Order of the Black Sun Box Set 8

by Preston William Child

  “The Russian security representative said something about a flight to Moscow tonight,” Sam recounted, but Kasper had heard no such thing from Tuft or Bessler. Sam added, “I have a program I nicked from reception. From what I gather, it is a three day summit. They have the symposium here today, then, tomorrow morning they are going to fly privately to Moscow to board some or other posh train called the Valkyrie. You have no knowledge of this?”

  “Well, Sam, I do not exactly enjoy a great deal of authority around here, you know?” Kasper ranted as quietly as he could. One of the technicians came in to take a leak, making a conversation of this nature impossible. “I have to go, darling. Lasagna will be fine. I love you,” he said and hanged up the phone. The technician just smiled sheepishly as he pissed, having no idea what the head of the project had really discussed. Kasper dismissed himself from the restroom and felt apprehensive about Sam Cleave’s question about a Siberian train trip.

  “I love you too, sweetheart,” Sam said on his side, but the physicist had already hung up. He tried Purdue’s satellite number, based in the billionaire’s private study, but even there was no answer. No matter how he tried, Purdue seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth and it concerned Sam beyond panic. Still, he had no way of getting back to Edinburgh now, and with Nina accompanying him, he could obviously not send her to check on Purdue either.

  For a brief moment, Sam even thought of sending Masters, but, having denied the man’s sincerity by giving Purdue the equation anyway, he doubted Masters would want to help him. Crouching in the box Ms. Noble’s contact had organized for him, Sam contemplated the entire mission. He almost found it more urgent to stop Purdue from completing the Einstein Equation, than to follow a blooming catastrophe orchestrated by the Black Sun and its high-end disciples.

  Sam was torn between his duties, spread too thin and caving under the yoke. He had to protect Nina. He had to stop a possible world tragedy. He had to stop Purdue from finishing his math. The journalist did not often come to desperate blankness, but this time he was out of options. He would have to ask Masters. The mutilated man was his only hope at stopping Purdue.

  He wondered if Dr. Jacobs had made all his own arrangements to defect to Belarus, but that was a matter Sam could still catch up with when he met up with Jacobs for dinner. Right now, he had to get the details of the flight to Moscow, from where the summit representatives would board the train. According to the discussions after the formal meeting, Sam gathered that the next two days would be to visit various reactor stations in Russia, still generating atomic power.

  “So, the NPT countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency are going on a field trip to grade the power stations?” Sam muttered to his recorder. “I still do not see where the threat is going to unfold into the tragedy. If I get Masters to stop Purdue, it does not matter where the Black Sun hide their weapon. Without the Einstein Equation, it will all have been in vain anyway.”

  He quietly slipped out, walking along the row of seats up where the lights were off. Nobody even saw him from the brightly lit section below where it was bustling. Sam had to get Nina, call Masters, meet with Jacobs and then make sure that he was on that train. From his intelligence, Sam took note of a secret elite airfield called the Koschei Strip, a few miles outside Moscow, where the delegation were set to land the next afternoon. From there, they would be chauffeured to the Valkyrie, a trans-Siberian super train for a luxury trip to Novosibirsk.

  Sam had a million things on his mind, but first and foremost, he had to get back to Nina to see if she was alright. He knew better than to underestimate the reach of men like Wolf and McFadden, especially once they discovered that the woman they had left for dead, was very much alive and could implicate them.

  After Sam had slipped out via Stage Door 3, through the props store room in the back, he was met with a cold night, full of uncertainty and menace in the air. He pulled his hoodie tight in the front, buttoning it over his scarf. With his identity concealed, he swiftly traversed the back parking lot where wardrobe trucks and deliveries usually came. Under the moonlit night, Sam looked like a shadow, but he felt like a wraith. He was tired, but not allowed to rest. There was so much to be done to make sure that he boarded that train tomorrow afternoon that he would never have the time or the sanity to sleep.

  In his recollection, he saw Nina’s battered body, the scene looping repeatedly. His blood boiled for the injustice of it, and he direly hoped that Wolf would be on that train.

  22

  Jericho Falls

  Like a maniac, Purdue was constantly redesigning the algorithm of his program to suit the data input. Thus far, it had been successful to an extent, but there were some variables it could not solve, leaving him to stand guard at his old machine. Practically sleeping in front of the old computer, he had grown more and more reclusive. Only Lilith Hurst was allowed to ‘bother’ Purdue. Since she could converse about the results, he enjoyed her visits, whereas his staff obviously lacked the understanding of the field necessary to present cogent solutions as she did.

  “I will be starting dinner soon, sir,” Lillian reminded him. Usually, when she fed him this line, her white haired, cheerful boss would suggest a plethora of dishes for her to choose from. Now, it seemed, all he wanted to consider was the next entry into his computer.

  “Thanks, Lily,” Purdue said absently.

  Hesitantly, she asked for clarification. “And what should I prepare, sir?”

  Purdue ignored her for a few seconds, scrutinizing the screen. She watched the dancing numbers reflect on his glasses, waiting for an answer. Finally, he sighed and looked up at her.

  “Um, a hot pot would be lovely, Lily. Perhaps Lancashire hot pot, as long as it has some mutton in the mix. Lilith loves mutton. She told me,” he smiled, but kept his eyes on the screen.

  “You want me to make her favorite dish for your dinner, sir?” Lillian asked, feeling that she would not like the response. She was not wrong. Purdue looked up at her again, glaring over his glasses.

  “Yes, Lily. She will be joining me for dinner tonight and I would like you to prepare a Lancashire hot pot. Thank you,” he reiterated irately.

  “Of course, sir,” Lillian recoiled respectfully. Normally the housekeeper was entitled to her opinion, but ever since the nurse had wedged her way into Wrichtishousis, Purdue would have nobody’s advice, but hers. “Dinner at seven, then?”

  “Yes, thanks Lily. Now, can you please let me get back to work?” he implored. Lillian did not respond. She simply nodded and made her way out of the server room, trying not to go off on a tangent. Lillian, like Nina, was a typically Scottish lass fro the old school of women. These ladies were not accustomed to being treated like second-rate citizens, and, with Lillian being the matriarch of the Wrichtishousis staff, she was deeply upset about Purdue’s recent behavior. The doorbell of the main doors chimed. Passing Charles as he crossed the lobby to answer the door, she snapped quietly, “It is the bitch.”

  Surprisingly, the android-like butler responded casually, “I know.”

  For once, he refrained from chastising Lillian for speaking freely about the guests. This was a sure sign of trouble. If the rigid, overly polite butler agreed on the bitch-hood of Lilith Hurst, there was reason to panic. He opened the door, and Lillian listened to the usual condescension of the approved intruder and wished that she could lace the Lancashire hot pot with poison. Still, she loved her employer too much to venture such a risk.

  While Lillian started dinner in the kitchen, Lilith strolled down to Purdue’s server room as if she owned the place. Down the stairs, she stepped gracefully, dressed in a provocative cocktail dress and shawl. She wore make-up and had her hair tied up to show off the sublime costume earrings that swung under her earlobes as she walked.

  Purdue beamed when he saw the young nurse enter the room. Tonight she looked different than usual. Instead of jeans and flats, she was in stocking and heels.

  “My God, you look ravishing, m
y dear,” he smiled.

  “Thank you,” she winked. “I was invited to some black tie thing for my college. I am afraid I did not have time to change, because I came here straight from that to-do. Hope you do not mind that I am a little overdressed for dinner.”

  “Absolutely not!” he cheered, briefly sweeping back his hair to gather his appearance a little. He was in a worn out cardigan and yesterday’s trousers, matched badly with Moccasins for comfort. “I feel I have to apologized for how terribly haggard I look. I am afraid that I lost track of time, as you might understand.”

  “I do. Have you made progress?” she asked.

  “I have. Considerably,” he boasted. “By tomorrow or maybe even late tonight, I should have this equation solved.”

  “And then?” she asked, sitting down suggestively opposite him. Purdue was momentarily blinded by her youth and beauty. To him, there was none better than the petite Nina, with her savage gorgeousness and hell in her eyes. Yet, the nurse had that flawless complexion and lean body only a tender age could maintain, and from her body language tonight, she was out to use it.

  Her excuse for her dress was a lie, of course, but she could not explain it with the truth. Lilith could hardly tell Purdue that she was randomly out to seduce him, without admitting to looking for a rich lover. Even less, she could not admit that she only wanted to influence him long enough to steal his masterpiece, to tally her own merit and make her way back into the scientific community.

  At nine o’clock, Lillian announced that dinner was ready.

  “As you requested, sir, dinner is served in the main dining room,” she declared without as much as a glance toward the sponging nurse.

  “Thank you, Lily,” he replied, sounding a bit like the old Purdue. His selective reverting to his old, pleasant manner only when Lilith Hurst was about, sickened the housekeeper.

  It was evident to Lilith that the object of her intentions did not possess the clarity of his people, as far as judging her objectives were concerned. His obliviousness to her intrusive presence was astonishing, even to her. Lilith successfully proved that genius and application of common sense were two distinctly different sorts of intelligence. However, that was the least of her worries now. Purdue was eating out of her hand, and working himself into the ground to accomplish what she was going to utilize to palm in her career.

  While Purdue was being intoxicated by Lilith’s beauty, guile and sexual advances, he did not realize that another brand of intoxication was introduced to make sure that he complied. Under the ground floor of Wrichtishousis, the Einstein Equation was being completed in full, the dire outcome of a mastermind’s mistake, once again. Both Einstein and Purdue had been manipulated by women far below their range of intellect in this instance, leaving the impression that even the smartest men were reduced to imbecile proportions in their trust of the wrong women. At least, this was true in the light of dangerous documents collected by women they assumed harmless.

  Lillian had been dismissed for the evening, leaving only Charles to clean up after Purdue and his guest finished dinner. The disciplined butler acted as if nothing was amiss, even while Purdue and the nurse engaged in a heavy bout of passion halfway up to the master bedroom. Charles took a deep breath. He ignored the consummation of a terrible alliance that he knew would smother his boss soon after, yet he dared not intervene.

  It was a hefty predicament for the loyal butler, having worked for Purdue for so many years. Purdue would hear nothing in opposition to Lilith Hurst and the house staff had to watch as she slowly blinded him more and more every day. Now the relationship entered the next level, leaving Charles, Lillian, Jane and all the others in Purdue’s service scared for their future. Sam Cleave and Nina Gould never came round anymore. They were the light and life of Purdue’s more private social life and the billionaire’s people adored them.

  While Charles’ mind was clouded with doubts and fears, while Purdue was being subjugated into servitude by means of pleasure, the Dire Serpent came alive downstairs in the server room. Quietly, it announced its completion for no one to see or hear.

  In the dead of dark morning, the lights in the mansion had dimmed, those that were left on. All throughout the vast house, it was quiet, save for the howling wind outside the ancient walls. A faint cadence ensued on the main staircase. Lilith’s slender feet left no more but a sigh in the thick carpeting as she descended to the ground floor, fleeting. Her shadow moved swiftly along the high walls of the main hallway and down to the sub-level, where the servers were humming in perpetual action.

  She did not switch on the light, but rather used her cell phone screen to illuminate her way to the desk where Purdue’s machine sat. Lilith felt like a child on Christmas morning, eager to see if her wish had been delivered yet, and she was not disappointed. From between her fingers, she slipped a flash drive into the USB port of the old computer, but soon learned that David Purdue was no fool.

  An alarm started shrieking, and on the screen, the first line of the equation started to erase itself.

  “Oh, Jesus, no!” she whimpered in the darkness. She had to think quickly. Lilith memorized the second line while she tapped on her phone camera, and took a screen shot of the first section before it could delete further. Then she hacked into a sub-server Purdue used as backup and retrieved the full equation before transmitting it to her own device. For all her technological prowess, Lilith did not know where to disable the alarm, and watched the equation slowly deleting itself.

  “Sorry, David,” she sighed.

  Knowing that he was not going to wake until well into the next morning, she simulated a short circuit in the wiring between Server Omega and Server Kappa. It started a small electrical fire, just enough to melt the wires and disable the machines involved before she extinguished the flame with the cushion from Purdue’s chair. Lilith realized that the security unit at the gate would soon receive the signal from the house interior alarm via their head office. In the far end of the ground floor, she could hear the security guards trying to rouse Charles, banging on the door.

  Unfortunately, Charles slept at the other side of the house in his apartment near the small kitchen of the manor. He could not hear the server room’s alarm, set off by the sensor of the USB port. Lilith closed the door behind her and careened along the back corridor that led into the large pantry. Her heart pounded at the rush of hearing the security people of the first unit waking Charles and heading up to Purdue’s room. The second unit went straight to the source of the alarm.

  “We found the cause!” she heard them holler as Charles and the others rushed down to the sub-level to join them.

  “Perfect,” she panted. Misdirected by the electrical fire’s location, the shouting men could not see Lilith dart back up to Purdue’s bedroom. Once more in bed with the unconscious genius, Lilith logged into her phone transmission device and rapidly punched in the connection code. “Quickly,” she whispered in urgency, as the phone opened up the screen. “Quicker than that, for fuck’s sake.”

  Charles voice was clear as he approached Purdue’s bedroom with a few men. Lilith bit her lip, waiting for the transmission of the Einstein Equation to finish loading at the Meerdaalwoud site.

  “Sir!” Charles roared suddenly, hammering on the door. “Are you awake?”

  Purdue was out cold and did not answer, causing a host of speculative suggestions in the corridor. Lilith could see the shadows of their feet under the door, but the upload was not yet completed. Again the butler hammered on the door. Lilith slipped the phone under the bedside table to continue its transmission, while she wrapped a satin sheet around her body.

  Stammering toward the door, she cried, “Hang on, hang on, dammit!”

  She opened the door, looking furious. “What in God’s name is your problem?” she hissed. “Keep it down! David is sleeping.”

  “How can he sleep through this?” Charles asked sternly. With Purdue out cold, he owed the intrusive woman no respect. “What did you do to him?”
he snapped at her, pushing her aside to ascertain the state of his employer.

  “I beg your pardon?” she shrieked, deliberately neglecting a part of the sheet to distract the security men with a flash of nipple and hip. To her disappointment, they were too busy doing their job, and they kept her cornered until the butler gave them an answer.

  “He is alive,” he reported, leering at Lilith. “Heavily drugged is more like it.”

  “We had a lot to drink,” she defended fiercely. “Can he not have a bit of fun, Charles?”

  “You, madam, are not here to entertain Mr. Purdue,” Charles retorted. “You have served your purpose here, so do us all a favor and return to the rectum that expelled you.”

  Under the bedside table, the upload bar displayed a 100% completion. The Order of the Black Sun had acquired the Dire Serpent in all its glory.

  23

  Tripartite

  When Sam called Masters, there was no answer. Nina was sleeping in the double bed of their hotel room, knocked out thanks to a strong sedative. She had some painkillers with her for the agony of the bruises and stitches, courtesy of the anonymous retired nurse who helped her get stitched up in Oban. Sam was exhausted, but his adrenaline levels refused to subside. In the faint lamp light on Nina’s side, he sat slouched over with his phone between his palms, his hands between his knees, thinking. He hit redial in hopes of getting Masters to pick up.

  “Christ, it looks like everyone has boarded a fucking rocket and flow to the moon,” he seethed as softly as he could. Frustrated beyond words by not reaching Purdue or Masters, Sam thought to try Dr. Jacobs in hopes that he may already have located Purdue. To divert some of the anxiety, Sam turned up the television slightly. Nina had left it on to sleep with in the background, but he switched from the movie channel to Channel 8 for the international bulletin.