by P. W. Child
The kiss in the car under the haunting sky of Baciu, the little hugs that lasted mere moments too long to just be hugs every time they were reunited, the night in Wrichtishousis after Val left the two of them alone....
Sam could think of a hundred different opportunities they had had to make love, even just to confess what he could feel as clear as a cat scratch to the soul when they were alone together. His dark eyes ran over her contours, and for a brief moment Sam wished he could graze his palm over her warm skin and feel her lips on his again. But there was no place for these notions now. She was asleep and he was exhausted.
He reached for his jacket, which he had deposited on the floor beside his bed, and dug out his lighter. Its faint glow confirmed his worst suspicions – there was, in fact, a No Smoking sign on the wall. Fortunately there was also a fire escape right outside their window.
Sam grimaced as the window squeaked and protested at being opened, worried that he would wake Nina, but she only mumbled in her sleep and turned over. He remembered a remark Purdue had once made about how deeply she slept. Nevertheless, he was careful to keep the noise down as he climbed out onto the rickety metal structure and settled down for a smoke.
The cigarette had not even touched his lips when he noticed the movement. Someone else was on the fire escape, just one story beneath him. A dark figure – stationary now, perhaps alert to the possibility of being spotted. ‘It could just be someone else out for a smoke,’ Sam thought. ‘Best thing to do is stay calm. We can’t be in danger every single time.’ Tentatively, he took a puff and breathed the smoke out slowly, watching the figure out of the corner of his eye.
It moved. A sudden, fluid, silent movement, up three steps. Sam could think of no reason why a fellow smoker on the floor below would be creeping up the stairs towards him. ‘Here we go again,’ he thought. He stubbed out the cigarette and turned back towards the window.
“Sam!”
Sam paused. The figure was closer now and still advancing, slowly and steadily, hands un-gloved and raised in a gesture of surrender.
“Sam, it’s me.” The pale hands reached up and pulled off the balaclava that covered the figure’s face.
“Purdue!” Sam’s jaw dropped. “What’s happening?”
Purdue said nothing until they were both inside. “We should be a little safer now,” he whispered. “I’ve lined the first step on the final flight with this.” In the dim light filtering in through the window, he held up a small spool, barely larger than a reel of thread, with something that looked like cling film wrapped round it. “I am quite proud of this. It’s essentially a much lighter, even more durable version of my tablet. If the sheet on the step detects the weight of anything heavier than a crow, it will set off a signal on the tablet to let us know that we must leave. It may buy us a life-saving few seconds.”
As usual, Sam felt completely wrong-footed by Purdue. While most people would start by explaining how they came to be sneaking up a fire escape, dressed like a cat burglar, and perhaps even apologizing for any alarm they might have caused, Purdue could not wait to share the genius of his latest toys.
“What’s happening?” Nina had woken up and was squinting into the darkness. “Sam? Are we in danger again?”
“It’s ok, Nina. It’s Purdue.”
“What?” Nina threw back the covers and got up, still fully dressed due to the fact that she had fallen asleep so quickly. “Dave? How did you get here? We were told you would be a couple of days, at least.”
“I made better time than I had expected,” Purdue said. “Anyone who was pursuing us should be under the impression that we set off in the direction of Zurich. They will catch up with us in time, no doubt, but this will give us enough time to stay one step ahead of them.”
“For how long?” Nina asked. “How long will this go on for, Dave? Are we going to be on the run forever?” A sorrowful note crept into her tone. “I want to go home.”
Sam instinctively turned to comfort her, but Purdue got there first. He sat beside her on the bed and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “You will, Nina,” he promised. “You will. I have a plan that should resolve any ill feeling between us and the Order of the Black Sun. I should soon be in a position to bargain for your safety. You must just trust me a little longer – and in the meantime, we have a task. One for which I shall need your help.”
“And what’s that?”
“There is an item I must acquire, something that will give me the means to bring matters to a conclusion with the Black Sun. Something that will require us to act… less than legally.”
Nina collapsed back onto the bed. “Well, there’s a nice change,” she sighed. “Tell me about it in the morning. Do you have a room?”
He shook his head. “Not for tonight. The floor will be quite sufficient.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” She held out the covers, inviting him into the narrow bed. With a protesting ache in his chest Sam saw him climb in beside her, and then there was silence.
‘Well, that clarifies nothing at all,’ Sam thought. He turned over, stared at the wall, and waited for morning.
END OF PART ONE
Chapter Fo urteen
By the time dawn broke, Sam had slept very little. His dreams had been full of strange, frightening things, images that kicked him out of sleep and into wakefulness over and over again. Memories of Trish and the days leading up to her death wove themselves together with the events of the past forty-eight hours.
During the small hours he had seen himself step out of his bedroom into the living room in Florence to watch Nina being gunned down just as Trish had been, her pretty face half-destroyed just as Trish’s had been. He had been back in the warehouse, running out from behind the crate as the smoke cleared to cradle Trish’s corpse, except this time the man wielding the gun was still alive and taking aim at Sam. As Sam had leaned back to welcome the bullet he had caught sight of the man’s face and watched it change from Charles Whitsun to his father, Admiral Whitsun, to the grinning, golden face of Jefferson Daniels and finally to Purdue before the sound of the gun shot had jolted him back into consciousness.
With such unwelcome thoughts filling his mind, Sam had found it easier just to stay awake. It was too dark to write so instead he continued to plan his book, composing paragraphs in his head and hoping that he would remember them by the time he was able to see his notebook again. Shaping sentences on the wall kept him focused, prevented him from turning over and seeing the dimly outlined shapes of Nina and Purdue in the opposite bed. He had no idea how things stood between the two of them. He did not know how to ask. Caught up in the business of running for their lives, there had been little time to be concerned with how they defined their relationship.
‘You’re thinking about it again,’ Sam rebuked himself. ‘And you shouldn’t be. It’s none of your business what they do. If Nina wants to talk, she will. If she doesn’t, then it’s safe to assume that she doesn’t want to. Or at least, not to me. The important thing is that she knows that she can talk to me as a friend. At least I hope she does.’
He pushed the thought of Nina out of his mind.
*
The fresh scent of the crisp morning entwined with stark black caffeine permeated Sam’s senses. His body was still a little stiff from a night of nightmares and he had yet to make peace with Nina and Purdue’s new sleeping arrangements.
“So do we have a plan?” Sam climbed onto the bench and set his heavily laden plate down on the long refectory table.
“You know, you could have gone back for seconds, Sam,” Nina remarked, eyeing the heap of rolls, ham and cheese in front of him. “There’s no-one else here, I doubt anyone would have judged you.”
“God is always watching, Nina. Besides, who says I’m not going back?” Sam tore open a roll, smeared it thickly with butter and stuffed it full. “This is me just getting started. You know the rules, never waste free food.” He took a big bite and munched contentedly. Nina rolled her eyes at him and
sipped her hot chocolate.
Never one to answer swiftly when there was a moment of intrigue to be created, Purdue kept them waiting before answering Sam’s question. He looked around, taking in the length of the empty hall, the height of its vaulted ceiling, the tall, narrow windows. “It’s an interesting safe house, isn’t it? I considered buying this place, you know, about five years ago. It seemed to me to have immense potential – sufficient space to build labs and work rooms, and I had a romantic fancy for a monastic cell. A small, irrational part of me was taken with the idea that I might work well in a place that had been built specifically for devotion and contemplation. But it lacked the privacy and seclusion that Wrichtishousis offered, and besides, I was outbid. Not something that happens to me very often, as I’m sure you can imagine, but it mattered a great deal to somebody that this place should remain open to those in need. But then, had I not purchased Wrichtishousis I would have missed out on the opportunity to meet you. Anyway, knowing of this place has done me a disservice now, because if I hadn’t I am almost certain that I would have made a mistake in interpreting the first clue.”
“Clue?” Nina pounced on the word. “What the hell are you talking about, Dave?”
“We have a mystery to unravel, Nina!”
“Oh, God…” She groaned and pushed her hands through her hair, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Please, no. Have you forgotten that we’re on the run? Tell me you didn’t bring us here just so you can play Hercule Poirot.”
Despite himself, Sam laughed. Purdue’s penchant for drama and Nina’s low tolerance for it had the capacity to entertain him, even when he was confused and frightened. Especially when he was confused and frightened, perhaps. For a brief moment, they diverted him from the gravity of their situation – until Nina shot him a death glare that silenced his laugher.
“I promise you, Nina, this is not a game. Nor is it a distraction from the task of staying safe – and alive. There is a task I must complete for someone who has the resources to guarantee our safety indefinitely. This person seeks a particular object, an item which I must retrieve.”
“Renata, presumably?” Sam remembered Nina’s words from two nights ago. “The same Renata who won’t wait much longer?”
“Correct,” said Purdue. “And believe me, she will not.”
“Who is she?” Nina asked. “She’s got to be someone pretty powerful if she can protect us from the Black Sun.”
“I would endanger you both if I were to tell you any more about Renata, and I have put you in too much danger already” Purdue said regretfully. “Suffice it to say that I have no reason to doubt her. I know exactly how powerful she is – or if I do not, then I err on the side of underestimating her.”
“So what’s this item that she wants, then?” Sam took a large swig of tea and moved on to his second roll. “And why do we have to solve clues to get it?”
“Another painting,” said Purdue, “which probably won’t surprise you. She made contact with me on the recommendation of the first person for whom I ever obtained an artefact, some years ago, before I had made my fortune. We were both quite surprised when we discovered who the other party was… Anyway, she is keen to own a particular painting by a Flemish old master, but it is a painting that has seldom been legitimately owned. It was first stolen from the court of Philippe le Bon and has since become something of a prize amongst art thieves and collectors who value work that cannot be found on the open market. The Arnolfini Portrait. People refer to it as “Fides Manualis”, since it depicts a man and a woman joining hands. The most recent owner of the painting, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, is a man named Addison Fabian, an American with a penchant for puzzles. He decided to return the painting to Belgium, where he felt it belonged – but being a sportsman, he anticipated that someone would come for it someday and left a trail of clues for them. A little dramatic, perhaps, but I can understand his reasoning. When you have the resources to set something like that in place…”
“It must be tempting,” said Sam. “So what’s the first clue?”
“To search in Ghent – A reliquary waits beneath the dozen, where the adored Lamb should be. That’s what led me back to this place, last night – before coming up to the room, I investigated the chapel. It may no longer be a functioning place of worship, but it was dedicated to Saint Agnes when it was consecrated, so I thought it might be the place we are looking for. So our task for today is to go there and find what we need. Just as soon as Sam has finished clearing out the breakfast buffet.”
Chapter Fifteen
The first obstacle they encountered was that the chapel was locked. In fact, it was not only locked, but its doors were sealed with a thick metal chain secured with a hefty padlock. Judging by the state of the chain, it had been some time since those doors had been opened.
“Isn’t it still operational?” Nina rattled the padlock, more in hope than expectation. “I thought from some of the things that Axelle said that it was.”
“If it is, they’re certainly not getting in through here,” said Sam. “Is there another door?”
They briskly walked around the chapel. Its walls were covered by dense creepers, so they split up and made a more thorough search, this time checking beneath the clinging vines in case there were hidden doors to be found. All they found was aged stone.
“No windows that we can get through.” Sam scanned the walls, looking for anything that was open or already broken. “Not without attracting attention and getting ourselves in trouble, at least.”
“There may be another way,” said Purdue. “Follow me.” He marched swiftly away from the chapel, back towards the main building. When Nina asked where they were going, he pointed back the way they had just come. “Look at the ground. Do you see all those little grates?”
“You think there’s a tunnel?”
Purdue nodded and led them inside, into the reception area. There was no-one behind the desk, so he lifted the entrance flap and let himself in to the area marked Staff Only. A large board full of keys on hooks hung beside the desk, and at the bottom of the board he found the ones marked Kitchen, Refectory, Library… and Chapel (Rear Entrance). “Now all we have to do is find the door,” he said, taking the key.
“In here!” Sam had joined Purdue behind the desk and was now looking through the window in the door that separated them from the little office behind Reception. “Got the key to this door?”
Sure enough, in the office there was a small, locked door leading to a flight of stairs, going down. The key that Purdue had taken opened it easily, and he took out his resizable tablet and activated the flashlight function as they descended into the darkness.
“Once all of this is over,” Nina muttered, half to herself, “once we’re back home and nobody’s trying to kill us anymore, I swear I’m never going anywhere more enclosed than George Street ever again.”
“Come closer to the light.” Purdue held out a hand to her. “It will help if you can see what’s around you. The tunnel is really quite spacious.”
The tunnel was short, opening out into a small chamber that smelled of dust and was lined with old, leather-bound hymnals and prayer books, and from there they emerged into the cool, weak daylight of the chapel itself. The air was tinged with the scent of incense and the sense that it had not been disturbed for a very, very long time. It was a simple chapel, with no elaborate artwork or statuary, a far cry from the church in which Nina had found herself two days ago. Its most decorative features were a modest altarpiece depicting the Annunciation and a single stained glass window bearing the image of a female saint, whom Sam and Nina presumed must be Saint Agnes.
“This can’t be right.” Purdue was pacing back and forth over by the altar, his footsteps echoing in the chapel’s clear acoustics. He looked truly puzzled, an expression neither Sam nor Nina saw often. “I was so sure… There’s so little here. We’re looking for where the adored Lamb ought to be, which is presumably the window, but… beneath the doze
n. I can’t make sense of that, can you? There should be a dozen of… of something.”
He trailed his long fingers over the wall beneath the window, looking for a loose brick, a spring or a catch, anything that might yield the promised reliquary, but there was nothing.
“Wait a minute,” said Nina. “You said this reliquary is beneath the dozen… I think you have the wrong Lamb!” Purdue stopped his search and turned to listen. “It’s a trick. You’re interpreting it as if the whole thing’s a puzzle, but it’s not. You don’t need to translate the name. We should be looking for the Lamb of God. The Adoration of the Lamb, to be exact. It’s the Ghent Altarpiece! It’s a polyptych – a dozen different panels, all depicting different things, and one of them is the Adoration of the Lamb!”
“Nina!” Purdue cried, seizing her hands in joy. “Of course! Why did I not think of that before! With this place on my mind, I couldn’t think of any other possibilities… You’re right, I’m sure of it!” He pulled her towards him and kissed her in a swift, unstoppable outpouring of enthusiasm, then strode back towards the tunnel without so much as looking back to see if Sam and Nina were following.
They were, though neither met the other’s eye. Nina was not sure what to make of the kiss, and was half-convinced that if Sam had been the one to come up with the answer Purdue would have kissed him just as readily. Sam, for his part, felt as though he should be embarrassed to have witnessed a private moment. He wondered whether to tease Nina about it to defuse the tension, but he thought better of it. ‘Sometimes it’s best just to pretend that these things never happened,’ he thought to himself.