Order of the Black Sun Box Set 3

by Preston William Child

  The lights died with the next thump, evoking cries of brute panic from all of them. In the pitch blackness, Gretchen and Nina held on to each other, sobbing softly as an awful wail shook the sheeting of the boat. Rattling ensued so violently throughout the enormous submarine that Sam, Nina, Gretchen, and Richard believed that every bolt and screw was being detached. They all expected the war machine to fall apart at its seams at any moment.

  “Did we hit rocks?” Nina asked, hoping that the boat’s double-layered metal sheeting had not been ruptured.

  “Could be,” Richard replied. “If our hull is on the rocks, the current could be propelling us into these jolts, changing direction from the velocity.”

  “Or it could be a whale,” Gretchen mentioned, slowly letting go of Nina so that she could scamper over to Sam to secure him.

  In the dark, Nina slipped into Sam’s embrace, feeling the furious temperature of his body burn against hers. There was not much else they could do. They were probably going to die in the next few minutes, a thought pondered by all aboard in the grasp of unadulterated horror.

  Like a keening banshee the whine sent sharp sound waves through the immediate proximity of the boat, shaking it in its course, like a dog shook a toy in its mouth. Nina screamed curses of terror. Gretchen’s arms were shaking around her bent face as the lights flashed with white lightning every now and then, attempting to regain current. Richard sat flat on his ass on the floor against the wall, staring at Sam, who returned his glare with his timid black eyes.

  “What was that, Richard?” he asked meekly.

  “Probably an orca,” the eloquent American answered, but Sam knew he was bluffing.

  “That is no orca, mate,” Sam protested.

  Nina listened and spoke from under Sam’s chin, where she had nestled her head.“Whatever that is must be three times the size of a whale. Besides, it doesn’t sound like any whale I have ever heard.”

  “Me neither,” Gretchen murmured, while her eyes stretched to see in the frightening flashes of the lights. “Did you know Orcinus orca means ‘bringer of death’?”

  “Thank you, Gretchen,” Nina moaned.

  “It is not a fucking whale,” Sam grunted laboriously through the fever and fear. “Just ask Richard. He did not look all too surprised about it, just . . . inconvenienced, eh, Pasty?”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Richard dismissed him out of hand.

  Sam was pissed. He propped himself up over Nina and with reddened eyes he pinned Philips to the wall, “You and I both know what it is. We both saw that thing in Oban.”

  The women perked up instantly, frowning and perplexed.

  “Excuse me? That sounds just a little fucking horrible! Care to share your wisdom with us, lads?” Nina gawked with that well-known fire in her dark eyes

  “What did you see in Oban?” Gretchen asked, pulling her legs in even closer against her body and tightening her embrace around them even more. Her face was distorted in dread, unlike Nina’s.

  The two men remained silent, neither one quite knowing how to describe what they had seen. Nina got up and went over to where Gretchen was clutching at her clothing. She put her arm around her friend and stared the two men down with a hellish glare that would make the devil think twice. “What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?” she shouted, Gretchen sobbing with fear in her arms.

  “You had better tell her, lad,” Sam forced through his impending unconsciousness. “I’m too tired to think anymore.” His big, dark eyes fluttered and he laid his head back down, still awake, but hardly calm. Sam’s chest heaved, and his breathing was shallow as the fever grew through him. Richard cleared his throat and tried to think of how to put it, what they had seen.

  “How much weight do you put in this lore of the old gods?” he started.

  “Listen, Richard, I am not the kind of bitch you want to test wits with, and I am certainly not the type you keep waiting,” Nina shrieked. “I swear to God I will make you!”

  “All right, all right. It’s just going to sound absurd, that is all,” he retorted, his voice firm and loud for a change. It proved that there was after all some marrow in old Pasty’s bones when Nina drove him into a corner. It was a corner he could not escape, here, trapped in a giant tin can in the belly of the North Sea.

  “Absurd?” Nina snapped. “Have you seen the electricity in my new house? Oh, and did you see the kind of features my basement boasts? It’s a darling little shack for the avid quantum physicist or every-day lunatic!”

  “We saw Argathule,” he said quickly.

  Silence came over the cabin where they were gathered. Gretchen swallowed hard. Normally she would not have believed it, but had she not heard the deafening wail of something that made an amplified sound lingering between whale and lion she would have laughed it off. Nina was not amused either, yet she was driven by the same acknowledgment as her friend. They knew what they had heard and encountered was not the actions of a mere sea mammal, no matter what its size. There was something malignant and intentional about the creature they encountered, as if it was a predator of immense intelligence honing in on those who brought it here.

  “It happened when we dumped the bodies in the mouth. When Sam stepped onto the submarine, while the police were bursting into the basement, he saw it lying below,” Richard confessed.

  The women shared an expression of confounded horror. Nina cocked her head, “saw it lying below, you say. Why did it not try to kill us then? Or climb out—”

  “It would not survive on land, first of all, so it was quite content in the well. But it was fed before we stepped off the edge of the well to board the submarine, so it did not feel compelled to hunt yet,” Richard explained nonchalantly.

  Gretchen stopped crying, sniffled and wiped her face carelessly. As she started approaching the man she so admired for his insights and unorthodox ideologies, the distant howl of the thing permeated through the near waters again. Waves of whining that drove the occupants of the Trident to terror surrounded the boat, gradually growing louder, announcing its approach.

  “It was fed? Richard, did you feed it?” she asked slowly. Nina gasped over where she stood watching. Her slender fingers covered her mouth under a wide-eyed scowl.

  “I had to or it would have compromised our only escape, Gretchen,” he explained in a soft tone. It was evident that he understood her repulsion and the way in which she questioned his morals. She knew that he was at fault and that he had no intention of apologizing for something he had construed as a victory in his work.

  “Richard, what did you feed it?” she asked in a childlike curiosity that bordered on brute fury. It made Richard Philips very uneasy, but he stood his ground. He had always been afraid of women to some respect, but now he understood why. Now there were two of them onto him, both of consummate intelligence and logic, both on the wrong side of tolerance with him. Nina knew.

  “McLaughlin’s sidekick,” she said coldly from behind Gretchen, stopping the stalking woman in her tracks. But Gretchen did not afford Richard his liberty from her wrath, and a moment later she came closer again.

  “It had to be done!” he exclaimed. “Your safety was secured by it, and she was there to kill Nina, so how can you not condone her sacrifice?”

  Gretchen slapped him hard across the face, leaving a substantial mark on his cheek.

  “I used to admire you . . . God, no, I used to worship you!” she screamed at him. Her body bent forward in an aggressive stance of hatred and disappointment. Nina came to collect her and pull her away from the shocked man who towered over her.

  36

  Jaap Roodt did not even know why the subject got under his skin like this. He had far bigger things on his plate than a cheating wife, but for some reason the idea of her having the audacity to have an affair after all she was entitled to as his wife, made him seethe with rage. Admittedly he was not a grand lover and certainly not affectionate at all. That was one thing Jaap could not help. He had never been an affectionate man,
and women usually just served their purpose on their knees or in his kitchen. That aside, he did Katrina a huge favor by marrying her, and it was chewing at him that she had failed to appreciate all that she had because of it.

  How dared she spend her time and her young body on anyone but the man who took her out of the gutters and made her a rich woman with all the comforts of a queen? It drove him up the wall when he found footage of her exploits in his email. The message was sent from the security office of the council in Bruges, Belgium, under a discreet subject line that read “Green Thumb.” It was a well-known fact among the council members and their immediate families and staff that Katrina Roodt was an ardent gardener, therefore the subject line of the email was no surprise to Jaap.

  However, inside he found video footage of the beautiful woman engaged in conversation with an attractive older man, much like himself, only this man was in possession of a better physique. Jaap bit his lip at the footage of her smiling, chatting as if she was truly taken with him. It reminded him of the way she used to look at him, a look he had not seen in more than a decade. Even her trademark sunken eyes and exhausted demeanor, brought on by alcohol and drugs, was absent in every clip dated differently. And the dates! Those dates at the right bottom corner of the footage had Jaap Roodt clutching harder at his tumbler of whisky harder than ever. They concluded that she had been seeing this man for more than two years.

  “Mark,” he hissed into the phone after he wiped the footage, “I want you to take the gardener to the nursery and wait for me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lackey answered from the other side of the phone. “What time?”

  “Make it . . . ” Jaap looked at his secretary, Don, who held out his watch for Jaap to see, “8:30pm. You know how to manipulate her. Don and I will meet you there.”

  “I knew there was something going on, Meester Roodt,” the eccentric young homo bragged to his boss, “but I did not want to speculate until I was sure.”

  “Did you send me this, Donovan?” Jaap asked.

  “No,” Don replied, taken aback. “I was not sure, but all this business of spas and day-long shopping gave it away a bit, I think.”

  “Yes, you know, I don’t have time for this. I have to check on Renatus and make sure he plays into our hands. I did not do this to save his life, you know? I did this for him to get done what I needed to take over the reins. I don’t have time to concern myself with infidelity as well!” Jaap shouted.

  His home office was now void of potted plants and a couch to make sure she had no business in there anymore. The last bit of dwindling consideration he held for his wife was the reason he did not want her in his office again. Jaap feared Katrina would discover the council and the Order of the Black Sun’s plans for the near future. Most of all, he did not want her to see that she was not included in his plans to travel to Poveglia in Italy and hide in ARK until the Longinus had completed Final Solution 2.

  The safety of all council members and their families was something he planned to exclude her from. She was simply not important enough and his position in the council had now ranked higher since his affiliation with Renatus in addition to the recent murders of council members, which had by chance elevated Roodt’s position favorably. Time was running out. Soon Renatus would have the information needed to give Dr. Alfred Meiner and within mere days Final Solution 2 would be in action. It was time to tie up loose ends and cut dead weight—even if it weighed only 55 kg.

  “Can you believe the crap I have to deal with, Don?” he said, as he poured them both a glass of whisky. He sat on his desk with one leg on the ground and sipped as he looked out the open window at the cool, cloudy sky.

  “That is just a risk men like you take, Jaap,” Don told him as he took a drink from his glass. “What do you expect? You are constantly away from home, and she has too much money to her disposal.”

  “Men . . . like me?” Jaap asked with a twinkle of amusement. “That is half-insulting.”

  “Well, I mean, you are well into your years. And although she is no spring chicken either, she is still . . . a quarter of a century . . . your junior, Mr. Roodt,” Don explained as best he could. “You are just too . . . mature . . . for her, and she is looking for someone who wants to do, well, younger things with her.”

  “Sex has an age limit now?” Jaap bit at him.

  “I wouldn’t know. I have not yet reached your age,” Don replied.

  “Are you patronizing me, Donny boy?” Jaap gasped. He was steering the conversation into an argument deliberately, to see where Don’s loyalties lay. But he was not planning to let up until the conversational topic had reached boiling point.

  “Absolutely not, sir,” Don defended strongly, swirling his glass as he gestured. “You are just too busy with important things of global significance . . . my God, you are busy with things bigger than history, to indulge in the silly needs of a younger sexually charged woman.”

  “Yes, this is true. As long as you don’t insinuate that I cannot fuck the living daylights out of her. I just don’t feel attracted to her anymore,” Jaap rambled into his glass.

  “Of course not, Jaap. I have been working for you for fifteen years. Of course, I am only on your side. And I trust you will accommodate me when the time comes. I know all your secrets and you need me to keep those secrets from other council members and high-level Black Sun affiliates,” he reminded his boss as he raised his glass for another sip.

  Jaap frowned. His secretary was correct. He knew that Jaap was corrupt to the core, an embezzler, and a wife-beating alcoholic. Moreover, Don knew about Jaap’s long-running need to escape the council and become Renatus himself.

  “If I may ask, Jaap?” Don asked and paused. Jaap perked up to show his attention. “I have been wondering, are you the genius behind the unfortunate deaths of the council members?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Jaap evaded.

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Roodt, I think you are the only man with enough balls and ambition to put an end to these insufferable bunch of geriatric assholes who think they can rule the Black Sun’s business forever,” Donovan played his best sycophantic role. “Only you would do something about it. Everyone has been so sick of their superiority complex, but fact is they have outlived their time and their command. I just figured you would be the man to get that done.”

  Jaap Roodt stared long and hard at his loyal dog. He gave it some thought and finally put down his glass to answer. Don seemed interested, but not overly eager to know. Maybe he really meant what he said, but Jaap was wary of why he was asking outright like that.

  “I hate to disappoint you, Donny,” he said, “but I have absolutely no idea who is killing off the members of the council. But whoever it is, he is doing me a hell of a favor.” Jaap chuckled heartily at the irony, “Unless, of course, I am next on the list!” And then he burst out in robust laughter that was hard to judge if it was from fear or coincidence.

  Don laughed with him, but he was honestly surprised that it was not Jaap Roodt behind the murders. His laugh died slowly, but he would not let go. “But, are you seriously not involved? I must tell you, I am almost disappointed that my boss is not the ruthless mastermind eradicating the council to take over the Black Sun.”

  Jaap Roodt felt that same jolt of insult again. He poured them two more glasses, planning to get drunk enough not to care about his Katrina’s fate tonight. Passing Don another glass, Jaap sighed.

  “How could you be disappointed in me?” he asked his secretary. “I am already making sure the world suffers the greatest ethnic cleansing in existence! Something as common as killing off a bunch of old bastards for power over the Black Sun is so . . . so . . . insignificant,” he ranted, his voice rising and falling in exasperation and impatience.

  “That is true, sir. That is very true, I admit,” Don said, raising his glass. “Now, do you want me to escort you when you return to Italy, or shall I hold the fort in Rotterdam?”

  “No, I won’t be needing you anym
ore,” Jaap said.

  “How do you mean? You will need someone to take care of your arrangements for ARK. But you would have to tell me where it is, otherwise I will not be able to join you when Renatus unleashes the Longinus,” Don said, as he swallowed the rest of his whisky.

  Jaap looked out the window in silence, twirling the liquid in the glass as if it hypnotized him. Lost in the circular movement, he considered what Don had said.

  “You will never know where ARK is, Donovan. You are not included on the list of desirables, you see? And I wish I could say I was sorry, but like I said before, I have to tie up loose ends and leave behind all shackles so that I can start afresh when the old gods return,” he explained to Don. Don frowned, clearly upset. He dropped his glass and it shattered at his feet.

  “Oh, don’t take it so hard,” Jaap smiled. “You work for a powerful, smart, and high-ranking man who controls the most iniquitous organization this world has ever seen . . . and you are surprised?”

  “I don’t feel well,” Don snorted, as he stumbled backward, holding his chest.

  “I know. Your blood will begin boiling soon as your body tries to combat the toxin,” Jaap described the process patiently, ignoring the young man’s cries of agony.

  Donovan’s fingers entered his shirt where he could feel the wire pinching on his sweaty skin. He screamed loudly, indifferent to the situation and concerned more for the fact that his heart rate was hitting the roof.

  “Remember when you warned me that all this whisky was going to kill me?” Jaap laughed, “Imagine how ironic this must be for you!”

  Slowly the secretary started to crawl across the floor to get to the door, hoping for his colleagues in MI6 to rescue him soon. Jaap heard the screeching tires and doors slamming outside on his driveway.