The Amber Room

by T. Davis Bunn

  “The man wasn’t dull,” Katya replied. “He was careful.”

  “He was dumb,” Jeffrey stated flatly. “Who would we be that he needed to go back, get the little guy, sneak him out.”

  “Habits of a lifetime die hard,” Alexander observed.

  “And he didn’t have the pox,” Katya said.

  “Whatever. His face looked like somebody had drilled for oil. About a thousand times.”

  “You didn’t like them,” Alexander said.

  “I didn’t like any of it. This isn’t antiques.”

  “But they wanted nothing up front,” Alexander said.

  Jeffrey shook his head. “I don’t understand what they’re trying to pull, but whatever it is, it smells.”

  “As soon as that man opened his mouth, you were angry,” Katya said, smiling now. “If you had been a dog, you’d have broken your chain and gone for his face.”

  “I wish I had,” he said, liking the image. Chase the guy down a few blocks, come trotting back with a mouthful of trousers. “I can’t believe we went all the way to Dresden to meet those clowns.”

  “Yes, well, despite your impressions, there may be something to this,” Alexander said. “In my experience, it is the offbeat character who takes the wild risk. He has nothing to lose, you see. All the normal channels for gain and ambition are closed to him. He walks along gray paths, neither legal nor criminal, skirting the edges, looking for those chances that others have missed.”

  Jeffrey thought that over. “But how could a trio like that come up with something hidden in Poland?”

  Alexander’s gaze snapped to full alert. “That is what they said? Why did you not tell me?”

  “I thought I had.”

  “It wasn’t them,” Katya said. “Frau Reining said it when she called to set up the meeting.”

  “And what did she make of those people?”

  “She only met the woman,” Katya replied with evident amusement. “But she would have sympathized with Jeffrey.”

  “Why does that make you smile?” Jeffrey asked.

  “It’s so unlike you,” Katya replied. “The suave and debonair man of the world with his hackles up and his teeth bared.”

  “I didn’t know you thought I was suave.”

  She nodded. “Sometimes I can hardly believe you can be so polished and not let it go to your head. You—”

  “Yes, well,” Alexander interrupted, “this is all perfectly fascinating, but I am still not clear on how Frau Reining entered into this picture.”

  The touch of Katya’s gaze lingered upon Jeffrey long after her eyes had turned away. She described Frau Reining’s contact with the woman and finished with, “Frau Reining is positive the woman is Stasi.”

  “Former Stasi,” Alexander corrected, not disturbed by the news. “That might explain how they gained access to secret information. Did she say anything more?”

  “I don’t think she was very interested in knowing anything else,” Katya replied.

  “Yes, I can imagine it must have been an uncomfortable reminder of a world she thought lost and gone forever,” Alexander agreed. “My dear, do you know of the Amber Room?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Katya replied. “It always sounded like something from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”

  “In this case,” Alexander said, “I assure you, the legend is real.”

  “I have to see to something in the kitchen.” Katya stood. “This is a story I want to hear from beginning to end. You have to promise to talk about something boring until I get back.”

  Alexander watched her leave, said to Jeffrey, “I don’t suppose your making moon eyes at each other has affected business overmuch.”

  “I don’t make moon eyes,” Jeffrey replied hotly.

  “My dear young man, lunar landings could be made upon the glances you cast at each other.” Alexander sipped at his coffee. “But no matter. You are entitled to them.”

  “Moon eyes. What nonsense.”

  “Yes, but much of love to an outsider is seen as nonsense. Just as faith in the unseen must be to a nonbeliever.”

  Jeffrey looked at him. “You’re still having questions?”

  “Doubts, my boy. Let us call them by their correct name. Doubts.”

  “Me too,” he confessed.

  “Not that God exists, nor that I am now seeking Him.” Alexander set down his cup. “Only whether I shall be able to find Him.”

  “I know what you mean,” Jeffrey responded. “Did you talk to Gregor about all this?”

  “I tried.” Alexander showed irritation. “He positively refused to discuss it. His manner reminded me of a proud parent praising a baby’s first steps.”

  “And he’s usually so . . .” Jeffrey searched for the words, “pointed in what he says.”

  “Scathingly so,” Alexander agreed. “But not in this instance. All he would say is that I should listen to the Master’s words.”

  Jeffrey compared this with his own recent telephone conversation and came up confused. “Are you reading the Bible?”

  “Every morning.”

  “Do you pray?”

  “I do indeed, and with unceasing difficulty. I feel as though I am waiting for the arrival of something that I remain unable even to name.” He shook his head. “I have had several discussions on this point with the bishop—he’s agreed to attend our little event, by the way. The poor man is positively mystified by my disagreeable searchings and assures me that all is quite in order. But whenever I permit myself the least little bit of self-satisfaction, I find the image of Gregor’s most sardonic smile dancing in my mind. And I realize that I must continue with my quest for the unseen.”

  “A quest for the unseen,” Katya said, reentering the parlor. “What a beautiful way to put it.”

  “Please excuse an old man’s ramblings, my dear.”

  “No discussion about a soul’s honest yearnings could ever be described as ramblings,” Katya replied, seating herself. “And if you will excuse me for saying it, I agree with Gregor. To acknowledge your heart’s unquenchable desires is a great step.”

  “And what must I do now?”

  “Wait,” she said with quiet firmness. “Wait upon the Lord. You are called simply to prepare the vessel. It is the Father’s task to fill it.”

  Alexander eyed her with evident fondness. “You do an old man’s heart a great deal of good, my dear.”

  “And a young man’s,” Jeffrey added.

  “Thank you.” She clasped her hands before her and raised her shoulders like an excited little girl. “Can we please come back to your story?”

  “But of course.” Alexander settled back in his chair. “It was at the very dawn of the Russian empire that our story begins. Peter the Great, the first emperor of all Russia, ascended to the throne in 1682. He was determined to lift his country from the Dark Ages that had dominated since the Mongul hordes swept out of Siberia and laid waste Russia’s heartland four hundred years earlier.

  “Europe was the key, Peter knew. He intended to bind his great land to the heart of Christendom. To do this, he established a new capital alongside the Baltic Sea, the warmest waters within his empire and the closest to Europe. He reclaimed vast stretches of land from swamp and inhospitable tribes, named the new city Saint Petersburg, and declared his intention to make it the Paris of the east.

  “As a wedding present to his new wife, Catherine Alexejevna, he gave her the estate of Saari, which lay twenty-six kilometers from Saint Petersburg—a most important distance, as you will soon learn. The succeeding emperors and empresses added to the initial buildings, until the estate had grown from its original palace of sixteen rooms to one that stretched over almost as many acres. Palaces of other royal family members sprang up nearby, along with those of princes and noblemen whose power and wealth bought them the right to summer with the ruler of all Russia. This vast village of palaces and riches became known as Zarskoje Selo, and its centerpiece was the Catherine Palace.

 
; “We must now turn our attention to one of Peter’s neighbors, the largest of the German principalities and by far the most aggressive in matters political and military. Frederick William I, ruler of the Prussian empire, was concerned about this newly unified behemoth to his east, but he was plagued even more by wars and rumors of wars from his northern neighbor, Sweden. Less than a century before, you see, tribes of ferocious blond giants had swept across a land weakened by the Protestant-Catholic wars and laid waste to almost half of Europe. Frederick William wanted to maintain good relations with Russia so that his strength and attention could be directed toward the clearest and most present danger—the one to the north.

  “It was then, in 1717, that Frederick William decided to give Emperor Peter the Great the Amber Room.

  “Das Bernstein Zimmer, as it was then known, had been designed by German and Danish craftsmen for Frederick William’s own palace, the Charlottenberg in Berlin.

  “Most amber came from the Baltic shores—what now is shared by Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, and then was dominated by the Prussian and Polish kings. But the amount of amber which this room required surpasses modern understanding. Nowadays we sell amber by the milligram. Records from 1944 tell us that the amber used in the Amber Room weighed in at twenty tons.

  “Nowadays, amber is considered by most people as simply another semiprecious jewel. But it is not really a stone at all, rather the fossilized sap of pine trees. And just as there are a number of different types of pines, there are great differences in the colors and shades of ambers.

  “The amber was fashioned as wood might be for inlay upon fine furniture. Where various tones of cherry or olive or satinwood might be used to design a floral arrangement and background, the amber was sorted by color shades. But where wood would be kept to razor-thin slices, the amber was carved at thicknesses of an inch or more. The carvings were then fitted together to form panels rising from floor to ceiling, depicting a vast variety of scenes—Grecian urns, cherubim by the hundreds, romantic landscapes, prancing stallions, royal emblems. Hundreds of thousands of amber pieces carved and polished and fitted precisely together, to cover the entire room.

  “The gift of the Amber Room to Peter the Great marked the signing of a treaty of unending friendship between the two powers, and was intended to go in the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. But it was soon moved to the Catherine Palace at Zarskoje Selo, where it adorned one of the royal chambers.

  “And such a chamber it must have been,” Alexander went on. “Only one color photograph remains, taken toward the end of World War II. That picture shows a vast hall, perhaps sixty feet long and forty wide, with ceilings rising up twenty-five feet. Between each of the amber panels were wide mirrors with solid silver backing and solid gold frames. The three chandeliers were of solid silver, as were the hundred or so candelabras set into the walls. There was also a central table with vast silver and gold candelabras.

  “Hundreds and hundreds of candles dancing and flickering on panel after jeweled panel.” He smiled at the thought. “Those fortunate enough to view it gave it the name, Eighth Wonder of the World.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Night gave way to dawn, the darkness not defeated but retreating grudgingly before a cloud-shrouded morning. Night left its shadows everywhere, on dank and sooty sidewalks, around corners of crumbling buildings, about the tired faces of early-moving people—silent reminders of its inevitable return. The cities of former East Germany were never far from the night.

  The dwindling crowd within the Schwerin tavern had arrived at its lowest ebb. Conversations were muted and sentences seldom finished, words carelessly tossed out by mouths reluctant to make the effort. Eyes were dulled and distant from a night of little hope and the prospect of a bed with less warmth.

  Erika chose that time to set her hands upon the table and stretch them out wide, as though clenching into the grain. Her nails were broad and flat, her hands very strong. She announced quietly, “My friend has found the man.”

  Kurt gave her an awful look. “You’ve been sitting here for almost an hour, and you just now decide to speak?”

  “I’ve been trying to decide whether to tell you at all,” she snapped back.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ferret raised his eyes from the aged yellow pages before him. “It means, Kurt, that she no longer is content to do our bidding. Doesn’t it, my dear?”

  “I’ve a right to know,” she said stubbornly.

  “Of course you do.” The sibilant voice carried no sense of warmth and even less inflection. “You are a most valued member of our team, a full partner with every right to know all about our little quest.”

  “And how much,” Erika replied. “Don’t forget that bit.”

  “Of course I won’t. The question is, where do I begin?”

  “Begin by asking her if she can trust her contact to give us the right information,” Kurt said. “We don’t need just any address from an old Berlin telephone directory.”

  “I didn’t say I had an address,” Erika replied, her eyes on Ferret. “I said I had the man.”

  Ferret peered back at her through spectacles so thick they made his eyes appear to swim. “You are sure of this?”

  Erika nodded. “You didn’t tell me he had been posted in Königsberg, did you?”

  “No,” lisped the little man. “I did not.”

  “Colonel in charge of Division Transport, wasn’t that right?”

  “As I said,” Ferret replied, “you have every right to know.”

  “Start with how much,” Erika demanded. “I like to get the big things out of the way.”

  “As I said to our Western contacts, how would you feel about half a million?” Ferret asked. “Dollars.”

  Even Kurt showed surprise. “You really think they’ll pay what you asked?”

  “I should think two million dollars is not too much to ask for the location of the Eighth Wonder of the World,” Ferret replied. “Would you?”

  Erika recovered sufficiently to ask, “Who gets the fourth share?”

  “I would imagine the man who remains yet unknown,” Ferret replied. “He shall probably wish to have a share. If not, well, that would only mean more for us.”

  “Not to mention papers and travel,” Kurt said.

  “And my friend in Dresden,” Erika added. “She’s holding out the most important bits until we work out the next payment.”

  “There are many incidentals attached to our quest and our escape,” Ferret agreed. “But these we may leave for later. What matters now is that our lady partner has a wish to know.”

  “And a right,” Erika added.

  “Of course, my dear. Well, the story begins in 1717, when the world was shaped far differently from what we know today, and was even more unstable than these dark and uncertain times.

  “As you know,” Ferret went on, “Kaliningrad, as it is today known, was the capital of East Prussia before the war. Königsberg it was called then, a place full of palaces and wealth the likes of which we can only dream about today. Now it is Lithuania’s main port, and little is left of its once glorious past.”

  His two listeners sat in utter stillness. Deadpan faces had long since lost the ability to react, but there was no masking the feverish glitter in their eyes. They remained blind to the cafe, the early morning, and all the new faces strange to their habitual nighttime crowd.

  “During the war years Königsberg was ruled by a man called Erich Koch,” Ferret went on. “His title was Gauleiter, which back then meant both Nazi Party leader and chief of the regional government. In effect, he had the power of life and death over all who lived there, and he ruled with an iron hand. On June 22, 1941, when the Nazis rolled the Blitzkrieg into Russia, Koch was also given the position of Kommissar over all Ukraine.”

  “A license to steal,” Kurt offered.

  “All completely legal,” Ferret agreed. “As Gauleiter and Kommissar, he also carried the title of Künst-Schutz O
ffizier. In that capacity, as officer in charge of the security of treasures, he was entitled to ‘relocate’ all appropriated treasures to Nazi Germany.

  “He robbed the treasure houses of Minsk, Pinsk, and Kiev,” Ferret went on. His lisping voice did not require strength to hold his listeners fast. “But he had to hurry. There were many treasure troves, and only so many trucks and trusted soldiers could be spared. The Nazis surrounded Leningrad and began the famous siege, then continued on to their destiny and death on the icy Steppes before the Moscow gates. Koch, in the meantime, arrived at Zarskoje Selo, which held the treasure troves within the Catherine Palace and lay just far enough outside Leningrad to be within the Nazis’ grasp.”

  “The Catherine Palace,” Erika said. “All this is true?”

  “Most well documented, I assure you, if you only know where to look,” Ferret replied. “There are no complete records, however, on how much the Nazis transported back to Königsberg. The wealth in the Catherine Palace and the other royal summer residences was so great that it simply overwhelmed the Nazi record keepers. We do know that the transport required seventy trucks. Think of it. Seventy trucks brought together in the midst of the greatest siege in modern warfare, and simultaneous with the push across two thousand miles of enemy territory to Moscow.”

  “They must have found something special,” Kurt said.

  “So many things, so special, that they left behind twenty thousand treasures. We know this because that which remains now makes up the permanent collection of the Catherine Palace Museum, one of the greatest such exhibitions in all the world.”

  The morning sun poked through an opening in the clouds and glinted against the sweat-streaked window. Erika leaned far back in her chair so her face could remain in accustomed shadows.

  “And these are the leftovers,” Kurt said, shaking his head. “Amazing.”