The Amber Room

by T. Davis Bunn

“Only that it was good news,” Katya replied, “and that his feelings about Karlovich were confirmed.”

  “He prefers to tell you himself,” Jeffrey said. “He asks that you please have patience until after this other matter has been settled.”

  “But he did say that the time for worry was over,” Katya added, “at least so far as the chalice is concerned.”

  “So there was a reliquary,” Alexander said, leaning back in visible relief.

  “It looks to me as if Karlovich knew there was one all along,” Jeffrey said.

  “I would wager that at any odds,” Alexander agreed. “He was probably one of very few people alive in all Poland who did. A keeper of secrets passed down from curate to curate over three centuries.”

  “We played right into his hands, didn’t we?” Katya said.

  “Indeed we did,” Alexander replied. “Our request to have a selection of Polish religious art for the gala, coming as it did through the proper channels, was the perfect way for the reliquary to depart from Poland.”

  “You mean Karlovich already had some deal worked out with the Vatican to return the reliquary?” Jeffrey asked.

  “That would certainly appear to be a possibility,” Alexander replied. “Though only Rokovski shall be able to say for sure.”

  “And they made the switch in London?” Jeffrey continued.

  Alexander shook his head. “I very much doubt it. I would imagine that yet another emissary from Rome appeared some time ago, one who did not share the current Pope’s Polish heritage, and who wanted the relic returned to its rightful place.”

  “Maybe even at the request of Karlovich,” Katya suggested.

  “That would be my guess,” Alexander agreed. “A man in his position would no doubt have numerous contacts within the Vatican museum structure.”

  “Not priests,” Katya said.

  “Most certainly not. A curate such as Karlovich would consider himself a man apart and would seek people of like station and mind. No, the emissary on this occasion would probably have been the equivalent of a Vatican civil servant, puffed up with his own importance, a petty power seeker intent on furthering his own career by announcing the completion of such a coup.” Alexander sipped his tea. “It is probably a very good thing for my soul that I shall never have an occasion to meet this person face-to-face.”

  “So the curate and the emissary met and discussed the millennium event,” Jeffrey said. “And then, just as they’re trying to figure out a way to get the reliquary back to Rome, up we pop. What do you think was Karlovich’s motive?”

  “Money,” Katya decided.

  “Most likely,” Alexander agreed. “You see, Jeffrey, a curate is a man without power, yet charged with weighty responsibilities. He manages the church cleaning staff. He pays all bills. He handles all supplies. He arranges for all day-to-day operations such as cooking and feeding and housing the priests. He must effect all necessary repairs to the church. And a church of this size and age, neglected as it has been for over five decades, must be in desperate need of major repairs. So here we have a man facing financial pressures, with no one in this new capitalist regime to whom he could turn.” Alexander shrugged. “And who knows? Perhaps he felt his first loyalty was to Rome, and decided that here was a means of killing two birds with one stone. So he called a colleague within the caverns burrowed beneath the Vatican, met with him and discussed the reliquary, and then waited for his chance.”

  “There are probably records kept of all visiting emissaries,” Katya presumed.

  Alexander gave her an approving nod. “Which Rokovski’s researches no doubt uncovered. I would imagine that he has had an interesting time in Rome.”

  “Not half as interesting as what’s happened since he got back,” Jeffrey replied. “Oh yes. He asked me to tell you that he will not even attempt to thank you for the loan.”

  “Ah, yes. The other matter.” Alexander sighed luxuriously. “Such a moment comes seldom to mortal lives, my dear friends. Savor this experience, I urge you. Drink your fill. Allow it to be firmly anchored in your memories, so that you may return to it in darker hours. Here is the anticipation of triumph, the risking of it all upon a hope, a struggle, a decision to seek and if possible to achieve. And it is done for that most important of reasons, the type of purpose which gives meaning to the grayest of lives.”

  “A cause,” Jeffrey said.

  Alexander’s strong gaze rested upon him in solemn approval. “A cause shared with friends, a quest taken on for a higher purpose. That, my young friends, is an essence strong enough to make the blood sing in your veins.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Jeffrey always thought of it as the dawn raid.

  Rokovski arrived to pick them up three hours before sunrise, as tired and frantic as a man could be after two days without sleep. He greeted them with, “You cannot imagine the problems I have had.”

  Alexander stood on the hotel’s top step and surveyed the mass of men and equipment stretched out in front of him. “I am sure I don’t want to know.”

  There were a trio of cars for Rokovski, Jeffrey, Katya, Alexander, two beribboned officers, a stranger in a quiet gray suit, and Rokovski’s three assistants. Beyond them were two police trucks filled with silent, sleepy uniformed figures. Behind these stretched an additional half dozen open-bed trucks bearing shovels, portable lights, pitchforks, drilling equipment, ladders, rubber knee boots, parkas, ropes, and bales of canvas wrapping.

  “I do not wish to leave whatever we discover there for one minute longer than necessary,” Rokovski explained. “I therefore decided to bring out all the reinforcements I could think of.”

  “My friend,” Alexander declared, “you have worked a miracle.”

  “I have fought many battles,” Rokovski countered.

  “And no doubt lit a number of fires under moribund backsides,” Alexander agreed.

  Rokovski managed a tired smile. “Bonfires. With blowtorches. A number of my illustrious colleagues will work standing up for weeks to come.”

  “And you have kept this quiet?”

  “I found an ally at the highest level,” Rokovski explained, leading them down to the waiting convoy. “One who has not yet decided whether to keep the entire Amber Room as a part of our own national heritage, or trade a portion of it in return for vast sums.”

  “Perhaps even to rid our nation’s soil of the pestilence of Soviet troops,” Alexander murmured.

  Rokovski opened the car door for Alexander. “I see that great minds think alike.”

  He walked around to the other side, slammed his door shut, motioned for the driver to be away, and continued. “I have resigned myself to perhaps being permitted to keep only a few of the panels. This is to be expected. In return for allowing the politicians to place portions of this room upon the chessboard of international politics, however, I shall gain immense conditions.”

  “If the amber is there,” Jeffrey muttered.

  “I no longer have the freedom,” Rokovski replied gravely, “even to permit such a doubt to surface.”

  * * *

  Czestochowa was wrapped in sleepy silence as they ground their way down dimly lit streets. They followed the directions that Rokovski had translated and typed and kept fingering and reading and perusing. They stopped before the series of shops fronting the broad Jasna Gora lawn, where two additional police cars awaited them. Rokovski and one of the uniformed officers traveling in the second car walked over. The waiting officers snapped to attention. Papers were exchanged and examined, salutes traded. Rokovski turned and motioned for them to alight. The officers went to organize their men.

  “We must act as swiftly as possible,” Rokovski stressed quietly. “There are too many conflicting lines of interest, both with the treasure and with the place they chose for depositing it.”

  “It would be far better to inform all concerned of an act already completed,” Alexander agreed.

  “Exactly.” Rokovski cast a nervous eye back to where the
unloading of equipment brought the occasional clatter. He waved back into the dark as an officer softly called out, “Please go back to where my colleague waits. All of you will be equipped with rubber boots and flashlights.”

  When they returned he inspected them briefly, spoke into the darkness where dozens of lights flickered and bounced and wavered up the hillside. An answering call came quietly back. “Very well,” Rokovski said. “Let us begin.”

  They walked up the lawn alongside the cobblestone path. But where the battlements marked the road’s passage through the first high portico, Rokovski motioned with his flashlight for them to descend to the base of the empty moat. “Careful here. You will need to use the ropes and proceed cautiously. The ground is very slippery.”

  One by one they grasped ropes held by soldiers and reversed themselves down the icy grass-lined slope. Jeffrey helped Alexander as he landed clumsily, then turned and assisted Katya, smiling at the excitement in her eyes. Rokovski was already reaching up and inspecting the barred windowlike openings, each about four feet square, that once had delivered the medieval city’s sewage and rain runoff into the moat. Suddenly he gave a muffled cry, dropped his flashlight, reached up with both hands, and wrenched at one iron-bar frame. Swiftly other hands arrived to assist; together they lifted the heavy bars free and settled them on the ground.

  No more light was needed to show the fervor that gripped Rokovski as he called softly up into the darkness, then waited for a ladder to be slid down the embankment. It was propped into position, then Rokovski signaled to Alexander. “My friend, if you wish, the honor is yours.”

  “It is enough simply to be here,” Alexander replied. “Go, my friend. Go.”

  Rokovski counted out several people who were to follow him, then positively leaped up the rungs and disappeared into the hole. The leading officer half bowed toward Alexander and motioned him forward. After him came Katya, then Jeffrey. The excitement was electric as he climbed the rungs and entered the dark, dank space. His feet hit ankle-deep water as he slid into the low tunnel. Rokovski was already proceeding down the depths, his flashlight illuminating tiny cantering circles of slimy ancient wall. One by one they followed him in a stooped position, craning to keep his bobbing light in view.

  The floor gave an unexpected drop, and filthy water began pouring in over the top of Jeffrey’s boots. He heard the squeaks of tiny animals—rats or bats or both—in nearby crevices, but had time neither for worry nor discomfort. Nor did his companions. They hustled forward as swiftly as caution and the mucky liquid would permit.

  Without warning the tunnel joined with another and rose high enough to permit them to stand upon dry land. The ceiling became lofty, arched in stone and age-old brick. They paused long enough to empty their boots, then pushed on.

  Another turning, yet another muffled shout from Rokovski. They rushed forward, saw him standing before an opening recently hacked from what before had been a crudely finished corner of the turning. Heaped in a half-hidden alcove were an uncountable number of human remains, now little more than bones and rags. Rokovski stood and shone his light upon them for a long moment, then raised his eyes to the waiting group and spoke solemnly in Polish. Katya translated his words as “I cannot avenge their death. But I can seek to give it meaning. On my honor, their tale will be told, and panels of what they died to keep hidden will remain in Poland, as testimony to those who come after.”

  “On my honor,” Alexander agreed solemnly.

  Rokovski bent and stepped through the opening, then emitted a long sigh. The group crowded in behind him. Jeffrey clambered through the opening and straightened to find himself facing row after row of coffin-like chests. They were stacked five and six high, lining the aged bulwark. It was possible to see in the distance where the false wall that the slain workers had been forced to build joined with the ancient original.

  One chest lay open and spilled at their feet, its corroded and dirt-encrusted surface battered with shiny streaks from a recent fury of hammer blows. Fist-sized blocks of amber, still flecked with bits of yellowed paper and rotten matting, lay scattered in the grime of centuries.

  Rokovski raised his arms up to gather in the multitude of chests and spoke in a fierce whisper that Katya translated.

  “Behold, my friends. Behold, the Amber Room!”

  CHAPTER 40

  They waited in the darkness just beyond the light surrounding the Cracow airport. Every breath he and Katya took sent plumes of white into the star-studded night. Jeffrey shivered, partly from the cold, more from what he knew was to come.

  One moment they were alone, the next the man with the pockmarked face was standing before them. His eyes continually scanned the night as he thrust a gloved hand outward and spoke in a voice as dead as his eyes.

  “He wants his papers,” Katya said quietly.

  Silently Jeffrey handed over the man’s passport. He caught a flicker of surprise, as though the man had not expected it to be so easy, to come without a struggle. He riffled the pages as though unsure of his next step, then turned and started for the airport.

  Jeffrey knew he was going to do it, had known since Gregor had first spoken the words. Even before perhaps, though this he could not explain. What Gregor had told him to do was mirrored somewhere deep within, and the willingness to recognize this fact had shattered him. Left him unable to refuse. To do anything but what this new heart budding within his chest was quietly demanding.

  Which was to speak. “Katya, tell him I have something else to say.”

  Reluctantly the man turned back toward them. Katya looked at Jeffrey in confusion, but for a brief moment he could not speak. The instant was so short as to outwardly appear as only a hesitation. But for him, in that instant, Jeffrey felt the realization rush up and up and up from a heart suddenly filled with a blinding white power that demanded release. With the words, “Tell him that there is an answer to his every need, to his every doubt and fear and worry.” He took a breath, finished, “And that answer is Jesus Christ.”

  Katya hesitated before beginning the translation. When he refused to drop his eyes to hers, a small hand shivered its way into his grasp. But there was no room just then for more than a comforting squeeze. The moment was locked in stillness. The seed was being planted. The call was being made.

  When she had finally spoken, he continued, “You need to confess that your ways have been the wrong ones, and that neither answers nor lasting peace have been found. You need to turn to the giver of peace and ask Him into your life.”

  Katya spoke, stopped. The man did not move, his gaze showing nothing but the same perpetual hostility.

  In the silence of that eternal moment, Jeffrey felt his entire being struck by invisible lightning. He heard the voice of his heart well up with the power of unspoken wisdom. The power cracked open the lies of his existence like the shell of a bird now ready to emerge, and grow, and fly.

  Jeffrey stood and saw the man’s self-centered darkness, the dull, lightless world of suspicious eyes, the utter ugliness of all he was and thought and did. And in those eyes and in the world behind them, Jeffrey saw himself. With this moment of recognition came the gift of eternal truth, the realization that he, too, was loved. Not for what he had done, nor for the struggles he had made, nor for the searchings. Nor was he to be punished for all the missed opportunities and wrong turnings and false hopes and empty days. Or sins. All the sins of his life that were reflected in the man’s empty eyes.

  He was simply loved for the promise of who he was and who he could be. An eternal child of God. A man made clean and whole.

  In the angry bitterness of a wounded, hateful man, in this pair of empty eyes was the answer Jeffrey had been seeking all his life. He found assurance that the Lord’s offer was made to everyone. None were too far from the fold. None were unworthy. Not even himself.

  And with this realization came the ability to love. To give, to accept, to be lost in a moment that reached out in all directions with a force that left hi
m unable to remember what about this man had angered him before.

  “As far as the East is from the West,” Jeffrey said, and the calmness was not his own, nor the quietness that left him steady despite a furiously beating heart. A truth pressed upward from the deepest fiber of his being, yearning for the release of giving, the gift of passing on what was not his, yet his forever, to another in need. “That is how far you can be from all the troubles and sins in your life if only you will give yourself to Jesus Christ.”

  The words were more than sounds of the mouth and thoughts of the mind. They were the only way he could give purpose to the love welling up in his chest. Not love for this man. Love. Without direction and without claim and without a need to be confined or measured or given against expected return. Love.

  Jeffrey listened to Katya translate his words with a voice made small and shivery by more than the cold. He gazed into eyes that squinted back in undisguised hostility. And he felt the love pour out and say with a clarity that went beyond all words, all doubt, all worry, all fear, all unworthy feelings—he stood and looked and knew that here was just another brother his Lord yearned to call home.

  And he was too full of newfound truth to feel the slightest scarring as the pockmarked man sneered and snorted and turned away.

  Instead, Jeffrey reached out an open hand and called to the retreating back, “I will pray for you!”

  CHAPTER 41

  Kurt arrived in Zurich a very angry man.

  The corridor leading from the satellite terminal to the main hub of the airport was almost a quarter of a mile long. It ran beneath several runways, a gently curving tunnel of spotless white stretching ahead as far as he could see. He did not need to walk. A smoothly running automatic walkway sprang lightly beneath his feet. Classical music played soothing strains along the entire distance. Instead of windows, enormous backlit displays advertised all the things that before had remained beyond his wildest dreams, and which now were within his grasp. All of them. From the gold watch to the lakefront resort to the mountain ski holiday to the luxurious clothes to the rented sports car to the private helicopter service. All of it could now be his.