“That is why you wanted to dissuade us from looking for it,” Purdue stated. “Now I understand.”
“So, is that all the soldier told the interrogator?” Sam asked the old man.
“He is asked how come he survived the captain’s order and then he replies that the captain could not come near him, so he never heard the command,” Kiril explained.
“Why couldn't he come near him?” Purdue inquired, taking notes of the facts on a small notepad.
“He does not say. Just that the captain could not be in the same room as him. Maybe this is why he gets shot before the session is over, perhaps by the man’s name they shout. They think he is hiding information, so they kill him,” Kiril shrugged. “I think maybe it was the radiation.”
“The radiation of what? As far as I know there was no nuclear activity in Russia back then,” Nina said as she poured Kiril another vodka and herself some wine. “Can I smoke in here?”
“Of course,” he smiled. Then he answered her question. “First Lightning. You see, the first atomic bomb was detonated in the Kazakh Steppe in 1949, but what nobody will tell you is that nuclear experiments have been going on since the late 1930’s. I imagine this Ukrainian soldier lived in Kazakhstan before he was drafted into the Red Army, but,” he shrugged indifferently, “I can be mistaken.”
“What name do they shout in the background before the soldier is killed?” Purdue asked out of the blue. It had just occurred to him that the identity of the shooter was still a mystery.
“Oh!” Kiril chuckled. “Yes, you can hear someone shout as if they try to stop him.” He softly imitated the shout. “Kemper!”
Chapter 23
Purdue felt a twinge of terror claw at his insides at the sound of the name. He could not help it. “Excuse me,” he apologized and darted for the toilet. Falling to his knees, Purdue disgorged the content of his stomach. It perplexed him. He had by no means been nauseous before Kiril had mentioned the familiar name, but now his entire body was shaking from the menacing sound.
While the others jested about Purdue's ability for holding his drink, he was suffering from a dreadful sickness in his stomach to a point where he fell into a new depression. Perspiring and plagued by fever, he clutched the toilet for the next imminent purge.
“Kiril, can you tell me about this?” Detlef asked. “I found it in Gabi’s communications room with all her intel on the Amber Room.” He stood up and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the medal pinned to his vest. He removed it and passed it to Kiril, who looked impressed.
“Bloody hell, what is that?” Nina smiled.
“This is a special medal that was given to soldiers who took part in the liberation of Prague, my friend,” Kiril said nostalgically. “You got this from Gabi’s things? Looks like she knew a lot about the Amber Room and the Prague Offensive. It is a remarkable coincidence, hey?”
“What is?”
“The soldier who gets shot in this audio clip was part of the Prague Offensive, where this medal comes from,” he explained excitedly. “Because the unit he was with, the 4th Ukrainian Front was involved in the operation to liberate Prague from the Nazi occupation.”
“For all we know it could come from that very soldier,” Sam speculated.
“That would be unnerving and awesome at the same time,” Detlef admitted with an accomplished grin. “It has no name on it, or does it?”
“No, sorry,” their host said. “It would have been interesting though if Gabi got the medal from this soldier's descendent while she was investigating the disappearance of the Amber Room.” He smiled sadly, remembering her fondly.
“You called her a freedom fighter,” Nina remarked absentmindedly, propping her head up on her fist. “That's a good description of someone trying to expose an organization attempting to subjugate the whole world.”
“Exactly, Nina,” he replied.
Sam went to see what was ailing Purdue.
“Hey, old cock. Are you alright?” he asked, looking down at Purdue's kneeling frame. There was no answer and no sound of sickness coming from the man hunched over the toilet bowl. “Purdue?” Sam stepped forward and pulled Purdue back by his shoulder only to find him limp and unresponsive. At first, Sam figured that his friend had knocked himself out when he passed out, but when Sam checked his vitals, he found that Purdue was in severe shock.
Trying to wake him, Sam kept calling his name, but Purdue was unresponsive in his arms. “Purdue,” Sam beckoned firm and loud and felt the tingling in the back of his mind. Suddenly energy flowed, and he felt recharged. “Purdue, wake up,” Sam commanded, forming a tether with Purdue's mind but he failed to rouse him. He attempted it three times, each time increasing concentration and intent, but to no avail. “I don’t understand it. It should work when it feels like this!”
“Detlef!” Sam called. “Can you help me here, please?”
The tall German came racing down the hallway to where he heard Sam yelling.
“Help me get him to bed,” Sam groaned as he tried to lift Purdue to his feet. With Detlef’s help, they got Purdue into bed and gathered to figure out what was wrong with him.
“This is strange,” Nina said. “He wasn't drunk. He didn't look sick or anything. What happened?”
“Just puked his guts out,” Sam shrugged. “But I could not wake him up at all,” he told Nina, indicating that he even employed his new ability, “no matter what I tried.”
“That is reason for concern,” she acknowledged his message.
“He is burning up. Looks like food poisoning,” Detlef hypothesized only to be dealt a nasty look from their host. “I'm sorry, Kiril. I don’t mean to insult your cooking. But his symptoms look like that.”
Checking on Purdue every hour and trying to wake him yielded no results. They were baffled by this sudden onset of fever and nausea that he suffered.
“I think it might be late complications resulting from something that happened to him at that snake pit where they tortured him,” Nina whispered to Sam while they sat on Purdue's bed. “We don't know what they have done to him. What if they injected him with some toxin or God forbid — a deadly virus?”
“They did not know he was going to escape,” Sam replied. “Why would they have kept him in the infirmary if they meant to make him sick?”
“Maybe to infect us when we rescue him?” she whispered urgently, her big brown eyes fraught with panic. “They are an insidious bunch of tools, Sam. Would you be surprised?”
Sam agreed. There was nothing he would have put past those people. The Black Sun had near unlimited capacity to cause damage and the necessary malevolent intellect to initiate it.
Detlef was in his room, gathering information from Milla’s numbers station. The female voice read the numbers monotonously, muffled by the bad reception behind Detlef’s bedroom door down the hall from Sam and Nina. Kiril had to close up his shed and pull in his car before starting dinner. Tomorrow his guests would leave, but he was yet to convince them not to continue their search for the Amber Room. Ultimately he could do nothing if they, like so many others, insisted on seeking out the remnants of the deadly marvel.
After wiping Purdue's forehead with a wet washcloth to alleviate his still rising temperature, Nina went to see Detlef while Sam took a shower. She knocked softly.
“Come in, Nina,” Detlef answered.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked with an amused smile.
“Nobody finds this as interesting as you do, besides me, of course,” he said. “Tonight I got a message from the man on the station. He told me that we would die if we keep looking for the Amber Room, Nina.”
“Are you sure you got the numbers right?” she asked.