“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, Mr. Purdue,” 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 clipped the safety off his gun. His eyes were brimming with tears and his lip quivered uncontrollably. To all who witnessed it was clear that he was volatile. 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.
Chapter 34
Agatha Purdue crawled along the dirty cement floor of the basement where she woke 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 was 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 management 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. Besides, she was never someone who let her morals or her emotions overwhelm 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 furniture 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 perish 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.
Chapter 35
Sam rained down the blows on Bloem while Nina held Purdue in her 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 canteen of elixir.
“So what do we do with them now?” Sam asked Bern, wiping the sweat from his face.