by P. W. Child
Chapter 21
“You know Milla too?” Detlef gasped. “My wife was in contact with her almost daily, and after my wife had died, I found her radio room. That is where Milla spoke to me and told me how to find her with a shortwave radio.”
Nina, Purdue, and Sam sat listening to all this, having no idea what was going on between Kiril and Detlef. While they listened, they poured some wine and vodka and waited.
“Who was your wife?” Kiril asked eagerly.
“Gabi Holtzer,” Detlef replied, his voice still cracking when he said her name.
“Gabi! Gabi was my friend from Berlin!” the old man exclaimed. “She had been involved with us since her great grandfather left behind documents about Operation Hannibal! Oh God, how terrible! How sad, so wrong.” The Russian lifted his bottle and shouted, “To Gabi! Daughter of Germany and defender of freedom!”
They all joined in and drank to the fallen heroine, but Detlef could hardly get the words out. His eyes welled up, and his chest ached with grief for his wife. Words could not describe how much he missed her, but his wet cheeks said it all. Even Kiril had bloodshot eyes at the tribute to a fallen ally. After a few consecutive shots of vodka and some of Purdue's Bourbon, the Russian was feeling nostalgic, telling Gabi's widower how his wife and the old Russian had become acquainted.
Nina felt a warm compassion for both men as she watched them share fond stories of a special woman they both knew and adored. It made her wonder if Purdue and Sam would sit celebrating her memory so fondly once she was gone.
“My friends,” Kiril roared in sadness and inebriation, kicking out his chair as he stood up and slammed his hands down hard on the table, spilling Detlef’s leftover soup, “I will tell you what you must know. You are,” he slurred and stammered, “allies in the fires of liberation. We cannot let them use that bug to oppress our children or us!” He concluded this strange statement with a swirl of unintelligible Russian war cries that sounded positively wicked.
“Tell us,” Purdue egged Kiril on with his glass raised. “Tell us how the Amber Room is a threat to our freedom. Should we destroy it or should we just eradicate those who want it for nefarious causes?”
“Leave it where it is!” Kiril shouted. “It cannot be reached by mere men! Those panels – we knew how evil they were. Our fathers told us! Oh yes! They told us early on how that evil beauty made them kill their brothers, their friends. They told us how Mother Russia almost bent to the will of the Nazi dogs, and we vowed never to let it be found!”
Sam was getting concerned for the Russian's mind as he seemed to mash up several stories into one. He concentrated on the tingling force that coursed through his brain, summoning it carefully, hoping that it would not take over as fiercely as it had before. With intent, he linked onto the old man's mind and formed the mental tether while the others were watching.
Suddenly Sam said: “Kiril, tell us about Operation Hannibal.”
Nina, Purdue, and Detlef turned to look at Sam in amazement. Sam's request instantly silenced the Russian. Not a moment after he had gone quiet he sat down and folded his hands. “Operation Hannibal was the evacuation of the German troops by sea to get away from the Red Army that would soon be there to kick their Nazi asses,” the old man chuckled. “They got on the Wilhelm Gustloff right here in Gdynia and made for Kiel. They were told to load that goddamn Amber Room's panels, too. Well, what was left of it. But!” he shouted, his torso swaying slightly as he continued “But, they secretly loaded it onto the Gustloff’s escort vessel, torpedo boat Löwe. Do you know why?”
The group sat spellbound, reacting only when asked to. “No, why?”
Kiril laughed jovially. “Because some of the 'Germans' at Gdynia harbor were Russians, as well as the crew of the torpedo escort boat! They dressed as Nazi soldiers and intercepted the Amber Room. But it gets even better!” He looked thrilled with every detail he spilled, while Sam held him on that cerebral leash for as long as he could. “Did you know that the Wilhelm Gustloff received a radio message while their idiot captain sailed them into open waters?”
“What did it say?” Nina asked.
“It told them that there was another German convoy approaching, so the Gustloff’s captain switched on the ship's navigation lights to avoid any collisions,” he recounted.
“And that would have made them visible to enemy vessels,” Detlef deduced.
The old man pointed at the German and smiled. “Correct! Soviet submarine S-13 torpedoed the ship and sank it – without the Amber Room.”
“How do you know this? You are not old enough to have been there, Kiril. Could it be you read some sensational story someone wrote,” Purdue refuted. Nina scowled as she gave Purdue an unspoken reprimand for second-guessing the old man.
“I know all this, Mr. Purdue, because the captain of the S-13 was Captain Alexander Marinesko,” Kiril boasted. “My father!”
Nina's jaw dropped.
A smile spread over her face for being in the presence of somebody who knew the secrets of the Amber Room's whereabouts first hand. It was a special moment for her, being in the physical company of history. But Kiril was far from done. “He would not have seen the ship so easily had it not been for that unexplained radio message telling the captain about an approaching German convoy, would he?”
“But who sent that message? Did they ever find out?” Detlef asked.
“No-one ever found out. The only people who knew were the men involved with the confidential plan,” Kiril said. “Men like my father. That radio message came from friends of his, Mr. Holtzer, and friends of ours. That radio message was sent by Milla.”
“That is impossible!” Detlef dismissed the revelation that had them all dumbstruck. “I spoke to Milla via radio the night I found my wife’s radio room. There is no way someone that operated in the Second World War would still be alive, let alone broadcast this numbers radio station.”
“You are right, Detlef, if Milla was a person,” Kiril insisted. Now he kept spilling his secrets, much to the delight of Nina and her associates. But Sam was losing his hold on the Russian, growing fatigued from the enormous psychic effort.
“Then what is Milla?” Nina asked quickly, aware that Sam was about to lose his command over the old man, but Kiril passed out before he could reveal more, and without Sam keeping his brain under his spell, there was nothing keeping the drunk old man talking. Nina sighed in frustration, but Detlef was not perturbed by the old man's words. He was planning to listen to the broadcast later and hoped that it would shed some light on what danger was lurking in the Amber Room.
Sam took a few deep breaths to regain his focus and his energy, but Purdue locked eyes with him from across the table. It was a look of sheer mistrust, one that made Sam very uncomfortable. He did not want Purdue to know that he could manipulate people's minds. It would make him even more suspicious, and he didn't want that.
“Are you tired, Sam?” Purdue asked without hostility or suspicion.
“Fucking exhausted,” he answered. “And the vodka doesn't help either.”
“I am going to turn in, too,” Detlef announced. “I suppose there will be no diving after all then? That would be great!”
“If we could wake our host, we could figure out what happened to the escort boat,” Purdue chuckled. “But I think he is done for, at least for the rest of the night.”
Detlef locked himself in his room at the far end of the hallway. It was the smallest of them all, adjacent to Nina’s designated bedroom. Purdue and Sam were to share the other bedroom next to the living room, so Detlef was not going to disturb them.
He switched on the transistor radio and started slowly turning the dial, minding the frequency number under the moving needle. It was capable of FM, AM, and shortwave, but Detlef knew where to set it. Since the discovery of his wife's secret communication room, he had developed a fondness for the sound of the cracking swish of the empty airwaves. Somehow the sheer possibilities it presented soothed him. Subconsciously, it r
eassured him that he was not alone; that there were lots of life and many allies hidden in the vast ether of the upper atmosphere. It presented the potential for anything imaginable to exist if one was only inclined to reach out to it.
A knock on his door startled him. “Scheisse!” Reluctantly he put down the radio to answer the door. It was Nina.
“Sam and Purdue are drinking, and I cannot sleep,” she whispered. “Can I listen to Milla’s broadcast with you? I brought a pen and paper.”
Detlef was elated. “Sure, come in. I was just trying to find the right station. There are so many that sound almost the same, but I'll recognize the music.”
“There is music?” she asked. “They play songs?”
He nodded. “Just one, in the beginning. It must be some sort of a marker,” he speculated. “I think the channel is used for different things, and when she broadcasts to people like Gabi, there is a specific song that notifies us that the numbers are for us.”
“Jesus! A whole science,” Nina marveled. “There is so much going on out there that the world is not even aware of! It is like a whole sub-universe full of clandestine operations and ulterior motives.”
He looked at her with dark eyes, but his voice was tender. “Frightening, isn't it?”
“Aye,” she agreed. “And lonely.”
“Lonely, yes,” Detlef repeated, sharing her sentiment. He looked at the pretty historian with longing and admiration. She was quite unlike Gabi. She looked nothing like Gabi, yet in her own way she felt familiar to him. Perhaps it was because they were of the same mind about the world or maybe just because their souls were alone together. Nina got a bit uncomfortable at his forlorn stare, but she was saved by the sudden crackling over the speaker that made him jump.
“Listen, Nina!” he whispered. “It is starting.”
The music began to play, tucked far away into the nothingness out there, smothered by static and whistling modulation fluctuations. Nina scoffed in amusement at the melody she recognized.
“Metallica? Really?” she shook her head.
Detlef was happy to hear that she knew it. “Yes! What does it have to do with the numbers, though? I have been racking my brain to figure out why they chose this song.”
Nina smiled. “The song is called ‘Sweet Amber', Detlef.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Now it makes sense!”
While they were still chuckling about the song, Milla's broadcast began.
‘Median 85-45-98-12-74-55-68-16…’
Nina jotted everything down.
‘Geneva 48-66-27-99-67-39…’
‘Jehovah 30-59-69-21-23…’
‘Widower…’
“Widower! That’s me! That’s for me!” he whispered loudly in excitement.
Nina took down the numbers that followed. ‘87-46-88-37-68…’
When the first 20-minute broadcast was done, and the music ended the segment, Nina gave Detlef the numbers she had written down. “Do you have any idea what to make of these?”
“I don't know what they are or how they work. I just write them down and keep them. We used them to find the location of the compound where Purdue was held, remember? But I still have no idea what it all means” he complained.
“We have to use Purdue's machine. I brought it. It's in my suitcase,” Nina said. “If this message is specifically for you, we have to decipher it right away.”
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.
