King Solomon's Diamonds

1 Lost to the Beacon

Wrichtishousis was even more radiant than Dave Purdue could remember. His home for over two decades, the majestic mansion’s towers, three in number, reached toward the ethereal Edinburgh sky as if to attach the manor to the heavens. Purdue’s white crown of hair stirred in the silent breath of the evening as he closed the car door and walked slowly up the remainder of the drive toward his front door.

Careless of the company he was in or the taking of luggage, his eyes reacquainted themselves with his residence. Too many months had passed since he had been forced to flee its security. Its security.

“Um, you did not get rid of my staff also, did you, Patrick?” he asked sincerely.

By his side Special Agent Patrick Smith, Purdue’s former hunter and rekindled ally from the British Secret Service, sighed and motioned for his men to close the gates of the estate for the night. “We kept them on, David. No worries,” he replied in a calm, deep tone. “But they have denied any knowledge or involvement in your pursuits. I hope that they did not impair our superior’s investigation as to the harboring of religious and invaluable relics on your property.”

“Rightly so,” Purdue agreed firmly. “These people are my housekeepers, not my colleagues. Even they are not allowed to know what I work on, where my pending patents are, or where I travel to when I am absent on business.”

“Yes, yes, we have ascertained that. Look, David, since I’ve been following your movements and put people on your trail…” he started, but Purdue lent him a sharp look.

“Since you turned Sam against me?” he snapped at Patrick.

Patrick caught his breath, unable to formulate an apologetic comeback worthy of what had transpired between the two of them. “I fear he put more stock in our friendship than I’d estimated. I never intended for things between you and Sam to crumble because of it. You have to believe me,” Patrick explained.

It had been his decision to alienate himself from his childhood friend, Sam Cleave, for the safety of his family. The separation was sore and necessary for Patrick, affectionately known to Sam as Paddy, but Sam’s involvement with Dave Purdue had steadily drawn the MI6 agent’s family into a dangerous world of post-Third Reich relic hunting and very true threats. Subsequently, Sam had had to rebuke his favor of Purdue’s companionship in exchange for Patrick’s acceptance once more, which turned Sam into a mole to seal Purdue’s fate during their excursion to find the Vault of Hercules. But Sam had ultimately proven himself loyal to Purdue by helping the billionaire stage his own death to avert capture by Patrick and MI6, while maintaining Patrick’s partiality for assisting in Purdue’s location.

After exposing his status to Patrick Smith in return for rescue from the Order of the Black Sun, Purdue had agreed to stand trial for archaeological crimes lodged by the Ethiopian government for his theft of an Ark of the Covenant replica from Aksum. What MI6 wanted from Purdue’s property not even Patrick Smith could figure out, since the government agency had taken custody of Wrichtishousis shortly after the apparent demise of its owner.

Only during a short preliminary hearing to prepare for the main tribunal meeting did Purdue manage to connect the smears of corruption, which he shared with Patrick in confidence the very moment he was confronted with the vile truth.

“Are you sure that MI6 is being controlled by the Order of the Black Sun, David?” Patrick asked under his breath, making certain that his men did not hear.

“I stake my reputation, my fortune, and my life on it, Patrick,” Purdue answered in the same fashion. “By God, your agency is under the supervision of a madman.”

As they ascended the steps of the front façade of Purdue’s home, the front door opened. Inside the threshold, Purdue’s house staff stood with bittersweet welcoming faces, applauding their master’s homecoming. They kindly ignored the hideous deterioration of Purdue’s physical appearance after his week of starvation in the torture cell of the Black Sun’s matriarch, and they kept their astonishment a secret hidden securely under their skins.

“We raided the pantry, sir. And your bar has been ransacked too, while we were drinking to your good fortune,” said Johnny, one of Purdue’s groundskeepers and a man Irish to the bone.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Johnny.” Purdue smiled as he stepped inside amidst the affectionate furor of his people. “Let’s hope I can replenish those stores immediately.”

Greeting his staff took only a minute, as they were few, but their loyalty was like permeating sweetness dripping from jasmine blossoms. The handful of people in his service were like family, all like-minded, and they shared Purdue’s admiration for courage and perpetual search for knowledge. But the man he most wished to see was not there.

“Oh, Lily, where is Charles?” Purdue asked Lillian, his cook and the in-house herald of gossip. “Please don’t tell me that he resigned.”

Purdue could never reveal to Patrick that his butler, Charles, was the man responsible for indirectly warning Purdue that MI6 was out to capture him. It would squarely discount the assurance that none of the Wrichtishousis staff was involved in Purdue’s business. The hardy butler was also responsible for arranging the release of a man held prisoner by the Sicilian Mafia during the Hercules expedition, a sign of Charles’ ability to go beyond the call of duty. He had proven to Purdue, Sam, and Dr. Nina Gould, that he was beneficial in so much more than just ironing shirts with military precision and remembering each engagement on Purdue’s calendar every day.

“He has been absent for a few days, sir,” Lily elucidated with a somber face.

“Has he called in?” Purdue asked seriously. “I told him to come and live on the estate. Where does he live?”

“You can’t go out, David,” Patrick reminded him. “Remember, you’re still under house arrest until the meeting on Monday. I’ll see if I can go round his place on my way home, alright?”

“Thank you, Patrick,” Purdue nodded. “Lillian will give you his street address. I am sure she can tell you anything you need to know, right down to his shoe size,” he said with a wink at Lily. “Good night, all. I think I will retire early. I have missed my own bed.”

To the third floor, the tall, emaciated master of Wrichtishousis climbed. He showed no signs of being at all emotional to be in his house again, but the MI6 men and his staff wrote it off as fatigue after a very trying month on his body and mind. But as Purdue closed his bedroom door and made for the balcony doors on the other side of his bed, his knees buckled. Barely able to see through the tears that flooded his cheeks, he reached for the handles, the right one a rusty annoyance he always had to wiggle.

Purdue threw open the doors and gasped at the rush of cool Scottish air that filled him with life, real life; life like only the soil of his forefathers could bestow. Overlooking the vast garden of perfect lawns, ancient outbuildings, and the distant sea, Purdue wept to the ears of the oak, spruce, and pine trees that guarded his immediate yard. His silent sobs and chipping breaths disappeared in the whisper of their tops as the wind rocked them.

He sank to his knees, allowing the hell in his heart, the infernal torment of his recent experience, to drown him. Trembling, his hands held his chest as it all came pouring out, dampened only for the sake of keeping quiet from human attention. He thought of nothing, not even Nina. He said nothing and did not consider, plot, or wonder. Under the extended roof of the enormous old manor, its master shook and wailed into his hands for a good hour, just feeling. Purdue abandoned all reason and elected only to feel. It took its own course, regurgitating the past few weeks from his life.

His light blue eyes finally opened laboriously from swelling lids, his glasses long removed. That glorious numbness after sweltering purging caressed him as his whimpers lessened and became more subdued. Above him, the clouds pardoned a few calm twinkles of brightness. But the wetness of his eyes when he looked up at the night sky turned every single star into a blinding sparkle, their long streaking rays meeting at points as the tears in his eyes stretched them unnaturally.

A shooting star caught his attention. It streaked across the dome of the heavens in silent chaos as it fell rapidly to some unknown destination, to be forgotten forever. Purdue was amazed at the sight. Though he’d seen it so many times before, this was the first time he really took notice of the strange way in which a star perished. But it was not necessarily a star, was it? He imagined the rage and fiery fall to be the fate of Lucifer — how it burned and screamed on its way down, undoing, un-creating, and ultimately dying alone where those who beheld the fall indifferently perceived it as just another quiet death.

His eyes followed it on its path into some amorphous chamber within the North Sea, until its tail left the sky unpainted, returning to its normal, static state. Feeling a tinge of deep melancholy, Purdue knew what the gods were telling him. He too, had fallen from the crest of mighty men, turned to dust after erroneously deeming his happiness eternal. Never before had he been this man he had turned into, a man who was nothing like the Dave Purdue he knew. He was a stranger in his own body, a brilliant star once, but reduced to a quiet void he did not recognize anymore. All he could hope for was the reverence of the meager few who deigned to look up at the sky to watch him fall, to take but a moment from their lives to salute his collapse.

“How I wonder what you are,” he said softly, inadvertently, and closed his eyes.