Mystery of the Amber Room

Chapter 29

Throughout the Red Forest predominantly pine trees populated the area, born from the very soil that covered the graves of the former forest. Contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster, the previous vegetation had been bulldozed and buried. The ginger red pine skeletons beneath the thick layer of earth had given birth to a new generation planted by authorities. The Volvo's only headlight, the high beam on the right, haunted the grave rustling tree trunks of the Red Forest as Nina drove toward the dilapidated steel gates at the entrance of the forlorn compound. Painted green and mounted with Soviet stars, the two gates fell askew, barely held up by the collapsing wooden perimeter fence.

“Good God, this is depressing!” Nina remarked, leaning on the steering wheel to get a good look at the hardly visible surroundings.

“Where are we supposed to go, I wonder,” Purdue said, looking for signs of life. The only signs of life, though, came in the form of surprisingly abounding wildlife such as the deer and beavers Purdue had seen on the way to the entrance.

“Let’s just go in and wait. I give them 30 minutes tops, then we get the hell out of this death trap,” Nina asserted. The car advanced very slowly, creeping along the decrepit walls where the fading Soviet era propaganda peeled from the crumbling masonry. Only the scrunching of the tires sounded in the lifeless night at the Duga-3 military base.

“Nina,” Purdue said softly.

“Yeah?” she replied, fascinated by an abandoned Willys Jeep.

“Nina!” he said louder with eyes frozen ahead. She slammed on the brakes.

“Holy shit!” she shrieked as the grill of the car stopped inches short of a tall, thin Balkan beauty dressed in boots and a white dress. “What is she doing in the middle of the road?” The woman's light blue eyes pierced through the beam of the car's light into Nina's dark stare. With a subtle wave of her hand, she beckoned them, turning to show them the way.

“I don’t trust her,” Nina whispered.

“Nina, we are here. We are expected. We are in deep already. Let's not keep the lady waiting,” he smiled at the pretty historian's pout. “Come. This was your idea.” He gave her a reassuring wink and got out of the car. Nina shouldered her laptop bag and followed along with Purdue. The young blonde woman said nothing while they trailed her, occasionally glancing at one another for encouragement. Finally, Nina gave in and asked, “Are you Milla?”

“No,” the woman said casually without turning around. They ascended two flights of stairs up to what resembled a cafeteria of the bygone era, where glaring white light fell through the doorway. She opened the door and held it for Nina and Purdue who reluctantly entered, keeping their eye on her.

“This is Milla,” she informed the Scottish guests, stepping aside to reveal five men and two women sitting in a circle with laptops. “It stands for ‘Militum Indicina Leonid Leopoldt Alpha’.

Each had their own style and purpose, taking turns to occupy the only control desk for their respective broadcasts. “I am Elena. This is my partners,” she explained in a thick Serbian accent. “Are you Widower?”

“Aye, he is,” Nina answered before Purdue could. “I am his associate, Dr. Gould. You can call me Nina, and this is Dave.”

“We have been hoping you will come. There is much to warn you about,” one of the men said from over at the circle.

“About what?” Nina said under her breath.

One of the ladies was seated in the isolation booth behind the control desk, unable to hear their conversation. “No, we will not disturb her transmission. No worry,” Elena smiled. “That is Yuri. He is from Kiev.”

Yuri raised a hand in greeting but carried on with his work. They were all under 35 years of age, but they all shared the same tattoo — the star Nina and Purdue had seen outside on the gates, with writing underneath in Russian.

“Cool ink,” Nina said approvingly, pointing at the one Elena sported on her neck. “What does that say?”

“Oh, it says Krasnaya Armiya 1985…um, ‘Red Army' and the date of birth. We all have our year of birthday next to our stars,” she smiled coyly. Her voice was like satin over the articulation of her words which only made her more appealing than her physical beauty alone.

“That name in Milla’s abbreviation,” Nina asked, “who is Leonid…?”

Elena quickly responded. “Leonid Leopoldt was German-born Ukrainian operative in World War II who survived the mass suicide drowning off the coast of Latvia. Leonid killed the captain and radioed to submarine commander Alexander Marinesko.”

Purdue nudged Nina, “Marinesko was Kiril’s father, remember?”

Nina nodded, eager to hear more from Elena.

“Marinesko’s men removed the Amber Room pieces and hid them while Leonid was sent to a Gulag. While he was in Red Army interrogation room, he was shot dead by SS swine Karl Kemper. That Nazi scum was not supposed to be in Red Army facility!” Elena fumed in her genteel way, looking distraught.

“Oh my God, Purdue!” Nina whispered. “Leonid was the soldier on the recording! Detlef has his medal pinned to his chest.”

“You are not affiliated with the Order of the Black Sun then?” Purdue asked sincerely. With great hostile looks, the entire group reprimanded and cursed him. He did not speak the languages, but it was clear that their response was not favorable.

“Widower means no offense,” Nina interjected. “Um, he was told by an unknown agent that your broadcasts came from the Black Sun High Command. But we have been lied to by many people, so we don’t really know what is going on. We don’t know who serves what, you see.”

Nina's words were met by appreciative nods from the Milla group. Instantly they accepted her explanation, so she dared ask a pressing question. “Did the Red Army not disband in the early Nineties, though? Or is it just to show your devotion?”

A striking man in his mid-thirties answered Nina’s question. “Did the Order of the Black Sun not disband after that zasranees Hitler killed himself?”

“No, the next generations of followers are still active,” Purdue answered.

“There you go,” the man said. “The Red Army is still fighting the Nazis; only this is new generation operatives fighting old war. Red vs. Black.”

“That is Misha,” Elena chimed in out of courtesy to the strangers.

“We are all military-trained personnel, like our fathers and their fathers, but we fight with new world's most dangerous weapon — information technology,” Misha preached. He was clearly the leader. “Milla is the new Tsar Bomba, baby!”

Cries of victory erupted among the group. Amused and perplexed, Purdue looked at a smiling Nina and whispered, “What is ‘Tsar Bomba’, may I ask?”

“Only the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated in the entire history of the human race,” she winked. “A hydrogen bomb; I believe it was a tested somewhere in the Sixties.”

“And these are the good guys,” Purdue remarked playfully, making sure he kept his voice down. Nina chuckled and nodded. “I’m just relieved we are not behind enemy lines here.”

After the group had quieted down, Elena offered Purdue and Nina some black coffee which both gratefully accepted. It had been an exceptionally long drive, not to mention the emotional strain for what they still had to deal with.

“Elena, we have some questions about Milla and its involvement with the Amber Room relic,” Purdue inquired respectfully. “We have to find the artwork, or what is left of it before tomorrow night.”

“Nyet! Oh no, no!” Misha protested blatantly. He ordered Elena to move aside on the couch and sat down opposite the misinformed visitors. “Nobody takes the Amber Room out of its tomb! Never! If you want to do this, we will have to resort to severe measures with you.”

Elena tried to calm him as the others stood up and encircled the small space where Misha and the strangers were sitting. Nina took Purdue's hand as they all drew their firearms. The terrifying clicks of hammers being pulled back proved how serious Milla was.

“Alright, relax. Let us discuss an alternative, by all means,” Purdue proposed.

Elena's soft voice was the first to respond. “Look, last time someone stole a piece of that masterpiece, the Third Reich almost destroyed the freedom of all people.”

“How?” Purdue asked. Of course, he had an idea, but was as yet unable to realize the true threat within. All Nina wanted was for the bulky hand guns to be holstered so she could relax, but the members of Milla didn't budge.

Before Misha went on another tirade, Elena implored him to wait with one of those enthralling waves of her hand. She sighed and proceeded, “The amber used to produce original Amber Room was from the Balkan region.”

“We know about the ancient organism — Kalihasa — that was inside the amber,” Nina interrupted gently.

“And you know what it does?” Misha snapped.

“Aye,” Nina affirmed.

“Then why the fuck do you want to let them have it? Are you crazy? You are crazy people! You West and your greed! Money whores, all of you!” Misha barked at Nina and Purdue in an uncontrollable rage. “Shoot them,” he told his group.

Nina threw up her hands in horror. “No! Please listen! We want to destroy the amber panels once and for all, but we just don’t know how. Listen, Misha,” she pleaded for his attention, “our colleague… our friend… is being held by the Order and they will kill him unless we deliver the Amber Room by tomorrow. So Widower and I are in deep, very deep shit! Do you understand?”

Purdue cringed at Nina’s trademark ferocity toward the trigger-happy Misha.

“Nina, may I remind you that the guy you are yelling at pretty much has our proverbial balls in his grip,” Purdue said as he tugged gently at Nina's shirt.

“No, Purdue!” she fought, slapping his hand aside. “We are in the middle here. We are neither Red Army, nor Black Sun, yet we are being threatened by both sides and forced to be their bitches, doing the dirty work and trying not to get killed!”

Elena sat silently nodding in agreement, waiting for Misha to let the predicament of the strangers sink in. The woman who had been broadcasting all this time exited the booth and stared at strangers seated in the cafeteria and the rest of her group, guns at the ready. At over six foot three, the dark-haired Ukrainian looked beyond intimidating. Her dreadlocks swung about her shoulders as she strode elegantly to meet them. Nonchalantly Elena introduced her to Nina and Purdue, “This is our explosives expert, Natasha. She is former Spetsnaz and direct descendent of Leonid Leopoldt.”

“Who is this?” Natasha asked firmly.

“Widower,” Misha answered, pacing as he considered Nina’s recent assertion.

“Ah, Widower. Gabi was our friend,” she replied as she shook her head. “Her death was a great loss to world freedom.”

“Yes, it was,” Purdue agreed, unable to peel his eyes from the newcomer. Elena filled Natasha in on the sticky situation the visitors found themselves in, upon which the Amazon-like woman responded, “Misha, we have to help them.”

“We wage war with data, with information, not with firepower,” Misha reminded her.

“Was it information and data that stopped that American Intelligence officer who tried to help the Black Sun obtain the Amber Room during the last era of the Cold War?” she asked him. “No, Soviet firepower stopped him in West Germany.”

“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.