“Who took a bullet. We’ll never know if they shot him because they were looking for the same thing or because they didn’t want him to find it first. I’m guessing the former, because they shot him in the mountains, which play a key role here.”
“So what happened to the American?” asked Anatol.
“I have no idea. There was never a trial. They probably agreed to swap spies.”
“Sounds about right,” said Anatol.
Then he paused. They waited patiently to hear what he had to say.
“OK, I have a question for you eggheads. What kind of bombshell would have had as much impact seventy years ago as it has today?”
7
Karol took up the challenge.
“First, we can assume this information concerns the United States and Nazi Germany, and that its revelation would greatly harm both sides.”
“Why?” asked Anatol.
“Because for seventy years historians have wondered what was so special about Hans Frank. In Berlin his arrogance and incredible avarice didn’t win him any friends. He must have antagonized the entire Nazi top brass, yet he was untouchable. So he must have had a major piece of dirt on someone at the top.”
The reasoning was sound.
“And the more I think about it,” said Zofia, “the more certain I am that this someone was none other than SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. In Lviv I did some digging in the sources available online, the reliable ones, and realized that the relationship between the two of them was strange. Himmler was ruthless about getting rid of his enemies among the top brass in Berlin. And in theory his number-one rival in the fight for power should have been Frank, that arrogant asshole. Yet there’s no trace of any conflict between them. There’s evidence of contact, some official encounters and some that look purely social—and that’s all. And, with apologies for the conspiracy theory . . .”
“No need to apologize,” said Karol, smiling.
“There is. Regardless of this whole affair, I’d like to think I’m a serious academic. So once again, I’m sorry to be suggesting a conspiracy theory, but both Frank and Himmler were bumped off by the Allies at record speed. Frank had a short trial and went straight to the gallows, and Himmler was dealt with even faster. They caught him in a clumsy manner, giving him the chance to poison himself the day after his arrest and questioning. Did the two of them know something? God knows.”
“But what about the US?” Anatol continued. “Could it be some sort of proof that the war was beneficial to the Americans?”
“War is always beneficial to any superpower. American industry was ecstatic at the prospect of the US entering the war—for them it meant billions of dollars in profit, a win for the elite, not the soldiers and their families. Consider the tank manufacturers and research institutions, all the way down to the seamstresses who sewed the uniforms. And obviously the banks—they always win by financing all sides. No business in history has ever been as lucrative as the Second World War was for the US. Of course nobody talks about it—it’s better to sing hymns to the fallen heroes under fluttering flags.”
“So could it be proof that the Americans actively supported the Nazis in the 1930s to incite war in Europe?”
“As a way to get their own country out of its economic crisis? Maybe, but this was more likely a political scandal. Something about how American firms cooperated with the Germans, and New York banks provided the Nazis with loans. Banks are evil, and big corporations are even worse. But proof of political collusion would be something else. The Americans rely on their reputation as ‘the good guys,’ so a blemish on that reputation could stir things up pretty badly. But as I said, it would have to be something bigger, more specific. I don’t know, a high-ranking US Army commander advising Goering on the most effective way to invade Poland? Something like that.”
“Could information like that even harm the American image now?”
“Sure. They’d lose moral footing on the international stage. At every negotiation they’d be hauled over the coals as the nation that supported Hitler and caused the entire world to go up in flames. Besides, if something like that could be proven, that their immoral activities caused real harm or death, then the victims’ families would unleash hell. Reparations would be astronomical—think trillions.”
“But why now?” asked Anatol.
They gave him a questioning look.
“There’s something we’ve overlooked. Frank’s treasure—or Aszkenazy’s treasure, it makes no difference—has been hidden away for seventy years. Something caused them to organize an ambush, pushing the Raphael toward Poland. They set the trap at New Rochelle, failed, then sent their thugs to Sweden. We’ve missed something they thought we might have noticed, as if they think we’ve stumbled onto some supersecret documents.”
Zofia smiled triumphantly. “And here’s what I was getting at earlier. While we were on the train I considered this same scenario and wondered, why now? The soldier doesn’t know. Nor the art historian. The art dealer’s clueless, and the art thief doesn’t know either. We’re the specialists, but none of us has the first clue. Maybe someone’s missing? Is there some other type of person who would get excited about this kind of thing?”
“There are all those screwballs with the metal detectors and the golden train,” Karol said. “They’re convinced the Amber Room is buried in their backyards.”
“Exactly! It’s a thriving international community, swapping information, perpetuating conspiracy theories, and churning out tons of fantasies about lost treasure. It’s a pointless, harmless hobby. But listen to this: just over a year ago, an American journal called Lost Treasure published an article by a Polish treasure hunter, who offered various theories about where the Amber Room is. As you may know, the treasure hunters in this part of the world are obsessed with the Amber Room—a ballroom made of gold, silver, and amber that the Germans packed into crates in 1941, then it disappeared without a trace.”
“You may have heard this before,” said Karol, “but there are plenty of leads that point to the United States. There was an American journalist who spent his whole life looking for the Amber Room. In the 1970s, he wrote to a friend to say he was sure the room had been hidden in the US, and a week later he committed suicide, yet he never suffered from depression. Quite a story, huh?”
The other three glared at him for interrupting.
“Of course the article cited the standard places,” Zofia went on. “Königsberg, castles in Masuria, the wreck of the Gustloff, the mines outside Wałbrzych. But a new element appeared. The author proposed that the Amber Room could have reached Hans Frank and then been hidden by a specially trained SS highland squad—don’t look at me like that, I’m just telling you what it said—in the Tatras, in the Giewont massif, in a hidden cave, the same one that gave rise to the legend of the sleeping knights.”
“What legend?” Lisa asked.
“Supposedly there’s a legion of knights in full armor fast asleep in a cave in the Tatras. And in time of need, the knights rise up and come to save the motherland.”
Lisa snorted with laughter. “I’m sure you know Polish history better than I do. But haven’t there been times of need already, and plenty of them, ages ago?”
Zofia ignored the comment. “You’re sure to find the origin story interesting. In Zakopane, a tourist found a prewar thermos flask in a mountain spring. But there was no prewar tea or coffee in it, just a piece of amber. A fragment of something larger, decorated with a swastika. The tourist mentioned this on his blog, where our treasure hunters found it, seized on the topic, and wrote endlessly about it and how Hans Frank had hidden the Amber Room in a cave in the Tatras.”
“And maybe he did?” asked Karol.
“No way. The Russians destroyed the Amber Room in Königsberg but didn’t want to fess up, so they spread false rumors of its mysterious disappearance. There is no Amber Room. But forget that, what matters is that a worldwide community of treasure hunters started feeding on the
idea that Hans Frank hid the Amber Room in the Polish mountains. Now suppose someone in the US reads the article about the governor’s treasure hidden in the Tatras. And that same person realizes there’s a danger of this being taken seriously by the Poles, who’ll crank up a major search operation, find the treasure, the paintings, and above all the secret.”
“Holy fuck,” said Anatol.
They looked at him.
“The Kasprowy terrorist attack, the shattered cable car, the two victims.”
Zofia opened her mouth, but the look in Anatol’s eyes told her to be silent. Only she knew about the role he’d played in those events, and he clearly wanted it to stay that way.
“So there were two victims in the cable car that went down. One was a conductor, the other a passenger named Janusz Hauptmann. A geology professor from the Academy of Mining and Poland’s top expert on karst formations and how to map caves through researching watercourses. A few weeks earlier his team had received a grant and started a project in the Western Tatras.”
“Sorry, researching watercourses?” Karol asked.
“It involves pouring compounds into caves in various parts of the mountains, which react with each other in various ways, and their compositions change over time. Then you test the water inside the caves, by making surgical boreholes, against the water flowing out in the valleys—that allows you to check exactly what route it took, and the computer draws a map of the underground rivers. Using this technique, if you knew where the thermos was found, you could figure out the exact point it emerged from inside the mountains. See?”
They all nodded.
“Until now I thought Hauptmann had been killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Anatol. “Now I think he was killed so he couldn’t research the cave systems in the Tatras. But why kill him like that? To suspend normal activity in the Tatras. Remember, access to the park was prohibited for two months. If someone wanted to look around without tourists on their backs, there you go. I know this, because I was there with the investigators. And you’ll remember from the newspapers who the investigators were.”
“Americans,” said Karol.
“Exactly. On the day of the attack, our dear allies announced that they’d help us get to the bottom of it by sending an army of experts. And indeed they sent people, who spent the next two months combing the mountains while they were closed to the public.”
“But they didn’t find anything,” said Zofia. “That’s why they decided, just in case, to eliminate the people who might find something. Meaning us.” After a pause, she said, “We have to go back there. Right away.”
“But where?” asked Karol. “If it were so simple the Americans would have found it.”
She smiled. “Where? To the place Henryk Aszkenazy told my grandfather to go. That’s where.”
She took out the postcards and laid them on the table.
“The first is a view of the Royal Castle on Wawel Hill in Kraków, where Hans Frank and the Young Man lived together. In the poem there’s a reference to the ‘Italian master.’ But the key is who wrote the poem—it’s by Tetmajer, who wrote beautiful love poetry and excellent poems about mountains, the Tatras in particular. This postcard says, ‘The Young Man is going to the Tatras.’ Whereas the other one, showing the cableway”—she glanced at Anatol—“says exactly where it is: at Berghaus Krakau. Listen to this poem: ‘Evviva l’arte! In our breasts the fires burn, lighted by the Lord, set by Him alone: in the mountain gorge we look with head upturned, we shan’t give laurels for a golden crown, even if our life is worthless from the start, evviva l’arte!’ The sender chose a passage that includes both art and a mountain gorge.”
“He didn’t choose it, he changed it,” said Anatol.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a mistake. It should go like this: ‘In our breasts the fires burn, lighted by the Lord, set by Him alone: so now at the crowd we look with head upturned, we shan’t give laurels for a golden crown, even if our life is worthless from the start, evviva l’arte!’”
Anatol had a fine, bass voice that made the poetry feel alive.
None of them knew that as he recited Tetmajer, Anatol once again had the strange premonition that had struck him in the café last night that he wouldn’t live through the new year. And even if our life is worthless from the start, evviva l’arte. Was it meant to be a doom-laden prophecy? That he was going to die for a work of art?
“So let’s find the ‘mountain gorge’ below Berghaus Krakau.”
“But hold on a minute, where is that?” Karol asked.
“It’s Kalatówki, now a hotel within the national park. You can only get there on foot, but before the war it was the most elegant place to stay in Zakopane, an exclusive resort high in the mountains, with a restaurant, a café, and a bridge room, and views of Kasprowy Peak and the newly constructed cableway. Limousines, celebrity entertainers, glittering evening gowns, gentlemen in top hats, a sea of fur coats, everyone standing beneath the stars on the terrace while lapping up champagne. Can you imagine?”
They nodded.
“During the war, the hotel at Kalatówki was called Berghaus Krakau, and it was one of Hans Frank’s residences. Apparently he loved it because it reminded him of the Alps.”
There was nothing more to say. Lisa and Anatol left.
Anatol whistled the tune from the café that had made him feel anxious. The farewell letter of a dying man. Why was that goddamn song stuck in his head?
8
“Do you recognize this?” asked Karol, then hummed the tune Anatol had been whistling.
Karol and Zofia were in the shower, soaping each other. It was a very pleasant end to the day.
“What is it?”
“The song Anatol was whistling. It got stuck in my head and now it’s bothering me, but I can’t think what it is.”
“It sounds like ‘Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall,’ only out of tune.”
“Very funny.”
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re a beautiful whistler, near concert standards. It’s just the poor acoustics in this shower.”
“Did I really propose to you?”
“Without a ring it doesn’t count.”
9
He dreamed he was on a walk. He was going along a mountain path at night, but the full moon reflecting off the snow cast plenty of light. It would have been pleasant if not for the strange, skinny man in a blue suit walking ahead of him. He didn’t like the look of this guy and wanted to turn back, but he couldn’t, so instead he kept following the path, until they emerged into a large clearing with a view of the mountains. The moon was high overhead, brightly illuminating the thin man’s back, and on the snow were long shadows like ink stains.
And that was when the figure ahead of him turned around. It wasn’t a man but a smiling skeleton in dark glasses.
Karol woke abruptly, and it took him a moment to remember where he was. The shape of Zofia under the quilt and the noise of the Kraków trams outside brought him back to reality.
A smiling skeleton in dark glasses. He knew that figure—it was the skeleton from the Megadeth album covers. Why on earth had he dreamed about that? Of course—all evening he’d been trying to remember the tune Anatol had been whistling. A great song, partly in French.
He started humming, louder with every line, until finally he remembered the words—a dying man’s lament as he says goodbye to his friends forever.
Zofia was amazed by his sudden, dramatic outpouring in song.
“Have you finally lost it?”
“I remembered that song. It’s a ballad by Megadeth. It’s called ‘À Tout le Monde.’”
“Yeah? Great. You’re bringing me coffee in the morning.”
He went to take a leak, humming the whole time. He was squinting in the mirror when the penny dropped.
À tout le monde. To everyone.
Tout le monde. Everyone.
Tout le monde.
TLM.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kalatówki
1
She could hardly believe she was here again.
Joanna Banaszek was sitting by the window in the restaurant, warming her hands on a mug of instant coffee, and waiting for her beloved frankfurters. There was a marvelous view—one wall of the restaurant had been turned into a huge window. The hotel stood on a wide mountain clearing, which sloped gently down the Bystra Valley to the spruce forest. A stream ran between the trees, as did the ski slope and the tourist trail, and until recently the cableway to Kasprowy had gone to and fro. She could see the supports and cables, along with the transfer station, and high above, on the ridge, the top cableway station and meteorological observatory on Kasprowy Peak, where the cables were no longer in place. One of the supports—the one that had saved sixty-one people—was still bent at a strange angle.
Unfortunately, this year there would be no skiing on the sacred Polish mountain, and what a shame—the conditions were perfect. There had been snow on the ground since November, and over the past three days another twenty inches had fallen. Today the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun was reflecting brilliantly off the fresh snow.
She loved this view, and she was feeling great. Still, she kept glancing at the bent support high up on the slopes.
Antoni, whom she’d married after their ill-fated trip, had asked a hundred times if she was really sure she wanted to return to this place for Christmas, given that their entire family were almost killed here in Poland’s first ever terrorist attack. She was certain. Though she could hardly believe she was here again.
2
He could hardly believe he was here again.
Hermod was sitting in his room the size of a large closet, staring out the window at the bent support. He thought the so-called hotel was a piece of crap; it couldn’t even be reached by taxi, and the toilet and shower were in the hallway.
Priceless Page 30