The Fountain of Youth (Order of the Black Sun Book 15) Read online

  He lifted Nina’s small, limp body into his arms and ordered Clara to prepare the machine for transfusion. Mrs. Patterson, having been wounded in the leg, stood up and shoved Clara aside. “The least we can do is try, right?” she told Purdue. “I’m not promising anything, but if we can get a few more pints in she would be able to travel with you.”

  “Mrs. Patterson, you are a goddess,” Purdue sniffed.

  “I’m no doctor, but even nurses have a duty to provide medical help,” she replied. “Now, get hold of your people on the other side to have a doctor on stand-by at the airport.”

  Purdue sat next to Nina, using his tablet to contact Sam while Mrs. Patterson attempted to save Nina with what she could find. She was performing her tasks in the very room where Prof. Ebner had subjected her and her sister to his sick experiments, but she did not care. While Purdue conversed hastily with his friend on the screen, Mrs. Patterson was doing a good job of administering the butterfly needle to Nina’s flimsy vein. She paid no attention to Clara, who was confined to the shower cubicle where Ebner used to bathe his daughters in pesticides.

  Chapter 29

  “Where is he, Jeeves?” Lieutenant Campbell asked the butler.

  “Excuse me, sir, but my name is Charles Amberson. Not Jeeves,” Charles corrected the investigator.

  “Are you being a prick, Charles?” Campbell asked, sounding a lot like Charles’ old football pals.

  “I believe I am introducing myself, sir,” he told Campbell.

  “Christ, it’s like talking to Mr. Spock. Are you aware that you are obstructing justice by refusing the police access to this mansion?” the lieutenant growled at the front door of Wrichtishousis, where Charles was deterring his entry in the middle of the night.

  “No sir,” Charles replied. “I am under no obligation to allow access without a warrant.”

  Lieutenant Campbell realized that his usual intimidating manner was not going to fly this time. The butler was correct and the lieutenant knew that he would not get any help unless he used another approach. And he could freeze to death in the cold night air on top of it.

  “Listen, Charles. I understand that you are only doing your job, but I have to impress upon you the ugly repercussions for your boss if he ditches us. All I ask is his whereabouts,” Campbell sighed.

  “To arrest him?” Charles asked, secretly enjoying his power trip over the cop.

  “I can’t arrest him yet. We don’t have enough evidence to bring him in, you see? You may as well tell me, because he’s being targeted by the very people who tried to kill him at the Sinclair Facility. Please, Charles, this is no bullshit. I need to know where David is because they already do. If I can’t send Interpol to his location, they’ll kill him and walk away,” the rugged lieutenant explained with no small measure of shameless pleading.

  “Lieutenant Campbell, I will lose my job,” Charles persisted.

  “Well, when they shoot your boss in the head you’ll be out of a job anyway,” Campbell said, shrugging. “It looks like you really have no choice, son. We’re both on David’s side. We have to save Nina Gould and we have to save him and we have to do it before they catch up to them, do you understand the weightiness of this issue?”

  Charles sighed and mulled it over. He could feel Lily’s eyes burning into his back and he knew that she was easier to crack than he was.

  Charles’ phone rang.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he apologized, and answered the phone. It was Purdue.

  “Sir, Lieutenant Campbell is here as we speak,” he reported with his back to the large investigator in the doorway. Still, Charles kept a keen eye on the unwelcome guest using the mirrors in the lobby. He kept his voice low, but he could tell that Campbell knew who he had on the line. Suddenly the butler looked utterly surprised. “Of course, sir. Please hold.”

  With the wind properly out of his sails the flabbergasted butler walked over to Campbell and handed him the phone. “It’s for you, sir.”

  Looking as perplexed as the butler, Campbell took the call.

  “Purdue?”

  Charles waited patiently for his master to complete the call, feeling a right twit. He pretended to look out over the porch furniture while he waited, trying to eavesdrop, but he heard little more than muttering from the police investigator who paced the driveway.

  At last the cop came smiling, returning the phone. To Charles’ surprise, he was not gloating. Instead he passed it on, “Talk to your boss quick, alright? Hurry, we have plans to make.”

  “Listen, Charles,” Purdue said, “I’ve asked Campbell to alert Interpol about Guterman. His lackey here is going to let him know that Nina and I will be traveling to the Faroe Islands post haste. We’re going to bait her into it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need you to call my flight crew to charter a flight to Vágar Airport, Faroe Islands with my private jet,” Purdue instructed as Charles ran into the library room next to the dining hall.

  “Sir, just one moment, please. I’m getting a pen and paper,” he puffed as his polished Italians clapped on the marble floor. “Right! Faroe Islands airport. Shall I send the jet to collect you at the nearest airfield in Hampshire?”

  “No, no, Charles,” Purdue rushed. “You know how I always tell you to use initiative?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Today is not that day, alright?” Purdue said hurriedly. “Just take down the information and execute the orders. Just for today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Campbell smiled as he watched the red-faced youth scribble down what he already knew. He gave the lad a quick wave to announce his departure and hoped he would get the instructions right and not foul it up for everyone involved.

  Chapter 30

  Purdue had made the arrangements, but he was no calmer. Nina was in a bad way, wheezing and shaking, regardless of the blankets they’d covered her with. He was talking in her ear and holding her hand while she slipped in and out of consciousness.

  “We can’t administer fluids or blood too quickly, Mr. Purdue,” Mrs. Patterson advised. “It would be deadlier than her current threats.”

  She didn’t notice the menacing frame of Clara Rutherford stealing towards her from behind, holding an old heart monitor box from Prof. Ebner’s collection above her head. With his eyes on Nina, Purdue also did not see her come. As she aimed the steel box at Mrs. Patterson a loud gunshot clapped from nowhere, propelling the assailant backward from the force of the second and third slugs that dissembled Clara’s youthful looks in an instant.

  Purdue’s jaw dropped and a cowering Mrs. Patterson held onto him for support as Mrs. Cotswald lowered her gun. “Stay away from my daughter, you bitch.”

  “Mrs. Cotswald? You are a godsend! Holy shit! I can’t believe what just happened!” Purdue exclaimed in amazement. It seemed to him that whatever was in the Fountains of Youth not only prolonged youthful regeneration, but also kept courageous attitude intact. “You ladies are something, I tell you that,” he huffed, on edge from the whole night’s negative excitement.

  But the elderly ladies heard nothing. They were locked in embrace, weeping at their strange reunion after a lifetime of being apart. “You know, I’ve never called anyone ‘Mum’ before,” Mrs. Patterson admitted. “Rather odd to start now, right?”

  Mrs. Cotswald, overjoyed at being with one of her daughters again, shook her head and chuckled through the tears. “I’ve searched for you for so long, my darling. Better late than never!”

  “She isn’t going to make it, Mr. Purdue,” Mrs. Patterson warned. “She’s lost too much blood already.”

  “I will not accept that!” he barked. “I will give every drop I have to save her. The cancer she suffers from is my doing and I will not let her die!”

  “My God, what did they do to you?” Mrs. Cotswald asked the emaciated Nina, who’s eyes barely looked at her.

  “They harvested…m-my blo—,” Nina spoke through arid lips. “Lita’s blood…”

  “
Lita Røderick? You were the vial everyone in the Order was speaking of?” Mrs. Cotswald gasped. “The Vial is a person? God, that is sick, even for them!”

  “The Vial?” Purdue asked.

  “In the Order, ever since Hitler promised my dance instructor that I would ‘stay pretty forever,’ there’d been myths all over the globe about the Fountains of Youth that contained such regenerative properties that those who drank it or bathed in it would defy aging,” Mrs. Cotswold explained. “I just never thought they really used people to carry the genetically engineered blueprint!”

  “Lita?” Purdue reminded her.

  The elderly woman looked annoyed. “Lita was a monster, not a person.”

  “Nina was almost killed while we locked horns with Lita’s imps, and that was when they transfused her blood into Nina’s body,” Purdue filled her in.

  “I’d heard the story, but thought it was a farce. Who could believe that there was a Fountain of Youth with blood capable of impeding cell division, in other words, to thwart aging as far as science permitted?” She placed her hand on Nina’s clammy forehead and revealed, “You, my dear, are the Fountain of Youth the Order has been referring to.”

  Purdue was shocked. “But she has cancer. That’s all about rapid cell division!”

  “Yes, but had she not been The Vial of Life, the Font of Youth, the illness would have spread far quicker. Had she had normal blood, your poor lady friend here would have perished months ago,” Mrs. Cotswald clarified. She smiled sweetly and took Mrs. Patterson’s hand. “And here I was, looking in all the wrong places for mountain springs and rock fountains all these years, hoping to put a hold on aging until I’ve seen my beloved daughters.”

  Nina drew a deep breath and groaned out a few words. “She says we must hurry up because G-Goo…no, Guter-m…”

  “Guterman?” Purdue asked quickly.

  “Aye,” Nina said. “Coming to kill you s-s-soon.”

  “Who told you that, deary?” Mrs. Patterson asked Nina.

  “Gertie. Gertie says…w-we…” Nina passed out.

  “Who the hell is Gertie?” Purdue asked, hoping that it was not one more opponent to evade.

  Both the old ladies stood dumbstruck, until Mrs. Patterson finally said, “Gertrud was my sister. She drowned in the fountain outside many years ago.”

  Mrs. Cotswald held back her tears. She hadn’t known that her other daughter had died before she could meet her. Mrs. Patterson smiled and held her mother’s hand. “Well, it looks like she’s still hanging around with us, hey…Mum?”

  As if possessed suddenly, Mrs. Cotswald rolled up her sleeves, looking absolutely focused. “Anna, dear, care to run a tab for Dr. Gould from the Bar of Cotswald? I hear the elixir behind that bar is downright surreal.”

  Purdue cried out an exclamation of joy!

  “Coming right up, Dr. Gould,” Mrs. Patterson smiled and made haste to get her mother’s virtually immortal donation to Nina.”

  “Don’t you have to be the same type?” Purdue panicked.

  “Not to worry. The blood used in engineering super soldiers like Lita Røderick came from a single source in 1945. Yours truly,” Mrs. Cotswald boasted. “If Lita’s blood was flowing in Nina’s, it’s safe to use mine.”

  “So you are the original Fountain of Youth,” Mrs. Patterson praised her mother.

  “I’m very concerned about your injury, Mrs. Patterson,” Purdue said.

  “It’s not near any major arteries, love. First things first, right?” she told the amicable young man.

  Nina’s eyes fluttered open somewhat a few minutes into the new transfusion. Before her sat a very graceful elderly woman who looked no older than seventy years. Her hair was on her shoulders, lush and shiny gray. She smiled at Nina with big blue eyes. “Feeling better yet?”

  “Aye. Thank you so much, ma’am,” Nina said, smiling as Purdue wet her lips.

  “Call me Ami,” the lady said. “But don’t thank me yet. You’re not out of the woods yet. We’re just keeping you ticking so that you can make it to the Faroe Islands.”

  Nina fell asleep again, unaware that the three people with her were rushing to get her out of there before Guterman and his animals came to assassinate them all.

  Chapter 31

  Christa was beyond furious. She’d drugged Daniel and locked him in the house so that he could not get in her way when she and Clara annihilated the snooping buyer and the threat from Edinburgh. When she came calling on Clara in the archive room she’d found it empty, with the secret door open. A sick feeling of defeat crawled over her spine and curled up in her stomach. Christa Smith stopped dead in her tracks when she found the bloody corpse of her daughter, Clara, gunned down by three bullets in strategic places.

  But Christa did not weep for her child. She readily became incensed that she’d lost the Vial she’d been trying to locate for so long, her last chance to reclaim her fading youth. Marrying Daniel had yielded nothing but an annoyingly kind husband who worshipped her to boredom. Until he included her in his will as benefactor to inherit St. Vincent’s Academy, she could not waste him. What was the point of being married to him if the fountain on his property had run dry? Well, Christa Smith had hoped that digging a little deeper would redeem the former splendor of the stream.

  Now she, too, had lost a daughter.

  “Anna, I know you sprung that nosy bastard from my guestroom,” she sneered out loud under the soothing disturbance of the rain. “And when we catch up, you will not grow a minute older, you old hag!” In Clara’s limp hand Christa found her cell phone. By the looks of it Clara had been busy writing a text message to her mother before she perished.

  ‘anna cotsw purdue Vial tt Faroes sorryyyyyyyyyyy’

  Christa looked up at her daughter’s unrecognizable face as she took her phone. “I’ll miss you, sweetie,” she said softly, draping one of the operation sheets over her. “At least you were good for something in the end.”

  She stormed out to her car and in the cracking rumble of the storm made a call to Guterman.

  “It’s me. Did you take care of Argyle?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I’m having her snuffed by a police officer next week when she shows her traitorous face in court,” he replied. “But not that I need to explain my plans to the likes of you, Dr. Smith. There are more important issues to be discussed. Is the Vial tapped out?”

  “I need you to not freak out. I have a lead,” she said.

  “A lead to what?” he barked. “I knew you would fuck this up.”

  Christa took a deep breath. Guterman was not someone to talk back to, even when he was wrong. “Guterman, I know exactly where they are going. Meet me at Farnborough in two hours and bring your passport.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked, sounding a bit more content.

  “I’ll meet you when we land there. Your reputation does not allow me to be generous with information,” she admitted. “Your pilot will have the coordinates. See you there.”

  “Smart woman,” he approved. “No wonder you’ve survived the leech pond this long. I’ll see you there. And Christa, don’t make me wait.”

  ***

  When Purdue’s pilot announced that they were entering Faroese air space the billionaire could not help but smile. Nina’s pulse was strong and Anna Patterson looked confident that she would make it to Sam’s sworn wonder well.

  “You think my grandson is safe with that witch?” Ami Cotswald asked.

  “I hope so. She won’t kill him until he’s overwritten my clause in my Testament, Mum,” Anna smiled. “Until then, she’ll keep him alive. Or until I find a way to kill the cow.”

  “That wish might come sooner than you think, Mrs. Patterson,” Purdue smiled. “Guterman is following us here, and no doubt Christa is accompanying him so that they can tap Nina’s blood for good this time.”

  “How is that a good thing, deary?” Mrs. Patterson asked.

  “You’ll see,” he winked, wiping Nina’s face gently with a moist
towelette.

  After they had touched down in Vágar in the dead of night, the crew helped the Faroe Island’s ground staff move Nina from the plane to the vehicle that Sam Cleave had arranged.

  “Thanks, gentlemen,” Sam said to the ground staff after Nina was safely seated between Ami Cotswald and Anna Patterson. He and Purdue exchanged a quick handshake and embrace before the two men got into the front of the vehicle. Ami and Anna were taken by the good-looking men who introduced themselves as Sam and Heri.

  “You ready, ladies?” Sam asked.

  The naughty Mrs. Patterson was eager to answer, “Oh yes, deary. Please, go ahead and drive us.”

  Purdue laughed as Sam’s face turned red. “Go on, old boy. Time is of the essence.”

  Shortly behind them Christa’s helicopter landed. She could see Purdue’s jet taxi to the bays.

  “Get ready,” she told her four passengers, Black Sun operatives who were on retainer for unforeseen excursions like these. “We have to swoop down and retrieve the Vial before they know what hit them. In and out! Are we clear?”

  Her colleagues cocked their concealed firearms as the helicopter touched down. Briskly they rushed to Purdue’s jet to take their places under it. Oddly, there was no ground staff outside and security was wonderfully lenient, taking little notice of the new arrivals. Christa stepped out of the chopper and approached the private jet, eager to load Nina back into her craft and rip Purdue’s head off for killing her daughter.

  “Excuse me, madam?” a voice said behind her.

  “I don’t have time,” she snapped. “I have to meet those passengers when they disembark.”