Mystery of the Amber Room (Order of the Black Sun Book 13)

by P. W. Child

  “That might be my fault, Sam,” Nina admitted. “I kind of… threw water in your face again. It seems to work for waking you up.”

  Wiping his face, Sam stared at her. “Not if it drowns me!”

  “It was nowhere near your mouth,” she scoffed. “I’m not stupid.”

  Sam took a deep breath and decided not to argue for now. Nina's big dark eyes stayed on him as if she was trying to figure out what he was thinking. And she was, in fact, wondering just that, but she allowed him a few minutes to recover from his seizure. What the other passengers had heard him mutter had been only the unintelligible gibberish of a man in the throes of a seizure for them, but Nina had understood the words all too well. It unsettled her immensely, yet she had to give Sam a moment before she started prying – if he even would remember what he had seen while under.

  “Do you remember what you saw?” she asked inadvertently, the victim of her own impatience. Sam looked at her, looking surprised at first. After some thought, he opened his mouth to speak but remained mute until he could articulate. In truth, he recalled every detail of the revelation this time, far better than when Dr. Helberg had hypnotized him. Not wanting to cause Nina any more worry, he toned down his response a bit.

  “I saw that well again. And this time the sky and ground was not yellow, but red. Oh, and this time, there were no people crowding me either “ he reported in his most nonchalant tone.

  “That’s it?” she asked, knowing that he was omitting most of it.

  “Aye, basically,” he answered. After a long pause, he casually told Nina, “I think we should follow your hunch about Purdue.”

  “Why?” she asked. Nina knew that Sam had seen something because he had said Purdue's name when he had been unconscious, but for now, she was playing dumb.

  “I just think you have a valid reason to probe into his whereabouts. The whole thing smells like trouble to me,” he said.

  “Good. I'm glad you finally understand the urgency. Maybe now you will stop telling me to relax,” she delivered her short sermon from the Gospel of I-told-you-so. Nina shifted in her seat just as the announcement sounded through the aircraft intercom that they were about to land. It had been an unpleasant and long flight, and Sam hoped that Purdue was still alive.

  Outside the airport building, they decided to get some early dinner before returning to Sam's apartment on the Southside.

  “I need to call Purdue's pilot. Just give me a minute before you get a taxi, alright?” Nina told Sam. He nodded and proceeded to place two of his cigarettes between his lips to light. Sam did a splendid job of hiding his apprehension from Nina. She was walking in circles around him while speaking to the pilot, and he casually handed her one of the fags when she passed in front of him.

  While sucking on his cigarette and appearing to stare into the setting sun just above the skyline of Edinburgh, Sam went over the events in his vision in his memory, trying to find clues where Purdue could be held. In the background, he heard Nina's voice ebb and flow in emotion with every morsel of information she received over the phone. Depending on what they would get from Purdue's pilot, Sam intended to start at the very spot Purdue had last been seen.

  It felt good to have a smoke again after hours of abstaining. Even the horrible sensation of drowning he had endured earlier was not enough to deter him from inhaling the therapeutic poison. Nina slipped her phone into her bag, her cigarette pursed between her lips. She looked completely flustered as she walked briskly toward him.

  “Get us a taxi,” she said. “We need to get to the German Consulate before they close.”

  Chapter 13

  Muscle spasms prevented Purdue from using his arms to stay afloat, threatening to let him sink below the surface of the water. He had been swimming for several hours in the cold water of the cylindrical tank, suffering from severe sleep deprivation and slowing reflexes.

  ‘Another sadistic Nazi torture?' he thought. ‘Please God, just let me die quickly. I can't go on much longer.'

  Those thoughts were not exaggerated or born from self-pity, but a rather accurate self-assessment. His body had been starved, depleted of all nutrients and forced into survival exertion. Only one thing had changed since the chamber had been illuminated two hours before. The color of the water had turned to a sickening yellow hue that was Purdue's overstrained senses perceived as urine.

  “Get me out!” he had been screaming several times through intervals of absolute calm. His voice was hoarse and weak, quivering from the cold that was seeping into his bones. Although the water had stopped pouring in a while back, he was still in danger of drowning if he stopped kicking his legs. Under his blistered feet lay at least 15 feet of water-filled cylinder. He wouldn't be able to stand when his limbs grew too weary. He simply had no choice but to keep going or else he would surely die a terrible death.

  Through the water, Purdue noticed a pulse every minute. It caused his body to jerk when it happened, but it did not hurt him, leading him to the conclusion that it was a low-current jolt meant to keep his synapses firing. Even in his delirious state, he found it quite peculiar. If they wanted to electrocute him, they could easily have done it already. Perhaps, he thought, they wanted to torture him with by sending an electrical current through the water but misjudged the voltage.

  Warped visions entered his weary mind. His brain was barely capable of keeping his limbs moving now, exhausted from lack of sleep and nourishment.

  ‘Don't stop swimming,' he kept urging his brain, not certain if he was speaking out loud or if the voice he was hearing was coming from inside his mind. When he looked down, he was horrified to see a nest of writhing squid-like creatures in the water below him. Screaming in fear of their appetite he tried to pull himself up the slippery glass of the basin, but without anything to hold on to, there was no escape.

  One tentacle reached up to him, causing a wave of hysteria in the billionaire. He could feel the rubbery squidgy appendage curl around his leg before it pulled him down into the depth of the cylindrical tank. Water filled his lungs and his chest burned as he looked up to the surface one last time. Looking down to what was awaiting him was simply too horrifying.

  ‘Of all the deaths I imagined for myself, I would never have thought I'd end like this! How alpha fleece going ashes,' his confused mind was struggling to think straight. Lost and scared to death, Purdue gave up on thinking, on formulating, and even on paddling. His heavy limp body sank to the bottom of the tank while his open eyes saw nothing but the yellow water when the pulse shot through him one more time.

  “Now that was close,” Klaus remarked amusedly. When Purdue opened his eyes, he was lying on a bed in what must have been an infirmary. Everything, from the walls to the linen was the same color as the hellish water he had just drowned in.

  ‘But if I drowned…,’ he tried to fathom the odd occurrences.

  “So, do you think you are ready to fulfill your duty to the Order, Herr Purdue?” Klaus asked. He was sitting, dressed painfully neat and tidy in a lustrous tan double-breasted suit, finished off with an amber colored cravat.

  ‘For God’s sake, just play along this time! Just play along, David. No shit this time. Give him what he wants. You can be a hard ass later when you are free,’ he instructed himself firmly.

  “I am. I am ready for any instruction,” Purdue slurred. Drooping eyelids hid his investigation of the room he was in as he combed the place with his eyes to ascertain where he was.

  “You do not sound particularly convincing,” Klaus remarked dryly. Between his thighs, his hands were clamped together as if he was either warming them or had the body language of a high school girl. Purdue detested him and his hideous German accent spoken with the eloquence of a debutante, but he had to do everything possible not to displease that man.

  “Give me my orders and you will see just how goddamn serious I am,” Purdue mumbled in labored breathing. “You want the Amber Room. I will retrieve it from its last resting place and personally bring it back h
ere.”

  “You do not even know where here is, my friend,” Klaus smiled. “But I think you are trying to figure out where we are.”

  “How else…?” Purdue started, but his psyche quickly reminded him that he was not to ask questions. “I have to know where to bring it.”

  “You will be told where to bring it once you have retrieved it. It will be your gift to the Black Sun,” Klaus explained. “You do realize of course, that naturally, you can never be Renatus again, due to your treachery.”

  “That is understandable,” Purdue agreed.

  “But there is more to your task, my dear Herr Purdue. You are expected to eliminate your former associates Sam Cleave and this deliciously feisty Dr. Gould before you address the European Union assembly,” Klaus commanded.

  Purdue kept a straight face and nodded.

  “Our representatives within the EU will arrange an emergency gathering of the Council of the European Union in Brussels and invite the international media, during which you will conduct a short announcement on our behalf,” Klaus continued.

  “I suppose that I will get the information when the time comes,” Purdue said, and Klaus nodded. “Right. I will pull the necessary strings to begin the search in Königsberg right away.”

  “Get Gould and Cleave to join you, would you?” Klaus snarled. “Two birds, as they say.”

  “Child's play,” Purdue smiled, still under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs he had ingested with the water after his night in the heat. “Give me… two months.”

  Klaus threw his head back and cackled like an old woman, crowing in delight. He rocked forward and backward before he caught his breath. “My darling, you will do it in two weeks.”

  “That is impossible!” Purdue exclaimed, careful not to sound antagonistic. “Just organizing such a search takes weeks of planning.”

  “It does. I know. But we have a schedule – one that is considerably tighter due to all the hold-ups we had thanks to your unpleasant attitude,” the German captor sighed. “And our opposition will no doubt figure out our game plan with every advance we make toward their hidden treasure.”

  Purdue was curious to know who was behind this opposition, but he did not dare to ask a question. He feared it might provoke his captor to another round of barbaric torture.

  “Now let those feet heal first and we will make arrangements for you to go home in six days. No use sending you on an errand as a...?” Klaus chuckled, “What do you English call it? A cripple?”

  Purdue smiled submissively, genuinely distraught that he had to stay for even another hour, let alone a week. By now he had learned to just go with it, to avoid provoking Klaus to throw him in a pit of octopi again. The German stood up and left the room, crying, “Enjoy your pudding!”

  Purdue looked at the delicious thick custard they served him in the confinement of his hospital bed, but it felt similar to eating brick. Several kilograms lighter from days of starving in the torture chamber, Purdue was struggling to keep any food down.

  He didn't know it, but his room was one of three in their private medical wing.

  After Klaus had left, Purdue looked around, trying to find anything that did not have a yellow tint or amber hue to it. It was hard for him to figure out if it was the influence of the sickening yellow water he all but drowned in that forced his eyes to see everything in amber shades. It was the only explanation he had for seeing those strange colors everywhere.

  Klaus walked through the long arched hallway to where his security men waited for instructions whom to abduct next. It was his master plan, and it was going to be executed to perfection. Klaus Kemper was a third generation mason from Hesse-Kassel, who had been raised with the ideologies of the Black Sun organization. His grandfather was Hauptsturmführer Karl Kemper, commander of Panzergruppe Kleist during the time of the Prague Offensive in 1945.

  From a young age, Klaus had been conditioned by his father to be a leader and to excel at everything he engaged in. There was no room for error in the Kemper clan and his larger than life father had often resorted to ruthless methods to enforce his doctrines. By his father's example, Klaus had learned soon enough that charisma could be as dangerous as a Molotov cocktail. Many times he had seen his father and grandfather intimidate independent and powerful men to a point of surrender by merely addressing them with certain gestures and tones of voice.

  It became Klaus' desire to hold that kind of power one day since his scrawny physique would never make him a good contender in the more manly arts. Since he neither possessed athleticism nor strength, it was only natural for him to immerse himself in extensive world knowledge and verbal skill. With this seemingly meager talent, the young Klaus managed to promote his standing in the post-1946 extension of the Order of the Black Sun sporadically until he had reached the prestigious status of being the organization's premier converter. Not only did he garner a wealth of support for the organization within academic, political and financial circles, but by 2013 Klaus Kemper had established himself as one of the main facilitators of several of the Black Sun’s covert offensives.

  The particular project he was busy with now, and for which he had converted many high profile collaborators in past months, would be his crowning achievement. In fact, if all went according to plan Klaus would quite possibly win the highest seat in the Order – the one of the Renatus - for himself. From there, he would be the architect of global domination, but for that all to come to fruition he needed the baroque beauty of the treasure that once adorned the palace of Tsar Peter the Great.

  Ignoring the befuddlement of his colleagues over the treasure he wished to locate, Klaus knew only the best explorer in the world could retrieve it for him. David Purdue – genius inventor, billionaire adventurer and academic philanthropist – had all the resources and knowledge Kemper needed to find the obscure artifact. It was just such a pity that he had not been able to successfully force the Scotsman into submission, even if Purdue thought Kemper could be fooled by his sudden compliance.

  In the lobby, his henchmen greeted him respectfully on his way out. Klaus shook his head in disappointment as he passed them.

  “I shall be back tomorrow,” he told them.

  “Protocol for David Purdue, sir?” the head asked.

  Klaus walked out onto the barren wasteland surrounding their compound in southern Kazakhstan and answered plainly, “Kill him.”

  Chapter 14

  At the German Consulate, Sam and Nina were put in touch with Berlin's British Embassy. They had found out that Purdue had had an appointment with Ben Carrington and the late Gabi Holtzer a few days before, but that was all they knew.

  They had to go home as it was closing time for the day, but at least they had enough to follow up on. This was Sam Cleave’s strong suit. As a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, he knew exactly how to go about obtaining the information they needed without throwing rocks in the quiet pond.

  “Wonder why he had to see this Gabi woman,” Nina mentioned as she stuffed her mouth with biscuits. She was going to have them with her hot chocolate, but she was starving, and the kettle just took too long.

  “I am going to check just that as soon as I get my laptop on,” Sam replied, slinging his bag onto the couch before taking his luggage to the laundry room. “Make me some hot chocolate too, please!”

  “Sure thing,” she smiled, wiping the crumbs from her mouth. In the temporary solitude of the kitchen, Nina could not help but recall the frightening episode aboard the flight home. If she could find a way to anticipate Sam's episodes, it would be a great help, reducing the potential for disaster next time when they might not be as lucky to have a doctor around. What if it happened while they were alone?

  ‘What if it happens while we have sex?’ Nina pondered, assessing the terrifying, yet hilarious, possibilities. ‘Just imagine what he could do if he channeled that energy through something other than his palm?' She started to giggle at the funny images in her mind. ‘It would justify scr
eaming ‘Oh God!’ wouldn’t it?’ With all manner of awkward scenarios in her head, Nina could not contain her laughter. She knew it was anything but a laughing matter, but it simply evoked some unorthodox ideas in the historian, and she found some comic relief.

  “What's so funny?” Sam smiled as he entered the kitchen for his cup of ambrosia.

  Nina shook her head to dismiss it, but she was shaking with laughter, snorting between giggle fits.

  “Nothing,” she chuckled. “Just some cartoon in my head about a lightning rod. Forget it.”

  “Okay,” he grinned. He loved it when Nina laughed. Not only did she have a musical chortle that people found infectious, but she was usually a bit high strung and temperamental. It had sadly become rare to see her laugh this heartily.

  Sam positioned his laptop so he could plug it into his landline router for faster broadband speed than through his wireless device.

  “I should have let Purdue make me one of his wireless modems after all,” he muttered. “Those things are precognitive.”

  “Do you have any more biscuits?” she called from his kitchen while he could hear her opening and closing cupboard doors all over the place in her search.

  “No, but my neighbor made me some chocolate-chip and oatmeal cookies. Check them, but I'm sure they are still good. Look in the jar on the fridge,” he instructed.

  “Got ‘em! Ta!”

  Sam opened the search for Gabi Holtzer and immediately found something that made him very suspicious.

  “Nina! You won't believe this,” he exclaimed as his eyes scanned the countless news reports and articles on the death of the German ministerial spokeswoman. “This woman was working for the German government, dealing with those killings a while back. Remember those assassinations in Berlin and Hamburg and a few other locations just before we went on holiday?”