the Amber Room

'Where's McKoy?'

Paul heaved a deep breath. 'Took a bullet . . . so I could get to you. Last I saw he was . . . bleeding all over the Amber Room.'

'The Amber Room?'

'Long story. Not now.'

'I guess I'm going to have to take back all the nasty things I said about that big fool.'

'I guess you are,' a voice suddenly said from below.

She glanced over the rail. McKoy stumbled into the dim foyer, holding his bloodied left shoulder.

'Who's this?' he asked, pointing to the body.

'The bastard who killed my father,' Rachel called down.

'Seems that score's settled. Where's the woman?'

'Dead,' Paul said.

'Good fuckin' riddance.'

'Where's Loring?' Paul asked.

'I strangled the motherfucker.'

Paul winced from the pain. 'Good fuckin' riddance. You okay?'

'Nothin' a good surgeon can't fix.'

Paul managed a weak smile. He looked at Rachel. 'I think I'm beginning to like that guy.'

She smiled back, the first in a while. 'Me, too.'

EPILOGUE

St. Petersburg, Russia

September 2

Paul and Rachel stood at the front of a side chapel. Italian marble surrounded them in elegant tones of sienese yellow with Russian malachite intermixed. Slanting rays from the morning sun cast a towering iconostasis beyond the priest in a glinting hue of sparkling gold.

Brent stood to the left of his father, Marla beside her mother. The patriarch pronounced the marriage vows in a solemn voice, the occasion enhanced by a chanting choir. St. Isaac's Cathedral was empty except for the wedding party and Wayland McKoy. Paul's eyes were drawn to a stained-glass window centered in a wall of icons. Christ standing tall after the Resurrection. A new beginning. How appropriate, he thought.

The priest finished the vows and bowed his head as the service ended.

He gently kissed Rachel and whispered, 'I love you.'

'And I you,' she said.

'Ah, go ahead, Cutler, give her a good lip lock,' McKoy said.

He smiled, then took the advice, kissing Rachel passionately.

'Daddy,' Marla said, signaling enough.

'Leave 'em alone,' Brent said.

McKoy stepped forward. 'Smart kid. Which one of you he take after?'

Paul smiled. The big man looked strange in a suit and tie. The wound to McKoy's shoulder had apparently healed. He and Rachel had also recovered, the past three months something of a blinding whirlwind.

Within an hour of Knoll's death, Rachel had telephoned Fritz Pannik. It was the German inspector who arranged for the Czech police to immediately intervene, and Pannik himself arrived at Castle Loukov, with Europol, at daybreak. The Russian ambassador in Prague was summoned by midmorning, and officials from the Catherine Palace and Hermitage flew in the next afternoon. A team from Tsarskoe Selo arrived the following morning, and the Russians wasted no time dismantling the amber panels and transporting them back to St. Petersburg, the Czech government offering no resistance after learning the details of Ernst Loring's sordid activities.

Europol investigators quickly established a link to Franz Fellner. Documents at both Castle Loukov and Burg Herz confirmed the activities of the Retrievers of Lost Antiquities. With no heirs left to assume control of the Fellner estate, the German government intervened. Fellner's private collection was eventually located, and it took only a few more days for investigators to learn the identity of the remaining club members. Their estates were raided under guidance from Europol's art theft division.

The cache was enormous.

Sculptures, carvings, jewelry, drawings, and paintings, particularly old masters thought lost forever. Billions of dollars in stolen treasure were retrieved virtually overnight. But since Acquisitors looted only what had already been stolen, many claims of ownership were muddy at best, nonexistent at worst. The number of both governmental and private claims filed in courts scattered across Europe rose quickly into the thousands. So many that eventually a political solution was fashioned by the EC Parliament utilizing the World Court as final arbitrator. One journalist covering the spectacle observed that it would probably take decades before all the legal haggling was completed, 'lawyers the only real winners in the end.'

Interestingly, the Loring family's duplication of the Amber Room was so precise that the reconstructed panels fit perfectly back into the lacunae at the Catherine Palace. The initial thought was to display the recovered amber elsewhere and allow the newly restored room to remain. But Russian purists strongly argued that the amber should be returned to its rightful home--the home Peter the Great would have intended--though in actuality Peter cared little for the panels, his daughter, Empress Elizabeth, being the one who actually commissioned the Russian version of the room. So within ninety days of its discovery, the original Amber Room panels once again adorned the first floor of the Catherine Palace.

The Russian government was so grateful that Paul, Rachel, the children, and McKoy were invited to the official unveiling and flown over at government expense. While there, Paul and Rachel decided to remarry in the Orthodox church. There'd been a little initial resistance, given they were divorced. But once the circumstances had been explained, and the fact that they were remarrying each other made clear, the Church agreed. It had been a lovely ceremony. One he would remember for the rest of his life.

Paul thanked the priest and stepped from the altar.

'That was nice,' McKoy said. 'A good way to end all this shi--I mean, crap.'

Rachel smiled. 'Children cramp your style?'

'Just my vocabulary.'

They started walking toward the front of the cathedral.

'The Cutler family off to Minsk?' McKoy asked.

Paul nodded. 'One last thing to do, then home.'

Paul knew McKoy had come for the publicity, the Russian government grateful for the return of one of its most prized treasures. The big man had smiled and backslapped his way though the unveiling yesterday, enjoying the press attention. He'd even done the Larry King show live last evening by satellite, fielding questions from around the world. National Geographic was talking to him about a one-hour special on the Amber Room with a worldwide distribution, the money they'd mentioned enough to satisfy his investors and resolve any issue of litigation from the Stod dig.

They stopped at the main doors.

'You two take care of yourself,' McKoy said. He motioned to the children. 'And them.'

Rachel kissed him on the cheek. 'Did I ever thank you for what you did?'

'You'd have done the same for me.'

'Probably not.'

McKoy smiled. 'Any time, Your Honor.'

Paul shook McKoy's hand. 'Keep in touch, okay?'

'Oh, I'll probably need your services again before long.'

'Not another dig?' Paul said.

McKoy shrugged. 'Who knows? Still lots of shi--stuff--out there to find.'

The train left St. Petersburg two hours later, the journey south to Belarus a five-hour ride through dense