The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Thirty

For three days Nina saw no-one, spoke to no-one. Following their apprehension at the Minnewater house they had been led through a tunnel into a different house, a town house with a sweeping central staircase and at least three stories. Rooms that would once have been the servants’ quarters on the uppermost floor had been converted into basic accommodation with high-tech locks on the doors. Locks that could only be operated from outside.

‘I’m in a cell. Again.’ Nina stared at the window in the sloping ceiling. For the first day she had watched the street and tried to attract attention every time anyone passed. Shouting, screaming, waving, banging on the glass, everything had been ineffective. ‘It’s got to be soundproofed,’ she reasoned. ‘And considering that I’m not being blinded every time the sun is right overhead, I’d guess it’s also tinted on the outside. Even if I could somehow let someone on the outside know that we’re trapped here, what good would it do? What are they going to do? Call the police? If these people are anywhere near as powerful as they seem, the police aren’t going to do us much good.’

The faded wallpaper was beginning to peel in the corner where the bed stood. Nina lay on the hard mattress and picked at it, focusing hard on tearing it off in long, even strips. Whenever she failed to remove a strip cleanly, she would go back and meticulously pick off every scrap until the wall was clean and she could see nothing but the pale paint underneath. It gave her something to think about. Something that wasn’t the Order of the Black Sun, or what might have happened to Sam or to Purdue. She had spent far too much time thinking about all of those things during the first two days.

She heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. Just forty-eight hours earlier she had responded to that sound by leaping to her feet, ready for whatever might come through the door — to fight for her life if they had come to end it, to barge past and run if she got the chance, or even just to make an attempt at talking her way out. Now she accepted that the door would not open. Meal trays were delivered via a slot. There were cameras mounted in the corners of the room, so there was no reason for anyone to enter to check on her. Even in the little shower room that adjoined her cell she was not free from the cameras. Knowing all of this, she no longer sprang into action every time she heard a noise outside. All she did was lying, waiting and listening.

The slot clattered open as her meal was delivered. She did not move. The footsteps moved away, one pace, two paces, three paces, four paces. Then they stopped, and a few seconds later another, similar clatter came from somewhere nearby. ‘That must be where they’re holding Sam,’ she thought. ‘Either in the room next door or two doors along at the very most. Unless they’ve got other prisoners? They could have, I suppose. Or it could be Purdue. I wonder how much longer they’re going to keep us here. I wonder why they haven’t just killed us yet. Surely that’s what they’ll do in the end.’

She got up and investigated the contents of the tray. Stew of some kind, a handful of green beans and peas, a thick slice of brown bread and a bottle of water. She would have killed for chocolate — or anything sweet — once again, the lack of cigarettes and alcohol was getting to her. She’d had a raging headache for the past two days.

‘I should have skipped the fundraiser that night,’ she thought as she curled up cross-legged on the bed to eat her meal. ‘If I’d just stayed in, got a pizza and spent the evening watching something mindless, which is what I wanted to do in the first place, we wouldn’t be here now. Well, Purdue might, but Sam wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t. It’s not like I cared about whether the university could fund a new sports facility. And if I had stayed at home I wouldn’t have run into Purdue, and I wouldn’t have let him talk me into having dinner with him, and we wouldn’t have ended up sleeping together. It’s my own damn fault. I knew he would be at the fundraiser, there’s no way the university would have let an event like that happen without begging him to come. And I knew that if he was there he would try…’

She remembered the night all too clearly. The event had been held in the Braxfield Tower, a building Nina hated. She had been determined not to go until it occurred to her that her nemesis, Professor Matlock, would be there, lording it over everyone and showing off about the fame the success of his book about the Antarctica expedition had brought him. She did not want her absence to make him think that he had won. She wanted to be there as a reminder to his conscience, if he had one, that he had stolen her research. So she had pulled out her old faithful red silk dress, donned her black patent heels, extra mascara and defiant red lipstick as if preparing for battle. She was going to be there, undefeated and working the room. Her mind was already made up that she would look for a position elsewhere, and it was time to do some serious networking.

The moment she had walked through the doors she had regretted her decision. Matlock had not bothered to turn up, too busy negotiating a television appearance somewhere. The faces in the room were all very familiar, people who had no power to help Nina and people whose cliques she had no desire to become a part of. The only person there who held any kind of interest for her was Purdue.

Purdue, whom she wanted to hate but found that she could not. Purdue, whose reckless approach to life she found herself envying and grudgingly admiring. The man who had taken her on the adventure of a lifetime. He had never made any secret of his attraction to her. It was not so much that he propositioned her every time he saw her, but that he would always make it clear to her that should she ever be interested, the offer was open. That night, utterly frustrated and in desperate need of some excitement, Nina had decided that she was interested. She accepted his invitation to dinner, which turned out to be served on the roof terrace at Wrichtishousis. They had watched the sun setting over the Firth of Forth as they dined, then as they stood by the balustrade and watched the moon rise, Purdue had kissed her. They ended the evening sipping excellent brandy lying on a heap of discarded clothes. She had not got home until two days later.

Purdue’s hedonism had been just the escape Nina had needed after years of hard, thankless work. He was an excellent lover and made few emotional demands on her. As far as she could tell, they were both enjoying a mutually satisfying but very casual relationship. And then she had agreed to go with him to America, and everything had changed.

‘Perhaps that’s the bit I should have said no to’, she thought. ‘Despite everything that’s happened, I’m pretty sure that if I could do it all over again I would still have gone home with him. If not that night, then some other time. I was always curious about him. I’d never have said yes to Antarctica if I hadn’t been.’

A little voice in Nina’s head wanted to remind her about her own hidden agenda towards Purdue — the other reason why she had agreed: he was a manageable risk and had a lot of money. She refused to acknowledge the comfort of her financial position since she had agreed to be his girlfriend and the subsequent ease with which she was able to support her research and ventures. Had it not been for his wealth working swimmingly with his affection for her, they would very well not have survived their quest for Valhalla. Even in his absence during that death defying excursion to Russia in search for the location of the Norse legend, Purdue had aided her invaluably. But Nina chose to be blind to the favor of his affluence.

She wondered what was happening to him, whether he had found his way back into the Order’s good graces. Based on the fact that she was still alive, she assumed that he had. ‘I hope Sam’s alright,’ she thought. A pang of worry shot through her abdomen. ‘I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to him. He wouldn’t be involved with any of this if it wasn’t for me. And I really should have — ’

Her thought were interrupted by the sound of footsteps again. That was unusual. No-one walked along the corridor except at meal times, and even then it was a single set of footsteps. This time it sounded like there were at least two people. They stopped outside her door and she waited for the sound of the flap. It did not come. Instead she heard a series of beeps as the person on the other side of the door went through the threefold biometric verification. Nina got to her feet, readying herself for all the possible scenarios she had considered. The door swung open and a man stepped through.

She stared in amazement and horror at the curly black hair, the stocky figure, the slight curl of the man’s lip.

“Steven?”