Berry, Steve - the Amber Room

The acquisition.

He bounded down the stairs, the words from the memo ringing in his ears.

Yantarnaya komnata.

The Amber Room.

NINE

Burg Herz, Germany

7:54 p.m.

Knoll stared out the window. His bedchamber occupied the upper reaches of the castle's west turret. The citadel belonged to his employer, Franz Fellner. It was a nineteenth-century reproduction, the original burned and sacked to the foundation by the French when they stormed through Germany in 1689.

Burg Herz, "Castle Heart," was an apt name, since the fortress rested nearly in the center of a unified Germany. Franz's father, Martin, acquired the building and surrounding forest after World War I, when the previous owner guessed wrong and backed the Kaiser. Knoll's bedroom, his home for the past eleven years, once served as the head steward's chambers. It was spacious, private, and equipped with a bath. The view below extended for kilometers and encompassed grassy meadows, the wooded heights of the Rothaar, and the muddy Eder flowing east to Kassel. The head steward had attended the senior Fellner every day for the last twenty years of Martin Fellner's life, the steward himself dying only a week after his master. Knoll had heard the gossip, all attesting they'd been more than employer and employee, but he'd never placed much merit in rumor.

He was tired. The last two months, without question, had been exhausting. A long trip to Africa, then a run through Italy, and finally Russia. He'd come a long way from a three-bedroom apartment in a government high-rise thirty kilometers north of Munich, his home until he was nineteen. His father was a factory worker, his mother a music teacher. Memories of his mother always evoked fondness. She was a Greek his father met during the war. He'd always called her by her first name, Amara, which meant "unfading," a perfect description. From her he inherited his sharp brow, pinched nose, and insatiable curiosity. She also hammered into him a passion for learning and named him Christian, as she was a devout believer.

His father molded him into a man, but that bitter fool also instilled a sense of anger. Jakob Knoll fought in Hitler's army as a fervent Nazi. To the end he supported the Reich. He was a hard man to love, but equally hard to ignore.

He turned from the window and glanced over at the nightstand beside the four-poster bed.

A copy of Hitler's Willing Executioners lay on top. The volume had caught his eye two months ago. One of a rash of books published lately on the psyche of the German people during the war. How did so many let such barbarism exist from so few? Were they willing participants, as the writer suggested? Hard to say about everyone. But his father was definitely one. Hate came easy to him. Like a narcotic. What was it he many times quoted from Hitler? I go the way Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.

And that was exactly what Hitler had done--straight to his downfall. Jakob Knoll likewise died bitter, twelve years after Amara succumbed to diabetes.

Knoll was eighteen and alone when his genius IQ led to a scholarship at the University of Munich. Humanities had always interested him, and during his senior year he earned a fellowship to Cambridge University in art history. He recalled with amusement the summer he fell in briefly with neo-Nazi sympathizers. At the time those groups were not nearly so vocal as today, outlawed as they were by the German government. But their unique look at the world hadn't interested him. Then or now. Nor had hate. Both were unprofitable and counterproductive.

Particularly when he found women of color so alluring.

He spent only a year at Cambridge before dropping out and hiring on to work for Nordstern Fine Art Insurance Limited in London as a claims adjuster. He recalled how quickly he made a name for himself after retrieving a Dutch master thought lost forever. The thieves called, demanding a ransom of twenty million pounds or the canvas would be burned. He could still see the shock on his superiors' faces when he flatly told the thieves to burn it. But they hadn't. He knew they wouldn't. And a month later he recovered the painting after the culprits, in desperation, tried to sell it back to the owner.

More successes came equally as easy.

Three hundred million dollars' worth of old Masters taken from a Boston museum found. A $12 million Jean-Baptiste Oudry, stolen in northern England from a private collector recovered. Two magnificent Turners filched from the Tate Gallery in London located in a ramshackle Parisian apartment.

Franz Fellner met him eleven years ago, when Nordstern dispatched him to do an inventory on Fellner's collection. Like any careful collector Fellner insured his known art assets, the ones that sometimes appeared in European art or American specialty magazines, the publicity a way to make a name for himself, spurring black marketeers to seek him out with truly valuable treasures. Fellner lured him away from Nordstern with a generous salary, a room at Burg Herz, and the excitement that came from stealing back some of humanity's greatest creations. He possessed a talent for searching, enjoying immensely the challenge of finding what people went to enormous lengths to hide. The women he came across were equally enticing. But killing particularly excited him. Was that his father's legacy? Hard to say. Was he sick? Depraved? Did he really care? No. Life was good.

Damn good.

He stepped away from the window and entered the bathroom. The oriel above the toilet was hinged open and cool evening air rid the tiles of moisture from his earlier shower. He studied himself in the mirror. The brown dye used the past couple of weeks was gone, his hair once again blond. Disguises were not his usual forte, but he'd deemed a change of look wise under the circumstances. He'd shaved while bathing, his tanned face smooth and clean. His face still carried a confident air, the image of a forthright man with strong tastes and convictions. He splashed a bit of cologne onto his neck and dried his skin with a towel, then slipped on his dinner jacket.

The telephone on the nightstand rang in the outer room. He crossed the bedchamber and answered before the third ring.

"I'm waiting," the female voice said.

"And patience is not one of your virtues?"

"Hardly."

"I'm on my way."

Knoll descended the spiral staircase. The narrow stone path wound clockwise, copied from a medieval design that forced invading right-handed swordsmen to battle the central turret as well as castle defenders. The castle complex was huge. Eight massive towers adorned with half timbers accommodated more than a hundred rooms. Mullion and dormer windows enlivened the outside and provided exquisite views of the rich forested valleys beyond. The towers were grouped in an octagon around a spacious inner courtyard. Four halls connected them, all the buildings topped by a steeply pitched slate roof that bore witness to harsh German winters.

He turned at the base of the stairs and followed a series of slate tiled corridors toward the chapel. Barrel vaults loomed overhead. Battle-axes, spears, pikes, visored helmets, suits of mail--all collectors' pieces--lined the way. He'd personally acquired the largest piece of armor, a knight standing nearly eight feet tall, from a woman in Luxembourg. Flemish tapestries adorned the walls, all originals. The lighting was soft and indirect, the rooms warm and dry.

An arched door at the far end opened out to a cloister. He exited and followed a breezeway to a pillared doorway. Three stone faces carved into the castle facade watched his steps. They were a remnant of the original seventeenth-century structure, their identities unknown, though one legend proclaimed them to be of the castle's master builder and two assistants, the men killed and walled into the stone so that they could never build another similar structure.