The Amber Rooms

by Ian Hocking

  ‘Do you see the wires on my arms?’ asked Saskia. Her Russian had never been more perfect, and she was aware of the beauty in her voice. Several of the nearby conversations ceased as guests turned towards her. ‘They carry electricity.’

  The woman smiled as she poured. ‘I’m from heaven,’ she replied. ‘Tell me about your place and I’ll tell you about mine.’

  ‘In the future,’ said Saskia, speaking to the covered faces, ‘we have buildings so tall they reach the clouds. The sun shines on their spires and there is plenty to eat and drink for all the people.’

  A servant’s arm entered her view and put a champagne flute next to her plate. Saskia was distracted by the thought that the narrow glass and the champagne, with its delightful tint, had come together in this moment with the elegance that only existed with transience. The two would separate soon and never meet again. On the surface of the glass, she saw the greenish reflection of the fires, and the curled fists of Kamo.

  ‘At least,’ she continued, ‘there is plenty for those who live in the tall buildings. Others live underground.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Kamo, in the belittling tone of a husband, ‘you will overplay your part.’

  ‘I want to hear about them,’ said the Angel, and several of the other guests motioned for Saskia to continue.

  ‘Their faces are dark and hidden,’ Saskia said. She had turned to Kamo. ‘They walk treadmills and operate huge dynamos. Every movement of each body is captured, transformed, and used for the betterment of their superiors in the sky, where the sun shines.’

  ‘Darling, you are drunk,’ said Kamo. He addressed the table: ‘She is drunk.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ replied a man in a black hat. ‘She is lucid and entertaining. Tell me, madam, how might one travel from St Petersburg to Moscow in your future?’

  ‘In ships that sail through the air.’

  ‘Winged ships?’ asked Angel.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Flapping wings, then,’ said the man in the black hat. ‘Like birds!’ He followed this with a bellowing laugh that drew glances from the tables around them. Kamo added his own, quieter laugh, and put his hand on Saskia’s thigh.

  ‘Fixed wings,’ she said, addressing the man but looking at Kamo. ‘Unless one wishes to travel by balloon, for which no wings are required. These air ships dock on the spires of the skyscrapers.’

  ‘Of course,’ Angel said. ‘Heavier-than-air machines.’

  ‘We dance,’ said Saskia, smiling. ‘We dance to music produced by machines.’

  ‘Automata?’ asked the man in the black hat.

  ‘And the automata are so indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood humans that men lust after them.’

  ‘What powers these automata?’

  Saskia laughed. ‘They are electric, of course.’

  ‘Electric!’

  As table laughed with her, the moment—all of them, with the exception of Kamo, laughing at the idea of electric automata—was clear to her with such brightness, such sharp meaning, that she lost the desire to talk any longer. She put a napkin to her mouth and coughed. The sound covered the fibrillation of her breath. The mask, likewise, hid her tears.

  ~

  At sixteen minutes to midnight, Saskia and Kamo were waiting in the chamber between the dining room and great hall. An ivy arch had been installed near the tiled stove. Beneath it, a wooden bridge, painted silver, was intended to recall the grace of Venice. The entire scene had been created by a photographic company to produce souvenirs of the event. The camera and its tripod were, however, unattended, and there were no more than a dozen people in the room at a given moment. Saskia and Kamo moved behind the ivy arch, which partially concealed them.

  ‘That was stupid,’ said Kamo. He put his lips against her neck. Her skin shuddered as though his tongue was a settling mosquito. ‘There will be no further delay. We have fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Sixteen. By that time, most people will be outside to watch the midnight fireworks.’

  ‘How will we escape?’

  ‘Through the private apartment of the Empress Maria Fyodorovna. There is an iron staircase that will take us to the park at the rear of the palace.’

  ‘I don’t like waiting,’ he said. She could smell the acid on his breath. It made her think of the green flames. Kamo opened his doublet. Inside, an apple grenade hung from his belt.

  She curtseyed a little, as though his lips had weakened her.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  Kamo drew his lips back. It was the smile that had always been prelude to murder. ‘Are you frightened for your delightful dinner companions, Lynx?’

  ‘They are people,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t abdicate your responsibility to forces behind your control. Don’t see them as already dead.’

  As she kissed his ear, she noticed that Kamo had his weight on his right leg. The bomb, fist-sized, looked heavy. Saskia had clocked Kamo’s reaction to a visual stimulus at 280 milliseconds. Unusually fast. Given the amount of wine he had drunk, his weight, and his age, she estimated his blood alcohol to be one tenth of a percent. Its relaxing effect would improve his simple reaction time but impair his judgement.

  She withdrew her hand from the warmer. She made a fist to help flex her biceps.

  ‘He gave it to me.’

  Saskia tried to swallow, but could not. She felt the room darken.

  ‘Are you saying that he is here?’

  ‘You’re scared.’

  She was. Saskia struck Kamo’s heart with a sharp, penetrating blow that almost tore her biceps. He coughed and fell against the wall. His mask remained jolly but his mouth was downturned. She looked hard at his throat, slowed her vision, and saw the subtle, blooming redness of his pulse. It was weak and irregular. His mouth opened, gulping silently. His lips became cyanotic as his heart misfired. The strike had been placed well.

  Saskia looked around the ivy arch. Nobody had noticed her attack. She reached inside his doublet and removed the apple grenade. There was no obvious method of disposal. She could not think of a place—laundry chute, punch bowl, stove—where any noble or servant would be safe.

  She put it into the fabric bag at the base of her back and buttoned it with an expert pinch of her fingers.

  The eyes behind Kamo’s mask were bloody. Saskia put her lips upon his in a passionate, open kiss; turned his head away from the hall; reached up and pinched his nostrils closed. He had barely the strength to lift his arms. Saskia could hold her breath for six minutes. Kamo would not manage thirty seconds. She stared into his huge, blurred eye, and saw the wadded skin of his cheek shake. She could bring him the gift he had given so many others.

  The room flashed white.

  Saskia withdrew her mouth. A gossamer of spit strung between their mouths for a moment, then was gone. A couple, their arms linked, were standing beneath the arch and looking at Kamo, who had leaned backwards, as though he were trying to brace the wall. The bluish cast to his lips was purpling, returning to red.

  Saskia stepped from behind the arch and apologised to the couple. The gentleman asked her, curtly, if she was a feature of the background. Saskia smiled. She slipped from the room with a last nod to the photographer, who was still holding his L-shaped flash-lamp aloft. She walked with studied confidence. In all the mirrors, all the polished surfaces, and the half-bright crowds in the windows, she looked for the man towards whom the compass of Kamo’s mind pointed, like a false north: the poet Soselo.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The size of the Grand Ballroom was emphasised by gilded mirrors between its double tier of windows. Saskia judged physical spaces in terms of their capacity for exploitation: attack, distraction, concealment. As she stepped onto the parquet floor, she understood that it would take more than eight seconds to sprint its length, though on this evening it was crammed with guests. Only six of the dozen chandeliers had been burned. The great windows to the west looked across the torchlit palace square, while those to the east had a view of th
e gardens. It felt as airy as a quadrangle despite the thunderous scenes painted on the ceiling. Soon, midnight would pass through this room. An orchestra played a rich, soaring piece. Saskia had entered the ballroom at the finale to a quadrille. The guests froze, then bowed as the music completed. There was a sizeable audience about the periphery and their applause echoed. A man wearing a blue fountain of peacock feathers—the nominated dance master—approached the conductor and made a circular motion with his hand: keep going.

  In the moment before the music returned, Saskia looked round. She saw Kamo stagger into the room. His appearance drew smiles and shakes of the head. He seemed the worse for drink. Saskia look ahead, towards the main staircase, and saw the same greenish glow that had captured her attention upon entering the Summer Palace. Then a reveller passed through her sightline and the green shine, or whatever produced it, had disappeared.

  A Strauss waltz commenced. At once, there was general movement towards the dance floor, like a flower closing. Tension had been released. Saskia felt bodies carry her forward. Ladies laughed and men laughed along with them. Couples formed and spun. The whirlpool carried Saskia anticlockwise. As ever, her height made her conspicuous, and her blackcurrant pelisse billowed as she turned, tracking Kamo.

  ‘May I?’ asked a man.

  ‘With pleasure.’

  She danced, but kept her left wrist held within her warmer. This seemed to please her dance partner, and the two waltzed without touching. The man kept his hands behind his back. Saskia, in deference to his politeness, made sure that their synchrony was absolute. Nearby dancers saw them and, laughing, adopted their remote style. But the dancers could not match Saskia for her ability to anticipate.

  ‘The piece is ending,’ she said.

  ‘Where may I take you?’

  ‘The far end of the floor, towards the staircase.’

  They spun and spun. In the turns, Saskia saw Kamo as he struggled to follow her through a thickening of the audience near the orchestra. Saskia’s dance partner did not follow her glance. He only looked at Saskia and, on occasion, those around him.

  ‘How can I not have seen you before, in society? You are the most beautiful woman here.’

  ‘I’m wearing a mask.’

  ‘The mask hides nothing, says the proverb. But here we are.’

  The man bowed. He wanted to kiss her glove, as was the custom, but Saskia did not offer it. So his smile was crooked as he reversed into the slow storm of dancers. Saskia nodded to him, then moved on. She was at the far wall of the Great Ballroom. Through the open door, she could see seven rooms of the enfilade. But she did not step through.

  She approached a short, nervous-looking man who had been observing her. His pocket watch, which dangled carelessly outside its pocket, had the greenish glow of radium. She confiscated his wine glass.

  ~

  ‘You’re not old enough to drink this,’ she said.

  Pavel Eduardovitch Nakhimov smiled beneath his Nosey Parker mask and bowed. In the mirror behind him, Saskia saw Kamo shouldering a path through the crowd. She thought of threatening him with the grenade, but knew the bluff would not work.

  ‘I’m seventeen today.’

  ‘Many happy returns,’ she said sourly. She drank the wine.

  She passed the glass to a footman, who appeared and disappeared for the purpose. ‘We have about fifteen seconds before my friend reaches us. When he does, he will probably try to kill you. Happy?’

  ‘Of course,’ Pasha replied. His words were slow. ‘It’s my birthday and you’re here.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘When we parted, I made sure to touch the band and listen for the countdown. Zero is tonight, at midnight. My father told me of your interest in the Amber Room.’

  ‘And the pocket watch?’

  ‘You can see it, can’t you? Like you saw me in the dark?’

  ‘Pavel Eduardovitch, you would be conspicuous enough without it. Gump teaches us that clever is as clever does.’

  Saskia looked into the mirror. Kamo’s journey across the dance floor was drawing consternation, particularly from the gentlemen. ‘Pasha, I have been beaten only once at chess, because I cheat. At any given moment in the game, I calculate many possible board states, starting with the most probable. The man who beat me employed an irrational, unpredictable move.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You, my dear boy, are the unpredictable move. You have complicated my evening beyond my powers to predict its next iteration.’ She touched his cheek. ‘You cannot have me. You may not even have your life.’

  Pasha straightened his back. ‘I will protect you.’

  ‘It’s too late. Pavel Eduardovitch, my name is Saskia Maria Brandt. Say it, please, so that I know you heard it.’

  ‘Saskia Maria Brandt.’

  Kamo pushed between them. His right hand was still on his heart and his eyes were narrow with pain. But he showed them his left hand, which held a palm pistol. Its barrel protruded between his second and third fingers. He pointed it at Pasha.

  Quietly, he said to Saskia, ‘Give me the apple.’

  ‘Take it yourself.’

  ‘No. Place it within my jacket. Inside, right pocket. Don’t try anything.’

  Pasha shook his head. She moved until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Kamo, their backs to the crowd, and placed the grenade inside his jacket.

  Kamo said, ‘Do you recognise me, boy?’

  ‘You’re the man with the spoilt eye. But I would smell you anyway. If you hurt Saskia, I’ll kill you.’

  Kamo laughed. ‘Not everything is as easy as jumping from a window.’

  ‘Then perhaps I’ll throw you through one.’

  ‘A poor response. Look at this, Little Hero.’

  Kamo put his gun to Saskia’s ribs. With his free arm, he pulled her close. Saskia felt the muscles in her abdomen quiver. It was not beyond Kamo to shoot. The report would be no louder than glass breaking on the carpet. Gutshot with a small-calibre bullet, Saskia would be more amenable.

  ‘As long as you both cooperate,’ said Kamo, ‘you will come to no harm. Let us proceed directly.’

  The three of them moved through the open doorway into a silvered dining room hung with streamers. Guests either stood or were seated at one of the three tables. Every few steps, Pasha looked back at them. In his eyes, Saskia saw Pasha’s wonder that she did not despatch Kamo with a high kick, knocking the sense from his head just she had knocked the cigarette from the his own mouth on the second day of their acquaintance. Indeed, she had been capable moments ago. She thought once more of the long kiss behind the photographer’s arch. She remembered the desperate suction and his failing, darkening blood. The magnesium flash. Now, with Pasha here, and the eyes of the crowd, she had lost it. Beneath the curve of Kamo’s collar were pipes bearing blood and air. She could throttle them using the wires along her forearm, which would mean death by an Allegory of the Future.

  And yet, when she had opened her blood-filled eyes on the trees above Turtle Lake, and seen Kamo, her rescuer, confronting the Cossacks of the Kuban Host, she had known that some part of him was worth rescue. They had looked at each other over the bodies of the Cossacks. He had said, ‘I am at your service.’

  ‘No,’ she had replied. ‘I am at yours.’

  They passed through the landing of the main staircase, another dining room, a room decorated with panels of crimson under glass, a portrait gallery, and arrived at the Amber Room. It had three floor-to-ceiling windows with gilt mirrors between them to double the light. Every other surface, excepting the floor and the painted ceiling, was a monument to amber. The centre of the room was occupied by a model of the Berlin monument to Frederick the Great, while its perimeter was filled with white chairs and furniture. Standing around the room—paying particular attention to the model in the centre and the showcases of amber collectibles near the windows—Saskia counted five men and three women. Her eyes stopped, however, on her own reflection, which w
as reflected in the tall mirror to the right of the far door.

  ‘Well?’ said Kamo.

  She ignored him. Her reflection was impossible. Instead of the Allegory of Night, she saw a woman wearing a sennit hat, a white blouse with puffed shoulders, and green-smoked eyeglasses. Though the virtual distance was considerable, she was certain that the face—and its expression of surprise—was her own. Before she could approach the apparition, Kamo pushed her deeper into the room.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, gesturing to a clock in the corner. It was a bronze clock with porcelain flowers and leaves. ‘It is two minutes shy of midnight. Now, where is the money?’

  Pasha said, ‘I’ve been here before.’

  ‘I’ve little doubt of it,’ Kamo replied. ‘Hold your tongue. Now, Lynx, where is it?’ He looked at the model of Frederick, whose base, which equalled the height of a man, was the best candidate for the hiding place of the stolen roubles.

  Saskia had waited long months to enter this room. She felt a mixture of peace, resignation and stage fright. The threat of Kamo’s gun was a note in the margin of her mind. It did not concern her directly. She found herself more interested in the blank, slackened expression on Pasha’s face. The boy had demonstrated a special connection with the band on her arm. Now, it appeared, he had made a similar connection with this room.

  ‘Pasha,’ she said, ‘did your illness come to you shortly after your first visit to this room?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pasha. For a moment, his eyes were clear. He stared at her. ‘I had my first seizure a month after my tenth birthday. My father had taken me here as a birthday present.’

  ‘Silence,’ said Kamo. He ground his teeth and put his arm across his chest. His heart had not yet recovered. ‘If you know of the mechanism that reveals the money,’ he whispered, ‘activate it. Now.’

  The bronze clock chimed midnight. Saskia knew that it was running fast, and so did two of the guests. They removed their pocket watches and murmured at their dials. Saskia took this as a sign that her band was affecting the time-keeping mechanism inside the clock. She did not understand why the watches of the guests had remained unaffected, but suspected it had something to do with the difference in mass. She considered Kamo. He was tense. Any touch might release his anger. Then he would be impossible to predict.