by P. W. Child
Nina saw a tear creep down the side of his nose and land on the light grey fabric of his trousers. “I realize that this must sound futile. Nothing the world has not heard before, ever since Nuremburg. We had no idea, we were only following orders, and we knew nothing until it was too late – but please believe me: if I had realized who and what these people are I would never have allowed myself to become involved. Though what I should have done, I do not know. Once they know the extent of their power, their reach, many people might think it best simply to concede…”
The old man fell silent, while Nina patted him on the shoulder in an attempt of comforting him. She wondered what it must have been like to carry his secrets through so many decades. His involvement with the Nazis, his membership of the Black Sun… all entered into when he was young, all mistakes he had been unable to undo.
‘I’ll probably never know what it’s like to keep a secret for that long,’ she thought. ‘I doubt I’ll live that long. The way things are going, I probably won’t have to keep any secrets of any kind for more than just the next few days. Still…’
“Professor Lehmann,” she said, “I’m really grateful that you’ve told me all this. It might seem like a weird sort of comfort, but in a way it’s good to know that it’s not just me and Sam who think these people are inescapable. But these renegades that you mention… they’ve broken away from the Order? And they’re still alive? What do you know about them? Please, Professor, if we’re to have any chance of getting out of this alive I need to know as much as you can tell me.”
For what felt like an age, Professor Lehmann sat in silence, lost in thought. Then, resolutely, he raised his head and told Nina everything he knew. She listened with absolute attention, committing as many details as she could to memory. Then, when he had finished, she nodded and said “I need to see Sam.”
Chapter Forty-S even
“Where is she?” Alexandr’s voice resounded through the long room, from the golden doors as they slammed against the walls to the far end where Renata sat poised in conversation with Purdue. He stormed down the length of the room and shoved her seat back, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her to her feet. “Tell me where to find Axelle!”
Renata’s hands shot up, shoving Alexandr back against the wall. She slammed her forearm against his throat, pinning him. He thought he felt the cold point of a blade pricking at his abdomen. Submitting, he contained his rage and spread his hands in a gesture of capitulation.
“If you ever burst in upon me like this again,” she hissed through her teeth, “there will be no warning. Now sit down and do not presume to threaten me.”
“I will stand,” he scowled. She did not back down.
“You will sit.” Her eyes were like cold steel. Unwillingly, Alexandr nodded. She released him. He took a seat, sitting stiffly. From across the table Purdue watched intently, his body taut and prepared to run, either in flight or to someone’s assistance.
Renata did not immediately resume her seat, nor did she acknowledge Alexandr’s questions or ask him to repeat them. Instead she walked calmly over to the bar, filled a tall glass with water and stood sipping casually. When she was ready, she set the glass down and turned around, standing behind Alexandr’s chair.
“You may repeat your question,” she said smoothly.
Purdue watched Alexandr battling the impulse to turn to face her, or to leap up from his seat. It took all his self-discipline, but he controlled his voice carefully as he asked her once again where he would find Axelle. As Renata coldly informed him that Axelle had been executed on her orders just days earlier, Alexandr’s fingers closed tightly round the arms of the chair. His eyes closed and he breathed a long, heartfelt sigh. His knuckles whitened as his grip grew tighter.
“Why?” he asked.
“You should know better than to ask me that,” Renata replied. “Why do you care, anyway?”
“We were… close.”
Renata’s lips twisted into an approximation of a smile. “Is that not sweet?” she smirked. “So lovely to see the Order bringing kindred spirits together. And yet how tragic. Well, unfortunately your sweetheart forgot that there is a price to be paid for sharing certain information and for disloyalty to me and to the Black Sun. I had already tolerated her insubordination for too long.” She moved over to sit on the edge of the table and brought her face threateningly close to Alexandr’s. The bristles of his five-day beard brushed against her smooth cheek. “I should warn you, Alexandr, I am in no mood for this nonsense. Remember where your loyalties lie, or you and your precious Axelle will be reunited in short order. I have had quite enough of people taking matters into their own hands instead of simply following orders.”
“Then what are my orders?” Alexandr’s expression was blank, all emotion concealed behind a wall of forced indifference. Only the unyielding grip on the arms of the chairs betrayed his feelings.
“I shall be sending one of the new members on a retrieval mission shortly,” said Renata. “Tomorrow morning, once the selection has been made. Your task will be to escort this new member as far as Khövsgöl Nuur Lake. After that you may return home until next time we contact you.”
She stalked back over to the bar, leaving Alexandr and Purdue to stare at each other in disbelief. Purdue broke the silence first. “Khövsgöl Nuur?” he enunciated the word as if it were unfamiliar, but his alarmed expression could not be concealed. “It has been some time since I was last out in that part of Asia, but if I recall correctly Khövsgöl Nuur is in the vicinity of Mönkh Saridag…” He left the question unasked, hanging in the air.
“You would be sending them to their deaths,” Alexandr stated flatly.
“Are you questioning a direct order?” Renata asked.
Alexandr shook his head. “No, Renata. I am simply stating a fact. If you send an inexperienced new member to that area, it is doubtful that they will succeed in their mission. If the mission is important, I respectfully suggest that you send me instead. You know that I know what’s there and I would suggest that my skills would be better suited than those of either Sam or Nina. Or, if you -” A quick gesture from Purdue, unseen by Renata, silenced him. The billionaire shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“What?” Renata snapped. “If I what, Arichenkov?” She waited, but he did not continue. “Doesn’t matter. There are aspects of this mission, which you will not be part of. Your only task is to ensure that they get to Khövsgöl safely. The rest is none of your business. Just be ready to take them when they are ready to go, whichever one it proves to be. Purdue, we will speak later. Come to my gallery in half an hour. Gentlemen.”
With a curt nod she strode out of the room, her guards marching behind her. Purdue and Alexandr waited until the sound of her footsteps had died away down the corridor, then Purdue rose and poured himself a stiff measure of whisky. “Considering the speed with which she moves,” he mused, “I sometimes wonder why she bothers to have guards at all.” He knocked the drink back in a single gulp, then began to refill the glass. “I am sorry about Axelle.”
Alexandr shook his head. “She knew that it was likely,” he said. “Once you take it into your head to stand against the Order, it is only a matter of time. She spoke too freely. I will most likely encounter the same fate someday. But not today, yes? Perhaps I have not the courage that she had, because today I got to keep my neck.” He accepted the glass of whisky that Purdue handed to him. “But do you? If Renata is planning to send only one to Mönkh Saridag, then I assume you are planning that it should not be Nina.”
Purdue stared glumly into his glass. “I shall certainly do everything in my power to ensure that it is not her,” he said. “And if you can get Sam out of this situation unscathed, I shall double whatever the Order is paying you. If anyone can manage it, I would imagine you can.”
Despite his grief, Alexandr’s face was briefly illuminated by the prospect of the sums he was being offered. “I will do what I can,” he promised.
“T
hank you.” Purdue lapsed back into silence, staring at his drink.
Chapter Forty-Eig ht
“I shall see what I can do,” said Professor Lehmann, pulling himself uncomfortably to his feet. “Unfortunately the alarm will be raised if anyone passes through that door without first verifying their identity by means of the palm scans, and of course it has been programmed not to permit you to leave unnoticed.”
“See if you can find Alexandr,” said Nina. “He’s good with these things. Or – no, maybe not.” She flushed slightly. “Well… the other person to ask would be Purdue, but I don’t know how well that would go down just now. Probably best to try Alexandr first.”
“I will do my best.” Lehmann pressed his palm to the plate, opened the door; then he stopped just before stepping over the threshold. He turned back and held out his open arms to Nina. She hugged him gladly. “If only things could have been different… Nina, I am sorry.”
She buried her face deep in his shoulder. “Don’t be daft,” she said. “This isn’t your fault.” She took a step back and smiled as brightly as she could, ignoring the tears that were pricking at her eyeballs. “How you managed to have a son like Steven I’ll never know. But even though I wish I’d never set eyes on him, I still think that if I had ever ended up with a father-in-law, I couldn’t have done much better than you. Meeting you was the one good thing that came out of all that nonsense.”
Without another word, Professor Lehmann smiled back weakly and stepped through the door. As it closed behind him, Nina felt a sudden, overwhelming certainty that she had seen the old man for the last time. She wanted to call him back, plead with him not to risk helping her any further… but if she did that, she would have no way to see Sam and tell him what she had learned.
Besides, she felt sure that she was picking up on Lehmann’s own certainty that he would not survive this encounter with the Order. His willingness to risk being caught on camera talking to her, his reflections on his past involvement, the information he had given her…
She caught herself listening at the door. ‘No point in doing that yet,’ she told herself. ‘It’ll take him a while to find Alexandr, get Sam out and bring him here. Or get me out. Either way, I’ll know when they’re here. Until then… well, I suppose I wait.’ She perched on the edge of the bed. She did not even notice as her fingers strayed towards the peeling wallpaper and began to pick off one small strip after another.
*
When Sam heard the lock clunking back and the door being pushed open, he was not surprised. He had thought that Alexandr might come back after speaking to Renata, needing someone to talk to or just silent company. He rolled off the bed and stood up to greet his visitor.
The sight of Professor Lehmann took him by surprise. The old man’s eyes were red, though it was impossible to tell whether he had been crying or was simply frail and exhausted after the exertions of the past day. At once he began to ask whether he was alright, whether he should sit down, if he would like Sam to go and get someone – the ridiculousness of the last question did not hit Sam until the words were already out of his mouth. Then Alexandr appeared at Lehmann’s shoulder and Sam felt even more confused.
“Alexandr, I’m so sorry.” He had never seen the Russian’s face so hard and serious. His customary impish grin was nowhere to be seen. Without his usual air of devil-may-care glee, Alexandr almost seemed like a different man.
“You were right to tell me, Sam,” He said, “or to tell me to demand an answer of Renata, at least. It is not a pleasant thing to know, but… at least I know.”
Professor Lehmann stumbled slightly. Both Sam and Alexandr dived forward to catch him and guided him to the bed to sit down. “Forgive me…” he coughed, waving away their questions about whether he was alright. “I will be well enough directly. That is not important just now. We may not have much time before -”
Before he could complete his sentence, the door swung shut and locked itself with an ominous clunk. All three men stared silently at it for a moment, then Alexandr spoke. “It was open for too long,” he said. “That is my fault. I should have closed it behind me. These doors, when they are left open for longer than half a minute and can detect no physical presence in the doorway, they will close themselves. Sam, we have come to get you out of here. This is not an escape attempt, I am sorry - escaping from this house would be virtually impossible – but Professor Lehmann here says that Nina needs to speak to you and that it is urgent. Since the alarm will sound if more people exit the room than entered it, Professor Lehmann has offered to stay in the room until I am able to return you to it. Are you ready? Will you come with me?”
“Of course!” Sam said. “Let’s get going.” He followed Alexandr to the door, but when the Russian pressed his hand against the plate nothing happened. There was no responsive beep, the lock did not click. He pulled his hand away, waited a moment and tried again. Nothing.
Alexandr cursed under his breath. “Either the door is malfunctioning or my clearance has been overridden,” he said. “Hmmm. Professor Lehmann, are you well enough to stand again? Good. Sam, take an end.”
Alexandr grabbed one end of the brass bedstead and heaved it round, dragging the heavy bed across the floor. Sam took the other and followed, helping him to haul it over to the sloping window.
“It won’t break, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Sam. “I tried when I first got here. Threw the bedside table at it and it didn’t so much as chip.”
“The Order uses safety glass as standard,” Alexandr said, not taking his eyes off the window. He planted his feet on the mattress, then pulled out a small Swiss Army knife and began working away at the bottom left corner of the window. The movements were so minute that Sam could not see exactly what he was doing, as much as he craned his neck. Then, with a swift flick of his wrist, Alexandr pulled off a long strip of silicon and dropped it onto the bed. Another strip followed, then another. “Hold it steady at the bottom, Sam,” he instructed. “We shall lay the pane against the wall once it’s down.”
As he stripped away the last white line of sealant from the top of the window the pane came loose and Sam felt its weight drop onto his waiting hands. Under Alexandr’s guidance he steered the heavy sheet of glass over to the designated patch of wall and laid it down carefully. Cold night air flowed in through the gap where the window pane had once been. Sam climbed up onto the bed and stuck his head out.
The roof sloped steeply down, its red tiled surface stretching several feet towards a small ledge adjoining the gutter. It did not look anywhere near sturdy enough to support a grown man’s weight. ‘Not even a skinny bastard like me,’ Sam thought with a gulp. Beyond the ledge, beyond the gutter, there was nothing but empty air all the way down to the cobbled alleyway, three stories below.
“Where are we going?” Sam hissed, as Alexandr jumped up from the bed and swung a leg over the empty window frame. “How are we supposed to get into Nina’s room from the outside?”
“We are going to the other end of the roof, Sam,” said Alexandr “And we will get in by doing the same thing in reverse.”
Damning Alexandr’s insanity, Sam followed him out of the window. They scrambled down to the ledge, leaning back against the tiles to spread their weight. Sam knocked a tile out of place and it scraped and scratched its way down the roof. He braced himself for the seconds of silence followed by the ear-splitting crash from the street, but it did not come. He opened his eyes to see that the tile had not gained sufficient momentum to clear the gutter, but was teetering precariously on the edge. He kept shuffling along.
When they reached the window that Alexandr knew to be Nina’s, he knocked on it. “They are all tinted so that it is impossible to see in from the outside unless you get really close,” he said, “but she will be able to see us, and we ought to be able to make – ah yes! There she is!” An indistinct figure had appeared in the room, little more than a dark shape against the light. “We need her to push her bed over so that the pane wi
ll fall onto the mattress, not the floor,” said Alexandr. He squinted against the glass, trying to discern the layout of the room so that he could point to the bed.
“Let me,” said Sam. He had a scrap of paper in his pocket and the chewed-up remains of a pen. Carefully he un-crumpled the paper and wrote PUSH BED UNDER WINDOW as neatly and clearly as he could. ‘This is not a time to be let down by bad handwriting,’ he thought. He pressed the paper against the glass. The dark figure seemed to go up on tiptoe to read it.
A moment later the figure disappeared and they heard a faint scraping sound as she dragged the bed into position. Alexandr waved at her to stand back, and when he was satisfied that she had retreated to a safe distance he repeated his trick with the window seals. The pane landed on the duvet with a soft whump, and Sam was able to climb down.
He turned back to help Alexandr through, but the Russian was not following. “I will not come in,” he said. “I will return and check on Professor Lehmann. He did not seem to be doing so well. I will leave you two to talk. Sam knows what to do to get back, now.” He left, moving considerably faster along the ledge now that he did not have to wait for Sam.
Sam turned to Nina, expecting her to tease him about making such a dramatic entrance. She did not. She simply threw her arms around him and held him tight.
Chapter F orty-Nine
Sam wrapped his arms around her and let himself be comforted by the hug. In all of this madness, it was a relief to feel something as simple as a friendly touch, more so the friendly touch of one so precious to him. He closed his eyes and stood for a moment, inhaling the clean scent of her hair, taking comfort in her proximity.
“They said you wanted to see me,” he said softly, not letting go.
“I did,” she nodded. “I do. There’s something you have to know, something Professor Lehmann told me. I should probably have just asked him to tell you himself rather than risking getting everyone into trouble this way, but I thought… I thought you’d better hear it from me.”