Mystery of the Amber Room

Chapter 30

Sam thought of Nina while he waited for Kemper to return to the vehicle. The bodyguard who drove them remained at the wheel, leaving the engine running. Even if Sam could escape the gorilla with the black suit, there was really nowhere to flee to. To all sides of them, stretching as far as the eye could see, the landscape resembled a very familiar sight. In fact, it was more of a familiar vision.

Unnervingly similar to Sam’s hypnosis-induced hallucination during those sessions with Dr. Helberg, the flat, featureless expanse of colorless grassland disturbed him. It was good that Kemper had left him alone for a bit so that he could process the surreal occurrence until it did not frighten him anymore. But the more he observed, acknowledged, and absorbed the scenery to adjust to it, the more Sam realized that it did not terrify him any less.

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he involuntarily recalled the dream of the well and the barren landscape before the devastating pulse that lit up the sky and exterminated nations. The significance of what had once been no more than a subconscious manifestation of turmoil attested to have been, to Sam’s dread, a prophecy.

‘Prophecy? Me?’ he pondered on the absurd nature of the idea. But then another memory wedged itself into his mind like another piece of the puzzle. His mind revealed the words it recorded while he had been in the grips of his seizure, back in the village on the island; words Nina's attacker had screamed at her.

“Take your evil prophet away from here!”

“Take your evil prophet away from here!”

“Take your evil prophet away from here!”

Sam was spooked.

‘Holy shit! How did I not hear it at the time?’ he racked his brain, neglecting to consider that this was the very nature of the mind and all its miraculous abilities. ‘He called me a prophet?' Ashen, he swallowed hard when it all came together — the vision of the exact terrain and the laying waste of an entire race under a sky of amber. But what bothered him most was the pulse he had seen in his vision, similar to that of a nuclear explosion.

Kemper startled Sam when he opened the door to get back in. That sudden thwack of the central locking system followed by the loud click of the handle came just as Sam recalled that all-consuming pulse that had rippled across the entire land.

“Entschuldigung, Herr Cleave,” Kemper apologized when Sam jolted in fright, clutching his chest. It did give the tyrant a chuckle, though. “Why so jumpy?”

“Just nervous about my friends,” Sam shrugged.

“I am sure they will not let you down,” Klaus attempted to be cordial.

“Problem with the cargo?” Sam asked.

“Just a minor problem with a petrol gauge, but it's sorted out now,” Kemper replied earnestly. “So, you wanted to know how the number sequences thwarted your attack on me, correct?”

“Aye. It was amazing, but even more impressive was the fact that it only affected me. The men with you showed no sign of manipulation,” Sam marveled, stroking Klaus' ego as if he was a huge admirer. It was a tactic Sam Cleave had utilized many times before while conducting his investigations to expose criminals.

“Here is the secret,” Klaus smiled smugly, wringing his hands slowly and brimming with conceit. “It is not necessarily the numbers as much as the combination of the numbers. Mathematics, as you know, is the language of Creation itself. Numbers control everything in existence, whether on a cellular level, geometrically, in physics, chemical compounds or whatever else. It is the key to converting all data — like a computer inside the task-specific part of your brain, you see?”

Sam nodded. He gave it some thought and replied, “So it is like a cipher to a biological Enigma machine.”

Kemper applauded. Literally. “That is an exceptionally accurate analogy, Mr. Cleave! I could not have explained it better myself. That is precisely how it works. By applying strings of specific combinations one could quite possibly expand the field of influence, essentially short-circuiting the brain’s receptors. Now, if you add an electrical current to this action,” Kemper reveled in his superiority, “it enhances the effect of the thought form tenfold.”

“So by using electricity you could actually increase the amount of data absorbed? Or is that to heighten the manipulator's ability to control more than one person at a time?” Sam asked.

‘Keep talking, dobber,’ Sam thought from behind his expertly played charade. ‘And the award goes to… Samson Cleave for his role as fascinated-journalist-enthralled-by-smarter-man!' Not in the least less exceptional at his own game, Sam registered every detail the German narcissist spewed out.

“What do you think the first thing was Adolf Hitler did when he assumed power over the idle Wehrmacht personnel in 1935?” he asked Sam rhetorically. “He implemented mass discipline, martial efficacy, and unshakable loyalty to enforce SS ideologies using subliminal programming.”

With great delicacy, Sam posed the question that shot to mind almost immediately after Kemper's statement. “Did Hitler have Kalihasa?”

“After the Amber Room was resident at Berlin City Palace, a German craftsman from Bavaria…” Kemper uttered a grunt as he tried to remember the name of the man. “Uh, no, I don't remember — he was summoned to join Russian craftsmen to restore the artifact after it had been gifted to Peter the Great, you see?”

“Aye,” Sam replied eagerly.

“According to legend, while he worked on the new design for the Catherine Palace erection of the restored room, he 'claimed' three pieces of amber, you know, for his trouble,” Kemper winked at Sam.

“Don’t really blame him, actually,” Sam remarked.

“No, how could anyone blame him for that? I agree. Anyway, he sold one piece. The other two were feared to have been swindled by his wife and sold as well. However, this was apparently incorrect, and the wife in question happened to be the early matriarch of a blood line that would meet an impressionable Hitler ages later.”

Kemper clearly relished his own storytelling while killing time en route to kill Sam, but the journalist paid attention nonetheless as the story unfolded ever more. “She had passed down the remaining two amber pieces from the original Amber Room to her descendants, and it ended up being bestowed on none other than Johann Dietrich Eckart! How is that for chance?”

“I'm sorry, Klaus,” Sam apologized sheepishly, “but my German history knowledge is embarrassing. That is what I keep Nina for.”

“Ha! Just for historical information?” Klaus teased. “I doubt that. But let me clarify. Eckart, an extremely educated man, and metaphysical poet was directly responsible for Hitler's admiration for the occult. It was Eckart, we suspect, who discovered the power of Kalihasa, and then used the phenomenon when he assembled the first Black Sun members. And of course, the most prominent member who could actively apply the undeniable opportunity to alter the ideologies of men…”

“…was Adolf Hitler. I get it now,” Sam filled the blanks, acting very fascinated to beguile his captor. “Kalihasa gave Hitler the ability to turn individuals into, well, drones. This explains how the masses in Nazi Germany were basically of the same mind… the synchronized movement, and this obscenely instinctive, inhumane level of cruelty.”

Klaus smiled endearingly at Sam. “Obscenely instinctive…I like that.”

“I thought you might,” Sam sighed. “This is all positively fascinating, you know? But how did you learn about all this?”

“My father,” Kemper replied matter-of-factly. He struck Sam as a would-be celebrity with his pretend coyness. “Karl Kemper.”

‘Kemper was the name called out on Nina’s sound clip,’ Sam remembered. ‘He was responsible for the death of the Red Army soldier in the interrogation room. The puzzle is coming together now.’ He stared in the eyes of the small-framed monster before him. ‘I cannot wait to watch you choke,’ Sam thought as he paid the Black Sun commander all the attention he craved. ‘Can’t believe I am drinking with a genocidal fuckwit. How I would dance on your ashes, Nazi scum!' The notions that materialized inside Sam's psyche felt alien and detached from his own personality, and it alarmed him. The Kalihasa in his brain was at it again, feeding negativity and primal violence into his thoughts, but he had to admit that the terrible things he was thinking were not altogether exaggerated.

“Tell me, Klaus, what was the objective behind the assassinations in Berlin?” Sam extended the so-called ad hoc interview for a glass of good whiskey. “Fear? Public alarm? I always thought it was your way of just preparing the masses for the coming implementation of a new system of order and discipline. How close I was! Should have placed a bet.”

Kemper looked less starry on hearing the new route the investigative journalist was taking, but he had nothing to lose in exposing his reasons to a walking dead man.

“That is a very simple agenda, actually,” he replied. “With the German Chancellor at our mercy, we have leverage. The killings of high-profile citizens, mostly responsible for the country’s political and financial well-being, prove that we are aware and that we are not hesitant to enforce our threats, of course.”

“So you picked them based on their elite status?” Sam inquired simply.

“That too, Mr. Cleave. But each of our targets had a deeper investment in our world than mere money and power,” Kemper revealed, yet he did not appear too eager to share what exactly that investment had been. Only until Sam pretended to lose interest with a simple nod and started staring out the window at the moving terrain outside did Kemper feel compelled to tell him. “Each of those seemingly random targets was in fact Germans assisting our contemporary comrades of the Red Army in concealing the location and shrouding the existence of the Amber Room. Milla has been the single-most effective hindrance in the Black Sun's search for the original masterpiece. My father heard it first hand from Leopoldt — a Russian traitor — that the relic had been intercepted by the Red Army and had not gone down with the Wilhelm Gustloff, as legend dictates. Since then some Black Sun members, changing their opinions about world domination, have defected from our ranks. Can you believe that? Aryan descendants, powerful and intellectually superior, chose to break ranks with the Order. But the ultimate betrayal was helping the Soviet bastards keeping the Amber Room hidden, even funding the covert operation in 1986 to destroy six of the ten remaining slabs of amber containing Kalihasa!”

Sam perked up. “Wait, wait. What are you saying about 1986? Half of the Amber Room was destroyed?”

“Yes, thanks to our freshly deceased elite members of society who funded Milla for Operation Motherland, Chernobyl is now the tomb of half of the magnificent relic,” Kemper sneered, clenching his fists. “But this time we are going to kill them off — make them extinct along with their countrymen and anyone who questions us.”

“How?” Sam asked.

Kemper laughed, surprised that a sharp man like Sam Cleave did not realize what was really going on. “Why, we have you, Mr. Cleave. You are the Black Sun's new Hitler… with that special creature that is feeding on your brain.”

“Excuse me?” Sam gasped. “How do you believe am I going to serve your purpose?”

“Your mind has the ability to manipulate the masses, my friend. Like the Führer, you will be able to subjugate Milla and all other agencies like them — even governments. They will do the rest themselves,” Kemper grinned.

“What about my friends?” Sam asked, alarmed at the prospects ahead.

“It will not matter. By the time you have projected Kalihasa’s power over the world, the organism will have consumed most of your brain,” Kemper revealed as Sam stared at him in raw horror. “Either that or the abnormal increase in electrical activity will have fried your brain. Either way, you will go down in history as a hero of the Order.”