The Other Side of Silence

Koch took the necklace from my hand, wrapped it in a sheet of tissue paper from the same drawer like a local shopkeeper-evidently he’d done this kind of thing before-and then placed the object in my tunic pocket, as if he would brook no argument against his gift.

“Do you feel trapped, Captain Gunther?” he asked. “Like that insect?”

“A little, sometimes,” I said carefully. I hadn’t forgotten Hennig’s words of caution about defeatism and the gauleiter’s predilection for hanging defeatists from the city’s lampposts. “Who doesn’t? But I’m sure it’s just temporary, sir. We’ll break out of this encirclement before very long. Everyone thinks so.”

“Exactly. Before the light there must first be the darkness. Is it not so? And now let me show you something else.”

Koch led the way out of the library and into the hall, which seemed to have more antlers on display than a Saxon deer park-not to mention the whole arsenal of musketry that had probably put them there. As we walked across a marble checkerboard floor I felt as if I were a pawn about to make a move with which I strongly disagreed. I ought to have walked through the front door and all the way back to Paradeplatz. Instead I followed Koch to a door where a suit of Gothic armor stared at me with slit-eyed, steely disapproval. I should have been used to that, having once worked for General Heydrich.

We went down two flights to the basement and into an enormous darkened room where he struggled to find the light switch.

“Here, sir,” said Hennig, “let me.”

A few seconds later I was looking at a series of decorative panels, each of them half a meter in height, that were arranged along the room’s walls. Some of these panels had imperial crowns and a large letter R on them, while others depicted hunting scenes; there were also ornate carvings-entwined imperial eagles, classical warriors, more imperial crowns, and mermen holding dolphins; and all of them made of amber. Frankly, there was a little too much amber in there for my taste; about a ton of the stuff. It was like being inside an enormous beer bottle.

“Tell me, Captain Gunther, have you heard of the Amber Room?”

“No, sir.”

“Really? The famous Amber Room that was a gift from King Frederick William the First to his then ally, Tsar Peter the Great?”

I shrugged, hardly caring if Erich Koch thought me ignorant. I thought he was an outrageous crook who probably deserved to hang, and his opinion on anything-least of all my knowledge of amber and Russian history-mattered not in the least.

“Russians weren’t so bad then, I guess,” I said.

“That was before Communism,” said Koch, as if I were the one German who might have forgotten 1917.

“Yes, it was.”

“Well then, let’s see. In 1701 Peter installed these magnificent panels in a special room in the Catherine Palace near present-day Leningrad, where they stayed until we liberated them a few years ago and brought them here to Gross Friedrichsberg. When it was still at the palace, the room was often described as the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

I tried to look impressed, although my own opinion was that this wide-eyed, lazy description of the Amber Room must have been given by people who didn’t get out very much. I was getting a little tired of Koch’s reverence for the orange stuff, so I decided to hurry things along.

“Sir, might I ask what all this has to do with me?”

“You’re going to help us get these priceless artifacts back to Berlin, where they belong.”

“Me? How? I don’t understand.”

“Don’t worry,” said Koch. “We weren’t thinking of making you hide them under your coat, Captain. No, we had something else in mind. Didn’t we, Harold? Something a little more sophisticated.”

“We’re going to load them on a refugee ship that’s due to leave the port of Gotenhafen in a few days’ time,” said Hennig. “The MS Wilhelm Gustloff. As you probably know, many of those ships are frequently targets for Russian submarines from the Baltic fleet operating out of the Finnish port of Hangoe. We thought it might help to guarantee the safety of both passengers and panels if the Russian navy was informed that one of their most important national treasures-which we may have to trade back one day-is on board that same ship.”

“They might be rather less inclined to sink it,” said Koch, as if I might have failed to understand.

“Informed? How? By postcard? Or would you like me to drive to the front and give them a letter?”

Hennig smiled. “Well, that would be one way. But we were rather hoping you might persuade that sweetheart of yours-the little lightning maid-to put out an unencrypted signal on an open frequency informing the Russians, indirectly, of the presence of the Amber Room on board the Wilhelm Gustloff.”

“Really,” said Koch, “when you stop and think about it, this would be to the advantage of everyone.”

“Persuade her? How? What am I supposed to tell her?”

“Only what we’ve told you.”