Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

A click ended the interference and silence fell over the cafeteria like a blanket of defeat.

“This is why we had to change locations. They have been hacking into our broadcast frequencies for a month now. Sending number sequences different from ours, they are making people kill themselves and kill others by means of subliminal suggestion. Now we have to squat in Duga-3 ghost site,” Natasha scoffed.

Purdue swallowed hard as his temperature spiked. Trying not to uproot the meeting, he placed his cold, clammy hands on the seat by his sides. Immediately Nina could see that something was wrong.

“Purdue?” she asked. “Are you sick again?’

He smiled faintly and dismissed it with a shake of his head.

“He does not look well,” Misha remarked. “Contamination? How long have you been here? More than a day?”

“No,” Nina replied. “Just a few hours. But he has been getting sick for two days now.”

“Don’t worry, people,” Purdue slurred, still keeping a cheerful face. “It goes away after.”

“After what?” Elena asked.

Purdue jolted up, his face drained of color as he tried to compose himself, but he propelled his lanky body towards the door in a race with the urging need to puke.

“After that ,” Nina sighed.

“The men’s toilet is one floor down,” Marko advised casually, watching the guest hasten down the steps. “Drinking or nerves?” he asked Nina.

“Both. The Black Sun tortured him for days before our friend Sam went to break him out. I think the trauma is affecting him still,” she explained. “They kept him at their fortress in the Kazakh Steppe and tormented him without rest.”

The women looked as indifferent as the men. Obviously, torture was embedded so deeply in their cultural past of war and tragedy that it was a matter of course in conversation. At once, Misha’s blank expression lit up and animated his features. “Dr. Gould, do you have the coordinates of this place? This… fortress in Kazakhstan?”

“Aye,” Nina replied. “That was how we found him in the first place.”

The temperamental man held out his hand to her, and Nina quickly fumbled through her front zipper pouch for the paper she jotted on in Dr. Helberg’s office that day. She passed Misha the scribbling of numbers and information.

‘So the first messages Detlef brought us in Edinburgh were not sent by Milla. Otherwise, they would have known about the location of the compound,' Nina thought, but she kept it to herself. ‘Then again, Milla dubbed him ‘Widower’. They recognized the name as Gabi’s husband right away too.’ Her hands rested in her dark, tousled hair as she propped up her head and elbows on the table like a bored schoolgirl. It occurred to her that Gabi — and therefore Detlef — had been deceived by the Order's interference in the broadcasts too, just like the people affected by the maleficent number sequences. ‘Oh my God, I owe Detlef an apology. I’m sure he survived the little Volvo incident. I hope?’

Purdue had been gone a long time, but it was more important to devise a plan before their time ran out. She watched the Russian geniuses discuss urgently in their tongue, but she did not mind. It sounded beautiful to her, and by their tone she guessed that Misha’s idea was solid.

Just as she started to worry about Sam's fate again, Misha and Elena faced her to explain the plan. The other members followed Natasha out of the room, and Nina could hear them thundering down the iron steps like during a fire drill.

“I take it you have a plan. Please tell me you have a plan. Our time is almost up, and I don't think I can take anymore. If they kill Sam, I swear to God I will dedicate my life to wasting them all,” she moaned in frustration.

“That is the Red attitude,” Elena smiled.

“And yes, we have a plan. Good plan,” Misha claimed. He almost seemed happy.

“Great!” Nina smiled, although she still looked tense. “What is the plan?”

Misha announced boldly, “We give them the Amber Room.”

Nina’s smile withered.

“Come again?” she blinked profusely, half with rage and half eager to hear his explanation. “Should I hope for more attached to your deduction? Because if that is your plan, I have lost all faith in my dwindling admiration for Soviet ingenuity.”

They laughed absent-mindedly. It was clear that they did not give a rat's ass about the opinion of a Westerner; not even enough to hasten toward alleviating her doubts. Nina folded her arms. Thinking about Purdue's persistent malady and Sam's constant subjugation and absence only riled the feisty historian up more. Elena could sense her frustration and bravely took her by the arm.

“We will not get involved in the actual, um, claim of the Amber Room or collection after by Black Sun, but we will give you what you need to combat them. Okay?” she told Nina.

“You're not going to help us get Sam back?” Nina gasped. She felt like breaking down in tears. After all this she had been turned down by the only allies, she had thought they had against Kemper. Maybe the Red Army was not as potent as their reputation stated, she thought with bitter disappointment in her heart. “What the fuck are you actually going to help with then?” she seethed.

Misha’s eyes grew dark with intolerance. “Look, we don’t have to help you. We broadcast information, not fight your battles.”

“That's obvious,” she scoffed. “So what is going to happen now?”

“You and Widower have to get the Amber Room’s remaining pieces. Yuri is getting a man with heavy truck and pulleys for you,” Elena tried to sound more proactive. “Natasha and Marko are in the sub-level sector reactor Medvedka right now. I am going soon to help Marko with the poison.”

“Poison?” Nina winced.

Misha pointed to Elena. “That is what they call chemical elements they put in bombs. I think they try to be funny. Like, poisoning a body with wine they poison objects with chemicals or something.”

Elena kissed him and excused herself to join the others at the secret fast breeder reactor basement, a section of the massive military base once used for equipment storage. Duga-3 was one of three locations Milla used to migrate to sporadically every year to evade capture or discovery, and the group had secretly adapted each of their sites into fully functional bases of operation.

“When the poison is ready, we will give you the materials, but you have to prepare your own weapon down at Shelter Object, ” Misha explained.

“Is that the Sarcophagus?” she asked.

“Da.”

“But the radiation there will kill me,” Nina protested.

“You will not be in the Shelter Object. In 1996, my uncle and grandfather moved the Amber Room plates to an old well near Shelter Object, but there is ground, much earth, where the well is. It is not connected to Reactor 4 at all, so you should be fine,” he clarified.

“Jesus, it’s going to peel my skin off,” she muttered, seriously reconsidering abandoning the entire venture and leaving Purdue and Sam to their own devices. Misha scoffed at the paranoia of the spoiled Western woman and shook his head. “Who is going to show me how to prepare it?” Nina finally inquired, having made up her mind that she did not want the Russians to think Scots were wimps.

“Natasha is explosives expert. Elena is chemical hazard expert. They will tell you how to turn the Amber Room into a coffin,” Misha smiled. “One thing, Dr. Gould,” he continued in a subdued tone uncharacteristic of his dominant nature. “Please handle the metal with protective gear and try not to breathe without covering over your mouth. And after you give them the relic, stay far away. Big distance, okay?”