The Amber Room

by Steve Berry

  B.N .

  Its craftsman.

  She yanked a cloth from the pocket of her jeans. The case, less than four inches long, easily dissolved into its crimson folds. She stuffed the bundle into her pocket and then crossed the ground floor to the den.

  Growing up on the Loring estate came with obvious advantages. A fine home, the best tutors, access to art and culture. Loring made sure the Danzer family was well cared for. But the isolation of Castle Lou-kov deprived her of childhood friends. Her mother died when she was three, and her father traveled constantly. It was Loring who took the time with her, and books became her trusted companions. She read once that the Chinese symbolized books with the power to ward off evil spirits. And for her they did. Stories became her escape. Particularly English literature. Marlowe’s tragedies on kings and potentates, the poetry of Dryden, Locke’s essays, Chaucer’s tales, Malory’sMorte d’Arthur .

  Earlier, when Jeremy had shown her around the ground floor, she’d noticed one particular book in the library. Casually, she’d slipped the leather volume from the shelf and found the expected garish swastika bookplate inside, the inscription reading:EX LIBRIS ADOLF HITLER . Two thousand of Hitler’s books, all from his personal library, had been hastily evacuated from Berchtesgaden and stashed in a nearby salt mine just days before the end of the war. American soldiers later found them, and they were eventually cataloged into the Library of Congress. But some were stolen before that happened. Several had turned up through the years. Loring owned none, desiring no reminders of the horror of Nazism, but he knew other collectors who did.

  She slipped the book off the shelf. Loring would be pleased with this added treasure.

  She turned to leave.

  Jeremy stood naked in the darkened doorway.

  “Is it the same one you looked at before?” he asked. “Grandmother has so many books. She’ll not miss one.”

  She approached close and quickly decided to use her best weapon. “I enjoyed tonight.”

  “So did I. You didn’t answer my question.”

  She gestured with the book. “Yes. It’s the same one.”

  “You require it?”

  “I do.”

  “Will you come back?”

  A strange question considering the situation, but she realized what he truly wanted. So she reached down and grasped him where she knew he could not resist. He instantly responded to her gentle strokes. “Perhaps,” she said.

  “I saw you in the piano room. You’re not some woman who just got out of a bad marriage, are you?”

  “Does it matter, Jeremy? You enjoyed yourself.” She continued to stroke him. “You’re enjoying yourself now, aren’t you?”

  He sighed.

  “And everything here is your grandmother’s anyway. What do you care?”

  “I don’t.”

  She released her hold. His organ stood at attention. She kissed him gently on the lips. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing one another again.” She brushed past him and headed for the front door.

  “If I hadn’t given in, would you have harmed me to get the book and the box?”

  She turned back. Interesting that someone so immature about life could be perceptive enough to understand the depths of her desires. “What do you think?”

  He seemed to genuinely consider the inquiry. Perhaps the hardest he’d considered anything in a while.

  “I think I’m glad I fucked you.”

  TWELVE

  Volary, Czech Republic

  Friday, May 9, 2:45 p.m.

  Suzanne angled the porsche hard to the right, and the 911 Speedster’s coil-spring suspension and torque steering grabbed the tight curve. She’d earlier hinged the glass-fiber hood back, allowing the afternoon air to whip her layered bob. She kept the car parked at the Ruzynè airport, the 120 kilometers from Prague to southwestern Bohemia an easy hour’s drive. The car was a gift from Loring, a bonus two years ago after a particularly productive year of acquisitions. Metallic slate gray, black leather interior, plush velvet carpet. Only 150 of the model were produced. Hers bore a gold insigne on the dash.Drahá. “Little darling,” the nickname Loring bestowed upon her in childhood.

  She’d heard the tales and read the press on Ernst Loring. Most portrayed him as baleful, stern, and dismissive, with the energy of a zealot and the morals of a despot. Not far off the mark. But there was another side of him. The one she knew, loved, and respected.

  Loring’s estate occupied a three-hundred-acre tract in southwestern Czech, only kilometers from the German border. The family had flourished under Communist rule, their factories and mines in Chomutov, Most, and Teplice vital to the old Czechoslovakia’s once supposed self-sufficiency. She’d always thought it amusing that the family uranium mines north in Jáchymov, manned with political prisoners—the worker death toll nearly 100 percent—were officially considered irrelevant by the new government. It was likewise unimportant that, after years of acid rain, the Sad Mountains had been transformed into eerie graveyards of rotting forests. A mere footnote that Teplice, once a thriving spa town near the Polish border, was renowned more for the short life expectancy of its inhabitants than for its refreshing warm water. She’d long ago noticed that no photos of the region were contained in the fancy picture books vendors hawked outside Prague Castle to the millions who visited each year. Northern Czech was a blight. A reminder. Once a necessity, now something to be forgotten. But it was a place where Ernst Loring profited, and the reason why he lived in the south.

  The Velvet Revolution of 1989 assured the demise of the Communists. Three years later Czech and Slovakia divorced, hastily dividing the country’s spoils. Loring benefited from both events, quickly allying himself with Havel and the new government of the Czech Republic, a name he thought dignified but lacking in punch. She’d heard his views about the changes. How his factories and foundries were in demand more than ever. Though spawned in Communism, Loring was a tried and true capitalist. His father, Josef, and his grandfather before that had been capitalists.

  What did he say all the time?All political movements need steel and coal. Loring supplied both, in return for protection, freedom, and a more than a modest return on investment.

  The manor suddenly loomed on the horizon. Castle Loukov. A former knight’shrad , the site a formidable headland overshadowing the swift Orlík Stream. Built in the Burgundian-Cistercian style, its earliest construction began in the fifteenth century, but it wasn’t finished until the mid-seventeenth century. Triple sedilia and leaf capitals lined the towering walls. Oriels dotted vine-covered ramparts. A clay roof flashed orange in the midday sun.

  A fire ravaged the entire complex during World War II, the Nazis confiscating it as a local headquarters, and the Allies finally bombing it. But Josef Loring wrestled back title, allying himself with the Russians who liberated the area on their way to Berlin. After the war the elder Loring resurrected his industrial empire and expanded, ultimately bequeathing everything to Ernst, his only surviving child, a move the government wholly supported.

  Clever, industrious men were also always in demand,her employer had said many times.

  She downshifted the Porsche to third. The engine groaned, then forced the tires to grab dry pavement. She twisted up the narrow road, the black asphalt surrounded by thick forest, and slowed at the castle’s main gate. What once accommodated horse-drawn carriages and deterred aggressors had been widened and paved to easily accept cars.

  Loring stood outside in the courtyard, dressed casually, wearing work gloves, apparently tending his spring flowers. He was tall and angular, with a surprisingly flat chest and strong physique for a man in his late seventies. Over the past decade she’d watched the silkened ash blond hair fade to the point of a lackluster gray, a matching goatee carpeting his creased jaw and wrinkled neck. Gardening had always been one of his obsessions. The greenhouses outside the walls were packed with exotic plants from around the world.

  “Dobriy den,my dear,” Loring called out in Czech.
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br />   She parked and exited the Porsche, grabbing her travel bag out of the passenger’s seat.

  Loring clapped dirt from his gloves and walked over. “Good hunting, I hope?”

  She withdrew a small cardboard box from the passenger’s seat. Neither Customs in London nor Prague questioned the trinket after she explained that it had been bought at a Westminister Abbey gift shop for less than thirty pounds. She was even able to produce a receipt, since she’d stopped by that very shop on the way to the airport and bought a cheap reproduction, one she trashed at the airport.

  Loring yanked off his gloves and lifted the lid, studying the snuffbox in the graying afternoon. “Beautiful,” he whispered. “Perfect.”

  She reached back into her bag and extracted the book.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “A surprise.”

  He returned the gold treasure to the cardboard box, then gingerly cradled the volume, unfolding the front cover, marveling at the book plate.

  “Drahá,you amaze me. What a wonderful bonus.”

  “I recognized it instantly and thought you’d like it.”

  “We can certainly sell or trade this. Herr Greimel loves these, and I would very much like a painting he possesses.”

  “I knew you’d be happy.”

  “This should make Christian take notice, huh? Quite an unveiling at our next gathering.”

  “And Franz Fellner.”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. I believe now it’s Monika. She seems to be taking over everything. Slowly but surely.”

  “Arrogant bitch.”

  “True. But she’s also no fool. I spoke to her at length recently. A bit impatient and eager. Seems to have inherited her father’s spirit, if not his brains. But, who knows? She’s young—maybe she’ll learn. I’m sure Franz will teach her.”

  “And what of my benefactor. Any similar thoughts of retirement?”

  Loring grinned. “What would I do?”

  She gestured to the blossoms. “Garden?”

  “Hardly. What we do is so invigorating. Collecting carries such thrills. I am as a child at Christmas opening packages.”

  He cradled his two treasures and led her inside his woodworking shop, which consumed the ground floor of a building adjacent to the courtyard. “I received a call from St. Petersburg,” he told her. “Christian was in the depository again Monday. In the Commission records. Fellner obviously is not giving up.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Hard to say. The idiot clerk should have gone through the boxes by now, but I doubt he has. Says it will take years. He seems far more interested in getting paid than working. But he was able to see that Knoll discovered a reference to Karol Borya.”

  She realized the significance.

  “I don’t understand this obsession of Franz’s,” Loring said. “So many things waiting to be found. Bellini’sMadonna and Child , gone since the war. What a find that would be. Van Eyck’s altarpiece of the Mystical Lamb. The twelve old masters stolen from the Treves Museum in ‘68. And those impressionist works stolen in Florence. There are not even any photos of those for identification purposes. Anyone would love to acquire just one of them.”

  “But the Amber Room is at the top of everyone’s collection list,” she said.

  “Quite right, and that seems to be the problem.”

  “You think Christian will try to find Borya?”

  “Without a doubt. Borya and Chapaev are the only two searchers left alive. Knoll never found Chapaev five years ago. He’s probably hoping Borya knows Chapaev’s whereabouts. Fellner would love the Amber Room to be Monika’s first unveiling. There is no doubt in my mind that Franz will send Knoll to America, at least to try to find Borya.”

  “But shouldn’t that be a dead end?”

  “Exactly. Literally. But only if necessary. Let’s hope Borya still has a tight lip. Maybe the old man finally died. He has to be approaching ninety. Go to Georgia, but stay out of the way unless forced to act.”

  A thrill ran through her. How wonderful to battle Knoll again. Their last encounter in France had been invigorating, the sex afterwards memorable. He was a worthy opponent. But dangerous. Which made the adventure that much more exciting.

  “Careful with Christian, my dear. Not too close. You may have to do some unpleasant things. Leave him to Monika. They deserve one another.”

  She pecked the old man on the cheek with a soft kiss. “Not to worry. Yourdrahá will not let you down.”

  THIRTEEN

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Saturday, May 10, 6:50 p.m.

  Karol Borya settled into the chaise longue and read again the one article he always consulted when he needed to remember details. It was from theInternational Art Review , October 1972. He’d found it on one of his regular forays downtown to the library at Georgia State University. Outside of Germany and Russia, the media had shown little interest in the Amber Room. Fewer than two dozen English accounts had been printed since the war, most rehashes of historical facts or a pondering on the latest theory on what might have happened. He loved how the article began, a quote from Robert Browning, still underlined in blue ink from his first reading:Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished .

  That observation was particularly relevant to the Amber Room. Unseen since 1945, its history was littered with political turmoil and marked by death and intrigue.

  The idea came from Frederick I of Prussia, a complicated man who traded his precious vote as an elector of the Holy Roman Emperor to secure a hereditary kingship of his own. In 1701, he commissioned panels of amber for a study in his Charlottenburg palace. Frederick amused himself daily with amber chessmen, candlesticks, and chandeliers. He quaffed beer from amber tankards and smoked from pipes fitted with amber mouthpieces. Why not a study faced ceiling to floor with carved amber paneling? So he charged his court architect, Andreas Schülter, with the task of creating such a marvel.

  The original commission was granted to Gottfried Wolffram, but in 1707, Ernst Schact and Gottfried Turau replaced the Dane. Over four years Schact and Turau labored, meticulously searching the Baltic coast for jewel-grade amber. The area had for centuries yielded tons of the substance, so much that Frederick trained whole details of soldiers in its gathering. Eventually, each rough chunk was sliced to no more than five millimeters thick, polished, and heated to change its color. The pieces were then fitted jigsaw style into mosaic panels of floral scrollwork, busts, and heraldic symbols. Each panel included a relief of the Prussian coat of arms, a crowned eagle in profile, and was backed in silver to enhance its brilliance.

  The room was partially completed in 1712, when Peter the Great of Russia visited and admired the workmanship. A year later Frederick I died and was succeeded by his son, Frederick William I. As sons sometimes do, Frederick William hated everything his father loved. Harboring no desire to spend any more crown money on his father’s caprice, he ordered the amber panels dismantled and packed away.

  In 1716, Frederick William signed a Russian-Prussian alliance with Peter the Great against Sweden. To commemorate the treaty, the amber panels were ceremonially presented to Peter and transported to St. Petersburg the following January. Peter, more concerned with building the Russian Navy than with collecting art, simply stored them away. But, in gratitude, he reciprocated the gift with 248 soldiers, a lathe, and a wine cup he crafted himself. Included among the soldiers were fifty-five of his tallest guardsmen, this in recognition of the Prussian king’s passion for tall warriors.

  Thirty years passed until Empress Elizabeth, Peter’s daughter, asked Rastrelli, her court architect, to display the panels in a study at the Winter Place in St. Petersburg. In 1755 Elizabeth ordered them carried to the summer palace in Tsarskoe Selo, thirty miles south of St. Petersburg, and installed in what came to be known as the Catherine Palace.

  It was there that the Amber Room was perfected.

  Over the next twenty years, forty-eight square meters of additional amber panels, most embla
zoned with the Romanov crest and elaborate decorations, were added to the original thirty-six square meters, the additions necessary since the thirty-foot walls in the Catherine Palace towered over the original room the amber had graced. The Prussian king even contributed to the creation, sending another panel, this one with a bas-relief of the two-headed eagle of the Russian Tsars. Eighty-six square meters of amber were eventually crafted, the finished walls dotted with fanciful figurines, floral garlands, tulips, roses, seashells, monograms, and rocaille, all in glittering shades of brown, red, yellow, and orange. Rastrelli framed each panel in a cartouche of boiserie, Louis Quinze style, separating them vertically by pairs of narrow mirrored pilasters adorned with bronze candelabra, everything gilded to blend with the amber.

  The centers of four panels were dotted with exquisite Florentine mosaics fashioned from polished jasper and agate and framed in gilded bronze. A ceiling mural was added, along with an intricate parquet floor of inlaid oak, maple, sandalwood, rosewood, walnut, and mahogany, itself as magnificent as the surrounding walls.

  Five Königsberg masters labored until 1770, when the room was declared finished. Empress Elizabeth was so delighted that she routinely used the space to impress foreign ambassadors. It also served as akunstkammer , a cabinet of curiosities for her and later Tsars, the place where royal treasures could be displayed. By 1765, seventy amber objects—chests, candlesticks, snuffboxes, saucers, knives, forks, crucifixes, and tabernacles—graced the room. In 1780, a corner table of encrusted amber was added. The last decoration came in 1913, an amber crown on a pillow, the piece purchased by Tsar Nicholas II.

  Incredibly, the panels survived 170 years and the Bolshevik Revolution intact. Restorations were done in 1760, 1810, 1830, 1870, 1918, 1935, and 1938. An extensive restoration was planned in the 1940s, but on June 22, 1941, German troops invaded the Soviet Union. By July 14, Hitler’s army had taken Belarus, most of Latvia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, reaching the Liga River less than a hundred miles from Leningrad. On September 17, Nazi troops took Tsarskoe Selo and the palaces in and around it, including the Catherine Palace, which had become a state museum under the Communists.