فصل 53

florian

I crouched near the cathedral altar, carefully watching the Polish girl. She was looking for me. When she turned her head I made my move, quickly darting to the small entry. I crawled inside and pressed my back against the tiny door to keep anyone from entering. As a small boy in Tilsit, I once found my way inside the pipe organ of a local church. It was a perfect hiding spot. The organ was my target as soon as I saw the cathedral. Adults wouldn’t bother me, only bored children who might be exploring.

The cramped space left little room to move, but I didn’t care. I was alone, out of the cold, and one step closer to completing my mission. I watched the group from behind the pipes. The Polish girl’s pink hat bobbed like a candy egg amidst hundreds of gray faces all so tired and drawn, they looked like boiled meat. The nurse continually scanned the cathedral. Was she looking for those who might need help? Was she looking for food? Or maybe, was she looking for me? I tried not to care.

Protected by privacy, I was finally able to open my pack. I took out the art supplies and my notebook. The small box was undisturbed. Had Dr. Lange peeked in the crate yet? At times, to fuel his artistic euphoria, Dr. Lange would open a crate to admire a panel from the precious Amber Room, savoring the experience as others would enjoy a vintage bottle of brandy. Initially, I was so impressed by his emotional reaction. I thought it was passion for art. It wasn’t. It was greed and power that excited him in a perverse way.

Originally created in Prussia and gifted to Peter the Great, the Amber Room was a glittering chamber of amber, jewels, gold, and mirrors. In 1941, the Nazis stole it from the Catherine Palace in Pushkin, near Leningrad. Packed into twenty-seven crates, the Amber Room was the culmination of Hitler’s artistic dreams. He carefully strategized its safekeeping and after much deliberation the twenty-seven crates were secretly shipped to the castle museum in K?nigsberg.

Dr. Lange was responsible for its protection.

I worked for Dr. Lange.

Some in the art world claimed the Amber Room carried a curse. Dr. Lange wouldn’t hear of that. He said the Amber Room was the greatest of the world’s treasures. I was the only one he trusted to touch the treasure. He gave me special tailored gloves, fitted to my fingers.

“Can you even comprehend what we have here, Florian?” Lange’s breath fluttered while admiring the sparkling jewels amidst the golden stones.

As the Russian forces approached, Dr. Lange assured me that moving the twenty-seven crates containing the Amber Room meant preserving the riches of the Reich. In reality, he and Koch had plans of their own. They were hiding the room for themselves and, in the process, implicating me in the biggest heist of all time. It was calculated and clever, putting an unknowing young apprentice in the middle to blame later, if necessary.

When we sealed the crates to move them, I noticed that one was unlike the others.

“Why is this crate marked differently?” I had asked Lange.

He was all too eager to tell me. “Inside that one,” he breathed, “is another very small box. It contains the crown jewel of the Amber Room.”

“What is it?”

“A tiny amber swan.” Lange put his hand to his chest, practically over his heart. “It is the Führer’s most favorite.”

We dug a secret bunker deep beneath the castle and locked the crates inside. I then painted the stone floor above the cellar to look aged. The door to the cellar was undetectable.

But I knew where it was.

I also had the key.

• • •

Hidden behind the organ, I carefully pulled the lid from the small wooden box and removed the top layer of straw. Even in the low light, the amber swan glistened and shimmered. People had fought for it, killed for it, died for it.

And I had it.

Had Dr. Lange gone looking for the key? Had he discovered my betrayal?

I carefully arranged the straw over the swan and slid the top of the small crate back into place. The key was my revenge against Lange. But the tiny crate with the swan was more important.

It held my revenge against Hitler.