Berry, Steve - the Amber Room

"And keep me informed," Monika called out.

ELEVEN

Woodstock, England

10:45 p.m.

Suzanne Danzer sat up from the pillow. The twenty-year-old slept soundly beside her. She took a moment and studied his lean nakedness. The young man projected the assurance of a show horse. What a pleasure it had been screwing him.

She stood from the bed and crept across hardwood planks. The darkened bedroom was on the third floor of a sixteenth-century manor house, the estate owned by Audrey Whiddon. The old woman had served three terms in the House of Commons and eventually acquired the title of lady, purchasing the manor house at foreclosure after the previous owner defaulted on a minor mortgage. The elder Whiddon still sometimes visited, but Jeremy, her only grandson, was now its main resident.

How easy it had been to latch on to Jeremy. He was flighty and spirited, more interested in ale and sex than finance and profit. Two years at Oxford and already dropped twice for academic deficiencies. The old lady loved him dearly and used what influences she still retained to get the boy back in, hoping for no more disappointments, but Jeremy seemed unaccommodating.

Suzanne had been searching nearly two years for the last snuffbox. Four constituted the original collection. There was a gold box with a mosaic on the cover. An oval one trimmed with translucent green and red berries. Another fashioned of hard stone with silver mounts. And an enameled Turkish market box adorned with a scene of the Golden Horn. All were created in the nineteenth century by the same master craftsman--his mark distinctively etched into the bottom--and looted from a private collection in Belgium during World War II.

They were thought lost, melted for their gold, stripped of their jewels, the fate of many precious objects. But one surfaced five years ago at a London auction house. She'd been there and bought it. Her employer, Ernst Loring, was fascinated by the intricate workmanship of antique snuffboxes and possessed an extensive collection. Some legitimate, bought on the open market, but most covertly acquired from possessors like Audrey Whiddon. The box bought at auction had generated an ensuing court battle with the heirs of the original owner. Loring's legal representatives finally won, but the fight was costly and public, her employer harboring no desire of a repeat. So the acquisition of the remaining three was delegated to her surreptitious acquiring.

Suzanne had found the second in Holland, the third in Finland, the fourth quite unexpectedly when Jeremy tried to peddle it at another auction house, unknown to his grandmother. The alert auctioneer had recognized the piece and, knowing that he couldn't sell it, profited when she paid him ten thousand pounds to learn its whereabouts. She possessed many such sources at auction houses all over the world, people who kept their eyes open for stolen treasure, things they couldn't legally handle but could sell all too easily.

She finished dressing and combed her hair.

Fooling Jeremy had been easy. Like always, her fashion-model features, saucer-round azure eyes, and trim body played well. All masked a mien of controlled calm and made her appear as something other than what she was, something not to be feared, something easy to master and contain. Men quickly felt comfortable with her, and she'd learned that beauty could be a far better weapon than bullets or blades.

She tiptoed from the bedroom and down a wooden staircase, careful to minimize the squeaks. Dainty Elizabethan stencils decorated the towering walls. She'd once imagined living in a similar house with a husband and children. But that was before her father taught her the value of independence and the price of dedication. He'd also worked for Ernst Loring, dreaming one day of buying his own estate. But he never realized that ambition, dying in a plane crash eleven years ago. She'd been twenty-five years old, just out of college, yet Loring never hesitated, immediately allowing her to succeed her father. She'd learned her craft on the job and quickly discovered that she, like her father, instinctively possessed the ability to search, and she greatly enjoyed the chase.

She turned at the bottom of the stairs, slipped through the dining hall, and entered an oak-paneled piano room. The windows highlighting the adjacent grounds loomed dark, the white Jacobean ceiling muted. She approached the table and reached for the snuffbox.

Number four.

It was eighteen-carat gold, the hinged cover enameled en plein with an impregnation of Danae by Jupiter in a shower of even more gold. She drew the tiny box close and gazed at the image of the plump Danae. How had men once believed such obesity attractive? But apparently they had, since they found the need to fantasize that their gods desired such a butterball. She flipped the box over and traced her fingernail over the initials.

B. N.

Its craftsman.

She yanked a cloth from the pocket of her jeans. The case, less than four inches long, easily dissolved into its crimson folds. She stuffed the bundle into her pocket and then crossed the ground floor to the den.

Growing up on the Loring estate came with obvious advantages. A fine home, the best tutors, access to art and culture. Loring made sure the Danzer family was well cared for. But the isolation of Castle Lou-kov deprived her of childhood friends. Her mother died when she was three, and her father traveled constantly. It was Loring who took the time with her, and books became her trusted companions. She read once that the Chinese symbolized books with the power to ward off evil spirits. And for her they did. Stories became her escape. Particularly English literature. Marlowe's tragedies on kings and potentates, the poetry of Dryden, Locke's essays, Chaucer's tales, Malory's Morte d'Arthur .

Earlier, when Jeremy had shown her around the ground floor, she'd noticed one particular book in the library. Casually, she'd slipped the leather volume from the shelf and found the expected garish swastika bookplate inside, the inscription reading: EX LIBRIS ADOLF HITLER. Two thousand of Hitler's books, all from his personal library, had been hastily evacuated from Berchtesgaden and stashed in a nearby salt mine just days before the end of the war. American soldiers later found them, and they were eventually cataloged into the Library of Congress. But some were stolen before that happened. Several had turned up through the years. Loring owned none, desiring no reminders of the horror of Nazism, but he knew other collectors who did.

She slipped the book off the shelf. Loring would be pleased with this added treasure.

She turned to leave.

Jeremy stood naked in the darkened doorway.

"Is it the same one you looked at before?" he asked. "Grandmother has so many books. She'll not miss one."

She approached close and quickly decided to use her best weapon. "I enjoyed tonight."

"So did I. You didn't answer my question."

She gestured with the book. "Yes. It's the same one."

"You require it?"

"I do."

"Will you come back?"

A strange question considering the situation, but she realized what he truly wanted. So she reached down and grasped him where she knew he could not resist. He instantly responded to her gentle strokes. "Perhaps," she said.

"I saw you in the piano room. You're not some woman who just got out of a bad marriage, are you?"

"Does it matter, Jeremy? You enjoyed yourself." She continued to stroke him. "You're enjoying yourself now, aren't you?"

He sighed.

"And everything here is your grandmother's anyway. What do you care?"

"I don't."

She released her hold. His organ stood at attention. She kissed him gently on the lips. "I'm sure we'll be seeing one another again." She brushed past him and headed for the front door.