The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Twenty-One

“You look like such a tourist,” Nina teased as Purdue held up his tablet, looking for the red lines that would lead them to their next stop. “The particularly obnoxious kind, snapping your holiday photos on a tablet. All you need is an offensively bright rain coat. And maybe a baseball cap, that would really complete the look.”

Purdue smirked, but he did not lift his eyes from the screen. The line led down the street, alongside the canal on their right and a clean terrace of white buildings on the left. A gaggle of school children in yellow hi-vis jackets pushed past them on the narrow pavement, with a couple of teachers herding them towards the Groeningemuseum.

With nothing to do but follow along, Sam fell back a few paces and watched Purdue. In his dark jacket and trousers, clinging to his favorite technological toy, he looked ordinary. He could have been any other tourist, albeit a somewhat geeky one. The tourists who passed him in the street did not look twice at him. There was nothing to mark him out as what he was, nothing to indicate his genius, his obscene wealth, his recklessness. To the casual observer, Dave Purdue was as unremarkable as Sam Cleave.

‘Makes you wonder what secrets everyone else is hiding,’ Sam thought. An elderly couple strolled past, side by side but not hand in hand, bickering amicably about whether the man’s heart would withstand a Segway tour. ‘Look at them, for instance. Who knows what they’ve done? That could be me and Nina in a few decades’ time. Maybe they spent a year or two when they were younger being targeted by sinister secret organizations, or perhaps they once took down a government or discovered and lost some incredible artefact… They don’t look like it. But neither do we.’

Sam did not realize that he had spent longer than he intended watching the old couple until he heard Nina calling from further along the street. He jogged along to catch up with her. Purdue was already round the corner, following the tablet into a little public garden. Neatly graveled paths and neatly trimmed hedges wound their way through the space, framing four statues.

It was not until Sam got closer that he realized what the twisting bronze figures on the pedestals were. All four were mounted on horses, some calm while other seemed to be frozen in motion, and the figures carried different attributes — a pair of scales, a bow and a sword.

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Nina said aloud, as if reading Sam’s thoughts. She walked from one statue to another, examining them from different angles, half admiring and half searching. “They’re beautiful, in a very stark way. But presumably we’re not here to admire the art. What are we looking for, Purdue?”

Sam listened to Nina. He could not help but question her dedication to Purdue in the way she addressed him. Did she just prefer sounding more professional, perhaps? But Sam just could not make peace with the fact that Nina, who is by all accounts Purdue’s lover and girlfriend, addressed the man by his surname as if they were colleagues in an office.

“Nothing we can find at present, I suspect.” Purdue was standing a little way off, at the focal point of the Four Horsemen’s respective gazes. He shifted the tablet a little, testing the red lines to see when they moved and when they did not, he said: “This is where we are supposed to be. Whatever we are supposed to search for here, I think we may have to dig for it, or find some other way of seeing it.”

“That’ll be a late night excursion, then,” Sam guessed. He wondered whether they should stay a little longer, think laterally, see whether there were any clues nearby — but Purdue was already folding up the tablet and getting ready to leave.

“This might seem like a redundant question, considering that it’s Purdue,” Nina said quietly, walking beside Sam as they followed Purdue, “but do you get the impression that he knows a lot more about this little treasure hunt than he’s letting on?”

“Of course I do,” Sam replied. “He always does. I mean, all that stuff in the belfry — how did he know that he needed to line things up that way? Or that we had to look towards this Addison guy’s house? There’s no way he could get all that from the clues we’ve had, is there?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. If he were figuring it out as he went along he would at least try to explain it to us. You know he likes an audience.”

“That’s what I thought. So presumably he’s got someone feeding him information, and that’s probably got something to do with the work he was doing last night.”

Nina opened her mouth to reply, but up ahead of them Purdue stopped dead and her train of thought was derailed. She watched as he stood stock still for a moment, then turned to face her and Sam. “You will have to excuse me,” he said. “There is something I have to do. Alone. I’ll see you back at the house. We can return tonight to dig — I shall find the necessary equipment while I am out.”

“Purdue, what’s all this about?” Sam asked. “I know you want us to trust you, but we really need to know what’s going on.”

“All in good time, Sam. I must go. It’s urgent.”

“Is there a plan for what happens if you don’t make it back?” Nina’s voice was steady, but Sam was sure that he could detect a note of fearful concern.

Purdue shook his head. “That will not be necessary. I will make it back. And the sooner I leave, the sooner that will be. Now go home, and stay safe.”

Without another word he took off, disappearing down a side street. Sam waited for a moment and then followed him, thinking that if they trailed him they might finally learn what was going on, but by the time he turned the corner Purdue was gone.

Nina cursed him under her breath. “Damn it, he’s infuriating. Come on, Sam. Let’s head back and see if we can work anything out.” With that she darted forward to move in front of Sam, but the uneven terrain under her betrayed her equilibrium and her leg buckled under her. Sam caught her just before she met the ground.

“Be careful!” he exclaimed. It took him a moment to pull her to her feet, but she yelped.

“I think I fucked up my ankle, Sam. Just give me a second to get my footing.”

But again she winced in pain, more annoyed by the inconvenience than the injury. “Great, just what I need now,” she grunted, and did her best to rein in her anger at Purdue.