Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

“Okay,” Nina replied, grateful for his concern. It was a side of him she had not had the pleasure of seeing until now. He was mature and human. “Misha?”

“Da?”

In all seriousness, she begged to know. “What weapon am I making here?”

He did not answer, so she pried some more.

“How far away should I be after giving Kemper the Amber Room?” she wished to determine.

Misha blinked a few times while he looked deep into the dark eyes of the pretty woman. He cleared his throat and advised, “Leave the country.”

When Purdue awoke on the toilet floor, his shirt was a mess of bile and saliva. Embarrassed, he did his best to remove it with hand soap and cold water at the sink. After some scrubbing, he surveyed the condition of the fabric in the mirror. “Like it never happened,” he smiled, satisfied with his effort.

When he entered the cafeteria, he found Nina being dressed by Elena and Misha.

“Your turn,” Nina grinned. “I see you had another bout of sickness.”

“This one was nothing short of violent,” he said. “What is happening?”

“We are padding Dr. Gould's clothing with radioactive-resistant materials for when you two go down to get the Amber Room,” Elena informed him.

“This is ridiculous, Nina,” he bitched. “I refuse to wear all that. Like our task is not already impeded by a deadline, now you have to resort to absurd and time-consuming measures to hold us up even longer?”

Nina frowned. It seemed Purdue had once again become the whiny bitch she had had a tiff with in the car, and she was not going to stand for his childish moods. “Would you like your balls to fall off by tomorrow?” she nipped back. “Otherwise you better get a cup; a lead one.”

“Grow up, Dr. Gould,” he countered.

“Radiation levels are next to lethal for this little expedition, Dave. I hope you have a large collection of baseball caps for that imminent hair loss you will suffer in a few weeks.”

Silently the Soviets laughed at Nina's patronizing rant as they adjusted the last of her lead enforced gear. Elena gave her a medical mask to put over her mouth once down in the well and a climbing helmet for good measure.

After sulking for a while, Purdue allowed them to deck him out in similar fashion before accompanying Nina to where Natasha was ready to arm them for battle. Marko had assembled some delicate cutting tools the size of a pencil case for them, as well as instruction on how to plate the amber with the fine glass prototype he had created for just such an occasion.

“Are you people sure we will be able to pull off this highly specialized undertaking with such short notice?” Purdue asked.

“Dr. Gould says you are inventor,” Marko replied. “Just like work with electronics. Use the tools to access and fit. Put pieces of metal on the amber sheet to hide as gold inlay and put the covers over it. Use clips on the corners and BOOM! Death-reinforced Amber Room for them to take home.”

“I’m still not clear on what this all is,” Nina complained. “Why are we doing this? I got the hint from Misha that we must be far away, which means this is a bomb, right?”

“Correct,” Natasha affirmed.

“But this is just a collection of dirty silver metal frames and rings. It looks like something my mechanic grandfather hoarded in his junk yard,” she groaned. For the first time, Purdue showed some interest in their mission when he saw the junk that looked like tarnished steel or silver.

“Mary, Mother of God! Nina!” he gasped in awe, giving Natasha a look of chastisement and wonder. “You people are insane!”

“What? What is it?” she asked. They all returned his gaze, unperturbed by his panic-stricken judgment. Purdue's mouth remained open in disbelief as he turned to Nina with one piece in his hand. “This is weapons-grade Plutonium. They are sending us to turn the Amber Room into a nuclear bomb!”

They did not refute his statement, nor did they look intimidated. Nina was speechless.

“Is that true?” she asked. Elena looked down, and Natasha nodded proudly.

“It cannot explode while you handle it, Nina,” Natasha explained calmly. “Just make it look like part of the art and seal Marko’s glass over the panels. Then give it to Kemper.”

“Plutonium ignites by contact with moist air or water,” Purdue gulped, thinking about all the properties of the element. “If the covering were to chip or to be exposed there could be dire consequences.”

“So don’t fuck up,” Natasha growled in amusement. “Now come, you have less than two hours to produce the find to our guests.”

Just over twenty minutes later Purdue and Nina were being lowered into a concealed stone well, overgrown by decades of radioactive grass and shrubs. The masonry had crumbled just like the former Iron Curtain, evidence of a bygone time of superior technology and innovation abandoned and left to the decay of the Chernobyl aftermath.

“You are well away from the Shelter Object,” Elena reminded Nina. “But breathe through your nose. Yuri and his cousin will wait here for you to hoist the relic out.”

“How do we get it to the entrance of the well? Each panel weighs more than your car!” Purdue declared.

“There is rail system,” Misha called down into the dark pit. “Tracks run to the chamber of the Amber Room where my grandfather and my uncle moved the pieces to the hiding place. You can just lower them with the ropes onto the mine car and roll them here where Yuri will bring them up.”

Nina gave them thumbs up after checking her walkie-talkie for the frequency Misha had given her to communicate with any of them, should she have questions while beneath the dreaded Chernobyl Power Plant.

“Right! Let’s get this done, Nina,” Purdue impelled.

They ventured into the dank blackness with flash lights mounted to their helmets. A black mass in the dark proved to be the mine car Misha had spoken of, and they lifted Marko's sheets onto it with the tools, pushing the car as they walked.

“A bit uncooperative,” Purdue remarked. “But I would be too had I been rusting in the dark for over twenty years.”

Their light beams weakened only a few meters ahead of them, overcome by the thick darkness. A myriad of minute particles floated through the air and danced in front of the rays in the silent oblivion of the underground channel.

“What if we come back, and they have closed the well?” Nina said suddenly.

“We’ll find a way out. We have been through worse than this before,” he reassured.

“It is so eerily quiet,” she persisted with her gloomy mood. “Once there was water down here. I wonder how many people have drowned in this well or perished from radiation while seeking refuge down here.”

“Nina,” was all he said to shake her from her folly.

“Sorry,” Nina whispered. “I am fucking scared.”

“That is unlike you,” Purdue said in the dense atmosphere that denied his voice any echo. “You only fear contamination or the after-effects of radiation poisoning that lead to a slow death. This is why you find this place terrifying.”

Nina stared at him in the misty illumination of her light. “Thank you, David.”

A few steps onward his face changed. He was looking at something to the right of her, but Nina was adamant not to know what it was. When Purdue stopped all kinds of scary scenarios gripped Nina.

“Look,” he smiled, taking her arm to face her toward the magnificent treasure that was hidden under years of dust and debris. “It is every bit as glorious as when the King of Prussia owned it.”

As soon as Nina shone her light on the yellow slabs, the gold and amber married to become exquisite mirrors of lost beauty from centuries past. Intricate carvings adorned the frames and slivers of mirror detailed the clarity of the amber.