The Amber Room (5 page)

Pebbles crunched with each step as he crossed the drive and rounded the château’s northeast corner. An elegant garden led back to a stone veranda, Italian wrought iron separating tables and chairs from grass. A set of French doors opened into the house, both knobs locked. He straightened his right arm and twisted. A stiletto slipped off its O-ring and slithered down his forearm, the jade handle nestling firmly in his gloved palm. The leather sheath was his own invention, specially designed for a dependable release.

He plunged the blade into the wooden jamb. One twist, and the bolt surrendered. He resecured the stiletto in his sleeve.

Stepping into a barrel-vaulted salon, he gently closed the glasspaneled door. He liked the surrounding decor of neoclassicism. Two Etruscan bronzes adorned the far wall under a painting,View of Pompeii, one he knew to be a collector’s item. A pair of eighteenth-centurybibliothèques hugged two Corinthian columns, the shelves brimming with antique volumes. From his last visit he remembered the fine copy of Guicciardini’sStoria d’Italia and the thirty volumes of Teatro Francese. Both were priceless.

He threaded the darkened furniture, passed between the columns, then stopped in the foyer and listened up the stairs. Not a sound. He tiptoed across a wheel-patterned marble floor, careful not to scrape his rubber soles. Neapolitan paintings adorned the faux-marble panels. Chestnut beams supported the darkened ceiling two stories above.

He stepped into the parlor.

The object of his quest lay innocently on an ebony table. A match case. Fabergé. Silver and gold with an enameled translucent strawberry red over a guilloche ground. The gold collar was chased with leaf tips, the thumbpiece cabochon sapphire. It was marked in Cyrillic initials,N .R . 1901. Nicholas Romanov. Nicholas II. The last Tsar of Russia.

He yanked a felt bag from his back pocket and reached for the case.

The room was suddenly flooded with light, shafts of incandescent rays from an overhead chandelier burning his eyes. He squinted and turned. Pietro Caproni stood in the archway leading to the foyer, a gun in his right hand.

“Buona sera,Signor Knoll. I wondered when you would return.”

He struggled to adjust his vision and answered in Italian, “I didn’t realize you would be expecting my visit.”

Caproni stepped into the parlor. The Italian was a short, heavy-chested man in his fifties with unnaturally black hair. He wore a navy blue terry-cloth robe tied at the waist. His legs and feet were bare. “Your cover story from the last visit didn’t check out. Christian Knoll, art historian and academician. Really, now. An easy matter to verify.”

His vision settled as his eyes adjusted to the light. He reached for the match case. Caproni’s gun jutted forward. He pulled back and raised his arms in mock surrender. “I merely wish to touch the case.”

“Go ahead. Slowly.”

He lifted the treasure. “The Russian government has been looking for this since the war. It belonged to Nicholas himself. Stolen from Peterhof outside Leningrad sometime in 1944, a soldier pocketing a souvenir from his time in Russia. But what a souvenir. One of a kind. Worth now on the open market about forty thousand U.S. dollars. That’s if someone were foolish enough to sell. ‘Beautiful loot’ is the term, I believe, the Russians use to describe things such as this.”

“I’m sure after your liberation this evening it would have quickly found its way back to Russia?”

He smiled. “The Russians are no better than thieves themselves. They want their treasures back only to sell them. Cash poor, I hear. The price of Communism, apparently.”

“I am curious. What brought you here?”

“A photograph of this room in which the match case was visible. So I came to pose as a professor of art history.”

“You determined authenticity from that brief visit two months ago?”

“I am an expert on such things. Particularly Fabergé.” He laid the match case down. “You should have accepted my offer of purchase.”

“Far too low, even for ‘beautiful loot.’ Besides, the piece has sentimental value. My father was the soldier who pocketed the souvenir, as you so aptly describe.”

“And you so casually display it?”

“After fifty years, I assumed nobody cared.”

“You should be careful of visitors and photos.”

Caproni shrugged. “Few come here.”

“Just the signorinas? Like the one upstairs now?”

“And none of them are interested in such things.”

“Only euros?”

“And pleasure.”

He smiled and casually fingered the match case again. “You are a man of means, Signor Caproni. This villa is like a museum. That Aubusson tapestry there on the wall is priceless. Those two Roman capriccios are certainly valued collectibles. Hof, I believe, nineteenth century?”

“Good, Signor Knoll. I’m impressed.”

“Surely you can part with this match case.”

“I do not like thieves, Signor Knoll. And, as I said during your last visit, the item is not for sale.” Caproni gestured with the gun. “Now you must leave.”

He stayed rooted. “What a quandary. You certainly cannot involve the police. After all, you possess a treasured relic the Russian government would very much like returned—pilfered by your father. What else in this villa fits into that category? There would be questions, inquiries, publicity. Your friends in Rome will be of little help, since you will then be regarded as a thief.”

“Lucky for you, Signor Knoll, I cannot involve the authorities.”

He casually straightened, then twitched his right arm. It was an unnoticed gesture partially obscured by his thigh. He watched as Caproni’s gaze stayed on the match case in his left hand. The stiletto released from its sheath and slowly inched down the loose sleeve until settling into his right palm. “No reconsideration, Signor Caproni?”

“None.” Caproni backed toward the foyer and gestured again with the gun. “This way, Signor Knoll.”

He wrapped his fingers tight on the handle and rolled his wrist forward. One flick, and the blade zoomed across the room, piercing Caproni’s bare chest in the hairy V formed by the robe. The older man heaved, stared down at the handle, then fell forward, his gun clattering across the terrazzo.

He quickly deposited the match case into the felt bag, then stepped across to the body. He withdrew the stiletto and checked for a pulse. None. Surprising. The man died fast.

But his aim had been true.

He cleaned the blood off on the robe, slid the blade into his back pocket, then mounted the stairs to the second floor. More faux marble panels lined the upper foyer, periodically interrupted by paneled doors, all closed. He stepped lightly across the floor and headed toward the rear of the house. A closed door waited at the far end of the hall.

He turned the knob and entered.

A pair of marble columns defined an alcove where a king-size poster bed rested. A low-wattage lamp burned on the nightstand, the light absorbed by a symphony of walnut paneling and leather. The room was definitely a rich man’s bedroom.

The woman sitting on the edge of the bed was naked. Long, dramatic red hair framed a pair of pyramid-like breasts and exquisite almond-shaped eyes. She was puffing on a thin black-and-gold cigarette and gave him only a disconcerting glance. “And who are you?” she quietly asked in Italian.

“A friend of Signor Caproni’s.” He stepped into the bedchamber and casually closed the door.

She finished the cigarette, stood, and strutted close, her thin legs taking deliberate strides. “You’re dressed strangely for a friend. You look more like a burglar.”

“And you seem unconcerned.”

She shrugged. “Strange men are my business. Their needs are no different from anyone else’s.” Her gaze raked him from head to toe. “You have a wicked gleam in your eyes. German, no?”

He said nothing.

She massaged his hands through the leather gloves. “Powerful.” She traced his chest and shoulders. “Muscles.” She was close now, her erect nipples nearly touching his chest. “Where is the signor?”

“Detained. He suggested I might enjoy your company.”

She looked at him, hunger in her eyes. “Do you have the capabilities of the signor?”

“Monetary or otherwise?”

She smiled. “Both.”

He took the whore in his arms. “We shall see.”

St. Petersburg, Russia

10:50 a.m.

The cab jerked to a stop and Knoll stepped out onto busy Nevsky Prospekt, paying the driver with two twenty-dollar bills. He wondered what happened to the ruble. It wasn’t much better than play money anymore. The Russian government openly banned the use of dollars years ago on pain of imprisonment, but the cabdriver didn’t seem to care, eagerly demanding and pocketing the bills before whipping the taxi away from the curb.

His flight from Innsbruck had touched down at Pulkovo Airport an hour ago. He’d shipped the match case from Innsbruck overnight to Germany with a note of his success in northern Italy. Before he too returned to Germany, there was one last errand to be performed.

Theprospekt was packed with people and cars. He studied the green dome of Kazan Cathedral across the street and turned to spy the gilded spire of the distant Admiralty off to the right, partially obscured by a morning fog. He imagined the boulevard’s past, when traffic was all horse-drawn and prostitutes arrested during the night swept the cobbles clean. What would Peter the Great think now of his “window to Europe”? Department stores, cinemas, restaurants, museums, shops, art studios, and cafés lined the busy five-kilometer route. Flashing neon and elaborate kiosks sold everything from books to ice cream and heralded the rapid advance of capitalism. What had Somerset Maugham described?Dingy and sordid and dilapidated.

Not anymore, he thought.

Change was the reason he was able to even come to St. Petersburg. The privilege of scouring old Soviet records had been extended to outsiders only recently. He’d made two previous trips this year—one six months ago, another two months back—both to the same depository in St. Petersburg, the building he now entered for the third time.

It was five stories with a rough-hewn stone facade, grimy from engine exhaust. The St. Petersburg Commercial Bank operated a busy branch out of one part of the ground floor, and Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, filled the rest. The first through third and fifth floors were all austere government offices: Visa and Foreign Citizen’s Registration Department, Export Control, and the regional Agricultural Ministry. The fourth floor was devoted exclusively to a records depository. One of many scattered throughout the country, it was a place where the remnants of seventy-five years of Communism could be stored and safely studied.

Yeltsin had opened the documents to the world through the Russian Archival Committee, a way for the learned to preach his message of anti-Communism. Clever, actually. No need to purge the ranks, fill the gulags, or rewrite history as Khrushchev and Brezhnev managed. Just let historians uncover the multitude of atrocities, thievery, and espionage—secrets hidden for decades under tons of rotting paper and fading ink. Their eventual writings would be more than enough propaganda to serve the needs of the state.

He climbed black iron stairs to the fourth floor. They were narrow in the Soviet style, indicating to the knowledgeable, like himself, that the building was post-revolutionary. A call yesterday from Italy informed him that the depository would be open until 3:00P .M. He’d visited this one and four others in southern Russia. This facility was unique, since a photocopier was available.

On the fourth floor a battered wooden door opened into a stuffy space, its pale green walls peeling from a lack of ventilation. There was no ceiling, only pipes and ducts caked in asbestos crisscrossing beneath the brittle concrete of the fifth floor. The air was cool and moist. A strange place to house supposedly precious documents.

He stepped across gritty tile and approached a solitary desk. The same clerk with wispy brown hair and a horsy face waited. He’d concluded last time the man to be an involuted, self-depreciating, nouveau Russian bureaucrat. Typical. Hardly a difference from the old Soviet version.

“Dobriy den,”
he said, adding a smile.

“Good day,” the clerk replied.

In Russian, he stated, “I need to study the files.”

“Which ones?” An irritating smile accompanied the inquiry, the same look he recalled from two months before.

“I’m sure you remember me.”

“I thought your face familiar. The Commission records, correct?”

The clerk’s attempt at coyness was a failure. “Da.Commission records.”

“Would you like me to retrieve them?”

“Nyet.I know where they are. But thank you for your kindness.”

He excused himself and disappeared among metal shelves brimming with rotting cardboard boxes, the stale air heavily scented with dust and mildew. He knew a variety of records surrounded him, many an overflow from the nearby Hermitage, most from a fire years ago in the local Academy of Sciences. He remembered the incident well. “The Chernobyl of our culture,” the Soviet press labeled the event. But he’d wondered how unintentional the disaster may have been. Things always had a convenient tendency of disappearing at just the right moment in the USSR, and the reformed Russia was hardly any better.

He perused the shelves, trying to recall where he left off last time. It could take years to finish a thorough review of everything. But he remembered two boxes in particular. He’d run out of time on his last visit before getting to them, the depository having closed early for International Women’s Day.

He found the boxes and slid both off the shelf, placing them on one of the bare wooden tables. About a meter square, each box was heavy, maybe twenty-five or thirty kilograms. The clerk still sat toward the front of the depository. He realized it wouldn’t be long before the impertinent fool sauntered back and made a note of his latest interest.

The label on top of both boxes read in Cyrillic,EXTRAORDINARY STATE COMMISSION ON THE REGISTRATION AND INVESTIGATION OF THE CRIMES OF THE GERMAN -FASCIST OCCUPIERS AND THEIR ACCOMPLICES AND THE DAMAGE DONE BY THEM TO THE CITIZENS,COLLECTIVE FARMS ,PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ,STATE ENTERPRISES ,AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC .