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  The Blackgaard Chronicles: Knight’s Scheme

  © 2020 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved.

  Illustrations © 2020 Focus on the Family

  A Focus on the Family book published by Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

  Focus on the Family, Adventures in Odyssey, and their accompanying logos and designs are federally registered trademarks of Focus on the Family, 8605 Explorer Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80920. The Blackgaard Chronicles is a trademark of Focus on the Family.

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of Focus on the Family.

  This book is based on Adventures in Odyssey audio drama episodes “Waylaid in the Windy City, 1 and 2”—original scripts by Paul McCusker and Phil Lollar.

  Novelization by Phil Lollar

  Editors: Larry Weeden and Brandy Bruce

  Cover design by Mike Harrigan

  Cover illustration by Gary Locke

  For Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data for this title, visit: http://www.loc.gov/help/contract-general.html.

  For manufacturing information regarding this product, please call 1-800-323-9400.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Tyndale House Publishers at [email protected], or call 1-800-323-9400.

  ISBN 978-1-58997-347-3

  ISBN 978-1-68428-275-3 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-68428-276-0 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-68428-274-6 (Apple)

  Build: 2020-06-05 17:12:36 EPUB 3.0

  For

  Bob, D. J., and Jerod

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Preview of Book Six

  Don’t miss Opening Moves, Pawn’s Play, Cross-Check, and Rook’s Ruse, books 1–4, in The Blackgaard Chronicles book series. Available from better bookstores everywhere and at www.WhitsEnd.org/Store.

  The Blackgaard Chronicles are based on the popular Adventures in Odyssey (AIO) audio drama series. Learn more at www.AIOClub.org, including how to get access to the complete library of AIO episodes, exclusive AIO radio dramas, daily devotions, and much more.

  Chapter One

  It was late. The streets were deserted, which wasn’t unusual for that part of Odyssey at that time of day, especially after what had happened there last week. A car pulled into the parking lot of what ten days ago was a thriving business and the newest hit entertainment attraction in town but was now the burned-out shell of a building.

  The car rolled across the lot and parked on the far side of the shell, out of view of the street. Its occupant, a stocky, neatly dressed man with thick, longish white hair, large round glasses, and a rather bushy white mustache shut off the engine and lights, exited the car, and headed toward the scorched ruins, moving with a slight limp.

  John Avery Whittaker thought about recent events as he walked toward what used to be Blackgaard’s Castle. Richard Maxwell, the young man who had caused the fire that destroyed it, was under arrest and locked up in jail. Maxwell had nearly died in the fire thanks to his boss, the owner and the place’s namesake, Dr. Regis Blackgaard.

  It was Dr. Blackgaard who caused Maxwell to be pinned under an arcade video game. According to Maxwell, Blackgaard and his cat then disappeared into the burning building. That’s the reason Whit was there—well, one of the reasons. He needed answers to a good many questions.

  He strode up to where the front doors of Blackgaard’s Castle used to be and then slipped through them into the smoky wreckage. Though the walls were still in pretty good condition, the ceiling was a total loss, as were all of the games and machines inside. Their blackened shells stood like tombstones, silent monuments to better days, even if they were brief.

  Whit clambered over heaps of ceiling debris and around the charred wrecks of the games and finally reached his destination: a door marked “Private.” It, too, was seared, and the sign on it now read “Pri . . te.” Whit tugged on it, and the door opened rather easily. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, slipped inside the door, and descended the stairs.

  The flames had not reached the basement, though there was still a strong smell of smoke. Water from the fire engines and hydrants had trickled down the stairs and onto the floor of the corridor that stretched before Whit, leaving the area dank.

  Both the police and fire departments had searched down here, but no trace of Blackgaard or his cat had been found in the hallway or in any of the rooms. They assumed Dr. Blackgaard had gotten out a different way upstairs, but Whit suspected otherwise. Lucy, a young friend of Whit’s who’d frequently visited Blackgaard’s Castle, had told him about an encounter she had down here and her discovery of an oddity in the wall.

  Stacked boxes on both sides of the hall formed a kind of maze. Whit maneuvered around them, checking them as he went. Most were completely empty. Then about halfway down the corridor, he came to a stack that wasn’t empty. Whit pushed the boxes over, and the top box split open. Out spilled an odd assortment of old newspapers and magazines. A quick check of the other boxes in the stack showed they contained the same. There was nothing valuable about the contents, but the boxes were heavy and could not be easily moved. It was as if they’d been stacked to hide what was behind them.

  Sure enough, when Whit examined the wall behind the stack, he confirmed Lucy’s discovery: the outline of a door. It was very faint; you would have to be really looking for it to see it or run your fingers over it, as Lucy had, to find it. But moving the boxes revealed more: The door and a bit of the wall around it had been recently plastered.

  Whit cleared away the toppled stack and examined the door. It had no knob or handle. Whit pushed on it, but it wouldn’t budge. He traced the outline of the door with his light and finally found what he was looking for: At the bottom left of the door, right at the floor, a small screw protruded from the wall. Whit tried toggling it in all directions, but it wouldn’t move. He pulled on it; again, nothing. He then pressed it into the wall and was rewarded with a metallic click. He pushed on the door again, and this time, it opened easily.

  Whit stepped through the doorway and shone his flashlight around the space inside. It hadn’t really been affected by the fire that had raged above it. The room was filled with lab tables and accoutrements, mainly of a chemical nature—beakers and tubes and burners. Some were broken, but most hadn’t been touched; indeed, much of the equipment was still in boxes. Curiously, though, the company names on all of the boxes and equipment had been either scratched off or marked over.

  Nothing stood out to Whit, except for one small box sitting on a table. He could still make out some of the letters of the company name on it: “. . . ebit . .”

  Strange. He pulled out a notepad and pen and copied down the letters as they appeared, spaces and all.

  He made a perimeter search of the room but found very little until he came to a spot almost directly opposite the entrance door. That’s when he felt a draft by his foot. He bent down and put his hand next to the floor. The draft was coming from behind the wall.

  He rose a
nd pushed on it. It didn’t move. He looked along the base for another screw, found one, and pushed on it.

  Click!

  This time, the door bumped inward. Whit pulled it open to reveal a large tunnel extending into the darkness. “So that’s how he and the cat got out,” he muttered. He pointed his light down the length of the shaft, but he couldn’t see beyond a few yards. Whit took a few steps inside and heard a crinkle beneath his foot.

  He shone the light down; he was stepping on some folded papers. He picked them up, tucked the flashlight under one arm, and unfolded them. One appeared to be the blueprints of Blackgaard’s Castle before it was Blackgaard’s Castle. But when Whit examined the second one, his eyes widened, a chill went up his spine, and he nearly dropped the flashlight.

  It was very old, encased in laminate, and bore the title “Odyssey Passageways” printed across the top in ornate lettering. It was a map of a network of interwoven tunnels connecting various spots around town. Two of those spots were Gower’s Landing, which had become Blackgaard’s Castle, and the Fillmore Recreation Center, which became his own place, Whit’s End. But that wasn’t the cause of his reaction.

  He had seen this map before.

  At Whit’s End.

  He had found it stuffed between two wall studs when he tore out the plaster and lath while renovating the space that became the Bible Room. He had sent it to one of his oldest friends, who collected and studied antiques.

  Jack Allen.

  Whit tucked the map and blueprints in his jacket and bolted back through the lab space, into the corridor, up the stairs, and out of the remains of the arcade, headed for his car.

  He hadn’t talked to Jack in more than five years, before he bought the Fillmore Recreation Center. In fact, the last time they were together was in Nebraska at the orphanage Jack ran.

  Whit frowned. The Clara incident.

  It was after his wife, Jenny, had died. Whit went to stay with Jack and ended up bonding with a little orphan girl named Clara. She’d brought comfort and hope back into Whit’s life, and he wanted to adopt her. Jack had withheld the truth that Clara was already adopted. When Whit found out, he was so upset he told Jack he didn’t think he ever wanted to see him again. He immediately regretted it and had tried to talk with Jack over the ensuing years, but they never reconnected.

  Whit had even sent Jack the map as a sort of peace offering, but Jack never acknowledged he’d received it. Whit knew he needed to get ahold of his friend somehow, to make sure he was all right.

  Questions raced through his mind . . . How did Blackgaard get the map from Jack? Was Councilman Philip Glossman actually representing Blackgaard when he fought Jenny for the Fillmore Recreation Center all those years ago? Lucy had confirmed to Whit that Blackgaard was after Applesauce, the secret computer program Whit had created. Does Blackgaard plan to use the tunnel to sneak into Whit’s End and steal Applesauce? How does Blackgaard even know about Applesauce to begin with?

  Whit was almost to his car when a new thought struck him—one so frightening, it made him stop dead in his tracks.

  What if Applesauce is just a feint, the tip of the iceberg? What if something much deeper—and far more terrible—is really going on?

  Chapter Two

  AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: ONE WEEK LATER

  “It’s a temporary setback, Chairman, nothing more.” Dr. Regis Blackgaard’s normally smooth baritone sharpened with intensity, echoing off the wood-paneled walls of the dimly lit, cavernous boardroom. His immaculately clad, angular frame sat upright at one end of an oak table, polished to a high gloss and so long he was certain a small aircraft could land on and take off from it. Pools of light illuminated the chairs on both sides of the table, reinforcing its landing strip image. Though otherwise calm in appearance, the manicured nails of his white-knuckled hands attempted in vain to claw through the table’s varnished edges and dig into the wood grain underneath.

  “These things happen when one is endeavoring to change the world,” Blackgaard continued smoothly. His coal-black eyes gazed intensely to where the table stretched into the semidarkness at the opposite end of the room.

  There the silhouette of the chairman, a hefty, balding man, sat squat in a large leather chair, a fat cigar smoldering in his stubby fingers. His facial features were completely obscured by shadow, and when he spoke, Blackgaard couldn’t help but think of a large toad sitting on a log in a swamp, waiting to nip fireflies out of the air with his tongue.

  “I’m sure they do, Regis,” his gravelly voice grated across the distance. “And I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But the decision is final. The Center of Scientific Understanding finance committee has voted to pull your funding.”

  “But they can’t! I’m so close! So very, very close!”

  “They can, and they have.” The stubby-fingered hand lifted the cigar to the shadow-covered mouth, and when it took a pull, the glow of the cigar briefly illuminated a craggy, pockmarked face and a wide frown. The hand took away the cigar, obscuring the face once again, though a swirl of smoke now surrounded the chair. “Some here never believed in Professor M’s project in the first place. It seemed more like fantasy than science.”

  “They are wrong!” Blackgaard insisted. “I am on the verge of proving it. I just need more time.”

  “You have all the time you need,” the chairman countered with a hoarse chuckle.

  “But not money,” Blackgaard growled.

  “Because there is no more.”

  “Not for me!”

  “Not for anyone.”

  Blackgaard frowned. “Explain.”

  The chairman took another puff. “You’ve been in that small town so long, you haven’t kept up with current events. The Soviet Union is collapsing, Regis.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Politboro made the mistake of trying to keep up with Reagan and the Americans. As a result, the Soviets have spent themselves into near oblivion. The USSR is all but bankrupt. It will not survive much longer.”

  Blackgaard’s jaw clenched. “Fools!” he hissed. “Bureaucratic collectivist fools!”

  Smoke curled around the chairman’s head. “Be that as it may, those ‘fools’ have withdrawn their support. No support from them means no support for you.”

  Blackgaard’s eyes narrowed. “But surely an organization like the Center of Scientific Understanding has more than one source of funding?”

  “Of course.” The chairman leaned back, and the leather seat groaned under him. “We will survive. But as for your project—” he brought the stogie up to his mouth again—“you’re on your own.”

  Blackgaard’s mind raced. His operation and facility in Chicago—pilfering, pickpocketing, and plundering high-ticket electronics—would keep things running. But for the bigger goal, he’d need a much larger source of funding—the kind of resources governments controlled and the very wealthy possessed. Hakim, his personal chemist, had offered to introduce him to the latter, friends of his in the Middle East with agendas of their own and oil money to back it up. Blackgaard had resisted such invitations up to now—too many unpleasant strings attached to them—but perhaps it was time to rethink that policy. In fact, that may be a way to bring in government resources as well. A plan was forming; he’d need time to think it through, but as the chairman said, time was one thing he had in abundance.

  Blackgaard sighed heavily. “Very well. If you’ll give me Professor M’s research notes, I’ll be on my way.”

  The chairman chortled. “And why would I do that?”

  Blackgaard blinked. “I need them to continue my work.”

  “But why would we just give them to you?”

  “Because you’re not continuing the project!” answered Blackgaard, leaning forward. “You just said that some here don’t even believe in it!”

  “True, but there may be someone out there who does believe in it,” the chairman said evenly. “Someone with money.”

  Blackgaard rose from h
is chair. “You’re going to sell the professor’s research?!”

  “To the highest bidder.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. The professor donated his papers to us. We can do with them as we like.” Cigar smoke fairly enveloped the chairman now. “Of course, we would certainly entertain any bid from you—assuming you can find the funds to back it up, of course.”

  His stubby index finger jabbed the armrest of the chair, and the double doors of the conference room opened by themselves. “Best of luck, Regis. Do keep in touch.” Another puff. “Or not. Your choice.”

  Blackgaard slammed his hands on the tabletop. The smack echoed around the room and caused the chairman to jump in his seat. Blackgaard leaned forward, eyes narrowed, his deep baritone deadly calm. “Oh, I’ll be in touch, Mr. Chairman. Count on it.” He stormed from the room, jaw clenched.

  The COSU was the past; he would now look to the future. And that future . . . was still in Odyssey.

  Chapter Three

  “Jason?”

  “Uncle Wilson!”

  “I thought that was you! Get over here and give your ol’ uncle a hug!” The two men embraced warmly, clapping one another on the back. When they released, Pastor Wilson Knox grabbed Jason Whittaker by his stocky shoulders. “What in the world are you doing in North Carolina?”

  “I love coming back to Provenance,” Jason said with a smile. “The place where you and Dad grew up! Uncle Jack, too.” He suddenly looked puzzled. “Wait a minute—what are you doing here? I thought you were a traveling preacher.”

  “Oh, I am, I am!” Wilson nodded, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m heading out again next week, in fact. But Provenance is what you might call my ‘headquarters’ when I’m not on the road. It’s a place where I can relax and regroup and refresh.” He looked fondly around the small, shop-lined main street. “It’s . . . home.”

  Jason smiled, and his deep brown eyes gazed up and down Main Street. Provenance was a sleepy hamlet that time seemed to have passed by, located between Durham and Raleigh. He remembered the make-believe adventures he and his siblings had when they were much younger and visited Grandpa Harold and Grandma Fiona in their house on Magnolia Lane. And he remembered hearing about the real adventures his father and uncles and their friends had around the town when they were kids. Gold, ghosts, moonshine, and bank robbers! He wondered if adventure followed the Whittakers, or if they created it wherever they went. Probably a little of both, he decided.