by P. W. Child
By the way Nina’s hand flew to her pocket Sam knew Alexandr was right. Not that there was any reason to doubt him. The Order of the Black Sun tended to have accurate technology, in Sam’s experience.
“Now, my instructions are to transport all three of you back to headquarters as swiftly as possible. A plane is ready for us at Northolt, and I -”
“Wait,” said Sam, “All three of us? Why all three of us? Why do you need to drag Professor Lehmann all the way over the Belgium?”
“It is an express order from his son,” said Alexandr “Will you comply, Professor?”
“Oh, Jesus,” Nina chipped in, rolling her eyes at Steven Lehmann’s audacity.
Professor Lehmann’s jaw was tight. “I will,” he said. “I do not appreciate being ordered this way, but I think it is time that I had a word with my son.”
Chapter Forty-Three
It was nearly noon by the time the car pulled up outside the Black Sun house. Someone had obviously been anticipating their arrival and tracking their position, because the moment the vehicle began to slow down the door swung open. Alexandr opened the door and shepherded them inside, where they found Renata waiting for them.
“What took you so long?” she demanded of Alexandr “Their mission was completed last night, and you kept me waiting until now?”
Alexandr met her gaze with an unapologetic smile. “If it had just been Mr. Cleave and Dr. Gould that I was to retrieve, I would have brought them to you straight away,” he said, “but I was asked to bring Professor Lehmann as well.”
Renata spun round to look at Lehmann, her handsome face contorted into a scowl. “That request did not come from me,” she said. “Arichenkov, we have spoken about this before. You obey no-one but me; you are answerable to no-one but me. Who thought that their orders outweighed mine?”
It was not necessary for Alexandr to reply, since Steven appeared at that moment on the staircase. “Father!” He rushed down the remaining steps, a sudden sweat suffusing his brown. “I didn’t think you would come.”
“And yet here I am,” Lehmann replied. Sam glanced from father to son and back again, trying to read the dynamic between them and failing. For a man who could apparently give orders to the unbiddable Alexandr, Steven did not look like a confident authoritarian now. If anything, Sam thought he detected shades of the schoolboy about to get a row in Steven’s nervous perspiration and slumped shoulders. Despite his resolution not to give in to curiosity about Steven and Nina, he caught himself trying to imagine what Lehmann had been like with her – it seemed almost impossible that this weak-looking man, cowed by a stern glance from his elderly father, could be the controlling ex-lover Nina had hinted at.
He stole a glance at Nina, but she was not watching the two men. Her eyes were on Renata, her sharp mind busily reconciling all the things they had learned on their brief trip with the woman who now stood in front of them.
Aware of his lapse in decorum, Professor Lehmann introduced himself to Renata and apologized for intruding upon her. He never would have done so, he told her, had he not believed that his son acted on her orders. The look of irritation did not entirely leave her face, but she softened a little and instructed Steven to find a place for his father to stay. The two men left together, heading upstairs towards the main bedrooms on the first floor.
What followed next was a heated conversation conducted entirely in Russian. Neither Sam nor Nina could follow the words, but it was crystal clear from the tone that the leader of the Order was not pleased, and that Alexandr did not feel that her displeasure was justified. Since even Purdue had been remarkably respectful in this woman’s presence, Sam could only suppose that very few people ever disobeyed her, crossed her or even just spoke back to her. He would have liked to intervene, to pull Alexandr aside and ask him to think about what he was doing. ‘You’re the one who told me that life’s only useful as long as you still have it,’ Sam thought. But he kept quiet. Best not to risk pouring fuel on the fire.
The conversation rose to a crescendo, then Renata turned on her stiletto heel and stalked off down the corridor. Alexandr sighed heavily. “You are to come with me,” he said, “and I am to take you back to your rooms. This way.” He led them back up the attic where they had been held before, showing them up the back stairs. The first door they came to was Sam’s.
“I thought the idea was that we were done with all of this?” Sam asked as Alexandr went through the rigmarole of palm and iris scans.
“Renata says that the mission was compromised by Professor Lehmann’s involvement,” Alexandr said grimly. He gave Sam a gentle push into the little off-white room, then followed him in and beckoned Nina after him. “I am supposed to take you each to your own room. I feel that this is close enough. In case she decides to keep you here a while, I want to visit with you for a while first. There is plenty of time to be alone in your coffin.”
He sat cross-legged upon the thin beige carpet and patted it invitingly. “Come, sit,” he said. “It will be like old times, except with no raging snow storm outside and we will all have washed ourselves properly within the past week! Sit.”
They did. Neither Sam nor Nina was even slightly surprised to see Alexandr pull out his flask. They had learned in Antarctica that he was never without it, and he was never mean about sharing its contents. He passed it round and they each took a nip of the stinging, overpowering spirit. “Is this still your cousin’s stuff?” Sam asked. “If it is, he’s a legend.”
Alexandr nodded, beaming with pleasure at the compliment. “I will pass that on, Sam, the next time I see him. Perhaps someday you will both come to visit, and you will try it at its best – served in my cousin’s home, with the black bread his wife makes and the smell of his dogs in the air.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you can possibly be real,” Nina said, accepting a second sip. “Do you work at living the stereotypes?”
“Nyet,” Alexandr replied. “Not all Russians are like me. In fact very few are like me. But it is the Russians like me who make an impression.” He winked at her and she laughed.
“Good thing I never take anything you say seriously,” she said.
His demeanor changed at once. “Oh, but you should. You must, because what I am about to say is very serious indeed… You must be very, very careful in the choices you make here. I do not know how much you know about the people you have met here. You know Purdue of course, and Nina, it appears, knows Professor Lehmann – but the others... How much you know of Renata?”
“Hardly anything.” Sam stretched out, leaning against the end of his bed. “Apparently she knows everything about me.”
“She worries Purdue,” said Nina, “and that worries me. I get the impression she doesn’t like us very much, but she feels obliged to take us in. I’d imagine her obligation is to Purdue, but that he’s not certain that she’ll honor it.”
“Very close to the mark,” Alexandr nodded. “I know little of her myself, and what I do comes second-hand from Purdue and from my blood-brother, Dragos. But what I can tell you is that it was no small matter for a woman like her to get as far as she has. No-one gets to be Renata unless they are, shall we say, a little dangerous. More than a little. Renata has no sense of danger; it is a thing that happens only to other people and often at her hands.”
In his description of the ruthlessness of the Order’s leader both Sam and Nina had a clear reminiscence of the redhead Lita and her unmatched power. Neither mentioned her outright, but where Sam had a brief memory of her defeat in the hall of Valhalla, Nina vividly recalled her malice and she wondered how safe Renata would have been, had Lita not been locked in the sinking mausoleum that was Odin’s earthly hall.
But that was of little importance now and Nina took great care to listen to the details of Alexandr’s warnings. “This is why, before her commitments to the Order of the Black Sun took over, she was a great and successful thief and smuggler.”
“Specializing in art, presumably?” The pieces were falli
ng into place for Sam. “Which is why she had that treasure hunt set up – it’s the kind of thing she knows about, as well as the whole test of valor idea.”
“Correct, but she did not focus solely on artwork. Talented as she is, I doubt the Order would ever have taken notice of her if she had been an art thief only. They look for adventurers! Dragos met her when she drove an ambulance full of Kalashnikovs and frag grenades through Russia down to Turkmenistan. Do you know, my friends, how many borders she had to cross? How many lies, how many chases, how many things she barely escaped? From Russia to Kazakhstan, then clear through Uzbekistan, then all the way to the Door to Hell. That is where Dragos first saw her, he told me – and many times he said that it was where she belonged!”
“Alexandr!” Purdue appeared in the open door. With a swift, meaningful glance at the cameras in the corners, he placed a finger to his lips. “Renata has noticed that one of the rooms is unoccupied. She sent me to ensure that both Sam and Nina are where they are supposed to be.”
“Well, party’s over then,” Nina said resignedly, getting to her feet. “Gentlemen, it’s been fun. Let’s see what she’s got in store for us next.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“Nina,” Purdue half-whispered as he escorted her along the corridor and went through the stages of unlocking her door, “I realize your frustration, but please – beware of Renata. You would be best not to antagonize or disobey her. Be careful what you say, even when you think you are amongst friends. Please.” He brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I can’t stay, but I will come back as soon as I can and make sure you are alright.”
She caught hold of his hand, preventing him from leaving. “Just one thing, before you go. Something I’ve wanted to ask you for a while now.”
“Anything.”
“Why me?” Nina asked softly. “I understand you feel the need for all these thrill-seeking things that you do. You enjoy putting yourself in danger. But me? And Sam? We don’t. You just dragged me into all of this. Why? Why would you do that? What did I ever do to you that would make you want to do this to me?”
She had never seen an expression like this on Purdue’s face before. His customary intense, analytical stare had given way to a gentle look of regret. He closed his eyes and sighed, reaching out for her hand. Wrong-footed, Nina automatically took it. She had been expecting anger, hatred, anything but this.
“I had hoped it would be self-evident,” he said, a rueful half-smile on his lips. “I love you, Nina.”
For a moment she stared at him, speechless, then began to shake her head almost involuntarily. “No,” she whispered, “no, don’t say that. You don’t. You can’t. How many times have you put me in danger over and over again? If you loved me… I don’t believe you would have done that. This is just another manipulation. Just another one of your weird little games.”
Purdue flinched as if she had physically struck him. “It must be difficult to believe that I ever do anything that is not part of some game,” he said, “but I can only ask you to trust me. You remember the night we met, surely?”
Nina did. She had never forgotten the evening she had spent at that fundraiser at the National Library of Scotland, well aware of Purdue’s gaze fixed upon her, uncomfortably intense. She had hoped that he would be content just to watch her from a distance and had tried to concentrate on chatting with other benefactors and her colleagues from the department, but even then she had known that he would ask to speak to her eventually. Sure enough, just as the evening started winding down and she had begun to relax, her Head of Department had pulled her aside and pointed Purdue out. “He’s very interested in your work,” Matlock had hissed in her ear. “He’s even waded through your god-awful thesis, so one can only assume that he’s a little strange. Go and do the department some good.”
Caught between Matlock’s eyes and Purdue’s, Nina had forced herself to hold her head up and smile as she made her wretched journey across the room. She remembered being surprised by his forceful grip as he wrapped his thin fingers around her hand, how the handshake had lasted just a fraction of a second too long, and how she had suddenly felt acutely aware of the exposed flesh across her neck and shoulders. Purdue’s eyes had never strayed from her face, not for so much as a second, but nevertheless she had felt intensely scrutinized.
She remembered how, after a brief and perfunctory conversation about her work and his supposed interest in it, he had propositioned her. It had been the most matter of fact declaration of interest she had ever had. He had informed her that she seemed to be “a perfect combination of erotic and intellectual fascinations” and invited her to his hotel room. She had declined politely. He had shown no sign of anger or even disappointment. It seemed as minor a matter to him as it would have been if Nina had refused another glass of champagne.
“If I did not show greater anguish at your refusal that night,” he said, as if reading the timeline of her thoughts, “it was because I was certain that sooner or later you would come to me. I had piqued your interest. It was only a matter of time.”
Nina wanted to make an indignant retort, to tell Purdue that he was wrong and there hadn’t been the slightest flicker of interest that night. All that had come later, during the turbulent moments she had experienced following their return from Antarctica. Yet as she cast her mind back, she realized that she had never quite stopped thinking about his proposition. She had always wondered what might have happened if she had said yes…
‘If I’d said yes he would probably have got me killed by now,’ she told herself firmly. But while she had no doubt that accepting his invitation would have been a bad idea, the more she thought about it the less she could deny that it had been tempting. So tempting, in fact, that at the next fundraiser she had felt the need to take a date – ostensibly to keep Purdue at a distance from her, but perhaps, in retrospect, also to prevent herself from going home with her eccentric admirer. ‘And look where that got me,’ she thought. ‘I pulled Sam into all of this along with me – and we both ended up back at Purdue’s that night.’
“I remember it,” Nina hauled her mind back into the present. “What are you trying to tell me? That it was love at first sight?”
“Precisely that.”
She shook her head again, furiously. “No. I don’t believe it. And I don’t know what you think of me, if you think I’m going to fall for all this fairytale bullshit.”
“I wish that you didn’t see it that way, Nina. I will admit that I went to that event to find out more about you. I was already planning the expedition to Antarctica, and I believed that you might be the specialist I was looking for. By the end of that evening I was not only convinced that you were – I was also certain that wherever I went, I wanted you to be there with me. By the time we spoke again I was prepared to offer you whatever it took to persuade you to join me.”
“But while we were together… we both agreed that it wasn’t going to be anything…” Nina searched desperately for the right word. “I don’t know. Anything significant? Anything serious? We were just going to see how it went.”
Purdue shrugged. “That was what you wanted. I would have agreed to whatever arrangement you preferred, from seeing one another casually to lifelong commitment. Surely you have realized this by now, Nina. I am not a demonstrative man, but I am a dedicated one. When I decide that I want something, I will move the earth itself in order to have it.”
Nina’s eyes narrowed. “So do I get a say in any of this? Or am I just going to be relentlessly manipulated until you get this something you want?”
Purdue realized his mistake seconds too late. He tried to catch hold of her hand as she wrenched it from his grip, but she was too fast, too angry.
“So what about the night we got together?” Nina yelled, backing away from him until they were separated by the table. “Was that all a set-up? Did I actually have a choice, or was that all part of the plan? Wait until I was sufficiently traumatized, get me talking about it and le
t me fall into your arms? I can’t believe I was so -”
“If truth be told, that was not part of my plan,” Purdue’s flat statement cut across Nina’s flow of fury, stopping her short. “There was a great deal that did not go the way I had intended during that expedition. If you must know, it was my intention that we would return after a successful mission and it would be the thrill of victory that brought us together. As a matter of fact I was concerned that our failure and subsequent trauma might drive you away from me altogether. Towards our dear friend Mr. Cleave, perhaps.”
At the mention of Sam’s name, Nina flushed. She remembered their one desperate kiss aboard the U-boat, when no-one had known whether they would survive. Did Purdue know about that? Or had there been other signs of their brief attraction? More flashes pierced her clandestine memory vaults where she had engaged Sam in Purdue’s absence, even recently where she had felt the need to abandon it all to be with him – just him and his cat. “I didn’t see Sam after all of that,” she said. “Not until America. And I didn’t even know he was going to be there – though I think you did. Is that why he was there? It is, isn’t it? You talked Jefferson into hiring him so he’d be there, so that he could see us together. Didn’t you? Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”
Purdue said nothing. Nina snorted. “That’s what I thought. That’s the kind of love I can do without.”
For a few long moments there was silence in the room. Purdue’s face was deathly white. With absolute precision and economy of movement he removed his glasses, polished them and placed them back on his nose. The image of him aboard the boat that had rescued them in Antarctica formed in Nina’s mind. Purdue had demanded that their rescuers abandon the crew of the sinking destroyer, and when the captain had refused she had seen a similar look of fury upon him.
There was more; more to be concerned about. Purdue’s dismissive and almost antagonistic behavior on Deep Sea One was more than questionable. The fact that he abandoned her to Sam, to hell - to whatever may come to make his clean getaway as the oil platform collapsed, overrun by enemy agents of the Black Sun. No, his loyalties had never been with her, at least not in the way of real love, right love. Instinctively she scanned the room for exits and cursed herself for letting Purdue get between her and the door.