Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

The whole vision lasted only twenty seconds, yet it felt as if Sam had relived every detail in real time — if the concept of time even still existed in this distorted sense of existence. From the fading recollection, Sam's reasoning returned to an almost normal range. Between the two worlds of psychic wandering and physical reality his senses switched like levers adjusting to alternating currents.

Once more he was in the room, his sensitive and feverish eyes assaulted by the meager effort of the bare light bulb. Sam was lying on his back, shivering from the cold floor underneath. From his shoulders to his calves the skin had gone numb from the unyielding temperature of the steel. Footsteps approached the chamber he was in, but Sam elected to play possum, again disappointed by his ineptitude to elicit the furious entomo-god , as he named it.

“Mr. Cleave, I have enough training to know when someone is faking. You are no more incapacitated than I am,” Klaus rambled indifferently. “However, I also know what you have been trying to do, and I must say, I admire your boldness.”

Sam was curious. Without moving, he asked, “Oh, do tell, old boy.” Klaus was not amused by the snide imitation Sam Cleave used to mock his refined, almost feminine, eloquence. His fists almost balled up at the journalist's impudence, but he was an expert at composure and held his form. “You tried to steer my thoughts. Either that or you were just adamant to be on my mind like the unpleasant memory of an ex-girlfriend.”

“Like you know what a girlfriend is,” Sam mumbled amusedly. He expected a blow to the ribs or a kick to the head, but nothing happened.

Dismissing Sam's efforts to rile up his vengeance, Klaus clarified, “I know you have Kalihasa , Mr. Cleave. I am flattered you deem me a prominent enough threat to use it on me, but I have to implore you to resort to more restful practices.” Just before leaving Klaus smiled at Sam, “Please save your special gift for… the hive .”

“You do realize that it is an approximate drive of fourteen hours to Pripyat, right?” Nina informed Purdue as he stalked Kiril’s garage. “Not to mention the fact that Detlef could still be here, as you might surmise by the fact that his corpse is not occupying the very space where I stabbed him last, right?”

“Nina, my dear,” Purdue hushed her in a low voice, “where is your faith? Better yet, where is that daring enchantress you normally turn into when things get rough? Trust me. I know how to do this. How else are we going to rescue Sam?”

“This is about Sam? Are you sure it is not about the Amber Room?” she called him out. Purdue did not merit her accusation with an answer.

“I don’t like this,” she grunted as she sank down on her haunches next to Purdue, surveying the perimeter of the house and yard where they had barely escaped from less than two hours before. “I have a bad feeling he is still there.”

Purdue crept closer to Kiril’s garage door, two decrepit old iron sheets barely held in place with wire and hinges. The doors were joined by a locked padlock on a thick rusty chain, with a few inches between them from the slightly askew position of the right door. Behind the gap, the interior of the shed was dark. Purdue tried to see if he could break the padlock, but an awful creak prompted him to abandon the effort to avoid alarming a certain killer widower.

“This is a bad idea,” Nina insisted, growing steadily impatient with Purdue.

“Noted,” he said absent-mindedly. Deep in thought, he placed his hand on her thigh to attract her attention. “Nina, you are quite a small woman.”

“Thanks for noticing,” she mumbled.

“Do you reckon you might be able to wedge your body through between the doors?” he asked sincerely. With one eyebrow raised, she stared at him, saying nothing. In truth, she was contemplating it, what with time running out and a considerable distance to travel to get to their next destination. Finally, she exhaled, closing her eyes and carrying a proper look of preconceived regret for what she was about to endeavor.

“I knew I could count on you,” he smiled.

“Shut it!” she snapped at him, pursing her lips in annoyance and utmost concentration. Nina stole forward through the tall weeds and thorny bushes thorns that poked through the thick denim of her jeans. She winced, cursed and muttered her way to the double door conundrum until she reached the bottom of the obstacle that stood between her and Kiril’s beat-up Volvo. With her eyes, Nina measured the width of the dark slit between the doors, shaking her head at Purdue.

“Go! You'll fit,” he mouthed at her, peeking over the weeds to keep watch for Detlef. The house and especially the bathroom window area were clearly visible from his vantage point. However, the advantage was also a curse as it meant than anybody could have been watching them from the house. Detlef would be able to see them as easily as they could see him and that was cause for urgency.

“Oh God,” Nina whispered as she slipped her arms and shoulders between the doors, cringing at the crude edge of the slanting door that was chafing her back as she worked her way through. “Christ, it's a good thing I didn't go the other way around,” she murmured quietly. “This tuna can would have skinned me tits something awful, goddammit!” Her frown deepened as her hip dragged over tiny pointy stones following her equally afflicted palms.

Purdue's keen eyes stayed on the house, but he heard and saw nothing to arouse alert — yet. His heart pounded at the prospect of the deadly gunman emerging from the back door of the shack, but he trusted Nina to get them out of the bind they were in. On the other hand, he was dreading the possibility that Kiril’s car keys would not be in the ignition. When he heard the rattling clang of the chain, he saw Nina's thighs and knees enter the gap, followed by her boots disappearing into the darkness. Unfortunately, he was not the only one who heard the noise.

“Well done, love,” he whispered, smiling.

Inside, Nina was relieved that the car door she tried was unlocked, but she was soon devastated to find that the keys were in none of the places suggested by the numerous action films she had seen.

“Fuck,” she hissed as she rummaged through fishing gear, beer cans, and a few other items the purpose of which she did not even want to consider. “Where the fuck are your keys, Kiril? Where do crazy old Russian soldiers keep their damn car keys — other than in their pocket?”

Outside, Purdue heard the kitchen door close with a click. As he had feared, Detlef appeared from behind the corner. Purdue dropped flat into the grass, hoping that Detlef had come outside for something trivial. But the German giant kept walking toward the garage where Nina was obviously having trouble finding the car keys. His head was wrapped in some blood stained cloth, covering the eye Nina had impaled with her scissors. Knowing that Detlef was hostile toward him, Purdue decided to distract him from Nina.

“Hope he doesn't have that bloody gun on him,” Purdue mumbled as he jumped up into plain sight and made for the boathouse quite a distance away. He heard shots shortly after, feeling a hot nudge at his upper arm and another whistling past his ear. “Shit!” he yelped, when he stumbled, but jumped up and kept going.

Nina had heard the shots. Doing her best not to panic, she grabbed the small gutting knife on the floor behind the passenger seat where the fishing gear was piled.

“I hope none of those shots just killed my ex-boyfriend, Detlef, or I'm going to flay your ass with this tiny little pick stick,” she sneered as she switched on the car's roof light and keeled over to get to the wiring under the steering wheel. She did not intend on rekindling her past romance with Dave Purdue, but he was one of her two best friends, and she adored him, even though he always dragged her into life-threatening situations.