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  “Aye,” she responded, casting a glance at Sam, who was nursing his bruises.

  “He meant to keep it for himself, like you,” Joost taunted maliciously. “But he needed help from a colleague, an archeologist who worked here at Wewelsburg, a man by the name of Wilhelm Jordan. He accompanied Werner as historian to retrieve the treasure from the Egyptian’s smallholding in Algeria, just like you,” he repeated his insult cheerily. “But when they got back to Germany his friend, who was overseeing excavations around Wewelsburg for Himmler and the SS at the time, got him drunk and shot him, making away with the aforementioned loot that Werner still did not directly refer to in his writings. I guess we’ll never know what they were.”

  “Pity,” Nina feigned sympathy while her heart slammed inside her chest.

  She hoped that they could somehow rid themselves of these less-than-cordial gentlemen sooner than later. In the past few years Nina was proud to have evolved from a feisty, although pacifist, academic to the capable ass-kicker she had been molded into by the people she had encountered. Where she once would have considered her goose cooked in a situation such as this, she now thought of ways to escape capture as if it was a matter of course—and it was. In the life she lived nowadays, the threat of death was constantly on her and her colleagues and she had become an unwilling participant in the madness of maniacal power plays and its unsavory characters.

  From the passage way the turbine’s humming stopped—a sudden, deafening silence disturbed only by a soft howling whistle of wind that haunted the complex tunnels. Everyone noticed this time, looking at one another with perplexity.

  “What just happened?” Wesley asked, the first to speak in the dead silence.

  “It is odd how you only notice a noise once it is subdued, isn’t it?” a voice said from the other chamber.

  “Da! But now I can hear myself think,” another spoke.

  Nina and Sam recognized the voice instantly and exchanged looks of extreme concern.

  “Our time isn’t up yet, is it?” Sam asked Nina in a loud whisper. Among the befuddled expressions of the others, Nina nodded her head at Sam, negating. They both knew the voice of Ludwig Bern and their friend, Alexandr Arichenkov. Purdue recognized the Russian’s voice too.

  “What is Alexandr doing here?” he asked Sam, but before his answer came, the two men stepped into the doorway. Wesley drew his weapon on Alexandr, and Joost Bloem grabbed the petite Nina roughly by the hair and pressed the barrel of his Makarov against her temple.

  “Please, don’t,” she blurted out without thinking. Bern’s eyes sharpened on the Dutchman.

  “If you harm Dr. Gould, I will wipe out your entire family, Joost,” Bern warned with no hesitation. “And I know where they are.”

  “You know each other?” Purdue asked.

  “This is one of the leaders from Mönkh Saridag, Dave,” Alexandr replied. Purdue looked ashen and very uncomfortable. He knew why the brigade was here, but he did not know how it found him. In fact, for the first time in his life, the flamboyant and carefree billionaire felt like a worm on a hook; fair game for venturing too deep into places he should have left be.

  “Yes, Joost and I used to serve the same master, until I came to my senses and stopped being a pawn to morons like Renata,” Bern sneered.

  “I swear to God I will kill her,” Joost reiterated, hurting Nina just enough to get a yelp out of her. Sam jerked into an attacking stance and immediately Joost shared his vicious stare with the journalist, “You want another hiding, highlander?”

  “Fuck you, cheese dick! You hurt one hair on her head and I’ll peel your fucking skin off with that rusty scalpel in the other room. Try me!” Sam barked, and he meant it.

  “I’d say you are outnumbered, not only by men, but by bad luck too, comrade,” Alexandr grinned as he pulled a joint from his pocket and lit it with a match. “Now, boy, lower your weapon or we’ll have to put a leash on you too.”

  With that Alexandr tossed five dog collars at Wesley’s feet.

  “What did you do to my dogs?” he shouted heatedly, veins protruding from his neck, but Bern and Alexandr paid him no attention. Wesley took the safety catch off his gun. His eyes were brimming with tears and his lip quivered uncontrollably. To all who witnessed it was clear that he was at the verge of breaking down. Bern dropped his eyes to Nina, subliminally asking her to make the first move in his surreptitious nod. She was the only one in direct peril, therefore it was up to her to gather her courage and try to surprise Bloem.

  The pretty historian took a moment to remember what her late friend, Val, once taught her when they engaged in a bit of sparring. With a surge of adrenaline her body jolted into action and with all her strength she jarred Bloem’s arm upward by his elbow, forcing his gun to point down. Purdue and Sam shot toward Bloem at the same time, taking him down with Nina still in his grip.

  A vociferous shot rang through the tunnels under Wewelsburg Castle.

  34

  Agatha Purdue crawled along the dirty cement floor of the basement where she had woken up. The agonizing pain in her chest attested to the last injury she sustained at the hands of Wesley Bernard and Joost Bloem. Before they put two bullets in her torso she had been brutalized by Bloem’s sick depravity for hours, until she passed out from the pain and blood loss. Barely alive, Agatha’s sheer will pushed her to keep moving on skinned knees toward the small square of wood and plastic she could see through the blood and tears in her eyes.

  Fighting for her lungs to expand, she wheezed with every grinding drag forward. The square of switches and currents on the dirty wall beckoned, but she did not feel like she could make it that far before oblivion would take her. Burning and throbbing, the raw holes left by the metal slugs buried in the flesh of her diaphragm and upper chest area bled profusely and it felt as if her lungs were pin cushions to railway spikes.

  Outside the room there was a world unaware of her plight and she knew she would never see the sun again. But one thing the genius librarian knew was that her attackers would not outlive her by much. When she accompanied her brother to the fortress in the mountains where Mongolia and Russia meets, they vowed to use the weapon they stole against the council at all costs. Instead of risking another Renata of the Black Sun to rise by the demand of the council, should they lose their patience in finding Mirela, David and Agatha decided to also eliminate the council.

  If they did away with the men who chose the leadership of the Order of the Black Sun, there would be no-one to elect a new leader when they delivered Renata to the Brigade Apostate. And the best way to do this would be to use the Longinus to destroy them all at once. But now she was faced with her own demise and had no idea where her brother was, or if he was even still alive after Bloem and his brutes found him. Determined to do her bit for the cause, though, Agatha risked the chance of killing innocent people if only to avenge herself. But she had never been someone who let her morals or her emotions outweigh what needed to be done and she was going to prove it today, before she exhaled her last breath.

  Presuming her dead, they had tossed her coat over her body to dispose of once they returned. She knew they were planning to find her brother and force him to give up Renata before killing him and then deposing Renata to hasten the implementation of a new leader.

  The power box invited her ever closer.

  With the wiring in it she could reroute the current to the small silver transmitter that Dave had fashioned for her tablet to use as satellite modem back in Thurso. With two broken fingers and most of the skin off her knuckles Agatha had rummaged through her sewn-in coat pocket to retrieve the small locator she and her brother fashioned after they returned from Russia. It was designed and assembled especially according to the Longinus’ specifications, serving as a remote detonator. Dave and Agatha were going to use it to destroy the council headquarters in Bruges, hopefully eliminating most of, if not all, the members.

  As she reached the electrical box, she propped herself up on the broken old f
urniture that was also dumped down there and forgotten, just like Agatha Purdue. With great toil she worked her magic, gradually and carefully, praying she would not die before she had completed the set-up to detonate the insignificant looking super weapon she skillfully planted on Wesley Bernard just after he raped her the second time.

  35

  Sam rained down the blows on Bloem while Purdue held Nina in his embrace. When Bloem’s gun went off, Alexandr rushed Wesley, catching a bullet in the shoulder before Bern brought the young man down and knocked him out. Purdue was shot in the thigh from the downward angle of Bloem’s gun, but he was coherent. Nina had tied a piece of fabric she had torn into a strip around his leg to cut off most of the bleeding for now.

  “Sam, you can stop now,” Bern said, as he pulled Sam off Joost Bloem’s limp body. It felt good to get even, Sam thought, and helped himself to one more blow before letting Bern pull him up off the ground.

  “We’ll get you sorted shortly. As soon as everyone can calm down,” Nina told Purdue, but she directed her words at Sam and Bern. Alexandr sat against the wall by the door with his bleeding shoulder, searching his coat for his flask.

  “So what do we do with them now?” Sam asked Bern, wiping the sweat from his face.

  “I would like to recover the item they stole from us first. Then take them back with us to Russia as hostages. They can supply us with a wealth of information about the Black Sun’s doings and inform us of all the institutions and members we do not yet know of,” Bern answered, tying Bloem up with straps from the medical chamber next door.

  “How did you get here?” Nina asked.

  “Plane. I have a pilot waiting in Hannover as we speak. Why?” he frowned.

  “Well, we have not been able to locate that item you sent us to bring back to you,” she told Bern with some unease, “and I was wondering what you were doing here; how you found us.”

  Bern shook his head, a mild smile playing on his mouth at the pretty woman’s deliberate tact in her questions. “I suppose there was some synchronicity involved here. You see, Alexandr and I followed the tracks of something that was stolen from the Brigade just after you and Sam left on your journey.”

  He crouched next to her. Nina could tell he was suspicious about something, but his affection for her kept him from losing his calm demeanor.

  “What bothers me is that at first we thought you and Sam had something to do with it. But Alexandr here convinced us otherwise and we believed him, yet in following the Longinus signal who should we find, but the very people we were assured had nothing to do with its theft,” he sneered.

  Nina felt her heart jump with fear. Gone was the kindness Ludwig always had for her in his voice and his eyes looked on her with disdain. “Now you tell me, Dr. Gould, what am I supposed to think?”

  “Ludwig, we had nothing to do with any theft!” she protested, watching her tone carefully.

  “Captain Bern would be preferable, Dr. Gould,” he snapped instantly. “And please don’t try to make a fool out of me a second time.”

  Nina looked over at Alexandr for support, but he had passed out. Sam shook his head, “She is not lying, captain. We definitely don’t have any involvement in this.”

  “Then how is it that the Longinus happens to be here?” Bern roared at Sam. He stood up and faced Sam, his imposing stature in a threatening posture and his eyes like ice. “It led us straight to you!”

  Purdue could take no more. He knew the truth and now, once again because of him, Sam and Nina were getting roasted, their lives threatened again. Stuttering through the pain, he lifted his hand to get Bern’s attention, “It was not Sam or Nina’s doing, captain. I don’t know how the Longinus led you here, because it is not here.”

  “How do you know this?” Bern asked sternly.

  “Because I was the one who stole it,” Purdue confessed.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Nina exclaimed, throwing her head back in disbelief. “You cannot be serious.”

  “Where is it?” Bern shouted, focused on Purdue like a vulture waiting on the death rattle.

  “It is with my sister. But I don’t know where she is now. In truth, she stole it from me the day she parted ways with us in Cologne,” he added, shaking his head at the absurdity of it.

  “Good God, Purdue! What else are you hiding?” Nina screeched.

  “Told you so,” Sam told Nina evenly.

  “Don’t, Sam! Just don’t!” she warned him, and got up from her position next to Purdue. “You can help yourself out of this one, Purdue.”

  Wesley came out of nowhere.

  He planted a rusty bayonet deep in Bern’s abdomen. Nina screamed. Sam pulled her out of harm’s way as Wesley’s maniacal grimace looked Bern straight in the eye. He pulled the bloody steel out of Bern’s body and sank it back in a second time. Purdue moved away as fast as he could on one leg while Sam held Nina against him, her face buried in his chest.

  But Bern was tougher than Wesley had measured him to be. He grabbed the young man by the throat and propelled them both into the bookshelves. With an enraged growl he snapped Wesley’s arm like a twig and the two engaged in a furious battle on the ground. The noise brought Bloem back to consciousness. His laughter filled the background of anguish and war between the two men on the floor. Nina, Sam, and Purdue frowned at his reaction, but he paid no attention to them. He simply laughed on, indifferent to his own fate.

  Bern was losing his ability to breathe, his blood gushing down his pants and boots. He could hear Nina crying, but there was no time to look on her beauty one last time—he had a kill to make.

  With a crushing chop to Wesley’s neck he immobilized the young man, stunning him to a momentary standstill, just long enough to snap his neck. Bern fell to his knees as he felt his life slipping away. Bloem’s annoying laughter drew his attention.

  “Please kill him too,” Purdue said softly.

  “You just killed my assistant, Wesley Bernard!” Bloem smiled. “He was raised by foster parents in the Black Sun, did you know, Ludwig? They were nice enough to let him keep some of his original last name—Bern.”

  Bloem let loose a shriek of laughter that infuriated everyone within earshot, while Bern’s dying eyes drowned in confused tears.

  “You just killed your own son, Daddy,” Bloem chuckled. The horror of it was too much for Nina.

  “I’m so sorry, Ludwig!” she wailed and held his hand, but Bern had nothing left in him. His powerful body failed under his will to die and he blessed himself with Nina’s countenance before the light finally left his eyes.

  “Aren’t you glad Wesley is dead, Mr. Purdue?” Bloem turned his poison toward Purdue. “You should be, after the unspeakable things he did to your sister before he snuffed the bitch!” he laughed.

  Sam grabbed a lead bookend off the shelf behind them. He walked over to Bloem and brought the heavy object down on his skull without any hesitation or contrition. The bone cracked while Bloem was laughing, and a disturbing hiss escaped his mouth as his brain matter seeped out onto his shoulder.

  Nina’s reddened eyes looked gratefully at Sam. Sam looked shaken at his own deed . Purdue shifted uncomfortably, trying to give Nina a moment to mourn Bern. Swallowing his own loss, he finally said, “If the Longinus is here, as Bern said, it would be a good idea to leave. Right now. The council will soon notice that their Dutch affiliates have not checked in and they’ll come looking for them.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said, and they gathered what they could salvage of the old documents. “We should really hurry, before the Generator goes kaput as well.. If the lights go out while we’re still down here we’re fucked.”

  Purdue thought quickly. Agatha had the Longinus. Wesley killed her. The brigade traced the Longinus here, he formulated his deduction. So the weapon must be on Wesley and the idiot had no idea he had it?

  Having stolen and handled the coveted weapon Purdue knew what it looked like and more so, he knew how to transport it safely.

  They woke Alexandr up
and took some bandages they could find from the medical cabinets. Regrettably the majority of surgical instruments was filthy and could not be used to mend Purdue and Alexandr’s wounds, but it was more important to first get out of Wewelsburg’s evil labyrinth anyway.

  Nina made sure that she gathered all the scrolls she could find, in case there were more priceless relics of the antique world to be saved. Although she was sick with disgust and sorrow she could not wait to study the treasures she had discovered in the hidden vault of Heinrich Himmler.

  36

  By late night they had all made it out of Wewelsburg and were heading for the airstrip in Hannover. Alexandr elected to take the heat off his companions because they were so kind to include his unconscious self in their escape from the underground tunnels. He had woken just before they exited the gate Purdue had removed on their arrival, feeling Sam’s shoulders supporting his limp physique in the ill-lit caverns of World War II.

  Of course, a hefty fee offered by Dave Purdue did not hurt his sense of loyalty either and he thought it better to stay in the brigade’s good graces by not absconding. They were going to meet Otto Schmidt at the airstrip and get in touch with the brigade’s other commanders for further instruction.

  Still, Purdue remained silent about his captive in Thurso, even when he received a new text, Muzzled the dog. It is rabid. Now that he had lost his sister and the Longinus, he was running out of trump cards to play when the opposing forces gathered on him and his friends.

  “There he is!” Alexandr pointed at Otto when they arrived at Hannover Airport in Langenhagen. He was seated in a restaurant when Alexandr and Nina found him.

  “Dr. Gould!” he exclaimed cheerily when he saw Nina. “Good to see you again.”