Mystery of the Amber Room

Chapter 22

“This is fucking unbelievable!” Nina raved in awe at what she had discovered. The men had gone out on the boat with Kiril, and she had stayed at the house to do some research, as she had told them. In truth, Nina was busy deciphering the numbers Detlef had received from Milla the night before. There was some concern in the historian’s gut that Milla knew where Detlef was well enough to present him with valuable and pertinent information, but so far it had served them well.

It had been half a day before the men returned with some cock-and-bull fishing stories, but they all felt the urge to carry on with their journey as soon as they had something to go on. Sam had been unable make another connection to the old man's mind, but he didn't tell Nina that the strange ability had begun escaping him lately.

“What did you discover?” Sam asked, taking off his spray-soaked sweater and hat. Detlef and Purdue entered behind him, looking exhausted. Kiril had made them earn their keep today by helping him with the nets and engine work, but they had had fun listening to his entertaining stories. Unfortunately though, none of those stories involved historical secrets. He had told them to head home while he delivered his catch to a local market a few miles from the docks.

“You are not going to believe this!” she smiled, hovering over her laptop. “The numbers station broadcast Detlef and I have been listening to has given us with something unique. I don't know how they do it, and I don't care,” she continued as they gathered around her, “but they have managed to turn a soundtrack into numerical codes!”

“What do you mean?” Purdue asked, impressed that she brought his Enigma machine with her in case they needed it. “It is a simple conversion. Like encryption? Like data from an mp3 file, Nina,” he smiled. “It is nothing new to use data to convert coding into sound.”

“But numbers? Proper numbers, nothing else. No codes and gibberish like what you do when you write software,” she contested. “Look, I'm a complete layman when it comes to technology, but I have never heard of sequential double-digit numbers making up a sound clip.”

“Me neither,” Sam admitted. “But then again I am also not exactly a geek.”

“That is all great, but I think the most important part here is what the sound clip says,” Detlef suggested.

“It is a radio broadcast that was sent out over Russian airwaves; I'm guessing. On the clip, you will hear a broadcaster interview a man, but I don't speak Russ…” she frowned. “Where is Kiril?”

“On his way,” Purdue said reassuringly. “I suppose we're going to need him to translate.”

“Aye, the interview carries on for almost 15 minutes before it is interrupted by this squeak that almost burst my eardrums,” she said. “Detlef, Milla wanted you to hear this for some reason. We have to keep that in mind. This might be pivotal to the location of the Amber Room.”

“That loud squeak,” Kiril suddenly muttered as he entered the front door with two bags and a bottle of liquor clutched under his arm, “is military interference.”

“Just the man we want to see,” Purdue smiled, coming to help the old Russian with the bags. “Nina has a radio broadcast in Russian. Will you be so kind to translate it for us?”

“Of course! Of course,” Kiril chuckled. “Let me have a listen. Oh, and pour me a drink there, please.”

While Purdue obliged, Nina played the audio clip on her laptop. By the bad quality in recording, it sounded much like an old broadcast. She could discern two male voices. One asked questions, and the other gave lengthy answers. Crackling interference persisted over the recording and the voices of the two men faded now and then, only to come back louder than before.

“This is not an interview, my friends,” Kiril told the group within the first minute of listening. “It is an interrogation.”

Nina’s heart skipped a beat. “Is it authentic?”

Sam motioned from behind Kiril for Nina not to speak, to wait. Intently the old man listened to every word, his face falling into a dark scowl. Occasionally he would shake his head very slowly, looking somber at what he had heard. Purdue, Nina, and Sam were dying to know what the men were saying.

Waiting for Kiril to finish listening had them all on tenterhooks, but they had to keep quiet so he could hear over the hissing of the recording.

“Watch out for the squeal, guys,” Nina warned when she saw the timer nearing the end of the clip. They all braced themselves for it, and rightly so. It split the atmosphere with a high pitched wail that persisted for several seconds. Kiril’s body jerked from the sound. He turned to look at the group.

“There is a gunshot in there. Did you hear it?” he said casually.

“No. When?” Nina asked.

“In that god awful noise, there is a man's name and a gunshot. I have no idea if the squeal was supposed to mask the shot or if it was just a coincidence, but there is definitely a gun shot,” he revealed.

“Wow, good ears,” Purdue said. “None of us even heard that.”

“Not good ears, Mr. Purdue. Trained ears. My ears have been trained to listen to hidden sounds and messages, thanks to years of radio work,” Kiril bragged, smiling and pointing at his ear.

“But a gunshot should have been loud enough to detect under that, even for untrained ears,” Purdue supposed. “Then again, it depends on what the conversation is about. That should tell us if it's even relevant.”

“Aye, please tell us what they said, Kiril,” Sam implored.

Kiril emptied his glass and cleared his throat. “It is an interrogation between a Red Army official and a Gulag inmate, so that must have been recorded just after the fall of the Third Reich. I hear a man’s name shouted outside before the shot.”

“Gulag?” Detlef asked.

“Prisoners of war. Soviets captured by Wehrmacht were ordered by Stalin to commit suicide when captured. Those who did not kill themselves — like the man interrogated in your clip — were considered traitors by the Red Army,” he explained.

“So kill yourself or your own army will?” Sam clarified. “Can’t catch a bloody break, these lads.”

“Exactly,” Kiril agreed. “No surrender. This man, the interrogator, he is a commander, and the Gulag is from 4th Ukrainian Front they say. Now, in this conversation the Ukrainian soldier is one of three men who survived…,” Kiril did not know the word, but he gestured with his hands, “…unexplained drowning at coast of Latvia. He says they intercepted the treasure that was supposed to be taken by the Nazi Kriegsmarine.”

“The treasure. The Amber Room panels, I presume,” Purdue added.

“Must be. He says that the plates, the panels, were crumbling?” Kiril struggled with his English.

“Brittle,” Nina smiled. “I remember they said that the original panels had become brittle from age by 1944 when they had to be removed by Heeresgruppe Nord.”

“Da,” Kiril winked. “He is telling about how they cheated the crew of the Wilhelm Gustloff and made away with the amber panels to make sure the Germans would not take those panels with them. But he says during the trip to Latvia, where their mobile units waited to pick them up, something went very wrong. The crumbling amber set free something that went into their heads — no, captain's head.”

“Excuse me?” Purdue perked up. “What went into his head? Does he say?”

“It may not make sense to you, but he says something was in the amber, trapped there for centuries and more centuries. An insect, I think, is what he says. It went into the captain's ear. None of them could see it again, because it was very, very small, like a gnat bug,” Kiril relayed the soldier’s account.

“Jesus,” Sam mumbled.

“The man says when the captain made his eyes white all the men did terrible things?”

Kiril frowned, thinking over his words. Then he nodded, satisfied his account of the soldier's bizarre statements was correct. Nina looked at Sam. He looked stunned, but he said nothing.

“Does he say what they did?” Nina asked.

“They all started to think like one man. They had one brain, he says. When the captain told them to drown themselves, they all walked onto the ship's deck, and without looking worried about it, they jumped into the water and drowned just off the coast,” the old Russian declared.

“Mind control,” Sam affirmed. “That is why Hitler wanted the Amber Room to be taken back to Germany during Operation Hannibal. With that kind of mind control, he would have been able to subjugate the world without much effort!”

“How did he know that, though?” Detlef wanted to know.

“How do you think the Third Reich managed to turn tens of thousands of normal, morally sound German men and women into uniformly thinking Nazi soldiers?” Nina challenged. “Haven't you ever wondered how those soldiers were so innately evil and irrefutably cruel when they wore those uniforms?” Her words echoed in the silent contemplation of her companions. “Think about the atrocities committed on even small children, Detlef. Thousands upon thousands of Nazis were of the same mind, the same level of cruelty, unquestioning of their despicable orders like brainwashed zombies. I bet Hitler and Himmler discovered this ancient organism during one of Himmler's experiments.”

The men agreed, looking shocked at the new development.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Detlef said, rubbing his chin, thinking about the moral corruption of Nazi soldiers.

“We always thought they were brainwashed through propaganda,” Kiril told his guests, “but there was too much discipline. That level of unity is not natural. Why do you think I called the Amber Room a curse last night?”

“Wait,” Nina scowled, “you knew about this?”

Kiril returned her reproachful look with a glare. “Da! What do you think we have been doing all these years with our numbers stations? We are all over the world, sending out codes to warn our allies, to share intelligence on anyone who might try to use them on people. We know about the bugs that were trapped in the amber because another Nazi bastard used it on my father and his company a year after the Gustloff disaster.”

“That is why you wanted to dissuade us from looking for it,” Purdue stated. “Now I understand.”

“So, is that all the soldier told the interrogator?” Sam asked the old man.

“He is asked how come he survived the captain’s order and then he replies that the captain could not come near him, so he never heard the command,” Kiril explained.

“Why couldn't he come near him?” Purdue inquired, taking notes of the facts on a small notepad.

“He does not say. Just that the captain could not be in the same room as him. Maybe this is why he gets shot before the session is over, perhaps by the man’s name they shout. They think he is hiding information, so they kill him,” Kiril shrugged. “I think maybe it was the radiation.”

“The radiation of what? As far as I know there was no nuclear activity in Russia back then,” Nina said as she poured Kiril another vodka and herself some wine. “Can I smoke in here?”

“Of course,” he smiled. Then he answered her question. “First Lightning. You see, the first atomic bomb was detonated in the Kazakh Steppe in 1949, but what nobody will tell you is that nuclear experiments have been going on since the late 1930’s. I imagine this Ukrainian soldier lived in Kazakhstan before he was drafted into the Red Army, but,” he shrugged indifferently, “I can be mistaken.”

“What name do they shout in the background before the soldier is killed?” Purdue asked out of the blue. It had just occurred to him that the identity of the shooter was still a mystery.

“Oh!” Kiril chuckled. “Yes, you can hear someone shout as if they try to stop him.” He softly imitated the shout. “Kemper!”