Sun of the Sleepless

by Patrick Horne

  Dale relaxed slightly and smirked as he turned to Jolene.

  'Jackson may be right you know, let's just take a step back and think about this properly, without making accusations based on circumstantial evidence.'

  Jolene was seething and Dale's tone had caused a grimace of incredulity to flash across her face.

  'There is one way to settle this once and for all!' she rasped in a husky rebuttal, but instead of explaining what she meant, she simply slid her hand into one of her jacket pockets and held it there, her fingers fumbling with something hidden within.

  A cellular phone started to sing.

  'Do you want to take that call Jackson?' she asked with a heavily implied suggestion of guilt, as if she had just discovered the illicit communication between a lover and another woman rather than clearly identifying the owner of the pre-paid mobile phone number that had been used to call Rey Faber.

  Jackson's eye's blazed for a moment and he cocked his arm up in a futile attempt to separate himself from the evidence that was obviously ringing in one of his own pockets. He gave a taut grin and then broke into a chuckle.

  'I won't bother to leave a message,' snarled Jolene as the implication suddenly took root, 'besides, you'll be much too busy to get back to me when the Special Forces team I've called in arrive to take you into custody. They've arranged some special transport back to the US just for you. A one-way ticket.'

  Jackson shook his head with the amused air of a jolly uncle at a birthday party who had just failed to deceive his young niece with a simple disappearing coin trick, finally realising that the precocious child no longer gave credence to parlour chicanery.

  'Now what in the world is this?' he asked pointlessly, looking down to where the thrumming chirrups were emanating from within his jacket.

  He looked up again and slowly delved his hand into a pocket, staring directly into Jolene's eyes the whole time, witnessing the satisfaction spreading across her face as he gently pulled out the now abruptly silent phone, holding it up pincered between his forefinger and thumb. As he held it aloft, he seemed to be expressing his distaste as though clearing up a dead bird that had been presented to him as a gift by a pet cat, its final burst of song cut short as it had expired.

  'I'd say that is all the proof we need,' smiled Jolene, 'unless you want to stop this bullshit and finally come clean?'

  Jackson sighed heavily and delved both hands into his trouser pockets, starting to wander in a small circle, padding behind Dale as he seemed lost in thought.

  Suddenly, displaying reflexes that belied his age and with an agility that contrasted starkly with his usual ambling gait, he pulled a razor sharp craft knife from one trouser pocket and in an instant had brought it to bear against Dale's throat, pressing the tip into the skin next to the jugular vein that throbbed on the right side and just above the larynx.

  He moved closer behind his hostage and grinned widely.

  'I found this in the gallery that the workmen are renovating. It may be a small blade but I assure you, it can cut right to the bone if necessary.'

  It had taken a moment for Dale to understand what was happening and his initial reaction of simply jerking away from the older man was quickly tempered by the sensation of the steel tip digging into his flesh and even a small warm trickle that seemed to be running down to his collar bone.'

  'I'll give a little exposé,' Jackson said slyly, his breath brushing past Dale's ear, 'but first I'd like you to hand over your gun, Jolene. If you shoot at me I'm sure the bullet would pass straight through Dale before it hit me and we wouldn't want that would we?'

  Jolene hesitated, seemingly about to speak, but she silently reached inside her jacket and pulled out a Desert Eagle pistol from her shoulder holster. She held it in her hand, apparently weighing up the odds of being able to shoot Jackson without harming Dale.

  'Slide it across the table to me,' Jackson commanded, 'nice and easy now, I don't want to play games at this stage.'

  Jolene grimaced angrily at the statement, but gently placed the handgun onto the heavy oak table, accelerating it with a shove so that it slid across the surface to Jackson, stopping abruptly when it was next to him.

  'Well done!' he grinned. 'I hope I'm that good when I start playing shuffle-board in my retirement.'

  He paused for a moment before tightening the elbow of his knife arm around Dale's shoulder.

  'Remember, nobody needs to get hurt here so let us all remain calm. We don't need any ideas of heroics.'

  He slowly reached out with his free arm and grasped for the pistol, picking it up and quickly aiming it at Dale's right temple, the release click of the safety catch clearly demonstrating that the gun was not being aimed just for show.

  'You know as well as I do what a shot from this will do to Dale's head, so let's all be gentle and just talk for a moment,' Jackson gently admonished, 'lock the door and then we can begin. I wouldn't want Stanley or Oliver barging in and making me nervous.'

  Jolene turned and rotated the heavy iron key in the lock of the door, the aged mechanism grinding slightly as the bolt slid to secure the only entrance. She slowly turned back again and rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  'So what now? We're all ears.'

  With a theatrical flail of both of his arms, Jackson swiftly released Dale and took a few steps backward to the window, ensuring that he was out of reach of any sudden movement by his former captive.

  'Now we talk,' he said. 'I have a couple of minutes before my escort comes to get me.'

  He grinned slightly and nodded his head back to the window.

  'There is a team here to convey me to retirement, a team from the Sun of the Sleepless in fact. I had received word that the messages to Rey Faber had given me away, silly really. I just didn't think that it would all come to this, however, now is the perfect opportunity for me to leave our intrepid trio since we're in an ideal location to say our farewells.'

  Dale's face was flushed with anger and he irritatedly wiped at his throat, noting the smear of blood from where the tip of the blade had pierced his skin.

  'You've been screwing us over the whole time!' he snarled.

  'Not all of the time,' Jackson chuckled, 'most of what I told you is completely true and I wouldn't have had it any other way.'

  'You put them onto me at Gertrude's apartment!'

  'Well, maybe I did,' Jackson posited, 'but I had no part in deciding to abduct the Verker girl, that was all Faber's doing. I just needed to get the book back one way or another and it was just as easy to get you to pick it up.'

  Dale grimaced malevolently.

  'You bastard!' he spat between his gritted teeth.

  'Don't feel so bad,' Jackson soothed in a conciliatory tone, 'it was just bad luck that you ended up in a street brawl with Akosua. I'm sure she never intended to hurt you too badly.'

  The rustle of Jolene's clothing suddenly broke the stagnant tension between Jackson and Dale and she started to speak with an air of impatience.

  'Recriminations are all very well, but can we get down to what is going on right here and now?'

  Jackson turned to look at her and grinned widely.

  'Of course, sorry, you know how I sometimes get distracted.'

  He coughed to clear his throat, relaxing slightly as he edged back closer to the window, quickly glancing outside before returning his attention to his literally captive audience.

  'As I was saying, I received word that my communication with Faber had been traced, a simple text message warning me as we were travelling down in convoy. Of course, I knew the game was up and it was just a matter of time before we had to have this little chat so I decided to prepare my exit. I requested my own special transport and the team that had been following you all along has come to my rescue. They have just arrived in the courtyard so I expect that they'll be knocking on our door any minute now. I would guess that we have to hurry though, as my messages will no doubt have been intercepted although I probably have a little time before your fr
iends arrive.'

  'So you just intend to walk out with your head held high?' jibed Dale.

  'Well, I don't intend to run if I can help it!' chortled Jackson.

  Jolene gasped incredulously.

  'You're an impudent son of a bitch when all is said and done! Whatever you're doing, just get it over and done with!'

  'Yeah,' Dale gruffly urged. 'Tell us all about your exposé,' he intoned with a heavy hint of sarcasm.

  Jackson pouted his bottom lip and thought for a moment.

  'Alright, to start with, do you remember when I said that anybody mentioned in the archive documents would almost certainly be dead by now? Well that wasn't exactly true. Paula Krom unknowingly hinted at the truth when she spoke of Hanna leaving Berlin with her Vril Society Sisterhood girls. I read the report detailing your visit so I know that you are aware that Hanna mentioned one particular girl being chosen to stay behind with Maria Orsitsch.'

  'I remember,' Dale blurted, 'her name was Adrianna.'

  'Just so,' Jackson smiled, 'she was twelve years old in 1945. She will be seventy-eight this year.'

  'What has that got to do with anything?' Jolene demanded petulantly.

  'Just a bit of background really, I thought that you'd like to know how we ended up in this position. She has been the Queen of the Order of the Sun of the Sleepless - our Sigulah - since she escaped Berlin all those years ago. Maria's purpose in staying behind was to go through the anointing rituals, readying Adrianna so that she could officially replace her. She knew that her time was coming to an end and that she had failed in her great mission to retrieve the technology that we had seeded for the Nazis.

  'She decided to stand-down - abdicate essentially - and entrusted the safety of our new Queen to Gudrun and Heike, the Cipher of Minerva and the Cipher of Artemis, the Senators of the Holy Orders of Cherubim and Thrones. The Cipher of Aphrodite - the Senator for our Holy Order of Seraphim - had already departed to create a safe haven for us elsewhere. It was wisdom and strength that Adrianna needed to see her safely out of harms way and beauty had secured the location where our Order would recover to rise again and continue our Great Work.'

  '- and all of this is your great work I suppose?' Dale offered with a heavy scowl.

  'Exactly so!' Jackson exclaimed. 'Now, in the early days when she was still quite young, Adrianna was purely a figurehead, kind of like a constitutional monarch. Any decisions that had to be made were actually guided by the wise counsel of the Powers, the Senators and the Cardinals if you recall from the structure list you saw earlier; the accumulated knowledge of advisers with years of service to our Order under their belts. A young Queen was chosen to break from the failure that our plan had become.'

  What had started as an ear-splitting crack echoed up from the main hall of the castle, bouncing off the stone walls and up the grand staircase until a barely audible pop was heard within the locked room. Dale and Jolene quickly exchanged glances as they realised that it was the sound of gunfire from the ground floor.

  'Not to worry,' Jackson assured them, 'that is probably my escorts asking Stanley and Oliver whether they can come in. Now, back to what I was saying. Over time, Adrianna grew into a very clever and resourceful Queen and she rebuilt our Order to be bigger than we had ever been before. Our Brothers and Sisters and assorted banyan informants walked the corridors of power from the so-called democracies of the West to the autocracies of the furthest reaches of the East and within a couple of decades we had regained our intellectual property from the USSR. We once again had the vortex technology within our grasp.'

  Another volley of sharp cracks showed that the exchange of fire was getting closer but Jackson seemed to ignore it.

  'Of course, even with the research that the USSR and the Nazis before them had funded on our behalf, it wasn't necessarily so easy to build the technology into a fully operational weapon on the scale that we needed and we have spent the better part of half a century waiting for technology to develop and for us to generate the finance necessary to complete our journey. It has been a long and difficult task without the power of a state behind us, but we eventually managed it and our real work can now begin in earnest - the very point of developing the vortex technology in the first place.'

  It was clear that a serious assault on the building was under way and shots were echoing around the castle. It appeared that Stanley and Oliver were on the defensive, the battle getting closer as they obviously fell back and the enunciation of each shot becoming much clearer and a lot louder.

  Jackson cocked an ear to the steady salvoes but did not waver from his story, acting as if nothing untoward was happening.

  'You must understand that we're going to give a voice of admonishment back to the world that nobody can ignore, a voice that surpasses the secular authority of governments and states. The voice of New Age terrorism you may call it, but it is backed by a power that must surely be considered as divine and we will wield it to ensure that the inhabitants of our global village will no longer be ignored. No longer will partisan politics demean and undermine what we know to be right and wrong in a civilised society. No longer will we accept the situation where oppressive autocratic regimes are propped up by Western powers just to maintain the status quo.

  'There are going to be big changes in our world society, although admittedly, it will be slow to start, the Earth turns but once in twenty-four hours. Our first aim is to create a ripple of dissent that shakes the very foundations of the world's states, to give impetus to the movements and peoples who live under the iron fists of tyranny in countries around the globe.'

  Dale was getting agitated, aware that the fight was heading to their own door and once Stanley and Oliver were no longer outside to defend them, they would make easy targets.

  He tried to remain calm and conversational, eager to drag some time out to figure out what he could do.

  'The iron fists of tyranny? That is a bit melodramatic. Such as - ?'

  'Oh come on,' gasped Jackson, 'I could name half a dozen North African states that are ruled by fear and subjugation, including some that are considered simply as major tourist resorts. That is the problem with our global society, the maintenance of the status quo by the Western powers even though the domination of the populations within these countries is obvious for all to see.

  'We do not intend to prescribe the solutions, but we will bring our power to bear on those that enable these circumstances to continue. We will empower the peoples of the world, to enable all societies to be judged on their humanity rather than their gross domestic product or their adherence to any specific ideologies. Left wing, right wing, it makes no difference to us, we will enforce our will and bring all governments into line, as well as the global corporations that place profit before human benefit.'

  Dale had started to edge around the table, hoping that Jolene would understand his intent to move away from where he had been standing, creating a wider field of fire that Jackson would have to cover.

  'How can you do that?' he asked, attempting to use his questions to divert attention from his movements. 'Nobody has ever heard of you.'

  'Nobody needs to know who we are!' shrugged Jackson. 'We have no desire to humiliate governments, that would achieve nothing. Rioting in the streets is a means to an end not an objective. It isn't helpful to anybody for the very fabric of society to be ripped to shreds. It requires gentle changes precipitated by us and applied by the administrations that have stood by and simply let things happen, too concerned with their own longevity of power to actually lead the people where they need to go. No longer will they stand at the pinnacle of power, they are no longer at the top of the food chain.'

  'What about the governments that will not listen? Just like you I could list half a dozen regimes that present a clear and present danger to world society which the Western governments can do nothing about, even though we have tried.'

  Jackson smiled at the pointed statement and nodded.

  'We will let diplomacy take
its course but if we have to engage in direct action then we will. The children will be allowed to play unless they cannot behave, at which point we will apply some discipline.'

  A blast from a handgun rang out and the gun fight outside of the room had clearly reached the landing of the floor they were on. Time was running out.

  'So you swap a whole host of dictators for one, the Sun of the Sleepless? Who disciplines you? Who admonishes you when you step out of line?'

  Jackson shook his head vehemently.

  'That is such a cliché! You think we're the only ones doing this? There are groups within governments the world over who are trying to control global politics. Conspiracy theories abound on the subject of the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, the Illuminati and the One World Government. Our record speaks for itself; we have never chased money purely for the sake of greed and yet espoused it as necessary for economic growth. The human population has lost faith in politics and turned to technology for their redemption but that technology is either in the hands of indolent governments or at the whim of marketing men and speculators, regardless of the benefit to society. A German philosopher once said, "Verlassen Sie sich nur nicht auf solch trügerische Schmuckstücke", do you know what that means?'

  Dale shook his head but Jolene suddenly took a step forwards and spoke from the other side of the table.

  'Do not put your faith in the jewellery of illusion?'

  'Just so,' nodded Jackson. 'The modern world is so blinded by the marvel of technology that it forgets to ask whether it is of real benefit. What is the use of synthesising foods to feed the world if it ends up poisoning the people that eat it? What is the use of social networking technology when the effect is to abstract people from real interaction? You think that economic mobility is the best way to measure a contribution to society? The West has lost its way, but everybody just shrugs and heads to the nearest globalised coffee-bar franchise to commiserate, yet at the same time millions are starving and dying across the other side of the world in a fight for survival.'