Mystery of the Amber Room

Chapter 17

Sam and Nina had left Dr. Helberg’s office before the police showed up. They had no idea what the psychologist was going to tell the authorities, but they had more important things to think about now.

“Did he say where he was?” Sam asked as they headed for Sam’s car.

“He was being held in a compound run by… guess who?” she sneered.

“The Black Sun, by chance?” Sam played along.

“Bingo! And he gave me a sequence of numbers to punch into one of his gadgets at Wrichtishousis. Some contraption that looks like an Enigma machine,” she informed him.

“Do you know what that looks like?” he asked as they drove to Purdue’s estate.

“Aye. It was extensively used by the Nazis during World War II to communicate. It's basically an electro-mechanical rotor cipher machine,” Nina explained.

“And do you know how to work this thing?” Sam wanted to know because they knew he'd be out of his depth at trying to mess with complex codes. He once attempted coding for a software course and ended up inventing a program that did nothing but creating umlauts and stationary bubbles.

“Purdue gave me some numbers to enter into the machine, He said it would give us his location,” she replied, looking over the seemingly senseless sequence she jotted down.

“I wonder how he got to a phone,” Sam said as they neared the hill where Purdue’s massive manor lurched over the winding road. “I hope he does not get discovered while waiting for us to get to him.”

“No, he is safe for now. He told me that the guards were ordered to kill him, but that he managed to escape the room they had kept him in. Now he is apparently hiding in the computer room, and hacked into their communication lines to be able to call us,” she explained.

“Ha! Old school! Well done, old cock!” Sam grinned at Purdue’s resourcefulness.

They pulled into the drive at Purdue's home. Security knew their boss' closest friends and cordially waved at them when they opened the huge black gates. Purdue's assistant met them at the door.

“You found Mr. Purdue?” she asked. “Oh thank God!”

“Aye, we have to get to his electronics rooms, please. It is very urgent,” Sam requested, and they rushed to the basement room Purdue had modified into one of his holy chapels of inventions galore. On one side, he kept everything he was still working on, and on the other side was everything he had completed but hadn't patented yet. To anyone who did not live and breathe for engineering or was less technically inclined, it was an impenetrable maze of wires and hardware, monitors, and tools.

“Shit, look at all this stuff! How are we supposed to find that thing in here?” Sam worried. His hands ran along the sides of his head as he scanned the place for what Nina had described as a sort of typewriter. “I see nothing like that here.”

“Me neither,” she sighed. “Just help me look through the cabinets as well, please Sam.”

“I hope you know how to work that thing, or else Purdue is history,” he told her as he opened the doors of the first cupboard, ignoring all the jokes he could crack about the pun of his statement.

“Given all my research for one of my final study papers back in 2004 I should be able to figure it out, don't fret,” Nina said as she rummaged through some cabinets that stood lines up against the east wall.

“I think I found it,” he said casually. From an old green army locker, Sam lifted a beat-up looking typewriter and held it up like a trophy. “Is this it?”

“That's it, yes!” she exclaimed. “Right, set it down over here.”

Nina cleared a small desk and moved a chair from another table to sit down in front of it. She retrieved the paper with numbers Purdue had given her and got to work. While Nina focused on the process, Sam was thinking about the most recent events, trying to make sense of it. If he could truly make people obey his orders, it would change his life completely, but something about his convenient new talent set of a whole bunch of red lights in his head.

“Excuse me, Dr. Gould,” one of Purdue's house staff called from the door. “There is a gentleman here to see you. He says he spoke to you on the phone a few days ago about Mr. Purdue.”

“Oh shit!” Nina cried. “I completely forgot about that guy! Sam, the man who alerted us that Purdue was missing? That must be him. Shit, he is going to be upset.”

“For what it's worth, he seems very nice,” the staff member chipped in.

“I'll go talk to him. What is his name?” Sam asked her.

“Holtzer,” she answered. “Detlef Holtzer.”

“Nina, Holtzer is the surname of the woman who died at the Consulate, isn't it?” he asked. She nodded, and suddenly remembered the man's first name from the phone call now that Sam mentioned it.

Sam left Nina to her task and went up to speak to the stranger. When he entered the lobby, he was surprised to see the powerfully built man sipping tea with such refinement.

“Mr. Holtzer?” Sam smiled, reaching out a hand. “Sam Cleave. I'm a friend of Dr. Gould and Mr. Purdue. How can I help you?”

Detlef smiled cordially and shook Sam’s hand. “Good to meet you, Mr. Cleave. Um, where is Dr. Gould? It seems that everyone I try to speak to disappears and I get someone else in their place.”

“She is just caught up in a project right now, but she is here. Oh, and she apologizes that she has not yet gotten back to you, but it seems you were able to find Mr. Purdue’s estate quite easily,” Sam noted as he sat down.

“Have you managed to find him yet? I really need to speak to him regarding my wife,” Detlef said, playing open cards with Sam. Sam looked at him, intrigued.

“What, may I ask, did Mr. Purdue have to do with your wife? Were they business associates?” Sam knew full well that they met at Carrington's office to talk about the landing ban, but he wanted to get a feel for the stranger first.

“No, in fact, I wanted to ask him some questions about the circumstances of my wife's death. You see, Mr. Cleave, I know she did not commit suicide. Mr. Purdue was there when she was killed. You understand where I am going with this?” he asked Sam with a sterner demeanor.

“You think Purdue killed your wife,” Sam affirmed.

“I do,” Detlef answered.

“And you are here to seek revenge?” Sam asked.

“Would that be so far-fetched?” the German giant retorted. “He was the last person to see Gabi alive. What else would I be here for?”

The atmosphere between them quickly grew tense, but Sam tried to apply reason and keep things civil.

“Mr. Holtzer, I know Dave Purdue. He is not a killer by any measure. The man is an inventor and explorer who is only interested in historical relics. How do you think would he benefit from your wife's death?” Sam inquired in his journalistic prowess.

“I know that she was trying to expose the people behind those assassinations in Germany and that it has something to do with the elusive Amber Room that was lost in the Second World War. Then she went to meet David Purdue and died. Do you not think that just a tad suspicious?” he asked Sam confrontationally.

“I can understand how you would come to this conclusion Mr. Holtzer, but right after Gabi's death Purdue went missing…”

“Which is precisely the point. Would a killer not try to disappear to avoid getting caught?” Detlef interrupted him. Sam had to admit that the man had a valid reason to suspect Purdue of his wife's murder.

“Alright, I tell you what,” Sam proposed diplomatically, “as soon as we locate…”

“Sam! I cannot get this goddamn thing to give me all the words. Purdue's last two sentences say something about the Amber Room and the Red Army!” Nina shouted as she ran up the steps up to the Bel Etage.

“That's Dr. Gould, right?” Detlef asked Sam. “I recognize her voice from the phone. Tell me, Mr. Cleave, what is her involvement with David Purdue?”

“I am a colleague and friend. I advise him on historical matters during his expeditions, Mr. Holtzer,” she replied firmly to his query.

“Good to meet you face to face, Dr. Gould,” Detlef smiled coolly. “Now tell me, Mr. Cleave, how is it that my wife was investigating something that sounds very much like the same subjects Dr. Gould was just talking about? And they both happen to know David Purdue, so why don't you tell me what I should be thinking?”

Nina and Sam exchanged frowns. It seemed like their visitor had missing pieces to their own puzzle.

“Mr. Holtzer, what subjects are you referring to?” Sam asked. “If you could help us figure this out, we are probably going to be able to find Purdue, and then I promise you can ask him anything you want.”

“Without killing him, of course,” Nina added as she joined the two men on the velvet seats in the drawing room.

“My wife was investigating the killings of the financiers and politicians in Berlin. But after her death, I found a room — a radio room, I think — and there I found articles about the assassinations and many documents on the Amber Room that was once given to Tsar Peter the Great by King Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia,” Detlef relayed. “Gabi knew there was a connection between the two, but I need to speak to David Purdue to find out what it is.”

“Well, there is a way you can talk to him, Mr. Holtzer,” Nina shrugged. “I think the information you need might be in his recent communication with us.”

“So you do know where he is!” he snapped.

“No, we only got this message, and we need to decipher all the words before we can go and rescue him from the people that abducted him,” Nina explained to the high-strung visitor. “If we can't decipher his message, I have no idea how to look for him.”

“By the way, what was the rest of the message you did manage to decode?” Sam asked her inquisitively.

She sighed, still baffled by the nonsensical wording. “It mentions ‘Army' and ‘Steppe', probably a mountain region? Then it says ‘search for Amber Room or die' and the only other thing I got was a bunch of punctuation marks and asterisks. I'm not sure if his machine is quite on point.”

Detlef thought about the information. “Look at this,” he said suddenly, reaching into his jacket pocket. Sam assumed a defensive position, but the stranger only pulled out his cell phone. He flicked through the pictures and showed them the contents of the secret room. “One of my sources gave me coordinates to follow to find the people Gabi was threatening to expose. See those numbers? Put them in your machine and see what it does.”

They went back in the room in the basement of the old mansion where Nina had been working with the Enigma machine. Detlef’s pictures were clear and close enough for them to discern each combination. For the next two hours, Nina entered the numbers one by one. Finally, she had a print-out of the words coinciding with the ciphers.

“Now this is not Purdue's message; this one is based on the numbers from Gabi's maps,” Nina clarified before she read out the result. “First, it says ‘Black vs. Red in Kazakh Steppe', then ‘radiation cage' and the last two combinations ‘Mind control' and ‘ancient orgasm'.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Ancient orgasm?”

“Ugh! I misspoke. It's ‘ancient organism',” she stammered, much to Detlef and Sam's amusement. “So the 'Steppe' is mentioned by both Gabi and Purdue, and it is the only clue that happens to be a location.”

Sam looked at Detlef. “So, you came all the way from Germany to find Gabi's murderer. How about a trip to the Kazakh Steppe?”