couldn't you leave it alone? Let the matter die. How many more have you corresponded with? My employer does not desire to take any more chances. Borya's gone. The other searchers are gone. You are all that's left.'
'You killed Karol, didn't you?'
'Actually, no. Herr Knoll beat me to it.'
'Rachel does not know?'
'Apparently not.'
'That poor child, the danger she is in.'
'Her problem, Comrade, as I have said.'
'I expect you to kill me. In some ways I welcome it. But please let the boy go. He cannot identify you. He does not speak Russian. He understood nothing we have said. Certainly that's not your actual appearance. The boy could never help the police.'
'You know I cannot do that.'
He lunged toward her, but muscles that perhaps once scaled cliffs and shimmied out of buildings had atrophied with age and disease. She easily sidestepped his meaningless attempt.
'There is no need for this, Comrade.'
He fell to his knees. 'Please. I beg you in the name of the Virgin Mary, let the boy go. He deserves a life.' Chapaev hinged his body forward and pressed his face tight to the floor. 'Poor Julius,' he muttered through tears. 'Poor, poor Julius.'
She aimed the gun at the back of Chapeav's skull and considered his request.
'
TWENTY-NINE
'Weren't you a little rough on him?' Rachel said.
They were speeding north on the autobahn, Kehlheim and Danya Chapaev an hour south. She was driving. Knoll had said he'd take over in a little while and navigate the twisting roads through the Harz Mountains.
He glanced up from the sketch Chapaev had drawn. 'You must understand, Rachel, I have been doing this many years. People lie far more than they tell the truth. Chapaev says the Amber Room rests in one of the Harz caves. That theory has been explored a thousand times. I pushed to be sure if he was being truthful.'
'He appeared sincere.'
'I am suspicious that, after all these years, the treasure is simply waiting at the end of a dark tunnel.'
'Didn't you say there are hundreds of tunnels and most haven't been explored? Too dangerous, right?'
'That's correct. But I am familiar with the general area Chapaev describes. I have searched caves there myself.'
She told him about Wayland McKoy and the ongoing expedition.
'Stod is only forty kilometers from where we will be,' Knoll said. 'Lots of caves there, as well, supposedly full of loot. If you believe what the treasure hunters say.'
'You don't?'
'I have learned that anything worth having is usually already owned. The real hunt is for those who possess it. You would be surprised how many missing treasures are simply lying on a table in somebody's bedroom or hanging on the wall, as free as a trinket bought in a department store. People think time protects them. It doesn't. Back in the 1960s, a Monet was found in a farmhouse by a tourist. The owner had taken it in exchange for a pound of butter. Stories like that are endless, Rachel.'
'That what you do? Search for those opportunities?'
'Along with other quests.'
They drove on, the terrain flattening and then rising as the highway crossed central Germany and veered northwest into mountains. After a stop on the side of the road, Rachel moved to the passenger seat. Knoll pulled the car back on the highway. 'These are the Harz. The northernmost mountains in central Germany.'
The peaks were not the towering snowy precipices of the Alps. Instead the slopes rose at gentle angles, rounded at the top, covered in fir, beech, and walnut trees. Towns and villages were nestled throughout in tiny valleys and wide ravines. Off in the distance the silhouette of even higher peaks were visible.
'Reminds me of the Appalachians,' she said.
'This is the land of Grimm,' Knoll said. 'The kingdom of magic. In the Dark Ages, it was one of the final venues for paganism. Fairies, witches, and goblins were supposed to roam out there. It is said the last bear and lynx in Germany were killed somewhere nearby.'
'It's gorgeous,' she said.
'Silver used to be mined here, but that stopped in the tenth century. Then came gold, lead, zinc, and barium oxide. The last mine closed before the war in the 1930s. That's where most of the caves and tunnels came from. Old mines the Nazis made good use of. Perfect hiding places from bombers, and tough for ground troops to invade.'
She watched the winding road ahead and thought about Knoll's mention of the Brothers Grimm. She half expected to see the goose that laid the golden egg, or the two black stones that were once cruel brothers, or the Pied Piper luring rats and children with a tune.
An hour later they entered Warthberg. The dark outline of a bulwark wall encased the compact village, softened only by arching tresses and conical-roofed bastions. The architectural difference from the south was obvious. The red roofs and timeworn ramparts of Kehlheim were replaced with half-timbered facades sheathed in dull slate. Fewer flowers adorned the windows and the houses. There was a definite glow of medieval color, but it seemed tempered by a shellac of self-consciousness. Not a whole lot different, she concluded, from the contrast between New England and the Deep South.
Knoll parked in front of an inn with the interesting name of Goldene Krone. 'Golden Crown,' he told her before disappearing inside. She waited outside and studied the busy street. An air of commercialism sprang from the shop windows lining the cobbled lane. Knoll returned a few minutes later.
'I obtained two rooms for the night. It is nearly five o'clock, and daylight will last another five or six hours. But we'll head up into the hills in the morning. No rush. It has waited fifty years.'
'It stays daylight that long around here?'
'We're halfway to the arctic circle, and it is almost summer.'
Knoll lifted both their bags out of the rental. 'I'll get you settled, then there are a few things I need to buy. After, we can have dinner. I noticed a place driving in.'
'That'd be nice,' she said.
Knoll left Rachel in her room. He'd noticed the yellow phone booth driving in and quickly retraced a path back toward the town wall. He didn't like using hotel room phones. Too much record keeping. The same was true for mobile phones. An obscure pay booth was always safer for a quick long-distance call. Inside, he dialed Burg Herz.
'About time. What's going on?' Monika asked as she answered the phone.
'I am trying to find the Amber Room.'
'Where are you?'
'Not far away.'
'I'm in no mood, Christian.'
'The Harz Mountains. Warthberg.' He told her about Rachel Cutler, Danya Chapaev, and the cave.
'We've heard this before,' Monika said. 'Those mountains are like ant mounds, and nobody has ever found a damn thing.'
'I have a map. What could it hurt?'
'You want to screw her, don't you?'
'The thought crossed my mind.'
'She's learning a bit too much, wouldn't you say?'
'Nothing of any consequence. I had no choice but to take her along. I assumed Chapaev would be more at ease with Borya's daughter than with me.'
