The Amber Knight (5 page)

‘How many times do I have to tell you? Keep faith with me and we’ll build a Salen Institute display to rival the Swedish exhibition in Malbork Castle.’ Edmund was proud of the museum’s amber collection that had blossomed under his guardianship from a few forlorn scraps into a four-hundred piece historical panorama detailing the history and working of the resin. ‘Come on, what did you get?’

‘A ring made by Krefta the elder in 1936. Nice piece of workmanship.’

‘Authenticated?’

‘What do you take me for? I found it in this.’ He tossed Dunst a catalogue emblazoned with a swastika.

‘“1936 Konigsberg exhibition”,’ Dunst read. ‘Please, tell me it’s this one?’ He pointed to a coloured sketch of an enormous ring set with a hunk of honey-coloured, opaque amber carved into an eagle’s head.

‘It is.’

‘I take back every evil thought I’ve ever had about you. And the other piece?’

‘A seventeenth-century powder horn, engraved with the von Bach Zalewski coat of arms.’

‘You fell for that?’

‘It was pretty.’

‘It’ll be a nineteenth-century forgery, the amber will be melted or pressed, not carved from a single piece, the workmanship shoddy and the silver mounting will turn out to be gilt, and bad gilt at that.’

‘Probably,’ Adam agreed, with irritating complacency.

‘But you couldn’t resist it because your great-great-grandfather changed his name from von Bach Zalewski to Salen when he reached America?’

‘Please, we’re the decayed branch. I’m proud of my peasant origins.’ Adam scanned a begging letter from a beleaguered museum that had lost its government funding. Binning the envelope, he tossed the letter into an empty tray before picking up another.

‘For Magdalena Janca?’ Edmund picked up the letter and read it.

‘Haven’t you any work to do?’

‘I could re-arrange the exhibits on the ground floor to make room for a ring and powder horn, but as I don’t know if I’m going to get them…’

‘Who else would I give them to? Don’t forget to close the door on the way out.’

After Edmund left, Adam sat staring out of the window at the canal and the weed-choked ruins of a bombed-out warehouse opposite. The saviours of Gdansk had completed a Herculean task when they’d rebuilt the city from the rubble and ashes of World War II, but odd corners of dereliction still needed attention.

Another perk of living in Europe, he decided. Time to sit and think. Folding his hands behind his head he contemplated the evening that lay ahead. The casino and Helga’s company were beginning to pall. Perhaps he needed a change.

‘Hard at it, I see?’ Edmund returned with a large brown envelope.

‘Nine-tenths of this job is planning.’

‘On whether to bed the luscious Helga, or ripe Elizbieta?’

‘Elizbieta belongs to Feliks.’

‘That’s not what I heard.’ Edmund dropped the envelope on the desk. ‘By the way, when can I expect the pieces?’

‘End of the month when the museum closes.’

‘I suppose it will have to do.’

Pouring himself a coffee, Adam propped his feet on the desk and set to work.

Half an hour later his waste-paper basket was overflowing and there were three neat piles of papers on his desk, all destined for Magdalena Janca. In the first he’d stacked appeals from museums and academic institutions; in the second, pleas for funding to save works of art and historical significance threatened with export and, in the third, scholarship applications from students who would otherwise have to abandon their studies.

A sucker for a sob story, Adam knew his limitations. Magdalena Janca was better equipped to deal with begging letters, particularly Polish ones. If she resented him dumping all the appeals that landed on his desk on her, she hadn’t complained to him about it. Her job description was to oversee all the educational and archaeological projects funded by the Polish branch of the Salen Institute in return for a salary and package that had enabled her to continue working in the Historical Museum. He had offered Magdalena the job after Edmund had told him that the trustees of the museum had been forced to let her go. But that didn’t stop him from suffering the odd pang of conscience or the feeling that he was using her. Jobs in the artistic and cultural fields were scarce in cash-strapped Poland and, for all Magdalena’s undoubted talent, if it hadn’t been for his offer, she would be unemployed. A fact they were both aware of. If Magdalena Janca had one fault, it was a tendency to work too hard. He would have been happier if she’d complained to him once in a while about the workload he sent her way.

Adam took his director’s position at the Institute more seriously than anything he’d worked at before, but he sensed that Edmund, for all his friendliness, considered him an amateur and wouldn’t have tolerated his presence in the building if he hadn’t held the Institute cheque book. On the other hand, Magdalena Janca kept everyone at a distance. If she had personal feelings about anybody or anything, he had never seen evidence of them.

Occasionally, after a bad day when they’d failed to save a significant piece of Polish art from export, or discovered an entire collection of unique artefacts had been stolen and replaced by fakes during the Communist era, he wondered what he was doing in Poland. He had arrived in Gdansk a year ago after shamefully milking his family connections to get himself appointed head of a three month fact-finding tour for the Salen Institute.

The facts he’d found hadn’t been good. The staff of practically every Polish museum, gallery and institute he’d visited were well-trained and well-intentioned, but neither their training nor intentions could compensate for lack of funding; nor could they stem the tide of corruption that was sending works of art and historical treasures westwards at an alarming rate. His three months had stretched to twelve and, as he’d become acclimatised to the slower, more civilised, cafe-orientated pace of life in Gdansk, he suddenly realised he was in no hurry to return to the States.

He stared down at his desk. There was only one envelope left, the special delivery Edmund had brought up. It was heavy and, when he slit it open, photographs tumbled out, along with two folded sheets of paper.

Adam picked up one of the prints. A dark background and slight blurring at the edges suggested it had been taken with a flash. An old man held a copy of
Time
magazine above what looked like a stone coffin filled with tarnished gold.

He reached for the papers. One was a testimonial, short and to the point.

I LUDWIG KREFTA, AMBER AND SILVER- SMITH, HEREBY AUTHENTICATE THE RELIC IN THESE PHOTOGRAPHS AS THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY AMBER ENCASED BODY OF HELMUT VON MAU, KNOWN AS THE AMBER KNIGHT.

There was an indecipherable signature scrawled beneath the text. The second paper was a letter.

FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE SALEN INSTITUTE.

THE AMBER KNIGHT IS IN OUR POSSESSION. WE ARE PREPARED TO ACCEPT BIDS FOR IT IN EXCESS OF FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS. ALL BIDS TO BE PLACED IN THE PERSONAL COLUMN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ONE WEEK FROM TODAY. IF SUCCESSFUL YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED TOGETHER WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR PAYMENT.

Adam buzzed Edmund as he laid the photographs out on his desk. There was a view of the side of the stone coffin, the head, the foot, the lid – cracked across the middle – and two close-ups taken with the lid off, one featuring the old man holding a copy of
Time International
. Picking up a magnifying glass he scrutinised the magazine’s cover and date. Unless the photographs had been faked, the pictures had been taken last week. A corner of the magazine was curled against the surface of the amber, presumably a calculated touch to convince sceptical buyers the knight was genuine.

‘I’ve found just the place for the pieces you’ve bought,’ Edmund flung back the door, crashing it against the wall. ‘We’ll have to adjust the lighting over the powder horn so no one can examine it too closely…’

‘Take a look at this,’ Adam interrupted, handing Edmund a close up of the coffin.

‘Is it a quiz? It looks like lumps of sausage in yellow pea soup.’

‘There’s a certificate signed by Ludwig Krefta authenticating it as Helmut von Mau’s body.’

‘The Amber Knight! Holy Mother of God! I never thought he would surface again.’ Staring at the photograph Edmund fumbled blindly for the others.

‘I’m surprised at the authentication. I assumed both Kreftas died years ago.’ Adam pushed the photographs into Edmund’s hand.

‘The elder did. As for the younger, an amber-smith doesn’t always die when he stops exhibiting, and the curtailment of government grants after the fall of Communism hit some artists hard.’

‘And the bad ones who relied on the subsidies hardest of all,’ Adam observed cynically.

‘Who’s to say what’s bad?’

Adam killed the argument before it began. ‘I admit I’m a philistine. Could these be for real?’

‘It would be marvellous if they were. My old tutor always believed von Mau’s body and the Amber Room ended up in the private collection of someone like your Howard Hughes; a recluse rich and mad enough to gloat over his ill-gotten gains in private.’

‘Let’s hope they did. Some of your countrymen are crazy and avaricious enough to break up anything for a quick profit.’

‘Touché. Can the Institute afford fifty million dollars?’

‘Only if I earmarked the whole of the European budget for the next fifty years including my own and Magdalena’s salary.’

‘Can’t you persuade the trustees to view this as a special case?’ Edmund pleaded. ‘If this is authentic it would set the museum on the international tourist map. The legendary Amber Knight, here in Gdansk. They’d pour through the doors. We’d have to employ another dozen guides just to herd them around.’

‘You mean more people would want to see the Amber Knight than your collection of Sudanese mud huts?’

Edmund had the grace to remain silent. When Adam had arrived at the museum its exhibits had comprised a motley collection of Roman fragments, Bronze Age bones and African huts and spears, all the museum could afford, and most of which had absolutely no connection with Gdansk or Baltic culture.

‘Just think what this means if it is the real thing?’ Carried away by the prospect of recovering the knight, Edmund began mentally re-arranging the museum’s layout. ‘If we emptied the long gallery on the second floor and re-furbished it – dark blue would look good and complement the amber – put in subdued lighting and raised the coffin on a dais, people could walk around the amber-encased body of the man who founded Christian civilization on the Baltic. We wouldn’t need another exhibit on the floor, and we could double, if not treble, our admission fees. I bet we’d even have to put in ropes to control the queues.’

‘Wasn’t von Mau a German?’ Adam wondered which other institutions would be interested – and rich enough – to make a bid.

‘He was born in Saxony, but that’s like saying St Patrick’s Welsh, not Irish. After he and von Balk vanquished the barbarians…’

‘The Prussians, you mean.’

‘What’s in a name?’ Edmund questioned impatiently. ‘Everyone knows the original Prussian tribes were savages, and Prussia as a state didn’t exist until the Teutonic knights founded it. It’s our history, the history of this region that goes back over seven hundred years.’

‘I hate to dampen your enthusiasm, but you’re forgetting two small technicalities. One, even if this is the real McCoy we haven’t got anything like fifty million dollars to spare. And two, it could be a forgery. Even I know that medieval stone coffins like this,’ Adam tapped the photograph Edmund was holding, ‘are ten a zloty around old monastery sites.’

‘Not with those markings.’ Edmund picked up a chair and pulled it close to the desk.

‘There are any number of pre-war photographs and sketches of the Amber Knight that could provide a blueprint for a skilled forger,’ Adam argued. ‘Modern methods of distressing are very effective. You should see my sister’s Roman swimming pool in LA.’

‘Look at the amber.’

‘You can tell whether it’s genuine or not, from the amber?’

‘Not exactly. But from the descriptions I’ve read, the colour is right.’

‘You’ve never seen a colour photograph of the Amber Knight?’

‘Only paintings, I doubt a colour print exists,’ Edmund admitted.

‘But you’ve studied the story and the period?’ Adam pressed.

‘Every child in Poland has.’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘You don’t know the legend of the Amber Knight?’ Edmund wondered if Adam was joking.

‘Only that he crossed the Vistula from what is now modern Germany with Hermann von Balk in 1231 on a Teutonic Crusade. When he was killed in battle his troops immortalised him by casting his body in amber.’

‘Helmut was Lancelot to Hermann’s Arthur.’

‘The round table in the East? Come on.’

‘Just as Arthur and his knights were the epitome of chivalry in western Europe, so Hermann and Helmut represented heroism and Christianity in the East. There’s even a Guinevere. The pagan princess, Woberg, who changed her name to Maria after Helmut converted her to Christianity.’

‘I thought the Teutonic knights were monks?’

‘The Teutonic order had three levels. The knights were the highest, but there were also chaplains and menial brothers. All took holy orders.’

‘But they weren’t averse to a bit on the side?’

‘Helmut and Maria’s love was platonic!’ Edmund protested.

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘Not everyone has your failings. Hermann and Helmut captured every pagan stronghold on the Vistula before reaching the last settlement on the Baltic shore which was close to the site of modern Elblag. The pagans had sent for reinforcements from the east and, they outnumbered the Teutonic knights ten to one, but that didn’t stop Helmut from attacking. The knights fought for twelve days and nights losing more and more men in every attack, until on the thirteenth day, Helmut himself was mortally wounded. With his dying breath he made his men promise to strap his body to his horse and send it into the pagan stronghold. When they did, every heretic who looked upon his face died. Struck down by God…’