The Amber Room (23 page)

“Most well documented, I assure you, if you only know where to look,” Ferret replied. “There are no complete records, however, on how much the Nazis transported back to Königsberg. The wealth in the Catherine Palace and the other royal summer residences was so great that it simply overwhelmed the Nazi record keepers. We do know that the transport required seventy trucks. Think of it. Seventy trucks brought together in the midst of the greatest siege in modern warfare, and simultaneous with the push across two thousand miles of enemy territory to Moscow.”

“They must have found something special,” Kurt said.

“So many things, so special, that they left behind
twenty thousand
treasures. We know this because that which remains now makes up the permanent collection of the Catherine Palace Museum, one of the greatest such exhibitions in all the world.”

The morning sun poked through an opening in the clouds and glinted against the sweat-streaked window. Erika leaned far back in her chair so her face could remain in accustomed shadows.

“And these are the leftovers,” Kurt said, shaking his head. “Amazing.”

“Amazing is the right word,” Ferret agreed, his voice barely above a whisper. “Amazing that among the treasures selected by the Nazis was an entire royal chamber with amber walls. Koch lost no time in stripping these jewels from their frames and wrapping the segments in cigarette paper. They must have been well aware of what they held, for the records pertaining to this one room are the most complete of the entire shipment. Upon each strip of paper was recorded the segment's place in the wall puzzle—quite a daunting task I would imagine, what with the pressure to complete this work and continue on behind the army's march to Moscow. Day and night, as
guns boomed in the distance, the amber was rolled in wadding and packed into iron chests. Twenty tons of amber in all.”

The Ferret spoke with scarce movements of his small bloodless lips, his lumpy body curved over the ever-present file, his pale, soft hands resting motionless upon the yellowed pages as though drawing sustenance from their ancient script. “Once the trucks arrived in Königsberg, unskilled hand workers and soldiers reassembled the pieces in a chamber of the central castle. Some amber was destroyed, one entire panel went missing and was never restored. Even so, this chamber became the single most popular museum exhibit in all Nazi Germany. And for good reason.”

“For as long as it lasted,” Kurt offered.

“It remained there for almost three years,” Ferret replied. “Until July of 1944. One month after it was taken down and relocated, the expected waves of bombers arrived. The British carpet-bombed Königsberg for three days and nights, destroying almost half the city and leaving behind fires that burned for another five days before they were finally extinguished.”

Erika shifted uneasily. “I've had enough of the history lesson.”

“It is distasteful, I agree,” Ferret said, “but an important part of our story.”

“I don't see how,” Erika said. “All that's better dead and buried.”

“You asked for the scoop,” Kurt snapped. “Button up and let him get on with it.”

Erika flared, “I don't take that from anyone.”

“Please, please,” Ferret lisped. “Let us act as partners, yes? We have a long road yet ahead.”

Kurt held her fast with his gaze, said to Ferret, “Get on with it.”

Instead, Ferret stripped off his glasses, revealing surprisingly small eyes. They were a weak-looking, washed-out blue in color, and very red-rimmed. He pressed two childlike fingers to the bridge of his nose and said, “I really must insist
on a truce here. We are seeking to unearth the hidden, do the impossible, escape with both freedom and the money with which to enjoy it. Such bickering must stop.”

Erika leaned back in her chair, grumbled, “My old man used to get drunk and talk about the war and the bombings. On and on he went. Then he'd start beating on anyone he could grab. Almost every night. It gave me the creeps then and it does now.”

“My dad died in the war,” Kurt said, subsiding. “I remember the bombings, though. Horrible, they were. Worse than horrible.”

Erika looked at him, the makings of a cease-fire in her eyes. “You were a war child, too?”

He nodded. “Born in thirty-nine.”

“You've five years on me, then. My old man, he said I was born in a bomb shelter and got covered with dust the minute I came out.” Her tone now was conversational. “I never knew my mother.”

“Me neither. I was a Young Patriot of the Great and Glorious Communist State,” he said wryly, referring to the title given war orphans in the fifties.

Erika looked amused. “Fired with the true Communist spirit from the cradle.”

“When young,” he admitted. “Now I live for myself.”

“The only logical course,” Erika agreed.

“I knew all the right slogans, and I could shout with the best of them,” Kurt went on. “But in truth I learned long ago to care for the State about as much as the State cared for me.”

“I too lived the great lie,” Erika said quietly.

They shared a look of understanding before Kurt repeated to Ferret, calm now, “Get on with the telling.”

“With pleasure.” Ferret refitted his spectacles. “The chamber was dismantled, as I said, in June of 1944. It was first placed inside the castle cellars, but after the British bombing leveled the castle, it was thought safer to locate it elsewhere. A temporary home was found in a local brewery, where it
was walled into a disused storage room. The officials asked a local count if he would allow them to store it in his cellar, but he refused on the grounds that the cellar was too damp. So it was decided to transport the Amber Room along with other valuables in what proved to be the last recorded transfer of treasures before the fall of the Nazi empire.”

Erika shook her head. “You sound so sure.”

“I am.”

“How can this be?”

“I have been searching,” he replied, “for the pieces of a puzzle. Those who made this search before, the bureaucrats who were ordered to do so by their communist bosses, sought with logic. When logic failed them, rather than admit defeat, they declared that there was in fact no puzzle at all—that the treasure had been destroyed in the bombing. But this I know to be false. I have found what they were too lazy to seek out. Doors in the West have been opened to me that remained ever closed to them and their endless demands for secrecy.”

Erika asked, “So what do you have instead of logic to solve these puzzles?”

“He lives with them,” Kurt replied, the gleam strong in his eyes. “Don't ask me to explain it, because I can't. But I've been with him for almost fifteen years, and I know it for fact. Accept it.”

“You must remember,” Ferret said, “that many of the puzzles are indeed false, the treasures forever lost. More than many. Almost all. I have spent years and years walking upon paths which in truth no longer existed.”

“But not this time,” Erika demanded, hoping in spite of herself.

Ferret shook his head. “No. This time I am sure.”

Erika thought it over, nodded her acceptance. “So a final transfer of the Amber Room was made.”

“It left Königsberg in December of 1944,” Ferret agreed. “The last available eighteen working trucks were loaded and placed upon flatbed railroad cars. There was very little
gasoline left, you see. Certainly none to be had once they left territory controlled by their
Gauleiter
, no matter who signed and stamped their passes. In those last chaotic days, all remaining supplies were hoarded by the lucky and shared with none.”

“A lot of treasure was left behind, I wager,” Kurt said.

“More than was taken,” Ferret agreed. “Room was made only for the priceless.”

“Like the chamber,” Erika said.

“Just so. The twenty tons of amber were stored this time in seventy-two steel chests, each so massive it took four men to shift. These cases took up three of the eighteen trucks. The train pulled out under cover of night, barely before the nemesis arrived.”

“The Russians,” Kurt said.

Erika smiled without humor. “You mean to say our saviors, don't you?”

“The invasion began on January 26, 1945,” Ferret continued. “Königsberg fell on April 9. Between those two dates, the city was pounded into the dust. When the Russians finally entered the city, not a single building remained intact. Not one. The seven-hundred-year-old capital of the Prussian empire was totally obliterated.”

With nervous gestures Erika fished a Russian cigarette from a crumpled pack. She spent a moment composing herself and pressing the paper-tube filter into various shapes. She finally lit it, drew hard, sighed with the smoke. “Cursed memories.”

Kurt had the decency to look away. “But the chamber was already gone.”

“Not according to the Soviets and their official story,” Ferret replied, “I am happy to say. After searching for almost twenty years, they claimed that it was destroyed in the bombing and that the rest of the story was myth. But the Soviets have now fallen, and the new Russian government claimed that new evidence points a finger at cliffs filled with Nazi bombs.”

“But you claim otherwise.”

“I do not just claim,” Ferret replied. “I know. I have had access to information which the Russians did not.”

Kurt's eyebrows crept up. “The American quartermaster sergeant?”

“A mere conduit. But the records he gave us were invaluable.”

“And the soldier who died in Siberia? The one whose records were supplied by the Russian colonel?”

“That is a bit of the puzzle overlooked by the logical plodders. They sought to do a job; their reward was security and nothing more. Finding or not finding the hidden treasures had no effect on their salary. Not a formula for stimulating independent thought.”

“What about my trips south?”

“Doing away with possible loose ends,” Ferret replied. “We had to be sure, you see. The caves at Jonastal and the underground bunkers in Weimar were intended as the collection point for all such treasures. The Königsberg shipment was supposed to have traveled there, just as Yeltsin said.”

“
Supposed
to be there.”

Ferret nodded. “No trace was found, no evidence that the trucks arrived.”

Kurt waited, asked the expected question. “So where is the Amber Room?”

Ferret turned to Erika, who had managed to replace her stonelike visage. “You have the man's address?”

“My friend does. As of last year. He is old, and he may have died, but as of last year he still lived there.”

“Let us hope that this essential thread remains within our grasp,” Ferret replied. “I suggest we travel as soon as it is dark.”

“Twenty tons of amber,” Kurt said. “How much is that worth?”

Ferret blinked. “Nothing and everything.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It does not matter how much it is worth,” Ferret said, “if we are not alive and free to enjoy the wealth.”

“Let me see if I understand,” Erika said. “We're going crazy looking for a treasure that isn't there—”

“Oh, believe me, it is there.”

“—so that even if we do find it, we can't sell it,” Erika finished. “That makes as much sense as one of Honecker's old speeches.”

“Let him talk,” Kurt said, but mildly. Erika shot him a glance, saw no rancor, subsided.

“As I said to our American contact, we do not sell what we cannot recover,” Ferret explained. “We do not struggle to take what we could never escape with. There is no war to mask our efforts, no crisis to blind people to the unearthing and transporting of seventy-two heavy chests. No. We sell what is weightless, what can be packed in the smallest coffer and carried without being a burden to anyone.”

“Information,” Kurt said, nodding. “Smart.”

“We will sell a treasure map,” Ferret continued, “and leave the struggles over unearthing and the battles over ownership to the nations.”

“While we make like the wind.” Kurt smiled, exposing yellowed teeth. “We're in the pirate business. I like it.”

“We will not be greedy,” Ferret said. “We want the wealth of the fortunate, the ones able to enjoy the spoils. We will ask only so much that it is easier to pay than to give chase.”

“Five hundred thousand apiece sounds like a fortunate number,” Kurt agreed. “When do we leave?”

CHAPTER 21

“But twenty tons of amber,” Jeffrey protested. “Seventy-two gigantic steel chests. How could anybody make something that big just disappear?”

It was two weeks since their return from Dresden, the day of the gala event. Despite the blitz of last-minute details, every free moment, every lapse in their work, every pause for coffee or food was spiced with reflection over the undiscovered.

“The war essentially turned much of Europe into the world's largest flea market,” Alexander explained. “Priceless items were sold by the pound, and treasures were passed around like tourist mementos.”

“That's hard to imagine.” Jeffrey continued with his careful checking of place cards for the tables, grateful for the conversation to break the tedium of preparation.

“I understand. But this does not make it any less true. In Nazi-occupied territories, well-placed generals arrived for inspections with scores of empty lorries. Their hosts, the heads of the local military governments, offered roomfuls of treasures to remain in the general staff's good favor.”

“Treasures,” Jeffrey repeated, thinking of Betty.

“I realize it must sound strange to you, having never lived through such horrors yourself. But you cannot imagine how much was flooding the German-controlled markets, especially toward the end of the war. There was literally a sea of goods swept up by the German armies, mind-boggling amounts from cities and palaces stretching from Paris to the gates of Moscow. An entire world of treasures, carted off by the conquering armies. And then came defeat. And rout. Retreats planned in haste and executed in blind panic. With wave after wave of Allied bombers destroying roads and rails and airports. With few trucks that still ran and petrol scarcer than emeralds.”