The Amber Room

FOURTEEN

9:35 p.m.

Borya once again scanned the article from International Art Review magazine and found the part he remembered:

. . . Alfred Rohde, the man who supervised the evacuation of the Amber Room from Konigsberg, was quickly apprehended after the war and summoned before Soviet authorities. The so-called Extraordinary State Commission on Damage Done by the Fascist-German Invaders was looking for the Amber Room and wanted answers. But Rohde and his wife were found dead on the morning they were to appear for questioning. Dysentery was the official cause, plausible since epidemics were raging at the time from polluted water, but speculation abounded they had been killed in order to protect the location of the Amber Room.

On the same day, Dr. Paul Erdmann, the physician who signed the Rohdes' death certificates, disappeared.

Erich Koch, Hitler's personal representative in Prussia, was ultimately arrested and tried by the Poles for war crimes. Koch was sentenced to death in 1946, but his execution was continuously postponed at the request of Soviet authorities. It was widely believed that Koch was the only man left alive who knew the actual whereabouts of the crates that left Konigsberg in 1945. Paradoxically, Koch's continued survival was dependent on his not revealing their location, since there was no reason to believe the Soviets would intervene in his behalf once they again possessed the Amber Room.

In 1965, Koch's lawyers finally obtained Soviet assurance that his life would be spared once the information was revealed. Koch then announced that the crates were walled into a bunker outside Konigsberg but claimed he was unable to remember the exact location as a result of Soviet rebuilding after the war. He went to his grave without revealing where the panels lay.

In the decades following, three West German journalists died mysteriously while searching for the Amber Room. One fell down the shaft of a disused salt mine in Austria, a place rumored to be a Nazi loot depository. Two others were killed by hit-and-run drivers. George Stein, a German researcher who long investigated the Amber Room, supposedly committed suicide. All these events fueled speculation of a curse associated with the Amber Room, making the search for the treasure even more intriguing.

He was upstairs in what was once Rachel's room. Now it was a study where he kept his books and papers. There was an antique writing desk, an oak filing cabinet, and a club chair where he liked to sit and read. Four walnut bookcases held novels, historical treatises, and classical literature.

He'd come upstairs after eating dinner, still thinking about Christian Knoll, and found more articles in one of the cabinets. They were all short, mainly fluff, containing no real information. The rest were still in the freezer. He needed to retrieve them, but didn't feel like climbing back up the stairs again afterward.

By and large the newspaper and magazine accounts on the Amber Room were contradictory. One would say the panels disappeared in January 1945, another April. Did they leave in trucks, by rail, or on the sea? Different writers offered different perspectives. One account noted that the Soviets torpedoed the Wilhelm Gustloff to the bottom of the Baltic with the panels, another mentioned bombing the ship from the air. One was sure that seventy-two crates left Konigsberg, the next noted twenty-six, another eighteen. Several accounts were sure the panels burned in Konigsberg during the bombing. Another tracked leads implying they made it surreptitiously across the Atlantic to America. It was difficult to extract anything useful, and no article ever mentioned the source of information. It could be double to triple hearsay. Or even worse, pure speculation.

Only one, an obscure publication, The Military Historian, noted the story of a train leaving occupied Russia sometime around May 1, 1945, with the crated Amber Room supposedly on board. Witness accounts vouched that the crates were offloaded in the tiny Czechoslovakian town of T ynec-nad-Sazavou. There, they were supposedly trucked south and stored in an underground bunker that housed the headquarters of Field Marshal von Schorner, commander of the million-strong German army, still holding out in Czechoslovakia. But the article noted that an excavation of the bunker by the Soviets in 1989 found nothing.

Close to the truth, he thought. Real close.

Seven years ago, when he first read the article, he'd wondered about its source, even tried to contact the author, but was unsuccessful. Now a man named Wayland McKoy was burrowing into the Harz Mountains near Stod, Germany. Was he on the right track? The only thing clear was that people had died searching for the Amber Room. What happened to Alfred Rohde and Erich Koch was documented history. So were the other deaths and disappearances. Coincidence? Perhaps. But he wasn't so sure. Particularly given what happened nine years ago. How could he forget. The memory haunted him every time he looked at Paul Cutler. And he wondered many times if two more names should not be added to the list of casualties.

A squeak came from the hall.

Not a sound the house usually made when empty.

He looked up, expecting to see Lucy bound into the room, but the cat was nowhere to be seen. He laid the articles aside and pushed himself up from the chair. He shuffled out into the second-floor foyer and peered down, past an oak banister, to the foyer below. Narrow sidelights framing the front door were dark, the ground floor illuminated by a single den lamp. Upstairs was dark, too, except for the floor lamp in the study. Just ahead, his bedroom door was open, the room black and quiet.

"Lucy? Lucy?"

The cat did not respond. He listened hard. No more sounds. Everything appeared quiet. He turned and started back into the study. Suddenly, someone lunged at him from behind, out of the bedroom. Before he could turn, a powerful arm locked around his neck, yanking him off the ground. The scent of latex bloomed from sheathed hands.

"Konnen wir reden mehr, `Yxo."

The voice was that of his visitor, Christian Knoll. He easily translated.

Now we talk further, Ears.

Knoll squeezed his throat hard, and his breath faltered.

"Miserable damn Russian. Spit on my hand. Who the fuck you think you are? I've killed for less."

He said nothing, the experience of a lifetime cautioning silence.

"You will tell me what I want to know, old man, or I will kill you."

He remembered similar words said fifty-two years ago. Goring informing the naked soldiers of their fate right before water was poured. What had the German soldier, Mathias, said?

It is an honor to defy your captor.

Yes, it still was.

"You know where Chapaev is, don't you?"

He tried to shake his head.

Knoll's grip tightened. "You know where das Bernstein-zimmer rests, don't you?"

He was about to pass out. Knoll loosened his grip. Air rushed into his lungs.

"I'm not someone to take lightly. I traveled a long way for information."

"I tell nothing."

"You sure? You said earlier that your time is short. Now it is shorter than you imagined. What of your daughter? Your grandchildren. Would you not like a few more years with them?"

He would, but not enough to be cowed by a German. "Go fuck, Herr Knoll."

His frail body was launched out over the stairs. He tried to cry out, but before he could muster the breath he pounded headfirst onto oak runners and rolled. His limbs splayed. Arms and legs raked the spindles as gravity sent him tumbling end over end. Something cracked. Consciousness flickered in and out. Pain seared his back. He finally settled spine first on the hard tile, agony radiating through his upper body. His legs were numb. The ceiling spun. He heard Knoll bound down the stairs, then watched him reach down and jerk him up by his hair. Ironic. He owed his life to a German, and now a German would take it.

"Ten million euros is one thing. But no Russian pissant will spit on me."

He tried to amass enough saliva to spit again, but his mouth was dry, his jaw frozen.

Knoll's arm encircled his neck.