“If you had one,” she giggled in a deep tone that only reinforced her heavy presence. “But lucky for you, Mr. Purdue, you don’t have one, do you?”
Ignoring the slight animosity she exuded, Purdue smiled and eventually managed to drag his eyes up to hers. “I suppose I don’t. It would be worthless anyway.”
“Oh, that is not true,” she teased. “Souls, even the rotten ones, all have some currency. Besides, there are different levels of stature in hell too. Even worthless souls are valuable to the lesser.”
“That does make a lot of sense,” he agreed, taking back his champagne. “About your proposition…”
Purdue hoped that it was a proposal for hotel keys, as he was used to getting from bored billionairesses, and this one would be his crowning achievement. A shimmer of excitement in her eyes drew him in.
Oh God, she smells good!
“I want you to help me find something,” she whispered.
Don’t ask if it is her G-spot! Don’t! he reprimanded his thoughts, but his words were less juvenile. “What could someone like you possibly be missing?”
She laughed. “You are as charming as your reputation lets on, Mr. Purdue,” she said. “You’d be surprised how empty the life of a woman like me could be,” she lamented. “I simply have too much of the thing I don’t need and too little of the thing I need most.”
“That sounds remarkably like myself,” he conceded, referring to something quite different. “But go on, I’m listening.”
She looked around to make sure nobody was imposing on their conversation before she placed her hand on his thigh. Purdue froze to appreciate the thunderstorm that erupted inside him.
“Are you familiar with the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem?” she asked.
Purdue’s senses begged him not to think consciously, but the location she had mentioned forced him to address the matter with his brain. “The Temple of Solomon?” he asked in a quivering voice, trying to escape the power of her sexuality to attain a cogent manner.
“Yes.”
“You do realize that it is not standing anymore,” he said.
She chuckled, “Yes, I’m aware of that, Mr. Purdue. But in its foundation there is something that once belonged to me, that I am desperate to regain. And your reputation as an explorer is one of reckless charge, to abandon all reason to get what you want.”
She continued before Purdue could answer, running her hand up his thigh. “I like that in a man. Only men like you understand my drive for excellence, for usurping thrones and attaining my goals at all costs.”
Her voice mesmerized him completely, rendering him enslaved to her will. It was a strange sensation, because he felt entirely conscious, coherent, and in charge of his thoughts and decisions, regardless of her sexual thrall over him. Purdue considered her proposal soberly, yet everything inside him had already yielded to the prospect of pleasing her.
“What is in it for me?” he asked suavely, piercing her with his light grey eyes and laying on his own brand of persistent charisma. “Your soul?”
The beauty threw her head back in obscene laughter, amusing the white haired genius. “Oh, David, you are a gem! Touché!” Purdue laughed with her, but was anxious for an answer. Her exuberant reaction drew attention from the Queen of the Netherlands and the two men standing with her, the Ambassador of Denmark and American communications tycoon, Henry Goldstein. They looked positively revolted, but kept to themselves nonetheless, with no desire to hush the forceful hussy they seemed to know personally. Then they looked at Purdue with equal disdain, but he noticed a different air about their looks. Seeing him with the stunning Middle Eastern beauty almost made them look sorry for him. For a blink in time, Purdue noticed an imperceptible warning shine in Goldstein’s expression, before he looked away.
Not since he was on trial before the Order of the Black Sun as Renatus, had Purdue felt so alone, so singled out. In fact, had he not been independently wealthy with all the resources his heart desired, he may well have felt an inkling of terror at that moment. Deep inside, he felt isolated and unsafe.
“In all honesty, what is in it for me?” he reiterated his query. The woman ceased her giggling and looked him in the eye.
“Money,” she replied.
“I have money,” he grinned arrogantly. “You will have to do better than that, my dear.”
She smiled, looking momentarily put down by his dismissal, but she was far from being out of chips to play this game. Her tone grew hard, and she delivered her bait with conviction. Purdue knew she’d deserted the charm and exchanged it for straight business talk – it had to be serious to her, whatever this was she wished to gain.
“You’re right, Mr. Purdue. Offering you money is like offering God the Universe, right?” she conceded. “If you help me I will give you three things your heart desires.”
Purdue smiled, but he was both wary and slightly unnerved. “Carry on,” he said. “Which three things would those be?”
“Whatever your heart desires, Mr. Purdue. Pay attention,” she snapped.
“What could I possibly desire that I cannot attain myself?” he chuckled, swigging the last of the bubbly. But something about her rising anger warned him that he was not playing with a spoiled princess or a desperate feminist. He physically felt his heart and stomach tense up at her silent annoyance. He added, “Nobody has anything I cannot achieve by my own means, madam.”
Her dark eyes, like onyx on fire, gazed at him, fueling his panic. There was something to her preposterous offer that felt genuine, but he dared not entertain such a notion. Then again, why did the other guests look at him with borderline pity?
She whispered, “Three things, David. Any three things I can give you if you help me find my treasure.” Drawing closer to him, she was not being suggestive this time, but meant to keep her proposition as quiet and secret as she could. Purdue felt as if her voice came from inside his mind, even though he could feel her breath from the outside his ear. “I can destroy the Order of the Black Sun in a day for you, David. You will never have to run from them again. I can make any woman sway to your whims. And yes, I know there are women who elude you. I can bring you peace, make you the king of the world, if you wish. All these leaders will kneel to you.”
Purdue could feel the hair raise on his skin, but he maintained his cynicism. “If you can destroy the Black Sun, why have you not done so already?”
The beauty looked amused, almost chuckling as she drew away from him to scrutinize his face to find the humor there. “Why on earth would I destroy them? They’re not my bane, but yours. Please, David, I do not busy myself with matters that do not pertain to me.”
“Three things,” he asked again, smiling at the interesting challenge. “What are you, a genie?” Purdue laughed heartily at his insinuation, but the lady was not as entertained as he.
“Do not jest about ancient things you will not comprehend in your tiny mind,” she retorted in vexation, shifting in the sofa seat and leering at the rich and powerful herd in the room. “You might be a genius among humans, Mr. Purdue, but the smartest cockroach on earth is still...just a cockroach. Are you willing to help me find my treasure at the Temple or not?”
Her statement was harsh, but Purdue liked her engaging appeal. There was much in her way that could convince him to join in her endeavor. After all, he had nothing to lose. His name restored, his holdings were consolidated and unreachable by any third party. Such a venture, lucrative or not, would not harm or mar his financial growth. “Tell me what you are looking for and I shall tell you if searching for it is worth my time, my dear lady. And your name would be a nice touch as well.”
The olive-skinned beauty smiled at his response. Looking pleased, she lifted her defenses somewhat. “Countess Baldwin, widow of Freiherr Klaus Geier,” she revealed proudly. “And I am looking for a very old family heirloom, Mr. Purdue, something from my own family’s history. I have reason to believe it is on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, under the masonry of a
plaza. You see, only you can search the plaza’s subterranean vicinity without bulldozing the whole thing and drawing attention. Your technological inventions are legendary, and nobody else would have a discreet way of locating the item.”
“And what exactly is this item, Countess Baldwin?” Purdue asked curiously, pouring the dark-eyed beauty a glass of absinthe to match his.
They raised their glasses. Crystal tapping crystal sounded like a delicate bell to accommodate the Countess’ sublime voice. “It is a crown, Mr. Purdue. My crown.”
16
Revelations of Masks Removed
It was well past midnight, but Nina was too intrigued by the strange customs reflected by the eight bodies still awaiting collection, in vain. Outside the office of the medical examiners, it was business as usual. Now and then Nina would hear a vehicle pull up, wheels squeaking under gurneys as unfortunate victims were delivered to the fridges of Upney Lane’s Nirvana. Voices would discuss processing and next of kin before it would grow quiet once more. The shift staff and security knew that the historian was permitted to work in Dr. Victor’s office, so they tried not to disturb her.
Still, every time a doom wagon would show up, or when the trains passed along the rails behind the building, the clattering of metal or slamming doors would startle Nina into a frenzy. After a while, she’d come to recognize the rumble of gurneys, cracking of hinges, and noise from doors opening and shutting. Even so, thumps came without warning, evoking more than a few choice words from the weary historian.
But as the night drew on, the chatter became less frequent and the ambulance and coroner visits rarer. Nina made her own notes from the records retrieved by Dr. Hooper’s wife and Dr. Victor’s comments on the peculiarities of the bodies. In the sharp light of the desk lamp, Nina sat mumbling the information as she typed the details onto her laptop.
One by one, she recorded the names of the men. As Glen Victor reported, they had names such as Carbo, Fluere and Silex. Next to her open spreadsheet, she had the periodic table open on screen so that she could identify which names were the Latin or Greek version of the chemical elements.
“Bromos,” she muttered as she typed, “you have your sigil on your left hand.” She looked impressed for a moment. “You seem to be the other side of Kadmia, who has his on his right hand.” Nina found it uncanny that some had their markings on the same body parts, but on opposite sides of the physique. “Why are they named after elements? What is the connection between the body parts and the elements?”
Another crash startled her. Nina’s heart went wild from the sudden slamming that sounded like a blunt, heavy object, a sound she had not yet heard this night. “Christ!” she gasped, clutching her chest. The din continued with sweeping sounds, distracting her from her focus on solving the mystery of the dead men. “Hey! Can you keep it down just a wee bit, please?” she hollered to the staff.
“Sorry, ma’am!” she heard back from the dreary, old reception room where the register was kept for new arrivals.
“Fucking hell, man! I’m trying to think,” she said softly, replacing her glasses to open another window on her laptop for research. In checking her resources on the Knights Templar Nina could not find any information pertaining to the element names, and all the sigils’ wording included the entire slogan. Not one instance was ever reported not to have the name of Christ in the sigil of the Templar Knights, bar no era.
Nina wracked her brain trying to put the pieces together. Her reputation was at stake, as well her insatiable need to unravel mysteries, leaving her in a furious debate with herself. The same symbols presented over and over, no matter where she sought them, no matter how deep she went. At wit’s end, and hammered by painkillers, concentration, and too much caffeine, an epiphany happened.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed, ripping her glasses from her face and falling on her arms to take a moment’s rest. Inside the darkness of her folded arms, she started smiling. A moment later, with the careful racket of the considerate night staff in the background, Nina grabbed the phone handset and dialed a number hastily.
As it rang, she felt her heart race, mostly because she was feeling guilty for the nocturnal bother, but also for the clarity she would no doubt attain from the man she was calling. A sleepy answer forced itself over the phone.
“This had better be a matter of heaven and hell,” he said.
“I am so very sorry to bother you at this hour, Father Harper,” she said, “but I am onto something amazing and I have to have some answers by morning.”
“Who is this?” he yawned. “Someone who needs counsel? Or a watch, perhaps?”
“Again, Father, I am terribly sorry. This is Nina Gould. I’m calling from a morgue in London, so a personal visit would have been out of the question,” she reported as amicably as she could, hoping that he would merit this a valid reason for her ridiculous timing.
“Nina! Oh, what a pleasant surprise! It’s no trouble at all,” he cried, suddenly sounding very forthcoming. “My favorite heathen!” he jested. “What can I do for you that has you calling for informa…wait, you are calling from a morgue?”
“Aye,” she chuckled. “I was called out to consult for something odd they came across when a group of bodies were brought in. Same incident caused all their deaths.”
“Accident?” he asked.
“I suppose you could call it that, Father. They were run over by a car. It killed them all,” she informed him, electing to put the phone on speaker so that she could make coffee while talking, “during the practice of lapidation.”
“My Lord!” he gasped. “And the woman they were stoning?”
“No trace,” she shrugged.
Nina was a little surprised that Father Harper knew about such terminology and practice, but she did, after all, call him because he was well versed in all things religious. In any event, it would be easier to explain the conundrum to someone who already knew the traditions involved.
“So, she was not also delivered to the morgue?” he persisted.
“Um, truthfully, Father, I never even thought of the woman. Nor did I ask. I guess what we found on the men occupied my attention entirely. The medical examiners said nothing about her, actually,” Nina explained. “As far as I know she’s not dead, or at least not here at this facility.”
“I see,” he said, finally accepting her elucidation. “What is so peculiar then, about these men, that you think I could advise on?”
“It’s too intriguing, but I have come to a dead end as to the origin of a sigil they all have tattooed on them,” she explained. “A Templar Knight sigil. Are you familiar with the order, Father? I mean, most people know who they are, but do you perhaps know more about them?”
“Because I’m a priest?” he inquired in amusement.
“Aye,” she hesitated.
Father Harper had a bit of a laugh before clearing his throat and replying dramatically. “You are in luck, Dr. Gould,” he announced, “for I know of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ.”
Nina chuckled as she stirred her strong black coffee, trying not to spill it while she hobbled back to Dr. Victor’s chair. “I am elated to hear that, Father, but the symbol on these lads does not include Christ’s name.”
A long pause ensued on the other side of the line. Nina hoped that Father Harper would not think her a fool. “I know it sounds silly, but unless you advise otherwise, I’m willing to assume they just had their bodies marked from ill-researched sources.”
There was no reply.
“Father Harper?” Nina prompted.
“I’m here, Dr. Gould,” he said. “Anything criminal, perhaps ties to extremist groups, you could find on them? Surely the medical examiner took their fingerprints?”
“Oh,” Nina remembered, “I was about to add that part too. They have no names, only pseudonyms…”
“Chemical elements, by chance?” he asked.
A dark shadow appeared in to Nina’s left, racing toward her with stealth precision and ma
lice in mind. Bare handed, he struck her down onto the hard floor, knocking her cold. Behind him, the bodies of a security guard and an assistant was left in his wake.
“Nina?” Father Harper called, having heard the commotion. “Nina! Answer me!”
All Father Harper could hear was a ruckus of drawers and the historian’s groaning as the assailant picked her up. He threw her hard into the chair and slapped her until she regained consciousness.
“Nina!” Father Harper bellowed into the speaker. “I am on my way.”
“Don’t bother,” the attacker told Harper. “She will be long gone.”
Having overheard the whole conversation, the attacker knew that Nina had been speaking to a clergyman, he knew his name and just before he hung up the phone, he mocked Nina’s friend. “Harper, stay in your foxhole and hide behind your ash and salt, Brother. Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis, placuit Deo.”
The line was cut, leaving Father Harper astonished, terrified for Nina, and furious with vengeful need. The man’s response had not not random, but specific to Father Harper in ways he could never disclose. In a twisted way, the priest was grateful that Nina had not heard the attacker’s address to him, or else she may have uncovered why the phrase was so demeaning to his personal ego.
Back at the morgue, Nina gradually came to under the forceful hand of her attacker. Blurry and hazed, her vision slowly returned to observe a line of men before her, only in silhouette. Her head was pounding and her ankle was hurt a second time when she fell, but she was too disoriented to do much for now. The black figures, like a congregation of shadowy monks, swayed and faded until Nina’s sight adjusted.
“Wake up!” she heard in the echo of her half-asleep mind. “Wake up…Nina!”
They all knew her name now that they had heard the conversation on the phone. They also knew who she held allegiance to, and yet she was still alive. That was, at least for the time being, a positive fact. “Are you awake? Or do you want us to hasten you to the consciousness in less patient ways?”
The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar (Order of the Black Sun Book 19) Page 9
