The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Four

The Piazza dei Cavalleggeri was quiet in the early morning. One of Florence’s infrequent rain storms had hit, keeping most people indoors. The few who did not have the luxury of staying in were scurrying swiftly across the square, huddled under umbrellas to shield them from the raindrops that slammed like mortar bombs into the uneven pavement.

Nina was out of the habit of using an umbrella due to years of living in Edinburgh, where the wind blew the rain almost horizontally, and umbrellas seldom survived long. Still, for the sake of blending in she had one pulled down low to conceal her face. Her hair, no longer brown but hastily bleached during their first few days in hiding, was tucked under a navy blue beret and the collar of her jacket was turned up. She worried that she was trying too hard to look inconspicuous, hoping hard that she simply seemed cold.

The pale pillars of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze loomed up ahead of her. She pushed open the heavy double doors, stepped inside and inhaled deeply. The familiar, comforting scent of books, dust, old stone and polished hardwood floors surrounded her. For the first time in a long time, Nina briefly experienced the feeling of being at home.

“English?” The old woman behind the desk squinted at Nina through thick glasses. Judging by the tone of her voice, acquiring library membership was going to be a lot harder if Nina answered yes.

Instead, she fished out her new fake passport. “Tedesca?” she smiled, applying her carefully-learned German accent to the few words of Italian that she had recently acquired. “Vorrei guardare dei libri?”

The old woman nodded briskly and stuck out her hand. “Passaporto per favore“ Nina handed over the passport and tried to remember to breathe as the librarian checked and scanned it. She took the form that she was offered and muddled her way through it, giving her false name and the address of the flat.

“Foto.”

Nina looked up from the form. The librarian was gesturing towards a little webcam perched on the desk, waiting to take a picture for the library card. Nina hesitated. ‘I should have anticipated this, she thought. I was just hoping that they wouldn’t have adopted photos on cards here yet… What am I going to do? Just turn and walk out? Far too suspicious. Fake an emergency phone call?’

“Foto!” The librarian tutted impatiently, gesticulating more emphatically.

‘I can’t,’ Nina thought. ‘I can’t risk being photographed just for the sake of accessing a library. I can’t risk it for anything. It’s crazy. But then, so is wandering all over Florence alone. And so is dealing in stolen paintings! You know what? They’re not the only ones who get to take risks.’

She stepped in front of the camera, pulled off her hat and combed her fingers through her messy blonde hair. The picture that flashed up on the screen behind the desk was unflattering and unfamiliar. The new hair color still looked strange to her, and she could see that her attempts at cutting it herself had left it a little uneven. After her recent months of running, fear, and not to mention the unfortunate torture due to assignments that came a little too close for comfort, Nina’s prettiness looked strained. The woman in the photograph looked tired, drained, a bit pissed off, perhaps older than her 36 years. ‘I always knew blonde hair wouldn’t suit me,’ Nina mused.

“La carta è pronta.” The old woman held out the newly printed card bearing Nina’s image and the name Sabine Bauer. Nina thanked her, deposited her belongings in a locker and made her way to the reading rooms, notebook and pencil in hand.

‘First things first,’ Nina thought as she settled herself at the far end of a long communal desk. ‘What am I actually looking for? With over five million books to choose from here, I’m going to need to get my topics straight.’ She knew that in reality, her decision to run the risk of leaving the house was only partly born of a desire to do some research. The biggest motivating factors had been cabin fever and fury. ‘If I had stayed indoors for another day I would have ended up slapping someone.’ She drew the notepad towards her, opened it to a fresh page and began to make a list.

She could not bring herself to write out the full name of the shady organization that had almost succeeded in having her killed so many times in such a short time. Caution was becoming second nature, and anyone glancing over her shoulder might have read what she was writing. Beside the bullet point she listed her questions.

Glancing down the list, she decided that her best bet would be to start off in a known area and investigate the organization’s Nazi connections. She was aware of the interest in the occult shared by Hitler and other senior Nazi officials, but her research had been more concerned with the experiences of ordinary Germans than with the elite. Exploring those occult beliefs was a task she had always preferred to leave to popular historians whose aim was to have a six part miniseries on BBC 2. Her own preference was for work that was much less eye-catching.

‘Time to brush up on the basics, then,’ she thought, and set off to search the shelves for anything that might refresh her memory regarding the Nazi party leadership and the occult.