Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

Purdue felt his frustration mounting. “Listen, Klaus, I am not a bloody tourist! I am not here for a visit, and I am certainly not here to entertain you. I want the details so that we can conclude our unfortunate business and I can go home! You seem to assume that I am fin e being here in my goddamn birthday suit jumping through your hoops like a circus animal!”

Klaus' smile disappeared rapidly. After Purdue had finished his rant, the slight man leered at him, unmoving. Purdue hoped that his point got through to the obnoxious idiot who was playing games with him on one of his not-so-good days.

“Are you quite done, David?” Klaus asked in a low, sinister voice that was barely audible. His dark eyes stared straight into Purdue's while he dropped his chin and locked his fingers. “Let me clarify something for you. You are not a guest here, you are right; neither are you a master. Here you do not possess any power because here you are naked, and that means you have no computer access, gadgets or credit cards to perform your magic tricks.”

Klaus slowly approached Purdue while he continued his clarification. “Here you will have no permission to question or have an opinion. You will comply or die, and you will do so without question, am I clear?”

“Crystal clear,” Purdue answered.

“The only reason I am even treating you with a tiny measure of respect is that you have once been Renatus of the Order of the Black Sun,” he told Purdue as he circled him. Klaus displayed a distinct expression of utter contempt for his captive. “Even though you were a bad king, a treacherous turncoat who elected to destroy the Black Sun instead of using them to reign the new Babylon.”

“I never applied for the position!” he defended his case, but Klaus kept on talking as if Purdue’s words were but creaks and squeaks in the wooden panels of the room.

“You had the most powerful beast in the world at your beck and call, Renatus, and you chose to shit on it, sodomize it and almost caused the total collapse of ages of power and wisdom,” Klaus preached. “If that had been your plan from the start I commend you. It shows a talent for deception. But if you did it because you were afraid of the power my friend, you are worthless.”

“Why do you defend the Order of the Black Sun? Are you one of their minions? Did they promise you a place in their throne room once they have destroyed the world? If you trust them you are a fool of special proportions,” Purdue bit back. He felt his skin relax under the soft warmth of the changing room temperature.

Klaus scoffed, smiling bitterly as he stood in front of Purdue.

“I suppose the moniker of fool depends on the object of the game, don't you think? To you, I am a fool to pursue power by any means necessary. To me you are the fool for throwing it away,” he said.

“Look, what do you want?” Purdue seethed.

He walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Behind the curtain, set flush into the wooden frame, was a keypad. Before he used it, Klaus looked back at Purdue.

“You have been brought here to be programmed so that you can serve a purpose again,” he revealed. “There is a particular relic we want, David, and you are going to find it for us. And do you want to know the best part?”

Now he smiled as before. Purdue said nothing. He preferred to bide his time and use his observational skills to find a way out as soon as the madman left. For now, he did not want to entertain Klaus anymore, but instead just acted along.

“The best part is that you will want to serve us,” Klaus chuckled.

“What relic is it?” Purdue asked, pretending to be interested in knowing.

“Oh, something truly special, even more special than the Spear of Destiny!” he disclosed. “Once called the Eighth Wonder of the World , my dear David, it was lost during the Second World War by a most baleful force that spread across Eastern Europe like a crimson plague. Due to their interference it is lost to us, and we want it back. We want every surviving part of it reassembled and restored to its former beauty to decorate the main room of this temple in its golden glory.”

Purdue choked. What Klaus insinuated was absurd and impossible, but that was typical for the Black Sun.

“Are you seriously hoping to locate the Amber Room ?” Purdue asked, astonished. “It was destroyed by British air raids and never made it out of Königsberg! It does not exist anymore. Only shards of it are scattered all over the ocean floor and under the foundations of old ruins obliterated in 1944. It is fool’s errand!”

“Well, let’s see if we can change your mind about that,” Klaus smiled.

He turned to enter a code on the keypad. A loud hum followed, but Purdue could see nothing out of the ordinary until the exquisite paintings of the ceiling and walls faded into their canvas. Purdue realized that it had all been an optical illusion.

LED screens made up the surfaces inside the frames, capable of changing the scenes like windows to a cyber-universe. Even the windows were just depictions on flat screens. Suddenly, the monitors all displayed the dreaded symbol of the Black Sun before switching to one giant image that spread across all the screens. Nothing was left of the initial room. Purdue was no longer in a lavish castle drawing room. He stood inside a cavern of fire, and although he knew it was merely a projection, he could not deny the discomfort of the rising temperature.

The television's blue light gave the room an even more somber atmosphere. Against the walls of the room, the movement on the news cast a plethora of shapes and shadows in black and blue, flashing like lightning and only momentarily illuminating the ornaments on the tables. Nothing was where it belonged. Where glass shelves on the sideboard used to hold glasses and plates, there was only a gaping frame with nothing inside. On the floor in front of it as well as on top of the drawer compartment lay scattered the large jagged pieces of the smashed crockery.

Smears of blood colored some of the flinders and floor tiles, taking on a black hue in the light of the television. The people on the screen seemed to speak to no-one in particular. There was no audience for them in the room, although someone was present. On the sofa, the slumbering mountain of a man filled all three seats as well as the arm rests. His blankets had fallen to the ground, leaving him exposed to the chill of the night, but he did not care.

Since his wife had been killed, Detlef wasn't feeling anything. Not only had his emotions abandoned him, but his senses had become numb, too. Save for sorrow and mourning Detlef did not want to feel. His skin was cold, so cold that it burned, but the widower felt only numbness when his blankets had slipped off and piled on the carpet.

Her shoes were still lying on the side of the bed where she had tossed them the day before. Detlef could not bear to take them away because then she would really be gone. Gabi's fingerprints were still on the leather of the strap, the dirt from her soles still there and when he touched the shoes he could feel her. If he put them in the closet, the traces of his last moments with Gabi would be forever lost.

The skin had come off his broken knuckles, and scurf was covering the raw flesh now. Detlef did not feel that either. He only felt the cold that killed the pain in the aftermath of his rampage and of the lacerations left behind by jagged edges. Sure he knew that he would feel the burning gashes the next day, but for now, he only wanted to sleep. When he slept, he would see her in his dreams. He would not have to face reality. In sleep, he could hide from the reality of his wife's death.

‘This is Holly Darryl at the scene of the heinous incident that took place this morning at the British Embassy in Berlin,' the American reporter on the television babbled. ‘It was here where Ben Carrington of the British Embassy witnessed the horrific suicide of Gabi Holtzer, ministerial spokesperson of the German Federal Chancellery. You might remember Mrs. Holtzer as the representative who addressed the press with regards to the recent killings of politicians and financiers in Berlin, now dubbed by the media as the 'Midas Offensive '. Sources report that there is still no clarity on Mrs. Holtzer’s motive for taking her own life after assisting in the investigation into those murders. It remains to be seen if she was possibly targeted by the same assassins or if perhaps she was even affiliated with them.”