Mystery of the Amber Room

Chapter 32

When Purdue awoke on the toilet floor, his shirt was a mess of bile and saliva. Embarrassed, he did his best to remove it with hand soap and cold water at the sink. After some scrubbing, he surveyed the condition of the fabric in the mirror. “Like it never happened,” he smiled, satisfied with his effort.

When he entered the cafeteria, he found Nina being dressed by Elena and Misha.

“Your turn,” Nina grinned. “I see you had another bout of sickness.”

“This one was nothing short of violent,” he said. “What is happening?”

“We are padding Dr. Gould's clothing with radioactive-resistant materials for when you two go down to get the Amber Room,” Elena informed him.

“This is ridiculous, Nina,” he bitched. “I refuse to wear all that. Like our task is not already impeded by a deadline, now you have to resort to absurd and time-consuming measures to hold us up even longer?”

Nina frowned. It seemed Purdue had once again become the whiny bitch she had had a tiff with in the car, and she was not going to stand for his childish moods. “Would you like your balls to fall off by tomorrow?” she nipped back. “Otherwise you better get a cup; a lead one.”

“Grow up, Dr. Gould,” he countered.

“Radiation levels are next to lethal for this little expedition, Dave. I hope you have a large collection of baseball caps for that imminent hair loss you will suffer in a few weeks.”

Silently the Soviets laughed at Nina's patronizing rant as they adjusted the last of her lead enforced gear. Elena gave her a medical mask to put over her mouth once down in the well and a climbing helmet for good measure.

After sulking for a while, Purdue allowed them to deck him out in similar fashion before accompanying Nina to where Natasha was ready to arm them for battle. Marko had assembled some delicate cutting tools the size of a pencil case for them, as well as instruction on how to plate the amber with the fine glass prototype he had created for just such an occasion.

“Are you people sure we will be able to pull off this highly specialized undertaking with such short notice?” Purdue asked.

“Dr. Gould says you are inventor,” Marko replied. “Just like work with electronics. Use the tools to access and fit. Put pieces of metal on the amber sheet to hide as gold inlay and put the covers over it. Use clips on the corners and BOOM! Death-reinforced Amber Room for them to take home.”

“I’m still not clear on what this all is,” Nina complained. “Why are we doing this? I got the hint from Misha that we must be far away, which means this is a bomb, right?”

“Correct,” Natasha affirmed.

“But this is just a collection of dirty silver metal frames and rings. It looks like something my mechanic grandfather hoarded in his junk yard,” she groaned. For the first time, Purdue showed some interest in their mission when he saw the junk that looked like tarnished steel or silver.

“Mary, Mother of God! Nina!” he gasped in awe, giving Natasha a look of chastisement and wonder. “You people are insane!”

“What? What is it?” she asked. They all returned his gaze, unperturbed by his panic-stricken judgment. Purdue's mouth remained open in disbelief as he turned to Nina with one piece in his hand. “This is weapons-grade Plutonium. They are sending us to turn the Amber Room into a nuclear bomb!”

They did not refute his statement, nor did they look intimidated. Nina was speechless.

“Is that true?” she asked. Elena looked down, and Natasha nodded proudly.

“It cannot explode while you handle it, Nina,” Natasha explained calmly. “Just make it look like part of the art and seal Marko’s glass over the panels. Then give it to Kemper.”

“Plutonium ignites by contact with moist air or water,” Purdue gulped, thinking about all the properties of the element. “If the covering were to chip or to be exposed there could be dire consequences.”

“So don’t fuck up,” Natasha growled in amusement. “Now come, you have less than two hours to produce the find to our guests.”

Just over twenty minutes later Purdue and Nina were being lowered into a concealed stone well, overgrown by decades of radioactive grass and shrubs. The masonry had crumbled just like the former Iron Curtain, evidence of a bygone time of superior technology and innovation abandoned and left to the decay of the Chernobyl aftermath.

“You are well away from the Shelter Object,” Elena reminded Nina. “But breathe through your nose. Yuri and his cousin will wait here for you to hoist the relic out.”

“How do we get it to the entrance of the well? Each panel weighs more than your car!” Purdue declared.

“There is rail system,” Misha called down into the dark pit. “Tracks run to the chamber of the Amber Room where my grandfather and my uncle moved the pieces to the hiding place. You can just lower them with the ropes onto the mine car and roll them here where Yuri will bring them up.”

Nina gave them thumbs up after checking her walkie-talkie for the frequency Misha had given her to communicate with any of them, should she have questions while beneath the dreaded Chernobyl Power Plant.

“Right! Let’s get this done, Nina,” Purdue impelled.

They ventured into the dank blackness with flash lights mounted to their helmets. A black mass in the dark proved to be the mine car Misha had spoken of, and they lifted Marko's sheets onto it with the tools, pushing the car as they walked.

“A bit uncooperative,” Purdue remarked. “But I would be too had I been rusting in the dark for over twenty years.”

Their light beams weakened only a few meters ahead of them, overcome by the thick darkness. A myriad of minute particles floated through the air and danced in front of the rays in the silent oblivion of the underground channel.

“What if we come back, and they have closed the well?” Nina said suddenly.

“We’ll find a way out. We have been through worse than this before,” he reassured.

“It is so eerily quiet,” she persisted with her gloomy mood. “Once there was water down here. I wonder how many people have drowned in this well or perished from radiation while seeking refuge down here.”

“Nina,” was all he said to shake her from her folly.

“Sorry,” Nina whispered. “I am fucking scared.”

“That is unlike you,” Purdue said in the dense atmosphere that denied his voice any echo. “You only fear contamination or the after-effects of radiation poisoning that lead to a slow death. This is why you find this place terrifying.”

Nina stared at him in the misty illumination of her light. “Thank you, David.”

A few steps onward his face changed. He was looking at something to the right of her, but Nina was adamant not to know what it was. When Purdue stopped all kinds of scary scenarios gripped Nina.

“Look,” he smiled, taking her arm to face her toward the magnificent treasure that was hidden under years of dust and debris. “It is every bit as glorious as when the King of Prussia owned it.”

As soon as Nina shone her light on the yellow slabs, the gold and amber married to become exquisite mirrors of lost beauty from centuries past. Intricate carvings adorned the frames and slivers of mirror detailed the clarity of the amber.

“To think that an evil god slumbers right in here,” she whispered.

“A speck of what appears to be inclusions, Nina, look,” Purdue pointed out. “A specimen so small that it was almost invisible came under the scrutiny of Purdue's glasses, magnifying it.

“Good God, aren’t you a positively grotesque little bastard,” he said. “It looks like a crab or a tick, but its head has a humanoid face.”

“Oh, Jesus, that sound hideous,’ Nina shivered at the thought.

“Come see,” Purdue invited, bracing himself for her reaction. He placed the left magnifying glass of his spectacles over another dirty spot in the otherwise pristine gilded amber. Nina bent to bring her eye to it.

“What in the name of Jupiter's Gonads is that thing?” she gasped in horror with puzzlement on her face. “I swear I will shoot myself if that creepy thing nestles into my brain. Oh my God, can you imagine if Sam knew what his Kalihasa looked like?”

“Speaking of Sam, I think we should get a move on hotwiring this treasure for the Nazis to enjoy. What say you?” Purdue pressed.

“Aye.”

When they had finished painstakingly reinforcing the giant slabs with the metal and carefully sealed it in behind the sheeting as directed, Purdue and Nina wheeled the panels to the bottom of the well mouth, one by one.

“Look, see? They are all gone. Nobody up there,” she lamented.

“At least they did not cover the entrance,” he smiled. “We cannot very well expect them to be up there all day, can we?”

“I suppose not,” she sighed. “I’m just glad we got it up to the well. Believe me, I have had enough of that bloody catacomb.”

From a distance, they could hear a loud engine noise. Vehicles slowly crawling along a nearby road approached the area of the well. Yuri and his cousin started pulling the slabs up. Even with convenient ship cargo netting, it was still a time-consuming endeavor. With the two Russians and four locals helping Purdue get the netting over each of the slabs he hoped it was made for securing a lift of over 400kg a pop.

“Unbelievable,” Nina murmured. She was standing at a safe distance, deeper into the tunnel. Her claustrophobia was crawling in on her, but she did not want to get in the way. While the men were shouting suggestions and count-outs, her two-way radio received a transmission.

“Nina, come in. Over,” Elena said through the low crackle Nina had come to grow used to.

“This is Nina receiving. Over,” she responded.

“Nina, we will be gone when the Amber Room has been lifted out, okay?” Elena warned. “I need you not to worry or think we just ran away, but we have to leave before they get to Duga-3.”

“No!” Nina shouted. “Why?”

“It will be a bloodbath if we meet on the same soil. You know that.” Misha responded to her. “Now don’t worry. We will be in touch. Be careful and Godspeed.”

Nina felt her heart sink. “Please don’t leave.” Never had she heard a lonelier phrase in her life.

“Over and out.”

She heard the clapping sound of Purdue dusting off his clothing and swinging his palms along his pants to wipe the dirt off. He looked around for Nina and when his eyes found her he gave her a warm, satisfied smile.

“Accomplished, Dr. Gould!” he cheered.

Suddenly the sound of gunshots thundered above them, sending Purdue diving into the dark. Nina screamed for his safety, but he crawled further into the opposite side of the tunnel, leaving her relieved that he was okay.

“Yuri and his helpers have been executed!” they heard Kemper say outside the well.

“Where is Sam?” Nina screamed up at the light falling like supernal hell onto the floor of the tunnel.

“Mr. Cleave had a bit too much to drink… but… thank you kindly for your cooperation, David! Oh, and Dr. Gould, please accept my sincerest condolences on what will be your last agonizing moments on this earth. Cheerio!”

“Fuck you very much!” Nina screamed. “I’ll see you soon, yeh bastard! Soon!”

As she unleashed her verbal fury on the smiling German, his men began to slide the thick concrete slab over the mouth of the well, gradually darkening the tunnel. Nina could hear Klaus Kemper calmly recite a sequence of numbers in a low tone of voice, much as he had sounded during radio broadcasts.

As the shadow gradually eclipsed, she looked over to Purdue and to her horror his frozen eyes looked up at Kemper in apparent thrall. With the last of the dying light, Nina saw Purdue's face contort in a lustful and evil sneer, staring right at her.