The Black Sun (48 page)

Authors: James Twining

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense

BOOK: The Black Sun

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In 1997, the son of one of the German officers who had accompanied the wartime convoy from St. Petersburg to Königsberg was arrested for trying to sell a small section of the room. Although it is not known how the officer got it, this fragment remains, along with an intricately inlaid chest, the only part of the original Amber Room known to have survived

the

war.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As ever my thanks to my agents, Jonathan Lloyd and Euan Thorneycroft at Curtis Brown in London, and George Lucas at Inkwell Management in New York, for their hard work and insight.

Thank you also to my editors, Wayne Brookes and Alison Callahan, who, along with the whole sales, editorial, marketing, and creative team at HarperCollins in both the UK

and the US, have continued to work wonders for me. This novel is a real testament to your combined skill and enthusiasm, and I feel incredibly privileged and fortunate to work with you all.

In researching this novel I owe a huge debt of gratitude to three excellent books:
The
Spoils of World War II
, by Kenneth D. Alford;
The Order of the Death’s Head
, by Heinz Höhne; and
Berlin: The Downfall, 1945
, by Antony Beevor. I would also like to acknowledge the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg, Germany; the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, Maryland; and the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague.

Many people helped in the editing of this novel and in supporting me through the lonely months it took to write it, but special thanks go to Ann, Bob, and Joanna Twining; Roy, Claire, and Sarah Toft; Kate Gilmore; Jeremy Green; Anne O’Brien; Florian Reinaud;

Nico

Schwartz;

Jeremy

viii

acknowledgments

Walton; Tom Weston; and, as ever, Rod Gillett. I am also indebted to the suggestions made by Adrian Loudermilk only a few days before he was tragically killed. Victoria and Amelia, thank you for putting up with me. I love

you. You make it all worthwhile. London, October 2005

About the Author

JAMES TWINING graduated from Oxford University with a first-class degree in French literature. His first Tom Kirk adventure,
The Double Eagle
, was published with great success on both sides of the Atlantic and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.

For more on James Twining, please visit

www.JamesTwining.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

JAMES TWINING THE BLACK SUN

“There’s something for thriller fans of all types in
The Black Sun
. . . Twining weaves history, legend and lore with his keen imagination to tell his story . . . A thrill-a-page story . . . From London to St. Petersburg and on to Munich, Zurich and Westphalia in Germany,
The Black Sun
never loses speed—all the way to the story’s culmination.”

USA Today

“Gripping and suspenseful . . . This is a can’t-put-down thriller.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Tom Kirk . . . [is] heir to the throne of the twisty international thriller, a seat that has belonged to Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for more than two decades.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Twining plunges into the story on page one and rarely slows down until the finale. Fastpaced and exciting, with a bigger-than-life villain, a conflicted hero, and a solid payoff. What more does a thriller need?”

Booklist

“The perfect read for anyone . . . who mourns the passing of Robert Ludlum. A whirlwind plot . . . The sheer breathless pace of the thing will carry you along to the end.”

Birmingham Post (UK)

“If you enjoyed James Twining’s action-packed art-theft thriller
The Double Eagle
you’re sure to get a similar charge from its sequel,
The Black Sun
.”
Chicago Tribune
Praise

By James Twining

The Black Sun The Double Eagle

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE BLACK SUN. Copyright © 2006 by James Twining. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-162713-2

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