Checkmate in Amber (8 page)

‘Very good, Läufer,’ Roi exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘That’s what I call magnificent research work!’

‘Absolutely brilliant,’ I agreed, delighted. ‘Well done, Läufer.’

‘HEY, ROOK! HOW ABOUT THAT THEN!’

‘You’re the best, man, the very best! By the way, I’d like to pick your brains about the stock market crisis. If they drop much further, some of us are going to be in serious trouble.’

‘Now is not the time or the place to discuss our business affairs, Rook,’ Roi intervened, in a schoolmasterly tone of voice.

‘Well, you’re one of the worst affected, Roi. You’re already down several million euros. You should have listened to me and stashed some of your money away in a tax haven.’

Luckily for me, Rook wasn’t my stockbroker. I managed my own investments through my bank, and they were hardly big enough to worry my head about. In any case, however much I’d managed to lose, it could never get even close to what my Tía Juana was skimming off me on a regular basis.

‘That’s quite enough of that!’ Roi was desperate by now to switch off Rook’s endless jabbering. But he failed dismally. The truth of the matter is that both Läufer and Rook - each in their own way, of course - had serious trouble keeping their mouths shut. And together, they went viral.

‘HEY, LET HIM SPEAK, MAN! ALL ROOK DID WAS ASK FOR MY OPINION, AND I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER TO PROVIDE IT.’

‘But not here and, above all, not now!’

‘All I was trying to say was that it really would make a lot of sense for us to go to Weimar, check it out and see if we couldn’t get our own hands on the treasure and that Amber Room. If the financial crisis carries on the way it’s going, I can assure you, Roi, that you’ll be forced to sell your wonderful château in the Loire.’

‘You must be exaggerating, surely?’ said Donna, uneasily.

‘You, my dear Donna, in particular, may well be forced to sell your restoration and training workshop and your whole magnificent business if the Dow Jones in New York and Milan’s MIBtel keep heading south. And if you go down, the whole Chess Group would be in serious trouble.’

‘THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH!’

For Roi to shout was so rare that, when he did, we all fell into line automatically. The screen went completely dead again. I could just picture all five of us staring at it in shock and not moving a muscle, that quiet Sunday morning.

‘That is quite enough,’ repeated the Prince, but this time not in capital letters.

‘ROOK IS RIGHT, ROI.’

‘I agree with him as well,’ added Donna, clearly rattled by Rook’s doomsday scenario.

‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Roi,’ Cavalo began, treading very carefully now, ‘but I do think that we all agree that getting our hands on Koch’s loot would be a really good idea. We’ve got more leads on its location than anybody else does and, after all, we are professional art thieves.’

Roi said nothing for a moment and then switched his attention to me.

‘What do you think about it, Peón? The hardest part of the job would be your responsibility. Do you feel up to exploring Weimar’s underworld?’

‘The truth is I don’t.’

‘YOU DON’T? BUT PEÓN, I’VE
SEEN
YOU OPERATING! YOU COULD DO IT IN YOUR SLEEP.’

‘No way. I’m not up for it.’

‘Explain yourself, my dear,’ the Prince commanded.

‘There’s no way I’m going down there to look for stuff that was carefully hidden well over forty years ago without even a reliable map of this crazy labyrinth of shafts and galleries. And what if Koch booby-trapped his hiding-place with explosives and snares to welcome uninvited visitors? Not to mention that if the cache was
easy
to find, the Weimar engineer who explored the tunnel system for several days would already have found it. I could get lost, I could die of starvation, I could fall and injure myself or I might never find my way out again. Forget it. I’m not doing it, period.’

‘AND IF SOMEBODY WENT WITH YOU? NOT ME, OF COURSE - YOU SAW HOW NERVOUS I GOT AT CASTLE KUNST. I’M BEST JUST SITTING IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER. BUT SURELY ONE OF US COULD BE YOUR PARTNER DOWN THERE.’

‘I am too old for that, I’m afraid,’ Donna responded.

‘With everything that’s going on at the moment, I’ve no choice but to keep my eyes permanently on the markets.’

‘So - that’s three no-shows already,’ I commented sarcastically. ‘Two to go then. Roi? Cavalo?’

‘As you know, Peón, I’m seventy-five years old. God knows I would be delighted to go with you. But I would just be a burden on you.’

‘Cavalo …?’

‘Signed, sealed, delivered - I’m yours.’

OK, I admit it - a small smile did begin to play about my lips.

‘CAVALO WOULD MAKE PEÓN A PERFECT PARTNER!’

‘Hush now, you wuss,’ I threw back at him, jokingly.

‘NO, I’M SERIOUS! HE’S PERFECT. HE EVEN SPEAKS GERMAN BETTER THAN I DO!’

‘Hey, I’m not so bad at it myself,’ I added, slightly overrating my four-word vocabulary. ‘Anyway, we’re not exactly planning to start chatting with the locals.’

‘I do have a slight problem, actually,’ José admitted. ‘My daughter had a big row with her mother and she’s staying with me right up until Christmas.’

‘Well, that’s you out as my bodyguard then.’

‘No, no - I’ll sort it out. Don’t worry about it.’

‘So we can all agree then. Peón and Cavalo will carry out the operation together.’

I could tell that Roi was not very happy with this arrangement. Leaving the two of us alone together for such a long time didn’t really strike him as a very good idea, especially given my record of lustful escapades and current desire for Iberian reunification. But there wasn’t much he could say about it, as Cavalo was the only one prepared to come with me. And as far as I was concerned, I was ready to go any damn place with José. After all, what could be more romantic than a long hike in the dark down some smelly and filthy old German sewers?

‘Fine, we will carry out this operation in accordance with the standard Group guidelines. Ladies and gentlemen, today sees the launch of Operation Peter the Great,’ Roi began to wind up the meeting with the usual litany. ‘I believe this name to be the most appropriate in this instance. As you know, from this moment on, all and any direct communication and personal encounters between Group members - except for Peón and Cavalo, of course - are strictly prohibited. All and any relevant news, information or advice must be passed through me and me alone, always using the Group encoder and the exclusively personal cipher and password with which I will provide each one of you, and which you are forbidden to share with anyone else. Bear in mind that apprehending the Chess Group would be the absolute highlight of any Interpol officer’s career. And don’t forget: maximum security is our best possible insurance. If one of us goes down, we all go down.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cavalo and I were walking along an endless tunnel when suddenly the cell phone began to ring insistently. ‘It must be for you,’ I told him, without turning to look back at him. He must have answered it, because after three or four ringtones the noise stopped. We headed towards a doorway which looked like the main entrance into Castle Kunst and then the damn thing started ringing again. ‘Why do they keep calling you on your cell phone?’ I asked as I pushed the door open and walked through into a bright sunlit meadow. ‘Hurry up and answer it, José - please,’ I begged him, as it was starting to annoy me. Another three or four ringtones later, Cavalo answered it. I headed on towards a huge tree whose trunk was cracked and dry. Through a split in the bark big enough to walk through, I could make out the beginnings of a staircase. But then the damn ringtones started droning again. ‘Enough, José, please!’ I yelled at him, losing my temper and turning towards him. It was then I realized that it wasn’t José who was behind me, it was Ezequiela. ‘Ezequiela …? What on earth are
you
doing in Weimar?’.

I opened my eyes all of a sudden, sat bolt upright and pricked up my ears. I was in my own bed and the phone that was ringing was the one in the living room.

‘Oh no, to hell with it!’ I grumbled, curling myself into a ball and jamming the pillow over my head.

But even so, Ezequiela’s voice, as happy as a clam at high tide, penetrated my semi-comatose neurons and dragged me out from the cozy madness of my dream.

‘Yes, yes, thank you very much! I’m so happy you remembered,’ she declared, delighted. ‘That’s right, at five o’clock. Don’t forget now.’

I sighed. Today was Ezequiela’s birthday. OK, I’d got my wake-up call, I said to myself, and sat up in bed with some difficulty, trying to shake off the cobwebs and get my head together. It was going to be a long, long day. The telephone wouldn’t stop ringing, the door would be spinning like a turnstile and all of Ezequiela’s girlfriends would be dropping round loaded with gifts and eating their heads off. My house was on the point of turning into a not-so-fast-food joint jam-packed with crazed senior citizens.

I jumped out of bed and headed for the chest of drawers where I had hidden the birthday present for my old nurse the previous afternoon. I always had a hard time working out what to buy her, and every year I got increasingly nervous as October 14th got closer and closer. And I always ended up buying her, at the very last minute, the most absurd gift imaginable. But, year after year, she reacted as if what I had given her was just exactly what she had always wanted, hugging me to death and squealing with pleasure. So I had high hopes that she would adore the dish set I had bought her, perfectly matching the tiles in her bathroom.

‘Happy birthday!’ I shouted out as I emerged from my bedroom with the package in my hands.

‘Thank you, thank you! I’m so happy you remembered.’

My slight frown on hearing that same old worn-out phrase soon disappeared as I watched her come towards me with her arms outstretched and a look of sheer happiness on her face. She didn’t mess around: two quick kisses and she grabbed the gift right out of my hands.

‘What is it?’ she asked me enthusiastically as she tore off the wrapping.

‘What are you asking me that for? You’re just about to find out,’ I answered her with a smile. ‘Come on, get on with it. Open it up! I’m off to pour myself a coffee.’

I could hear her admiring comments from the kitchen, but still couldn’t entirely repress the usual doubts that hit me every year on her birthday. Ezequiela’s unrestrained shrieks of joy were hardly deserved by the shower gel dispenser, soap dish and toothbrush holder that I had bought her. But she really did seem to be pleased with them.

She rushed into the kitchen, rose up on tiptoe, put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me down to plant another kiss on my cheek.

‘They’re lovely! Really lovely! And they go perfectly with my bathroom tiles! Thank you so much, Ana, they’re absolutely …’

As luck would have it, the phone started ringing again and I shot off towards the living room. And kept right on going. I walked out the front door and down the four steps to the street, carrying a file with the latest documents that Läufer had sent me. There was a wide selection of photographs of the renovated Weimar
Gauforum
and the enormous Beethovenplatz, a green space on one of whose flanks Läufer had marked all the manhole covers leading down into the underground sewage system. He’d also included photos of all the surrounding streets, as well as an illegible plan of the city center with a big cross marking the
Gauforum
’s location.

I had lunch at a
mesón
near my store, safe in the knowledge that Ezequiela was busy fixing up the house and preparing food for her friends’ arrival. Then I settled down on the sofa in the back room of the store, next to my desk, carefully studied all the material which Läufer had sent me and finally had my short
siesta
until it was time to raise the security shutters and open up for business. I had an appointment arranged for that afternoon with an agent representing an English buyer who was interested in an eighteenth-century Spanish console table whose long legs ended in lion’s paws. It was a piece of furniture that I had bought for surprisingly little at an auction in Madrid. I bid successfully for the whole lot in which it was included, sold all the other pieces before I even left the auction room and included the beautiful console in my next biannual catalog, giving it pride of place and a particularly fancy filigreed layout. It worked a treat. Within a couple of weeks I had over twenty offers from foreign collectors.

The Englishman’s agent, a pot-bellied fifty-something guy with a miserable face and a strong smell of liquor on his breath, spent ages examining every inch of the console. Finally, looking slightly happier, he came over to my desk, quickly signed the huge pile of documents that I laid in front of him and disappeared at full speed, heading for the nearest bar, no doubt. I was just finishing off the endless paperwork when the telephone rang.

‘Ana? It’s your aunt.’

God in heaven! I had completely forgotten to take her the money for the coffered ceiling in the scriptorium!

‘Ana María -
are you there?
’

‘Yes, here I am, Tía,’ I finally answered, in an apologetic tone of voice.

‘I am sure that you know exactly why I’m calling.’

‘Yes, Tía, I can well imagine.’

‘And I suppose that you have a good excuse for it.’

‘I do, Tía, I do.’

She was getting more and more annoyed.

‘Is everything alright?’

‘Yes.’

‘Excellent. So you can stop playing the fool with me,’ she snapped. ‘When precisely do you plan on bringing me the check?’

‘I’m not sure, Tía, because I’ve got to go on another trip.’

‘When, exactly?’

‘The day after tomorrow.’

‘This Friday?’

‘Yes, Tía. As soon as I close the store. I’ve already booked my flight. But don’t worry. I’ll be back on Sunday night, so I promise to drive over with the money on Monday.’

‘I take that as a promise,’ she said, challengingly. ‘I expect to see you on Monday. Don’t let me down again.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ I growled back, fed up by now with her badgering.

‘Oh yes, just one more thing …’

Enough already!

‘If I’m not mistaken, today is Ezequiela’s birthday, is it not?’

I grunted in exasperation.

‘That is so, is it not?’ she repeated, in a menacing tone worthy of Cinderella’s wicked stepmother.

‘Yes indeed …’

‘Well, do congratulate her on my behalf.’

I groaned audibly.

‘Congratulate her!’

‘Yes, Tía.’

‘Fine. I will expect you on Monday. Enjoy your trip.’

‘Thank you.’

‘See you on Monday then.’

‘Yes, Tía.’

Needless to say, I made damn sure
not
to pass on her birthday wishes. The last thing I needed was to provoke Ezequiela into launching into yet another endless rant about Juana’s countless failings.