“But I got a gift. A gift from someone special.”
Antonov did not understand.
“What do you mean?”
Dimitri tucked his hand into his torn, dirty uniform and pulled out something Antonov could not clearly see. The object glittered in his hand when he showed the contents of his hand to his father. Antonov stared at the radiant ring that Dimitri held up. It did not look like anything he had seen before. It seemed to be hollow and it was quite small, not more than ten centimeters in diameter with a thickness of about one centimeter. But what really caught his eye was that the ring glittered in colors he had never seen before. He whispered.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know but I think it’s valuable. I and Nikolai were on our way here when three men stopped us. They killed Nikolai, but I managed to escape into a cave. There, a faceless figure gave it to me and the figure vanished in a flash of light. That was two days ago. When the men had gone, I managed to climb out the cave and make my way here.”
Antonov carefully picked up the radiant ring. It was cold to touch, and a shiver went through his arm when he held it. He was about to give it back to Dimitri when three hairline cracks suddenly appeared on the ring. Before he could do anything, it cracked, and the three parts fell onto his son’s hand. Dimitri cried out.
"You broke it!"
Antonov adamantly shook his head.
"No, no, it wasn’t me. It did it itself."
They stood in awestruck silence and stared at the three parts. They were still glowing, but they seemed to have changed color. One of the parts shone in yellow, the second in red and the last in a bluish tint. Dimitri could barely breathe while his head raced to figure out what to do with the three parts.
”And there’s more. The faceless figure touched my hand and I saw images in my head.”
Antonov stared in disbelief at his son.
“What do you mean? What images?”
Dimitri shrugged.
”I don’t know how to explain it. It was like the images came from within. Pictures of stars and the sun and how many faceless figures hurled through our solar system. And there seemed to be something machine-like hidden on the surface of the moon”, he paused, “And I also sensed that other things were hidden on the other planets”
Antonov stared at his son as if he had lost his marbles. Dimitri looked around the room for something to write with and saw a brown, worn notebook on a shelf. He rushed over to it, pulled it from the shelf, ran back to the table and began to scribble furiously. After what seemed to be an eternity, Dimitri finally stopped writing and let his hand rest.
Antonov placed his hand on his sons’ shoulder and glanced over at the metal box.
“We need to hide the parts and I know just the right place to do it.
Copenhagen
December 31, 1999
He saw his destiny as clearly as he saw the dark sky outside the beautiful, old window. Thick, sparkling snowflakes had begun to fall the last half hour and slowly fell to the ground in the pale glow of the street lights. The sidewalk below the window was covered in a thin layer of snow which slowly grew deeper.
The cold lingered outside the window this last day of the year but the heat from the fireplace warmed the room with a crackling noise. Arne Buch stood in front of the window in his office, furnished with dark bookshelves, heavy Chesterfield sofas and subdued lighting from green and gold-colored lights. A faint smell of wood and cigarette smoke mixed, and the comfort of the smell surrounded him. He blinked, glanced fascinated down at the locked marron-colored box that was placed on the desk in front of him.
He took off his dark blue jacket and hung it over the armchair. His thoughts swirled, and he felt light-headed. The expectation and tension within him grew. He checked the time on his precious Rolex. A quarter past eleven.
He ought to go back to the party approaching its crescendo and join the others in the big party room below him but the letter he read several times had stolen his attention.
The thin envelope had been submitted with courier less than fifteen minutes ago. Arne had been interrupted in the middle of a conversation with a well-known actor when a courier had interrupted him. Scribbled on the letter were only four words, to my son Arne.
He once more carefully lifted the letter that was written on thick, rough paper. It was signed by his deceased father, James Buch.
In the letter, his father did not discuss the usual things that parents sometimes write to their children shortly before they die. There was nothing about love, family drama or anything else every day as people in the moment of sentimentality had a need to write down to their descendants, especially when they approached the end.
This letter was something else. It was a letter that told a story that Arne initially doubted could be true, but he also knew that when his father had been alive, he had not been a fan of jokes. If his father wrote it to him and arranged for the letter to be delivered after his death, Arne understood that its importance could not be overestimated and that what was said in it must be true.
His father described how he, as a young man and allied soldier, had fought during World War II. James had been part of the sixth Army group who fought against the Nazis and had participated in the fierce fighting in southern Germany during the last months of the war. It had been a hard, bloody and horrible slaughter. James and his unit belonged to the advance troops that were often assigned to before the main attack began, perform secret operations to sabotage and spread chaos at the target.
A yellow-colored photograph was attached with a paper clip at the top of the letter and showed about twenty young hard men in dirty camouflage uniforms. They were placed in the classic semi-circle like so many photos of soldiers are, some half-seated in front of their standing comrades in the rear row. Their faces were dirty and camouflage-painted, but all the men looked triumphantly into the camera and a pair of them raised an arm in a victory salute.
Arne recognized his father in the back row. His father looked so young, he could not have been more than twenty years old, but already looked like a seasoned warrior. His face was like the sheet of stone, and his eyes were firmly fixed to the unknown photographer, and Arne could see the unmistakably arrogant smile on his father's face. He turned the photograph and read the pale text written on the backside.
April 3 - 1945, Aschaffenburg, 45:th Infantry Division, Oklahoma Army National Guard.
He continued to read; There were three of us that night. Tommy, Mike and me. It was us three that were assigned to check two seemingly abandoned houses on the edge of Aschaffenburg. The houses were in surprisingly good shape considering how hard the fighting had been just a few days before.
Our sergeant, Leibowitz, sent us out to make sure that no damn Nazis would come out of their hiding place after we had passed and stab us in the back. The first house was empty but the second we found something. No Nazis though, but something far more valuable.
Tommy was heading down the basement when he hit his head on the edge of the door frame. Tommy was a tall guy, almost one meter and ninety centimeters and he became mighty angry when he hit his head, so he smashed the frame with the rifle butt.
I was in the adjacent room when I heard Tommy started smashing something, so I rushed over there and saw Tommy with a trickle of blood on his head and the smashed door frame.
Something gleamed in the door frame, so I went closer. I could see something that looked like a small lever. I asked Tommy if he knew what it was, but he had no idea. I reached up, pulled the lever and heard something click down in the dark basement.
Mike came rushing down from the floor above and together we all walked down the basement stairs. The basement floor was made up of trampled earth and furthest away a small hatch in the wall had opened. We carefully went down the stairs, ready to shoot everyone that could be lurking down there, but nothing happened. We came to the hatch and there we found it. I stuck my hands into the opening and saw a marron metal box with gold in
lays. I and Tommy dragged it out and opened it. In it was something amazing, three Fabergé-eggs.
I had read an article a few years ago and I knew straight away what it was that we had found and how valuable it was. But that was not the best part. When I, Tommy and Mike each took an egg and held them in our hands, somehow, we all understood each other’s thinking. We did not speak when we were down there, but we knew what we would do. We would not speak to anyone about this and we would keep the eggs for ourselves.
Arne studied the other men in the photograph and vaguely recognized some of the faces that had come to visit his father through the years. When James had been eighteen he had emigrated from poverty in Gothenburg to the promised land, United States of America. Arne hade only heard a few stories about his father’s upbringing in Sweden, his father had never been keen to talk about it. Arne had been able to figure out that the family had been very poor, and each day had been a struggle, both against poverty and an alcoholic father.
As James grew up he had his mind firmly set on escapee and he had been able to raise enough money to be a one-way trip. It had been in 1930:s and the winds of war had begun to blow in Europe. Once arrived, he made his way to Oklahoma City where he quickly acclimatized and got work as a welder at a metal factory that acted as a supplier to the military industry. After a couple of years there, he joined the army and was stationed at the 45:th infantry division. Arne had asked his father several times about his experiences as a soldier, but James never opened up about it.
As the years went by, Arne had accepted that his father would never speak about it and he had stopped asking. And now, as his father was dead, he had gotten a letter that not only answered many of the questions he had posed through the years but also a photography. It was so strange. Why did not his father ever tell him about it in person if he would after his death? It was confusing and not like his father that always radiated a sense of control and power.
He continued to read; when we left the war and made our way home, Tommy’s egg was stolen but we promised each other that we would do everything in our power to retrieve it. We agreed to share the value of the two remaining eggs in our possession. Mike, Tommy and I all became successful businessmen after the war. We used the two eggs as collateral as we build our fortunes and we all became leaders in our industries. Mike made his career in mining in the Amazons and Canada, Tommy went into gems and precious stones in Asia and me in banking in Europe.
But we all remembered that something was missing. Because when we stood together in that basement with a Fabergé-egg in our hands, we nodded to each other and opened them. Have you ever held a Fabergé-egg? I promise you, it is the most intense feeling in the world.
When we opened them, we saw that the eggs also contained something else, something extraordinary. Each of the eggs contained a small, radiant metal part. The parts looked as they would fit, and we tried to fuse them together. When they were assembled they were about ten centimeters in diameter. The part in my egg, Necessaire, had a yellowish tint. Tommy’s egg contained a reddish part and Mikes a bluish part.
When we placed them together, they fit perfectly but nothing happened and to this day I am not sure what we did wrong. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I have an idea what it might be. Because when we found the eggs, we also found a brown, worn notebook and in it, a Russian soldier from the First World War had written down the story about how he and his father got into possession of the eggs and the radiant ring.
After the war ended we used the two remaining eggs to build our fortunes but each year we would meet a secret location to plan how we could find and retrieve the third egg.
Arne heard the music from below and remembered the party and all the people that eagerly waited for the crescendo. It was New Year’s Eve, but not an ordinary one, it was the last day of the year and together they would enter a new millennium.
The office was large even by Arne’s standards. To surround himself with the best was something he was used to. A beautiful painting hung across his desk. The colors of the painting went from pure white to ash-grey. The scene it depicted was of a group of people that were heading up a small hill where something shapeless was waiting for them. The gazes from the struggling men and women were that of focus and they were all single-minded set of reaching their goal.
He read the letter once more and glanced at the box in front of him. It was made of metal and heavy oak that contrasted with the gold inlays that went around the box. Swirling patterns in outlines the edges and only the sides were made of dark metal. The last section of the letter kept repeating in his head.
When we opened the eggs, a metal part was hidden in each of the eggs. But now, when we only had two parts, we cannot repeat our work in fusing the three parts. The third egg contains the last part and even though our nearly limitless combined resources we have not been able to relocate it.
And since neither Tommy nor Mike had any children, I now pass on the quest to you. If you can find the last part and fuse them all, you will have the world in your hands. I also give you the notebook from the Russian soldier. What the key will unlock is not made of human hands.
His father’s words echoed in his head. The dampened rhythm of the music from the part came up from below and he had to hold on to the desk to steady himself.
He shook his head to clear his mind. He gently placed the letter on the desk and stared at the box in front of him. There was no lock on it and he gently opened the lid and peeked inside. A bead of sweat ran down his temple and he wiped it away.
There were three sections in the box, like three equal parts of a cake and each section was clad with red velvet. Two of the sections were occupied but the third was empty. He could not believe his eyes. It could not be possible, but it was. Two Fabergé-eggs.
He held his breath. Not one, but two of the most famous lost treasures in human history. Endless articles had been written about the Fabergé-eggs and how they were part of the series of Easter gifts ordered by the Russian Tsars Alexander III and Nikolai III at the end of the eighteen and start of the nineteen’s century. Fabergé made fifty eggs and they were all gifts from the Tsars to their wives and mothers. The eggs were delivered in the Easter which was the most important in the Russian calendar. And hidden in each of the eggs, a special surprise lay in wait.
The two eggs were astoundingly beautiful, and he instantly recognized the egg that was called Royal Danish. It was one of two eggs that both had a photography of it and a description of it. A wave of understanding swept through him. His father had many times talked about the Fabergé-eggs and when Arne got older, his father had filled him with information about them and their fate. What a secret his father had kept all these years.
Slowly he reached out and touched it. It was an egg that was made in 1903 and was made from white and blue enamel with inlays of gold and precious stones. The surprise in it were two miniaturized paintings of the Danish king Christian IX and his wife, Louise. The extraordinary egg was cool under his touch and he let his fingers slowly glide over it.
He glanced over to the second egg in the box. Also that one he recognized instantly and knew that it was the famous Necessaire-egg. It was an egg that was confiscated by the reds after the Tsar family had been shot in 1917 and the egg was for some years hidden in the Kremlin treasure chamber. But somehow the egg later made its way to a London auction house where it was sold in 1949 to a man that gave his name as A Stranger.
His father had countless times discussed this egg with Arne and he easily remembered the description of it. In the Kremlin files, the egg was made of multicolored stone and diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. But when he saw the egg, he immediately knew it was lacking in truly describing this unique masterpiece. His one hand rested on Necessaire, the other on Royal Danish and he felt his spine tingle with excitement. In his hands, he held not one, but two of the most valuable lost treasures the world had ever seen.
He studied the box and felt an impulse. He picked u
p the velvet tray and saw the brown, worn notebook hidden beneath it. His hand trembled when he picked it up and started to read.
He did not know for how long he had been reading the fascinating book when he heard a faint knock on the door. He forced his gaze from the pages written by Dimitri Konalev.
"Yes?"
The door opened slowly. A tall, slender woman dressed in a tight, golden dress hesitated in the doorway before she came in. She glided over towards him and her high heels made no sound on the thick carpets. Her high cheekbones gave her an impression of a Greek goddess and her blond, gold-colored hair fell softly over her shoulders as liquid gold had been spun in thin, whirling locks.
She moved with trepidation and her gaze was firmly fixed on the floor. She stopped in front of him. Arne noted the faint, sensual perfume that his wife wore. He was content to notice that she had adjusted surprisingly well under the circumstances. Dagmar Buch stood in front of the desk, quiet and tense as a violin string.
“Yes?” Arne repeated in slightly harder tone.
“The guests are asking for you, they wonder where you went. What should I say?”
Arne smiled, not to Dagmar but more to himself. They were all sheep. Lacking will and deep down, they only wanted to have someone to take charge and tell them what to do. It suited him fine. It was his destiny. To lead. To be a visionary and to show the way. He sighed and rose with a theatric moan, pulled his dark blue jacket from the chair and put it on.
He walked around the desk and stood beside Dagmar. Her scent was intoxicating. It was not only the expensive perfume he had made for her that he enjoyed, but it was also the mixture of that and her own smell that mixed and made him hard.
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