The Amber Knight

Synopsis:

This fast-paced action thriller is a multi-layered story that spans eight centuries, from medieval Germany and Prussia to present day Poland and USA centred on the legend of the Amber Knight — a beloved relic that inspired generations until the Nazis stole it. Created in 1232 during The Teutonic Crusade when the heroic knight, Helmut von Mau, dies in battle at Elblag. When the town is burned and the amber in the treasury melts and is poured into Helmut's sarcophagus, covering his body and creating the Amber Knight. Present day Gdansk. Adam Salen, director of a museum trust receives photographs of the Amber Knight which disappeared in 1945, and a demand for 15 million dollars. His assistant, Magda, believes that, given a corpse, amber and armour the knight could be recreated. Adam and Magda want the knight for the museum, but when a mafia hit man is found dead on Adam’s doorstep and more corpses are discovered in woods near Hitler’s Wolf’s lair, it seems like there may be truth behind the myth that death awaits every unbeliever who looks upon Helmut’s face.

Hitler’s Wolfschanze, Rastenburg, East Prussia, the dark hours before dawn,

24th January 1945

The standartenfuhrer had never experienced a winter like it. An intense bitterness was carried on winds that bleached and shrivelled flesh and permeated bones and, as if the cold wasn’t enough, despair had set in. He detected it in every communication from Berlin; recognised it in the faces of his fellow officers and unkempt uniforms of his command; saw it in the sluggish steps of the men hauling crates out of the bunker into the waiting line of trucks. Wrapping his fur-lined greatcoat closer to his numbed body, he waved his arms and stamped his feet to circulate blood to his insensate and frozen extremities.

‘Can’t they move any faster, Hauptsturmfuhrer?’ he barked.

His aide clicked his heels, cracking the frosting of ice on his boots. ‘Are you soldiers or snails? Move it! At the double.’

‘The boxes are breeding in there,’ a private muttered loud enough for a sergeant to hear. The unterscharfuhrer snapped a reprimand, which was drowned out by a boom from a Russian gun. Night hadn’t slowed the Soviet advance. Even the birds were fleeing westwards. Possessing neither the men nor heart to fight, all the standartenfuhrer hoped for was survival and an uneventful retreat to the Western front where he could surrender his command to the British or Americans. After a few years in a POW camp, he and his men could go home – if they still had homes to go to.

A private stumbled, dropping a long, narrow box. The wooden casing shattered on a concrete step revealing a panel that glowed gold against the silver snow.

‘You stupid oaf, Schutze! Do you know what that is? How valuable…’

The private snapped to attention, shivering as the unterscharfuhrer gave vent to his anger.

‘That was a piece of the amber room Tsar Peter stole from Frederick the Great.’ The standartenfuhrer picked up the panel emblazoned with a darker inlay depicting an eagle which Third Reich historians had unanimously pronounced Prussian.

‘You’re not fit to wipe a pig’s arse, Schutze! Retrieve the pieces.’

As the private scrambled for the broken corner pieces an officer stumbled through the darkness towards them, sliding up the icy path that led from the SS barracks.

‘The mines are in place, Obersturmfuhrer?’ the standartenfuhrer asked, irritated by the breakage that was going to take some explaining if they ever reached Berlin.

‘The sturmbannfuhrer respectfully requests another two hours, sir. The cold…’

‘The cold is freezing all our balls, Obersturmfuhrer.’ The standartenfuhrer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Tell the sturmbannfuhrer he has half an hour, after that he’ll be on his own.’

The obersturmfuhrer snapped to attention before backtracking down the path.

‘The snow chains…’

‘Have been put on the wheels of all the trucks, Standartenfuhrer,’ his aide reassured him.

The standartenfuhrer lost sight of the lieutenant in the darkness that shrouded the trees, but he could still hear his boots crunching over the drifts. The man was passing the ruin of the conference room where von Stauffenberg had planted the bomb he’d hoped would put an end to Hitler and the war. The colonel shuddered from more than cold. How many people, civilian as well as military, would have lived if von Stauffenberg had succeeded? He was grateful Hitler’s scientists hadn’t perfected a machine that could read men’s thoughts otherwise he and most of the surviving officers on the Eastern Front would find themselves facing piano wire nooses suspended from meat hooks.

‘Twenty-five trucks packed, Standartenfuhrer.’

‘I’ll inspect the bunker.’ Pushing past the line of burdened privates negotiating the narrow staircase that led into the bunker, he strode inside and stood on the threshold of what had been Hitler’s living room. Blinking against the blaze of artificial light, he saw a clerk hovering, clipboard in hand over hillocks of packing cases. ‘What’s left?’

‘Only the modern furniture, Persian rugs and what you see, Standartenfuhrer.’

The standartenfuhrer scrutinised the chalk inscriptions on the chests. ‘Take the van Goghs and Rembrandts next and –’ he looked at the largest case. Over two metres long and one and a half wide, it could have coffined a giant. ‘Helmut von Mau?’

‘I left it until last, sir, because of the weight. The stone sarcophagus alone is enough to test the strength of any axle and there’s the amber…’

The colonel reverently touched the box. As a twelve-year-old schoolboy, he and his classmates had been taken on a pilgrimage to Konigsberg castle to pay homage to the amber-encased body of the knight who had crossed the Vistula in the Teutonic crusade of 1231. They had sat around the glass case that held the coffin, listening as their teacher related stories they knew by heart. Helmut von Mau, the lieutenant of Hermann von Balk, conqueror, founder and saviour of Prussia. Helmut, the heroic and fearless soldier who helped free Prussia from the barbarians before making the ultimate sacrifice; a man so handsome that the beautiful pagan princess, Woberg, only had to look upon his face once to change her name to Maria, her religion to Christianity and forsake her people to become his camp follower. A man who wrought vengeance against the pagans even in death, when desperate in defeat, his men had strapped his body to his horse and sent his corpse galloping into the enemy camp. Legend had it that every heathen warrior who had looked upon him had been struck dead. Pity he didn’t have one or two von Mau’s in his command now.

‘This goes next, pack the paintings around it. Don’t leave any case graded A. High Command would be displeased if any of them were lost.’

‘Jawohl, Standartenfuhrer.’

The colonel damned the transport department. If he’d been given a train and half a dozen wagons he could have delivered the more valuable contents of the Wolfschanze to Berlin a week ago. What could possibly be taking precedence over the Reich’s art and history?

It had taken him days to assemble the decrepit convoy that lined the narrow road outside the Fuhrer bunker, thirty vehicles and none of them sound. One ambush by partisans and the entire consignment would be lost. If it happened it would be the fault of Hitler and the sycophants he surrounded himself with, but he and his men would pay the price. When he’d taken a commission in the SS, he hadn’t envisaged Command assigning crack troops and a platoon of hand-picked engineers to nursemaid treasure while allied bombs fell on Berlin, killing civilians – perhaps even his beloved wife Hilde and little Wilhelm…

‘It’s not going to be easy to make progress through the forest in this snow, sir,’ his aide ventured as he stepped outside the bunker.

‘No, Hauptsturmfuhrer.’ His voice rasped; he hoped the captain would put it down to the cold. ‘Alert the escort, we’ll move out in thirty minutes.’

‘Before the last trucks are loaded, sir?’

‘Delay and we risk losing the lot.’ The booming of large-bore guns tore through the air, adding emphasis to his order.

The partisan leader known only as “Jan” even to his closest confederates, for fear of reprisals against his family and village, crouched behind a tree. He hadn’t moved a muscle in four hours and was beginning to doubt he’d be able to do so again. The cold had seeped through his rags, freezing his blood; and still the road stretched white, naked and empty like a scar hacked between the trees. Was there another route out of the Wolfschanze he knew nothing of? A road that led directly from the western perimeter?

When he heard the rumble of engines coughing reluctantly to life, he dismissed it as a product of his exhausted mind, then the click of a rifle reverberated behind him and he realised it was real. Tension filled the air; the same nauseating mixture of fear and fragile bravado that marked the prelude to every skirmish he had fought. Willing his frozen limbs to move, he jerked his gun arm forward.

The trucks lumbered slowly out of the chalky mist towards the inner ring of security gates like grey, mechanical elephants. He raised his hand. It didn’t feel as though it was connected to his body. Guns blazed. Shadows dived out from behind the trees alongside him. The largest force he had been able to muster in five and a half years of bloody guerrilla warfare, but a turning tide carries a lot of flotsam on its crest. Men who’d kept a low profile were now anxious to strike a blow before victory bells sounded and their apathy – or collaboration – was noticed.

‘Hold your fire!’ A tall, fair-haired German colonel brandishing a white rag stepped in front of the leading truck, his hat tipped back on his head, his greatcoat open to show he carried no weapons.

‘What now, Jan?’ His second-in-command’s question echoed above the engines.

‘We talk to the bastard before we shoot him, and his men, like dogs.’

The silhouettes in the forest reminded the colonel of wolves – gaunt, ravening wolves with rapacious eyes. Without turning his head he shouted to his aide,

‘Stand by.’

Mesmerised by the sight of the approaching partisans, the captain remained silent.

‘They’re at our gates because the Russians aren’t far behind. As we’re set to lose our cargo, I’ll try to use it as barter for our lives. If they kill me, retreat to the Fuhrer bunker, order the sturmbannfuhrer to activate the explosives in the outer ring and contact Berlin.’ Both he and his aide knew there would be no reinforcements from Berlin or anywhere else, but he kept up the pretence for the men’s benefit. ‘Alert the sturmbannfuhrer.’

The leading partisan raised his rifle and took aim at the captain as he ran back through the gates.

‘If he doesn’t deliver the order I’ve just given him, we’ll all be blown to kingdom come in five minutes.’ The colonel stepped forward.

‘Hitler would never destroy his Headquarters.’

‘Annihilation is preferable to surrender in the Fuhrer’s eyes.’

‘Then why didn’t he blow this place when he left in November?’

‘Because he and High Command refused to recognise the end and that the Russians were near.’ The colonel lowered his voice, ‘and because they needed a secure place to store the Reich’s treasure.’ He offered a pack of cigarettes to the partisan leader; when the man refused he pushed one into his own mouth. The paper stuck to his frozen lips. He waved at the trucks. ‘They’re packed with gold, silver, amber, paintings – the riches of every building worth looting in every German-occupied Russian and Polish town. Yours, commander – and mine, if we can stop fighting long enough to divide it.’ He surveyed the ragged horde ranged behind the leader and saw that at least a third were women and children. ‘The war will soon be over. We all have lives to pick up, homes to build. The contents of those trucks could go a long way to easing the problems of peace.’