by P. W. Child
Running along the width of the cube, the slots were prepared for one single amber panel to be inserted in each of them and kept separate from the next. As Kemper explained the contraption and its purpose, Sam could not help but wonder obsessively about the incident in the door of his holding quarters on the boat an hour before. He was eager to remind Kemper to disclose what he had promised, but for now, he tempered their tumultuous relationship by playing along.
“Is there some chemical compound in the water?” he asked Kemper.
“No, just water,” the German commander answered plainly.
Sam shrugged, “So what is this plain water for? What does it do to the Amber Room's panels?”
Kemper smiled. “Think of it as a containment measure.”
Sam locked eyes with him and asked nonchalantly, “To contain, say, a swarm from a hive of sorts?”
“How melodramatic,” Kemper replied, his arms folded confidently across his chest as the men secured the container with cable and cloth. “But you are not altogether wrong, Mr. Cleave. It is just a precaution. I do not dabble in risk unless I have considerable alternatives.”
“Noted,” Sam nodded affably.
Together they watched Kemper's men complete the loading process, neither engaging in conversation. Inside his mind, Sam wished he could tap into Kemper's thoughts, but not only could he not read minds, but the Nazi spin doctor already knew Sam's secret – and evidently more to boot. It would be superfluous to pry covertly. Something peculiar struck Sam about the way in which the small crew was laboring. There was no specific foreman, yet each man moved as if governed by particular commands to assure that their respective tasks were executed fluently and concluded at the same time. It was uncanny how they moved swiftly, efficiently and without any verbal exchange.
“Come, Mr. Cleave,” Kemper urged. “It is time to go. We have two countries to cross and very little time. With a cargo this delicate we cannot traverse the Latvian and Belarusian landscape in less than 16 hours.”
“Holy crap! How bored are we going to be?” Sam exclaimed, already fatigued by the prospect. “I don’t even have a magazine. Better yet, with a trip this long I could probably read through the entire Bible!”
Kemper laughed, clapping his hands in amusement as they climbed into the beige SUV. “Now reading that would be a colossal waste of time. It would be like reading contemporary fiction to determine the history of the Mayan civilization!”
They shifted into the back of the vehicle, which waited ahead of the cargo truck to lead it along a secondary route to the Latvia/ Belarus border. Once they started moving at a snail's pace, the luxurious interior of the car started filling with cool air to alleviate the midday heat, accompanied by soft classical music.
“I hope you don't mind Mozart,” Kemper said purely out of propriety.
“Not at all,” Sam accepted the formality. “Although I am more of an ABBA man myself.”
Once again Kemper was highly amused at Sam's entertaining indifference. “Really? You play!”
“I do not,” Sam insisted. “There is something irresistible to Swedish retro pop with one’s impending death on the menu, you know.”
“If you say so,” Kemper shrugged. He got the hint, but he was not in a hurry to entertain Sam Cleave’s curiosity on the subject at hand. He knew full well that the journalist was shocked by the inadvertent reaction his body exhibited when he attacked. Another fact he kept from Sam was the information pertinent to Kalihasa and the fate that awaited him.
While traveling through the remainder of Latvia, the two men hardly spoke. Kemper had his laptop computer open, mapping strategic locations for unknown purposes Sam could not spy from his seat. But he knew it had to be nefarious – and it had to involve his part in the insidious agenda of the sinister commander. For his own part, Sam refrained from prying about the pressing matters on his mind, electing to spend the time relaxing. After all, he was almost certain he would not get the chance to do it again anytime soon.
After crossing the border into Belarus, things changed. Kemper offered Sam a drink for the first time since they had left Riga, having tested the endurance of body and will of the investigative journalist who was so highly regarded in the United Kingdom. Sam accepted readily, receiving a sealed can of Coca-Cola. Kemper took one as well, putting Sam at ease about being duped into drinking a laced beverage.
“Prost!” Sam said before emptying a quarter of the can in one big gulp, relishing the bubbly burn of the drink. Of course, Kemper drank his steadily, retaining his refined composure at all times. “Klaus,” Sam unexpectedly addressed his captor. Now that his thirst was quenched, he had summoned his courage. “The numbers trick if you please.”
Kemper knew he owed Sam an explanation. After all, the Scottish journalist was not going to survive past the next day anyway, and he was rather tolerable. A pity that he was going to meet his end by suicide.
Chapter 28
On their way to Pripyat, Nina drove several hours after she had filled the Volvo's tank in Wloclawek. With Detlef’s credit card she had purchased Purdue a first aid kit to treat the flesh wound on his arm. Searching the unfamiliar town for a pharmacy had been a detour, but a necessary one.
Even though Sam's captors had directed her and Purdue to the Sarcophagus in Chernobyl - the tomb of the ill-fated Reactor 4 - she recalled the radio message from Milla. It mentioned Pripyat 1955, a term that simply would not relent since she jotted it down. Somehow it stood out among the other phrases, almost as if it glowed with promise. It had to be resolved and so Nina had spent the last few hours trying to discover the meaning of it.
She did not know of anything of significance related to 1955 about the ghost town that was in the Exclusion Zone that had been evacuated after the reactor disaster. In fact, she doubted that Pripyat had ever been involved in anything important before its infamous evacuation in 1986. The words kept the historian's mind busy until she looked at the watch to determine how long she had been driving for and realized that 1955 could refer to time, not a date.
At first, she thought it might be a reach, but it was all she had. For her to make it to Pripyat by 8 pm there would hardly be enough time for a good sleep, a very dangerous prospect given the fatigue she was already experiencing.
It was dreadful and lonely on the dark road through Belarus while Purdue was snoring through his Antidol-induced sleep in the passenger seat next to her. What kept her going was her hope that she could still save Sam if she did not falter now. The small digital clock on the dashboard of Kiril’s old car announced the time in eerie green.
02:14
Her body ached, and she was exhausted, but she popped a fag in her mouth, lit it, and took a few deep breaths to fill her lungs with slow death. It was one of her most favorite sensations. Rolling down the window was a good idea. The furious whip of the cold night air revitalized her somewhat, although she wished she had a flask of strong caffeine to keep her wired.
From the surrounding land hidden beyond darkness on both sides of the lonely road, she could smell the soil. On the pale concrete meandering towards the border between Poland and the Ukraine, the car hummed a melancholic dirge with its worn rubber tires.
“God, this is like Purgatory,” she complained as she flicked her spent butt out into the beckoning oblivion outside. “I hope your radio works, Kiril.”
With a click, the knob turned at the command of Nina's twisting grip and a frail light proclaimed that there was life in the radio. “Hell yeah!” she smiled, keeping her weary eyes on the road as her hand turned the other dial for a suitable station to listen to. There was an FM station that came through on the car's only speaker, one fitted in her car door. But Nina was not picky tonight. She direly needed company, any company, to soothe her rapidly growing moroseness.
With Purdue out cold most of the time, she had to make the decisions. They would head for the Chelm, a city 25km shy of the Ukraine border and get some sleep at a lodge. As long as they reached the border b
y 2 pm, Nina was confident they would be in Pripyat by the designated time. Her only concern was how to get into the ghost town with guarded check points everywhere in the Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl, but little did she know that Milla had friends even in the harshest camps of the forgotten.
After a few hours’ sleep at a quaint family-owned motel in Chelm, a fresh Nina and a wide awake Purdue had taken on the road across the border from Poland, Ukraine-bound. It was just past 1 pm when they reached Kovel, an approximate 5-hour drive away from their destination.
“Look, I am aware that I was under the weather for just about the entire trip, but are you sure we should not just proceed to this Sarcophagus rather than to chase our tails in Pripyat?” Purdue asked Nina.
“I understand your concern, but I have a thick hunch that that message was important. Don’t ask me to explain it or make sense of it,” she replied, “but we have to see why Milla mentioned it.”
Purdue looked stunned. “You do realize that Milla’s broadcasts come straight from the Order, right?” He could not believe that Nina would choose to play right into the hands of the enemy. As much as he trusted her, he could not fathom her logic on this endeavor.
She looked at him sharply. “I told you that I cannot explain it. Just…” she hesitated, doubting her own hunch, “…trust me. If we run into trouble, I will be the first to admit I fucked up, but something about the timing of that broadcast feels different.”
“Women’s intuition, right?” he scoffed. “May as well have let Detlef shoot me in the head back in Gdynia.”
“Jesus, Purdue, can you be a bit more supportive?” she glowered. “Do not forget how we got into this in the first place. Sam and I had to, once again, come to your aid when you got into a scrap with these bastards for the umpteenth time!”
“I had nothing to do with this, my darling!” he sneered at her. “I was ambushed by that bitch and her hackers while I was minding my own business, trying to vacation in Copenhagen, for God’s sake!”
Nina could not believe her ears. Purdue was beside himself, acting like a high-strung stranger she had never met before. Granted, he had been pulled into the Amber Room affair by the doing of agents beyond his control, but he had never exploded like this before. With an aversion for tense silences, Nina turned on the radio and kept the volume low to serve as a third, more cheerful presence in the car. She did not say anything after that, leaving Purdue to fume while she was trying to make sense of her own ludicrous decision.
They had just passed the small city of Sarny when the music on the radio began to fade and swell in turn. Purdue ignored the sudden change, staring out the window at the unremarkable scenery. Normally such interference irritated Nina, but she dared not switch off the radio and plummet into Purdue's silent treatment. As it persisted, it grew steadily louder until it got impossible to ignore. The familiar tune last heard on the Gdynia shortwave broadcast floated forth from the battered speaker by her side, identifying the emerging broadcast.
“Milla?” Nina muttered, half afraid and half excited.
Even Purdue's stone face became animated as he listened to the slowly waning melody in astonished apprehension. They exchanged suspicious glances as the static scratches violated the airwaves. Nina checked the frequency. “It is not in its usual frequency,” she declared.
“How do you mean?” he asked, sounding much more like his old self. “Is this not the place you usually tuned it to?” he asked, pointing to the needle sitting well away from where Detlef used to set it to tune into the numbers station. Nina shook her head, intriguing Purdue even more.
“Why would they be on a diff…?” she wanted to ask, but the explanation came to her as Purdue answered, “Because they are hiding.”
“Aye, that’s what I’m thinking. But why?” she wondered.
“Listen,” he rasped excitedly, perking up to hear.
The female voice sounded insistent, but even. “Widower.”
“That’s Detlef!” Nina told Purdue. “They are transmitting to Detlef.”
After a brief pause, the fuzzy voice continued, “Woodpecker, eight-thirty.” A loud click popped on the speaker, and only white noise and static was left in place of the concluded transmission. Dumbstruck, Nina and Purdue considered what had just happened by apparent happenstance while the radio waves hissed into the current broadcast of a local station.
“What the hell is Woodpecker? I assume eight-thirty is the time they wish us to be there,” Purdue speculated.
“Aye, the message to go to Pripyat was for seven fifty-five, so they have moved location and adjusted the time frame to reach it. It is not much later than before, so I take it Woodpecker is close to Pripyat,” Nina ventured to guess.
“God, I wish I had a phone! Do you have your phone?” he asked.
“I might - if it is still in my laptop bag you snuck it out of Kiril’s house,” she replied, glancing back to the zipped-up case on the backseat. Purdue reached back and rummaged through the front pocket of the bag, digging between her notebook, pens, and shades.
“Got it!” he smiled. “Now I hope it is charged.”
“It should be,” she said, peeking over to see. “That should do for the next two hours at least. Go ahead. Find our Woodpecker, old boy.”
“On it,” he replied, browsing the Internet for something with a nickname of the sort in the vicinity. They were rapidly approaching Pripyat as the late afternoon sun lit up the pale brown and gray of the flat landscape, making eerie black giants of sentinel pylons.
“It feels so foreboding,” Nina remarked as her eyes recorded the scenery. “Look, Purdue, this is the graveyard of Soviet science. You can almost feel the lost brilliance in the atmosphere.”
“That would be the radiation talking, Nina,” he jested, evoking a giggle from the historian who was happy to have the old Purdue back. “I got it.”
“Where do we go?” she asked.
“South of Pripyat, towards Chernobyl,” he directed casually. Nina gave him the raised eyebrow, showing her reluctance to visit such a devastating and hazardous patch of Ukrainian soil. But in the end, she knew they had to go. After all, they were already there – contaminated by the remnants of the radioactive material left there after 1986. Purdue checked the map on her phone. “Carry on straight from Pripyat. The so-called ‘Russian Woodpecker’ is located in the surrounding forest,” he reported, leaning forward in his seat to look upward. “Night is coming soon, love. It is going to be a cold one too.”
“What is the Russian Woodpecker? Will I be looking for a large bird plugging holes in the local roads or something?” she chuckled.
“It is actually a relic of the Cold War. The nickname comes from… you're going to appreciate this… a mysterious radio interference that plagued broadcasts all over Europe in the 80's,” he shared.
“More radio phantoms,” she remarked, shaking her head. “It makes me wonder if we are not being programmed daily by hidden frequencies fraught with ideologies and propaganda, you know? Without a clue that our opinions might be formed by subliminal messages…”
“There!” he exclaimed suddenly. “The secret military base where the Soviet military broadcasted from about 30 years ago. It was called Duga-3, a state-of-the-art radar signal they used to detect potential ballistic missile attacks.”
Vividly visible from Pripyat’s region stood a terrible vision, captivating and grotesque. Looming silently over the tree tops of the irradiated forests ablaze with the touch of the setting sun, the assembly of identical steel towers lined the deserted military base. “You might have a point, Nina. Look at the sheer size of it. Transmitters here could easily manipulate the airwaves to alter thought patterns,” he hypothesized in awe of the creepy wall of steel grids.
Nina looked at the digital clock. “It’s almost time.”
Chapter 29
Throughout the Red Forest predominantly pine trees populated the area, born from the very soil that covered the graves of the former forest. Contamin
ated by the Chernobyl disaster, the previous vegetation had been bulldozed and buried. The ginger red pine skeletons beneath the thick layer of earth had given birth to a new generation planted by authorities. The Volvo's only headlight, the high beam on the right, haunted the grave rustling tree trunks of the Red Forest as Nina drove toward the dilapidated steel gates at the entrance of the forlorn compound. Painted green and mounted with Soviet stars, the two gates fell askew, barely held up by the collapsing wooden perimeter fence.
“Good God, this is depressing!” Nina remarked, leaning on the steering wheel to get a good look at the hardly visible surroundings.
“Where are we supposed to go, I wonder,” Purdue said, looking for signs of life. The only signs of life, though, came in the form of surprisingly abounding wildlife such as the deer and beavers Purdue had seen on the way to the entrance.
“Let’s just go in and wait. I give them 30 minutes tops, then we get the hell out of this death trap,” Nina asserted. The car advanced very slowly, creeping along the decrepit walls where the fading Soviet era propaganda peeled from the crumbling masonry. Only the scrunching of the tires sounded in the lifeless night at the Duga-3 military base.
“Nina,” Purdue said softly.
“Yeah?” she replied, fascinated by an abandoned Willys Jeep.
“Nina!” he said louder with eyes frozen ahead. She slammed on the brakes.
“Holy shit!” she shrieked as the grill of the car stopped inches short of a tall, thin Balkan beauty dressed in boots and a white dress. “What is she doing in the middle of the road?” The woman's light blue eyes pierced through the beam of the car's light into Nina's dark stare. With a subtle wave of her hand, she beckoned them, turning to show them the way.
