“He was murdered by what his driver says was a transient. Apparently a young girl he wished to . . . entertain.”
“How was he killed? I think that is what we all need to know most.”
A murmur of agreement buzzed through Paddy’s speaker and he perked up to pay attention to the coming comment. A shrill, older voice spoke next.
“He was asphyxiated. A large amount of meat was thrust down his throat after a paralytic agent was administered to immobilize him.”
Paddy swallowed hard. That was a strange way to assassinate someone, but then again, he had learned with experience that killers were as creative and versatile as artists. He wondered who the girl was and what her motives were. It was a well-known fact that Kees Maas was a cannibal and pedophile, to mention his most prevalent traits, but this murder sounded premeditated in every way.
“Jaap, when you leave for Padua, make sure that you are well-guarded. We should not overestimate our invincibility,” another voice added calmly.
“Yes, I realize. Could it be that they know about our . . . .umm . . . impervious nature?” Jaap asked. Paddy recognized his voice perfectly from the house stakeout.
Impervious nature? Paddy thought to himself. Could that be a figure of speech? Or is that why they never have security in place to protect them?
“They must. Why else would Kees have been choked instead of shot or stabbed? They must know that we cannot be killed by conventional methods.”
Paddy frowned in the dark shelter of the smelly old cupboard, mouthing “what?” to himself as the words came over the earpiece.
“Thank the gods for Alfred Meiner,” another man sighed.
Who? Why do we not have a file on this character? Paddy pondered, shocked at the new information. He made a mental note to find out who this man was and why he was responsible for the council’s apparent immunity to certain attacks.
Then another voice brought something even more shocking to the fore. Paddy hardly dared to breathe just to make sure he would not miss a single syllable.
“What about Nina Gould? Is that happening?”
Paddy gasped, immediately holding his breath.
“Yes, that is what Jaap will be finalizing before going to Venice.”
“Oh, all right then.”
“Are you gentlemen sure this is necessary?”
“Absolutely,” a stern voice came from nowhere. It reminded Paddy of Sir Christopher Lee and his penchant for playing villains, for some reason. “We know that Dr. Gould is not only a witness to many of the Black Sun’s doings, but the prospective Renatus finds her invaluable. The fool is in love with her, after all.”
A resounding agreement hummed among the men again. Another remarked, “She is the reason for many of his indiscretions against our organization. Had it not been for Nina Gould, Dave Purdue would have been bagged and successfully completed his conversion by now.”
“Not to mention he would have finished Final Solution 2 by now,” the shriller voice revealed.
Final Solution 2? Paddy thought. He was thoroughly confounded by all this new information, but he wished he knew how to put into place all these puzzle pieces he was given.
“This is true. Once we take care of Gould and she is off the board, Purdue has no choice but to focus all this strengths on Final Solution 2. Is she in Scotland now?”
“Yes, Izaak. We have it on good authority that she is back in her hometown of Oban.”
“Has McLaughlin made her move yet?”
McLaughlin? Jesus! How many people are involved in this thing? And what the fuck is this thing at any rate? Paddy thought, absolutely baffled. He felt like a full canteen, carrying so much liquid that his cap would pop, overflowing with new and very disturbing details. All this had to be investigated immediately. With Nina in danger there was no time to unravel this plot and get to Nina before they did. From what he heard, Paddy knew that this McLaughlin character was already in Nina’s vicinity.
I have to find out who McLaughlin is, first of all. And then find out where in Oban Nina is at the moment. She will not be pleased to hear that Sam is back in her life, but we have to protect her at all costs, even if the little harpy shrieks and claws, Paddy decided. But he could not leave until the meeting had adjourned. What if there was more information?
While the committee discussed other things, such as the circumstances of Kees Maas’ death, his funeral arrangements, and media coverage, Paddy sat slouched in his hiding place. His heart pounded wildly and his adrenaline surged at the new developments. Here he was thinking he was collecting intel on a crooked financier involved with a global organization of ill repute, when actually there was so much more to the Black Sun and the council’s objective. What was Final Solution 2? What kept them alive?
“Now, brothers, we have to return to our own nests and start planning the last phases of the plan. The gods are becoming restless, and I certainly do not want to be at the receiving end of their wrath. Let’s allow the rest of the world to suffer that fate when Longinus is activated,” the deep voice concluded.
Longinus is still out there? Paddy thought. I knew it had been stolen by Purdue, and that Purdue’s sister, Agatha, had stolen it from him in turn . . . or did she? Maybe they were in on it, creating a diversion to fool their pursuers?’
It was all too perplexing, and Paddy came into this intelligence assignment thinking he had covered all the bases, that he knew everything about this operation. Was he sent in to find all this? Or does MI6 really not carry any knowledge of this, of the extent of the Black Sun’s plans for world domination?
And Sam and Nina thought they were rid of this bunch, finally. My God, I don’t even want to tell Sam all this stuff. Maybe he shouldn’t know? Paddy’s inner dialogue ranted. No, you underestimate him. He is an investigative journalist of the highest caliber, Patrick. He will find out, just like he found out you lied to him about the council on this mission. And if he finds out you kept from him that Nina’s life was in danger, you will never dink together again. Don’t be stupid.
Paddy nodded as if he was talking to someone else. His mind was made up. The problem he had to deal with now was to make all this information available to his Secret Intelligence Service supervisors. After all, they were the ones who sent him out to get intel on Jaap Roodt. But if they had no knowledge of the true agenda behind Roodt’s affiliations, it would take more time to push them into action, legally. They would have to investigate the whole of the Black Sun and its members, of which there were incalculable numbers of agents and locations.
By that time they would have already assassinated Nina, converted Purdue to his new position, and had him complete Final Solution 2. The Longinus would be activated before any government organization could figure out what the hell it was and the world would, by the lore that was actively progressing into reality, be destroyed. Whatever the Black Sun had planned for the world after that would be inevitable, because all its opponents would be exterminated.
With this in consideration, Agent Patrick Smith elected to only impart the basics to his employers and keep the awful underbelly of the atrocious war to himself and his friends, Sam Cleave and Nina Gould.
They were the only people he could trust with such ludicrous information. More than that, they were the only people who would know what to do to avert the impending New World Order under the fabled old gods that the SS and its occult practices attempted to resurrect. Even if these things did not exist, the destruction of the world as they knew it was reason enough to put a stop to their madness.
16
The house was warming, thanks to the delightful fire in the hearth. The three history buffs gathered around in front of it, sipping wine, and enjoying the music Gretchen played from her iPod, a bouquet of varied tunes from Enigma to Vera Lynn.
“Do you like music, Dr. Philips?” Nina asked. At the moment she asked, she meant only to make conversation, but as soon as her words were out she realized that it was quite an interesting thing to ask a man li
ke Richard Philips.
“Call me Richard, please,” he smiled timidly, playing with his glass. “I have always found music a singularly bewitching entity, a thing with a mind of its own, and equally decisive of its impact on the listener.”
Gretchen rolled her eyes behind the pale man as he spoke and Nina had to try not to laugh at her smitten friend’s childish admiration. She could not deny that Richard had a very eloquent manner in conversation, his phrasing and choice of words almost poetic whenever he described something. He was not unattractive at all, apart from his weak body language, and the severely introverted lack of opinion he exhibited on most subjects, but his occasional verbalization was worth the imbalance.
Nina stared into the fire. Just how does one respond to that? Thankfully Gretchen came back into the banter and asked Richard about his presence.
“So, tell me, Richard, why did you have to see the house so desperately?”
He looked at her with a distinct glare of surprise, his dark eyes glimmering with a touch of insanity.
“You do not know?” he asked.
Nina shifted on her ass, turning her undivided attention toward him, “Know what?”
Richard looked at her with the same resolute amazement. Gretchen sat down next to him.
“My dear Nina, this house has historical value, I fear to admit, in the more ghastly vein of science,” he said nonchalantly.
Again with the overdone words, Dick, Nina thought with utter frustration. Just fucking tell us what is so weird about my house.
“Ghastly vein of science?” Gretchen asked. She was hooked like a little girl about to listen to a ghost story.
“Yes, Gretchen,” his husky softness came in words. Hardly an emotion showed on his face and its pasty hue showed no signs of the hype that could have gone with such a statement.
“Um, I hate to be so persistent,” Nina pressed, “but do tell us what you mean, Richard.”
“This house has a reputation for . . . ” he smiled coyly, and almost looked embarrassed, “well . . . strange phenomena.”
Silence among the three of them lasted too long for Nina to bear.
“Richard, please,” she cried out, gesturing with her half-full glass, “keep talking.”
Gretchen laughed, “You have to excuse her. She is very inquisitive,” and she looked at Nina with a reprimand before adding, “and impatient.”
Richard chuckled for a moment and then returned his face to its usual statuesque blankness.
“This house, even when my grandfather lived here, had a reputation among the locals as being . . . this might sound absurd . . . a portal to other dimensions,” he said quickly and took to the refuge of his wine.
“That is not absurd at all,” Gretchen noted. “Other dimensions exist and quantum mechanics allow us to explore the possibility of traveling among them.”
Nina could feel the emergence of the car conversation she had with Gretchen happening all over again. Sure, what she knew about mathematics and physics was meager, but her logic taught her that the things Gretchen believed to be possible were just a tad too farfetched for her logical deduction. But she listened anyway, for the sake of chiming in now and then, and this way she would not have to attend one of Richard’s lectures.
Speculation, her inner bitch sighed with every theory Gretchen tried to impress Richard with.
“But the place was known for it, because . . . ?” Nina asked suddenly. “Were there any witnesses?”
Gretchen sighed at Nina’s cynicism, but Richard turned his attention to the skeptical historian and continued to tell her about the lore of the house.
“All witnesses obviously disappeared. Either the theory was true and they were pulled through portals, therefore vanishing into thin air, or they were murdered and their bodies used by the Nazis for medical research,” Richard said.
Nina refused to entertain the ideology, not because she thought it was impossible, but because she knew it to be true; and it terrified her to the bone. Not long ago she played witness to the fearsome factors of physics and dimensions when she spent a horrifying night in Hoia Baciu’s haunted forest. There was no denying what she and Sam experienced there, how they were ripped from day to night, from one place to somewhere else, in a blink. Now she lived in a house reputed to have the same qualities as the Romanian forest’s deadly circle? Denial was her best friend right now.
“It was said by the locals that strange lights would illuminate the windows of the attic,” Richard relayed calmly.
His words prompted the two women to lock eyes with a solid amount of panic.
“What?” Richard asked. “Did you see the attic?”
For the first time, he looked alive. His expression bent into excitement and his cheeks colored slightly with a flush of pink. He put his glass down.
“Please, ladies, do tell me that my grandfather was not decidedly mad.”
Nina and Gretchen were stunned into silence. They just looked at each other for a time and then both turned their eyes to Richard.
“Come, let me show you what we found in the attic,” Nina said with a strong tone. If she was fortunate, this academic could fill her in on the weird Nazi books about monsters and gods.
After the three of them made their way up to the attic, filled still with the sickening odor of old masonry, rotten water, and mummified remains, Richard looked stunned. He moved carefully, making sure to absorb every morsel of information with every step he took.
Nina led him to the broken wall where the books were still scattered, and she told him of how they had discovered the hidden compact library with the grotesque book still lying a few feet away.
Richard seemed fascinated by the spider book with the ungodly binding, but he too could not get himself to pick it up.
“This book, like that other one you showed me, attests to the existence—at least, belief in the existence—of inter-dimensional creatures of unfathomed power and size. These were the same deities mentioned in my grandfather’s writings, notes he took from his own father’s ramblings when he was on his deathbed. My grandfather, Heinrich Schaub, joined the SS because of this very theory, did you know?” Richard dribbled on and on, while the two women stood confounded.
“So it’s a family thing?” Nina asked. “Not the Nazi thing; the physics-god-monsters from other dimensions thing.”
“I suppose so,” Richard scoffed with a taste of embarrassment. “You have to concede it is a fascinating concept, as nightmarish as it is.” Gretchen nodded in agreement, scrutinizing Richard’s hands as he explained. “It has connotations to the legend of the Library of Forbidden Books.” Nina gasped at the familiarity of the phrase.
As before, a waft of reeking putrefaction floated up through the house and Nina commented to her guests.
“Excuse the smell. I have not been able to find a pond or old swimming pool around here that could be responsible for the foul stench, but I’ll get that sorted out this week,” Nina apologized, but Richard looked at her with careless abandon.
“That’s the well, Nina.”
Gretchen exhaled an involuntary groan at the sound of it, and Nina could feel her skin crawling.
“The well,” she repeated. “Like, the well, you know, the well that naturally appears on the grounds here . . . ”
Richard could hear Nina’s sarcasm escalating, so he clarified the statement, which did nothing to make the idea less creepy.
“Yes, Nina. There is a large well under the house. It has always been here, even when my grandfather moved in. It is all written in his journal, and some of it he mentioned to my father when he was a young boy. You didn’t know?” Richard asked in his usual collected assumption that drove the fiery Nina mad.
“Umm, no, Richard. I did not know there was a well under my house,” she accentuated in frustration, looking at Gretchen with astonished disbelief.
“I myself have only heard of it, of course, but naturally my grandfather spoke about it a few times. I wonder, would you mind awfull
y if we go and see it?” he asked politely, leaving Nina no reason to refuse.
“Of course we can, but I will put this on the table right now, that the idea of a giant water hole under my house does not sit well with my fragile courage,” she said, and evoked a tiny snigger from both her accomplices.
“Get your flashlight,” Gretchen told Nina, as she gave hers to Richard. “We’re going Lara Croft tomb raiding, guys!”
“I’m glad you find it so exciting!” Nina marveled at her friend’s enthusiasm. “But I’m sure it’s not a tomb, and do we even know where it is?”
“From the tales, it is right under your bedroom, Nina, where the attic’s west wall ends,” Richard informed her.
“And now it gets even more creepy,” Nina announced to the amusement of the other two.
“Don’t worry, doll. We will protect you against those foul North Sea guppies!” Gretchen jested with a mocking tone of courage in her best cartoon voice.
Nina was not amused by her two companions, but she had to concede, the evening was filled with fun and intellectual banter and that made their presence quite welcome.
“Indeed. We should take our fishing poles down there. Imagine what a wealth the tide brings in every day,” Richard smiled. It was a full smile meant to cheer Nina, but all it instilled was a terror filled image of man-eating mermaids and plagues of slugs.
“Hope you two can swim,” Nina mumbled behind them, her teasing threat ineffective.
Down in the pantry of her kitchen, they located the trap door to the dark basement space that was still just composed of rock. It had never been renovated to accommodate living or storage space, so there was nothing but an uneven moist rock surface as floor and some old rope and rusted cabinets gathering spider webs down there.
With the flashlight casting its faint beam, the three moved forward deeper into the vast darkness, choking on the rotten wetness that assaulted their sense of smell.
“Oh, God, I’m going to puke,” Nina complained, but Gretchen and Richard did not respond, too curious to stop now.
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