“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 reassured 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?”