“What about the uranium? What’s going to happen to that?”
“It’s safe, although apparently the Germans and Austrians can’t agree who it belongs to.”
“No surprises there,” Tom said with a shrug. “What about Bailey? Is he in the clear?”
“As far as I know. He mentioned something about transferring to New York.”
“Good for him.”
“You know, he mentioned to me that Jennifer Browne had called him. Asking after you. Apparently she got wind you’d been involved.”
“And?” Tom said stonily, his eyes still fixed to the ground.
“And maybe you should call her. Look, I know I gave you a hard time about her before, what with her being a Fed and everything, but you two were good together. All this stuff with your father and Renwick and Viktor . . . it’s messing with your head. I mean, what have you got to lose?”
“You see all this, Archie?” Tom gestured at the gravestones around them. “This is what I’ve got to lose. I’ve spent too much of my life in cemeteries. Buried too many people I’ve cared about over the years. It’s easier this way. You can’t mourn something you’ve never
had.”
the black sun 415
“Tom? Archie?” Dominique’s voice rang out, breaking into their conversation. “Over here. I’ve found him.”
They picked their way over to where she was standing and found her at the foot of an open grave. A pile of frozen earth lay to her left, a shovel handle emerging from it like the mast of a half-buried ship.
“There.” She pointed.
Tom could just about make out the brass plaque screwed into the coffin’s lid and the name engraved onto its already dull and faded surface.
HENRY JULIUS RENWICK
“It’s over, Tom,” Dominique said gently.
Tom nodded. He knew he should feel glad that Renwick was gone; some sense of relief, elation even, that this man who had betrayed him, lied to him, and tried to kill him, was finally dead.
But instead he felt sad. Sad as the memories of the good times he had spent with Renwick as a boy came flooding back. Sad that he had lost someone who, for a long time, he had considered to be a friend and a mentor. Sad that yet another link to his father had been severed, never to be recovered.
“You all right?” asked Archie.
“Yeah,” said Tom, gently taking out his father’s gold pocket watch and twirling it by its chain between the fingers of his left hand, the case winking lazily as it turned and caught the sun.
“You don’t really think your father . . . ?” Archie began, catching sight of the watch.
“No, of course not,” Tom said with a firm shake of his head. He allowed the watch to spin for a few seconds longer, barely blinking as his eyes followed it. Then in one firm movement he grabbed it and flung it into the grave, smashing it against the coffin lid. For a few moments the three of them stood there, staring at the watch’s white face, hands frozen, the shattered glass
416 james twining
scattered around it like small drops of ice, springs and
screws strewn like shrapnel. “Let’s go and get a drink,” said Dominique eventually.
“Yeah,” said Tom, a sad smile on his face. “Let’s go and
get several.” Archie threw his cigarette to the ground, where it flared for a few seconds, then flickered, then went out.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
In 1999 the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets finally admitted not only that the U.S. Army had been guilty of wrongly identifying the contents of the Hungarian Gold Train as enemy property after recovering it in 1945, but that several of its men had actively conspired in plundering it. Although the U.S. Department of Justice opposed all attempts at compensation, in 2005 the courts ruled in favor of a class-action suit brought by Holocaust survivors. A total of $25 million was ordered to be distributed to Hungarian survivors. A large number of paintings and other works of art taken from the Gold Train remain lost to this day.
Wewelsburg Castle, near Paderborn in northern Westphalia, Germany, was intended by Himmler to be the epicenter of the Aryan world. He had envisioned a vast complex radiating out from the castle’s north tower, and over 1,250 concentration camp inmates died bringing the first phases of his plan to fruition. Today the castle operates as a museum and youth hostel. The crypt and the ceremonial chamber where twelve of his generals would meet around a round table, complete with the symbol of the Black Sun inlaid into the floor, are open to visitors.
The Nazis’ nuclear research effort was centered at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under the physicist Werner Heisenberg, although a military team under the scientific leadership 418 note from the author
of Professor Kurt Diebner was also in the chase. It is a matter of historical debate as to whether Heisenberg’s team deliberately sabotaged their work or were simply lagging behind the Allies. Historians believe that Stalin deliberately ordered Marshals Zukhov and Konev to race each other to Berlin so as to secure the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute ahead of the Americans, sacrificing close to 70,000 men in the process. The special NKVD
troops dispatched to the institute recovered over three tons of uranium oxide, a material the Russians were short of at the time, allowing them to kick-start Operation Borodino, their own nuclear program. The first Soviet nuclear test took place in August 1949, over four years after the first American explosion at the Trinity site in New Mexico in July 1945.
The Amber Room was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, and later presented to the Russian czar Peter the Great. It decorated the Catherine Palace, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, from 1770 until September 1941, when invading German troops carried it off to Königsberg in East Prussia (now the Russian city of Kaliningrad). Fearing Allied bomb attacks, the room was again packed up in 1944 but then vanished. Opinions differ as to what happened to the room. Some believe that it was moved to an abandoned silver mine in Thuringia, others that it was buried in a lagoon in Lithuania. The latest theory suggests that the room was in fact burned by mistake by Soviet troops, with the Kremlin subsequently disguising their actions and propagating the myth of the Amber Room’s survival as a negotiating ploy.
In 1997, the son of one of the German officers who had accompanied the wartime convoy from St. Petersburg to Königsberg was arrested for trying to sell a small section of the room. Although it is not known how the officer got it, this fragment remains, along with an intricately inlaid chest, the only part of the original Amber Room known to have survived
the
war.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As ever my thanks to my agents, Jonathan Lloyd and Euan Thorneycroft at Curtis Brown in London, and George Lucas at Inkwell Management in New York, for their hard work and insight.
Thank you also to my editors, Wayne Brookes and Alison Callahan, who, along with the whole sales, editorial, marketing, and creative team at HarperCollins in both the UK
and the US, have continued to work wonders for me. This novel is a real testament to your combined skill and enthusiasm, and I feel incredibly privileged and fortunate to work with you all.
In researching this novel I owe a huge debt of gratitude to three excellent books: The Spoils of World War II, by Kenneth D. Alford; The Order of the Death’s Head, by Heinz Höhne; and Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, by Antony Beevor. I would also like to acknowledge the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg, Germany; the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, Maryland; and the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague.
Many people helped in the editing of this novel and in supporting me through the lonely months it took to write it, but special thanks go to Ann, Bob, and Joanna Twining; Roy, Claire, and Sarah Toft; Kate Gilmore; Jeremy Green; Anne O’Brien; Florian Reinaud;
Nico
Schwartz;
Jeremy
viii
acknowledgments
Walton; Tom Weston; and, as ever, Rod Gillett. I am also indebted to the suggestions made
by Adrian Loudermilk only a few days before he was tragically killed. Victoria and Amelia, thank you for putting up with me. I love
you. You make it all worthwhile. London, October 2005
About the Author
JAMES TWINING graduated from Oxford University with a first-class degree in French literature. His first Tom Kirk adventure, The Double Eagle, was published with great success on both sides of the Atlantic and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.
For more on James Twining, please visit
www.JamesTwining.com
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JAMES TWINING THE BLACK SUN
“There’s something for thriller fans of all types in The Black Sun . . . Twining weaves history, legend and lore with his keen imagination to tell his story . . . A thrill-a-page story . . . From London to St. Petersburg and on to Munich, Zurich and Westphalia in Germany, The Black Sun never loses speed—all the way to the story’s culmination.”
USA Today
“Gripping and suspenseful . . . This is a can’t-put-down thriller.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Tom Kirk . . . [is] heir to the throne of the twisty international thriller, a seat that has belonged to Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for more than two decades.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Twining plunges into the story on page one and rarely slows down until the finale. Fastpaced and exciting, with a bigger-than-life villain, a conflicted hero, and a solid payoff. What more does a thriller need?”
Booklist
“The perfect read for anyone . . . who mourns the passing of Robert Ludlum. A whirlwind plot . . . The sheer breathless pace of the thing will carry you along to the end.”
Birmingham Post (UK)
“If you enjoyed James Twining’s action-packed art-theft thriller The Double Eagle you’re sure to get a similar charge from its sequel, The Black Sun.” Chicago Tribune Praise
By James Twining
The Black Sun The Double Eagle
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE BLACK SUN. Copyright © 2006 by James Twining. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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