The Amber Room

by T. Davis Bunn

  “The curate at the Marian Church was decidedly one of the strangest characters I have dealt with in years,” Alexander told him as they walked.

  “How so?”

  “He had quite the most remarkable eyes I have ever seen. Almost fanatical in their brilliance.”

  “You didn’t call him weird just because of the way he looked at you.”

  “I did not say weird at all, and no, it was not just his eyes. There was an aura of strangeness about the man. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. As though he dwelled in worlds that no other mortal could fathom.”

  Jeffrey smiled. “I hear another story in the making.”

  “Indeed. My entire encounter with the gentleman was quite remarkable.”

  ****

  The Marian Church’s rectory was a centuries-old stone cottage, connected to the cathedral and to Cracow’s main plaza by a broad cobblestone way. Alexander used his umbrella handle to rap sharply on the stout oaken door, which was swiftly opened by the curate himself.

  Curate Karlovich was a wild, Rasputin-like figure. A man of astonishing intensity, he was tall and slim, with thick black hair disheveled as the beard that cascaded in unruly curls down his front. He was dressed completely in black—black sweater, black trousers, black thick-soled shoes. On his left hand he wore an enormous gold ring, which he tapped on whatever surface was nearest in accent to his words. There was a disturbing aura about the man, evident from the first moment of their contact.

  “Mr. Kantor! Greetings, greetings!” He bustled forward with outstretched hand. “Dr. Rokovski told me I should expect you this morning. Indeed, I cannot tell you how very opportune your visit is.”

  “Thank you. I imagine Dr. Rokovski explained—”

  “Yes, of course! I am sure a man of your discernment will very much appreciate what I am about to show you. Please follow me.” The curate turned and hurried through an arched wooden door, down an ancient stone-lined hallway, and into the Marian Church. He led Alexander to the center of the nave, genuflected slightly, and waved Alexander toward a massive pillar in the left corner.

  An elaborately carved staircase encircled the front half of the pillar, leading up to one of the church’s three medieval podiums. Karlovich unlocked a small door that had been hollowed from the back of the same pillar, the wood bowed so as to fit the pillar’s gradual curve. He switched on a dim light and pointed Alexander down a set of very steep, very narrow stairs. Alexander lowered his head and made his way gingerly downward. Above and behind him, Karlovich slammed the door with a resounding boom, locked it, and hastened down to the cellar landing.

  “Please come this way,” Karlovich announced. He moved swiftly along a cavelike passage carved from the solid stone upon which the church stood.

  “How old is this tunnel?” Alexander asked, struggling with the too-small confines, the coffin-still air, the meager lighting, and the strangeness of it all.

  “A thousand years, perhaps two. Perhaps more. Its age is a mystery as complete as the reason behind its first being carved.” The ancient stone bounced and jumbled words that were spoken in electric haste. “I suppose it goes without saying that this place is closed to the public. In fact, very few of our church officials have access here. We cannot be too careful with these treasures.”

  “I quite agree,” Alexander replied, walking with one shoulder twisted slightly back in order not to rub against the passageways’ narrow confines.

  “I have worked on my own here for nearly twenty years,” Karlovich said. “Sometimes I think I am alone in my appreciation of these things—their beauty and their value.”

  “Dr. Rokovski has told me your collection is most impressive.” He was immensely relieved when the tunnel widened and ended against a gate of iron bars.

  “Yes, Rokovski would understand. But most people, they think the job of a church curate is to keep the candlesticks counted and the pews dust free.” His keys jangled as he fitted one into the gate’s lock and twisted. “Here we are.”

  Alexander peered beyond the elaborate wrought-iron gate and made out a crude but spacious semicircular gallery. “This place has quite an eerie feeling to it.”

  “Indeed. Some centuries ago, this chamber served as a crypt.” The gate shuddered its protest as Karlovich shouldered it aside. “There may still be a few bones around here, for all I know.”

  Karlovich pointed toward a sarcophagus no more than five feet long, its time-worn stone top carved with the image of a medieval knight. “Come have a seat on my little bench.”

  Reluctantly Alexander did as he was instructed, saying a silent apology to whoever’s remains rested within.

  The curate approached a series of crude wooden panels that covered the three opposing walls. They were made of ancient oak planking, banded together with long iron bars whose ends made up hinges on one side and locks on the other. It required a pair of skeleton keys, each almost a foot long, to unlock the central double panel, and all of Karlovich’s strength to move the two massive doors aside.

  Alexander squinted through the dust raised by Karlovich’s effort and saw an expanse of rusting wire-mesh screens. Karlovich reached into the upper recesses and flicked an unseen switch. At once the cages’ interiors were illuminated.

  Alexander leapt forward at the sight.

  Karlovich was clearly pleased with the reaction. “I did not think you would be disappointed with my little display.”

  “Disappointed?” Alexander said, his voice catching. “This is such treasure as dreams are made of.”

  The hollow enclosure held hundreds of gold and silver items. Each was worthy to be a centerpiece for a major museum’s religious art collection, yet here they were crammed together like cheap souvenirs in an Arabic bazaar. Alexander saw crosses and carvings and statues and reliquaries and icons and chalices. Most were heavy with jewels—pearls and coral and amber, emeralds the size of grapes, giant rubies carved in the crudely uneven facets of very ancient times. Many were adorned with intricate patterns of semiprecious stones.

  “You are looking for one special item, yes?” Karlovich unlocked one of the smaller wire-screen doors. “Something very special for your fund-raising efforts in London.”

  “That is correct,” Alexander replied. His breath came in short bursts, as though a giant hand had clamped itself around his chest.

  “Something that would capture the imagination, symbolize the sacred, and impress upon these potential benefactors the importance of collecting and preserving such works. A chalice, perhaps.” Karlovich reached into the recesses. “We are not just talking about art. We are speaking about our religion and our tradition.”

  “I find these chalices incredibly striking,” Alexander agreed, striving to keep his voice level, to keep the pleading from his tone. “Perhaps not as fragile as the other pieces.”

  “Then a chalice it shall be.” Karlovich pulled out a heavily carved chalice of solid gold, almost eighteen inches high. “Might I present you with a personal favorite. This dates from the end of the fifteenth century, when Cracow was the royal capital of the great Polish-Lithuanian empire and this church was the seat of worship for the patriarchs and kings of the age.”

  “A splendid choice,” Alexander said, fighting the urge to reach forward, hold the chalice in his own hands, examine it more closely.

  “It is, of course, made of hammered gold. The filigree at the base here is exquisite, wouldn’t you agree? We believe it was made here in the vicinity of Cracow. At one time there were rumors that it originated in an Italian city-state, but nothing substantiated so far as I know. Fifteenth century, that much is certain. The shape and size is very typical for that era.”

  Rising from the octagonal base was a slender pillar whose lines gracefully joined with a wreathlike central carving. Above this, an inverted crown was fashioned into the base of the cup itself. The rim held a smooth, highly polished finish.

  Karlovich held the chalice up before his dark, gleaming eyes and stared at it a
s though hypnotized. “A chalice,” he murmured. “Yes. The Holy Grail. The circle of the sun, of wholeness, of completion. The mystical symbol of man’s search for continuity and perfection. Yes, it is all here in a chalice. Here the wine is placed for the mystery of Communion, that we might drink and share in the eternal promise and thus come full circle.”

  Reverently he handed the chalice to Alexander and said, “Guard it well.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “I still don’t see why you put so much stock in what that little mole says,” Erika said.

  “Not mole,” Kurt replied. “Ferret. He’s the most ferocious man I’ve ever met.”

  Erika laughed at that. “You want to sell me for an idiot.”

  “It’s the truth, I tell you. He gets his teeth into something and he never lets go. Never. He’d take on an elephant, know it’ll probably kill him in the end, and still never let up.”

  “Sounds suicidal.”

  “You don’t understand,” Kurt said with unaccustomed patience. “There’s method to his madness. Ferret built himself a reputation, see. Nobody took him on. Nobody. Maybe they didn’t like him or want to work with him, but even then they left him alone. The Ferret stayed safe and dry no matter which way the winds blew.”

  “Until now.”

  “Yes, well, these aren’t winds, are they. More like an eruption.”

  They were driving the Schwerin-to-Berlin autobahn in a nondescript rental truck. Their progress was slowed to a crawl by the snowy slush and by the two emblems of East joining West—perpetual roadwork and traffic.

  “Ferret and I,” Kurt went on, “we’ve been together fourteen years. I’ve never seen a mind like his, not even in the snakes at the top. He wants to stay out of the light, though. He’s fanatic about that. That’s why I know I can trust him. He pushes me to the front, so I keep him hidden.”

  “What about me?”

  “We thought you’d fit in, or we wouldn’t be driving out here together.”

  “Speaking of which, I don’t see why you need me tonight.”

  “Let’s just say helping out with matters like this is part of the deal.”

  “An obligation.”

  Kurt shook his head. “Think of it as a favor.”

  “A favor is something I can turn down.”

  “Not if you’re smart.”

  He was doing it again, hinting at something without ever saying anything outright. She kept her voice casual. “So, what does Ferret have his teeth into now?”

  Kurt took his time replying. “He’s been going through those old records ever since I met him. I thought he was crazy, just a weird little guy spending all night reading garbage files from just after the war. Called it his hobby. Said he was putting together puzzles.”

  “Booty,” she guessed. “He’s after the Nazi booty. I heard it was all myth.”

  “Some of it was. Most of the real goods went with the ones who survived and fled to South America. The Odessa, that’s no fable. Ferret traced a dozen or so of these puzzles, followed them all the way to Argentina or Paraguay. A couple of times he found something he’d been searching for in auction catalogues, maybe traced the seller back to a Gomez Schumann in Montevideo. Crazy how all those old Nazis gave their children Spanish first names.”

  “The treasure,” Erika reminded him.

  “Soon as one piece was identified,” Kurt went on, “Ferret called the puzzle finished and moved on. He used his title to send off for other such records and start a new search. He spent all his free time searching. His flat was a kitchen, a fold-up table, a mattress, and three rooms of papers.”

  “Why not just blackmail the old Nazis living in South America?”

  “No future in that. They have a reputation for nailing anybody who gets too close. Stuck to their old ways. No, Ferret’s been after something clean. Something with a future.”

  “After all these years.” Erika shook her head. “You really think there’s something left?”

  “Something big.” Kurt smiled his grim, bloodless line. “Big enough to relocate us permanently.”

  Erika examined his face. Sweeping lines of rain-flecked light streaked Kurt’s face from shadow to parchment yellow and back again. “You don’t know what it is, do you?”

  “I know enough.”

  “The Amber Room, that’s all,” she pressed. “I heard him the same as you. I looked it up, know what I found? Amber is petrified tree sap. That’s what you’re looking for? A room made from old resin?”

  Kurt shook his head. “We’re looking for freedom and the money to enjoy it with.”

  “How can you sound so sure about something that’s nothing more than rumor? If it’s real, why haven’t the Russians found it already?”

  “Palm trees,” Kurt said. “I’ve always wanted to live where I could catch my own fish and drink rum all day.”

  Erika leaned back in her seat, stared out at the slush-lined autobahn. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Sleep on the beach,” Kurt continued. “Watch the stars through swaying palms. Hear strange bird calls.”

  “I’ve gotten hooked up with a pair of clowns.”

  “Turn the color of old leather and grow a beard. Be a legend to the tourists,” Kurt said. “Watch sunsets and strolling girls in small bikinis.”

  “Who is in charge of this circus, you or Ferret?”

  “Drinks with bunches of fruit stuck in the top. You remember the fruit we used to get? Oranges from Cuba the size of olives and stuffed with seeds. I was ten years old before I saw my first banana.”

  “Where are we going anyway? Can you tell me that much?”

  Kurt signaled his exit, took the snow-covered ramp slow and easy. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Just look ferocious and keep the boys honest. You’re probably real good at that.”

  * * *

  It was amazing, Kurt thought as he watched the guy stomp and slip over frozen muddy ground toward him. Put a red star on his cap brim and he could be coming straight from the other side.

  “I ain’t no spy,” the guy growled in greeting. He had the slightly seedy look of quartermaster sergeants the world over. His American uniform was crumpled, his boots loose-laced and grimy. An enormous beer gut was held in place by a strained webbing belt. A two-day growth of beard peppered his face. Teeth the color of old ivory chomped on the shreds of an ancient stogie. A bluish web of spidery veins spread out across flabby cheeks from a dedicated drinker’s nose. Knuckles were scarred by the same fights that had chipped segments from his trio of heavy rings.

  But what kept Kurt from worrying about his own health, standing in a frozen empty clearing in a stretch of forest halfway to Berlin, was the avarice gleaming in the quartermaster’s eyes.

  “Ain’t got nothing against unloading the butts.” The cigar was unplugged long enough for the quartermaster to spit a long brown stream onto the iron-hard earth. “But I ain’t no spy.”

  The clearing was turned a whitish silver by headlights from two trucks. Behind the lights, ghostly half figures moved in stealthy haste, slipping and cursing on the icy earth and sending long plumes of frozen breath into the starry sky.

  Kurt stood with all the patience he could muster. The quartermaster’s accent was so thick that he could barely make out the man’s words as English. And he knew from experience that the man wouldn’t understand anything Kurt tried to say in return. Kurt’s English was rudimentary at best, learned from books and not from practice. In his former life, there had been few opportunities to converse with native English speakers. He just stood and waited for the quartermaster to finish his grumbling protests so they could get down to business.

  The collapse of the Berlin Wall was beginning to show effects in areas further and further afield, like ripples spreading out from a stone dropped in a pond. Or a meteorite. Or a bomb. Something big enough to uncover the rotting muck at the bottom of the pond.

  The Soviet empire, with its iron girdle of vassal states, no longer posed a threat to the
free world. The Americans, therefore, were pulling out of Berlin in a very big way. Orders came down the line two or three times a week, whittling away at what once had been the greatest concentration of American military anywhere outside the States. Some garrisons had been stripped to the bone. Others had been shut down entirely.

  The entire spy apparatus, listening stations and all, was being torn down and packed up and shipped a thousand miles to the east, sometimes much farther. Stations were being planned for formerly unheard-of places, borderlands in Poland and Czechoslovakia, even inside Russia, and pointed toward China. Old hands read orders containing their new postings and shook their heads in amazement as their universe was redefined—then got busy with their packing.

  Some items, however, were not to be removed in the mass exodus. It was decided, for instance, that it would be easier to restock a minor item like cigarettes at the new locations than to move the supplies already in Berlin. But this relatively minor decision was more complex than it seemed. American soldiers were per capita the largest group of smokers in the United States. Added to that was the fact that there were somewhere around half a million American soldiers, diplomats, agents, and dependants in and around Berlin, and all of them bought their butts at the PX’s vastly reduced prices.

  Given these facts, a minor logistics decision took on somewhat larger implications.

  Like how to liquidate two warehouses full of cigarettes. Just in Berlin.

  Suddenly the official German channels became swamped with offers of cheap smokes. Supermarket chains found faxes waiting for them each morning, the quoted prices dropping at a panic rate the closer it came to pulling-out day. Yet no matter how low the offers dropped, these legal channels could absorb only so many cigarettes.

  So when supply officers arrived in the mornings to learn that a hundred thousand packs or so had disappeared into the frozen night, the hunt for thieves was perfunctory. After all, the whole shebang was due for closure in less than three months.

  Overnight, therefore, a new product began appearing on the black markets of Poland and the Ukraine—even as far away as Moscow, Budapest, and, if rumor was to be believed, Istanbul. Enterprising traders offered cigarettes that had actually been made in the United States with top-quality American tobacco—and at prices which were equal to or slightly less than the local imitation.