Order of the Black Sun Box Set 8

by Preston William Child

  “I am an investigative journalist,” Sam winked with that same beguilement he used on the wives of dignitaries he used to interview. He could make them reveal catastrophic truths about their husbands sometimes.

  “What are you investigating?” she asked in her adorably layman manner. Sam could tell that she lacked the proper terminology and knowledge, but her common sense and articulation of her opinions were sharp and logical.

  “I am looking into a possible plot to stop a rich man from doing long division and destroy the world in the process,” Sam jested.

  Narrowing her eyes in the rear view mirror, the lady taxi driver scoffed and then shrugged, “Alright then. Don’t tell me.”

  Her dark haired passenger was still amused and looked out the window in silence on the way back to his apartment complex. As they passed the old schoolyard, he seemed to perk up, but she did not ask why. When she followed his line of sight, she saw only rubble and debris of what looked like shattered glass of a car crash, but she found it peculiar that such a site would host a vehicle collision.

  “Could you please wait for me?” Sam asked her as they approached his home.

  “’Course!” she exclaimed.

  “Thanks, I will be swift at it,” he promised as he exited the car.

  “Take yer time, love,” she grinned. “The meter’s running.”

  When Sam bolted into the complex, he latched in the electronic lock, making sure to secure the gate behind him before racing up the stairs to his front door. He called Aidan on the number the editor of the Post gave him. To Sam’s surprised, his old colleague answered almost immediately.

  Sam and Aidan both had little time to spare, so they kept the conversation concise.

  “So, where did they send your worn-out ass this time, mate?” Sam smiled as he grabbed a half-flat soda from the fridge and chugged it down. It had been a while since he ate or drank anything, but he was in too much of a hurry now.

  “I cannot disclose that information, Sammo,” Aidan replied happily, always busting Sam’s balls for not taking him with on assignments when they were still working at the newspaper.

  “Oh come on,” Sam said, burping softly from the forced drink. “Listen, have you ever heard of a myth called the Dire Serpent?”

  Cannot say I have, son,” Aidan answered promptly. “What is it? Tied to some Nazi relic again?”

  “Aye. No. I don’t know. It is supposed to be an equation devised by Albert Einstein himself a while after the 1905 paper, from what I was told,” Sam elaborated. “They say it holds the key to some terrible outcome when applied correctly. Know anything like that?”

  Aidan hummed in thought and finally admitted, “Nope. No, Sammo. I have never heard of anything like that. Either your source is letting you in on something so huge that only the highest orders know about it…or you are being played, mate.”

  Sam sighed. “Alright, then. I just wanted to run this by you. Listen, Aid, whatever you are in on over there, just be careful, you hear?”

  “Aw, I did not know you cared, Sammo,” Aidan teased. “I promise I’ll wash behind me ears every night, okay?”

  “Yeah, alright, fuck you too,” Sam smiled. He heard Aidan roaring in laughter in his hoarse old voice before he ended the call. With his former colleague not knowing about Masters’ claim, Sam was pretty sure that the big fuss was overrated. It was safe to give Purdue the footage with the Einstein equation after all. One last thing had to be taken care of before he left, though.

  “Lacy!” he cried down the corridor to the apartment in the corner of his level. “Lacy!”

  A young teenage girl came stumbling out, fixing the ribbon in her hair.

  “Oi Sam,” she called as she jogged back to his place. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  “Please watch Bruich for me for just one night, alright?” he begged hastily, picking up the disgruntled old feline from his lazing on the couch.

  “You are lucky my mum has a crush on you, Sam,” Lacy preached as Sam shoved cat food in her pockets. “She hates cats.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” he apologized, “but I have to get to my friend’s house with some important stuff.”

  “Espionage stuff?” she gasped excitedly.

  Sam shrugged, “Aye, top secret shite.”

  “Awesome,” she smiled, stroking Bruich gently. “Okay, come Bruich, let’s go! Bye Sam!” And with that, she was gone, getting back inside from the cold and wet cement of the hallway.

  It took Sam less than four minutes to pack an overnight bag and shove the much sought after footage into his camera case. Soon he was ready to leave to appease Purdue.

  ‘God, he is going to have my hide,’ Sam thought. ‘He must be pissed as hell.’

  15

  Rats in the Barley

  The ever-resilient Aidan Glaston was a veteran journalist. He had been on many assignments during the Cold War, during the administrations of several crooked politicians and he always got his story. He opted for a more passive career move after he was almost killed in Belfast. Repeatedly, he had been warned by the people he was investigating at that time, but he had to get the expose before anyone else in Scotland. Not long after, karma took her turn, and Aidan found himself one of many injured by shrapnel during the IRA bombings. He took the hint, and asked for an administrative writer’s job.

  Now he was back in the field again. His sixties did not turn out as well as he had thought and the rugged reporter soon discovered that boredom would kill him long before cigarettes or cholesterol would. After months of begging and proposing better perks than the other journalists, Aidan had convinced the fussy Ms. Noble that he was the man for the job. After all, he was the one who wrote the front-page article about McFadden and the most irregular meeting of selected mayors in Scotland. That alone, the word ‘selected’, instilled distrust in someone like Aidan.

  In the yellow light of his rented hostel room in Castlemilk, he sucked on a cheap cigarette, writing his report draft on his computer, to formulate later. Aidan had learned well about losing valuable records before, so he had a fail safe – once done with each draft, he would e-mail it to himself. That way, he always had back-up copies.

  I wondered why only some of Scotland’s municipal administrators are involved, and I found out when I cheated my way into the local gathering in Glasgow. It became clear that the information leak I tapped into was not intended, because my source consequently disappeared off the radar. From the meeting of Scottish municipal governors, I learned that the common denominator is not their profession. Isn’t that interesting?

  What they all have in common is in fact an affiliation with a bigger, worldwide organization, or rather, a conglomerate of influential businesses and associations. McFadden, whom I was most interested in, turned out to be the least of our worries. Whilst I was thinking this was a meeting for mayors, they all turned out to be members of this anonymous party, one that includes politicians, financiers and military men. This meeting was not about petty town council laws or ordinances, but about something much bigger; the summit in Belgium we all heard about on the news. And Belgium is where I will attend the next secret summit. I have to know, if it is the last thing I do.

  A knock at the door interrupted his report, but he quickly added the time and date, as per usual, before dousing his cigarette. The knocking became persistent, even urgent.

  “Hey, keep yer pants on, I am on my way!” he barked impatiently. He pulled on his trousers and, to be spiteful to his caller, decided to first attach his draft to his e-mail and send it, before answering the door. The knocking became harder and more, but when he looked through the peephole, he recognized Benny D, his main source. Benny was a personal assistant in the Edinburgh branch of a private financing corporation.

  “Geez, Benny, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you disappeared off the face of the planet,” Aidan muttered as he opened the door. In front of him, Benny D stood in the dirty corridor of the hostel, looking pallid and sick.

/>   “I am so sorry I did not call you back, Aidan,” Benny apologized. “I was afraid they would find me out, you see…”

  “I know, Benny. I know how it is in this game, son. Come in,” Aidan invited. “Just latch the locks behind you when you come in.”

  “Okay,” the shaky snitch panted nervously.

  “Do you want some whiskey? Sounds like you could use some,” the old journalist offered. Before his words were cold, a blunt thump ensued behind him. Not a moment later, Aidan felt the spray of fresh blood against his bare neck and upper back. He swung around in shock, and his eyes stretched at the sight of Benny’s cleaved skull, there where he had sunk to his knees. His limp body fell over, and Aidan cringed at the coppery smell of the freshly shattered skull of his main source.

  Behind Benny stood two figures. One was latching the door and the other, an enormous thug in a suit, cleaned the nozzle of his silencer. The man at the door walked out from the shadows and revealed himself.

  “Benny will not be having any whiskey, Mr. Glaston, but Wolf and I would love a tot or two,” the jackal-faced businessman grinned.

  “McFadden,” Aidan sneered. “I would not waste my own piss on you, let alone a good single malt.”

  Wolf grunted like the animal he was, annoyed that he had to let the old newspaperman live until told otherwise. Aidan met his gaze with contempt. “What is this? You could not afford a bodyguard who can form proper words? I guess you get what you can afford, hey?”

  McFadden’s smirk dwindled in the light of the lamp, the shadows deepening every line of his foxlike features. “Easy now, Wolf,” he purred, pronouncing the thug’s name in the German fashion. Aidan took note of the name and the pronunciation, and deduced that it could probably be the bodyguard’s actual first name. “I can afford more than you think, you washed-out hack,” McFadden jeered, as he circled the journalist slowly. Aidan kept his eye on Wolf until the mayor of Oban rounded him and halted at his laptop. “I have some very powerful friends.”

  “Obviously,” Aidan scoffed. “What splendid things did you have to do to while you were on your knees in front of those friends, Honorable Lance McFadden?”

  Wolf stepped in and walloped Aidan so hard that he stumbled to the floor. He spat out the small amount of blood that pooled inside his lip and chuckled. McFadden sat down on Aidan’s bed with his laptop and perused his open documents, including the one Aidan had been writing before he was interrupted. The blue LED light illuminated his hideous face as his eyes ran silently form side to side. Wolf stood static, his hands locked in front of him with the gun’s silencer protruding from his fingers, just waiting for the command.

  McFadden sighed, “So, you have figured out that the mayoral meeting was not quite what it smelled like, right?”

  “Aye, your new friends are far more powerful than you will ever be,” the journalist sniffed. “It just proves that you are nothing but a pawn. Fuck knows what they need you for. Oban is hardly an important town…in just about any matter.”

  “You would be surprised how valuable Oban will become once the 2017 Belgian Summit is in full swing, pal,” McFadden bragged. “I am at the pinnacle to make sure that our cozy little town is complacent when the time comes.”

  “For what? When the time comes for what?” Aidan asked, but he was met with just an irritating giggle from the fox-faced villain. McFadden leaned closer to Aidan, where he was still kneeling on the mat in front of the bed where Wolf had sent him. “You will never know, my nosy little foe. You will never know. That must be hell for you types, hey? Because you just have to know everything, don’t you?”

  “I will find out,” Aidan persisted, appearing defiant, yet he was terrified. “Remember, I found out that you and your fellow administrators are in cahoots with a bigger sibling, and that you are bullshitting your way through office by bullying those who see right through you.”

  Aidan did not even see the order pass from McFadden’s eyes to his dog. Wolf’s boot shattered the left side of the journalist’s rib cage with one hefty kick. Aidan cried out in pain as his torso caught fire under the force of the steel reinforced shoes his attacker wore. He doubled over on the floor, tasting more of his warm blood welling up in his mouth.

  “Now, tell me, Aidan, have you ever lived on a farm?” McFadden asked.

  Aidan could not respond. His lungs were on fire and refused to inflate enough for him to speak. Only a hiss came from him. “Aidan,” McFadden sang to urge him on. To avert any more punishment the journalist nodded profusely in order to give some reply. Luckily for him, it was satisfactory for now. Smelling the dust from the dirty floor, Aidan sucked in as much breath as he could manage while his ribs constricted his organs.

  “I used to live on a farm when I was in my teens. My father was a wheat farmer. Our farm yielded spring barley every year, but some years, before we took the sacks to the market, we would store them while we harvest,” the mayor of Oban recounted with a slow pace. “Sometimes, we would have to work extra fast because we had a problem with the storage sheds, you see. I asked my father why we have to work so fast and he explained that we had a vermin problem. I remember one summer when we had to eradicate entire nests burrowed under the barley, poisoning every single rat we could find. There were always more, when you left them alive, you see?”

  Aidan could anticipate where this was going, but the pain kept his opinions inside his head. Behind the light of the lamp he could see the massive shadow of the thug moving when he tried to look up, but he could not twist his neck far enough to see what he was doing. McFadden passed Aidan’s laptop to Wolf. “Take care of all that…information, would you? Vielen Dank.” He returned his attention to the journalist at his feet. “Now, I am sure you are following my lead on this simile, Aidan, but in case the blood is filling your ears already, let me elucidate.”

  ‘Already? What does he mean with already?’ Aidan thought. The sound of his laptop being smashed to smithereens cut into his ears. For some reason, all he found concerning was how his editor was going to bitch about the loss of company technology.

  “You are one of those rats, you see,” McFadden calmly continued. “You burrow in until you disappear in the mess and then,” he sighed dramatically, “it becomes more and more difficult to find you. All the while you sow havoc and destroy, from the inside out, all the work and nurturing that had gone into the harvest.”

  Aidan could hardly breathe. His skinny frame was no match for physical castigation. Most of his strength came from his wit, his common sense and powers of deduction. His body, however, was terribly frail in comparison. As McFadden spoke of destroying rats it became explicitly clear to the veteran journalist that the mayor of Oban and his pet orangutan were not leaving him alive.

  In his line of sight, he could see the red smile of Benny’s skull, deforming the shape of his staring dead eyes. He knew that would be him soon, but as Wolf crouched next to him and wrapped his laptop cord around his neck, Aidan knew that there would be no swift course for him. It was already hard to draw breath, and the only lament that came from this, was that he would have no defiant last words for his killers.

  “I must say, this is quite the profitable evening for Wolf and I,” McFadden infested Aidan’s last moments with his shrill voice. “Two rats in one night, and a host of dangerous information countered.”

  The old journalist felt the immeasurable strength of the German thug applied to his throat. His hands were too weak to pry the wire away from his throat, so he decided to die as swiftly as possible without tiring himself with a futile struggle. All he could think of as his head began to burn behind his eyes, was how Sam Cleave was probably onto the same thing these high profile crooks were stirring. Then Aidan recalled another ironic twist. Not fifteen minutes before, in his report draft, he had written that he would expose these people even if it was the last thing he did. His e-mail would get out. Wolf could not erase what was already out in cyberspace.

  As the darkness enfolded Aidan Glaston, he managed t
o smile.

  16

  Dr. Jacobs and the Einstein Equation

  Kasper was dancing with his new crush, the stunning, but clumsy, Olga Mitra. He was ecstatic, especially when the family invited them to stay and enjoy the wedding reception Olga brought the cake for.

  “This day certainly turned out great,” she laughed as he playfully twirled her and tried the dip thing. Kasper could not get enough of Olga’s high pitched, soft giggles, filled with elation.

  “I agree on that,” he smiled.

  “When that cake started to topple,” she confessed, “I swear, I felt my entire life fall to pieces. It was my first job here, and my reputation was at stake…you know how it goes.”

  “I know,” he empathized. “Come to think of it, my day was shit until you happened.”

  He did not think of what he was saying. Pure honesty spilled from his mouth, the measure of which he only grasped a moment later, when he found her dumbstruck, staring into his eyes.

  “Woah,” she said. “Kasper, that is the most amazing thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  He just smiled, while inside him fireworks went off. “Yeah, my day could have turned out a thousand times worse, especially from the way it started.” Suddenly Kasper was hit by clarity. It smacked him right between the eyes with such force that he almost blacked out. At once, all the warm-hearted, good stuff of the day flew out of his mind, to be substituted with what wracked his brain all night before he heard Olga’s fateful sobbing outside his door.

  Thoughts of David Purdue and the Dire Serpent surfaced instantly, penetrating every inch of his brain. “Oh Christ,” he scowled.

  “What is wrong?” she asked.

  “I forgot about something very important,” he admitted, feeling the ground sink from under him. “Do you mind if we go?”