The Black Sun Conspiracy (Order of the Black Sun Book 6)

by P. W. Child

  Purdue smirked, but he did not lift his eyes from the screen. The line led down the street, alongside the canal on their right and a clean terrace of white buildings on the left. A gaggle of school children in yellow hi-vis jackets pushed past them on the narrow pavement, with a couple of teachers herding them towards the Groeningemuseum.

  With nothing to do but follow along, Sam fell back a few paces and watched Purdue. In his dark jacket and trousers, clinging to his favorite technological toy, he looked ordinary. He could have been any other tourist, albeit a somewhat geeky one. The tourists who passed him in the street did not look twice at him. There was nothing to mark him out as what he was, nothing to indicate his genius, his obscene wealth, his recklessness. To the casual observer, Dave Purdue was as unremarkable as Sam Cleave.

  ‘Makes you wonder what secrets everyone else is hiding,’ Sam thought. An elderly couple strolled past, side by side but not hand in hand, bickering amicably about whether the man’s heart would withstand a Segway tour. ‘Look at them, for instance. Who knows what they’ve done? That could be me and Nina in a few decades’ time. Maybe they spent a year or two when they were younger being targeted by sinister secret organizations, or perhaps they once took down a government or discovered and lost some incredible artefact… They don’t look like it. But neither do we.’

  Sam did not realize that he had spent longer than he intended watching the old couple until he heard Nina calling from further along the street. He jogged along to catch up with her. Purdue was already round the corner, following the tablet into a little public garden. Neatly graveled paths and neatly trimmed hedges wound their way through the space, framing four statues.

  It was not until Sam got closer that he realized what the twisting bronze figures on the pedestals were. All four were mounted on horses, some calm while other seemed to be frozen in motion, and the figures carried different attributes – a pair of scales, a bow and a sword.

  “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Nina said aloud, as if reading Sam’s thoughts. She walked from one statue to another, examining them from different angles, half admiring and half searching. “They’re beautiful, in a very stark way. But presumably we’re not here to admire the art. What are we looking for, Purdue?”

  Sam listened to Nina. He could not help but question her dedication to Purdue in the way she addressed him. Did she just prefer sounding more professional, perhaps? But Sam just could not make peace with the fact that Nina, who is by all accounts Purdue’s lover and girlfriend, addressed the man by his surname as if they were colleagues in an office.

  “Nothing we can find at present, I suspect.” Purdue was standing a little way off, at the focal point of the Four Horsemen’s respective gazes. He shifted the tablet a little, testing the red lines to see when they moved and when they did not, he said: “This is where we are supposed to be. Whatever we are supposed to search for here, I think we may have to dig for it, or find some other way of seeing it.”

  “That’ll be a late night excursion, then,” Sam guessed. He wondered whether they should stay a little longer, think laterally, see whether there were any clues nearby – but Purdue was already folding up the tablet and getting ready to leave.

  “This might seem like a redundant question, considering that it’s Purdue,” Nina said quietly, walking beside Sam as they followed Purdue, “but do you get the impression that he knows a lot more about this little treasure hunt than he’s letting on?”

  “Of course I do,” Sam replied. “He always does. I mean, all that stuff in the belfry – how did he know that he needed to line things up that way? Or that we had to look towards this Addison guy’s house? There’s no way he could get all that from the clues we’ve had, is there?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. If he were figuring it out as he went along he would at least try to explain it to us. You know he likes an audience.”

  “That’s what I thought. So presumably he’s got someone feeding him information, and that’s probably got something to do with the work he was doing last night.”

  Nina opened her mouth to reply, but up ahead of them Purdue stopped dead and her train of thought was derailed. She watched as he stood stock still for a moment, then turned to face her and Sam. “You will have to excuse me,” he said. “There is something I have to do. Alone. I’ll see you back at the house. We can return tonight to dig – I shall find the necessary equipment while I am out.”

  “Purdue, what’s all this about?” Sam asked. “I know you want us to trust you, but we really need to know what’s going on.”

  “All in good time, Sam. I must go. It’s urgent.”

  “Is there a plan for what happens if you don’t make it back?” Nina’s voice was steady, but Sam was sure that he could detect a note of fearful concern.

  Purdue shook his head. “That will not be necessary. I will make it back. And the sooner I leave, the sooner that will be. Now go home, and stay safe.”

  Without another word he took off, disappearing down a side street. Sam waited for a moment and then followed him, thinking that if they trailed him they might finally learn what was going on, but by the time he turned the corner Purdue was gone.

  Nina cursed him under her breath. “Damn it, he’s infuriating. Come on, Sam. Let’s head back and see if we can work anything out.” With that she darted forward to move in front of Sam, but the uneven terrain under her betrayed her equilibrium and her leg buckled under her. Sam caught her just before she met the ground.

  “Be careful!” he exclaimed. It took him a moment to pull her to her feet, but she yelped.

  “I think I fucked up my ankle, Sam. Just give me a second to get my footing.”

  But again she winced in pain, more annoyed by the inconvenience than the injury. “Great, just what I need now,” she grunted, and did her best to rein in her anger at Purdue.

  Chapter Twenty-T wo

  By the time Sam and Nina got back to the safe house, Nina’s ankle was troubling her to the point where she had to hold onto Sam’s arm for support.

  “That really needs proper attention,” he said, helping her over the threshold.

  “I know. Might have to wait a bit, though. It’s fine, I just need to rest it for a bit. Purdue’s got my first aid kit in his case.” She winced as she began to climb the stairs, clinging to the banister to take the weight off her left leg. Halfway up, she paused. “You do think he’s going to be ok, don’t you?”

  Sam was taken aback. “Purdue? Yeah, of course he will.” Even though he had seen Purdue in danger several times and even seen him sustain serious injuries, he simply could not imagine that Purdue would ever fail to emerge from any situation in one piece. Judging by the look on her face, Nina did not share his certainty. She looked genuinely concerned.

  “It’s just…” She sat down, perching on the narrow step. “I don’t know. He’ll probably be fine, whatever it is that he’s up to, but I’m worried about him. If I’m worn out and hurting after the past couple of days’ exertions, I can only imagine that he is too. But he’s always determined that he can put mind over matter and that he doesn’t have to give in to little things like injury. I just hope that he doesn’t put himself in danger – or at least, in any more danger than he absolutely has to. Then again, it’s Purdue. That’s like asking him not to breathe.” She shook her head as if casting out the thought of Purdue coming to harm, then hauled herself onto her feet again. “Anyway, I’d better go and get this bandaged up.”

  Sam watched her limping up the last few steps. “I know what’ll make you feel better,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  *

  Stepping out of the house Sam took a sharp turn to the right and made his way towards a shop that he had spotted from the car as they had arrived. Its windows were full of bottles – mostly a vast array of Belgian beers, but there were a few promising-looking larger bottles that made him think that he might find whisky there.

  The bell chimed above Sam’s head as
he entered the shop, rousing an old man from the back room. Sam scanned the shelves, but all he could see was beer and wine.

  “Have you got any whisky?” he asked, more in hope than expectation. The old man nodded and smiled broadly. He shuffled off to the far end of the counter and bent down. When he surfaced he had a bottle in his hand. He slid it across the counter towards Sam.

  “Belgian,” he croaked. “Very good. Made in Liège. Only distillery in Belgium. Best in the world.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow, privately doubting that he would ever find anything preferable to Islay malts, but he accepted the bottle and scanned the label. The Belgian Owl. It was unfamiliar, but it was single malt and would serve his purposes. “I’ll take it,” he said, and handed over the pre-paid credit card.

  *

  Nina stretched out across the bed, her muscles aching and then releasing. She rolled onto her stomach and pulled herself across the mattress. Purdue’s case lay at the foot of the bed, and she knew that the first aid kit was in one of the zipped sections. One by one she opened them and rummaged around.

  When she opened the pocket on the lower right hand side, something black and rectangular fell out. She reached down and picked it up. It was a small Moleskin notebook, neatly bound with elastic. Her heart missed a beat.

  ‘His notebook. I can’t read this… or at least I shouldn’t.’ She slipped a finger under the elastic. ‘Normally I wouldn’t. It’s private. I respect that. But… we are in danger. There’s a lot that he won’t tell me. If there’s any chance that reading this would mean finding out something that could keep us alive further down the line, surely that justifies the intrusion?’

  She turned the notebook over in her hand. The strap slipped easily over the corners. ‘Knowing Purdue, it’s probably in code anyway. It’s the kind of precaution he would take. He doesn’t write much down anyway. Chances are it’ll be mostly blank.’ Nina knew that she was working hard to justify opening it. She skirted around the thought that perhaps she wanted to see whether he had written anything about her and was relying on their situations to provide an ethically impeccable excuse. The idea lingered on the edge of her awareness, as hard as she tried to push it away.

  “Fuck it,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing ventured…”

  She flipped the notebook open to a random page. As she had expected, there was plenty that she did not understand. Coded notes, formulae and strings of numbers that looked like they might be URLs. She opened it to a different page, nearer to the front. Blank pages stared back at her. She tried the back. There she found densely written sheets. Evidently Purdue preferred to start at the back of the book and work towards the front.

  In between the pages that Nina found unintelligible she found a few that caught her attention. One was a diagram of some sort, a roughly-sketched pyramid labelled with names. Some were names that she recognized – Sara Stromer, Jefferson Daniels, and Admiral Whitsun. A few were crossed out and repositioned, or punctuated with question marks or other symbols that meant nothing to her. It appeared to outline some kind of hierarchical relationship between them all. ‘So Purdue either knows their positions within the Order of the Black Sun or he’s tried to work it out,’ Nina reasoned. ‘I’m not really surprised either way.’

  She flicked through another few pages. Another sketch caught her eye, this time a rough floor plan. Nina recognized the layout. It was the first floor of the east wing of Wrichtishousis, showing the master bedroom and Purdue’s study. Two other large rooms stood adjacent, rooms that had been empty save for a few paintings and sculptures every time Nina had seen them. Now he had drawn in shelves, a desk and chair, and labelled the rooms ‘N. Study’ and N. Library’. Her eyes widened.

  Ignoring the pounding of her heart and all the terrified feelings of being trapped that she always felt when she thought of that kind of commitment, Nina pressed on. There was only one other page that she could make any sense of, and that was a list of names. Most were unfamiliar, but a handful rang bells. Jan Provoost. Petrus Christus. Jan van Eyck. Hieronymus Bosch. ‘Artists,’ she thought. ‘I think they’re all Flemish Primitives? Presumably this is something to do with whatever he’s going to be stealing or fencing or whatever it counts as.’

  Downstairs the front door opened and closed. Nina jumped. Quickly she slammed the notebook shut and snapped the elastic back into place, then shoved it back into the pocket. She snatched up one of the bandages from the first aid kit and hastily rolled one onto her injured ankle, then limped downstairs to join Sam.

  Chapter Twenty- Three

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half hour. It display showed the time as half past ten. The street outside was silent and the only noises within the room were the crackling of the fire, the sound of Sam’s pen scratching across paper and the rattle of the keyboard as Nina worked on Purdue’s laptop. A few hours earlier she had raided the kitchen, thrown an assortment of ingredients together to make a thick, hearty soup. The aroma still lingered in the air.

  “He’s not back yet.” Nina knew that she was stating the obvious, but she felt she had to say something.

  “Want me to go and have a look for him?” Sam offered. “I’d say let’s go together, but you’d probably better not put any more strain on your ankle just now.”

  Nina glanced at the clock again. “Hmm… I think we’d be better sticking together. We don’t have phones. If anything happens we’ve no way of figuring it out. Let’s give him until eleven. If he’s not back by then we’ll… I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

  She went back to tapping away on the keyboard. Sam poured out another tumbler of whisky for himself, then one for Nina. She thanked him and topped it up with a little water.

  “I thought you took it neat?” Sam remarked. “I always remember that night when we were at Purdue’s and he offered me whisky and then asked what you wanted and you took it straight. The look on your face…”

  Nina smiled. “Just my standard reaction to being treated like a girl. I like whisky, preferably with a few drops of water to bring out the flavors. I wouldn’t try it with ice again unless we find ourselves in another hot country – and hopefully it’ll be a long time before that happens. When we get home after this, that’ll be me finished with foreign travel for a while.”

  Sam clinked his glass against hers. “You and me both,” he said, and turned his attention back to his writing. It was beginning to take shape. The chapters concerning Trish’s careful insinuating herself into Charles Whitsun’s world were nearly finished, painful as they had been to write. As Trish had finagled her way into parties and events to which Charles was invited, Sam had always been there in the background, witness and bodyguard, ready to protect her. Watching her flirt with the man had been difficult enough the first time around. Dredging up the memories now, after everything that had happened, was taxing to say the least.

  The door swung open. Purdue nearly collapsed into the hallway, his face even paler than usual. Sam and Nina were on their feet like a shot, ready to prop him up and put him in the nearest chair.

  “Are you hurt?” Nina demanded. “What happened?”

  Purdue shook his head weakly. “Not hurt. Just exhausted.” He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, sinking back into the cushions. “Just let me rest for a while.”

  Sam left Nina to pour him a drink and went into the kitchen. The soup was still warm in the pot. He ladled some into a bowl, tore off a hunk of bread and took them back to the fireside. “Here,” he said, handing the food to Purdue. “You look like you need it.”

  In unspoken agreement, Sam and Nina both stayed quiet as Purdue ate, despite their impatience to know what had happened to him. What little color the billionaire had gradually returned to his cheeks. “Thank you,” he sighed as he finished the last bite. “I’ve had an exhausting evening.”

  “Doing what?” Sam asked.

  “Keeping us safe.” They waited for Purdue to say more, but he did not. He closed his eyes and let his head fall bac
k, holding his shoulder, the very same joint injured in their previous excursion together.

  Nina rolled her eyes, frustrated. “We’re going to need a bit more information than that,” she said. “Who from? And how? And why are you hell-bent on doing all of this alone?”

  Purdue’s brow furrowed as he considered whether to answer her questions. “Nina… Believe it or not, I would be very happy to tell you everything. But I am forced to admit that I am not, myself, in possession of all the facts.”

  “Then tell us what you do know.”

  “I wish I could,” he said, “but all I would achieve would be to confuse matters. There is more I need to learn before I can share anything useful, and I fear that saying too much prematurely might endanger you further. Besides, we must return to the Four Horsemen and retrieve the next part of the puzzle.”

  Sam shook his head. “That’s not happening, Purdue. Look at yourself, you’re a wreck. You’re not going anywhere until you’ve had a decent rest. Would you be strong enough to dig even if you did go? Let’s see.”

  The moment Purdue pulled off his shirt Sam could tell that the situation was not good. The scar where the knife had plunged into his pectoral muscle was still livid – not infected, but the shade of reddish-purple that suggested that there was a lot of healing still to be done. More alarming, though, was the difference in mass between one shoulder and the other. After being immobilized by the bandages for a while, Purdue had lost a great deal of strength on his right hand side. Even his upper arm was diminished. It looked painful, though Purdue hid his discomfort well.

  ‘Or maybe he’s not hiding it,’ Sam thought, noticing a cylindrical container sticking out of the pocket of the discarded shirt. As inconspicuously as he could, he tried to maneuver the shirt so that the container’s label was facing outwards.