“He is alive,” he reported, leering at Lilith. “Heavily drugged is more like it.”
“We had a lot to drink,” she defended fiercely. “Can he not have a bit of fun, Charles?”
“You, madam, are not here to entertain Mr. Purdue,” Charles retorted. “You have served your purpose here, so do us all a favor and return to the rectum that expelled you.”
Under the bedside table, the upload bar displayed a 100 % completion. The Order of the Black Sun had acquired the Dire Serpent in all its glory.
23
Tripartite
When Sam called Masters, there was no answer. Nina was sleeping in the double bed of their hotel room, knocked out thanks to a strong sedative. She had some painkillers with her for the agony of the bruises and stitches, courtesy of the anonymous retired nurse who helped her get stitched up in Oban. Sam was exhausted, but his adrenaline levels refused to subside. In the faint lamp light on Nina’s side, he sat slouched over with his phone between his palms, his hands between his knees, thinking. He hit redial in hopes of getting Masters to pick up.
“Christ, it looks like everyone has boarded a fucking rocket and flow to the moon,” he seethed as softly as he could. Frustrated beyond words by not reaching Purdue or Masters, Sam thought to try Dr. Jacobs in hopes that he may already have located Purdue. To divert some of the anxiety, Sam turned up the television slightly. Nina had left it on to sleep with in the background, but he switched from the movie channel to Channel 8 for the international bulletin.
The news was full of smaller reports about things useless to Sam’s plight as he paced the room, calling one number after the other. He had arranged with Ms. Noble at the Post to procure tickets for him and Nina to get to Moscow in the morning, listing Nina as his historical advisor on this assignment. Ms. Noble was well acquainted with Dr. Nina Gould’s stellar reputation as well as the integrity of her name in academic circles. She would be a reputable associate to Sam Cleave’s report.
Sam’s phone rang, shaking him into overdrive for a second. At that moment, so many thoughts came and went as to who it might be, and what the state of affairs were. His phone screen displayed Dr. Jacobs’ name.
“Dr. Jacobs? Can we change dinner to the hotel here instead of your house?” Sam said right away.
“Are you psychic, Mr. Cleave?” Kasper Jacobs asked.
“Wh-why? What?” Sam frowned.
“I was about to advise you and Dr. Gould not to come to my apartment tonight, because I believe I have been ousted. Meeting with me would be detrimental at this location, so I am heading out to your hotel immediately,” the physicist informed Sam, rambling his words so fast that Sam could hardly keep up with the facts.
“Aye, Dr. Gould is a bit under the weather, but you only need me to summarize the details for my article,” Sam assured him. What bothered Sam the most was Kasper’s tone of voice. He sounded shaken up. Quivering, his words came with hasty intervals of breathiness.
“I am coming right now, and Sam, please make sure that nobody follows you. They might be watching your hotel room. See you in fifteen minutes,” Kasper said. The call ended, leaving Sam reeling.
Sam took a quick shower. When he was done, he sat down on the bed to zip up his boots. On the television screen he saw something familiar.
‘Delegates from China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States exiting the La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels to adjourn until tomorrow,’ the report stated. ‘The Atomic Energy Summit will continue on board a luxury train that will be hosting the rest of the symposium while en route to the main atomic reactor in Novosibirsk, Russia.’
“Nice,” Sam muttered. “As little information as possible about the location of the platform you are all boarding from, hey, McFadden? But I will find you and we will be on that train. And I will find Wolf for a little heart to heart.”
When Sam was done, he grabbed his phone and headed out. He checked on Nina one last time before closing the door behind him. From left to right, the corridor was vacant. Sam checked that nobody came out of any rooms while he was going for the elevator. He was going to wait in the lobby for Dr. Jacobs, ready to record all the dirty details of the reasons he was defecting to Belarus in a hurry.
Having a fag just outside the main entrance of the hotel, Sam saw a man in a coat approaching him with a deadly serious stare. He looked dangerous, his hair slicked back like a spy from a Seventies thriller.
‘Of all the moments to be unprepared,’ Sam thought, locking eyes with the fierce man. ‘Note to self. Get a new firearm.’
From his coat pocket the man’s hand emerged. Sam flicked his cigarette aside and braced himself to elude a bullet. But in his hand the man pinched what looked like an external hard drive. He came right up and grabbed the journalist by the collar. His eyes were wide and wet.
“Sam?” he wheezed. “Sam, they took my Olga!”
Sam threw up his hands and gasped, “Dr. Jacobs?”
“Yes, it is me, Sam. I Googled you to see what you looked like, so I could recognize you tonight. My God, they took my Olga, and I have no idea where she is! They are going to kill her if I do not go back to the compound where I built the vessel!”
“Hang on,” Sam immediately halted Kasper’s hysteria, “and listen to me. You have to calm down, understand? This is not helping.” Sam looked around, surveying their environment. “Especially when you could draw some unnecessary attention.”
Up and down the wet streets glimmering under pallid streetlights, he watched every movement to see who was watching. Not many people paid attention to the ranting man at Sam’s side, but a few pedestrians, mainly strolling couples, threw a quick look their way before carrying on their conversations.
“Come, Dr. Jacobs, let’s go inside and have a whiskey,” Sam suggested, ushering the shaking man gently through the glass sliding doors. “Or in your case, a few.”
They sat down at the bar of the hotel restaurant. Small ceiling mounted spot lights cast an atmospheric air on the place with soft piano music permeating through the restaurant. Low murmurs floated along with the clink of cutlery as Sam recorded his session with Dr. Jacobs. Kasper told him everything about the Dire Serpent and the exact physics involved, dreadful possibilities Einstein thought best to dispel. Finally, after he had spilled all the secrets of Clifton Tuft’s facility hosting the nefarious creations of the Order, he started sobbing. The distraught Kasper Jacobs could not keep himself together any longer.
“And now, when I got home, Olga was gone,” he sniffled, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands, trying to be inconspicuous. Sympathetically, the rugged journalist stopped the recording on his handheld and stroked the crying man’s back twice. Sam imagined what it would be like to be Nina’s partner, as he had been doing many times before, and pictured coming home to discover that she had been taken by the Black Sun.
“Jesus, Kasper, I am sorry, mate,” he whispered, motioning to the bartender to refill the tumblers with some Jack Daniels. “We are going to find her as soon as we can, okay? I promise you, they will not do anything to her before they can locate you. You fucked with their plans and someone knows. Someone with authority. They took her to get back at you, to make you suffer. That is what they do.”
“I do not even know where she could be,” Kasper wailed into his hands. “I am sure they killed her already.”