Order of the Black Sun Box Set 6 Read online

  “Look at this,” she carried on, her eyes spying every detail of the religious icon. “The measurements are precisely accurate with those reputedly dictated to Moses for its construction, if memory serves me correctly. However,” she raised an eyebrow, “the etchings are wrong. Even the Cherubim on the lid are facing away from one another, unlike the effigies on the actual Ark. Their wing tips are said to meet in the middle.”

  “So, if this is not the Ark,” Purdue checked with Nina, “then it was made deliberately as decoy? Or was it made for an entirely different purpose?”

  “Like what?” Nina inquired.

  “I don't know,” he shrugged, “but maybe it wasn’t meant to hold the stone slabs of the Ten Commandments, Nina. Maybe this trunk is something entirely unique and different, only fashioned to look like the Ark of the Covenant to mock the Bible or something. Don't you think it’s just too uncanny how this chest resembles a legendary relic, yet at the same time represents some form of blatant opposition to the original artifact?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Purdue,” Nina said softly, letting her hands slide alongside the smooth surface of fool's gold to appreciate the work put into such a close likeness. “Look, I don't know why they made this piece, only that it’s an obvious counterfeit of the real deal. What worries me is the fact that they knew it was not the true Ark, and yet they died for it, defended it, and chased after it.”

  “I understand,” he said. “The only answers we’ll ever obtain from it lie inside it.”

  Nina looked at Purdue with a cautious leer, taking one more look at the gilded coffin hidden in the depths Wrichtishousis before looking him straight in the eye. She tucked her hands to her sides, sighed, and said, “Then get on with it. Let's open it and get it over with.”

  Purdue didn’t show it, but Nina's green light had him overly excited, as scared as he was of what could be hidden inside. She stepped aside as he fetched one of his own inventions from the cupboard, a small device shaped like a bug.

  “Alright, I have to know,” she said, gazing at the crawly robotic thing Purdue held in his palm.

  “Nothing special,” he said modestly. “Just laser and SONAR technology, my dear. First B.U.G. will

  study the contents of the item by means of x-ray technology, so please, keep well out of the way.”

  “B.U.G.?” she frowned, just bracing herself for the insight to come. Purdue switched on the steel, tortoise-shaped gadget, lighting up it's flattened base with red lights and erecting its antennae to receive the motion transmission that penetrated the interior of the trunk.

  “Yes, my dear,” Purdue affirmed.

  “And that stands for...?” she asked inquisitively.

  Purdue looked uncomfortable, his eyes searching the floor. “The abbreviation is for Bloody Ugly Gizmo,” he clarified, leaving Nina in humorous purgatory, uncertain of the sincerity value of his statement. Purdue looked up at her through his glasses. “No, really.”

  Nina burst out in a fit of laughter, forcing Purdue to smile. “You suck at naming stuff,” she snorted.

  “I know. I know,” he blushed. “But that’s what it is, right?”

  “Too right!” she dipped her head bemusedly. “So, let it sniff out the contents. We don't have much time before we have to give Sam something to do.”

  “Of course,” Purdue agreed. He placed the strange gadget on the golden lid of the chest and waited for it to start recording information. Its sonic pulses registered the structural and chemical composition of whatever lay inside. With high-pitched beeps every two seconds, it assessed and recorded the information as it walked along the length of the box. Nina was impressed, scrutinizing the amazing fashion in which the device moved. It honestly did look and behave like a bug, inching along on six appendages that were perfectly fixed by tiny ball joints to the silvery body of the bug. Purdue didn’t care to gloat about his latest invention. Rather, he spent the waiting moments wondering what the data would yield. The myriad of possibilities staggered him. Had it been the actual Ark of the Covenant, there would at least be some indication of what could be contained in the chest. But this was something else. It was built for a different purpose altogether, and because this function was still a mystery, it presented Purdue with some concern.

  “There could literally be anything in there. You do know that, right?” Nina said suddenly, as if she had read Purdue's thoughts. He nodded in agreement. She folded her arms and cocked her head. “Imagine if it contained something unprecedented. I mean, obviously, but what if we find something we didn’t know, like an alien object or a chart of minerals and chemicals our Periodic Table doesn’t have.”

  “Intriguing,” Purdue replied. “Maybe it only contains old letters sent by men who fought wars in Egypt and Tunisia, some medallions, and a bit of spice.”

  “Smartass,” she scoffed. “Typical of a scientist to take all of the wonder out of a well-placed scenario.”

  “I'm all for wonder, my dear Nina, but you have to agree that at times like these it is hardly wise to set one's heart on wishes and dreams.” Purdue shrugged. “Believe me, I’ve been having way too many sobering experiences of late, convincing me that there is hardly any magic left in this world, apart from that we construct for ourselves.”

  “I refuse to entertain that notion,” she insisted, watching the buggy device complete its journey. It sounded one long beep as the red light under its belly died, announcing that its gathering of data was complete.

  Purdue smiled and slammed his palms together for a good rub. “The moment of truth.”

  14

  Along the A90 northbound, Sam drove past Inverkeithing after crossing the Forth Road Bridge from Queensferry on his way to Hillend. It had been a few days since a close friend's shunning had smashed his heart, but the pain still persisted relentlessly. His old, silver BMW cruised along the buildings that flanked the road under a cloud splattered sky where the pale sun had barely begun to make shadows on the ground.

  A stiff wind rocked his car as he passed the Bowling Club on the way out of the neighborhood, and Sam barely noticed the high speed at which he was traveling. There was good reason for his heavy foot on the accelerator, apart from his zeal to get to his destination.

  He drove in the din of some old commercial Metallica and sang along with the choruses of doomed dreams and the dark twin's confronting of the composed human, only exacerbating his current negative emotion. Along with the aggression in the music, Sam felt validated. It kept him aware of how fed-up he really was with bad people getting away with destroying the lives of others. At the same time, he had to admit that he needed to become one with the underworld of drugs, snitches, hookers, and hits if he wanted to get to the bottom of the crimes he intended to investigate.

  At a glance, Sam Cleave looked like a rugged, attractive man in his early 40s, but inside he was a young lad again, traumatized by a schoolyard tiff. It felt like a break-up with a woman, he realized, to lose one's best friend because of who you are. He simply couldn’t make peace with the abrasive feeling that left him bleeding, the one that made him feel dirty, unwanted, and lesser than. Paddy, in Sam's opinion, now saw him as a burden and a liability, something that broke Sam inside every time he replayed those fateful words in his memory.

  After he’d gone on his alcoholic binge to wallow in self-pity, investing too much time in introspection, Sam had grown tired of doing nothing about it. Even if he couldn’t convince Patrick Smith to forge a friendship with him again, he would go all out to find out who had taken the man's daughter. Just because he’d become a problem for Patrick, it didn’t constitute him allowing the little girl to come to harm. It wasn’t her fault that her father and Sam were not close anymore and she deserved to be saved nonetheless.

  Just before the A921 turn-off, Sam noticed the barren green carpets of the fields to his right. Their desolate distance, uniformly flat, somehow brought him immense peace. The music stopped just as he turned onto the main road, heading for the Parrot Cage Pub
& Hotel to meet Norris. Sam remembered how he had first met Norris in 1998 in Glasgow. It was during an exposé on a drug cartel from Nigeria that had caused no less than seven deaths by igniting violent hooliganism among local football fans.

  Back then, Norris had been a scrawny mosquito of a man, barely in his 20s and naive as hell. Gradually, as Sam taught him to use his streetwise skills for his own benefit, he started seeing the world through Sam's eyes. It was a short road and hasty travel toward cynicism and insensitivity for Norris, especially after his brother and mother were killed after a sour bet by a clan of tinkers migrating through the Highlands. He quickly became a hardened trader, arms instructor, and general freelancer of fists. By 2012, Norris was reputed to have been responsible for several covert hit operations in the sports world, primarily football and boxing. But it was all speculative at best. Such was the skill of the young Norris at covering his tracks and cleaning up his own messes. The only problem with him was that he had absolutely no sense of civic responsibility, and could not be bribed, begged, or threatened into anything he did not already endorse.

  Sam was a master of the interview, the grand old swap of terms and words to evoke cooperation in subjects, but if there was one man who could see right through him, it was Norris. The old BMW came to a low hum as Sam turned into the Patterson Partners Royale Golf Club parking area, electing to park there instead of daring to leave his vehicle at the insecure and risky Parrot Cage parking lot. Calling it so was quite a reach. It was more like a backstreet gravel backyard, riddled by broken glass under the muddy skin of the sprawling, swamp-like muck that lay between the main road and the main entrance of the establishment.

  “Jesus, some things just never change,” Sam mumbled, wincing at the hideous terrain he had to traverse to get to the pub. For a second he almost considered driving through it with his car anyway, but he didn’t feel like buying new tires and replacing his diff again. The grounds of the tavern were reminiscent of the characters who haunted the place—scummy, dirty patrons who were exceedingly treacherous and difficult to converse with, harboring sinister intentions under the amicable surface of their appearance.

  Sam flipped up the collar of his leather jacket as he started the perilous journey past some scurvy people arguing next to a beat up old Volkswagen Kombi. Billows of smoke emanated form its tail pipe in thick clumps that almost choked anyone in passing. Clutching his jacket, Sam proceeded into the virtually ankle-deep mess of mud and God knows what else that lived underneath.

  “Fuck,” he cussed as his favorite pair of biker boots sank into the muck. “Shit! This is never going to come off. Never! For fuck's sake!” Deeper his boots fell with each tread as Sam grew less and less tolerant over the damage he had to sustain just to meet with Norris. “For Christ's sake! Why couldn't he meet me in a decent fucking place for once in his life?” Tugging hard to lift each foot with every step, Sam Cleave started to doubt his initial intentions to help find Amber Smith. But then he’d imagine her sweet face and big gray eyes and remember why he’d undertook this endeavor to begin with.

  “Oi! Oi, Brotha!” a skinny male with a crew cut yelled at Sam from the group of people at the Kombi he was already trying to avoid. Sam ignored him, already feeling his heart rate preparing for a fight. Fortunately for Sam, he was in a dark emotional state with plenty of frustration and aggression just begging to be released. The cold gale brushed hard over his skin and burned his neck where his collar lowered. His wild, dark hair was basted by the changing currents of the wind, leaving his looks in disarray, corresponding perfectly with the way he felt inside.

  “Oi, you! I'm talking to you, you tosser!” Sam’s fingers tightened into a fist.

  “Oh please God, let him follow me. Pretty please,” Sam muttered loudly enough for them to hear him. But he kept walking for the door as he spoke without even passing them an eye.

  “What did you say? Oi, prick!” the anorexic runt shouted, sounding a lot closer. Sam smiled.

  He had almost reached the double door entrance of the shady, noisy bar, but he was hoping to lead the suicidal drug pusher all the way to the men's restrooms and give him some education. A hand fell on Sam's shoulder and that repulsive shrieking voice came right by his ear. “Are you deaf, son?”

  Sam felt his morality slide off from him like a pair of loose jeans. He turned around and looked into the repugnant mug of the heroin addict. Up close he looked a hundred times worse. His skin was infested with acne and his pupils were alarmingly dilated.

  “Give us a fag there mate,” he sniffed, looking Sam up and down to check what he had on his person, where his pockets were located, and so on. At first Sam felt like just swinging a right hook and being done with it, but he remained calm and cordially slipped his hand into his jacket. For a moment the jumpy mugger held his breath, slightly pulling back when Sam's hand moved. But when he saw the pack of Marlboro's he snickered, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

  “You got a light?” Sam asked, keeping his eyes firmly on the lad he was dying to clobber.

  “Aye, here somewhere,” he told Sam, frisking his baggy pants for his spoony flare. He cracked a horrible smile. Curling back his cracked lips and baring rotten teeth that only just kept a foul breath at bay, he held the Zippo up to where Sam was pursing two smokes between his lips. He lit them both and waited for Sam to give him one.

  “So, what else you got, son?” the repulsive junky snarled.

  “Me?” Sam asked, taking a drag. “I got common sense. Like, I just heard your pack of clowns get really quiet, which means they mean to stalk. Secondly, you’ve been moving clockwise while talking to me to make sure my back is to them. But what you didn’t count on, is that behind you is a door with a glass window in it...” Sam stepped in closer to speak past the junky's ear, “...and I can see their reflections in it.”

  The others had gained on Sam in the meantime, but had not reached him yet. He thought it would make him nervous, but to his pleasant realization he was perfectly calm. As a matter of fact, he almost looked forward to the showdown. It was a side of Sam he had very seldom felt before, if at all, but he enjoyed the numbness to all the repercussions possible from this situation.

  “You see,” he told the nervous junky who suffered Sam's blackened glare, “I’m smarter than you and your whole tribe together, which is why I have a life. But you’re a loser. If you didn’t smell like elephant shit and look like walking pus I’d have bitch slapped you in front of the other vermin here.”

  Sam could see them about three paces from him. Deep inside him something took over, much like the time in the island village in Bali, where he’d inadvertently surrendered his will to a malevolent force and almost killed a man in cold blood. Only this time it was he—just pure Sam—that charged the rage that had been lying dormant since Paddy politely told him to fuck off.

  Before he knew it Sam had the putrid drug addict by the back of the neck. With empty eyes Sam swung violently around with the thin thug dangling helplessly from his grip, turning to stand with his back against the wall to face the oncoming troop of lowlifes. Ahead of him, he held the squealing guy on display at arm's length, forcing the gang of wasted animals to slow their pace and look to their scrawny leader for command. But he couldn’t utter a word while Sam was squeezing his throat, his cigarette hanging limply from his mouth. In horror they watched as Sam inhaled, taking the butt between his fingers and bringing it closer to the junky's face. “Look everyone, in the land of the blind...”

  A chorus of groans and exclamations disapproved what the dark stranger implied, but they never expected him to really do it. He whispered in the grimy ear of the mugger, “I'm about to make you king...son.”

  Sam's dark eyes were blank, save for the glinting reflections within them that mirrored the setting around him. Without a flinch the journalist pressed the smoldering cherry of the cigarette on the left eyeball of the junky, sending him to the icy ground in a heap of agony.

  “Holy shit! Sam! What the fuck are you doing
?” a man shouted from a car that came to a sliding halt a few feet from the unfolding drama. “Get in! NOW!”

  While the strung out girls flocked over the screaming thug, his friends looked at Sam with terrified hatred. They dared not attack now that Bad Norris pulled up, not with friends like him. Sam gave them a look too, still trying to feel sorry for what he’d done. But as he climbed into Norris' Jeep, he still couldn’t find any empathy.

  15

  On to an undisclosed location the car roared away from the violent scene, leaving the group of miscreants furious and panicked over the injured thug on the ground. Sam did not speak and neither did Norris. The only sound was the purr of the 3.0L V-6 engine thundering under the shelter of the long hood of the Mercedes C-Class that glided along the main road in the direction of Otterston Loch.

  Light tremors became evident to Sam after about four minutes of silent driving. His breath quivered and he locked his hands together to stop shaking, but the odd thing was that he couldn’t feel bad about any of it. There was none of that human reaction—that guilt and reconsideration—inside of him. Only the belated jolt of adrenaline he’d had to suppress. In fact, all Sam could think of was how grateful he was that the gang he left in his trail didn’t know which car was his, otherwise he’d certainly come back to a heap of junk where his BMW used to be.

  “You could have gotten filleted back there, you realize,” Norris finally noted.

  “Aye.”

  “That's it? Do you have any idea what kind of rubbish that bunch is, old boy? Jesus, they would have carved you like Aunty Laura's Christmas turkey had I not shown up.” He looked at the journalist in utter shock. “Not that you were exactly sane, either.”

  “Aye.”

  Sam didn’t have much else to say. What could he say? He conceded. He could have been killed and yes, he was beside himself with brutality. But that was how it was and he couldn’t see a reason to elaborate on obvious facts. However, as he saw the sign for the small town of Aberdour, he finally decided to formulate whole sentences. “Where are we going, Norris?”