Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

“We are hackers, not terrorists!” he protested.

“Was it hackers who destroyed the Chernobyl Kalihasa threat in 1986? No, Misha, it was terrorists!” she argued. “Now we have that problem again, and we are going to have it as long as the Amber Room exists. What will you do when the Black Sun succeeds? Are you going to send out number sequences to de-program the minds of the few who would still listen to radio for the rest of your life while the fucking Nazis take over the world by mass hypnosis and mind control?”

“The Chernobyl disaster was not an accident?” Purdue asked inadvertently, but the sharp warning glares of the Milla members shut him right up. Even Nina could not believe his misplaced query. By the looks of it, Nina and Purdue had just stirred up the deadliest hornet's nest in history, and the Black Sun was about to learn why red was the color of blood.

Sam thought of Nina while he waited for Kemper to return to the vehicle. The bodyguard who drove them remained at the wheel, leaving the engine running. Even if Sam could escape the gorilla with the black suit, there was really nowhere to flee to. To all sides of them, stretching as far as the eye could see, the landscape resembled a very familiar sight. In fact, it was more of a familiar vision .

Unnervingly similar to Sam’s hypnosis-induced hallucination during those sessions with Dr. Helberg, the flat, featureless expanse of colorless grassland disturbed him. It was good that Kemper had left him alone for a bit so that he could process the surreal occurrence until it did not frighten him anymore. But the more he observed, acknowledged, and absorbed the scenery to adjust to it, the more Sam realized that it did not terrify him any less.

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he involuntarily recalled the dream of the well and the barren landscape before the devastating pulse that lit up the sky and exterminated nations. The significance of what had once been no more than a subconscious manifestation of turmoil attested to have been, to Sam’s dread, a prophecy.

‘Prophecy? Me?’ he pondered on the absurd nature of the idea. But then another memory wedged itself into his mind like another piece of the puzzle. His mind revealed the words it recorded while he had been in the grips of his seizure, back in the village on the island; words Nina's attacker had screamed at her.

“Take your evil prophet away from here!”

“Take your evil prophet away from here!”

“Take your evil prophet away from here!”

Sam was spooked.

‘Holy shit! How did I not hear it at the time?’ he racked his brain, neglecting to consider that this was the very nature of the mind and all its miraculous abilities. ‘He called me a prophet?' Ashen, he swallowed hard when it all came together — the vision of the exact terrain and the laying waste of an entire race under a sky of amber. But what bothered him most was the pulse he had seen in his vision, similar to that of a nuclear explosion.

Kemper startled Sam when he opened the door to get back in. That sudden thwack of the central locking system followed by the loud click of the handle came just as Sam recalled that all-consuming pulse that had rippled across the entire land.

“Entschuldigung, Herr Cleave,” Kemper apologized when Sam jolted in fright, clutching his chest. It did give the tyrant a chuckle, though. “Why so jumpy?”

“Just nervous about my friends,” Sam shrugged.

“I am sure they will not let you down,” Klaus attempted to be cordial.

“Problem with the cargo?” Sam asked.

“Just a minor problem with a petrol gauge, but it's sorted out now,” Kemper replied earnestly. “So, you wanted to know how the number sequences thwarted your attack on me, correct?”

“Aye. It was amazing, but even more impressive was the fact that it only affected me. The men with you showed no sign of manipulation,” Sam marveled, stroking Klaus' ego as if he was a huge admirer. It was a tactic Sam Cleave had utilized many times before while conducting his investigations to expose criminals.

“Here is the secret,” Klaus smiled smugly, wringing his hands slowly and brimming with conceit. “It is not necessarily the numbers as much as the combination of the numbers. Mathematics, as you know, is the language of Creation itself. Numbers control everything in existence, whether on a cellular level, geometrically, in physics, chemical compounds or whatever else. It is the key to converting all data — like a computer inside the task-specific part of your brain, you see?”

Sam nodded. He gave it some thought and replied, “So it is like a cipher to a biological Enigma machine.”

Kemper applauded. Literally. “That is an exceptionally accurate analogy, Mr. Cleave! I could not have explained it better myself. That is precisely how it works. By applying strings of specific combinations one could quite possibly expand the field of influence, essentially short-circuiting the brain’s receptors. Now, if you add an electrical current to this action,” Kemper reveled in his superiority, “it enhances the effect of the thought form tenfold.”

“So by using electricity you could actually increase the amount of data absorbed? Or is that to heighten the manipulator's ability to control more than one person at a time?” Sam asked.

‘Keep talking, dobber,’ Sam thought from behind his expertly played charade. ‘And the award goes to… Samson Cleave for his role as fascinated-journalist-enthralled-by-smarter-man!' Not in the least less exceptional at his own game, Sam registered every detail the German narcissist spewed out.

“What do you think the first thing was Adolf Hitler did when he assumed power over the idle Wehrmacht personnel in 1935?” he asked Sam rhetorically. “He implemented mass discipline, martial efficacy, and unshakable loyalty to enforce SS ideologies using subliminal programming.”

With great delicacy, Sam posed the question that shot to mind almost immediately after Kemper's statement. “Did Hitler have Kalihasa?”

“After the Amber Room was resident at Berlin City Palace, a German craftsman from Bavaria…” Kemper uttered a grunt as he tried to remember the name of the man. “Uh, no, I don't remember — he was summoned to join Russian craftsmen to restore the artifact after it had been gifted to Peter the Great, you see?”

“Aye,” Sam replied eagerly.

“According to legend, while he worked on the new design for the Catherine Palace erection of the restored room, he 'claimed' three pieces of amber, you know, for his trouble,” Kemper winked at Sam.

“Don’t really blame him, actually,” Sam remarked.

“No, how could anyone blame him for that? I agree. Anyway, he sold one piece. The other two were feared to have been swindled by his wife and sold as well. However, this was apparently incorrect, and the wife in question happened to be the early matriarch of a blood line that would meet an impressionable Hitler ages later.”

Kemper clearly relished his own storytelling while killing time en route to kill Sam, but the journalist paid attention nonetheless as the story unfolded ever more. “She had passed down the remaining two amber pieces from the original Amber Room to her descendants, and it ended up being bestowed on none other than Johann Dietrich Eckart! How is that for chance?”

“I'm sorry, Klaus,” Sam apologized sheepishly, “but my German history knowledge is embarrassing. That is what I keep Nina for.”

“Ha! Just for historical information?” Klaus teased. “I doubt that. But let me clarify. Eckart, an extremely educated man, and metaphysical poet was directly responsible for Hitler's admiration for the occult. It was Eckart, we suspect, who discovered the power of Kalihasa, and then used the phenomenon when he assembled the first Black Sun members. And of course, the most prominent member who could actively apply the undeniable opportunity to alter the ideologies of men…”