Amber Beach (34 page)

“You already have an amber phallus”, Jake said. “Remember? You’re safe from the inside out.”

She willed herself not to blush. “I haven’t put it to the hot needle test. It might be fake.”

“Trust me. It’s real.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Snickering, Resnikov set out a shallow box on the table and took off the lid.

Jake turned to the new item. Inside the box, pieces of amber interlocked to form an intricate, exquisite mosaic in the shape of a royal crest. Several pieces were missing.

“Amber?” Honor asked.

“Ask me in a few minutes”, Jake said. “Amuse her, Pete. Tell her about
ginteras.”

“It is an old Lithuanian word”, Resnikov said to Honor. “In general it means ‘defender’ or ‘protector,’ but it particularly refers to an amber talisman worn around the neck. Jake wears one in the shape of twined dragons. It is of Chinese making. The ancient Chinese believed amber to be the soul
of a dead tiger.”

Honor had a flash of memory – a translucent cinnamon-gold pendant lying against the black pelt on Jake’s chest. She had noticed the amber when her alarm clock screamed and
he showed up nearly naked at her door. She hadn’t noticed the pendant last night.

“Are you wearing it now?” she asked Jake.

“Yes.”

“Why weren’t you wearing it last night?”

“Later”, he said without looking away from the amber in front of him.

While Jake worked, Resnikov told Honor about the amber woven like sunlight through the darkness of ancient Baltic cultures. Amber to cure illness, amber to protect the body in war, amber to speed the soul on its final journey. Amber as the sign of the Celtic male sun god. Amber as sacred to the ancient mother. Amber as the precious residue of tears cried by the goddess Juarate, who fell in love with a mortal man and thereby ensured his death and her eternal grief….

Amber, always amber, the only stone that was warm to the touch, the only stone that could be carved with a simple knife, the only stone that crackled with life when rubbed by fur, the only stone that floated on the mysterious breast of the ocean. Amber, the divine made tangible. Amber, the burning stone of man’s desires.

“Very nice”, Jake said, looking up finally. “An excellent sampling of eighteenth-century carving techniques. And someone resisted the temptation to fill in the missing pieces with Dominican amber.”

Resnikov laughed softly. “You have not forgiven me for that table, have you? But it was an honorable mistake.”

Jake grunted.

“I would like to have seen the whole of the Amber Room”, the Russian said, watching him more closely,
“or even just a single panel.
To enter the room was said to be like being reborn into a world made wholly of sunlight.”

Instinct and intelligence combined into a coolness sliding down Jake’s spine. “I’m betting on the side of those who said
that room burned to ash.” He pushed his chair back as though
to leave.

“Not so quickly, my friend”, Resnikov said. “There are
other pieces that require your fine touch.” Jake looked at Honor.

“You couldn’t drag me out of here with amber horses”, she said instantly. “This amber is fantastic. Designs are going through my mind like chain lightning.”

The smile he gave her was as warm as the touch of amber. She found herself responding before she could think of all the reasons she shouldn’t.

Resnikov lifted out a long, shallow box that had been constructed with a care that bordered on obsessive. The box itself was wrapped in intricately tooled leather that had designs embossed on it in gold. The clasp and hinges were hammered from solid gold. The lining inside the box was a dark, very fine suede. Eight uneven compartments held amber carvings that seemed simple, almost crude, next to the elegance of the
box itself.

Jake whistled. “How many people did you kill for this
lot?”

“Ah, Jacob. Always the jokester, yes?”

“Not this time.”

“Then you will be pleased to know that no blood was
spilled”, the Russian said smoothly.

“I would be pleased if I believed you.”

“It is the truth.”

“Then some folks must have died of natural causes”, Jake said, unconvinced. “You would have to pry these pieces out of a collector’s dead hands. Or a curator’s. No one would willingly part with these artifacts… if they’re real.”

“That is what you are here for, is it not? To determine if
these are genuine.”

Without another word Jake bent over the box. The difference in him was obvious to Honor. When he handled the
other pieces of amber, he had been intent, interested, and appreciative. Now he was utterly focused. He radiated a kind of intensity she had seen in him only once before – last night, when he had taught her so much about the nature of sensuality and passion.

The first piece of amber appeared to be a small, worn head of an ax carved out of pale butter. When Jake gave it a delicate, questing touch with his fingertip, a flush of memory and new hunger coursed through Honor. Holding her breath without knowing it, she watched while he ran his sensitive fingertips over the miniature ax head as though he were blind and reading Braille.

“Unbelievably smooth”, he said after a time. “The drill holes that decorate it feel like they were polished after the piece was made.”

“Is it a fetish?” Honor asked.

“Of a kind”, Jake said. “Amber was believed to give immortality to its owner. Neolithic hunting societies sometimes buried their members with amber grave goods. Amber axes were probably a highly valued gift to the dead.”

Resnikov nodded, but said nothing. He was watching Jake rather than the amber.

Shifting his grip on the artifact, Jake ran his thumbnail over the surface with measured force. As he had expected, his nail didn’t leave a mark.

“I won’t put the hot needle to this”, he said.

“Is it real, then?” Honor asked.

“I don’t know. But if it is, it would be a crime to mark it in any way at all.”

“Stalemate?” she asked.

“No.”

Gently Jake replaced the ax head in the box. Then he turned to his own case and began pulling things out. When he was finished, he had several tightly sealed jars in front of him. Each was about the size of a big coffee mug and partly
filled with a clear liquid. He unscrewed the top of one jar, took the small ax head, and dropped it in. The amber dipped and settled to the bottom of the container.

“What’s the liquid?” Honor asked.

“Distilled water.”

Jake fished out the artifact, dried it carefully, and unscrewed the top of the second jar. Though the liquid looked the same, the ax head floated on it like thin, opaque ice.

“What’s in that one?” Honor asked.

“Salt water with
a
specific gravity of one
point zero five”, Jake said without looking away from the ax head. “If this were transparent amber instead of opaque, I would have used the third jar. That water has more salt in i
t, which means a higher specific gravity.” He lifted the ax head out and dried it carefully. “Clear amber is more dense than the cloudy kind, because the ‘clouds’ are caused by very tiny air bubbles.”

Jake returned the ax head to its compartment in the elaborate box and selected another piece. Honor sensed his increasing excitement in the clarity of his eyes and the slight tension in his mouth. The change in him was so small she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t spent the night learning the depth of emotion he concealed behind his beard and impassive
expression.

She looked at Resnikov, wondering if he had noticed anything different. If he did, it didn’t show in his face. The Russian was watching Jake the way a fisherman watched a baited hook disappearing beneath the surface of the sea – uncertainty and hope combined.

Jake picked up another artifact from the box. The figure’s shape suggested
a
horse. It was perhaps four inches wide by three inches tall.

Though crudely made by modern standards, the artifact was nonetheless oddly powerful. A series of tiny drill holes, like tattoos, ran down the horse’s thick neck and over its short back to its stocky haunches. Its feet were close together. The
piece had a shape that was both bowed and supremely centered in its own life.

“It looks like one of those ancient horses”, Honor said. “The kind they just discovered running wild in Nepal or Tibet.”

“It probably was modeled after an animal just like that”, Jake said. “They weren’t as scarce seven thousand years ago as they are now.”

“Seven thousand years?” she asked, startled.

“At least.”

She leaned closer, staring at the small object more closely. It looked like it had been carved from fossil ivory or bone. Yet the way Jake handled the horse told Honor that he believed it was amber. Gently he put it into a jar of liquid. The figurine floated just as the other had.

“Amber”, she said.

Neither man answered. The gentle motion of the horse floating on salt water said it all.

In silence Jake lifted piece after piece out of the box. Each one that was small enough to fit in the container floated. None of them tickled his instincts, telling him that there was less to an artifact than it appeared.

The eighth piece he examined was a primitive statuette of a person. It was perhaps five inches tall, two inches wide, and obviously had been broken off below the knees so long ago that the scar had blended with the whole. The facial features were minimally carved – brooding, sunken eyes and a straight-lined, strongly defined nose. The mouth was either worn away or hadn’t been considered important enough by the carver to command attention. There were two small holes drilled where the armpits would have been.

“Perhaps a pendant, perhaps a badge of office, perhaps a fetish hung by a cave door to protect the family within”, Jake said. Then he added softly, “A very, very fine piece.”

“Some of the others are more carefully carved”, Resnikov
pointed out.

“And less powerful for it.” Jake cradled the object in his hand. “It’s as though the artist didn’t want to make the mannequin too real, for fear of what it had been or might become. Stone Age people didn’t view life as we do, a straight line to death. I suspect they knew many kinds of life, many levels
of death.”

Jake replaced the statuette without performing any tests on it other than simply weighing it in his hand and running his fingernail over its surface. “Is it real?” Honor asked.

“It looks right, feels right, and didn’t scratch beneath my nail. In any case, it’s too big for the containers I brought.”

“No hot needle?” she asked.

“Bite your tongue.” Then he looked up from the statuette and smiled slowly at her. “Never mind. I’ll do it for you later.”

“I’m breathless.”

The words didn’t carry quite the sting Honor wished. There was something about Jake’s smile that could disarm a tank. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, she was made of much softer stuff than armor plate.

“Superb”, Jake said, touching the figurine delicately as it lay in the box. “Art, artifact, and gemstone in one. Literally
priceless.”

“Everything has a price”, Resnikov said. Though he said nothing more, his attitude made it obvious that he included Jake in the things that were for sale.

Honor held her breath, expecting him to go for Resnikov’s throat. Instead, Jake smiled. It wasn’t the kind of grin that made a woman feel all warm and tingly.

“I’m listening”, Jake said, packing up his small suitcase as
he spoke.

“If you agree to work for me, Emerging Resources will once again be welcome in all of the Russian Federation.”

Jake’s hands stilled for an instant, but no more. It was his only reaction to being offered exactly what he had been looking for – a means of removing his company from the Russian least-wanted list.

“When you successfully complete your task”, Resnikov continued, “you will become the sole representative to the world of all Baltic amber, whether raw or worked. If you wish, every single piece of Russian Federation amber will pass through your own hands before it is sold.”

Honor drew in a swift breath at what Resnikov was offering to the man who loved amber more than he loved anything else. Yet when she looked at Jake, he was closing up his suitcase as though nothing important had been said.

“Whether or not you are wholly successful in your task”, the Russian added, “you will receive one hundred amber artifacts that equal or exceed the quality of those which you have deemed genuine tonight. You will be allowed to choose them yourself from a selection of four hundred museum-quality goods.”

Jake’s eyes widened fractionally, then narrowed. “Then you’re still working for the Russian government.”

“Does it matter? No matter who is my employer, the quality of your payment is assured by your own expertise.”

Silence. Then Jake asked, “What do you want me to do?”