Sometimes he loved his job, and this was one of those times.
3
November 13, 1987
8:15 a.m.
McLean, Virginia, USA
“Tell me what you know about the Amber Room.”
Tracie Tanner had barely settled into the chair placed—as always—directly in front of CIA Director Aaron Stallings’s home office desk, when he hit her with the challenge. There was no “good morning,” no “nice to see you,” no “how is your day going?”
No greeting at all.
Just, “Tell me what you know about the Amber Room.”
Tracie rubbed a palm absently over her left thigh. The bullet wound she had sustained a few weeks ago in a fight to the death with a domestic terrorist deep in the Florida Everglades still throbbed and burned on occasion, but she wasn’t about to admit to feeling any pain. Not even any discomfort.
Not in front of Stallings. Not ever.
She had assured the CIA director by phone earlier that the injury was fully healed. It was the only way to be reinstated to fieldwork, and she thought if she had to spend one more day pacing her apartment and watching ridiculous soap operas on her tiny black-and-white TV she might go completely, batshit crazy.
Her fitness to return to duty had been verified—reluctantly, but in writing, which was all that mattered—by a physician at Langley who’d wanted her to take another thirty days off but who seemed resigned to the notion of confirming diagnoses for operatives that may not be…fully...accurate.
The issue of why a young woman with no official ties to the agency was being examined by a CIA doctor had never been raised. Even company medical professionals understood that many questions were better left unasked.
“It’s nice to see you, too, boss,” she said drily. “And yes, I’m doing well. Thanks for asking.”
Stallings raised his eyes from the paperwork cluttering his desk and peered at her over his reading glasses. It was the first time he had looked up since bellowing, “Come in,” when she knocked at the door.
He spread his hands. “Well?”
“Thanks for starting me off with an easy question. The answer is, nothing. I know nothing about the Amber Room. I’ve never heard of it. Something tells me that’s about to change.”
“I see you haven’t lost any of your superior sense of perception while lounging around on an extended government-sponsored vacation.”
She gritted her teeth and said nothing. Three hours per day of physical therapy seven days a week, sandwiched between twenty-one hours per day of extreme boredom, didn’t strike Tracie as anyone’s idea of a vacation. And it certainly hadn’t been “extended.”
But she couldn’t imagine anything positive coming from voicing that observation, so she smiled grimly and waited for the director to continue.
“Nothing to say?” he prompted. “No wise-ass comeback?”
This was too much, especially for her first day back to work.
“Okay, I’ll admit it, the vacation was great,” she said cheerfully. “Nothing like lounging around on the taxpayers’ dime. I’ll have to see what I can do about getting shot more often.”
Stallings shook his head. He cleared his throat with what sounded like the growl of an angry German Shepherd, and she congratulated herself on getting under his skin. She had convinced herself on the drive here that no matter the provocation, no matter how badly he asked for it, she would be good. She would stick to business.
That vow had lasted all of maybe three minutes, but as always, he had insisted on pushing her buttons. It just wasn’t in her nature not to push back.
And she had to admit she hadn’t felt this pleased in quite some time. It wasn’t even nine a.m., but no matter what else happened today, tweaking the CIA’s pompous top man made it a good day. She doubted she wanted to know what that fact said about her, but there it was.
“Where were we?” Stallings rumbled, his face flushed red. The man’s temper was legendary in Washington circles; he had made a career out of intimidating politicians and bureaucrats all over D.C. for decades. But after Tracie had been dismissed from the CIA and then rehired unofficially by Stallings as his blackest of black ops specialists, she recognized instinctively that she would need to demonstrate she was not intimidated by his bluster.
And she had been reinforcing that point ever since.
“You were referencing the Amber Room,” she said, smiling like the teacher’s pet.
“Yes. That’s right. The Amber Room.” He shuffled some papers around his desk as he gathered his thoughts and then said, “In the early 1700s, Russian Tsar Peter the Great was given a gift of a series of large, gold-encrusted amber panels by Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia.”
“The panels made up the Amber Room,” Tracie said. The smile was gone, the teasing over. She was all business.
“Correct. They were literally dripping in gold and weighed more than six tons. The panels were erected in the tsar’s castle in 1716, covering the entirety of one room, where they remained for two hundred twenty-five years.”
Tracie did the math in her head, adding 225 to 1716, and then said, “Until the Nazis invaded Russia in World War Two.”
“That’s right. Nazi troops looted the treasure from Catherine Palace in Leningrad in 1941 and removed it to Germany in twenty-seven massive crates. The Amber Room panels were transported to the city of Koenigsberg, where they dropped off the face of the earth prior to Germany’s surrender to Allied forces in 1945.”
“Fascinating story,” Tracie said. “I assume you’re getting to the part that involves me.”
“You assume correctly. The value of the Amber Room, were the panels to be recovered in their entirety, has been estimated at upwards of two hundred fifty million dollars. Or more.”
Tracie felt her eyes widen involuntarily and whistled softly. “A quarter of a billion dollars?”
“Or more,” Stallings repeated. “Some historians believe that figure to be overly conservative, that the actual value could potentially be as much as one hundred million dollars higher.”
“But nobody knows where the Amber Room panels are located.”
“Correct.”
“How could they simply vanish?”
“Germany was in chaos by 1945. Bombing raids had reduced Berlin and most other major German cities to rubble, and many German Army officers and civilian officials were out to salvage anything they could from what was left of the Third Reich.”
“Whoever was in charge of securing the Amber Room panels hijacked them.”
Stallings nodded. “That’s been the prevailing theory since the end of the war. The most popular of a number of competing theories regarding the Amber Room is that an East Prussian Nazi leader named Erich Koch, who amassed a trove of looted treasure, stashed them somewhere in or around his home city of Koenigsberg.”
“But no one’s been able to find them in four decades of searching. And a treasure as valuable as that must have had its share of hunters searching for it.”
“One would have to assume.”
Tracie sat back in her chair and nibbled on her lower lip, thinking. She looked up and locked eyes with the CIA director. “They’ve been looking in the wrong place, haven’t they?”
He smiled. “Very good, Tanner.”
“You know where the Amber Room is, don’t you?”
“More or less,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“The history you and everyone else learned regarding the end of the Second World War is not accurate, at least not in its entirety.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there was a small cadre of Nazi officials and sympathizers that never abandoned the dream of Nazi world domination.”
Tracie shrugged. “There are fanatics who cling to any cause, no matter how horrific, and no matter how unlikely. A few wild-eyed Nazis would never be able to accomplish much, regardless of how dedicated they were to their cause. Especially now, more than forty years after
their infestation was eradicated.”
Stallings eyed her closely. “What if the wild-eyed fanatics had access to three hundred million dollars? Would that change your opinion of their prospects?”
She felt her jaw drop in momentary surprise, but then shook her head. “I can see where it would be cause for concern, yes. But even with access to that kind of cash, it would be almost impossible to organize any serious revolution without a central rallying point, someone all the fanatics could get behind. And in this day and age, who the hell would want to be the face of a resurgent Nazi movement?”
“Does the name Adolph Hitler sound like one the fanatics could support?”
4
“What are you talking about? Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in April, 1945.” Tracie felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. A day that had started with coffee and a return to the job she loved had somehow taken a ninety-degree turn straight into the realm of the bizarre.
“I told you already,” Stallings said. “The history you think you know about Adolph Hitler’s death does not necessarily reflect the truth of the matter.”
“You expect me to believe that Hitler is alive, forty-two years after supposedly putting a bullet in his own head? And that not only is he alive, he’s poised to take three hundred million dollars in stolen treasure and fund a Nazi revolution?”
Stallings chuckled, something Tracie wasn’t sure she had ever seen him do before. The sight was a little disconcerting, like suddenly discovering dogs could talk. Or long-dead Nazi leaders might actually be alive.
“I know it sounds farfetched,” he said. “But the agency has known Hitler was alive almost since the day he escaped Germany.”
“But what about the bodies?” Tracie said. “The Soviets discovered the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun in a shallow grave. They had been wrapped in a Nazi flag and burned, but enough of the bodies remained that Soviet troops were able to positively identify the remains.”
“Exactly,” Stallings said, nodding. “Enough of the bodies remained. That was the whole point. The corpses were meant to be found. Yes, a male with a bullet wound to the head and a female who had been poisoned with cyanide were found partially covered in dirt outside the Reich Chancellory buildings in Berlin. But the bodies were not those of Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun.”
“I’ve seen pictures,” Tracie insisted. “Photographs taken at the scene by Russian troops. The body had been burned but the face was remarkably well preserved. It was Hitler.”
“Come on, Tanner, wise up. This was the leader of the Thousand Year Reich who supposedly committed suicide and was buried by Josef Goebbels and Martin Bormann. You don’t think they would have treated the corpse of their revered Führer with a little more respect than to drop it in a hole and toss some dirt over it?”
Tracie narrowed her eyes in concentration. Stallings’s point was a good one. It would be like a U.S. president dying and then being dumped in a shallow grave by the secretary of state.
The silence stretched on as Stallings, normally not the most patient of men, allowed her to work through the story.
Finally she said, “But, boss, those pictures. The likeness was striking.”
“The end of the war didn’t happen overnight, nor did it occur in a vacuum. The handwriting was on the wall for months, and even the most ardent Nazi supporter could see over the course of last few weeks that all was lost. It was only a matter of time. But there was more than enough of that time for Nazi leadership to hatch an outlandish plan to save the Führer.”
“So you’re saying the Germans located and sacrificed a man and a woman who looked enough like Hitler and Braun that the public and the media would accept it?”
“By 1945, the war had been going on for six years. The world was more than ready for it to be over. Human nature being what it is, people were only too happy to accept that Hitler was dead and the Axis threat was finished.”
“Still,” she said. “Those photographs, the resemblance of the face to pictures we’ve all seen of one of the world’s most notorious men. The likeness was uncanny.”
“It would not have been difficult to find a man with the distinctive Hitler mustache at that point in time in Germany. The Führer had restored German pride and brought the country back from the ignominy of their crushing defeat in World War One. You probably couldn’t swing a dead cat in Berlin in the early 1940s without hitting a man wearing a Hitler mustache.”
Tracie was silent and Stallings continued. “We have copies of dental records on file in CIA archives that were taken from Hitler and from the corpse recovered that day. The dental records prove they were not the same person.”
Tracie opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Stallings said, “And if you have any remaining doubts, the agency also has in its possession definitive DNA evidence that corroborates what we already know from the dental records. Have you heard of DNA?”
She nodded. “It’s brand-new technology. I don’t know much about it, but it’s supposed to be very reliable.”
“It’s more than just reliable. It’s almost foolproof. We don’t know who was buried that April night in Berlin in 1945, but we do know it was not Adolph Hitler.”
“So the Nazis kidnap a man who looks like Hitler and a woman who looks like Eva Braun. They wait for the right moment and then murder them, making it look like Hitler and his new bride had killed themselves. Meanwhile they spirit their leader out of the country to…where?”
“Argentina.”
“So you expect me to believe Adolph Hitler has been living in Argentina for more than forty years, where he’s now poised to rise to power once again on the mountain of cash provided by the missing gold panels of the Amber Room?”
Stallings returned her gaze steadily. Wordlessly.
“But I don’t understand. Hitler would have to be, what, in his eighties by now?”
“Nineties, to be precise.”
“And he’s still alive.”
Again Stallings gazed at her without speaking.
“Come on, boss, even if everything you’ve said is true—a stretch, to be sure—a man in his nineties would be frail and feeble. He wouldn’t be up to leading a parade, never mind a Nazi revolution.”
“He doesn’t have to lead anything. All he has to do is be the face of the uprising. The populist focus of every misguided malcontent in Europe and South America. Appear on television and say a few words to exhort his followers, maybe snap off a Nazi salute or two. He could be on his deathbed and it wouldn’t matter. He could plunge the globe into World War Three from a wheelchair. There aren’t many people alive I would say that about, but Adolph Hitler is one of them.”
Tracie felt numb. “Why is it suddenly a problem now? You said the agency has known Hitler was alive almost from the moment he escaped death or capture in Berlin more than forty years ago. What’s suddenly changed?”
Stallings smiled again. “Excellent question, Tanner. Your ability to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of complex matters at a moment’s notice is why I keep you around. Why I put up with your attitude.”
Tracie couldn’t remember the CIA director ever offering her a compliment, and while this one was obviously of a backhanded nature, it still represented something of an earthshaking development. It was unlikely the Aaron Stallings she had come to know would ever say anything nicer to her than that.
But Tracie wasn’t in the mood for anything besides puzzling through this bizarre scenario.
She shook her head and ignored his words. “What’s changed?” she repeated.
“After the end of World War Two,” he said, “it took quite a bit of time—years, in fact—to ascertain the approximate whereabouts of the Amber Room. Between rebuilding Germany and Japan, and monitoring Hitler’s whereabouts, the location of what in essence was a cache of buried treasure, even one as massive as the Amber Room, was of secondary importance to the U.S. intelligence community.
“But then, in the late 1940s, one of ou
r operatives learned of the existence of a secret group of Nazi loyalists led by a man named Klaus Newmann. This group was called Phoenix, and it was different from the dozens of similar organizations in East and West Germany at the time, because Phoenix had an actual plan for rebuilding the Nazi party. The plan was concrete and workable. And a major component of that plan involved—”
“The Amber Room.”
“Yes. The Amber Room. The agent insinuated himself into the organization and learned that while the entire membership of Phoenix was aware they had access to a mountain of wealth that would aid them in building their revolution when the time was right, only one man actually knew what specific form that wealth took and, more importantly, where it was hidden.”
“The agent shadowed this Newmann and discovered his secret.”
“Yes. Newmann was too careful to actually enter the storage site. Phoenix obviously feared their man might be under surveillance, and didn’t want to risk the Amber Room’s discovery.”
“But…”
“But Newmann’s daily forest constitutionals always took him to the immediate vicinity of one single, secluded location. Always. It was a crumbling, abandoned building. There was no legitimate reason for him to visit this location, especially with that kind of single-minded consistency.”
“So you know the location of the Amber Room treasure.”
“Presumably, yes.”
“How can you be sure it’s even still there?”
“We don’t know for sure, which is why I say, ‘presumably.’ The agency has maintained occasional surveillance on the site for the last four decades. The panels are massive and heavy, and would require eighteen-wheel flatbed trucks to be moved. They are being stored in a location where the use of such trucks would be obvious. We’re as certain as we can be that no trucks have visited the location. The treasure is still in place.”
“Presumably.”
“That’s right.”
Tracie leaned back in her chair, thinking. “How could Newmann resist the temptation to check out the treasure? To show it to other Phoenix members? How could they resist the temptation to force him to show them?”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 76