The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Forty-Five

“You will not hear anything, Sam,” Alexandr said. “Her room is much too far along the corridor, almost at the other end of the house.”

Sam had not even realized that he had inched closer to the door and tilted his head towards it. Quickly he righted himself and shuffled back to his original position. “You’re sure that’s where they went?” he asked. “I’m just a bit on edge here, after everything that’s happened — I just want to know that she’s alright.”

“If we are to judge by the look on Purdue’s face, she will be perfectly safe with him. That was not the expression of a man who was about to hand her over to anyone else. Sam, why do you look like that? You must face it bravely, my friend — it is a hard thing when a woman chooses another man, but that is what she has done, is it not?”

Sam nearly choked. “What? No! I mean… It’s not like that. Nina and I, we were never… There was never anything between us. She didn’t have to choose between me and Purdue, we were always just friends.” Alexandr’s eyebrow slowly rose, pulling the corner of his lip inexorably along with it.

“Really! Why does everyone think that?” Sam protested, lying as best as he could.

“If you say so, Sam,” Alexandr held up his hands in a gesture of submission, but Sam could tell that he had not convinced him. “You are just friends. You are a very caring, very concerned friend of hers. That’s all. I understand. I have had many such friends during my life. Why, when I was a young man, my first time living in Sevastopol, I had a friend there whom I will never forget for all my days… Ekaterina was her name. How can I describe her to you, Sam? Such a woman! Red hair to her waist, green eyes like you have never seen on any mortal woman… and a husband a full head taller than me, broad-shouldered and my direct superior! Yes, Sam, you should believe me when I tell you that Ekaterina and I made certain that everyone knew we were nothing more than friends…”

And he was off, describing at length his secret love affair during his time working in the submarine base at Balaklava. Knowing the unstoppable nature of Alexandr’s stories, Sam stretched out on the floor and relaxed, his feet resting on the narrow brass bed. After their mad dash to England it was a relief to sit still for a while, and although there was still plenty to worry about, it was all far beyond his control. Better to enjoy the down time while it lasted and allow himself to become lost in Alexandr’s exaggerated, fantastical stories.

True to form, once the Russian had begun to tell his tales he found it difficult to stop. After he had described the end of his romance with Ekaterina, cut short by the fall of the Soviet Union and her husband being sent to oversee the decommissioning of Kraterny, he launched straight into the story of the woman who had consoled him. Once again, she was beautiful, unforgettable, possibly supernatural, and once again the affair had come to a premature end. So he had wandered from job to job, city to city, woman to woman. Some adventures he alluded to, others he explained in some detail while the two men shared cigarettes and nips from the flask.

“So what’s the state of affairs now?” Sam asked, blowing a lazy sequence of smoke rings. “Anyone on the go?”

“Da,” Alexandr replied with a gratified smirk. “When Renata ordered me to come here I was certain that I would be bored, more bored than I could imagine. What could there be for me here in this nice, safe city? I am meant for wild, inhospitable places. That is why they recruited me in the first place! That is my purpose, danger and adventure. To come here, where there are clean streets, no mountains, no oceans, no glaciers… This is halfway to death, for me. Or so I thought. But since I have been here, things have been more interesting than I would ever have expected. The woman I met here, she is not like the unworldly beauties of my home, but she has great courage and spirit. She is by far the most interesting person I have met within the Order of the Black Sun. She is a woman with whom I can enjoy my time here.” He took a deep puff on his thin roll-up. “Perhaps will take her back to Siberia with me.”

“What’s her name?”

“Axelle.”

The cold, plunging sensation hit Sam suddenly in the stomach. ‘It can’t be her,’ he thought, ‘it can’t be the same woman. There must be more than one Axelle… Is it a common name here? Maybe it is. I hope it is.’ The nightmare image of blood-soaked blonde curls filled Sam’s mind and imprinted itself on the inside of his eyelids. He pushed his fists against his closed eyes as if that might drive the thoughts out.

“Sam? Are you alright?”

“Yes,” he gasped. “I mean… I don’t know. Tell me what Axelle looks like.”

Alexandr’s gravelly voice washed over Sam, drowning him in the rising waters of certainty and despair as he described the woman whom Sam had known so briefly. The short stature, the full figure, the sweet, heart-shaped face with its earnest blue eyes, the snub nose and the spiraling curls of her blonde hair.

“To look at her,” he said, “not a soul would believe that she is capable of the things she does. Try to picture a woman who is an expert in breaking codes. Go on, try it! The first image that comes to mind — it is not the woman I have described, not for you. It is someone a little like Nina, is it not? Yes, I can see that I am not mistaken! Now try to picture a woman who drives fearlessly, as fast as if the Devil himself were pursuing her.”

‘That would definitely be Axelle,’ Sam thought, casting his mind back to that terrifying ride through the streets of Bruges with the motorcyclist in pursuit. ‘How do I tell him? How am I supposed to tell him that she’s dead? Why does he not know?’ He wondered whether Renata was aware of Alexandr and Axelle’s relationship. Was it possible that she was, and this was all part of some greater power play? Or, if she was not, would she regret giving that order when she found out? Or was acceptance of that kind of collateral damage just part of life within the Order? Somehow he could not imagine that Alexandr would accept the news calmly.

“Alexandr…” he began uncertainly then stopped, at a complete loss for words. After a pause too long to pass off as an ordinary hesitation, he soldiered on. “I… think I met Axelle. Briefly. We certainly met someone who looked like her and had that name. And she seemed like a really extraordinary woman in the short time that I knew her. But I got the impression that she was having some kind of power struggle with the Order. Does that sound right?”

Alexandr’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It is possible,” he said. “Sam, what do you know? What has she said?”

Sam wondered whether he should just come clean, land the blow swiftly, but his courage deserted him. “Just a few things about how we shouldn’t trust Purdue, and how the Order would take us in if we did particular things but we should still be careful of it. Nothing too concrete. The way she spoke about things was just… out of the ordinary, that’s all.” ‘There could be all sorts of things going on here that I’m not aware of,’ Sam thought. ‘He needs to hear it from someone who isn’t me, someone with a better grasp on all of this stuff…’ He sighed deeply and clapped a hand on Alexandr’s shoulder. “Look, I think you’d better go and have a word with Renata. There’s a lot that I don’t understand.”

Slowly, never taking his eyes from Sam’s face, Alexandr capped his flask and put it away. He stubbed out what little remained of his cigarette and stood up, his demeanor unusually grave. “What is wrong, Sam? Something has happened to Axelle?”

Words deserted Sam completely. He remembered being given the news after the shootout, the hellish news that confirmed what he knew and robbed him of the sweet hope that seeing Trish die might have been nothing but a nightmare. He could see the alarm rising in Alexandr, but he could not bear to be the one to remove his hope. Especially when he was in no position to explain the situation clearly. “You just… need to go and talk to Renata, all right? Please.”

With a quizzical nod and a promise to return later, Alexandr took Sam’s suggestion. He laid his hand against the plate by the door and slipped out. Sam dropped down onto his bed and pressed his cheek against the cool pillow, breathing a long, disheartened sigh across the smooth cotton.

‘Poor Alexandr,’ he thought. ‘What he’s about to experience, I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’