The Black Sun

EPILOGUE

The freshly turned earth lay in a smooth mound, a narrow black finger against the whiteness of the surrounding ground covered in snow. In the distance, smoke rose from a small mountain range of factory chimneys. Gray and dirty, it drifted aimlessly upward until, touching the sun, it suddenly blossomed into a glorious pink cloud that soared toward the empty heavens.

Tom knelt down and grasped a handful of earth. He rubbed it through his fingers, the cold already freezing the moisture so that it crumbled like small grains of ice to the ground.

"What do you think we should put on her gravestone?" asked Archie.

"Katya. Her name was Katya," Tom said firmly. "Katya Nikolaevna Mostov."

"To me, she'll always be Viktor," Archie said with a shrug. "Katya just doesn't seem to fit somehow."

"It fits who she once was and who she hoped to be again, one day," Tom said. "She never really wanted her life as Viktor. She just sort of fell into it and found she couldn't escape."

"I think that's what she liked in you," Archie said, drawing on a freshly lit cigarette. "The fact that you'd also ended up in a place you realized you didn't want to be and had somehow walked away."

There was a pause, and Tom shifted his weight to his other foot as he stared silently at the ground.

"Any news on Dmitri?" he asked eventually.

"Bailey called me last night. There's no sign of him yet. Lucky bastard must have been outside when we set off the charges."

"Any survivors?"

"Sixteen in all. Four dead. They must have been caught in the tunnel."

"What about the uranium? What's going to happen to that?"

"It's safe, although apparently the Germans and Austri-ans 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."

"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.

"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 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.