The Amber Room (39 page)

“I have fought many battles,” Rokovski countered.

“And no doubt lit a number of fires under moribund backsides,” Alexander agreed.

Rokovski managed a tired smile. “Bonfires. With blowtorches. A number of my illustrious colleagues will work standing up for weeks to come.”

“And you have kept this quiet?”

“I found an ally at the highest level,” Rokovski explained, leading them down to the waiting convoy. “One who has not yet decided whether to keep the entire Amber Room as
a part of our own national heritage, or trade a portion of it in return for vast sums.”

“Perhaps even to rid our nation's soil of the pestilence of Soviet troops,” Alexander murmured.

Rokovski opened the car door for Alexander. “I see that great minds think alike.”

He walked around to the other side, slammed his door shut, motioned for the driver to be away, and continued. “I have resigned myself to perhaps being permitted to keep only a few of the panels. This is to be expected. In return for allowing the politicians to place portions of this room upon the chessboard of international politics, however, I shall gain immense conditions.”

“If the amber is there,” Jeffrey muttered.

“I no longer have the freedom,” Rokovski replied gravely, “even to permit such a doubt to surface.”

Czestochowa was wrapped in sleepy silence as they ground their way down dimly lit streets. They followed the directions that Rokovski had translated and typed and kept fingering and reading and perusing. They stopped before the series of shops fronting the broad Jasna Gora lawn, where two additional police cars awaited them. Rokovski and one of the uniformed officers traveling in the second car walked over. The waiting officers snapped to attention. Papers were exchanged and examined, salutes traded. Rokovski turned and motioned for them to alight. The officers went to organize their men.

“We must act as swiftly as possible,” Rokovski stressed quietly. “There are too many conflicting lines of interest, both with the treasure and with the place they chose for depositing it.”

“It would be far better to inform all concerned of an act already completed,” Alexander agreed.

“Exactly.” Rokovski cast a nervous eye back to where the unloading of equipment brought the occasional clatter. He waved back into the dark as an officer softly called out,
“Please go back to where my colleague waits. All of you will be equipped with rubber boots and flashlights.”

When they returned he inspected them briefly, spoke into the darkness where dozens of lights flickered and bounced and wavered up the hillside. An answering call came quietly back. “Very well,” Rokovski said. “Let us begin.”

They walked up the lawn alongside the cobblestone path. But where the battlements marked the road's passage through the first high portico, Rokovski motioned with his flashlight for them to descend to the base of the empty moat. “Careful here. You will need to use the ropes and proceed cautiously. The ground is very slippery.”

One by one they grasped ropes held by soldiers and reversed themselves down the icy grass-lined slope. Jeffrey helped Alexander as he landed clumsily, then turned and assisted Katya, smiling at the excitement in her eyes. Rokovski was already reaching up and inspecting the barred windowlike openings, each about four feet square, that once had delivered the medieval city's sewage and rain runoff into the moat. Suddenly he gave a muffled cry, dropped his flashlight, reached up with both hands, and wrenched at one iron-bar frame. Swiftly other hands arrived to assist; together they lifted the heavy bars free and settled them on the ground.

No more light was needed to show the fervor that gripped Rokovski as he called softly up into the darkness, then waited for a ladder to be slid down the embankment. It was propped into position, then Rokovski signaled to Alexander. “My friend, if you wish, the honor is yours.”

“It is enough simply to be here,” Alexander replied. “Go, my friend. Go.”

Rokovski counted out several people who were to follow him, then positively leaped up the rungs and disappeared into the hole. The leading officer half bowed toward Alexander and motioned him forward. After him came Katya, then Jeffrey. The excitement was electric as he climbed the rungs and entered the dark, dank space. His feet hit ankle-deep water as
he slid into the low tunnel. Rokovski was already proceeding down the depths, his flashlight illuminating tiny cantering circles of slimy ancient wall. One by one they followed him in a stooped position, craning to keep his bobbing light in view.

The floor gave an unexpected drop, and filthy water began pouring in over the top of Jeffrey's boots. He heard the squeaks of tiny animals—rats or bats or both—in nearby crevices, but had time neither for worry nor discomfort. Nor did his companions. They hustled forward as swiftly as caution and the mucky liquid would permit.

Without warning the tunnel joined with another and rose high enough to permit them to stand upon dry land. The ceiling became lofty, arched in stone and age-old brick. They paused long enough to empty their boots, then pushed on.

Another turning, yet another muffled shout from Rokovski. They rushed forward, saw him standing before an opening recently hacked from what before had been a crudely finished corner of the turning. Heaped in a half-hidden alcove were an uncountable number of human remains, now little more than bones and rags. Rokovski stood and shone his light upon them for a long moment, then raised his eyes to the waiting group and spoke solemnly in Polish. Katya translated his words as “I cannot avenge their death. But I can seek to give it meaning. On my honor, their tale will be told, and panels of what they died to keep hidden will remain in Poland, as testimony to those who come after.”

“On my honor,” Alexander agreed solemnly.

Rokovski bent and stepped through the opening, then emitted a long sigh. The group crowded in behind him. Jeffrey clambered through the opening and straightened to find himself facing row after row of coffin-like chests. They were stacked five and six high, lining the aged bulwark. It was possible to see in the distance where the false wall that the slain workers had been forced to build joined with the ancient original.

One chest lay open and spilled at their feet, its corroded
and dirt-encrusted surface battered with shiny streaks from a recent fury of hammer blows. Fist-sized blocks of amber, still flecked with bits of yellowed paper and rotten matting, lay scattered in the grime of centuries.

Rokovski raised his arms up to gather in the multitude of chests and spoke in a fierce whisper that Katya translated.

“Behold, my friends. Behold, the Amber Room!”

CHAPTER 40

They waited in the darkness just beyond the light surrounding the Cracow airport. Every breath he and Katya took sent plumes of white into the star-studded night. Jeffrey shivered, partly from the cold, more from what he knew was to come.

One moment they were alone, the next the man with the pockmarked face was standing before them. His eyes continually scanned the night as he thrust a gloved hand outward and spoke in a voice as dead as his eyes.

“He wants his papers,” Katya said quietly.

Silently Jeffrey handed over the man's passport. He caught a flicker of surprise, as though the man had not expected it to be so easy, to come without a struggle. He riffled the pages as though unsure of his next step, then turned and started for the airport.

Jeffrey knew he was going to do it, had known since Gregor had first spoken the words. Even before perhaps, though this he could not explain. What Gregor had told him to do was mirrored somewhere deep within, and the willingness to recognize this fact had shattered him. Left him unable to refuse. To do anything but what this new heart budding within his chest was quietly demanding.

Which was to speak. “Katya, tell him I have something else to say.”

Reluctantly the man turned back toward them. Katya looked at Jeffrey in confusion, but for a brief moment he could not speak. The instant was so short as to outwardly appear as only a hesitation. But for him, in that instant, Jeffrey felt the realization rush up and up and up from a heart suddenly filled with a blinding white power that
demanded
release. With the words, “Tell him that there is an answer to his every need, to his every doubt and fear and worry.” He took a breath, finished, “And that answer is Jesus Christ.”

Katya hesitated before beginning the translation. When he refused to drop his eyes to hers, a small hand shivered its way into his grasp. But there was no room just then for more than a comforting squeeze. The moment was locked in stillness. The seed was being planted. The call was being made.

When she had finally spoken, he continued, “You need to confess that your ways have been the wrong ones, and that neither answers nor lasting peace have been found. You need to turn to the giver of peace and ask Him into your life.”

Katya spoke, stopped. The man did not move, his gaze showing nothing but the same perpetual hostility.

In the silence of that eternal moment, Jeffrey felt his entire being struck by invisible lightning. He heard the voice of his heart well up with the power of unspoken wisdom. The power cracked open the lies of his existence like the shell of a bird now ready to emerge, and grow, and fly.

Jeffrey stood and saw the man's self-centered darkness, the dull, lightless world of suspicious eyes, the utter ugliness of all he was and thought and did. And in those eyes and in the world behind them, Jeffrey saw himself. With this moment of recognition came the gift of eternal truth, the realization that he, too, was loved. Not for what he had done, nor for the struggles he had made, nor for the searchings. Nor was he to be punished for all the missed opportunities and wrong turnings and false hopes and empty days. Or sins. All the sins of his life that were reflected in the man's empty eyes.

He was simply loved for the promise of who he was and who he could be. An eternal child of God. A man made clean and whole.

In the angry bitterness of a wounded, hateful man, in this pair of empty eyes was the answer Jeffrey had been seeking all his life. He found assurance that the Lord's offer was made to
everyone
. None were too far from the fold. None were unworthy. Not even himself.

And with this realization came the ability to love. To give, to accept, to be lost in a moment that reached out in all
directions with a force that left him unable to remember what about this man had angered him before.

“As far as the East is from the West,” Jeffrey said, and the calmness was not his own, nor the quietness that left him steady despite a furiously beating heart. A truth pressed upward from the deepest fiber of his being, yearning for the release of giving, the gift of passing on what was not his, yet his forever, to another in need. “That is how far you can be from all the troubles and sins in your life if only you will give yourself to Jesus Christ.”

The words were more than sounds of the mouth and thoughts of the mind. They were the only way he could give purpose to the love welling up in his chest. Not love for this man. Love. Without direction and without claim and without a need to be confined or measured or given against expected return. Love.

Jeffrey listened to Katya translate his words with a voice made small and shivery by more than the cold. He gazed into eyes that squinted back in undisguised hostility. And he felt the love pour out and say with a clarity that went beyond all words, all doubt, all worry, all fear, all unworthy feelings—he stood and looked and
knew
that here was just another brother his Lord yearned to call home.

And he was too full of newfound truth to feel the slightest scarring as the pockmarked man sneered and snorted and turned away.

Instead, Jeffrey reached out an open hand and called to the retreating back, “I will pray for you!”

CHAPTER 41

Kurt arrived in Zurich a very angry man.

The corridor leading from the satellite terminal to the main hub of the airport was almost a quarter of a mile long. It ran beneath several runways, a gently curving tunnel of spotless white stretching ahead as far as he could see. He did not need to walk. A smoothly running automatic walkway sprang lightly beneath his feet. Classical music played soothing strains along the entire distance. Instead of windows, enormous backlit displays advertised all the things that before had remained beyond his wildest dreams, and which now were within his grasp. All of them. From the gold watch to the lakefront resort to the mountain ski holiday to the luxurious clothes to the rented sports car to the private helicopter service. All of it could now be his.

And yet all he could think of was that strange American and the insanity of his final words. It
consumed
him.

He felt like pounding his fists against the gleaming white walls.

Just when he should have been readying himself for the good life, a barb had been wedged in his flesh at heart level. With every step he came closer to losing control, to shouting his unexplained rage to the unseen heavens. Try as he might, he could not shake off the words. They rang in his head over and over and over, lancing at his reason in ways he could neither understand nor stop. He felt helpless, caught up in something that made no sense to him at
all
.

The tunnel's end appeared in the distance. Kurt picked up his single valise and marched forward, shrugging hard at the resounding pressure in his mind and heart. He would leave this barbed message behind, it and the messenger both, and enter the new life that awaited him. The life he had always dreamed of. The life he
deserved
.

Wait until he told the others about the crazy American.

CHAPTER 42

When Jeffrey arrived downstairs the next morning on his way to Gregor's, he was surprised to find Alexander up and waiting for him. “I was wondering if you might permit me to accompany you this morning.”