The Amber Room (16 page)

At the first station after the border, the train ejected a steady stream of people. Most carried boxes and bales and bags and pushed strollers that contained not babies, but more boxes and bags. The people looked very tired. Exhausted.

“Shoppers,” Katya explained. “There is still greater variety in the West, and the people trust the stores there more than they do the ones here.”

Signs of renovation and new construction dotted the landscape like flecks of bright new paint on an old scarred canvas. Flashing lights and yellow construction trucks signaled roadworks almost every time a highway came into view. New, unfinished factories rose alongside structures built more from rust than steel. But despite the evident signs of change, the predominant color remained gray, the main impression one of deep fatigue. Bone tiredness of both the people and the land. That, and cold.

They arrived in Erfurt two hours late. Night had fallen hard on the city, engulfing it in almost total darkness. Occasional streetlights poured tiny islands of light into a sea of black. Here and there, apartment windows glowed in yellow solitude against the night. But the dominant feeling was of darkness.

Their hotel, the Erfurter Hof, was located just across a cement and asphalt square from the main train station. The centuries-old building had been redecorated in a bland Communist style, all hard edges and overly bright colors and charmless prints of big-muscled men and women in determined parade. They were joined at the check-in counter by a large group of weary businesspeople in rumpled suits and dresses, all off the same train from the West as themselves.

Jeffrey collected their keys, joined the elevator's silent throng, walked Katya down to her room. He saw his own weariness mirrored in her face. “I don't understand how I could grow so tired just sitting down all day.”

“Travel does that,” she agreed. She offered her face up for a kiss. “I hope you sleep as well as I intend to.”

His room was high-ceilinged and furnished with light-wood beds and chairs and low tables screwed into the floor. Jeffrey drew his drapes against the train station's constant rumble and gave in to his rising fatigue.

CHAPTER 15

Erika paused on the Schwerin office building stairs to catch her breath and go over Ferret's instructions. It still rankled, this working at the beck and call of a half-finished man. He sat downstairs in her car, waiting for her to walk up and talk and go down and report. Then she had to smile. At least he had let her drive.

A taxi ride with Ferret was the most harrowing experience of a passenger's lifetime. Fear was an ever-present companion from the moment Ferret nodded his acceptance of the address and leveled his nose as close to the windshield as the steering wheel permitted. Ferret's vision was so poor he could scarcely make out other cars, especially at night, which was the only time he drove. He tended to stick to quieter ways and hope he would not meet anyone at crossroads. Traffic lights were seldom seen until the last possible moment. This meant he had the choice of standing on the brakes or shooting the intersection at blinding speeds. Either way, his passengers lost years.

Erika sighed, a sound she was making more and more these days, and walked down the hall. At least this work required a few of the talents she had garnered over the years. And though she did not understand what they were doing, it afforded her a small hope of moving on, of escaping this place where life as she knew it had disappeared.

For most Ossies, the nation of East Germany had been a prison, a landlocked cell without doors or hope of release. The slightest glimpse toward the outside world had been both forbidden and frightfully dangerous. If a child had happened to mention at school that his family watched Wessie programs intentionally beamed over the Wall, the entire family—children included—had faced arrest, interrogation, and a loss of job and hearth and home.

Ossies had responded by turning inward, especially in the
smaller communities. Villages had become islands, struggling to provide barriers against a world that was beyond their control or understanding. Automatic suspicion of newcomers had kept Stasi infiltration to a minimum. Choosing brides and husbands from local stock had preserved local solidarity, even if communities were so small as to require inbreeding. Anything had been deemed better than letting in the dangers of the unknown, the outside, the secret, the hidden.

But for the keepers like Erika, the former system had provided security, sufficient wealth, and the thrill of life-and-death power over the masses. For them, the Wall's collapse had been the unthinkable brought to life, the subsequent investigations and trials beyond belief. Across the former country, worried conversations began and ended with the argument voiced by every defendant brought into court: We served our country as we were trained and ordered to serve. How can another country come in and fire us and put us on trial and accuse us under a different country's laws? How is this possible? Show us where we broke the laws of our own country! Show us!

Erika watched the unfolding drama from the relative safety of a new identity in a strange town and wished only to be away. Questions of guilt left her tired. As far as she was concerned, the difference between Stasi tactics and those of the West—such as the headline-grabbing 1982 alliance between Pope John Paul II and President Reagan to keep Solidarity alive after Poland declared martial law—was that the West had won the undeclared war. Safety did not rest in reason. These days, safety was possible only for those who could come up with enough cash to buy a new life.

Erika rapped sharply on the door, then pushed it open at the sound of a woman's voice from within. She entered a cramped office overflowing with books and ledgers, looked down on a middle-aged woman whose dark hair spilled over her face as she continued to peruse legal documents. Without looking up, the woman raised a nicotine-stained finger toward
the chair across from her desk. Erika remained standing, waiting with patience born of a lifetime's experience.

The silence extended through another minute, then the woman slammed the tome shut and reached with a practiced gesture for her cigarette pack. It was only then that she raised her eyes and focused on Erika. With that first glance, her motions ceased.

Erika felt the faintest thrill of pleasure and a fleeting memory of a former world, when it had rarely been necessary even to show her badge to get total and unswerving attention. Badges had been superfluous for one accustomed to holding Stasi power. People had looked and seen and understood. Their freedom had depended upon diligent attention and absolute obedience.

Then the woman forced herself to relax, a conscious effort that cost her dearly. The shaking fingers that plucked out the cigarette told of her difficulty in casting aside the lessons of a lifetime. She lit the cigarette, dragged deeply, said with the smoke, “Yes?”

Erika felt the bitter disappointment of one robbed of her rightful place, and it grated into her voice. “Frau Reining?”

The woman nodded. “You are the woman who called for an appointment, Frau.” She leaned forward, glanced at her calendar, said with evident skepticism, “Frau Schmidt?”

“Yes.” Erika swallowed her bitterness. To stoop to such nonsense. Yet she knew how to follow orders, that much she still carried with her. She spoke as Ferret had instructed. “I represent a seller of an antique who wishes to contact a Western dealer. One who knows his business and can be trusted to offer a fair price.”

“I see.” Frau Reining took in almost a quarter of her cigarette in one drag. “And why come to me?”

“You are involved with several court cases involving compensation for stolen antiques. We had hoped you were in touch with people within the Western markets. Trusted people,”
she continued by rote from Ferret's own words, “who respect our need for confidentiality.”

“We?” Frau Reining asked. “You are agent for the seller?”

“We will be pleased to pay a fee for this introduction,” Erika evaded. “In hopes that it will help us avoid a costly mistake.”

The woman showed no reaction to the offer, just as Ferret had predicted. And as he had said she would, Frau Reining asked, “It is a German piece?”

“No,” Erika answered, more sure of her footing now that Ferret's strange-sounding predictions were proving accurate. An honest woman, Ferret had described Frau Reining. A freak of nature. One who couldn't be bought. Erika stifled a vague wish that things were still as they once had been, when she could have tested this ridiculous claim.

Erika had known a great many women to change their tune when faced with fear. Not just a little fear, no. A real fear. Of real pain. Pain promised by blood-spattered walls and a room filled with the stink of others' agony. Such women would enter a prison interrogation cell, see hopelessness painted on all the walls, and know there was only one hope, one escape—through utter submission. Through giving in to terror and doing exactly as they were told. At such times, fear stripped away strength and exposed principles for what they were—mere luxuries.

Once she had led a prisoner, a Christian caught handing out Bible tracts, into the cellar punishment chamber. The woman had taken one look around, and as her legs gave way she had spoken words Erika would never forget. She had raised her eyes to the gray-spackled ceiling and cried,
Oh, dear Father, protect me from the eater of souls!
Erika had no idea what those words meant, but she liked the ring of them.

But all she said to Frau Reining was, “The article we wish to sell resides in Poland.” Which was another mystery to Erika, but here again Ferret had seemed both certain of his facts and unwilling to discuss them further.

“Poland.” Reining showed surprise. “There has been a very unscrupulous history of antique dealing under the old regime. I have learned to be very cautious.”

“Poland,” Erika repeated, and continued as instructed. “It has been there since the war.”

“I see.” Frau Reining ground out her cigarette. “Normally I would not become involved in such a matter. But as the article is not in this country, I see no reason why I should not help you.”

Erika reacted with stony silence, her thoughts and desires hidden behind a practiced mask.

Frau Reining reached for her notepad. “I will give you an address. It so happens that my contact is at this moment in Erfurt.”

“We would prefer that
you
represent us,” Erika replied as Ferret had instructed.

“Represent you how?”

“We wish to arrange a meeting on neutral ground. In Dresden. This week would be excellent.” This moved up Ferret's time plan slightly, but the contact was nearby, and the little man had said to set up a meeting quickly. Within a week or so if possible, Ferret had told her, though why she did not know. They still had nothing to sell.

Erika handed over Ferret's typed instructions. “Please pass this on to your contact and confirm that you've done so by calling the number below.”

Frau Reining was clearly unsure of herself. “I suppose I could—”

Erika slipped an envelope out of her pocket, set it on the desk. “This is a retainer. Let us know when further funds are required.” With that she turned and walked from the room, glad to be done with this freakish woman and her foolish, unchallenged principles.

CHAPTER 16

Jeffrey awoke toward dawn to find that his heat had been cut off. The air was so cold that it poured through the hotel's windows as if they were open. The bathroom tiles burned his feet. He could see his breath. He put on clothes over his pajamas as well as a second layer of socks, stripped covers from the second bed, and piled everything on top of his own. Eventually he returned to sleep.

Breakfast was served in a plain, high-ceilinged hall so large the businessmen and their rattling papers were reduced to tiny, harrumphing dolls. Katya arrived looking incredibly fresh, and was followed to his table by every eye in the room.

He rose and said in greeting, “You look beautiful.”

She kissed him twice. “One of those was for last night, in case I forgot.”

He fought off a rising blush. “You didn't, but thanks just the same.”

She ordered breakfast from the waitress, then said, “I called the antiques dealer, Herr Diehl. He is eagerly awaiting our arrival. He sounds like a very nice man.”

Jeffrey nodded. “Was your room cold last night?”

“Freezing. And my bath water was brown.”

“Mine, too.”

“Rusty pipes,” she said. “Probably there since before the war.”

“In a first-class hotel.”

“They haven't changed the radiators, either.”

“I slept in both my sweaters last night.”

“Good.” She smiled. “You're learning to adjust to life in the glorious East.”

Their way from the hotel to the Krämer Bridge took them down ancient cobblestone streets now used as pedestrian passages. Gradually the city was awakening from its long sleep,
with a charm and heritage that even the depths of winter could not disguise. Some of the houses were minute, built for the smaller peoples of six and seven hundred years ago. Most buildings remained scarred from the old regime's determined neglect, yet everywhere there were signs of change—flashing store lights, cheerful window displays, enthusiastic street hawkers, new construction, fresh paint.

If Katya had not announced their arrival at the bridge, Jeffrey would not have known it. The line of old houses simply opened for yet another cobblestone way with ancient dwellings standing cheek-to-jowl along both sides. There was no sign of a river, no indication that they were stepping up and over a waterway. But a stone plaque attached to the first bridge-house stated that this was indeed the Krämer Bridge, built of wood in the twelfth century, then of stone two hundred years later. Closely packed houses lining the bridge showed chest-high doors, tiny waist-level windows, and bowed walls.