The Black Sun Conspiracy

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 falling 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.”