The Other Side of Silence (13 page)

There was only one handicap that I recalled, but it seemed foolish to disagree when all I really wanted was to get out of that place as soon as possible. The last thing I wanted was to be drawn
into a twilight rivalry between these two little men. I tasted the schnapps, which was enough to promote an emaciated smile.

“How would you like to be a captain again?”

At that stage in the war, it was better to be the lowliest kind of officer there was. Being a general seemed like a responsibility that no one would have wished for. But I shrugged with an indifference that I felt could reasonably have been interpreted as modesty. Koch wasn't concerned with my feelings in the matter, however, and had already assumed that, like him, I was keen to advance in life and to profit wherever and whenever possible, and probably however, too.

“And you will be,” he said. “I need only call your commanding officer, General Lasch, to make that happen.”

“It's kind of you. But I wouldn't trouble yourself on my behalf. I've long ceased to believe that my future lies in the army.”

“Oh, it's no trouble. I'm always glad to help someone who's fallen foul of Joey the Crip. Isn't that so, Harold?”

“Yes, sir,” said Captain Hennig. “We don't like the doctor very much.”

“Harold tells me that you were a policeman in Berlin before the war. A commissar, no less.”

I finished the schnapps and let him pour me another, the way I like it, right to the brim, before putting that one down the tube, too.

“That's right.” I was pleased to change the subject. Or so I thought. “But my maternal grandparents were from Königsberg.
I used to visit here a lot when I was a boy. I always liked coming to the old Prussian capital. You might almost say that for me this is a home from home.”

“I feel much the same. I'm from Elberfeld, near Wuppertal. But this is where my heart now lies. In East Prussia. I love it out here.”

I glanced around the library. All those books were making it easy for me to understand why he had such a foolish, sentimental attachment to the place. Books are precious. They can almost make you feel at home. In any other home but that one they'd have been used as fuel.

“When you came here as a boy, I bet you visited the old Amber Museum.”

“Oh, yes sir. Prussian gold, they used to call it.”

“Indeed. The world's major source of amber is the Samland. And Palmnicken, in particular. We've had Jews—mostly women—surface mining the stuff for the last few years. Tell me, do you like amber?”

I didn't, as it happened. To me, amber had always looked like nature's plastic, not in the least bit precious and no more than a curiosity at best. I couldn't ever understand why some people seemed to prize the stuff so highly. But since I felt we were now, perhaps, finally coming to the point of my being there, I nodded politely and said, “Yes, I suppose so. I never really thought much about the stuff.”

“What else do you know about it?”

“Only that it's expensive. Which is where I stop knowing about anything very much. There's usually a tight hand brake on my thinking when there's a lot of money involved.”

“As there is for everyone these days. We're all of us having to make sacrifices in this terrible war that was forced upon us by our ideological enemies. But Harold tells me that you are not without diversions in Königsberg. That there is a lovely girl in the naval auxiliary you've been seeing. What's her name?”

“Irmela. Irmela Schaper.”

“Good. I'm glad about that. A soldier should always have a sweetheart. Don't you agree, Harold?”

“I do indeed, sir. Especially now that I've seen the girl. She's as sweet as a sweetheart gets.”

“Before she stops being a sweetheart and becomes a wife, eh?”

Koch laughed at his own joke. But it was too near to being true for me to join him in a smile.

He went over to a desk as big as a Tiger tank and pulled open an enormous drawer. “Come over here, Captain,” he said. “Come and see.”

The drawer was full of amber objects—necklaces, brooches, earrings, cigarette holders, animal carvings; it looked like one of the many market stalls near the museum I'd seen when I was a boy.

“Please, pick something out for your sweetheart.”

“I couldn't, sir. Really, it's very kind of you, but—”

“Nonsense,” said Koch. “Whatever you think she'd like. A nice necklace, or perhaps a brooch. Or for yourself, if that's what
you'd really prefer. Harold has a very handsome antique cigarette case. Not to mention a beautiful pair of cuff links that were originally made for Arthur Schopenhauer.”

I'd have much preferred to have taken nothing; the idea of being in Koch's debt was horrible to me, especially now that I'd learned how some of the stuff was mined. And I couldn't help but think that much of what I was looking at had been stolen from someone else—from Jews, probably. But finally I could see I had no choice in the matter. I picked up a gold necklace that contained a large teardrop piece of amber and, holding it up in front of my eyes, let the firelight illuminate the perfectly preserved insect it contained.

“Oh yes,” said Koch. “Good choice. That's a Wilhelmine piece from before the Great War. Fascinating, isn't it? The way an insect from thousands of years ago should have become trapped by some sticky tree resin which then fossilized.”

“Perhaps it will remind her of me,” I said.

Koch took the necklace from my hand, wrapped it in a sheet of tissue paper from the same drawer like a local shopkeeper—evidently he'd done this kind of thing before—and then placed the object in my tunic pocket, as if he would brook no argument against his gift.

“Do you feel trapped, Captain Gunther?” he asked. “Like that insect?”

“A little, sometimes,” I said carefully. I hadn't forgotten Hennig's words of caution about defeatism and the gauleiter's predilection for hanging defeatists from the city's lampposts. “Who
doesn't? But I'm sure it's just temporary, sir. We'll break out of this encirclement before very long. Everyone thinks so.”

“Exactly. Before the light there must first be the darkness. Is it not so? And now let me show you something else.”

Koch led the way out of the library and into the hall, which seemed to have more antlers on display than a Saxon deer park—not to mention the whole arsenal of musketry that had probably put them there. As we walked across a marble checkerboard floor I felt as if I were a pawn about to make a move with which I strongly disagreed. I ought to have walked through the front door and all the way back to Paradeplatz. Instead I followed Koch to a door where a suit of Gothic armor stared at me with slit-eyed, steely disapproval. I should have been used to that, having once worked for General Heydrich.

We went down two flights to the basement and into an enormous darkened room where he struggled to find the light switch.

“Here, sir,” said Hennig, “let me.”

A few seconds later I was looking at a series of decorative panels, each of them half a meter in height, that were arranged along the room's walls. Some of these panels had imperial crowns and a large letter
R
on them, while others depicted hunting scenes; there were also ornate carvings—entwined imperial eagles, classical warriors, more imperial crowns, and mermen holding dolphins; and all of them made of amber. Frankly, there was a little too much amber in there for my taste; about a ton of the stuff. It was like being inside an enormous beer bottle.

“Tell me, Captain Gunther, have you heard of the Amber Room?”

“No, sir.”

“Really? The famous Amber Room that was a gift from King Frederick William the First to his then ally, Tsar Peter the Great?”

I shrugged, hardly caring if Erich Koch thought me ignorant. I thought he was an outrageous crook who probably deserved to hang, and his opinion on anything—least of all my knowledge of amber and Russian history—mattered not in the least.

“Russians weren't so bad then, I guess,” I said.

“That was before Communism,” said Koch, as if I were the one German who might have forgotten 1917.

“Yes, it was.”

“Well then, let's see. In 1701 Peter installed these magnificent panels in a special room in the Catherine Palace near present-day Leningrad, where they stayed until we liberated them a few years ago and brought them here to Gross Friedrichsberg. When it was still at the palace, the room was often described as the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

I tried to look impressed, although my own opinion was that this wide-eyed, lazy description of the Amber Room must have been given by people who didn't get out very much. I was getting a little tired of Koch's reverence for the orange stuff, so I decided to hurry things along.

“Sir, might I ask what all this has to do with me?”

“You're going to help us get these priceless artifacts back to Berlin, where they belong.”

“Me? How? I don't understand.”

“Don't worry,” said Koch. “We weren't thinking of making you hide them under your coat, Captain. No, we had something else in mind. Didn't we, Harold? Something a little more sophisticated.”

“We're going to load them on a refugee ship that's due to leave the port of Gotenhafen in a few days' time,” said Hennig. “The MS
Wilhelm Gustloff
. As you probably know, many of those ships are frequently targets for Russian submarines from the Baltic fleet operating out of the Finnish port of Hangoe. We thought it might help to guarantee the safety of both passengers and panels if the Russian navy was informed that one of their most important national treasures—which we may have to trade back one day—is on board that same ship.”

“They might be rather less inclined to sink it,” said Koch, as if I might have failed to understand.

“Informed? How? By postcard? Or would you like me to drive to the front and give them a letter?”

Hennig smiled. “Well, that would be one way. But we were rather hoping you might persuade that sweetheart of yours—the little lightning maid—to put out an unencrypted signal on an open frequency informing the Russians, indirectly, of the presence of the Amber Room on board the
Wilhelm Gustloff
.”

“Really,” said Koch, “when you stop and think about it, this would be to the advantage of everyone.”

“Persuade her? How? What am I supposed to tell her?”

“Only what we've told you.”

“Need I remind you both that putting out a signal without encoding it using a Scherbius Enigma machine would be a court-martial offense? For which she could easily be shot as a spy. Or worse. You're asking her to break the very first rule of being a signals auxiliary.”

“No, no, no,” said Koch. “My authority as Prussian gauleiter supersedes all local military and naval codes and protocols. There would be no chance of this even getting near a court-martial.”

“There are going to be as many as ten thousand people on that ship, Gunther,” said Hennig. “Civilians. Women and children. Wounded German soldiers. The Russians might not care for
them
. But they would never attack if they thought by doing so they'd be destroying the famous Amber Room.”

“Is it them you're worried about?” I asked. “Or these priceless bits of tree resin?”

“That's a little unfair,” said Hennig. “This is, by any definition of the word, a great historical treasure.”

“Then it beats me why you don't just give an order to our Marine War Office commanders in Kiel and have them put out a signal.”

“For the simple reason that they're in Kiel,” said Koch, “and more than seven hundred and fifty kilometers away from my authority.”

“Besides,” added Hennig, “if the Russians were to intercept an unencrypted naval communication from Kiel they'd assume
it was some kind of trap. On the other hand if it comes from a small and, let's face it, unimportant naval station here in Königsberg, they'll conclude it's not been authorized by the Marine War Office and then be inclined to take it more seriously. That the person sending the message is someone desperate to prevent the loss of thousands of lives.”

“And what happens if this cultural blackmail of yours doesn't work? What if the Russians aren't as keen on amber as you are, sir? What if they're not interested in preserving a national treasure? Let's face it, they haven't shown a great deal of care for anything else in this damn war. Haven't you heard of Stalin's math? If there are ten Russians and one German left alive at the end of this war he will consider it to have been won. They now own the international patent on scorched earth.”

“Nonsense,” said Koch. “Of course they don't want to lose the Amber Room. It was the fucking Ivans who disassembled it for transport to some Siberian shithole in the first place. They must think it's valuable. Our men got there only just in time to prevent that and shipped it back here to Königsberg instead.”

I shook my head. “I'm sorry gentlemen. But I won't do it.”

“What the fuck do you mean, you won't do it?” said Captain Hennig.

“I won't. It's a monstrous thing to ask of a girl like that.”

“Says who? You? Fuck you, Gunther. This isn't just any beer cellar Fritz who's asking you for a favor, this is the governor of East Prussia.”

“She's only twenty-three years old, for Christ's sake. You
can't ask a girl like that to disobey strict orders and take a risk not just with her own life but with the lives of thousands of people.”

“You dumb idiot,” said Hennig. “Call yourself an intelligence officer? I've seen scum in my toilet that's more intelligent than you.”

“It's all right, Harold,” said Koch calmly. “It's all right. Let's be civil here. Is that your final word, Gunther?”

Suddenly I felt tired—too tired to care much what happened to me now; it might have been the schnapps; then again the whole war felt like a lamppost that had been tied around my neck. Only, maybe it would be my neck tied to the lamppost.