forests and sloping fields of blue flax. Autumn had arrived, and the leaves had surrendered to the chill in bursts of red, orange, and yellow.
Russian officials had intervened with Belarussian authorities to make everything possible. Karol and Maya Borya's caskets had arrived the day before, flown over by special arrangement. Rachel knew that her father wanted to be buried back in his homeland, but she wanted her parents together. Now they would be, in Belarussian soil, forever.
The caskets were waiting at the Minsk train station. They were then trucked to a lovely cemetery forty kilometers west of the capital, as near as possible to where Karol and Maya Borya had been born. The Cutler family followed the flatbed in a rental car, a United States envoy with them to make sure everything went smoothly.
The patriarch of Belarus himself presided at the private reburial, Rachel, Paul, Marla, and Brent standing together as solemn words were said. A light breeze eased across brown grass as the coffins were lowered into the ground.
'Say good-bye to your papa and nana,' Rachel told the children.
She handed each a sliver of blue flax. The children stepped to the open graves and tossed down the buds. Paul came close and held her. Her eyes teared. She noticed that Paul's were watery, too. They'd never spoken about what happened that night in Castle Loukov. Thankfully, Knoll had never finished what he started. Paul risked his life to stop him. She loved her husband. The priest this morning cautioned them both that marriage was for life, something to be taken seriously, especially with children involved. And he was right. Of that she was sure.
She approached the graves. She'd said good-bye to her mother nearly a quarter century ago.
'Bye, Daddy.'
Paul stood behind her. 'Good-bye, Karol. Rest in peace.'
They stood for a little while in silence, then thanked the patriarch and started for the car. A hawk soared overhead in the clear afternoon. A breeze rolled past them, neutralizing the sun. The children trotted ahead toward the gate.
'Back to work, huh?' she said to Paul.
'Time to get reacquainted with real life.'
She'd won reelection in July, though she'd done almost no campaigning, the aftermath and attention from the recovery of the Amber Room springboarding a victory over two opponents. Marcus Nettles had been crushed, but she'd made a point to visit the cantankerous lawyer and make peace, part of her new attitude of reconciliation.
'You think I ought to stay on the bench?' she asked.
'That's your call, not mine.'
'I was thinking maybe it's not such a good idea. It takes too much of my attention.'
'You have to do what makes you happy,' Paul said.
'I used to think being a judge made me happy. But I'm not so sure anymore.'
'I know a firm that would love to have an ex-superior court judge in its litigation department.'
'And that wouldn't be Pridgen and Woodworth, would it?'
'Maybe. I have some pull there, you know.'
She wrapped her arm around his waist as they continued to walk. It felt good to be near him. For a few moments they strolled in silence and she savored her contentment. She thought about her future, the children, and Paul. Practicing law again might be just the thing for them all. Pridgen & Woodworth would be an excellent place to work. She looked over at Paul and heard again what he'd just said.
So she hugged him hard and, for once, didn't argue.
WRITER'S NOTE
In researching this novel I traveled throughout Germany, to Austria and Mauthausen concentration camp, then finally to Moscow and St. Petersburg where I spent several days at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. Of course, the primary goal of a novel is to entertain, but I also wanted to accurately inform. The subject of the Amber Room is relatively unexplored in this country, though the Internet has recently started to fill that void. In Europe, the artifact holds an endless fascination. Since I do not speak German or Russian, I was forced to rely on English- version accounts of what may or may not have happened. Unfortunately, a careful study of those reports reveals conflicts in the facts. The consistent points are presented within the course of the narrative. The inconsistent details were either disregarded or modified to suit my fictional needs.
A few specific items: Prisoners at Mauthausen were tortured in the manner depicted. However, Hermann Goring never appeared there. Goring and Hitler's personal competition for looted art is well documented, as is Goring's obsession with the Amber Room, though there is no evidence he ever attempted to actually possess it. The Soviet commission for which Karol Borya and Danya Chapaev supposedly worked was real and actively sought looted Russian art for years after the war, the Amber Room at the top of its wanted list. Some say there is, in fact, a curse of the Amber Room, as several have died (as detailed in chapter 41) in the search--whether by coincidence or conspiracy is unknown. The Harz Mountains were extensively used by the Nazis to hide plunder, and the information described in chapter 42 is accurate, including the tombs found. The town of Stod is fictional, but the location, along with the abbey that overlooks it, is based on Melk in Austria, a truly impressive place. All the stolen art detailed at various points in the story is real and remains among the missing. Finally, the speculation, history, and contradictions about what may have happened to the Amber Room noted in chapters 13, 14, 28, 41, 44, and 48, including a possible Czech connection, are based on actual reports, though my resolution of the mystery is fictional.
The Amber Room's disappearance in 1944 was a tremendous loss. At present, the room is being restored at the Catherine Palace by modern-day artisans who are laboring to re-create, panel by panel, magnificent walls crafted entirely of amber. I was fortunate to spend a few hours with the chief restorer, who showed me the difficulty of the endeavor. Luckily, the Soviets photographed the room in the late 1930s, planning on a restoration in the 1940s--but of course, war interfered. Those black-and-white images now act as a map for the re-creation of what was first fashioned more than 250 years ago.
The chief restorer also provided me with his insight into what may have happened to the original panels. He believed, as many others do (and as postulated in chapter 51), that the amber was either totally destroyed in the war or, like gold and other precious metals and jewels, the amber itself commanded the greatest market worth. It was simply found and sold off piece by piece, the sum of its parts far greater in value than the whole. Like gold, amber can be reshaped, leaving no trace of its former configuration, so it is possible that jewelry and other amber objects sold throughout the world today may contain amber from that original room.
But, who knows?
As Robert Browning was quoted saying in the narrative:
How true.
And how sad.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright (c) 2003 by Steve Berry
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
