The Amber Knight (11 page)

‘The river must flow under the building.’ Elizbieta reeled back as Adam entered the apartment.

‘The poor little thing.’ Magdalena stooped down beside the corpse of a kitten. Skeletally thin, its fur writhed with spirals of maggots. ‘How could anyone have left it?’

‘Perhaps Krefta didn’t realise it was locked in.’ Adam looked around. The room was a reasonable size but it was crammed with rubbish and mouldering furniture. A single, small window was set in the wall opposite the door. In front of it a table held piles of papers and the remains of a greyish, rock-hard slice of bread. A rickety, worm-eaten chair stood next to the table and another had been placed in front of a dust-coated work bench in the corner. A sagging sofa covered with blankets, so blackened with ingrained dirt it was difficult to see what colour they had originally been, filled the space in between. The threadbare mats on the concrete floor felt spongy underfoot. Adam almost expected to hear a squelch as he tip-toed to the window. There were only two doors, the one they had entered by and another that opened into a cupboard-sized, filthy bathroom that contained a grimy toilet pan without a seat and a chipped and cracked sink. The smell was even more overpowering in there than the living room, which suggested its origins lay in more than the decomposing kitten. Adam turned to see Magdalena covering the tiny corpse with one of the blankets. Elizbieta was examining the work bench.

‘If these are Krefta’s tools it’s no wonder he hasn’t exhibited in years. No amber-smith worth his salt would attempt to work with this junk.’ Elizbieta held up a cutter blackened with neglect and eaten by rust. ‘There are some amber nuggets too.’

‘A lot?’ Adam asked, thinking of the missing shipment.

‘Not enough to keep the average workshop going for a day.’ She picked up one of the pieces. ‘The quality’s appalling, the sort of thing beginners are given to practise on.’

Adam kicked aside the debris of rags and rubbish that littered the floor, sifting through it patiently with his foot, too fastidious to touch it with his fingers.

‘What are you looking for?’ Magdalena asked.

‘Something that might indicate where he’s gone and when he left.’

She rose to her feet and looked behind the door. ‘There’s a small key hanging on a nail that might open his mail box.’

‘I’ll go,’ Elizbieta took it from her. ‘If anyone stopped either of you, you wouldn’t have a clue whether they were offering you a good time or asking the time of day.’

Steeling himself against the smell, Adam returned to the bathroom. On a shelf behind the door he found a piece of cracked, dried, red soap, an old jam jar filled with water and a pair of hideous, grinning false teeth. ‘He left his teeth behind.’ He showed them to Magdalena.

‘There’s an old bus ticket here.’ Magdalena continued to sift through the papers piled on the table. ‘But there’s no passport, no identity card…’

‘And not even circulars in the mail box.’ Elizbieta closed the door behind her.

‘Looks like your Mr Krefta doesn’t believe in the principles of basic hygiene.’ Adam flushed the toilet in an attempt to alleviate the smell.

‘I think moving the cat out might do more than that,’ Elizbieta suggested.

‘We should bury it.’

‘Under the rubbish in here is as good a place as any.’

‘I meant outside,’ Magdalena broke in, unimpressed by Adam’s attempt at humour.

‘I’m not touching that cat,’ Elizbieta announced firmly.

‘Adam.’ Magdalena looked expectantly at him.

‘Be practical, there’s nowhere to bury it in this concrete jungle.’

‘Then we’ll take it to the forest.’

‘I’m not getting into the same car as a dead cat,’ Elizbieta snapped.

‘We can’t leave the poor thing lying here,’ Magdalena insisted.

‘My mother says I’m too easy-going for my own good.’ Folding the blanket around the pathetic remains, Adam lifted it from the floor. ‘Open the door.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Magdalena offered.

‘There are some things a man should do alone.’ Negotiating the maze of corridors to the outside he abandoned the blanket on top of a bank of rubbish bins.

‘What did you do with it?’ Magdalena demanded when he returned, hands outstretched and made a bee-line for the bathroom.

‘What’s the difference?’ Adam had always thought of Magdalena as a hard-headed woman. Hardly the type to turn sentimental over a dead cat.

‘I hate to think of a corpse, any corpse, left lying in the open to be kicked around.’

‘Do you realise you’re talking about a cat?’ Elizbieta was already at the door. ‘I’ve had enough of this place. You two coming?’

‘As soon as I can raise lather on this damned soap,’ Adam answered.

‘Break a piece off,’ Magdalena advised. ‘It will be softer inside.’

‘Westerners, they’ve never had to cope with poverty or shortages,’ Elizbieta sneered, giving Magdalena a conspiratorial glance.

‘Oh shit!’

‘Give up, Adam. I doubt even a dead cat carries enough germs to kill.’

‘This damned soap has just sliced my palm.’

‘Not even Russian soap can do that.’ Magdalena went to the bathroom door and saw blood seeping out of a cut in Adam’s hand. ‘Let me look at it.’

‘It’s nothing.’ Avoiding her eye, he wrapped his bloody hand, still clutching the soap in tissues before thrusting it into his trouser pocket. ‘There’s a first-aid kit in the car. Let’s go.’

The return journey was swifter than the drive to Kaliningrad. Even the border crossing took only thirty minutes. While Elizbieta dozed fitfully in the back, Magdalena continued to immerse herself in her book and maps.

Adam broke the journey at the same clearing outside Frombork. Leaving Elizbieta and Magdalena the remains of the hamper, he walked into the forest in an effort to clear his lungs and head, of the stench of Kaliningrad. Crunching stale bread and warm salami, his thoughts turned to the hot savoury soups, sauces and meats in the Milan. Overwhelmed by a sudden desire for the familiar streets of Gdansk he tossed aside the remains of his roll, picked up the hamper, ordered the girls back into the car and climbed into the driving seat.

As they moved out of the lay-by he caught sight of a large black car pulling out of a side-road behind them. Wondering if it was plain clothes police, he remembered local traffic regulations regarding forest driving and switched on the headlamps before winding down the window.

The weather was glorious, the air sweet and untainted after the fetid stench of the city and the foul cloying smell of death in the apartment. He looked across at Magdalena. She was leaning against her door as though she couldn’t get far enough away from him. Adjusting his rear-view mirror he caught a glimpse of Elizbieta sprawled inelegantly across the back seat. This time she really had to be asleep. Awake, she would never have lolled with her head thrown back and her mouth gaping wide. He pushed the mirror back into position and saw the black car again.

He slowed his speed to ten kilometres below the speed limit. He’d heard too many stories of foreigners being stopped and forced to pay on-the-spot fines that amounted to the contents of their wallet to want to tangle with officialdom.

The car continued to follow them. When Adam accelerated, the black car accelerated, when he slowed, it slowed, the distance between them as constant as if the vehicles had been linked by a steel tow-rope. When he dropped his speed to forty kilometres an hour the black car still refused to overtake. Adjusting the rear-view mirror he attempted, and failed, to read the Russian number plate while trying to recall all that Josef had told him about hire and Western cars being forced off the road, and the occupants robbed.

Finally deciding his best option was to put as much distance between the black car and his as possible; he pushed his foot down on the accelerator.

It happened when he was least expecting it. As he reduced his speed at a sign signalling crossroads ahead, the black car shot forward and swerved in front of him, forcing him to brake. The front passenger door flew opened and a man dressed in casual clothes emerged. A second man appeared from the back. Adam had time to register the tip of a gun barrel poking out from beneath his jacket before slamming down the central locking with his elbow and ramming the car into reverse. He did a handbrake turn and whirled around, speeding back along the road they had just travelled down.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Elizbieta shouted angrily as she was thrust rudely out of sleep by the squeal of brakes and an impact that sent her reeling from one side of the car to the other. Adam was too busy trying to steer and check his mirror at the same time to answer. Magdalena, who had sized up the situation, pulled down her sun visor and peered into the cosmetic mirror.

‘Check the map,’ Adam commanded. ‘There has to be a town or a village close by.’

‘Do you think people like that,’ Magdalena jerked her head to the back of the car, ‘would worry about the occupants of a small village?’

‘They friends of your husband?’ he enquired dryly.

‘Take the next right.’

‘Back to the border?’ he queried.

‘There are police there,’ she pointed out.

‘And whose side do you think they’ll be on?’ He checked the mirror. The car was gaining. It had a larger engine than the hire car. ‘Strap yourselves in and hold tight.’

‘Adam!’ Elizbieta screeched as he ploughed off the road on to the forest floor. ‘Now they have us cornered like eels in a trap.’

‘Not yet they don’t.’ Pressing the accelerator to the floor, he charged between the trees at breakneck speed, scattering last year’s leaves in his wake.

‘And to think I won’t even ski in the woods because the trees are in the way,’ Elizbieta wailed.

Adam didn’t hear her. He was too busy watching the black car slowly but inexorably gain on them. Ahead was a steep-sided gully. Adam saw it, but didn’t slow for an instant. Elizbieta and Magdalena wrapped their heads in their arms as he headed straight for it. There was a nerve-wracking moment when all four wheels left the ground, swiftly followed by a bump and the whirr of tyres skidding over soft earth before they moved on.

‘Just as I thought,’ Adam continued to charge recklessly ahead.

‘Just as what?’ Magdalena was white from shock.

‘They haven’t got four-wheel drive. That’s the one thing I’ve learned about Polish roads. It’s essential to rent a four-wheel drive vehicle.’

‘Watch out!’

Elizbieta’s scream alerted Adam to a black transit van parked ahead. He spun the wheel frantically as the black-suited driver turned a rubber-masked face towards them. There was a sickening crunch of metal on metal as he lost control, followed by another scream, a long, loud piercing sound he thought would never end.

Adam opened his clenched eyelids to see a cloud of black smoke billowing from beneath the hood of the car. Relaxing his grip on the steering wheel, he flexed his muscles to confirm he was in one piece. ‘Everyone all right?’ he shouted above Elizbieta’s hysterical screaming.

‘All right! Are you insane?’ Elizbieta ceased screaming to round on him. ‘You could have killed us!’

‘Perhaps they’ll finish what Adam started,’ Magdalena said as the door of the van they had crashed into slid back. Twin black-suited figures, their heads concealed by gas masks, lumbered towards them through the smoke.

‘Ever feel as though you’d strayed on the set of a science fiction movie?’

‘How can you make jokes at a time like this?’ Elizbieta wailed as one of the men attacked the handle on Adam’s door only to be foiled by the central locking. Adam reached for the ignition key and a shadow moved across the windscreen. He glanced up to find himself looking down the barrel of a semi-automatic shotgun.

‘You can’t go out there.’ Elizbieta clutched his collar as he reached for the door button.

‘You’d rather be shot in the car?’

‘For God’s sake, drive off.’

‘Even if this thing is capable of moving, I doubt the windscreen is bullet proof.’ He opened the door and stepped out. To his amazement a white and trembling Magdalena followed suit on the other side. He barely had time to give her an encouraging wink before his face was slammed on to the roof of the car and his hands wrenched painfully behind his back.

‘Identity card?’

The question, muted to a metallic whisper by the mask, was the last thing Adam had expected.

‘In my jacket.’

A gloved hand retrieved his passport from the inside pocket.

‘Adam Salen? American? Director of the Salen Institute, a charitable institution?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘You are in a restricted area?’

‘I didn’t see any signs.’

‘Barriers have been erected on all roads leading into this zone.’

‘A car forced us off the road. It’s behind us –’ Adam lifted his head to see the woods stretching around them, mockingly devoid of life. ‘It was a black Mercedes with Russian plates. The men in it were armed with sub-machine guns.’ He could feel the gun barrel digging into his neck, but it didn’t prevent him from looking to Magdalena to check she was faring no worse than him. He knew that his story sounded pure Hollywood and, bad Hollywood at that. Handcuffs snapped over his wrists. ‘You’re arresting us?’ His question was drowned out by Elizbieta’s shrieks as she was unceremoniously hauled from the back of their car. Minutes later Adam found himself sandwiched between Magdalena and Elizbieta in the sealed rear compartment of a second van that had pulled up alongside the first. With no windows to look out of, he had no way of knowing whether they were heading east or west, and he was left clinging to a dwindling hope that they were in the hands of the Polish authorities, not the Russian Mafia.

‘I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. They stripped me, took away all my clothes, made me march naked into a shower, scrubbed me until my skin was raw, then a doctor, at least I hope it was a doctor – it was difficult to see under the mask – pushed me into a cubicle and stuck needles into my most tender parts before poking smear sticks over every inch of me – inside as well as out.’ Elizbieta glared at Adam who was wearing an identical white boiler suit to the ones she and Magdalena had been issued with.