The Black Sun Read Free

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    “A Jewish artist. Not well known, but dear to us because he lived here in Prague—until the Nazis murdered him. He was called Karel Bellak.”
    “Bellak?” Tom drilled him with a questioning look.
    “You’ve heard of him?” the rabbi asked, clearly surprised.
    “I’ve heard the name,” Tom said slowly. “I’m just not sure where. I’ll need to speak to my colleague back in London to be sure I’m thinking of the same person. Do you have a photo of the painting?”
    “Of course.” Rabbi Spiegel produced a photograph from his pocket and handed it to Tom. “We made a few copies of this one a few years ago for the insurance company. They told us the painting wasn’t worth much, but to us it was priceless.”
    “May I?” Tom asked.
    “Keep it. Please.”
    Tom slipped the photograph into his overcoat.
    “From what I remember of Bellak . . .” Tom began, pausing as two Czech policemen stepped into the room and peered around at the damage.
    “Go on.”
    “Is there anywhere a little more private we can go?”
    “Why?”
    Tom tilted his head toward the policemen.
    “Oh.” The rabbi sounded disappointed. “Very well. Come with me.”
    He led Tom back down the stairs and across the main body of the synagogue to a thick wooden door that he unbolted. It gave onto a small open space, the oppressive cinder gray walls of the surrounding apartment blocks looming down on all sides. A few trees reached into the small window of gray sky overhead, their leafless branches creaking in the wind and occasionally scraping their skeletal fingers against the stifling walls. Ahead of them, the ground undulated in a series of unexpected mounds and dips and was peppered with dark shapes.
    “What is this place?” Tom asked in a whisper.
    “The old Jewish cemetery,” the rabbi answered.
    It suddenly dawned on Tom that the dark shapes in front of him were in fact gravestones, thousands of them in all shapes and sizes, some leaning against others for support, some lying prostrate as if they had been sprinkled like seeds from a great height. They were jammed so close to each other that the ground, muddy and wet where the morning’s frost had melted, was barely visible between them. Tom was certain that if he were to topple one, the rest would fall like a field of overgrown dominoes.
    “For hundreds of years this was the only place the city allowed us to bury our dead. So each time it filled up we had no choice but to put down a layer of earth and start again. Some say there are eleven levels in all.”
    Tom knelt down at the stone nearest to him. A swastika had been etched on the stone’s peeling surface. He looked up at the rabbi, who gave a resigned shrug.
    “The war may have ended long ago, but for some of us the struggle continues,” the rabbi said, shaking his head. “Now, Mr. Kirk, tell me—what do you know about Karel Bellak?”

CHAPTER THREE
    NATIONAL CRYPTOLOGIC MUSEUM, FORT MEADE,

MARYLAND
    January 3—2:26 a.m.
    It was a little game he played, something to pass the time on his rounds. As he came upon each exhibit he would test himself against the display’s information cards to see how much he could remember. After twenty years he was pretty much word-perfect. First there was the Myer flag system, a line-of-sight communication tool devised in the Civil War by an army doctor who went on to form the Signal Corps. The glass cases held the original flags, battle-torn and stained with age.
    Satisfied, he walked on, his rubber soles squeaking rhythmically on the floor like a metronome marking time, the polished toe caps of his boots glowing with a white sheen from the dimmed overhead lights.
    Al Travis had been a guard at the National Cryptologic Museum since it had first opened. He liked it there. He’d finally found a place where he felt he was part of something special, something important. After all, technically he worked for the NSA, the agency responsible for protecting Uncle Sam’s information