But for now she knew that Wrichtishousis, Purdue's vast historical manor that played sentinel over the ancient city of Edinburgh, was off-limits. She sighed, leaning on one arm as Lenny delivered her a spare shooter.
“What's this?” she frowned.
“From that gentleman across…” Lenny smiled.
“Len, I don't accept drinks from strangers. I told you before,” she whispered loudly in reprimand, practically lying her head on the counter to keep her voice low.
“Oh,” Lenny's scarlet cheeks sank, “but I thought you knew him.”
“How would you know that?” she inquired in short snappy grunts.
“Well, because he said to tell you…happy birthday? How would he know your birthday?” the pub owner shrugged. Nina kicked away from the heavy wood of the counter, sending her chair twirling. She stopped it abruptly when she caught sight of the dark figure at the far corner of the establishment. He was draped in shadow, his gloved hands folded on the table in front of him and his clothing generously obscured his frame. Still, she could not deny those eyes. Light blue, piercing eyes stared back at her from under a thick woolen knit hat.
“Unmistakable,” she smiled. “Thanks Lenny.”
“Do you know him, then?” the plump pub owner asked, looking quite relieved for it.
“Aye, I know that one,” she smiled dreamily as she rose from her seat to join the man in the dark, “but Lenny?”
“Aye?”
“…if you tell anyone, I'll kill you.”
Chapter 2 — Joseph Karsten, Level Three
“What do you mean, you cannot find her? She has a GPS in her cell phone, you imbecile!” Karsten bellowed. He was furious that the private investigator he’d hired could still not locate either Sam Cleave or Dr. Nina Gould. “What the hell did I pay you for?”
“With respect, sir, increasing my fee will not make these people surface any better or faster,” came the wry response. Karsten leered at the impudent specimen, his nostrils positively flaring as he panted softly. From the narrow flagstone lane inadvertently formed by the myriad of lined potted plants in his greenhouse, he called an associate he had employed to help narrow the net for him.
Under the blue and orange Austrian heavens, Karsten's lone house stood in the cool late afternoon wind. It was a colossal place, built in the fashion of an Italian courtyard, complete with hanging plants and creepers adorning the walls like feral botany from a science fiction novel. On the outside of the rectangular walling of the south boundary, Karsten kept his greenhouse. There he spent most of his time after 3 p.m., escaping the dreaded sharp morning sun, much like his plants did. It was considerably warmer inside the glass house, a temperature difference the private detective could feel by the trickling sweat down his spine.
The investigator just stood there, waiting for dismissal or further orders, as was the custom when he worked for the Order of the Black Sun or its affiliates. Apparently the person on the other side of the line had similarly empty news, because Karsten suddenly growled, clenching his teeth as he ended the call. The livid Level Three member of the old Nazi organization tried to compose himself, closing his eyes and slowing his breaths gradually from heavy groans to shallow inhalations. If the investigator had not been under the eye of Karsten's bodyguard, he may well have rolled his eyes at the melodrama.
Karsten opened his eyes, looking decidedly sorrowful. His expression reminded the investigator of a pouting child as the overweight fascist slid his phone into his pocket, sniffing in disgust. To the indifferent investigator he said sullenly, “I want you to find anyone close to Dr. Gould. Even if it is an old lady she helps to buy groceries or a niece who visits her…anyone remotely close to her heart. If she wishes to be invisible I will find someone close to her who beams like a goddamn star! And then she will have no choice but to come to their rescue.”
“Why Dr. Gould, Herr Karsten?” the private dick had to ask, as the logic of it eluded him. He was met with a look from the Austrian millionaire that resembled a face confronted with the odor of putrefaction. “No, seriously,” the man continued sincerely. “If you’re after David Purdue, why not trail someone close to him?”
That was it for Karsten. He slowly approached the ignorant buffoon, trying not to lose his cool in the process. “Do you know anything about David Purdue, Beck?” Jonathan Beck's shook his head. “Of course not. This man has no one close to him, save for the esteemed little black-eyed beauty we’re tracking, you see? And do you know why? Purdue had a twin sister he and an uncle abandoned once in Africa when they were mere children. And when they were reunited as adults, it took that insolent bastard no more than a few weeks to get rid of her for good.”
“Then why would he kill his sister and not Dr. Gould?” Beck asked, to his detriment. Karsten slapped him hard and waited for him to recover before explaining. “Obviously he was not fucking his sister, was he?”
“I see,” the still shocked Beck stammered.
“Do you understand now? Do you?” the moody Karsten demanded.
“I do, I get it. A lover is good bait,” Beck answered. “So I’ll start in her home town watching her house. Give me a week to assemble a dossier of activity by surveillance.”
“That’s too long,” Karsten protested. “The Super Moon is fast approaching; it’s less than two months away and still we don't have what we need. Dr. Gould is not just a historian versed in modern history, but she has walked in the light of the Black Sun. She understands what we’re about and she knows the other side, the dark side, of political history like no other scholar of her time. I’d venture to say that she’s remarkable and unique in the things we deal with. Whether she fully grasps that is a mystery. Whether she realizes how important her knowledge in the matters of the Order is, is of no consequence right now; just that we apprehend her as soon as possible.”
“Sir, you must give me time to effectively breach the perimeter of her home. I need to install feeds so I can record all regular activity. That’s the only way we can find out which people Dr. Gould is close to,” Beck explained to the impatient Karsten. Feeling his cheek throbbing from the wallop, he continued to state his idea. “I must insist that you use a little more patience. It’s best not to rush this procedure and to do it right the first time, otherwise the whole plan may be botched…and recovering from that will take twice as long…sir.”
“The German military does it faster,” Karsten mocked.
“But MI5 does it thoroughly,” Beck bragged dryly, without meeting eyes with his employer. “My training allows me to effectively arrest her daily life, Herr Karsten. Trust me. In the end, I’m worth every cent of my fee.”
“So they say,” Karsten calmed a bit, continuing to prune his creeping azaleas and blue Alpine snowbells. “But they don’t have a celestial stopwatch ruling their missions as I do. Just get me Nina Gould and do it quickly so that I can proceed with the second stage of the plan. There are many checkpoints for me to complete, my dear Beck, and stage two is but the start. All the other feats need to be accomplished speedily, you see?”
“I do. Let me get to Oban, Scotland…and start from there. No more technology. Now I follow the real world, real footsteps and seeking with my own two eyes rather than using machines to do my searching for me,” Beck informed his employer. “Besides, if she decides to come home, we’ll be a few steps ahead already.”