Preston Child - Mystery of the Amber Room

‘Oh sweet Jesus, where is he?’ she thought, crouching near where the Amber Room had been. Her mouth was parched, and she ached for relief, but now was not the time to pursue comfort or sustenance. A few feet away she heard a few small rocks scrunch, and it made her gasp loudly. ‘Shit!’ Nina considered talking him down, but by the look of his glazed-over eyes, she doubted that anything she said would get through. ‘He is coming my way. I can hear the sounds are closer every time!’

They had been underground in the vicinity of Reaktor-4 for over three hours already, and she was beginning to feel the effects. She was starting to feel nauseous, while a migraine practically crippled her ability to concentrate. But danger was coming in many shapes and forms for the historian lately. Now she had become a target for a brainwashed mind, programmed by an even sicker mind to kill her. To be murdered by her own friend would be so much worse than running from a deranged stranger or a mercenary on a mission. It was Dave! Dave Purdue, her long-time friend and ex-lover.

Without warning her body convulsed and she fell to her knees on the cold hard ground, throwing up. It grew more violent with every convulsion until she started to cry. There was no way for Nina to do it quietly and she was convinced Purdue would easily track her by the din she caused. She was sweating profusely, and the flash light strap around her head turned into an annoying itch, so she jerked it from her hair. In a spell of panic, she pointed the light downward a few inches from the ground and switched it on. The beam spread over the small radius on the ground, and she took stock of her surroundings.

Purdue was nowhere to be found. Suddenly a large steel rod came hurling towards her face from the darkness ahead. It struck her on the shoulder, evoking a yelp of agony from her. “Purdue! Stop! Jesus Christ! Are you going to kill me because of that Nazi prick? Wake the fuck up!”

Nina killed her light, panting like an exhausted hunting hound. Crouched forward on her knees she tried to ignore the throbbing migraine that was splitting her skull while she held down another pressing bout of regurgitation. Purdue's footsteps moved towards her in the dark, indifferent to her quiet sobbing. Nina's numb fingers fiddled with her strapped two-way radio.

‘Leave it here. Switch it on for noise and then run in another direction,’ she suggested to herself, but her other inner voice was not for it. ‘Idiot, you cannot abandon your last chance for outside communication. Get something you can use as a weapon, over where the debris was.'

The latter was a more feasible idea. She grabbed a handful of stones and waited for a sign of his location. The dark was a solid robe wrapped around her, but what made her frantic was the dust that burned her nose when she breathed. Deep in the darkness, she heard something stir. Nina launched the handful of stones out ahead of her to throw him off before she darted to her left, running straight into a protruding rock that hit her like a truck. With a suppressed gasp, she fell limply to the floor.

As her state of consciousness jeopardized her life, she felt a boost of energy and crawled along the floor on her knees and elbows. Like a bad flu, the radiation started to plague her body. Her skin was crawling, her head was as heavy as lead. Her forehead hurt from the collision while she was struggling to regain her equilibrium.

“Hey Nina,” he whispered a few inches from her shivering frame, shocking her heart into a leap of terror. Purdue’s bright light momentarily blinded her as he flicked it on in her face. “I found you.”

Sam was livid, but he dared not stir up trouble before his escape plan was secure. When he had awoken to find himself still in the clutches of Kemper and the Order, the transport vehicle ahead of them had been creeping steadily along a miserable, desolate stretch of road. By then, they had already progressed past Saratov and had crossed the border into Kazakhstan. It was too late for him to get out. They had traveled almost a day from where Nina and Purdue were, making it impossible for him to simply jump out and run back to Chernobyl or Pripyat.

“Breakfast, Mr. Cleave,” Kemper offered. “We have to keep your strength up.”

“No thanks,” Sam snapped. “I have had my quota of drugs this week.”

“Oh, come on now!” Kemper replied evenly. “You are like a whining teenager throwing a tantrum. And I thought PMS was a women's issue. I had to drug you or else you would have run off with your friends and gotten killed. You should be grateful that you are alive.” He held out a wrapped sandwich bought at a shop in one of the towns they had passed.

“Did you kill them?” Sam asked.

“Sir, we have to fill up the truck at Shalkar soon,” the chauffer announced.

“That’s fine, Dirk. How long?” he asked the driver.

“Ten minutes until we get there,” he informed Kemper.

“Alright.” He looked at Sam, and a mean smile jumped onto his face. “You should have been there!” Kemper laughed in glee. “Oh, I know you were there, but I mean you should have seen it!”

Sam grew intensely upset with every word the German bastard spat out. Every muscle in Kemper’s face fueled Sam's hatred, and every hand gesture pushed the journalist to a point of unadulterated wrath. ‘Wait. Just wait a bit longer.’

“Your Nina is now rotting beneath the highly radioactive Reaktor-4 ground zero.” Kemper imparted with no small measure of enjoyment. “Her sexy little ass is blistered and decomposing as we speak. Who knows what kind of things Purdue has done to her! But even if they survived each other, the starvation and radiation sickness will have ended them.”

‘Wait! Don’t. Not yet.’

Sam knew that Kemper could shield his thoughts from Sam's influence and that attempting to get a hold of him would not only waste his energy but be futile altogether. They pulled into Shalkar, a small town adjacent to a lake in the middle of a flat desert landscape. A petrol station on the side of the main road accommodated the vehicles.

‘Now.’

Sam knew that although he could not manipulate Kemper's mind, the skinny commander would be easy to subdue physically. Rapidly Sam's dark eyes checked the back of the front seats, the foot well and the items lying on the seat within reach of Kemper. The only threat to Sam was a Taser device next to Kemper, but Highland Ferry Boxing Club taught a pre-teen Sam Cleave that surprise and speed trumped defense.

He took a deep breath and began to latch on to the chauffer's mind. The big gorilla had physical prowess, but his mind was like cotton candy to the battery Sam was packing in his skull. Not even a minute later Sam had gained complete control of Dirk's brain and decided to get nasty. The suited thug stepped out of the car.

“Where are you g…?” Kemper started, but his effeminate face was obliterated by a devastating punch from a well-trained fist bent on freedom. Before he could even think of grabbing the Taser, Klaus Kemper received another hammer — and a few more — until his face was a mess of swollen bruises and blood.

On Sam's command, the chauffer pulled his gun and started opening fire on the workmen on the giant truck. Sam took Kemper's phone and slipped out of the back seat, heading for a secluded place near the lake they had passed on their way into town. With the ensuing chaos, the local police arrived quickly to arrest the gunman. When they found the battered man in the backseat, they assumed it was Dirk's doing. As they tried to capture Dirk, he took one last shot — to the roof of his mouth.