The Black Sun
High adventure, mind–blowing suspense. Tom Kirk, the world’s greatest art thief, is back on another life–threatening mission. Now available in e-book format for the first time.James Twining’s second Tom Kirk thriller - available in e-book format for the first time.In London, an Auschwitz survivor is murdered in his hospital bed, his killers making off with a macabre trophy – his severed left arm.In Fort Mead, Maryland, a vicious gang breaks into the NSA museum and steals a World War II Enigma machine, lynching the guard who happens to cross their path.Meanwhile, in Prague, a frenzied and mindless anti-Semitic attack on a synagogue culminates in the theft of a seemingly worthless painting by a little known Czech artist called Karel Bellak.A year has passed since Tom Kirk, the world's greatest art thief, decided to put his criminal past behind him and embark on a new career, on the right side of the law . Then three major thefts occur, and suddenly Tom is confronted with a deadly mystery and a sinister face from the past.
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JAMES TWINING
The Black Sun
To my parents and my sisterThank you for everything
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.Sir Isaac Newton, Letter to Hooke, 1675
This novel is inspired by the incredible true story of the Hungarian Gold Train and its desperate journey across a ravaged continent in the dying days of the Second World War. When it was eventually discovered by US troops in a remote Austrian tunnel, it was found to contain several billion dollars’ worth of stolen gold, art and other treasures.
All descriptions and background information provided on works of art, artists, thefts, architecture, Nazi uniforms, rituals and objects are similarly accurate. Descriptions of the workings of the Enigma machine have been simplified.
Contents
Extract from the Völkischer Beobachter,
official journal of the Nazi party
(Edition A No. 270 of 27th September 1934)
Today the old defiant Wewelsburg Castle, situated in a historical location in the old land of the Saxons, has passed into the care of the SS of the NSDAP and is to serve, in future, as the Reich Leaders’ School of the SS.
As a result, Wewelsburg Castle, which can look back on a long and glorious role in German history, has also been assigned a place of historical importance in the Third Reich.
For it is here that the men are to be instructed in a world view and beliefs as well as to receive physical instruction, whose calling it is to assume the office of leaders in the SS, and who are to march forward as examples and leaders before the nucleus of our healthy German youth.
Extract from The Spoils of World War II by
Kenneth D. Alford
On May 16, 1945, the 3rd Infantry Division, 15th Regiment, A Company, commanded by Lieutenant Joseph A. Mercer, entered the Tauern Tunnel 60 miles south of Salzburg. To their astonishment, they discovered a partially concealed train crammed with gold and other valuables…The 1945 estimated value of the contents of the train was $206 million – which would translate into several billion dollars today.
The broad mass of a nation…will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
St Thomas’ Hospital, London
27th December – 2.59 a.m.
Ash cash.
That’s what medical students call it. Every cremation or burial release form requires a doctor’s signature, and every signature earns its donor a small fee. Death could be good business for a doctor who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.
To Dr John Bennett, however, shouldering the icy rain as he walked briskly over to the main hospital building from the ugly hulk of the accommodation block, the prospect of a few extra quid was small compensation for being paged at three a.m. Very small. As if to emphasise the hour, Big Ben, its face suspended in the air like a small moon on the other side of the river, chose that moment to chime, each heavy, deadened strike shaking Bennett a little further awake.
He stepped out of the cold into the warm blast of the heaters positioned in the entrance vestibule, the sudden change in temperature making his glasses fog. He took them off and wiped them clean on his shirt, the moisture streaking across the lens.
A red LED display glowed into life overhead as the lift made its way down to him, the declining numbers scrolling rhythmically across the panel. Eventually, there was a muffled sound of machinery as the lift slowed and the door opened. He stepped inside, noting as the lift lurched upwards that the bronzed mirrors made him look healthier than he felt.
A few moments later, he walked out on to the ward, the wet soles of his shoes faintly marking the scarlet lino. The corridor ahead of him was dark, the lights dimmed apart from the emergency exit signs that glared green above the doors at either end.
‘Doctor?’ A woman’s voice rang out through the gloom. He slipped his glasses back on to identify the approaching figure.
