The Amber Room

TWENTY

Wednesday, May 14, 10:25 a.m.

Rachel forced herself to climb out of bed and get the children dressed. She then dropped the kids off at school and reluctantly headed for the courthouse. She'd not been in her chambers since last Friday, having taken Monday and Tuesday off.

Throughout the morning her secretary made things easy, running interference, rerouting calls, deflecting lawyers and the other judges. Originally the week had been scheduled for civil jury trials, but they were all hastily postponed. An hour ago she'd called the Atlanta police department and requested somebody from Homicide be sent to her chambers. She wasn't the most popular judge with the police. Everyone seemed to assume that since she was once a hard-nosed prosecutor, she'd be a pro-police judge. But her rulings, if they could be labeled, tended to be defense-oriented. Liberal was the term the Fraternal Order of Police and the press liked to use. Traitor, was the description she'd been told a lot of the narcotics detectives whispered. But she didn't care. The Constitution was there to protect people. The police were supposed to work within its bounds, not outside them. Her job was to make sure they didn't take any shortcuts. How many times had her father preached, when government comes before law, tyranny is not far behind.

And if anyone should know, he should.

"Judge Cutler," her secretary said through the speaker phone. Most times they were simply Rachel and Sami; only when someone came around was she labeled judge. "A Lieutenant Barlow is here from the Atlanta police. In response to your call."

She quickly dabbed her eyes with a tissue. The picture of her father on the credenza had triggered more tears. She stood and smoothed her cotton skirt and blouse.

The paneled door opened and a thin man with wavy black hair strutted in. He closed the door behind him and introduced himself as Mike Barlow, assigned to the homicide division.

She regained her judicial composure and offered a seat. "I appreciate your coming over, Lieutenant."

"No problem. The department always tries to accommodate the bench."

But she wondered. The tone was irritatingly cordial, bordering on condescending.

"After you called, I pulled the incident report on your father's death. I'm sorry about your loss. It appears to be one of those accidents that sometimes happen."

"My father was fairly independent. Still drove a car. He had no real health problems, and he'd climbed those stairs for years without a problem."

"Your point?"

She was liking his tone even less. "You tell me."

"Judge, I get the message. But there's nothing here to suggest foul play."

"He survived a Nazi concentration camp, Lieutenant. I think he could climb stairs."

Barlow seemed unpersuaded. "The report says nothing appears missing. His wallet was on the dresser. The televisions, stereo, VCR were all there. Both doors were unlocked. No evidence of forced entry anywhere. Where's the burglary?"

"My father left the doors unlocked all the time."

"That's not smart, but it doesn't appear to have contributed to his death. Look, I agree, no evidence of robbery could lead to an implication of murder, but there's nothing to suggest anyone was even around when he died."

She was curious. "Did your people search the house?"

"I've been told they looked around. Nothing elaborate. There seemed no need. I'm curious, what do you think was the motive for murder? Your father have enemies?"

She did not answer him. Instead she asked, "What did the medical examiner say?"

"Broken neck. Caused by the fall. No evidence of other trauma except bruising on the arms and legs from the fall. Again, Judge, what makes you think your father's death was something other than accidental?"

She considered telling him about the file in the freezer, Danya Chapaev, the Amber Room, and Paul's parents. But the arrogant ass didn't even want to be here, and she'd sound like a conspiratorial nut. He was right. There was no proof her father had been shoved down the stairs. Nothing that connected his death to any "curse of the Amber Room," as some of the articles suggested. So what if her father was interested in the subject? He loved art. Once worked with it every day. So what if he was reading articles in his study, stashed more in his freezer, unfolded a German map in the den, and possessed a keen interest in a man heading for Germany to dig in forgotten caves? A huge leap from that to murder. Maybe Paul was right. She decided to let it lie with this guy.

"Nothing, Lieutenant. You're quite right. Just a tragic fall. Thanks for coming by."

Rachel sat sullen in her office and thought back to when she was sixteen, her father explaining for the first time about Mauthausen, and how the Russians and Dutch worked the stone quarry, hauling tons of boulders up a long series of narrow steps to the camp where more prisoners chiseled them into bricks.

The Jews, though, weren't so lucky. Each day they were tossed down the cliff into the quarry simply for sport, their screams echoing as bodies flew through the air, bets taken by the guards on how many times flesh and bones would bounce before being silenced by death. Eventually, her father explained, the SS had to stop the hurling because it so disrupted the work.

Not because they were killing people, she remembered him saying, only because it affected the work.

Her father cried that day, one of the few times ever, and so had she. Her mother had told her about his war experiences and what he'd done afterward, but her father hardly mentioned the time. She'd always noticed the smeared tattoo on his left forearm, wondering when he'd explain.

They forced us to run into electric fence. Some did willingly, tired of torture. Others were shot, hanged, or injected in the heart. The gas came later.

She'd asked how many died in Mauthausen. And he told her without hesitation that 60 percent of the two hundred thousand never made it out. He arrived in April 1944. The Hungarian Jews came shortly thereafter, every one of them slaughtered like sheep. He'd helped heave the bodies from the gas chamber to the oven, a daily ritual, commonplace, like taking out the garbage, the guards used to say. She remembered him telling her about one night in particular, toward the end, when Hermann Goring marched into the camp wearing a pearl gray uniform.

Evil on two legs, he called him.

Goring had ordered four Germans murdered, her father part of the detail that poured water over their naked bodies until they froze to death. Goring stood impassive the whole time, rubbing a piece of amber, wanting to know something about the Amber Room. Of all the horror that happened in Mauthausen, her father said, that night with Goring was what stayed with him.

And set his course in life.

After the war, he was sent to interview Goring in prison during the Nurnberg trials.

Did he remember you? she'd asked.

My face in Mauthausen meant nothing to him.

But Goring recalled the torture, saying he greatly admired the soldiers for holding out. German superiority, breeding, he'd said. Her love for her father multiplied tenfold after finally hearing about Mauthausen. What he endured was unimaginable and just to survive was an accomplishment. But to survive with his sanity intact seemed nothing short of a miracle.

Sitting in the quiet of her chambers, Rachel cried. That precious man was gone. His voice forever silent, his love only a memory. For the first time in her life she was alone. Her parents' entire family had either perished in the war or were inaccessible, somewhere in Belarus, strangers really, linked merely by genes. Only her two children were left. She remembered how they'd ended that conversation about Mauthausen twenty-four years ago.

Daddy, did you ever find the Amber Room?

He stared back at her with woeful eyes. She wondered then and now if there was something he wanted to tell her. Something she needed to know. Or was it better she not know? Hard to tell. And his words didn't help.

Never did, my darling.

But his tone was reminiscent of when he once explained there really was a Santa Claus, an Easter Bunny, a Tooth Fairy. Hollow words that simply needed to be said. Now, after reading the letters between her father and Danya Chapaev and the note penned in his own hand, she was convinced that there was more to the story. Her father harbored a secret, and apparently had done so for years.

But he was gone.

Only one lead left.

Danya Chapaev.

And she knew what had to be done.

Rachel stepped off the elevator on the twenty-third floor and marched toward the paneled doors labeled PRIDGEN & WOODWORTH. The law firm consumed the entire twenty-third and twenty-fourth floors of the downtown high-rise, its probate division on the twenty-third.

Paul started with the firm right out of law school. She'd worked first with the DA's office, then with another Atlanta firm. They met eleven months later and married two years after that. Their courtship typical of Paul, never in a hurry to do anything. So careful. Deliberate. Afraid to take a chance, play the odds, or risk failure. She'd been the one to suggest marriage, and he readily agreed.

He was a handsome man, always had been. Not rugged, or dashing, just attractive in an ordinary way. And he was honest. Along with possessing a fanatical dependability. But his unbending dedication to tradition had slowly turned irksome. Why not vary Sunday dinner every once in a while? Roast, potatoes, corn, snap peas, rolls, and iced tea. Every Sunday for years. Not that Paul required it, only that the same thing always satisfied him. In the beginning, she'd liked that predictability. It was comforting. A known commodity that stabilized her world. Toward the end it became a tremendous pain in the ass.

But why?

Was a routine so bad?

Paul was a good, decent, successful man. She was proud of him, though she rarely voiced it. He was next in line to head the probate division. Not bad for a forty-one-year-old who needed two tries to get into law school. But Paul knew probate law. He studied nothing else, concentrating on all its nuances, even serving on legislative committees. He was a recognized expert on the subject, and Pridgen & Woodworth paid him enough money to prevent another firm from luring him away. The firm handled thousands of estates, many quite substantial, and most she knew were attributable to the statewide reputation of Paul Cutler.

She pushed through the doors and followed the maze of corridors to Paul's office. She'd called before leaving her chambers, so he was expecting her. She went straight in, closed the door, and announced, "I'm going to Germany."

Paul looked up. "You're what?"

"I didn't stutter. I'm going to Germany."

"To find Chapaev? He's probably dead. He didn't even return your father's last letter."

"I need to do something."

Paul stood from the desk. "Why do you always have to do something?"

"Daddy knew about the Amber Room. I owe it to him to check it out."

"Owe it to him?" His voice was rising. "You owe it to him to respect his last wish, which was to stay out of whatever it was. If anything, by the way. Damn, Rachel, you're forty years old. When are you going to grow up?"

She stayed surprisingly calm, considering how she felt about his lectures. "I don't want to fight, Paul. I need you to look after the children. Will you do that?"

"Typical, Rachel. Fly off the handle. Do the first thing that comes to mind. No thought. Just do it."

"Will you watch the kids?"

"If I said no, would you stay?"

"I'd call your brother."

Paul sat back down. His expression signaled surrender.

"You can stay at the house," she said. "It'll be easier on the kids. They're still pretty upset over Daddy."

"They'd be even more upset if they knew what their mother was doing. And have you forgotten about the election? It's less than eight weeks away, and you have two opponents working their asses off to beat you, now with Marcus Nettles's money."

"Screw the election. Nettles can have the damn judgeship. This is more important."

"What's more important? We don't even know what this is. What about your docket? How can you just up and leave?"

She notched two points for a nice try, but that wasn't going to discourage her. "The chief judge understood. I told him I needed some time to grieve. I haven't taken a vacation in two years. I have the leave accrued."

Paul shook his head. "You're going on a wild goose chase to Bavaria for an old man who's probably dead, looking for something that's probably lost forever. You're not the first one to search for the Amber Room. People have devoted their whole lives to looking, and found nothing."

She wasn't going to budge. "Daddy knew something important. I can feel it. This Chapaev may know also."

"You're dreaming."

"And you're pathetic." She instantly regretted the words and tone. There was no need to hurt him.

"I'm going to ignore that because I know you're upset," he slowly said.

"I'm leaving tomorrow evening on a flight to Munich. I need a copy of Daddy's letters and the articles from his files."

"I'll drop them off on the way home." His voice was filled with total resignation.

"I'll call from Germany and let you know where I'm staying." She headed for the door. "Pick up the kids at day care tomorrow."

"Rachel."

She stopped but did not turn back.

"Be careful."

She opened the door and left.