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  KEEPERS OF THE LOST CITY

  Order of the Black Sun – Book 21

  Preston W. Child

  Tasha Danzig

  Edited by

  Helen Minder

  Copyright 2017 by Preston W. Child

  Contents

  1. The Black Soil of Nekenhalle

  2. The Last Casket

  3. The All-Nighter

  4. Padlocked Gates and Dead Roads

  5. Unexplained and Unwarranted

  6. Nazi Grammar

  7. Trouble from Down Under

  8. Abandoned

  9. Closing the Door

  10. The Fate of Miss Williams

  11. Contrition and Pledge

  12. The Mountain that Eats Men

  13. The Clash at Nekenhalle

  14. Fortress Breached

  15. Pla2

  16. This is not Australia

  17. Gathering a Posse

  18. Welcome to Nekenhalle

  19. The Common Denominator

  20. Visiting Grange House

  21. The Impromptu Interview

  22. Operation Eden

  23. Abandonment

  24. Flush

  25. Symbiosis

  26. Heike’s Heart

  27. Meeting in the Barn

  28. What Lurks in the Dust?

  29. Secret of Snakes

  30. Nekenhalle Receives Her Guests

  31. Snake Eat Snake

  32. Unearthing the Truth

  33. Bitter

  34. Lost in the City

  35. Feasting & Fire

  36. Kaitiaki

  1 The Black Soil of Nekenhalle

  Moana Region, New Zealand

  Lewis and his son, Gary, labored for hours to clear the thick brush from the obscured route that led up to the peculiar entrance of the rock.

  “Hurry, boy!” Lewis cried, clenching his jaw while the spear-thistles cut through his calloused hands. With great toil, the big farmer held fast to a handful of stems and thorns, waiting for his son to catch up. They were halfway up the steep hill, working their way up through the dense shrubbery that grew from arid soil and loose rocks. “Gary, move!”

  “I’m trying, dad! For God’s sake, my boots are slipping with every step, man! Why do we have to do this now?” he bitched, gasping for air as his unfit lungs screamed under the labor of climbing the incline. “Maybe if we wait for a cooler day…”

  “Crikey, boy, you want to wait for a cooler day round Moana? It is not the temperature that makes you suffer like this and you know it. Maybe if you had less than three plates of food and got of your lazy ass once in a while, this kind of stuff would be easier.”

  “I got plenty of exercise when I was in Wellington,” Gary retorted through uncomfortable tufts as he slowly tightened the gap between him and his father.

  “Oh, yes, Wellington,” his father scoffed. “That was two years ago and you played a bit of rugby. It hardly makes you Bill Best, does it?”

  Gary hated it when his father started the Bill Best stuff. Apparently the legend of the annoying hero stemmed from somewhere in their family, a century before sometime. Lewis Harding raised his two sons on the premise that their grand ancestor, who was known by this name, was the benchmark by which the men in their family should be tested. Never once did he allow them any slack, using Bill Best and his mythical abilities to consolidate their ineptitudes.

  “I played first team, I’ll have you know,” Gary attempted a futile comeback, but his father paid no attention to his whining. The sun was setting in an hour and he needed the path open by nightfall, so that he could move down the rusty tractor he found abandoned in the mouth of the rock face. Gary reached his father and grabbed hold of a handful of weeds for anchoring, before he brought his right arm forward and slashed the barricade of thorn bush ahead of them with a machete. Severing the hardy stems, the blow sent particles of leaf and stalk flying. They pinched their eyes shut for the sap splattering on their faces and spat out some clumps of dry dirt that assailed their lips.

  “Okay, now the bigger one up there,” his father ordered. Gary bore forward, subconsciously out to prove to his father that he could impress. With the explosive power his rugby coach trained them with, he leapt up to the menacing bushes a few meters above them. It was the last obstacle between them and the gaping dark hole in the hill. Within its edges, Gary could finally discern the brick brown contraption his father had hyped about all day. Since they started surveying the small farm two months ago to find suitable agricultural terrain, the new owner and his younger son had been scouring through tough overgrowth.

  From fence post to fence post, they were busy marking Lewis Harding’s property. Fertile sediment covered the floor of this mountainous area which was a few kilometers from the town of Moana. Lewis had inherited the farm called ‘Nekenhalle’ from a distant relative the year before, but what first struck him about the place was the unusual gravel. Even under the dense growths of weeds and small trees, thorn bushes and loose roots, the soil was dark – almost black. Black soil, like that which surrounded volcano turf, had been known to be immensely fruitful. Here was no different. It was not the shade cast by the bushes, it was the very color of the sand. On hot days, the sand was especially prone to absorb the sun’s heat more effectively than other types of soil. However, to the eye it was rather disheartening, reminiscent of coalmines and their torturous hue.

  As the original Maori learned to modify the available soil for fern root production, they left the land ripe for the right tending. Lewis knew that, with a bit of hard work and careful planning, his new farm could yield considerable crops. Most of all, he wished he could turn his farmland into lucrative vineyards, but with his limited knowledge of agriculture in general, he thought to first start modestly.

  Enhancing the ground composition by adding materials like wood ash and vegetable matter, he reckoned could take advantage of the already fertile land with little chemical interference. According to his local research, like asking other farmers, Lewis learned that the addition of gravel, fine sand, and the necessary potassium/ magnesium balance, he could be sitting on a goldmine.

  “Alright, hang on!” Gary yelled with a grunt as he aimed the slated blade of the rough machete at the base of the thorn bush. Lewis closed his eyes, pursed his lips and waited for the thwack. Nothing sounded. He waited, but he heard no impact. Reluctantly the farmer slowly inched his lids apart, yet there was no clap or dusty puff to go with his son’s awkward position on the ground.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, annoyed at Gary’s tardiness. The young man was sprawled across the dark gravel, his ginger hair full of the brush’s debris, but his eyes were wide open, fraught with terror. “Gary, get up and chop the bloody thing free. We don’t have all day for your bullshit.” His son did not respond. It was as if young Gary wanted to make himself as flat as the ground he was lying on, but he dared not budge. “Gary!” Lewis roared. “Get up, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Dad,” Gary whispered. “Dad, don’t move.”

  “What?” Lewis scowled impatiently. “Give me the bloody knife. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Dad, listen to me,” Gary growled under his breath as the dust swirled up under the force of his words. “Listen, for once in your life. Don’t…fucking…move.”

  2 The Last Casket

  After their last expedition into the Peruvian forest, the three weary explorers elected to follow up on their adventure’s finds. Billionaire inventor David Purdue was hosting Dr. Nina Gould and Sam Cleave at his historical Edinburgh mansion, Wrichtishousis, for the next week. Constant rain and cold gales were a welcome change of climate from the Amazon jungle’s choking humidity, not to mention t
he perilous wildlife of the beautiful Inca kingdom where they aided Spanish authorities in tracking down a missing boy.

  Along with the encounters of their recent trip to South America, Purdue and Sam also discovered and recovered a grisly hoard on board a sunken Nazi vessel off the coast of Spain. Purdue had procured the necessary authorization from the Spanish Government for temporary custody of the ghastly find – a few hundred mummified Nazi crewmen – in order to investigate the source of their condition. Their condition was that he be allowed to temporarily keep one container of remains for examination, dating, and forensic sampling, provided he fully disclosed all findings resulting from his investigation.

  “How long do we have to do this?” Dr. Nina Gould asked. As historian, anything they would recover in the form of documentation would be her responsibility. Along with this, she was also responsible for cataloguing the extraordinary mummies for the Historical Foundation of Barcelona. The foundation needed her recommendations and full reports before they would decide the fate of the deceased German soldiers with the German High Commission in Madrid.

  “One week, starting yesterday,” Purdue informed her.

  “Geez, thanks for telling me….yesterday,” she sighed.

  “Aw, you were sleeping like a baby after all that drama, Nina,” Sam Cleave explained in his jesting way. “We could not bear to wake you up. You looked so content curled up on the couch, passed out from all the Tia Maria and table dancing.”

  Nina looked alarmed. “I don’t recall the table dancing.”

  “Of course not,” Sam grinned. “That is the charm of Tia Maria.”

  Sam was present in his usual capacity as photographer and record keeper, but he was working more closely with Purdue to assure that they satisfy their own ends as far as the find was concerned. After barely escaping with their lives during the excursion in the Alboran Sea, the two men felt that it was owed to them that they could compile a more privatized report. There were things the three relic hunters omitted to the authorities, and rightly so. Purdue had funded both excursions in their entirety, with no obligation, including the trip to South America to help Sagunto Police Chief, Capt. Pedro Sanchez. The Spanish government would certainly not reimburse him for his trouble, as it was not an official request. Therefore, Purdue and his companions found it only fair that they keep what they discovered during the life-threatening pursuit they had inadvertently become involved in.

  With no small amount of surprise, they had found that the entire business with the child’s abduction and attempted murder was driven by the insidious agenda of the infamous Order of the Black Sun. The latter had been a scourge to Purdue, especially, since he had declared open war on the clandestine Nazi organization that still prevailed in the seedy underbelly of the highest global consortiums.

  From the dive that yielded the horrific piles of Nazi skeletons, they also retrieved an ancient Inca statue of a woman, cast in pure gold. This was one of the artifacts, along with a golden prayer stick, that was not declared to any of the government agencies involved in the Peruvian expedition. Purdue had paid both Sam and Nina a substantial amount for their services during the pursuit, and added a hefty bonus for their share of the golden treasures now beautifying a vault in his vast manor.

  Now, all that was left of the terrible ordeal suffered, was solving the conundrum of the mummified remains. The three friends had been tested well beyond their capabilities without even realizing it at first, but only after they returned to Scotland did they fully appreciate the jeopardy they faced. Barely surviving drowning, sustaining various injuries by torture, enduring danger at every turn and even witnessing traumatic things like hypnotic suggestion and cannibalism, they could not wait to put the Inca episode behind them.

  In the sub-level of the giant manor, Purdue had several laboratories, each serving its own purpose in exercises like carbon dating and information technology science. On the same floor, right underneath the extensive entrance hall off the front door lobby, Purdue had four large storage vaults to accommodate bigger pieces. Artifacts, paintings, and impressive containers holding heavy items like safes and airtight cages, were kept here.

  The iron and steel casket, containing Purdue’s grisly treasure of bone and Swastika, was lodged on the eastern wall of the room marked Storage 4. It was situated right next to the chemical dating facilities of Lab A, where Nina previously examined some ancient scrolls for Purdue.

  “Right, let’s test the samples we took from their uniforms to rule out poisoning,” Purdue told Nina and Sam. Sam was busy rolling on his camera to capture the full investigation for submission to the Spanish authorities. Nina winced. Dressed in a white overcoat and gloves, she looked the part, but she could not deny feeling properly grossed out.

  “You have done this before, Nina. What is getting to you this time?” Purdue asked, perplexed by Nina’s unusually personal approach. “It’s the same as the child cadaver you inspected when we went looking for the Vault of Hercules, remember?”

  With her flashing dark brown eyes she looked at him and then Sam’s lens. “It is so not the same. I hope you edit this out, Sam.”

  “It’s actually a live stream. They are all watching from Madrid right now,” he replied. Purdue seemed a tad alarmed at Sam’s revelation, but noticed the journalist’s faint smirk and relaxed.

  “He is pulling your leg, Nina,” he coaxed, wagging a finger at Sam. “We don’t need more hold-ups, Sam. Put away your evil for the moment.” The two men grinned as she gave them a dirty look.

  “I don’t know what it is about this examination, guys,” she admitted, slowly placing the first sample into the solvent to prepare it for examination. “Something about knowing that they were someone’s son, husband, or brother, makes me feel a bit less professional than usual.”

  “Sentimental?” Purdue frowned. “That is unlike you.”

  “Precisely,” she shrugged. “I have seen, and handled, many corpses and mummies, as you know. My emotions never factor into my examinations. It is all about uncovering secrets of the past. Usually, it is a singe. But with these blokes, and it is not the SS marks or the death’s head hats, nothing like that…”

  “Maybe it is because they died in masses?” Sam suggested, drawing from his own experience behind the borders of countries run by genocidal dictators. Investigative journalism was a front row seat to the atrocities of human sin and tyranny and he had seen more than his fair share. “I remember when I covered the slaughter in Rwanda and the secret eradications in Zimbabwe during the first years of my career. My God, those heaps of bodies! It was different than to see one or two dead people, you know? It made them faceless, void of identity, even to be classified as human.”

  “Aye! That is exactly how I feel, Sam,” she exclaimed, sounding relieved that someone understood her odd repulsion at what was normally just another ‘antique appraisal’. “But, as I am being paid handsomely,” she sighed, glancing at Purdue with a quick wink, “I suppose I shall have to earn my worth in a professional manner…no matter how it fucks with my head.”

  She placed the sample in the scanner to ascertain if there were any anomalous compositions present in the fabric. Sam moved slowly to where Purdue was busy checking the examination one of his forensic staff members from an affiliate academy was working on one of the cadavers.

  “This is the sixth one, Mr. Purdue,” the man reported, hand in his sides. Sam panned with the camera to capture the man’s full frame, from head to toe, and softly remarked to the microphone how the scientist’s attire made him look like a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. Purdue looked at the scientist with some expectation.

  “Yes, and that means?” he finally asked.

  , “I cannot seem to find anything,” the man sighed and shook his head

  “How do you mean, Harris?” Purdue asked the forensic expert who has freelanced for him before.

  “I mean,” he tried again, his face dancing between perplexity and vexation, “I know what I am doing. I have done th
is for two decades, Mr. Purdue, but I have to say, this case has me baffled. You see, I cannot find a cause for these men to have been mummified. Your report indicated that most of them were found stuffed into ovens and the warmth of the boiler room.”

  “That is correct, Harris. That is how we found them. In fact, Mr. Cleave here has the entire dive’s footage from the camera he was wearing on a collar at the time if you wish to see the environment in which we found them.”

  “No,” Harris bowed his head and gestured with an open hand that it would not be necessary, “thank you. I fully trust what you told me. It is just that, well, that kind of heat is not close enough to representing an environment that could cause mummification, sir.”

  “That is what we thought too,” Sam mentioned as he paced sideways around the two men to film from the other side of the slab. Harris looked up with hope in his eyes. To him, it was a relief to hear that Mr. Cleave concurred right when he was beginning to feel inept at his methods.

  “You do? Okay, well see that makes no sense, the theory of the ovens. I venture to guess that this only happened because the crewmen and officers tried to get warm, sir, and that is all that means. As far as the amount of years they had been reportedly been cased up in the ship, the time frame could accommodate such regression. However, that is the only factor, and cannot achieve mummification without the other contributing factors. No matter how hot the kitchen and boiler rooms may have been, sir, the temperature would have to be a lot hotter and drier over this span of time to achieve what we see here.”