Order of the Black Sun Box Set 5

by Preston William Child

  “Aye, vaguely. So what about her?” Nina asked as she perched on the sofa arm rest with her cup and a cookie.

  “She met Purdue at the British High Commission in Berlin, and get this: on the day she reportedly committed suicide,” he stressed the last two words in his bewilderment. “It was the same day Purdue met this Carrington bloke.”

  “That was the last time somebody saw him,” Nina remarked. “So Purdue goes missing on the same day he meets a woman who kills herself shortly after. It reeks of conspiracy, doesn't it?”

  “Apparently, the only participant of the meeting who is not dead or missing is Ben Carrington,” Sam added up. He looked at a picture of the Brit on the screen to memorize his face. “I would like a word with you, son.”

  “I take it we are going south tomorrow,” Nina assumed.

  “Aye, once we have paid Wrichtishousis a visit, that is,” Sam said. “It won’t hurt to make sure that he has not returned home yet.”

  “I've called his cell over and over. It's turned off, no voice box, no nothing,” she reiterated.

  “What was this deceased woman’s involvement with Purdue?” Sam asked.

  “The pilot said that Purdue wanted to know why his flight to Copenhagen was denied entry. Since she was a German government rep, she was invited to the British Embassy to discuss why it happened,” Nina conveyed. “But that was all the captain knew. That was the last contact they had, so the flight crew is still in Berlin.”

  “Jesus. I must admit that I am beginning to get a very bad feeling about this,” Sam conceded.

  “Finally, you admit it,” she answered. “You mentioned something while you had that seizure, Sam. And that something spells definite shit storm material.”

  “What?” he asked.

  She took a bite of another cookie. “Black Sun.”

  A dark scowl fell on Sam’s face as his eyes stared floorwards. “Fucking hell, I forgot that part,” he said softly. “I remember now.”

  “Where did you see it?” she asked bluntly, aware of the horrible nature of the sigil and its power to turn conversations into ugly reminiscences.

  “At the bottom of the well,” he revealed. “I was thinking. Maybe I should see Dr. Helberg about this vision. He will know how to interpret it.”

  “While you are at it, ask him for his clinical opinion on the cataracts induced by the visions. I bet that is a new development he won't be able to explain,” she said firmly.

  “You have no faith in psychology, do you?” Sam sighed.

  “No, Sam, I don't. There is no way that a defined set of behavioral patterns can suffice to uniformly diagnose different people,” she argued. “He knows less about psychology than you do. His knowledge comes from studies and some other old farts' theories, and you keep trusting in his not-so-successful attempts at formulating his own theories.”

  “How could I possibly know more than he does?” he snapped back at her.

  “Because you are living it, you idiot! You are experiencing these phenomena while he can only speculate. Until he has felt and heard and seen it the way you do, there is no fucking way that he could even begin to comprehend what we are dealing with!” Nina barked. She was so frustrated with him and his naive trust in Dr. Helberg.

  “And what is it, in your qualified opinion, that we are dealing with, sweetheart?” he asked sarcastically. “Is it something from one of your ancient history books? Oh yes, a god. Now I remember! That, you could believe.”

  “Helberg is a shrink! All he knows is what a bunch of psychotic fuckwits exhibited in some study based on circumstances nowhere near the level of bizarre that you have experienced, my darling! Wake the hell up! Whatever is wrong with you is not just psychosomatic. There is something external controlling your visions. Something intelligent is manipulating your cerebral cortex,” she presented her point.

  “Because it talks through me?” he smiled sardonically. “Note that everything it says represents things I already know, things that are already in my subconscious.”

  “Then explain the thermal anomaly,” she retorted rapidly, leaving Sam momentarily stumped.

  “My brain apparently controls my body temperature too. Same thing,” he countered without showing his uncertainty.

  Nina laughed mockingly. “Your body temperature – I don't care how hot you might think you are, Playboy – cannot reach the thermal properties of a lightning bolt. And that is precisely what the doctor in Bali picked up, remember? Your eyes conducted so much concentrated electricity that ‘your head should have exploded', remember?”

  Sam had no comeback.

  “And another thing,” she continued her verbal victory, “Hypnosis is said to induce increased levels of fluctuating electrical activity within certain neurons of the brain, genius! Whatever is hypnotizing you is pushing an impossible amount of electrical power through you, Sam. Do you not see that what is happening to you is categorically outside the boundaries of mere psychology?”

  “What do you suggest, then?” he shouted. “A shaman? Electroshock therapy? Paintball? A colonoscopy?”

  “Oh Jesus!” she rolled her eyes. “There is no talking to you. You know what? Deal with this shit yourself. Go and see that quack and let him probe your brain a little more until you are as clueless as he is. It shouldn’t be a long trip for you!”

  With that, she stormed out of the room and slammed the door. Had she had her car there she would have driven straight home to Oban, but she was stranded for the night. Sam knew better than to mess with Nina when she was pissed off, so he spent the night on the couch.

  The annoying ringtone of her phone woke Nina the next morning. She was coming out of a deep, dreamless sleep that had been way too short and sat up in bed. Somewhere in her purse, her phone was ringing, but she could not find it on time to answer.

  “Alright, alright, dammit,” she mumbled through the cotton wool of her waking mind. Fumbling madly through make-up and keys and deodorant she finally got a grip on her cellphone, but the call had already ended.

  Nina frowned when she checked the clock. It was already 11.30 a.m., and Sam had let her sleep in.

  “Great. Vexing me already today,” she cussed Sam out in his absence. “You better overslept yourself.” When she exited the room, she realized that Sam was gone. Heading for the kettle, she checked the screen of her phone. Her eyes could barely focus yet, but still, she was sure she did not know the number. She hit redial.

  “Dr. Helberg’s office,” the receptionist answered.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Nina thought. ‘He went there.’ But she kept her cool just in case she was mistaken. “Hello, this is Dr. Gould. I just received a call from this number?”

  “Dr. Gould?” the lady repeated excitedly. “Yes! Yes, we were trying to contact you. It's about Mr. Cleave. Is it possible…?”

  “Is he alright?” Nina exclaimed.

  “Could you come into our offices…?”

  “I asked you a question!” Nina snapped. “Please just tell me if he is alright first!”

  “We…we d-don't know, Dr. Gould,” the lady replied hesitantly.

  “What the bloody hell does that mean?” Nina fumed, her rage fueled by worry for Sam’s condition. She heard a commotion in the background.

  “Well, ma'am, he appears to be... um... levitating.”

  15

  Detlef took apart the floorboards where the air vent was, but when he inserted the screwdriver head into the second screw slit, the whole thing sank into the wall where it was mounted. A loud crack startled him, and he fell backward, kicking himself away from the wall. As he sat watching, the wall started to move sideways like a sliding door.

  “What the…?” he gawked, propped up on his hands where he still cowered on the floor. The doorway led to what he thought was their neighboring apartment, but instead the dark room was a concealed space off Gabi's office for a purpose he was soon to discover. He rose to his feet, dusting off his pants and shirt. As the obscured doorway waited, he was reluctant j
ust to walk inside because his training had taught him not to storm recklessly into unknown places – at least not without a weapon.

  Detlef went to get his Glock and a flashlight, just in case the unknown room was rigged or had an alarm system. This was what he knew best – security breaches and counter-assassination protocol. With absolute precision he aimed the barrel into the darkness, steadying his heart rate to enable a clean shot if needed. But a steady pulse did not tame the thrill or the rush of adrenaline. It felt like the old days again as Detlef stepped inside the room, assessing the perimeter and scrutinizing the interior for any alarm or trigger devices.

  But almost to his disappointment, it was just a room, although what was inside was far from uninteresting.

  “Idiot,” he cursed himself when he saw the standard light switch next to the door frame on the inside. He flicked it on to reveal the full view of the room. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling lit Gabi's radio room. He knew it was hers because her blackcurrant lipstick stood at attention next to one of her cigarette cases. One of her cardigans was still draped over the small office chair's backrest, and Detlef had to fight the sorrow again at the sight of his wife's belongings.

  He took the soft cashmere cardigan and inhaled her scent deeply before replacing it to examine the equipment. Four tables furnished the place. One where her chair was, two others on either side of it, and another by the door where she kept stacks of documents in what looked like folders – he could not tell off-hand. In the timid light of the bulb, Detlef felt as if he had stepped back in time. A musty odor reminding him of a museum filled the room with the unpainted cement walls.

  “Wow, honey, I would have thought you of all people would put up some wallpaper and a mirror or two,” he told his wife as he looked around the radio room. “That's what you always did; beautified everything.”

  The place reminded him of a dungeon or an interrogation room in an old spy movie. On her table was a contraption similar to a CB radio, but it something was different. Being a complete layman at radio communication of this outdated sort, Detlef looked for an on-switch. A protruding steel switch was fixed to the bottom right corner, so he tried it. Suddenly the two small gauges lit up, their needles rising and falling as static hissed through the speaker.

  Detlef looked at the other devices. “They look far too complicated to suss out without a being a rocket scientist,” he remarked. “What is all this, Gabi?” he asked, as he noticed a big corkboard mounted above the table where the paper stacks were. Pinned to the board, he saw several articles on the killings Gabi had been investigating without her superiors' knowledge. On the side, she had scribbled ‘MILLA' in red felt pen.

  “Who is Milla, baby?” he whispered. He recalled her diary noting someone called Milla on the same time slot as the two men present during her death. “I have to know. It's important.”

  But all he could hear was the swishing whispers of the frequencies that came through the radio in swells. His eyes wandered further along the board where something vivid and brilliant caught his attention. Two photographs in full color depicted a palace room in gilded splendor. “Whoah,” Detlef mumbled, stunned by the detail and intricate work adorning the walls of the lavish room. Amber and gold stucco formed beautiful emblems and shapes framed at the corners by small effigies of cherubs and goddesses.

  “Estimated at $143 million? Geez, Gabi, do you know what this is?” he muttered as he read through the details of the lost work of art known as the Amber Room. “What did you have to do with this room? You must have had something to do with it; otherwise, all this would not be here, right?”

  There were notes all over the articles of the murders that hinted at the possibility that the Amber Room had something to do with it. Below the word ‘MILLA' Detlef found a map of Russia and its borders to Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania. Over the area of the Kazakh Steppe and Kharkiv, Ukraine there were numbers written in red pen, but they had no familiar pattern such as phone number or coordinates. Seemingly randomly Gabi had written these double-digit numbers on the maps she had pinned to the wall.

  What caught his eye was an apparently valuable relic hanging from the corner of the corkboard. The purple ribbon with a dark blue stripe down the middle held a medal inscribed with Russian lettering. Detlef removed it carefully and pinned it to his vest under his shirt.

  “What the hell were you into, sweetheart?” he whispered to his wife. He took several pictures with his cell phone camera and made a short video clip of the room and its contents. “I will find out what this all had to do with you and that Purdue you were meeting, Gabi,” he vowed. “And then I will find his friends to tell me where he is or else they will die.”

  Suddenly, a static cacophony screamed from the direction of the makeshift radio on Gabi's desk, scaring Detlef half to death. He fell back against the stacked paper desk, shoving it so hard that some of the folders slid off and fell in a mess all over the floor.

  “Christ! My fucking heart!” he shouted, gripping his chest. The red needles of the gauges were dancing left and right rapidly. It reminded Detlef of old hi-fi systems that used to display loudness or clarity of the media played on it that way. From the static, he heard a voice fade in and out. On closer inspection, he realized it was not a broadcast, but a summoning. Detlef sat down on his late wife's chair and listened intently. It was a female voice speaking one word at a time. Frowning, he leaned in. His eyes widened at once. There was a distinct word he recognized.

  ‘Gabi!’

  He sat up in alert, having no idea what to do. The woman kept calling for his wife in Russian; he could tell, but he did not speak the language. Adamant to talk to her, Detlef hastened to get his phone browser open to look up old design radios and how they were operated. In his frenzy his big fingers kept mistyping the search, frustrating him beyond words.

  “Fuck! Not ‘cockmunication’!” he complained as several pornographic results appeared on his phone screen. His face glistened with sweat as he hurried to get some form of help to operate the old communication device. “Wait! Wait!” he shouted at the radio as the woman's voice called for Gabi to respond. “Wait for me! Argh, fuck!”

  Furious with the unsatisfactory results of his Google search, Detlef grabbed a thick dusty book and threw it at the radio. The iron casing came loose slightly, and the receiver fell off the table, dangling by its cord. “Fuck you!” he shrieked, filled with despair at being unable to operate the device.

  A crackle sounded on the radio, and a man's voice came over the speaker in a heavy Russian accent. “Fuck you too, bro.”

  Detlef was astonished. He jumped up and went over to where he had shoved the device. He grabbed the swinging microphone he had just assaulted with the book and clumsily picked it up. The device had no button to press to broadcast, so Detlef just began to speak.

  “Hello? Hey! Hello?” he called, his eyes flitting in desperate hopes that somebody would answer him. His other hand rested gently on the transmitter. Only static noise prevailed for a while. Then the squeak of switching channels over different modulation shifts filled the small creepy room while its only occupant waited in anticipation.

  Eventually, Detlef had to admit defeat. Distraught, he shook his head. “Please talk?” he moaned in English, realizing that the Russian at the other end probably couldn't speak German. “Please? I don't know how to work this thing. I need to let you know that Gabi is my wife.”

  The female voice grated from the speaker. Detlef perked up. “Is that Milla? Are you Milla?”

  With slow reluctance, the woman answered, “Where is Gabi?”

  “She is dead,” he replied, then wondered out loud about the protocol. “Do I say over?”

  “No, this is covert transmission via L-band using Amplitude Modulation as carrier wave,” she assured him in broken English, yet she was fluent in the terminology of her trade.

  “What?” Detlef shrieked in utter confusion of a subject he was completely inept at.

  She sigh
ed. “This talk is like telephone. You talk. I talk. No saying ‘over’.”

  Detlef was relieved to hear that. “Sehr gut!”

  “Speak up. I can barely hear you. Where is Gabi?” she repeated, having not heard his previous answer clearly.

  It was hard for Detlef to repeat the news. “My wife… Gabi is dead.”

  There was no answer for a long while, only the distant crunch of static noises. Then the man came on again. “You lie.”

  “No, no. Nyet! I am not lying. My wife was killed four days ago,” he defended apprehensively. “Check Internet! Check CNN!”

  “Your name,” the man said. “Not your real name. Something to identify you. Just between Milla and you.”

  Detlef did not even think about it. “Widower.”

  Crackle.

  Sweesh.

  Detlef hated the hollow sound of white noise and dead air. It felt so desolate, so lonely, and wasted by the void of information - to a measure it defined him.

  “Widower. Switch to 1549MHz on the transmitter. Wait for Metallica. Get the numbers. Use your GPS and go Thursday,” the man instructed.

  Click

  The click sound echoed like a gunshot in Detlef’s ears, leaving him devastated and bewildered. Pausing in disbelief, he sat frozen with his hands outstretched. “What the fuck?”

  Suddenly he was spurred on by the instructions he was about to forget.

  “Come back! Hello?” he shouted on the speaker, but the Russians were gone. He threw his arms up in the air, roaring in frustration. “Fifteen forty-nine,” he said. “Fifteen forty-nine. Remember that!” Frantically he searched for the approximation of the number on the dial indicator. Turning the knob slowly, he found the designated station.

  “Now what?” he whined. He kept a pen and paper ready for the numbers, but he had no idea what waiting for Metallica meant. 'What if it is a code I cannot decipher? What if I don't understand the message?' he panicked.