The Black Sun Conspiracy

Chapter Forty-Six

Above the steeply-slanted window in Nina’s room, a handful of stars glimmered in the dark sky alongside a sliver of moon. She lay in the dark and stared up at them. Try as she might, she could not concentrate on anything but the words she had just heard from Purdue and what they might mean.

‘I could have kept us out of all of this,’ she thought, twisting the corner of her pillowcase between her fingers. ‘If what he says is true… If I had just said no all the way along, if I hadn’t said yes to dinner that night… We wouldn’t be here now. Or if I had said yes sooner — no, that’s a pointless road to go down. I couldn’t see any of this coming. I’d have stayed well out of the way if I had. Might as well say that we could have avoided this if I’d never studied history, or German, or if I’d taken up the offer to go to Cambridge instead of Edinburgh. Any of those things would have meant that Purdue and I never crossed paths.’

She tried to imagine what her mother would say if she could talk to her. ‘She’d probably tell me to marry him. I’d imagine there are quite a lot of people who’d tell me that. If I’d had any sense, maybe I would… That would get us out of here, surely? If I told him I’d go back. It would get me out, at least, and then we’d only have to worry about freeing Sam.’ She switched the light on. ‘Maybe it’s worth a try…’

Stepping into the cold little bathroom, she examined her face in the mirror. It was pale and drawn, and she looked very nearly as fearful as she felt. She had looked better, she knew. Still, she would look more relaxed and perhaps more appealing after a shower. She set the water running and pushed the door shut.

A suit bag hung from the hook on the back of the door. She stared at it. She had not seen it before. The clothes that Steven had brought were stacked in neat piles under the bed, for want of a suitcase or a chest of drawers in which to organize them, but there had been nothing in a bag like this. Curious, wary, she unhooked it and opened it up. A river of dark blue velvet cascaded from the bag, and she nearly threw it across the room.

“Steven Lehmann, you bastard,” she hissed. This was the dress that Nina had been wearing at dinner the night that Steven had finally confessed to being married. It had been a gift from him for her birthday, a few weeks earlier. When he had dropped his bombshell she had ripped it off so that she could put on something more suitable for travelling. A quick inspection showed that it was definitely the same dress and had not been mended, the zip had detached from the velvet where she had tugged at it and the hook that held the clasp together at the nape of the neck was bent out of shape.

The worst thing was that she knew it had looked good on her. She had felt so glamorous with it on… ‘The only pretty thing I have here,’ she thought, remembering the piles of plain t-shirts and trousers under the bed, and the flat, sturdy boots on her feet that she had worn daily since just after their arrival in Florence. ‘And also the ugliest. There’s no way I’m wearing that. Steven and his little mind games can fuck off.’ She bundled the dress back in to the bag, zipped it up and hung it back on the door, but its presence annoyed her even when she could not see it. It reminded her of how long it had been since she had last been able to dress like herself.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told herself. ‘Or at least, it shouldn’t. I’m just so sick of feeling like I’m not on solid ground.’ Not knowing what else to do, she began to pull off the offending plain shirt and get ready to shower.

“Nina?” A soft knock on the door followed the call. Quickly she pulled her top back on and dashed through to the bedroom.

“Who’s there?”

“Professor Lehmann.”

Nina sighed in relief. “You can come in,” she called, and waited as he went through the rigmarole of verifying his identity to gain entrance. “I didn’t think I would be allowed visitors,” she said as he limped into the room, more heavily dependent on his cane than ever.

“Strictly speaking I suspect you are not,” he grimaced. “May I sit down? Thank you.” He lowered himself painfully onto the edge of the bed. “In fact, I was told quite specifically that no-one was to go near you. But there are some rules that must be disobeyed.” He looked up at her with a grave expression on his face. “Nina, has anyone spoken to you about a further mission?”

“No,” she said, “nobody’s spoken to me at all. Nobody but Purdue, but he didn’t say anything like that.”

“Then let me warn you, and then let both of us attempt to warn Mr. Cleave if we can. My son informs me that while safety may be offered to one of you, the other will be told that they must prove themselves further and given the opportunity to do so by means of a new mission. It is codenamed Longinus.”

The word rang a bell. Nina thought hard for a moment. “Wait, Longinus as in the Spear of Destiny?” The professor nodded.

So many thoughts flooded Nina’s mind at the mention of the cursed artefact that almost cost her and Sam their lives, the subsequent seizure thereof by Purdue to impress his Black Sun consorts during that fateful meeting on Deep Sea One. Thus far she elected to ignore the fact the Spear of Destiny in Purdue’s possession was the very reason she first acquiesced to his advances.

Months had gone by without Purdue even as much as mentioning the Spear of Destiny. That night, before Sam agreed to join her in the quest for Valhalla, she had actually admitted to him that the whereabouts of the missing Lance, finding out where it was, was her reason for fucking Purdue, as she so eloquently put it. Nina’s heart raced at the thought of the wicked relic, but she kept her poker face on.

“Yes, I am quite familiar with the relic, Professor,” she blinked profusely. “The Heilige Lanze.”

“The very same, though whether the mission has anything to do with the artefact itself I do not know. What I do know is that whoever undertakes the mission will be dispatched to the Russian/Mongolian border, somewhere near Mönkh Saridag, straight into an extremely dangerous situation. I sincerely doubt that whoever goes will return alive.”

“Why is that?”

“Because in the vicinity of Mönkh Saridag is the base of a company of renegades who would kill anyone they believe to be from the Order. It is my belief that this is what both Renata and Steven are relying on, though they may have different targets in mind. Nina, it is imperative, imperative, that you do not allow yourself to be sent on this mission. No matter what the alternative, take it.”

“It’s been made pretty clear to me that the only alternative to doing what these people ask is death.” Nina’s tone was flat. She understood what Professor Lehmann was saying. The words made sense. She grasped the concept. But she could not internalize it. She could not feel anything, not fear, not hurt, not even anger. All she could find within herself was numbness and resignation, a sense of being outmaneuvered before she could even attempt to save herself.

Professor Lehmann reached out and took her hand. He squeezed it gently. “Then take it,” he said softly. “Nina, you know how fond I am of you. I would never want any harm to come to you. But if it comes down to a choice between a swift death here or the fate that might await you at Mönkh Saridag… Steven once told me of a man who was kept alive for months, being tortured for information. What if the same thing were to happen to you? Considering how little you know, how little you would be able to tell them even if you chose to; can you imagine how long your suffering might last before they eventually allowed you to die?” The old man dropped his head into his hands, letting his walking stick fall to the floor with a clatter.

Nina sat beside him on the bed and slipped a comforting arm around his shoulders. “All my life I have been in thrall to these people,” he whispered. “I have tried to fight them quietly, by subverting their aims and denying some of my own abilities. I thought that it might be possible to fly under their radar… And it might have been, it might have been, were it not for my son and his ridiculous determination… We didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for, you know. A barracks full of impressionable young men at Peenemunde, all thinking that we were going to change the world and set it right, and then the best and brightest of us were invited to join the Order. We thought it was going to be something like the Freemasons. Such stupidity, such naivety… It was inexcusable.”

Nina saw a tear creep down the side of his nose and land on the light grey fabric of his trousers. “I realize that this must sound futile. Nothing the world has not heard before, ever since Nuremburg. We had no idea, we were only following orders, and we knew nothing until it was too late — but please believe me: if I had realized who and what these people are I would never have allowed myself to become involved. Though what I should have done, I do not know. Once they know the extent of their power, their reach, many people might think it best simply to concede…”

The old man fell silent, while Nina patted him on the shoulder in an attempt of comforting him. She wondered what it must have been like to carry his secrets through so many decades. His involvement with the Nazis, his membership of the Black Sun… all entered into when he was young, all mistakes he had been unable to undo.

‘I’ll probably never know what it’s like to keep a secret for that long,’ she thought. ‘I doubt I’ll live that long. The way things are going, I probably won’t have to keep any secrets of any kind for more than just the next few days. Still…’

“Professor Lehmann,” she said, “I’m really grateful that you’ve told me all this. It might seem like a weird sort of comfort, but in a way it’s good to know that it’s not just me and Sam who think these people are inescapable. But these renegades that you mention… they’ve broken away from the Order? And they’re still alive? What do you know about them? Please, Professor, if we’re to have any chance of getting out of this alive I need to know as much as you can tell me.”

For what felt like an age, Professor Lehmann sat in silence, lost in thought. Then, resolutely, he raised his head and told Nina everything he knew. She listened with absolute attention, committing as many details as she could to memory. Then, when he had finished, she nodded and said “I need to see Sam.”