The Black Sun

‘I know, I know,’ Archie said sheepishly. ‘I just plain forgot and now…well, Apples has got a game round at his place tonight. Big money. Invitation only. I can’t get out of it.’

‘More like you don’t want to get out of it.’ Tom’s voice was laced with disappointment. ‘This whole gambling thing’s getting a bit out of control, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s just a laugh.’ Archie spoke a little too emphatically, as if it wasn’t just Tom he was trying to convince.

Looking back, Tom sometimes found it hard to remember that throughout the ten years that Archie had been his fence, he had known him only as a voice at the end of a phone line. Archie had always insisted that it was safer that way. For both of them.

Tom still remembered his anger when Archie had broken his own rule the previous year, back when they were both still in the game, tracking him down to convince him to follow through on a job. And yet from that first, difficult meeting, a friendship had developed. A friendship that was still finding its way, perhaps, as they both struggled to overcome a life built around suspicion and fear, but a friendship nonetheless, and one that Tom increasingly valued.

‘Besides, I need a bit of excitement now and then,’ Archie continued. ‘The art recovery game, well, it’s not exactly got the buzz of the old days, has it?’

‘I thought you got out because you’d had enough of the old days.’

‘I did, I did,’ Archie conceded. ‘It’s just, well, you know…sometimes I miss it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Tom mused. ‘Sometimes, I miss it too.’

‘Dom told me about those ads in the paper, by the way.’

Tom nodded grimly. ‘Seems the FBI aren’t the only people looking for Renwick.’

‘You all right with that?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be? He deserves everything that’s coming to him.’

They had left the market and were making their way down Park Street towards Archie’s car. Although the pub on the corner was busy, the crowds soon thinned out away from the main market and Tom was relieved that it was easier to make himself heard now. They walked past a succession of small warehouses, the faded names of earlier, now forgotten enterprises still just about visible under the accumulated grime.

Archie reached for his packet of cigarettes and lit one. Smoking was a relatively new vice. Tom put it down to his missing the buzz of the underworld. Archie put it down to the stress of being honest.

‘Did you find what you were after in the States?’

‘More or less,’ Archie replied. From the way his eyes flashed to the ground, Tom sensed that he didn’t really want to talk about it. ‘How was Prague? Worth following up?’

‘Maybe. You ever heard of a painter called Bellak?’

‘Bellak? Karel Bellak?’

‘That’s him.’ Tom had long since ceased to be amazed by Archie’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the art market, painting especially.

‘Yeah, course I’ve heard of him. What do you want to know?’

‘Is this one of his?’

Tom reached into his pocket and withdrew the photograph the rabbi had given him. Archie studied it for a few seconds.

‘Could be.’ He handed it back. ‘Bleak palette, heavy brushstrokes, slightly dodgy perspective. Of course, I’ve never actually seen one in the flesh. As far as I’m aware, they were all destroyed.’

‘That’s what I told the rabbi,’ Tom said. ‘That the Nazis are said to have burnt them all. I just couldn’t remember why.’

Archie took a long drag before answering.

‘Bellak was a journeyman artist. Competent, but, as you can see, no great talent. A portrait here, a landscape there, basically whatever paid that month’s bar bill. Then in 1937 an ambitious SS officer commissioned him to paint Himmler’s daughter Gudrun as a gift for his master.’

‘But wasn’t Bellak Jewish?’

‘As it turned out, yes. But by then a grateful Himmler had hung the portrait in his office on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin and even commissioned a second painting. When he discovered the truth, he had the SS officer shot and Bellak arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Then he ordered that every last one of Bellak’s works was to be tracked down and disposed of.’

‘Clearly, some survived,’ Tom said. ‘This one was stolen a few days ago.’

‘Why bother pinching that? The frame they had it in was probably worth more than the painting.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe because he was Jewish,’ Tom said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should have seen the place.’ Tom was surprised at the anger in his voice. ‘Someone had done a real number on it. Swastikas and graffiti sprayed all over the walls. Children’s drawings from a local death camp torn to shreds, as if they were trying to make confetti.’

‘Bastards,’ Archie muttered, flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter. ‘And the painting?’

‘Sliced out of its frame and taken with them.’

‘But what would they want with it?’

‘That’s what I’ve been wondering.’

‘Unless…’

‘Unless what?’

Overhead, a train crashed its way towards London Bridge and Archie waited until the raucous clanking had subsided before answering.

‘Unless the painting was what this was all about. Unless they were trying to be clever by disguising an old-fashioned robbery as some sort of anti-Semitic attack.’

‘Exactly,’ Tom said, reassured that Archie had come to the same conclusion as him. ‘So I made some calls. And from what I can work out, it seems that over the last year or so there have been six thefts of alleged Bellak paintings from various private homes and collections across Europe.’

‘Six? I’d no idea that many had survived.’

‘Well, they’re not exactly the sort of thing anyone would bother cataloguing, are they? Even now, no one’s managed to join the dots. The cases have just stuck with the local police in each area. The insurance companies haven’t got involved because the pictures aren’t worth anything. I only found out because I knew who to ask.’

‘Someone’s going to a hell of a lot of trouble to steal a bunch of supposedly worthless paintings.’ A pause. ‘Tom? You listening?’ Archie looked up at him questioningly.

‘Don’t turn round,’ Tom said in a low voice, ‘but I think we’re being followed.’

SIX

Black Pine Mountains, nr Malta, Idaho

5th January – 5.34 a.m.

‘What’s the latest from inside the compound?’ Special Agent Paul Viggiano spoke over the background noise of technicians and ringing telephones, a trim muscular figure in his blue wind-breaker, FBI stamped in large yellow letters across his back.

Bailey, sitting at the kitchen table of the cabin they had commandeered the previous evening as their operational HQ, was the first to speak.

‘No movement, nothing. Not a single phone call. Even the generator shut down this morning. I figure it ran out of gas. No one’s come out to fix it.’

‘What about the dogs?’ Silvio Vasquez this time, the leader of the fourteen-man FBI Hostage Rescue Team that had been assigned to the investigation, sitting to Bailey’s right.

‘What?’ Viggiano frowned. ‘What the hell’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Didn’t someone say they had dogs? Have you seen them?’

‘No.’ Bailey shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘So that’s weird, right?’ Vasquez concluded. ‘A dog’s gotta take a leak.’

‘When did it last snow?’ Viggiano asked. Bailey noticed that he had found some loose matches and was arranging them into neat parallel lines as he spoke.

‘Two days ago,’ Vasquez answered.

‘And there are no footprints? You’re seriously saying no one has stepped outside that farmhouse for two days?’ Peering over, Bailey could see that he had rearranged the matches into a square.

‘Not unless they can fly,’ Bailey confirmed. ‘And that includes the dogs.’

‘I still say you boys have screwed up big time.’

It was the local sheriff’s turn to speak. A tubby man with ginger hair and a closely trimmed moustache, Sheriff Hennessy seemed to be in a permanent sweat, the perspiration beading on his pink forehead and cheeks like condensation on glass.

‘I know these people,’ he continued, the top of his clip-on tie losing itself in the fleshy folds of his neck. ‘They’re law-abiding, God-fearing folk. Patriots.’

‘So you say,’ Bailey began, feeling the resentment welling inside him. ‘But they happen to be on a federal blacklist for suspected links to the Aryan Nations and the Klan.’

Bailey saw Viggiano give a slight shake of the head, warning him to back off. ‘Now, Sheriff, it’s true we don’t know for sure that these people have done anything wrong,’ Viggiano resumed in a conciliatory tone, ‘but we do know that three days ago an exhibit was stolen from the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland. We know that whoever took it left no physical evidence that we’ve been able to find.’

‘Apart from the security guard they strung up like a hunk of meat in cold storage,’ Bailey couldn’t help himself from adding.

‘We also know,’ Viggiano continued as if he hadn’t heard him, ‘that our Salt Lake office got a call yesterday suggesting these law-abiding patriots of yours were involved.’

‘I know all that,’ Hennessy said, dabbing his brow with a paper napkin taken from the dispenser at the side of the table. ‘But any crack-head could have made that call. It don’t prove nothing.’

‘It proves that the caller knew about the theft. With the press blackout the NSA have imposed, the only people outside of law enforcement agencies who could know about that are the people who did it. So this is a lead, Sheriff, and we’re going to follow up whether you agree with it or not.’

Hennessy slumped back into his chair, muttering under his breath. Bailey smiled, feeling somewhat the better for his capitulation.

‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked.

‘Well, I’m not sitting on my ass till these jokers run out of water and crackers,’ Viggiano declared. ‘We’re going in. Today.’

There was a murmur of approval from around the table, Hennessy excepted. ‘But I want to keep this simple,’ Viggiano continued. ‘We’ve got no reason to assume things will get ugly, so we keep the Humvees under cover and the choppers on the ground. Hopefully we won’t need them. Vasquez?’

Vasquez got to his feet and leant over the table. His face was dark and pockmarked, his lank black hair tucked under an FBI baseball cap which he wore back to front, his dark eyes glowing with excitement.

‘The Sheriff’s men have put road blocks here and here –’ he indicated two roads on the map spread out in front of them – ‘blocking all routes in and out of the compound.’ ‘I want SWAT teams here, here and here, in the trees on the high ground to cover the windows. First sign of any hostile activity once my guys are inside the compound, they put down covering fire while we fall back to the RV point here.’

‘You got it,’ said Viggiano.

‘The two HRT teams will come in from the front and the rear. Based on the blueprints, we estimate we’ll have the main building secured in about three minutes. Then it’s over to you.’

‘Good,’ said Viggiano as Vasquez sat down. ‘Now remember, when this thing goes down, I want it done by the numbers. No exceptions. There are families in there – women, kids.’ He pointed at the pile of manila folders containing photos and profiles of all the people the FBI had identified as living in the building. ‘So we knock on the door nice and easy. We ask to come inside. Any sign that this is more than a plain vanilla secure-and-search operation, we pull back. The last thing I – the Bureau can afford right now is another high-profile hostage situation. Besides, if it gets hot, the DC brass will want to handle it themselves. They always do.’

Vasquez nodded his agreement.

‘You got it.’

‘Okay then.’ Viggiano slapped the table. ‘Let’s move out. There’s a shit-load to do, and I want to hit this place after lunch.’

SEVEN

Borough Market, Southwark, London

5th January – 12.47 p.m.

‘Followed? You sure?’ Archie asked.

‘Tracksuit, bomber jacket and white trainers. Noticed him glancing over at us five minutes ago. Just saw his reflection in that van’s rear window about thirty yards back.’

‘We’re nearly at the motor. We could make a run for it.’

Tom followed Archie’s gaze to his DB9 about thirty yards down the road. It was a recent purchase and, for Archie – who had always said that the cardinal rule of being a criminal was not to attract undue attention by living beyond your means – an uncharacteristic indulgence. When he had handed over the cheque, twenty years of pent-up spending frustration had been released with one cathartic swish of his pen.

‘Oh shit!’ Archie swore. A wheel clamp glowed bright yellow against the gunmetal grey bodywork. ‘They’ve only gone and bloody clamped me.’

He quickened his pace, but Tom laid a restraining hand on his arm. Something felt wrong. Behind them a man who had followed them from the market; ahead, a street sweeper whose shoes looked a little too new; parked in front of Archie’s car, a van with its windows blacked out; and the car itself conveniently immobilised. It was textbook.

‘This isn’t right,’ he breathed.

‘I see them too,’ hissed Archie. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Get out of here. Now!’

As Tom shouted, the rear doors of the van flew open and three men jumped to the ground. At the same time the street sweeper threw his broom away and swung a semi-automatic out from under his coat. Tom heard the heavy thud of fast-approaching feet from behind.

Before the sweeper could get a shot off, Archie peeled away to the left, while Tom darted right, down a small alleyway that emerged on to a narrow lane bordered by a wire fence. Grabbing the galvanised mesh, he hauled himself up its shuddering face, the metal clanging noisily. He was on the point of vaulting over to the other side when he felt a hand close around his left ankle.

The man who had followed them from the market had somehow managed to catch up with him and was now hanging off his leg, trying to drag him to the ground. Instead of trying to shake him off, Tom lowered himself slightly until his feet were level with the man’s head and then kicked out, freeing his foot from the man’s grasp and striking him across the chin. With a strangled gasp, the man fell to the ground.

Tom swung himself over the fence into a strip of wasteland that had been turned into a temporary car park for the market. He heard the clang of metal behind him and saw that two of the men from the van had arrived at the fence and were clambering up it.

At least they hadn’t shot him, Tom thought as he sprinted out of the car park, narrowly avoiding a car that was turning in, and headed back towards the market. If they’d wanted him dead, whoever they were, they could have taken him right there, through the fence. Clearly they had other plans.

At that moment a fork-lift truck loaded with market produce swung out of a hidden turning ahead of him. Tom jinked round it, the driver slamming on his brakes just in time to avoid hitting him.

‘Watch it, moron!’ the driver yelled, leaning on the horn to emphasise his point.

Tom ignored him, leaping over the spilled vegetable crates and then plunging back into the market. As soon as he was inside, he slowed to a walk, snaking in and out of the lines of shoppers. He knew that he would be safer in a busy place and hoped that Archie had had the good sense to come to the same conclusion. When he judged he was far enough inside, he stopped next to a wine stall and glanced back over his shoulder. His pursuers had reached the market entrance and were scanning the crowd for him. Both had their right hands tucked inside their coats where each was presumably concealing a gun.

Tom turned abruptly and slammed into a man carrying a case of red wine, knocking it out of his hands. The box landed with a crash, the bottles shattering noisily. Tom glanced back towards the entrance and saw that the men, alerted by the noise, were already fighting their way over to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said, pushing past.

‘Hey!’ the man shouted after him. ‘Get back here!’

But Tom didn’t stop. Dropping to his knees, he crawled under a stall, then ducked under two more until he was a couple of aisles away from the site of the collision. From the cover of a pyramid of olive oil drums, he checked the progress of the two men. They were standing by the box of shattered wine bottles, gesturing frantically. They’d lost him.

He cautiously made his way towards the north exit, attaching himself to a group of tourists who were chattering excitedly about the whole deer they’d seen strung up on one of the stalls. As they left the market, he broke away, heading for the main road and the river.

With a screech of brakes, a large black Range Rover pulled up alongside him. Tom turned on his heel but slipped, the road surface rendered treacherous by the wet cardboard boxes, lettuce leaves and plastic bags that had been generated by the morning’s trading. Before he could scramble back to his feet, the rear passenger door flew open and he caught a glimpse of who was sitting in the back seat.

Archie.

The front passenger window retracted a few inches and a pale hand appeared in the crack clutching a government identity badge.

‘Enough fun and games, Kirk. Get in.’

EIGHT

5th January – 12.56 p.m.

The driver’s square, close-shaved head emerged from a thick grey woollen polo neck. He flicked his eyes up to the mirror and then back to the road, a smile playing around the corner of his mouth as the car accelerated away.

The man in the passenger seat peered back over his shoulder and nodded at them both.

‘I’m William Turnbull.’

He extended his hand back over his shoulder towards them as he spoke, but they both ignored it, staring at him in stony silence. From what he could see of Turnbull, Tom estimated that he must weigh about eighteen stone, little of it muscle. He appeared to be quite young though, about thirty-five, give or take a few years, and was dressed in an urban camouflage of jeans and an open-necked shirt that barely contained the roll of fat around the base of his neck.

‘Sorry about…that.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the market. ‘I guessed that you probably wouldn’t come if I just asked, so I brought some help. I didn’t quite expect you to make us –’

‘Let me guess,’ Tom interrupted angrily. ‘Somebody’s got knocked off and you think we might know something about it? Am I right? How many times have I got to tell you people, we don’t know anything and, even if we did, we wouldn’t say.’

‘This has nothing to do with any job,’ was Turnbull’s unsmiling response. ‘And I’m not the police.’

‘Special Branch, Interpol, Flying Squad, PC bloody Plod…’ Archie shrugged. ‘Whatever you want to call yourselves, the answer’s still the same. And this is harassment. We’re clean and you know it.’

‘I work for the Foreign Office.’ Turnbull flashed his identity card at them again.

‘The Foreign Office?’ Archie said incredulously. ‘Well, that’s a new one.’

‘Not really,’ said Tom quietly. ‘He’s a spook.’

Turnbull smiled.

‘We prefer “intelligence services”. In my case, Six.’

Six, Tom knew, was how insiders referred to MI6, the agency that dealt with overseas threats to British national security. It wasn’t the sort of organisation Tom wanted to get caught up in. Not again. He’d done five years in the CIA, seen how they worked, and had only just lived to regret it.

‘So what do you want?’

‘Your help,’ came the toneless reply as the car slowed to a halt at a set of lights.

Archie gave a short, dismissive laugh.

‘What sort of help?’ Tom asked quietly. Until he knew exactly what he was up against, he was forcing himself to play along.

‘As much as you want to give.’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Tom said. ‘None.’ Archie nodded his agreement. ‘Not unless you know something I don’t…’ People like Turnbull never made a move unless they had an edge, some sort of leverage. The key was to flush it out.

‘No reason.’ Turnbull smiled. ‘No threats. No phoney deals. No “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” If you help us it will be because, by the time I’ve finished telling you what I’ve got, you’re going to want to.’

‘Come on, Tom, we don’t have to listen to this shit. They’ve got nothing on us. Let’s get out of here,’ Archie pleaded. But Tom hesitated. Something in Turnbull’s voice had piqued his curiosity, even though he knew Archie was probably right.

‘I want to hear him out.’

The lights changed to green and the car drew away again.

‘Good.’

Turnbull released his seatbelt and turned to face them. He had a flat, featureless face, his cheeks rounded and fleshy, his chin almost disappearing into his neck. His brown eyes were small and set close together, while his long hair parted in two wild cow licks in the middle of his head and fell like curtains which he had draped behind his ears.

In many ways, he looked like the most unlikely spy Tom had ever seen. The best ones always did. Certainly he had an easygoing confidence that Tom had observed in other field agents in the past, and good agents at that.

‘Have you ever heard of a group called Kristall Blade?’ Turnbull asked.

‘No,’ said Tom.

‘No reason you should have, I suppose. They’re a small band of extremists with loose ties to the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands or NPD, the most active neo-Nazi political group in Germany. They’re supposedly run by a former German Army captain called Dmitri Müller, although no one’s ever seen him to confirm it. To be honest, we don’t know a huge amount about them.’

Tom shrugged. ‘And?’

‘And from the little we do know, these aren’t your regular skinheads, cruising around the suburbs looking for immigrants to beat up. They’re a sophisticated paramilitary organisation who are still fighting a war that the rest of us think ended in 1945.’

‘Hence the name?’ It was more a statement than a question. Tom knew his history well enough to guess that Kristall Blade must have drawn their inspiration from Kristallnacht – the fateful night in late 1938 when Nazi-inspired attacks on Jewish businesses had left the streets of Germany’s cities littered with broken glass.

‘Exactly,’ Turnbull said eagerly. ‘They used to fund their activities by hiring themselves out as freelance hit men behind the Iron Curtain, but these days they’re into small-scale drug and protection rackets. They’re suspected of involvement in a range of guerrilla-style terrorist atrocities aimed primarily at Jewish communities in Germany and Austria. There are no more than ten or twenty active members, with a wider group of supporters and sympathisers perhaps a hundred strong. But that’s what makes them so dangerous. They slip under the radar of most law-enforcement agencies and are almost impossible to pin down.’

‘Like I said, I’ve never heard of them.’

Turnbull continued, undeterred. ‘Nine days ago, two men broke into St Thomas’ Hospital and murdered three people. Two of them were medical staff – witnesses, most likely. The third was an eighty-one-year-old patient by the name of Andreas Weissman. He was an Auschwitz survivor who moved here after the war.’ Tom was silent, still uncertain where this was leading and what it had to do with him. ‘They amputated Weissman’s left arm at the elbow while he was still alive. He died of a heart attack.’

‘They did what?’ Archie sat forward at this latest piece of information.

‘Cut his arm off. His left forearm.’

‘What the hell for?’ Tom this time.

‘That’s where we want your help.’ Turnbull smiled, revealing a disconcerting set of overlapping and crooked teeth.

‘My help?’ Tom frowned. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’