by P. W. Child
“La carta è pronta.” The old woman held out the newly printed card bearing Nina’s image and the name Sabine Bauer. Nina thanked her, deposited her belongings in a locker and made her way to the reading rooms, notebook and pencil in hand.
*
‘First things first,’ Nina thought as she settled herself at the far end of a long communal desk. ‘What am I actually looking for? With over five million books to choose from here, I’m going to need to get my topics straight.’ She knew that in reality, her decision to run the risk of leaving the house was only partly born of a desire to do some research. The biggest motivating factors had been cabin fever and fury. ‘If I had stayed indoors for another day I would have ended up slapping someone.’ She drew the notepad towards her, opened it to a fresh page and began to make a list.
O.B.S.
She could not bring herself to write out the full name of the shady organization that had almost succeeded in having her killed so many times in such a short time. Caution was becoming second nature, and anyone glancing over her shoulder might have read what she was writing. Beside the bullet point she listed her questions.
Structure?
True aims?
Size/reach?
N connections
Glancing down the list, she decided that her best bet would be to start off in a known area and investigate the organization’s Nazi connections. She was aware of the interest in the occult shared by Hitler and other senior Nazi officials, but her research had been more concerned with the experiences of ordinary Germans than with the elite. Exploring those occult beliefs was a task she had always preferred to leave to popular historians whose aim was to have a six part miniseries on BBC 2. Her own preference was for work that was much less eye-catching.
‘Time to brush up on the basics, then,’ she thought, and set off to search the shelves for anything that might refresh her memory regarding the Nazi party leadership and the occult.
Cha pter Five
It started with an opinion piece. Trish’s first opinion piece in her new role as a regular contributor to the Clarion’s comment pages. She wrote the first draft of it with a vicious hangover after we celebrated her new job with a combination of very good single malt and really cheap corner shop fizz.
The opinion piece itself started with a broken-down train. Trish’s ex-husband had finally agreed to return the last of her belongings, a handful of sentimental items, as long as she collected them from a friend of his in Greenwich. On the way home the Docklands Light Railway train we were riding in had a sudden attack of the vapors, meaning we were all pitched out onto the platform. Fortunately – or so we thought – we were already at Canary Wharf, so a quick change onto the Jubilee line would take us straight home to Stratford East.
Canary Wharf is one of those odd stations that are actually two stations, so we had to leave the DLR station and cut across Reuters Plaza. It was evening by that time, about 8.30pm, and it was Bonus Day. The city boys, obscenely well-paid even in the wake of the crash, were out to play, and there was a sense of danger in the air that you could almost smell – sharp and metallic, a little bit like blood.
As we walked past brightly-lit bars and restaurants lugging Trish’s box of knick-knacks, we could hear the sound of braying laughter and popping champagne corks. A lad in his late 20s ran whooping across our path, wielding a fizzing Jeroboam high over his head, its contents spilling out in an incredibly expensive trail behind him. Trish stopped in her tracks and looked down. “More than I earn in a week, just pissed across the street,” she chuckled. “These people are crazy. What’s the betting that he’ll blow more money tonight, just in one single night, than you and I will make this year – put together?”
We spent the rest of our journey home talking about the atmosphere in Canary Wharf, that near-palpable sense that anything could happen and that these people were just seconds away from spiraling out of control. When Trish got the news about her new column a few days later, she already knew what she wanted to write about – the incredibly rich City boys who are mad, bad and dangerous to know. She had taken her first step on the path that led her straight towards Charles Whitsun.
Sam set down his pen and pushed the notebook away. It wasn’t an easy story to tell, knowing how it ended. But he was determined to tell it. Trish was dead, Charles Whitsun was dead, Admiral Whitsun was dead – the only person who could still be hurt by these memories was Sam, and it was time to face that pain.
“Not that I know if I’ll ever be in a position to publish it,” Sam muttered to himself. Thinking about Trish no longer filled him with the old feelings of bleak anguish. He could now remember her without wanting to drink himself into oblivion – but while he no longer wished for oblivion, he still felt the familiar impulse telling him to drink. “Best not,” he mumbled. “I’ll never get this written if I start all that now.”
He headed into the tiny kitchen, filled the kettle and set it on the gas ring. He missed the electric kettle back home. In fact, there were many things he missed. The galley kitchen that had seemed so pokey back in Edinburgh but now seemed palatial in comparison to its Italian counterpart. The teabags. The soft Scottish water. The search for a clean mug, no longer an issue since Purdue would not tolerate disorder. Bruichladdich sitting in the sink, watching him judgmentally. Sam really missed Bruich. He wished that he could give Paddy a ring and check that the cat was doing well. And Paddy…
‘Probably thinks I’m dead,’ thought Sam, splashing milk into his mug. ‘My sister probably does too, though I doubt she’ll mind as much. I wonder if Bruich misses me. Probably not. Cats know which side their bread’s buttered and he’s definitely better off at Paddy’s.’
At last the water came to the boil. Sam poured, dumped in a few spoonful of sugar and left the bag in to stew. The tea was not good, but it was hot and vaguely comforting, and that was good enough. He pushed open the door to the sitting room. To his surprise he found Purdue there, by the table at the far end of the room, apparently just emerging from his bedroom.
“Sorry, man,” said Sam, setting his mug on the table. “I should have asked if you wanted one. Do you? It’s just boiled.”
“I think that’s exactly what I need,” Purdue nodded. “But sit down and enjoy your tea, Sam. I can make my own.”
Sam did not argue but allowed Purdue to squeeze past him into the little kitchen. It was only as he sat down to read over what he had written that he realized that he had left his work lying around in plain sight. ‘I wonder if Purdue read any of it?’ He thought. ‘Oh god, I hope not. There’s nothing worse than somebody seeing the crap I churn out in a first draft.
Cha pter Six
“Why, oh why did I decide to learn German?” Nina whispered to herself. Perched precariously at the top of a ladder, searching the top row of one of the long shelves. So far she had succeeded in finding a handful of books that looked potentially useful and, crucially, were in either English or German. It was frustrating though, to see the shelves stacked with books that might very well contain useful, even life-saving information which was inaccessible due to her lack of command of the Italian language.
‘Even if I’d just taken French, that would probably help,’ she thought. ‘German doesn’t give me much of a chance of muddling through.’
A glance at the catalogue had shown her that there were other books in English available, but only if she submitted a request for them using her name and card number. She was tempted to take the risk, especially when she found a book entitled Black Sun: Occult Origins of Hitler’s Master Race.
‘But if I were them,’ she thought, ‘if I were part of some secret organization trying to track down three people on the run, and I had access to the kind of technology the Order seems to have, I would definitely be monitoring attempts to access that kind of information. Because if we’re really so valuable or so dangerous to them, we’d be worth accidentally taking out a few academics for.’ So she had left the tantalizing book alone, thinking that s
he might ask Purdue if there was any other way to get her hands on its contents. Assuming, of course, that at some point she would feel capable of speaking to him again without wanting to hurl the sparse furnishings of their hideout at him.
By the time the library closed Nina could hardly tell whether her head was spinning due to a lack of food or an overdose of information. Page after page of hastily-scribbled notes filled her notepad. Nevertheless, she still felt that she had done little more than refresh her existing knowledge and scratch the surface of what was going on. She returned her books to the shelves before the librarian could see that they were in a language she had claimed not to speak. Then she retrieved her belongings and went back to the apartment, hat pulled in her face and head down.
*
The heavy front door fell shut, but the lock failed to click. Nina turned to check on it, squinting as her eyes got accustomed to the darkness in the stairwell. She wriggled the handle, waiting for the lock to right itself. Just as it clicked, she heard a sound behind her. Footsteps! Light footsteps coming down the stairs. She spun around to face the wall and dug deep into her handbag, shoulders hunched, head angled to keep her face in darkness so that any passing neighbor would not get a clear look at her.
“Very convincing, Nina.” The amusement in Purdue’s voice was audible. “If I didn’t know you better I would be quite certain that you were searching for your keys.”
She straightened up, trying to keep the scowl off her face as Purdue moved along the short, dingy corridor towards her. He was wrapped in a long, charcoal grey coat with a thick black scarf pulled up to his ears. He was still immediately recognizable as himself, which infuriated Nina. If she and Sam were taking the trouble to look inconspicuous when they went out, why could he not do the same? Where was he going, anyway?
“I have an errand to run,” Purdue said, holding up a long, thin case in black leather. It looked like it might have contained a flute, but Nina guessed at once that it must have been the Renoir.
“And you’re going alone?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We are more likely to be spotted together. I shall be safe enough. I should be no more than an hour. If I am gone for more than two hours, go to Caffe Rivoire on the Piazza della Signoria. You will find Matteus there between eight and ten. He’ll know what to do.”
“Dave, that really doesn’t sound reassuring – look, why don’t you just let one of us come with you and at least that way we’ll -”
She was cut off mid-sentence by his lips suddenly covering hers. Before she could decide whether to push him away or relax into his embrace, he was gone. The door fell shut behind him, leaving her to fix the lock once again.
Chap ter Seven
The unmistakable aroma of Sam’s cooking hit Nina as soon as she stepped into the apartment. The slight hint of smoke in the air from singed bread, the sweet artificiality of tomato sauce.
“You just can’t get this right with the bread you get here,” Sam said as he set two plates on the table, eyeing the beans on toast ruefully. “It’s the salt, apparently. At some point there was a hefty tax on salt, so they stopped putting it in the bread. So you’ll need this.” He pushed a salt shaker towards her and took a seat. “You’re very quiet, Nina. Everything ok?”
Nina snapped back to reality. “Sorry, Sam, I was miles away. Yeah, everything’s fine. As fine as it can be. Thanks for cooking.”
“It was my turn. That’s probably why Purdue went out when he did. You just missed him, by the way – he’s gone out to deliver that painting and he’ll be back in an hour or -”
“I know,” Nina cut him off more abruptly than she intended. “I know. I ran into him on the stairs. It’s probably just as well that he’s not here, anyway. I spent the whole day trying to find out more about the Order of the Black Sun’s reputation and historical accounts of brushes with them and I’d rather just talk to you about it. I don’t think I can deal with any dramatic revelations from Dave right now.”
“I’ll tell you as much as I’ve figured out so far,” Nina said. “But it’s going to take me a lot more than a day to get a clear picture…”
*
Since Sam was far less versed in the occult mythology that had fascinated Hitler and other high-ranking members of the Nazi party, Nina started from scratch. In her research at the library she had discovered that the Order had several tentacles in places even she and Sam would not have expected. Not only was the organization responsible for the abhorrent experiments she had already witnessed first-hand, but they had infiltrated society to an extent than not even she would ever have expected.
Nina explained a little about the Theosophical Movement, founded in the late 19th century by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott, and how Blavatsky had theorized that humans descended from seven Root Races. The fifth of these was the Aryan race, the purest of races, descended from the people of Atlantis. Briefly Sam had flashbacks of the collapsing structure in the North Sea, where being on Deep Sea One had almost introduced both him and Nina to the fate of the mythological Atlanteans.
“I know,” Nina said, as Sam tried not to smirk. “I know. But bear with me; it’ll get a lot crazier than this. Not only were the Aryans descendants of Atlanteans, the Semites were apparently Aryans who had become ‘degenerate’ – yes, you heard that correctly – and chosen the material over the spiritual. There are other categories of supposedly inferior people, though most of us are just standard issue humans who lack the ‘sacred spark’ that makes the Aryans so special. Anyway, this later gives rise to Ariosophy, when Guido von List picks up these ideas and suggests that Teutonic and Norse people are a sub-race of the Aryans.”
“Oh my God, here we come right back to the Brotherhood’s problem again,” Sam remarked, shaking his head at the obsession the Nazis had with Norse Mythology. It felt like yesterday when he and Nina joined the Brotherhood in their battle against the Black Sun’s pursuit of Valhalla’s location.
“Exactly. Guido von List apparently wasn’t keen on the Nazis co-opting his work, but there wasn’t a great deal he could do. The Nazis ran with the idea, favoring the Nordic kind of Aryan, and mixed in a bit of misunderstood Nietzsche – you’ve heard of Übermenschen and Untermenschen? Good.”
Sam listened attentively, trying hard to follow every detail as Nina began to explain the significance of the Black Sun as their insignia. The earliest mentions of the symbol that she had found dated from the 5th century, when the design that they had seen used as the FireStorm logo had been used on iron brooches.
“With something like Freemasonry we at least know it exists,” Nina said. “There are Masonic Lodges all over the place. Their rites and customs are secret, not the existence of the society itself. And while you hear rumors that the Masons look out for each other and that sometimes means that people enjoy a greater level of protection from the law than they should, they’re pretty benign. Whereas the Black Sun… well...”
Sam thought back to the ideology they had encountered at the FireStorm retreat in the desert a few years back. At first it had seemed like the usual absolute confidence of the rich and powerful, certain that the world belonged to them because it always had. Combining technology with some half-formed spiritual beliefs appeared to be nothing more than the latest diversion for people with considerable amounts of money, much like Kabbalah or Scientology. Was it really possible that it had all been a front, just a means of luring these well-connected people into a frightening form of white supremacy?
“I agree,” said Sam, “but there’s one thing that worries me, and that’s how much they seem to bother Purdue. Whatever they do or don’t believe, they seem to be genuinely dangerous. If he’s prepared to go into hiding rather than just going back to Wrichtishousis and ramping up his security… that can’t be good, can it? And then he says that we need to stay in hiding too because we know too much, and I feel like we know bugger all. So what does he know? Forgive me if I’m suggesting the obvious here, but would he tell you if you asked him?”<
br />
A tinge of scarlet crept across Nina’s cheeks. “I’ve asked,” she said. “Just after we got here. I told him that if he didn’t tell me everything that was going on I’d leave, and I’d hitchhike my way back home if I had to. I meant it, too. He knew I did. I’ve never seen him go so pale. He told me that there are things you and I are better off not knowing, that we’ve got to trust him, all the usual stuff – but he actually begged me not to go, not to take the risk. You know Purdue. He doesn’t plead. And he doesn’t usually worry about risks.”
“You’re sure that wasn’t just because you’re…” Sam fumbled around for the right word, unsure of how to proceed since neither Nina nor Purdue had ever really clarified the nature of their relationship of late, if even they knew anymore.
“No, I don’t think so,” Nina shook her head. “I’ve never seen him like that before.”
“Maybe he’s lost some of his nerve? He got messed up pretty badly in Vegas.” Sam recalled their flight from the hotel and how Purdue was prompted to employ every ounce of his knowledge and reach, like he had never had to before. It had to be somewhat sobering.
“And God knows what else he has been up to during his lengthy absence from our esteemed company,” Sam added. “The stress on him has to be immense, even on base level.”
“Maybe. Either way, there’s a lot he’s refusing to say,” Nina pressed with urgency in her eyes.
“Which means we really need him to tell us what he knows,” Sam sighed. “I’ll talk to him. See if I can get anything out of him. Anything else to share?”
“That’s it for now,” said Nina, pushing her plate away. “A few things I still need to make sense of. However, I’d be more than happy to give you some cooking tips some time. Not that I don’t enjoy beans on toast every time it’s your turn, but you could stand to widen your repertoire a wee bit.”
