Checkmate in Amber (7 page)

That night, as I was going over all the documentation, I realized that something seriously significant and almost certainly highly dangerous lay behind the tangled web of data we had unearthed. Why else would Melentyev have hired the Chess Group to get hold of the
Muzhiks
at this particular point in time? In October 1941, German commandos had stolen the Krylov painting from the State Museum in Leningrad and it had been brought to Königsberg, where Koch was king. On August 31st 1944, Allied bombing practically destroyed the city. The war’s ending with German defeat already seemed more than likely, if not inevitable, and it made sense to assume that Koch had started thinking about how to save his looted treasures. In early 1945, with the Red Army closing in on Königsberg, Koch sent the painting along with all the rest of his considerable plunder to his good friend Fritz Sauckel, the
Gauleiter
of Thuringia. During his trial in Nuremberg, Sauckel declared that all those works of art had been removed from Weimar and sent to Switzerland. But in 1965, twenty years later, the
Muzhiks
suddenly reappeared in the catalog of the then modest private collection of a certain Helmut Hübner, who as an ace Luftwaffe pilot and squadron leader had been stationed in Königsberg in 1944. The Krylov canvas remained in that private collection until persons unknown (well, OK: yours truly) snatched it away to deliver it into the hands of an ex-KGB agent who, disguised as a prison guard, had worked for twenty-seven years at Barczewo prison, where Eric Koch was serving out his sentence.

At some point in this complicated saga, Koch himself, or possibly someone else, had pasted the
Jeremiah
piece to the back of the
Muzhiks
. It must have been done after 1949 (the year it was painted), while the former
Gauleiter
of East Prussia was living undercover somewhere in the British Occupation Zone in Germany, with Sauckel already dead and Hübner still in quiet obscurity at his house in Pulheim. All of which made it crystal clear that Krylov’s
Muzhiks
had not only never arrived in Switzerland, as Sauckel had suggested, but had probably never even left Weimar, the city whose name appeared in the message Koch left encoded in the
Jeremiah
inscription.

By this time my head was in a whirl, and I stumbled sick and dizzy along the unlit hallway, heading for the kitchen. I badly needed a change of space and something to eat, anything at all just to wake me up a bit. My study was soporifically warm and full of cigarette smoke, and I had been on the point of flaking out. I turned on the cold white neon lighting in the kitchen and, dazzled by the sudden brightness, stepped back without thinking and leant against the doorjamb just to stay on my feet.

I was a hundred per cent certain that what Melentyev was really after was not the Krylov but its phoney lining, Koch’s
Jeremiah
, and that what interested him most about that was the message in the inscription. Somehow he had found out about the message, which possibly had a lot to do with Operation Peter the Great or which was maybe what the whole damn operation had actually been all about. Its overall aim hardly seemed to be a big mystery: to recover the treasures Koch had stolen and which had then gone missing in Weimar in early 1945. It made sense that successive Soviet dictators had been interested in getting back what the Nazis had plundered, and had placed an agent close to Koch for so many years. That was clearly the reason why his death sentence was never carried out, in the hope that he would spill the beans - although it eventually turned out that he never did. Which then begged the question: why didn’t they
force
Koch to talk? Why didn’t they use torture or some other equally effective method to make him reveal his hiding place? After all, courtesy and the loving touch were hardly the Soviets’ standard modus operandi when they wanted results. Why the hell had they been so feeble and laid-back with Erich Koch?

My body sleepwalked into the middle of the kitchen, completely of its own accord. It clearly needed to make some kind of movement, if only to break out of the total immobility that my humming brain had left it in. The two slowly began to get to know each other again, although my brain was still working overtime as I got a clean glass out of one of the closets, opened the icebox door and poured out an unknown liquid which luckily turned out just to be cold milk.

And what was Helmut Hübner’s role in this whole story? He must have got to know Koch in Königsberg in 1944 and they must have become pretty good friends, good enough for Koch to entrust him with the
Muzhiks
with the
Jeremiah
already stuck on the back. Which also confirmed that Koch and Hübner had been in contact after 1949. Maybe Hübner visited him in jail and it was there that … Hang on a minute! That was impossible. The Russians sent Melentyev to Barczewo as soon as Koch arrived there, so if Koch had given Hübner something, the KGB man would have known immediately. Not to mention that, in every prison in the world, visitors are physically searched on their way in and on their way out again, and much more thoroughly in Barczewo where Koch was the star of the show. It was even less likely that Koch had managed to make the switch during the ten years from 1949 to 1959 that he was awaiting trial because, if anything, the security on him would have been even tighter. Which meant that he could only have delivered it to Hübner during the short space of time between painting the
Jeremiah
and his arrest later that year - implying a connection between two previously unrelated points. Was Pulheim in the British Occupation Zone? Did Koch spend his four years in hiding at Hübner’s place? I needed to check this out immediately.

Now fully awake, I hurried back to the study and pulled out the old atlas that I had been consulting while making notes and collating all the information. It confirmed that Pulheim had been within the British Occupation Zone in post-war Germany, so my new theory could be right, although of course it still needed proof.

It was also becoming clear to me that Hübner hadn’t known about the
Jeremiah
hidden behind the Krylov painting. If he had known of its existence, he surely would have used it to get his hands on the treasure after Koch died in 1986. But the fact that Melentyev hired us to steal the
Muzhiks
for him was evidence that possession of its secret was still worthwhile, Which in turn suggested that Hübner had had no idea at all of what he had been hiding in his private collection for thirty-three years.

I switched off the computer and the desklamp, and walked out of the study yawning as I headed for my bedroom. One more thing was puzzling me as I pulled back my bedcovers and settled down to sleep. What the hell did
Bernsteinzimmer
and
Gauforum
mean?

Still, tomorrow was Sunday, thank goodness, and our next Chess Group get-together was scheduled for nine-thirty in the morning.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Has anybody got anything to add to Peón’s report?’

I had just finished giving the Group a summary of my thoughts and conclusions from the night before after studying the information that Läufer had provided. I felt hugely proud of myself and sat back smugly, expecting to be showered with compliments by my team-mates. Surely it was the very least they could do after listening to my brilliant deductions, don’t you think?

‘Personally I think that we should just hand over the painting to Melentyev and forget about the whole business,’ said Rook, puncturing my inflated ego in one fell swoop.

‘I believe that we should continue investigating,’ wrote Cavalo, coming to my rescue. ‘In the first place, because forgetting the whole thing now would just be crazy. After what Peón has told us, we can’t go back and act as if nothing at all has happened. And secondly, because if nobody has found these treasures yet, we’ve got just as much right as they have to try and get our hands on them.’

‘AMEN! WE’VE GOT EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD TO BE SLAUGHTERED LIKE PIGS BY MELENTYEV.’

‘Melentyev doesn’t know who we are,’ I insisted. ‘He doesn’t even know who Roi is. Nobody knows our identities, and they can’t find them out.’

‘No more stupid remarks, please,’ interrupted Donna, abruptly. ‘This business is not up for debate. We are the Chess Group, are we not? So, Läufer, please get on with it and tell us what the
Jeremiah
inscription means, and we can take it from there.’

‘FINE. WELL, IF YOU WERE INTRIGUED BY THE DOCUMENTS I SENT YOU, WHAT I’M GOING TO TELL YOU NOW WILL KNOCK YOU RIGHT OFF YOUR FEET.’

By now I was seriously impatient to finally hear Koch’s secret.

Just as I was on the point of enlightenment, I was distracted by some discreet taps on the door. I dragged my eyes away from the screen, to see Ezequiela’s face peeking in at the door.

‘I’m going to Mass. Do you want me to get you anything?’

‘Yes, the Sunday paper please,’ I answered quickly, looking back at the screen impatiently. ‘And don’t forget the magazine.’

‘OK. Goodbye then.’

‘Bye!’

‘PEÓN WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING - EXCEPT FOR ONE LITTLE DETAIL,’ Läufer was saying, rather smugly. ‘THE RUSSIANS’ PETER THE GREAT OPERATION WASN’T ABOUT RECOVERING THE TREASURES WHICH KOCH HAD LOOTED. NOR WAS IT MELENTYEV’S MOTIVE FOR TRYING TO GET HOLD OF THE
JEREMIAH
. IT WASN’T EVEN WHAT REALLY MATTERED TO KOCH.’

‘Oh really?’ I kicked back. ‘So what was it that mattered so much to him, might I ask?’

‘YOU WOULDN’T GUESS IT IN A MILLION YEARS, MY ESTEEMED PEÓN. IT’S SOMETHING THAT’S WORTH INFINITELY MORE THAN MERE TREASURE. THE MOST SOUGHT-AFTER MASTERPIECE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, ONE OF THE KEY SYMBOLS OF RUSSIAN IDENTITY AND NATIONAL PRIDE.’

‘I’m impressed …’

‘Just get on with it, Läufer!’ Donna cut in, angry and impatient.

‘LIKE THE REST OF YOU, I GOT URI ZEV’S TRANSLATION OF THE INSCRIPTION THAT ROI SENT US. MY BLOOD RAN COLD, I SWEAR. THE
BERNSTEINZIMMER
, MY DARLING CHESS PIECES! WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE GENUINE HONEST-TO-GOD
BERNSTEINZIMMER
…’

‘Roi, please …’ Donna begged.

‘That’s enough, Läufer. I will explain it to them,’ intervened Roi, to avoid a volcanic eruption. ‘
Bernsteinzimmer
is a German word meaning Amber Room. One of the real legends in art history. It was built by the Danish craftsman Gottfried Wolffram in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin at the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the reign of the first king of Prussia, Friedrich the First, and was used as a smoking room. Just to give you a rough idea of what we are talking about here, I consulted some old notes I made on the subject and I can tell you that the Amber Room was covered by over fifty-five square meters, almost six hundred square feet, of semi-transparent panels of Baltic amber in varying shades of orange to yellow-gold. In addition to this were mosaics, furniture and other accessories all created in this precious raw material. You will agree that it fully deserved its description as the Eighth Wonder of the World, as it was dubbed soon after its creation.’

An admiring whistle reached me through the loudspeakers. Läufer just couldn’t resist playing with his special effects.

‘It’s impossible to put a price on such a thing,’ commented Cavalo.

‘You are absolutely right. It is impossible,’ continued Roi. ‘In 1716, the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, paid a visit to Friedrich Wilhelm I, the new king of Prussia, in his Charlottenburg Palace and was deeply impressed by his Amber Room. Friedrich Wilhelm was at war with Sweden at the time over the vast territory of Pomerania, and decided to present the Room to Peter the Great as a gift, in exchange for a crack force of armored grenadiers.’

‘So it makes a lot of sense that the project we’re dealing with should be called Operation Peter the Great, seeing as it bears the name of one of its main protagonists. A strong coincidence, at the very least.’

‘There is no doubt about it,’ Roi declared. ‘The Room was installed for a short time in the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, a city which the Tsar founded in 1703 and made the capital of Russia in 1715. But it was soon dismantled and moved to the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. Tsarskoye Selo, which means Royal Village, now forms part of a town called Pushkin and is some fifteen miles south of Saint Petersburg. The palace was named after Peter the Great’s wife Catherine, who ordered its construction as a summer palace for the imperial family. But the new space into which it was rebuilt on the orders of Empress Elizabeth in 1743 was considerably larger than the original, and the original Baltic amber panels were insufficient to cover it. So they called in the court architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli and the sculptor Alexander Martelli, who worked for five years redesigning and adapting the splendid Baroque creation to its new site. They enriched it substantially with impressive ornamental detailing, such as a smooth vaulted ceiling highlighted in gold and a tropical hardwood floor inlaid with mother-of-pearl.’

Läufer’s admiring whistle blew again through my speakers, in amazement.

‘All there is to add is that, in October 1941, after the capture of Leningrad by the German army, the Amber Room was rapidly dismantled and, along with a whole host of other treasures from what used to be called Saint Petersburg, was transported to the city with which we are becoming so familiar: Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia.’

‘Königsberg!’ wrote Donna, delighted.

‘Koch’s Kingdom!’ added Cavalo, in similar style.

‘According to my notes,’ Roi concluded, ‘the last time the Amber Room was seen was in late August 1944, in Königsberg Castle.’

‘The big Allied bombing raid on Königsberg was on August 31st 1944,’ I reminded everyone.

‘SO THE AMBER ROOM WAS STOLEN AND HIDDEN AWAY BY KOCH, AND OPERATION PETER THE GREAT WAS AIMED AT FINDING IT AND TAKING IT BACK. FOR THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE, IT IS AS EMBLEMATIC AS THE EIFFEL TOWER IS FOR THE FRENCH AND THE COLISEUM IS FOR THE ITALIANS. ABSOLUTE TOP PRIORITY FOR BRINGING IT HOME.’

‘So much so, that they are currently building a replica in the original room of the Tsarskoye Selo palace. A team of specialist amber craftsmen, carpenters and sculptors are working on a faithful recreation of the Room using black and white photographs from 1936. Furthermore, given that it has proved impossible for them to obtain the orange-toned amber predominant in the original, they have had to develop various methods of dyeing the amber, one of which actually involves boiling it in honey.’

‘But I thought Russia was completely bankrupt!’ interrupted Rook, in outrage. ‘How on earth can they afford it?’

‘As far as I’m aware, the craftsmen and site managers haven’t been paid for several years, but they have carried on working. Their main motivation is pride in recreating the Amber Room. Even if it is just a copy.’

‘Clearly Melentyev didn’t get the confession he was banking on from his Barczewo prisoner,’ added Donna.

‘No,’ I responded. ‘But it does seem that he confirmed the existence of a Koch painting holding the key to finding out where the original Room was hidden, not to mention all the rest of the
Gauleiter’s
loot. Perhaps Koch himself told him just before he died, and Melentyev kept the secret in the hope of keeping all of it for himself.’

‘But Melentyev is extremely rich already. What more does he need?’

‘There’s no such thing as enough,’ remarked Rook, dismissively.

‘Maybe what he’s after is the Room itself,’ argued Cavalo. ‘Just imagine if it was him who found it and returned it to Russia. He would immediately become a huge national hero - maybe even launch a campaign to become president of Russia, or something like that. Maybe what he’s really after is political power.’

‘I agree with Cavalo,’ I said. ‘Melentyev isn’t interested in Koch’s bits and pieces. All he wants is the Amber Room. He may be a gangster, and corrupt as all hell, but he’s heart and soul a Russian. He’d be so proud to be the man who got it back off the Germans.’

‘But why on earth has he waited until now to hire us to get the Krylov painting?’

For a short while, not a single word appeared on-screen.

‘BECAUSE WE’RE THE BEST,’ cracked Läufer, breaking the silence. ‘THE MINUTE HE HEARD ABOUT US, HE KNEW THE TIME HAD COME TO MAKE HIS MOVE.’

Hysterical canned laughter, courtesy of we-all-knew-who, applauded his jokey remark - but was suddenly interrupted by a loud and mocking raspberry.

‘OK, SO WHO’S THE COMEDIAN?’

A red, red rose floated lazily up the screen, with the loving inscription
- FOR LÄUFER
.

‘AHA! SO IT WAS YOU THEN, DONNA - RIGHT?’ yelled our computer genius, highly offended - and completely forgetful of the fact that he had sent her exactly the same rose not so long ago. ‘I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU EVEN
HAD
A SENSE OF HUMOR!’

‘Perhaps you should try and get used to the idea that you don’t know everything,’ Donna replied with scorn, followed by a string of LOLs which took up a good two or three lines of text.

If I had been in Donna’s shoes, there’s no way I would have risked shooting my mouth off like that. I had no doubt in my mind, none at all, that Läufer was already plotting his revenge. But the only Italian on this street was Donna, an Anna Magnani reborn, passionate and unflinching, incapable of letting anybody take liberties with her and get away with it.

‘Enough of this,’ Roi intervened. ‘Läufer, Donna - no more, please.’

‘OK. COOL.’

‘And what about the second word in the inscription -
Gauforum?
’ I hurriedly changed the subject.

‘THE
GAUFORUM
,’ Läufer began to explain, ‘WAS THE OLD
LANDESMUSEUM
, THE STATE MUSEUM IN WEIMAR. DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR - PAY ATTENTION HERE - IT WAS THE PRIVATE RESIDENCE OF THE
GAULEITER UND REICHSSTATTHALTER
FRITZ SAUCKEL! HOW ABOUT THAT THEN, EH? IT WAS PRACTICALLY DESTROYED BY ALLIED AIR RAIDS, AND LEFT IN RUINS. IN 1954 IT WAS REPLACED BY THE MODERN
STADTMUSEUM
AND CURRENTLY THEY ARE ABOUT TO FINISH REBUILDING AND RESTORATION WORKS TO CONVERT IT INTO THE
NEUESMUSEUM
- THE NEW MUSEUM, IN OTHER WORDS. IT’S DUE TO BE OFFICIALLY OPENED ON THE FIRST OF JANUARY, IN LESS THAN THREE MONTHS’ TIME, TO CELEBRATE WEIMAR’S NOMINATION AS EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE FOR 1999. AS FAR AS I CAN TELL FROM THE ARCHITECTS’ DRAWINGS, THE ONLY PART OF THE ORIGINAL BUILDING LEFT STANDING IS THE FACADE. EVERYTHING ELSE WAS REDUCED TO RUBBLE. IT HAS BEEN COMPLETELY REBUILT.’

‘Hang on a minute. Are you saying that it just doesn’t exist anymore?’ I asked him, shocked.

‘NOPE. IT’S LONG GONE.’

My fingers froze up on the keyboard. I was speechless. And incredibly disappointed to discover that all my fevered research and ace detection had been reduced to ashes, in less than a second. Koch’s secret message had only contained three words: the first,
Bernsteinzimmer
, had told us what, and the second and third had told us where. But now it turned out that Sauckel’s old
Gauforum
just didn’t exist anymore and that the Amber Room might be lost again, and this time for good, because the building it was supposedly hidden in had been obliterated.
Damn!
The total lack of activity on-screen reflected the fact that my partners were just as blown away and bummed out as I was.

‘OK, OK. DON’T GIVE UP ON ME NOW, GUYS.’

Was Läufer a jerk or what?

‘I’VE GOT A LITTLE SURPRISE UP MY SLEEVE.’

Yep, a bona-fide jerk. An 18-carat moron.

‘WHEN I CHECKED OUT THE
GAUFORUM
CONSTRUCTION PROJECT, I CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THERE WERE ONLY TWO POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS: ONE, THAT THE
BERNSTEINZIMMER
HAD BEEN FOUND AND THEN HIDDEN AGAIN SOMEWHERE ELSE (HIGHLY UNLIKELY BECAUSE THE WORKS STARTED TEN YEARS AGO, AND SOME NEWS WOULD SURELY HAVE LEAKED OUT AT SOME POINT DURING ALL THAT TIME) OR, TWO, THAT THE
BERNSTEINZIMMER
HADN’T BEEN DISCOVERED. AND IF IT HADN’T BEEN DISCOVERED, IT COULD ONLY BE BECAUSE: ONE, IT WASN’T IN THE
GAUFORUM
, OR TWO, IT WAS IN THE
GAUFORUM
BUT NOT IN THE ACTUAL BUILDING. WELL, IF IT AIN’T IN HEAVEN - I THOUGHT TO MYSELF - IT MUST BE IN HELL. SO I STARTED NOSING AROUND IN THE ARCHIVES OF THURINGIA’S TOWN & COUNTRY PLANNING DEPARTMENT. AND FINALLY FOUND THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION.’

OK, so maybe he wasn’t quite as stupid as I’d thought, after all.

‘I FOUND A PLANNING REPORT FROM THE EARLY SIXTIES, SIGNED BY THE CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE
RATHAUS
, THE COUNCIL … HELL, THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT, CITY HALL, WHATEVER. ANYWAY, THIS GUY HAD GONE DOWN INTO THE DRAINS AND TUNNELS BELOW THE OLD
GAUFORUM
TO SORT OUT A PROBLEM WITH THE CITY’S WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM AND HE FOUND AN INCREDIBLY COMPLEX MAZE OF GALLERIES, CAVITY WALLS, BRICKED-UP PASSAGEWAYS, SUPPLY PIPES WITHOUT A BEGINNING OR AN END, PROTECTIVE STEEL SHEETING, FALSE CEILINGS, SHAFTS WHICH HE COULDN’T MAKE SENSE OF, AND SO ON AND SO ON. HE SPENT SEVERAL DAYS EXPLORING THIS LABYRINTH AND ENDED UP CONVINCED THAT HE HADN’T SEEN THE HALF OF IT. HE HAPPENED TO MENTION IN HIS REPORT THAT HE HAD FOUND OUT THAT MUCH OF THIS TUNNELING HAD BEEN BUILT DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND THAT THE CONSTRUCTION WORK HAD BEEN CARRIED OUT - PAY ATTENTION NOW - BY SLAVE LABOR FROM THE NEARBY BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP.’