Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

“Estimated at $143 million? Geez, Gabi, do you know what this is?” he muttered as he read through the details of the lost work of art known as the Amber Room . “What did you have to do with this room? You must have had something to do with it; otherwise, all this would not be here, right?”

There were notes all over the articles of the murders that hinted at the possibility that the Amber Room had something to do with it. Below the word ‘MILLA' Detlef found a map of Russia and its borders to Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania. Over the area of the Kazakh Steppe and Kharkiv, Ukraine there were numbers written in red pen, but they had no familiar pattern such as phone number or coordinates. Seemingly randomly Gabi had written these double-digit numbers on the maps she had pinned to the wall.

What caught his eye was an apparently valuable relic hanging from the corner of the corkboard. The purple ribbon with a dark blue stripe down the middle held a medal inscribed with Russian lettering. Detlef removed it carefully and pinned it to his vest under his shirt.

“What the hell were you into, sweetheart?” he whispered to his wife. He took several pictures with his cell phone camera and made a short video clip of the room and its contents. “I will find out what this all had to do with you and that Purdue you were meeting, Gabi,” he vowed. “And then I will find his friends to tell me where he is or else they will die.”

Suddenly, a static cacophony screamed from the direction of the makeshift radio on Gabi's desk, scaring Detlef half to death. He fell back against the stacked paper desk, shoving it so hard that some of the folders slid off and fell in a mess all over the floor.

“Christ! My fucking heart!” he shouted, gripping his chest. The red needles of the gauges were dancing left and right rapidly. It reminded Detlef of old hi-fi systems that used to display loudness or clarity of the media played on it that way. From the static, he heard a voice fade in and out. On closer inspection, he realized it was not a broadcast, but a summoning. Detlef sat down on his late wife's chair and listened intently. It was a female voice speaking one word at a time. Frowning, he leaned in. His eyes widened at once. There was a distinct word he recognized.

‘Gabi!’

He sat up in alert, having no idea what to do. The woman kept calling for his wife in Russian; he could tell, but he did not speak the language. Adamant to talk to her, Detlef hastened to get his phone browser open to look up old design radios and how they were operated. In his frenzy his big fingers kept mistyping the search, frustrating him beyond words.

“Fuck! Not ‘cockmunication’ !” he complained as several pornographic results appeared on his phone screen. His face glistened with sweat as he hurried to get some form of help to operate the old communication device. “Wait! Wait!” he shouted at the radio as the woman's voice called for Gabi to respond. “Wait for me! Argh, fuck!”

Furious with the unsatisfactory results of his Google search, Detlef grabbed a thick dusty book and threw it at the radio. The iron casing came loose slightly, and the receiver fell off the table, dangling by its cord. “Fuck you!” he shrieked, filled with despair at being unable to operate the device.

A crackle sounded on the radio, and a man's voice came over the speaker in a heavy Russian accent. “Fuck you too, bro.”

Detlef was astonished. He jumped up and went over to where he had shoved the device. He grabbed the swinging microphone he had just assaulted with the book and clumsily picked it up. The device had no button to press to broadcast, so Detlef just began to speak.

“Hello? Hey! Hello?” he called, his eyes flitting in desperate hopes that somebody would answer him. His other hand rested gently on the transmitter. Only static noise prevailed for a while. Then the squeak of switching channels over different modulation shifts filled the small creepy room while its only occupant waited in anticipation.

Eventually, Detlef had to admit defeat. Distraught, he shook his head. “Please talk?” he moaned in English, realizing that the Russian at the other end probably couldn't speak German. “Please? I don't know how to work this thing. I need to let you know that Gabi is my wife.”

The female voice grated from the speaker. Detlef perked up. “Is that Milla? Are you Milla?”

With slow reluctance, the woman answered, “Where is Gabi?”

“She is dead,” he replied, then wondered out loud about the protocol. “Do I say over?”

“No, this is covert transmission via L-band using Amplitude Modulation as carrier wave,” she assured him in broken English, yet she was fluent in the terminology of her trade.

“What?” Detlef shrieked in utter confusion of a subject he was completely inept at.

She sighed. “This talk is like telephone. You talk. I talk. No saying ‘over’.”

Detlef was relieved to hear that. “Sehr gut!”

“Speak up. I can barely hear you. Where is Gabi?” she repeated, having not heard his previous answer clearly.

It was hard for Detlef to repeat the news. “My wife… Gabi is dead.”

There was no answer for a long while, only the distant crunch of static noises. Then the man came on again. “You lie.”

“No, no. Nyet! I am not lying. My wife was killed four days ago,” he defended apprehensively. “Check Internet! Check CNN!”

“Your name,” the man said. “Not your real name. Something to identify you. Just between Milla and you.”

Detlef did not even think about it. “Widower.”

Crackle.

Sweesh.

Detlef hated the hollow sound of white noise and dead air. It felt so desolate, so lonely, and wasted by the void of information — to a measure it defined him.

“Widower. Switch to 1549MHz on the transmitter. Wait for Metallica. Get the numbers. Use your GPS and go Thursday,” the man instructed.

Click

The click sound echoed like a gunshot in Detlef’s ears, leaving him devastated and bewildered. Pausing in disbelief, he sat frozen with his hands outstretched. “What the fuck?”

Suddenly he was spurred on by the instructions he was about to forget.

“Come back! Hello?” he shouted on the speaker, but the Russians were gone. He threw his arms up in the air, roaring in frustration. “Fifteen forty-nine,” he said. “Fifteen forty-nine. Remember that!” Frantically he searched for the approximation of the number on the dial indicator. Turning the knob slowly, he found the designated station.

“Now what?” he whined. He kept a pen and paper ready for the numbers, but he had no idea what waiting for Metallica meant. 'What if it is a code I cannot decipher? What if I don't understand the message?' he panicked.

Suddenly the station started broadcasting music. He recognized Metallica, but he did not know the song. It gradually faded off as the female voice started reading number codes and Detlef jotted them down. When the music started again, he concluded the broadcast was over. Sinking back in the chair, he breathed out a long sigh of relief. He was intrigued, but his training also warned him that he could not trust anyone he did not know.

If his wife was killed by people she had been involved with, it might well have been Milla and her associate. Until he knew for sure, he could not just follow their orders.

He had to find a scapegoat.

Nina stormed into Dr. Helberg’s office. The waiting room was empty save for the receptionist who looked ashen. As if she knew Nina she immediately pointed toward the closed doors. Behind them, she could hear a man's voice speaking very deliberately and very calmly.