The Amber Knight (30 page)

‘I’m sorry for the way Maria died,’ he consoled her clumsily. ‘It was a rough way to go.’

‘What I can’t bear is the thought that I never took the trouble to get to know her better. She took me and my brothers into her home, made us feel wanted and welcome even when Brunon moved out and we had no reason to stay and she had less reason to allow us to live with her. Never once in all those years did she mention her husband, or fighting with the Partisans during the war.’

‘I’m not surprised. Have you heard people talking about the Jews lately? Even now, when there are less than four thousand of them left in the country, they’re being blamed for everything from rent rises to political unrest. God only knows why, when there are so many other, more obvious, scapegoats to choose from.’

Magdalena wasn’t listening to him. ‘Maria carried all that guilt and shame, and I had no idea.’

‘You can’t blame yourself for that,’ Joseph said briskly. ‘Put yourself in Maria’s shoes. How do you begin to tell someone the secrets she disclosed to us tonight? She said she’d told Brunon about the Amber Knight, but I’m betting he didn’t believe her until Krefta and this Russian turned up.’

Pajewski slowed the car and pulled on the handbrake. Josef stared at the red traffic lights ahead. The complexities of the case were bewildering. No matter which way he turned he seemed to be spiralling in circles of confusion.

Since the fall of Communism in the Eastern Bloc, money had become the new God. He wouldn’t have to look far to find men and women who would be only too delighted to terrorise, kill and commit murder and mayhem for a lot less than fifty million dollars. For that reason alone he doubted that Maria’s and Krefta’s deaths would signify an end to this case, especially if Brunon knew about the knight. Or was Brunon already lying dead of anthrax somewhere in the forest? He wished he’d thought to ask Maria just how many people had gone into the vault where the knight had been hidden.

So far there were four dead, but Maria had intimated there were more conspirators. There had to be, two nondescript, middle-aged men with fingerprints that indicated they had no police record worth recording, one washed-up amber-smith who had produced nothing worth exhibiting for years, and an old woman at the tail end of a tragic life, couldn’t have planned and carried out the attacks on Adam and Magdalena. That’s if the attacks were connected with the reappearance of the knight.

‘This Russian Maria kept talking about,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Could he be anyone Brunon knew?’

‘Brunon knows Radek,’ Magdalena reminded him.

‘It’s a long time since Brunon worked for Radek. Perhaps Maria didn’t know this Russian well enough to put a name to him, and if he wasn’t one of the two dead men who were found in the hut – if he was someone who had been sent by the surviving German, whoever he is. If he was the man who shot Adam –’ Josef delved into his pocket for his mobile phone and pressed the button that connected him to police HQ. ‘Send a squad around to the museum now, at once. Warn them to expect trouble.’

Magdalena looked on horrified as Josef switched on the siren and ordered Pajewski to put his foot down on the accelerator.

‘Adam’s a competent soul,’ he mumbled, in an unconvincing attempt to reassure her. ‘He has a gun. There are guards in the museum. Patrols in the street. He’ll be fine. You’ll see, he’ll be fine.’

The petrol fumes that had penetrated the body bag lingered beneath the plastic, repugnant and nauseating. The car continued to lurch forward slowly, bumping over cobblestones that jarred every throbbing inch of Adam’s flesh. The wheels ground to a halt after a drive that seemed short even to him. Doors opened and slammed but he remained in the trunk long enough to wonder if he’d been abandoned there. When he was finally lifted out, he feigned unconsciousness. It didn’t take a great deal of effort. He was bundled head first down a flight of steep stone steps. He knew they were stone because his heels bounced against the edge of every one.

A door grated open on hinges in need of oiling. He was unzipped from the bag and propelled into pitch darkness. Hands caught at the ropes that bound him, cutting him free, before spread-eagling his body and chaining his ankles and wrists to the frame of a metal cot.

The gag around his mouth was tightened. All he could see was a faint square of grey in the darkness, and even that was blotted by shadows. The door closed and he could no longer decipher anything. Footsteps ebbed into absolute silence. He tried moving his arms and legs, but all he succeeded in doing was rattling the metal cuffs against the bed frame. He explored his body, tensing each muscle in turn. His ribcage burned with an almost unendurable pain he knew would heighten as soon as the effects of the vodka and anaesthetics wore off. Cramping pins and needles shot through his limbs.

Even if he’d been able to cry out he doubted anyone would hear. The combination of steps and cool temperature told him he was in a cellar. Dressed only in jeans and bandages, and immobilised by chains, he would soon begin to feel the cold, but there was nothing he could do to help himself except breathe slowly and deliberately, keep panic at bay and wait for something – anything – to happen. And hope that he didn’t choke on the foul tasting cloth and his own saliva.

By the time Josef and Magdalena reached the Main Town, a police forensic team was hard at work in the apartment in the Historical Museum and roadblocks had been set up on all the major and minor routes out of Gdansk. But when they drew up outside the old Town Hall, Josef knew that he had done too little too late.

Despite the Museum’s proximity to Piwna Street, the Royal Way was packed with squad cars. Josef opened his door, and the look on his colleagues’ faces told him more than he wanted to know. He tried to keep Magdalena back, but she was inside the building and up the stairs before him. She reached the top landing as the police surgeon was bagging the guard’s head.

Reeling back against Josef she gripped his arm so tightly he could feel her nails digging into his flesh through the layers of shirt and jacket.

‘There was no one in the apartment, sir.’ Pajewski walked out to meet them.

Magdalena struggled free from Josef’s grasp.

‘Careful,’ Josef warned. ‘You go in there and you risk destroying evidence that could lead us to Adam.’

‘We have to look for him,’ she insisted.

‘Tell me where?’ Josef pleaded. ‘We’ve erected road blocks. They won’t be able to take him out of the main city. Believe me, I know it looks as though we’re wasting time but our best chance of finding Adam is by looking for clues in the apartment.’ He snapped on the rubber gloves Pajewski handed him along with a pair of white paper overalls and over-shoes.

‘Four sets of prints,’ a technician announced as he finished dusting what was left of the door.

‘You’ve mine on record. Take Ms Janca’s and both guards for elimination purposes, and pick up a set of Adam Salen’s from his office in the Archaeological Museum.’

‘Looks like a well planned job, sir,’ Pajewski advised. ‘The guard downstairs said a uniformed police officer knocked on the front door and asked for Mr Salen. They told him they were the only ones in the building. The man flashed an identity card and insisted he had an urgent message for Mr Salen from you. He was so persistent one of the guards took him up to the apartment. They thought it was the only way to convince him there was no one there. He used the fire axe to decapitate the guard and smash his way inside. By the time the second guard arrived on the scene it was all over.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Josef stepped cautiously through the broken doorway. ‘Surely Adam would have heard the axe. He had a gun. Why didn’t he shoot?’

‘Probably because he’d already been overpowered.’ Pajewski led Josef into the small bedroom. ‘The window’s broken in here. It looks as though it was kicked in, commando-style, from the outside. There’s a rope tied to one of the turrets on the roof. The timing was probably co-ordinated between the man who posed as the officer and whoever crashed through the window. From what the second guard told us, they were all out of here seconds after the bogus policeman broke through the door.’

‘You’ve a description of this “officer”?’ Josef demanded.

‘You’re not going to like it, sir.’

‘Let me guess, tall, thin, Slavic features, slicked back dark hair…’

‘Yes, sir.’

Josef walked through the apartment to the double bedroom. He looked out at the narrow metal landing. ‘The fire escape wasn’t dropped.’

‘There’s a fixed fire escape three buildings away. They could have used the rope to get back up on the roof and climbed down to it from there.’

Josef leaned forward and picked up a splinter of wood from the foot of the railings that fenced in the narrow platform. ‘Looks like the bastards laid planks across from next door’s balcony. Send someone down to check out all the outside landings, balconies, window boxes and fire escapes to the right of this window. Wake anyone who’s sleeping in any of the buildings. I don’t care who they are. I want to know if they heard a car, or saw anything unusual in the last couple of hours. If they heard footsteps I want to know what direction they were moving in. If they heard a cat cry, I want to know who trod on its tail. If a dog barked I want it hauled in for questioning. Do you understand?’

‘Sir!’ Pajewski scuttled down the passageway.

Josef glanced into the other rooms as he walked to the door. Magdalena, dressed in a paper overall and over-shoes, was standing at the table in the conference room.

‘He was watching one of the films of the Wolfschanze.’ Her eyes were heavy as though she was holding back tears, but Josef couldn’t tell whether they were for Maria or Adam. ‘They’ll kill him, won’t they?’

‘If they’d wanted to kill him they would have done it here, along with the guard.’

‘Who are these people?’ she exclaimed bitterly.

‘It looks as though one of them is the same man who tried to kill Adam in the police station earlier today. This has to be connected with the Amber Knight. First Adam wouldn’t make a bid because he couldn’t be certain it was genuine. Then he decided it might be worth checking out and dragged you and Elizbieta to Kaliningrad and attracted the wrong sort of attention. Now we know that it’s more than likely contaminated, no one with any sense will go near it. Possibly they shanghaied him because they want him to push through the sale with the people who hold the purse strings in the Salen Institute. Would a financial decision on a purchase like the knight have to go through a board of directors?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Would the Institute hand over the money on Adam’s authority alone?’

‘I don’t know.’ Magdalena bit her lip in annoyance. ‘He never discussed funding with me, he’s never needed to. My brief is to evaluate archaeological and educational projects and turn out reports on artefacts that come on the market. The only time he ever mentioned money was to say the Institute would have trouble raising fifty million dollars, but he did call his grandfather earlier. I don’t know whether it was to tell him he’d survived the attack in Ketrzyn, or discuss the knight.’

‘Number?’

‘Only Adam knows that.’

‘That sister of his, where is she?’ Josef looked to Pajewski.

‘She did say that she was leaving the Grand Hotel today, sir.’

‘She may have left a forwarding address, call the hotel.’

‘Sir.’ Pajewski reached for his mobile.

‘Fuck it!’ Josef exclaimed angrily. ‘We can’t even go to the press and announce Adam’s missing when we’ve already announced his death and leaked the identity of the “corpse” to the Mafia.’ Josef turned to Pajewski who had begun to dial. ‘I want all leave cancelled and every available man out looking for Adam Salen, and I want them out now. Warn everyone in Piwna Street there’ll be no eating, sleeping or rest until he’s found.’

‘We have to find somewhere safe to put you,’ Josef commented as he watched Magdalena pile books and tapes from the table into her bag.

‘I’m not going anywhere until Adam is found.’

‘You can’t stay here. Apart from the fact it’s a crime scene, there’s no door.’

‘My office across the hall isn’t a crime scene. I’ll work there.’

‘You could move into Piwna Street.’

‘Do you have a particular cell in mind?’ she asked, anxiety making her even more caustic than usual.

‘You could use my office,’ he answered, ‘although it’s likely to be about as peaceful as Election Day until Adam’s found.’

Magdalena lifted her bag to the floor, then sank down on to a chair as though the effort had been too much for her. ‘I need to go through those Berlin documents to see if I can come up with a name that means anything. And there’s still the knight. Maria said something about the cemetery…’

‘You can’t be sure she was talking about the Wolfschanze. It was the last thing she said…’

‘It’s all we have to go on, Josef,’ she snapped. ‘And I think it’s worth passing on the information to the team from the contagious diseases institute. They could probe the ground…’

‘I’ll contact them first thing in the morning,’ Josef promised. He had never seen anyone so close to breaking point.

‘I’ll e-mail, fax and telephone them now. Someone on the team is bound to be awake. If Maria was right, it will be a difficult excavation. As the knight is almost certainly contaminated they can’t risk ripping the bunker apart with a bulldozer. The only alternative is to find the entrance, and even then they’d have to move cautiously, that means slowly.’

‘With your knowledge of the knight, Adam and the Institute it might be a better idea to move the centre of operations into this building.’ Josef went into the hall and looked at Adam’s briefcase and bag. ‘You said he telephoned America after you got here?’

‘Adam was waiting for him to return his call when we discovered that the telephone had been cut off.’

‘So he gave someone in his grandfather’s house this number?’

‘He used a gadget so no one could listen in on the call.’

Josef stepped into the living room and picked up the phone. ‘A scrambler.’ He pulled it off the receiver and shouted for Pajewski. ‘Take this to the lab and find out if there’s a way to put a trace on it when it’s in use, then get on to the phone company. I want a list of all the incoming and outgoing calls from the telephones here tonight.’ Trying not to think about whether or not Adam was alive, he retrieved Adam’s briefcase. ‘I’ll be across the hall in Ms Janca’s office. Bring me the reports as they come in, and bring coffee sooner. I’m going to need something to keep me awake.’