The Amber Knight (29 page)

With hindsight it was so damned obvious. Why hadn’t he thought of it? Someone old. Someone who knew where the knight was. Someone with a grandson who had a taste for money and the experience and connections to steal a shipment of amber to make a copy or even two, so the knight could be sold three times over. Only the grandson couldn’t just leave it at the amber, not when it was only part of a consignment – he had to take the Mafia’s money as well.

Magdalena approached the glass wall that gave a fish-tank view of the cubicle beyond. Maria’s small frail figure was lying on a narrow hospital bed covered by the transparent folds of an oxygen tent.

The doctor took Magdalena’s arm. ‘It’s a matter of minutes rather than hours. I think she would have died some time ago if you or her grandson had been here. She insisted she has to speak to one of you.’

‘Why didn’t you send for me earlier?’ Magdalena demanded.

‘Because no one knew who she was until she came round just over an ago.’ Josef tried to blot out an image of Mariana beside herself with rage when he’d walked out on her less than twenty minutes after walking in.

Magdalena approached the glass. Maria opened her eyes and her hand moved feebly within the confines of the tent. Magdalena pressed her fingers against the glass as close to Maria’s as she could get, while trying not to blanch at the dry whiteness of Maria’s skin and the disfiguring, malignant pustules that covered the old woman’s face and arms.

The doctor pressed a button set below the glass. ‘Intercom,’ he explained. ‘She can hear you.’

‘Magda…’ Maria’s voice was so faint Magdalena crashed her head against the pane in an effort to draw nearer. ‘…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone with Krefta, but I was afraid he’d keep our share. He was always greedy. My August never trusted him. With good reason…’

‘August was your husband?’ It was the first time Maria had mentioned her husband in all the years Magdalena had known her.

‘…He called himself Jan – we were Partisans, freedom fighters for Poland…’ She closed her eyes.

‘What happened to him?’ Magdalena questioned gently, regretting all the times she could have talked to Maria about her life, and hadn’t.

‘Killed – so many were killed.’

‘In the war?’

Maria answered without opening her eyes but she couldn’t hide the pain, not even after all the intervening years. ‘He was shot in the street like a dog because he was a Jew. That’s why I never told anyone who or what I’d been – why I could never see a rabbi – never say Kaddish for August’s soul.’

Magdalena sensed movement behind her and heard Josef whisper to someone to send out for a rabbi, but she wasn’t optimistic enough to think one would arrive before Maria died.

‘Did Krefta take you to the Amber Knight?’ Josef moved close to Magdalena.

Maria opened her eyes, they were bright, feverish. ‘I told Brunon all the money he could ever want was in the Wolfschanze. He didn’t believe me until the Russian came.’

‘You knew where the knight was hidden?’ Josef asked.

‘I knew, but what could I, a woman alone, do? Krefta knew, but he couldn’t leave the Russian territory until after the revolution. Then his wife died and he lost the will to live. But they came. They needed help from people who knew about the treasure and could speak Polish. I sent them to Brunon.’ Maria tried and failed to sit up in the bed. ‘It was for you, Magda. You – your brothers and Brunon. I wanted money for you. Living in the flat with me and your brothers, you and Brunon never had time to be alone together –’ she closed her eyes again; exhausted by the effort it had taken to say so much.

‘Maria.’ Josef moved in front of the microphone. ‘Who are these people who came to you?’

‘Germans. I wanted to kill them, but my August allowed them to live because they told us about the treasure.’

‘Where did you hide the knight?’ Magdalena begged. ‘We have to know, Maria. It’s infected. It’s what killed Krefta, what’s killing you.’

‘Nine of us. Three Russians, three Germans, three Poles – August, Krefta and me. I told Brunon all the money he could spend was hidden in the Wolfschanze,’ she repeated dully.

‘Where, Maria?’ Magdalena pleaded. ‘Where in the Wolfschanze was it hidden?’

‘I was one of the nine – the nine –’

‘Was it in a bunker?’ Josef urged.

‘The German showed us a secret vault. He said we would go back at the end of the war and get it – but we never did. August –’ her eyes clouded and lost focus. ‘– I wanted to die when he was killed but I was carrying his baby – Little August was like his father – always causes before family – he disappeared and I was left with Brunon. I thought about the treasure, but what could I do? One woman on her own –’

‘Maria, did you go to the hidden vault?’ Josef asked. ‘Was Brunon with you? If he was, we have to find him.’

‘The Russian found me. After fifty years he found me –’

‘Who is this Russian? Did he go in the vault with you?’ Josef demanded impatiently.

‘August was too trusting. He would take anyone into his band. He used to say it didn’t matter where people came from, only where they were going. But he was wrong – some carry hatred with them – hatred for Jews –’

‘Maria,’ Josef appealed. ‘Who is this Russian who knew about the treasure?’

‘The German sent him. The German is old – old and tired like me, he can’t travel,’ she rambled.

‘Maria, we have to seal off the vault before anyone else goes into it. Where is it?’ Magdalena begged.

‘Where are Brunon and the Russian? If they went into the vault with you, they need help. If they don’t get it, they will die,’ Josef pressed. ‘You don’t want Brunon to die do you, Maria?’

‘Under the… cemetery…’ the old woman shuddered. A rattling sigh escaped her lips. The doctor stepped forward and shook his head. Magdalena pressed her hands and forehead against the glass. The minutes ticked past slowly and audibly on an electric clock above the door. The quiet clicks resounded like staccato machine-gun fire in the stillness of the room.

Josef watched impotently as the last vestiges of life ebbed from the frail body. Feeling like a trespasser he retreated with the doctor.

‘You know who this Russian is?’ the doctor asked when they reached the corridor.

‘No.’

‘If he and her grandson have been exposed to this disease we need to see them before they start an epidemic. I can’t impress on you how serious this could be. Anthrax –’

‘You don’t need to impress me,’ Josef said wearily. ‘If we find Brunon and this Russian, you’ll be the first to know.’ He looked up at Magdalena who had left the cubicle. ‘We’ll both do all we can.’

Adam was sitting in the conference room keeping pain at bay with shots of vodka that were disagreeing with the painkillers he had been given in the hospital, and watching yet another DVD about the Wolfschanze, when the telephone rang again. Expecting his grandfather’s call, he waited for the answer-phone to cut in. When it did, whoever was at the other end hung up.

Seconds later there was a ring at the door bell. He reached for the gun on the table. The ringing was replaced by an urgent knocking.

‘Mr Salen?’

He tensed when he heard his name. Had Josef sent one of the guards up with a message? Why would he do that when he could contact him directly through the answer-phone?

As he looked into the hall to reassure himself that he had fastened all the bolts on the front door, he heard the guard protest.

‘I told you no one was in there.’

The bell rang again. Louder and longer this time. He held the gun out ahead of him and walked backwards into the single bedroom that overlooked the rear of the building. A crash resounded behind him. He turned as a dark mass steamrollered through the smashed window and landed on him. He had no time to brace himself for the impact, and in his weakened state, no strength to combat it. Thrust headlong, face down on the floor, he moaned as a knee jerked into his back, compressing his broken ribs and sending razor-sharp shards of pain into his lungs. Josef’s gun was wrenched from his hand and hurled across the room. He followed the sound, groaning as the weapon skidded out of reach beneath the bed.

The sound of splintering wood reverberated from the passage and he realised someone had taken a fire axe to the front door. The dead weight of his assailant’s knee continued to press into the small of his back, effectively paralysing him. A hand dug into his hair and yanked up his head. A dry, foul tasting rag was stuffed into his mouth. Ropes bit between his lips and teeth as the gag was knotted firmly into place.

The knee was lifted, but his relief was short-lived. He doubled in agony as his arms were hauled high behind his back. His teeth clenched around the suffocating gag. Whoever was working on him was fast, silent, and efficient. His ankles and legs were trussed together. He was rolled, none too gently, on to an open body bag. He recognised the smell of cheap, raw plastic from the wrapping Josef and Stephan had used to carry him into the hospital.

As if the ropes weren’t enough, a black gloved hand zipped the bag up to his neck. He looked up as he was dragged, a shiny chrysalis, into the corridor. A man holding a bloodied fire axe stepped through the shattered door. Beyond its fractured remains Adam saw the decapitated torso of the guard. The head lay alongside his feet, the neck cleanly severed below the chin.

The man’s Slavic features twisted into a crooked smile as he walked towards Adam and his assailant. It was the man Adam had seen in Helga’s bed, the man who had tried to kill him in the police station, and in that split second Adam realised exactly where he had seen him. He cursed himself for not remembering earlier. Like Maria, it was all so bloody obvious – now.

He brought up his knees and lashed out with his bound legs in a futile gesture of defiance. All he succeeded in doing was rattling the body bag cocooned around him. He wanted to scream that they’d never get away with it – that there were police patrols outside the building, but the gag muted his cries.

The handle of the fire axe swung towards him and cracked against his left temple. Consciousness clouded, Adam was barely aware of being hauled to his feet. He lurched against the shoulder of his assailant, a hurting, helpless bag of flesh and blood. He had neither the strength nor the will to fight back as he was lifted like a sack of potatoes and pressed against the wall.

The tearing sound of a zip closed out even the half-light. There was movement, a change in atmosphere and a sharp drop in temperature that permeated even through the plastic. The ring of footsteps on metal confirmed that he had been bundled out through the broken window and carried onto the landing of the fire escape.

There was a click of metal on metal as he was strapped into a harness that constricted his waist and shoulders, followed by a sickening, lurching sensation as he hurtled downwards.

Hands closed around him, the harness was removed and he was unceremoniously stuffed into a space too small for comfort. The stench of exhaust fumes vanquished the reek of plastic. He was in the trunk of a car. Would Josef’s patrols think to stop it? If they didn’t, how long before Josef returned to the apartment to find him gone? Would Josef go there after Maria died, or would he linger in the Institute talking to the doctors?

Adam’s brain was too fogged by a combination of carbon monoxide, exhaustion, vodka and analgesics to think of escape. The only consoling thought was, if his assailants had wanted him dead, they would have killed him in the apartment and laid out his body alongside that of the guard. He tried to move in an effort to ease the cramps settling into his legs and arms. Whatever these people wanted of him, he had a feeling that he was going to find out – and probably sooner than he wanted to.

‘Nine people knew of the Konigsberg treasure. Three Russians –’

‘Maria said the Russian had been sent by a German,’ Magdalena reminded Joseph as they sat side by side in the back of the squad car. Consumed by guilt she murmured, ‘Maria might have had time to say more if I’d left for the hospital as soon as that police officer came to the apartment.’

‘Bloody idiot, he should never have gone to the museum in the first place. Rookies and their ideas of initiative,’ Josef griped, as Pajewski turned out of a side road and on to the main thoroughfare into Gdansk.

‘If I’d gone with him straight away Maria might have still been lucid.’

‘From what the doctor told me, I doubt it. And we now know who the three Polish conspirators were.’

“Were”, the past tense grated. Magdalena thrust all thoughts of Maria’s death aside. She would remember and mourn the woman who had been more family to her than her own, later. Now was not the time to grieve, not with Brunon and some unknown Russian at risk of dying from anthrax and, even worse, causing an epidemic.

‘One in 1945, two now,’ Josef muttered. ‘It must hinge on the German who was too old to travel, but judging from what Maria said, not too old to mastermind the recovery of the Amber Knight.’

‘A German, who employed a Russian,’ Magdalena mused. ‘I checked on the SS colonel who commanded the Wolfschanze in January 1945. He and all his men disappeared during the Russian invasion.’

‘Disappeared at the end of the war didn’t necessarily mean dead, as high-ranking Nazis and those who ran the concentration camps have proved time and again. Were the staff in the Wolfschanze all SS?’ Josef asked.

‘Contemporary documents indicate the only personnel left there in January 1945 were SS. It makes sense. The Wolfschanze was Hitler’s headquarters and his bodyguard was drawn from that regiment.’

‘The chances are, if the colonel and his men were captured by the Russians, they were killed. No one who lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland and Russia could blame the Russians for coming down hard on all Germans in uniform, and doubly hard on the SS.’

‘But Maria said there was one survivor. The answer has to lie in the names in the documents I’ve had from Berlin. I’ll go through them again as soon as we get back to the museum.’

Josef looked across at her. In the half-light of the street lamps, she looked haggard, clearly emotionally and physically drained He would have liked to have told her to forget about the Wolfschanze and rest, but with the search for the Amber Knight transformed into a race against time to contain the spread of anthrax, neither he nor Magdalena could afford the luxury of sleep. He watched as she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.