Berry, Steve - the Amber Room

"None." Caproni backed toward the foyer and gestured again with the gun. "This way, Signor Knoll."

He wrapped his fingers tight on the handle and rolled his wrist forward. One flick, and the blade zoomed across the room, piercing Caproni's bare chest in the hairy V formed by the robe. The older man heaved, stared down at the handle, then fell forward, his gun clattering across the terrazzo.

He quickly deposited the match case into the felt bag, then stepped across to the body. He withdrew the stiletto and checked for a pulse. None. Surprising. The man died fast.

But his aim had been true.

He cleaned the blood off on the robe, slid the blade into his back pocket, then mounted the stairs to the second floor. More faux marble panels lined the upper foyer, periodically interrupted by paneled doors, all closed. He stepped lightly across the floor and headed toward the rear of the house. A closed door waited at the far end of the hall.

He turned the knob and entered.

A pair of marble columns defined an alcove where a king-size poster bed rested. A low-wattage lamp burned on the nightstand, the light absorbed by a symphony of walnut paneling and leather. The room was definitely a rich man's bedroom.

The woman sitting on the edge of the bed was naked. Long, dramatic red hair framed a pair of pyramid-like breasts and exquisite almond-shaped eyes. She was puffing on a thin black-and-gold cigarette and gave him only a disconcerting glance. "And who are you?" she quietly asked in Italian.

"A friend of Signor Caproni's." He stepped into the bedchamber and casually closed the door.

She finished the cigarette, stood, and strutted close, her thin legs taking deliberate strides. "You're dressed strangely for a friend. You look more like a burglar."

"And you seem unconcerned."

She shrugged. "Strange men are my business. Their needs are no different from anyone else's." Her gaze raked him from head to toe. "You have a wicked gleam in your eyes. German, no?"

He said nothing.

She massaged his hands through the leather gloves. "Powerful." She traced his chest and shoulders. "Muscles." She was close now, her erect nipples nearly touching his chest. "Where is the signor?"

"Detained. He suggested I might enjoy your company."

She looked at him, hunger in her eyes. "Do you have the capabilities of the signor?"

"Monetary or otherwise?"

She smiled. "Both."

He took the whore in his arms. "We shall see."

EIGHT

St. Petersburg, Russia

10:50 a.m.

The cab jerked to a stop and Knoll stepped out onto busy Nevsky Prospekt, paying the driver with two twenty-dollar bills. He wondered what happened to the ruble. It wasn't much better than play money anymore. The Russian government openly banned the use of dollars years ago on pain of imprisonment, but the cabdriver didn't seem to care, eagerly demanding and pocketing the bills before whipping the taxi away from the curb.

His flight from Innsbruck had touched down at Pulkovo Airport an hour ago. He'd shipped the match case from Innsbruck overnight to Germany with a note of his success in northern Italy. Before he too returned to Germany, there was one last errand to be performed.

The prospekt was packed with people and cars. He studied the green dome of Kazan Cathedral across the street and turned to spy the gilded spire of the distant Admiralty off to the right, partially obscured by a morning fog. He imagined the boulevard's past, when traffic was all horse-drawn and prostitutes arrested during the night swept the cobbles clean. What would Peter the Great think now of his "window to Europe"? Department stores, cinemas, restaurants, museums, shops, art studios, and cafes lined the busy five-kilometer route. Flashing neon and elaborate kiosks sold everything from books to ice cream and heralded the rapid advance of capitalism. What had Somerset Maugham described? Dingy and sordid and dilapidated.

Not anymore, he thought.

Change was the reason he was able to even come to St. Petersburg. The privilege of scouring old Soviet records had been extended to outsiders only recently. He'd made two previous trips this year--one six months ago, another two months back--both to the same depository in St. Petersburg, the building he now entered for the third time.

It was five stories with a rough-hewn stone facade, grimy from engine exhaust. The St. Petersburg Commercial Bank operated a busy branch out of one part of the ground floor, and Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, filled the rest. The first through third and fifth floors were all austere government offices: Visa and Foreign Citizen's Registration Department, Export Control, and the regional Agricultural Ministry. The fourth floor was devoted exclusively to a records depository. One of many scattered throughout the country, it was a place where the remnants of seventy-five years of Communism could be stored and safely studied.

Yeltsin had opened the documents to the world through the Russian Archival Committee, a way for the learned to preach his message of anti-Communism. Clever, actually. No need to purge the ranks, fill the gulags, or rewrite history as Khrushchev and Brezhnev managed. Just let historians uncover the multitude of atrocities, thievery, and espionage--secrets hidden for decades under tons of rotting paper and fading ink. Their eventual writings would be more than enough propaganda to serve the needs of the state.

He climbed black iron stairs to the fourth floor. They were narrow in the Soviet style, indicating to the knowledgeable, like himself, that the building was post-revolutionary. A call yesterday from Italy informed him that the depository would be open until 3:00 P.M. He'd visited this one and four others in southern Russia. This facility was unique, since a photocopier was available.

On the fourth floor a battered wooden door opened into a stuffy space, its pale green walls peeling from a lack of ventilation. There was no ceiling, only pipes and ducts caked in asbestos crisscrossing beneath the brittle concrete of the fifth floor. The air was cool and moist. A strange place to house supposedly precious documents.

He stepped across gritty tile and approached a solitary desk. The same clerk with wispy brown hair and a horsy face waited. He'd concluded last time the man to be an involuted, self-depreciating, nouveau Russian bureaucrat. Typical. Hardly a difference from the old Soviet version.

"Dobriy den," he said, adding a smile.

"Good day," the clerk replied.

In Russian, he stated, "I need to study the files."

"Which ones?" An irritating smile accompanied the inquiry, the same look he recalled from two months before.

"I'm sure you remember me."

"I thought your face familiar. The Commission records, correct?"

The clerk's attempt at coyness was a failure. " Da. Commission records."

"Would you like me to retrieve them?"

" Nyet. I know where they are. But thank you for your kindness."

He excused himself and disappeared among metal shelves brimming with rotting cardboard boxes, the stale air heavily scented with dust and mildew. He knew a variety of records surrounded him, many an overflow from the nearby Hermitage, most from a fire years ago in the local Academy of Sciences. He remembered the incident well. "The Chernobyl of our culture," the Soviet press labeled the event. But he'd wondered how unintentional the disaster may have been. Things always had a convenient tendency of disappearing at just the right moment in the USSR, and the reformed Russia was hardly any better.

He perused the shelves, trying to recall where he left off last time. It could take years to finish a thorough review of everything. But he remembered two boxes in particular. He'd run out of time on his last visit before getting to them, the depository having closed early for International Women's Day.