by P. W. Child
“The Black Sun?” Sam interrupted. “Then I think we might have found the one we’re looking for.”
He was examining the painting on the wall behind Nina. She recognized it instantly as the Arnolfini Wedding, a piece by Jan van Eyck she had seen before in the National Gallery. A man in a long dark gown and black hat stood holding by the hand a woman in a voluminous green dress, most likely in the act of getting married or betrothed. She remembered the guide book pointing out the mirror in the background as an example of van Eyck’s exceptional artistry, where the other occupants of the room were depicted in a display of perfect perspective. In this version, however, there was no mirror. There was only a black sun hanging between the couple, its ebony rays spilling across the wall behind them. Viewed this way, knowing what she now knew, the dealings between the man and the woman looked less like a marriage and more like an initiation.
“That’s got to be it,” she concurred. “How do we get it out of the frame?”
“No idea,” said Sam. “Let’s get it down off the wall to start.”
The painting was not large, but it had been executed on a wood panel which did not make for easy handling. With some difficulty they removed it from its hanging and grappled it to the floor without injury, but it was clear from touching it that any rough treatment would result in serious harm. Whatever they did next, they were going to have to do it very carefully. ‘We might be better just leaving it in the frame and putting our jackets over it while we’re outside,’ Sam thought. ‘There’s no point in - ’
The light above their heads snapped on. Sam looked up in alarm and found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Please do not move,” the man behind the shotgun said calmly. “I shall permit you to raise your hands, but anything more than that and I shall shoot.”
Sam raised his hands, very slowly. He dared not turn his head, and he could not quite see the man clearly in his peripheral vision. All he could tell was that the gun was pointed low, towards his abdomen. ‘Not the stomach,’ he thought, ‘that’s a slow, miserable way to go.’ He wondered whether he would be able to reach his poison capsule if he needed it.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
Sam’s blood froze at the sound of Nina’s voice. ‘What is she doing?’ He wondered. ‘We’re not exactly in a position to negotiate here!’
“If you fire that thing the recoil’s going to send you flying,” she continued. “Remember? It did last time, Professor.”
There was silence, and a moment of confusion. Then the man lowered the gun. “Nina?”
As the man came further into the room to get a closer look at Nina, Sam took the risk on looking round. He saw a frail, elderly man dressed in a smart suit, with neatly cropped white hair and an immaculately maintained beard. He pulled out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, polished them on his handkerchief and put them on. Then his face split into a warm, delighted smile.
“Nina!” Professor Lehmann opened his arms and Nina stepped into them at once for a long, heartfelt hug. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story,” she said. “Do you remember Sam? I sent him down to see you once. Sam, do you remember Professor Lehmann?”
Sam did. When he had found himself in possession of a box of mementoes from a dead Nazi, Nina had referred him to Professor Lehmann to find out more about the collection of mysterious brass objects. He had liked the old man a great deal, even though he had been less enthused of his son. It was shortly before his first dangerous expedition with Purdue to Wolfenstein.
“Ah yes,” Professor Lehmann held out a hand for Sam to shake. His skin was cool and papery, and it felt as if it might break in Sam’s. “How do you do, Mr… Cleaver, was it?”
“Cleave,” said Sam. “Close enough.”
“Mr. Cleave, that’s right. Well, Mr. Cleave, why don’t you and Nina tell me what the devil is going on here, and how you come to be in my house? Come through to my study. I shall make some tea.”
*
By the time the kettle Professor Lehmann kept by the fire in his study had boiled, Sam and Nina had given him a précis of their situation. It had been Sam’s intention to keep things vague, letting him know that they were being forced to steal to order on pain of death. When Nina first made mention of the Order he had gasped involuntarily. He had not expected her to be so indiscreet. But she had noticed his consternation and explained why she believed that Professor Lehmann already knew about the Order.
“If Steven’s a part of it and he’s got any kind of authority at all, it’s because someone else has pulled the strings for him,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Since Professor Lehmann has that painting, I’m prepared to bet that any influence Steven has actually comes from him. Am I right, Professor?”
“Sadly, my dear, you are,” said the Professor. With shaking hands he poured the hot water into a delicate china teapot and added four spoonfuls of tea leaves. “It was never in my son’s nature to look far beyond the things I could do for him. As for my association with the Black Sun… Yes, they recruited me during my time at Peenemunde in the Forties. I never progressed beyond the Fourth Level, which is the highest anyone can reach while remaining safely in a research facility and not in the field.”
“What were you researching?” Sam asked.
“Aeronautics. The development of new types of military aircraft. I worked for many years on designing planes that could evade radar detection. It was my expertise and my acceptance of a place within the Order that ensured my safety when Hitler fell. They take care of their own. They got me out as part of Operation Paperclip and allowed me to continue the work I had been doing. The only thing that changed was that I answered to a different paymaster – a far more generous one, if truth be told.”
“So how did you come to be here?” Nina accepted her cup and perched on the footstool. “I thought you lived out near Reading somewhere.”
“I do,” he said. “At Cold Ash, with Steven and my granddaughter, Lavinia.”
He made no mention of Frida, Steven’s equally insidiously inclined wife, but neither Sam nor Nina bothered to ask. “But thanks to the ample remuneration offered by the Black Sun, I was able to buy this house shortly after the war, at a time when properties like this could still be come by cheaply. I use it to store a few of my favorite things, and I stay here when I come up to town to see my doctor. It is one of my pleasures to escape to this place every so often.”
Sam listened, fascinated. It was not just the details that Professor Lehmann disclosed about his life that he found intriguing, it was everything that was unstated, everything implied. The man had clearly had a fascinating life, and yet Sam detected some reticence, some distaste for the Order in his manner. ‘Is it possible, then?’ Sam wondered. ‘Can you take advantage of these people’s protection, get what you can out of them, but not lose your integrity to them? Or at least hang on to enough of yourself that you can reject their ideas even as you take their money? Plenty of people work for companies whose ethics they don’t believe in. Is this really any different? But even if they’re as bad as they seem, shouldn’t we stay alive and fight them? Is that what Lehmann did?’
“Now tell me more about this mission of yours,” Lehmann insisted, sipping his tea. “You say you have been sent to obtain one of my paintings? Presumably the van Eyck?”
“That’s right,” said Nina. “At least, we think it is. I would assume that it’s some kind of test of worthiness. It’s frustrating, because there’s such a lot we don’t know and we haven’t been able to research anything properly because of being on the run… but as far as we can tell, the Black Sun harbors a number of… I don’t know how to put it. Occult beliefs? Esoteric beliefs?” Nina once again played dumb, concealing what she and Sam had learned of the Black Sun’s origins and beliefs. She did not pass a glance to Sam, but he could read by her tone that she was acting far more uninformed than she was a
nd it would be best if he followed suit in non-disclosure. “Either way, a lot of it seems to be based in Norse mythology, and the Norse gods were keen on earning wisdom and knowledge the hard way. Odin swapped an eye for a drink from the Mirmir’s well in order to gain the Wisdom of Ages, and he hung from a tree – okay, it wasn’t just a tree, it was Yggdrasil but anyway - for something like nine days and even pierced himself with his spear in order to learn the mysteries of the runes!”
Lehmann nodded. “Games like these are not uncommon, but as you have seen, they are played in deadly earnest. My own task was to deliver an item I would never see to a location I was lucky to get in and out of alive. Now…” He rose and began to pace the room. “You will be killed if you return without the painting. You cannot outrun the Order. Therefore you must return with the painting.”
“But it’s yours,” said Sam. “I know it doesn’t make sense to have scruples about stealing from someone we know when we were ready to nick it from a stranger, but…” He trailed off. He might not have known Professor Lehmann well, but Nina clearly did and it seemed absolutely wrong to take advantage of his frailty.
“Fortunately that can be managed,” the Professor smiled. “More tea, Mr. Cleave? I shall give the painting to you – on loan, at least. As much as it would pain me to lose it, I would be willing to allow you to make temporary use of it. Take it back to Belgium with you, and we shall reclaim it at some later date when the two of you are in less danger.”
Nina gave a cynical chuckle. “I notice you don’t say when we’re out of danger.”
“Indeed I do not.” Settling himself back into the armchair, he reached over and patted Nina’s hand. “I think you already know that you’re in this for the long haul. At least…” He shook his head. “No. There is nothing to be said on that matter. It is better to accept that this is your fate. Take the painting, and we shall work out how to retrieve it later.”
“Thank you,” Nina said, taking his hand and squeezing it tightly. Tears of relief pricked the backs of her eyes.
Professor Lehmann returned the grip on her hand and smiled as broadly and as bravely as he could. “I wish you could have been my daughter-in-law, Nina… except that would have meant your being married to my son. Accept the loan of the painting a token of affection and an apology for Steven.” He sighed and emptied his cup. “It is, I think, the least I can do.”
Chapter Forty
“This theft malarkey is a lot easier when the owner of the painting gives you a crate and bubble wrap to pack it up with.” Sam unrolled a strip of plastic sheeting and wrapped it around the wood panel.
“And calls for a taxi to get the goods to their drop-off point,” said Nina. “I’m fairly sure it’s not standard practice, but we can check with Purdue when we see him.”
Once the painting was safely padded and securely packed Sam and Nina took it and carried it down the wide, winding staircase. A black cab was waiting outside the front door, and Professor Lehmann guided and supervised as they loaded the crate and arranged themselves around it. Nina sat strapped into the rear-facing seat, holding their cargo upright and chatting away happily to the old man.
The taxi swung out onto Holborn and straight into heavy traffic. As the entire line of cars ground to a halt and the driver informed them that they might be stuck there for some time, Sam stole a glance at the meter. ‘I’m glad Professor Lehmann offered to pick up the tab for this one,’ he thought.
“You know the story behind the painting, I trust?” Professor Lehmann folded his hands on his walking cane.
“We don’t,” Sam admitted. “But if I were to guess, I’d assume that the one at the museum is a copy and that someone found it funny to swap them at some point.”
“Then you would be wrong, Mr. Cleave. It is understandable that you would make such an assumption, but in fact the painting that hangs in the National Gallery is an original. But this one, this is also an original. Both issued from the brushes of Jan van Eyck, neither is a forgery. Very few people know that he painted two similar but slightly different versions, both for different purposes. Equally, very few people know that the version we have here, the version of whose existence most people are not even aware, was intended to appear in Hitler’s Führermuseum.”
“His what?” Sam was at a loss.
“It was a project that never got anywhere,” Nina filled him in. “A plan for a museum in Linz in Austria. It was going to be filled with the treasures that had been stolen by the Nazis during the war. Considering that they’re supposed to have looted about twenty per cent of all the artwork in Europe, it could have been a hell of a collection. It was going to be divided into two sections – one for art that depicted or reflected the Aryan race and ideals, and the other for what they termed ‘degenerate’ art. The idea was to show the world what depravity the Nazis had saved them from.”
“And this piece was going to be part of the Aryan collection, presumably?”
“Yes,” said Professor Lehmann, patting the crate with an odd look on his face. Sam could not tell whether what he was seeing was remorse or some sort of nostalgia. “I never saw the plans for the museum myself, but I knew one or two people who claimed to have worked on them and told stories of the designs. A central hall, a giant circle with the Black Sun picked out in mosaic on the floor, each of its rays pointing in the direction of a sub-gallery… It would have been remarkable, and the existence of the Order of the Black Sun would finally have ceased to be a secret. The gallery would have laid out its history, tracing centuries of activity that had previously remained hidden. And this would have told the story of the Order’s brush with discovery in the fifteenth century.”
While they sat in the taxi, waiting for the traffic jam ahead of them to clear and the cars to start moving again, Lehmann began to tell the story of the painting’s origin and how close the Black Sun had come to being revealed. First he explained that to call it The Arnolfini Wedding was a misnomer, not only because it was not a wedding, but also because the man in the painting was not cloth merchant Giovanni Arnolfini, but another man altogether. The misidentification had taken place in 1516, and it had either stuck through chance or as part of a convenient cover.
The man’s true identity, according to Lehmann, was Raoul d’Anjou. He was descended from a bastard son of the French ruling dynasty, and had once led the Order, following on from Maria di Canossi. While Maria had been the first woman to take on the role, Raoul was the first to share it. His decision had caused great controversy within the Order and had very nearly prompted a schism, but his was a rulership based on fear. It was well known that he kept a number of hired killers on retainers, and his vicious reputation benefitted from the popular rumor that the entire Anjou family dealt with the Devil. When he insisted that he would lead jointly with his wife, very few dared oppose him. The ones who did either ended up dead, or swiftly backed down when they realized their danger.
Katrina van der Gueldre was the woman for whom Raoul d’Anjou was prepared to risk so much. Unlike him, she did not come from a powerful or wealthy family. Her origins were shrouded in mystery, but the received wisdom within the Order was that she had been an adventuress, born to an unnamed prostitute and an unknown father in Sint Oedenrode. By a combination of great determination, boldness and a string of increasingly wealthy and influential lovers, she had clawed her way up to become rich and influential in her own right.
An even more turbulent sea of rumors surrounded her than Raoul. When her own mother attempted to blackmail her, threatening to stir up scandal and humiliate the girl in front of her courtier lover, Katrina was reputed to have poisoned her slowly, agonizingly, over a period of several weeks. By the time she left the Dutch court in favor of the Flemish one, there was hardly a nobleman in the Netherlands who did not have some tale of horror to tell. Katrina van der Gueldre was a witch who seduced everyone from stable boys to kings. Katrina had stolen the newborn babies of women around the court and sacrificed them. Katrina had fled the court with a
select handful of the crown jewels. If proof were needed that Raoul d’Anjou was in league with the Devil, his union with Katrina was more than sufficient.
“That’s all very interesting,” said Sam as the taxi lurched a little further forward. Aldwych was now in sight, The Strand tantalizingly close. “But what’s going on with the painting? Did heads of the Order usually have portraits done?”
“They did, in the same way that any wealthy person of the era might have done. What makes this unusual is that as far as we know, it is the only depiction of someone undergoing initiation as Renata. Certainly it is the only one where she is being initiated by the incumbent Renatus. This is her official introduction to the senior members of the Order.”
“So Jan van Eyck was a member?”
“Again, Mr. Cleave, a reasonable assumption – but an incorrect one. Jan van Eyck was not a member, or at least not in his heart. Van Eyck was a spy engaged to infiltrate the Order of the Black Sun. As you can see, he did a very good job. Very few people would ever have been trusted to carry out a commission like this.”
“Who was he spying for?” Nina asked.
“For his patron, Philip the Good,” Lehmann replied. “A very powerful man. Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders, founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a chivalric organization which also still exists to this day. Philip had heard of the existence of the Order of the Black Sun, but had yet to obtain solid proof of its existence. When he moved his court to Bruges he realized that there was something out of the ordinary, but whether it was a particularly powerful merchant cartel, a court faction with popular local support or something completely different, he could not tell. All he knew was that his word did not appear to be law in Bruges the way it had always been everywhere else. The city continued to do more or less as it pleased, with but scant regard to Philip’s wishes. He never met with direct opposition, but with a silent conspiracy of disobedience towards anything the burghers did not like. He moved on to Lille, but left behind van Eyck, who enjoyed his patronage. Van Eyck was ordered to learn whether the Order genuinely existed and to inform Philip of the identities of its members.”