The Amber Knight (21 page)

‘Looks like poor Mariana’s going to miss her mini-break.’

‘Can’t be helped. But don’t worry, I’ll send plenty of muscle with you.’

Adam thrust the Glock back into his shoulder holster. ‘If last night was anything to go by, it’s more guns and bullet proof vests we need, not muscle.’

Helga lived in an art deco villa in a narrow street that ran from the main Sopot thoroughfare to the beach. The location would have been desirable in Sopot’s heyday, now it was merely quiet. The building sported the usual signs of neglect and decay; peeling paint, decomposing wood, broken and boarded windows and walls green with mould and damp.

Adam left the car and scanned the column of bell pushes next to the front door. Most looked as though they’d been installed when the house was built, but there was nothing to indicate which ones were still working, or any names to help a caller. Josef, who knew the area better than he wanted to, pushed the door and it opened.

‘Trusting residents,’ Adam commented.

‘Ladies out to make as many male friends as they can,’ Josef amended. Like most of Adam’s acquaintances he disapproved of Helga.

Very little light shone through the few panes of glass that hadn’t been boarded up. The hallway was dark, gloomy and stank of urine. The floor was tiled with the original 1920s mosaic tiles, which had lifted and crumbled in more places than they had clung to. The stairs were painted. Some of the flakes that clung to Adam’s shoes were green, some brown. Peering into the darkness he tried to decipher the name plates on the doors.

As Josef had prophesied, they were all female. Helga’s room was on the top floor. There was no bell. Josef had to knock three times before a sleepy voice cried, ‘Get lost.’

Josef signalled to Adam. Adam had never felt so reluctant to approach a woman in his life. ‘It’s Adam. I’ve brought your earrings.’

‘Why didn’t you telephone? I would have met you somewhere.’ There was a flurry of movement before the door creaked open a scant two inches. The window in the room couldn’t have been boarded, because light flooded around Helga, spilling out into the hall. She looked exactly as she’d done when Adam had last seen her; naked, mascara smudged in large dark circles beneath her eyes, lipstick smeared over her cheeks, her hair, wild, tousled. She saw Josef standing behind him and moved back behind the door.

‘I’d ask you in, but it’s not convenient.’

‘We have to talk to you, it’s official business,’ Josef insisted.

She pointed to a door opposite. ‘Go in there. I’ll be with you after I’ve put some clothes on.’

Josef opened the door on a small, obviously communal sitting room. Coffee mugs half-filled with cold, congealing liquid lay dotted around on scarred, Formica-topped tables. An upholstered sofa and chairs sagged on a heavily stained carpet. He walked to the window and looked down.

‘My mother told me that this was an exclusive suburb in its day.’ He gazed over the tops of a scattering of pine trees to the sea.

Helga appeared in the doorway. Her face was still streaked with yesterday’s make-up, but she had thrown on a robe. A shiny blue nylon affair held together by a belt that slipped every time she moved. She opened a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. Josef lit it for her. She raised her eyes to Adam. ‘You brought my earrings?’

He handed her the box Feliks had given him. ‘They’re not the ones you wanted. I couldn’t run that high.’

She flipped the lid open, and gave them a cursory glance. ‘Pity, these aren’t a patch on the ones I wanted.’

‘I won’t bother next time,’ Adam leaned against the door post.

‘There was an American woman and a Polish man at your blackjack table last night? They played for half an hour some time around midnight.’ Josef launched into his questioning without any further preliminaries.

‘A lot of Americans come to the casino.’

‘You should remember this woman. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, with the looks of a movie star.’

‘She wasn’t that pretty.’ Helga inhaled her cigarette. Her robe fell open revealing more flesh than either Josef or Adam could cope with at that time in the morning.

‘Mr Salen here thought so. He married her.’

Helga lifted her head and stared at Adam. ‘You never told me that you were married?’

‘You never told me that you lived here.’

‘I’m not a whore, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘You know who I am?’ Josef asked.

‘Everyone knows who you are, policeman.’ Helga managed to make “policeman” sound worse than any of the insulting nicknames bestowed on the force.

‘I’m interested in the man who was with the lady.’

‘Casimir Zamosc, why, what’s he done?’ she asked coolly.

‘Got himself killed. You know him?’

‘Seen him around the last couple of weeks. Lousy tipper.’

‘Seen him with anyone?’

‘Adam’s wife.’

‘Very funny,’ Josef snapped. ‘Anyone else?’

‘Guys,’ she flicked the ash from her cigarette on to the floor.

‘Guys?’

‘Men.’

‘Any of them have names?’ Josef persisted.

‘You any idea how many people I meet in a night? Now if that’s all, I have to go and change into my uniform. I’m on duty at two.’

‘If you think of anything…’

‘I know, call Piwna Street.’

Josef pushed past Helga, stepped across the hall and burst open the door to her room. A double bed dominated the limited floor space. A man sat up, a furious expression darkening his face.

‘What the hell…’

‘Sorry, wrong room.’ Josef closed the door.

‘You bastard!’ Helga spat sourly.

‘Just checking.’ Josef glanced at Adam.

‘I’ll get you for that,’ Helga threatened.

‘Your security clearance for the casino in order?’ Josef threatened.

Using a word no Polish lady should know, she flounced off. Josef waited at the top of the stairs.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked Adam, who was still standing outside Helga’s door.

‘That man in Helga’s room.’

‘Tall, slim, with dark eyes, Slavic features, black hair, straight cut, combed back. I can’t blame Helga, he’s prettier than you. I’ll check the description against the wanted files when I get back, but I don’t expect to find anything. Don’t tell me he came as a shock to you.’

‘No.’

‘Believe me – you’re better off without her.’

‘It’s not that. I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

The assertion that Adam had seen the man before was enough to halt Josef in his tracks, it made no difference that Adam couldn’t remember where. To Adam’s dismay Josef insisted on turning back and hammering on Helga’s door. This time there was no answering sound from inside.

‘You have ten seconds to open up before I smash my way in.’ Josef pulled out his gun, ‘– six – seven – eight – nine – ten – ’

The door caved in as Josef’s shoulder hit it. Standing, gun in hand, his back to the corridor wall, surrounded by girls in various stages of undress who’d left their rooms to see what all the commotion was about, Adam felt as though he’d strayed into a melodrama.

Cautiously holding his gun at arm’s length, Josef moved in front of the open doorway. The bed was empty. Tattered lace curtains fluttered limply in the light breeze that wafted through the window.

‘Adam, shut the door. Check the wardrobe and the bed.’

Adam did as Josef asked. There was nothing under or on the bed. The wardrobe held Helga’s clothes and shoes. He was surprised how few there were. As he closed the door on the stale, musky scent of her favourite American perfume, Josef moved to the window.

‘Damn the bastards.’

Adam stood alongside him. A sliver of window box held a few shrivelled, trampled geraniums. It was an easy step away from the fire escape. ‘They can’t have gone far.’

‘I’ll put out a general alert, but there’s a black hole in this town that swallows people I want to question.’ Josef holstered his gun. ‘You sure you can’t remember where you saw him?’

‘You know how many places I go to. It could have been an auction, a museum sale, the casino. In fact that’s probably it. I have a vague recollection of him wearing a tuxedo. But you can’t go around harassing people just because I’ve seen them, and can’t remember where.’

‘Can’t I?’ Josef moved away from the window. ‘If he’s so bloody innocent, why has he done a runner?’

‘How long did you work here?’ Adam asked Magdalena as they drove along a narrow road towards the car park of the Wolfschanze.

‘Three summers when I was a student. I even lived here in the old SS barracks, above the cafeteria.’

‘Peculiar to think of anyone living in SS accommodation.’

‘You think the country was fumigated after the Second World War? Germany hasn’t a monopoly on Third Reich monuments. When a country is in ruins, the last thing people can afford to do is pull down serviceable buildings.’

The driver slowed at the barrier and Adam opened the back window, first checking that the car with the guards Josef had assigned to them was close behind them. A man approached with the car park attendant. Adam slid his hand under his coat and loosened the holster on the Glock.

The attendant elbowed the man aside, but he proved persistent.

‘For only twenty euros I’ll show you over the site.’

‘Staff.’ Magdalena flashed a card at the attendant and both men retreated. ‘While you were talking to your wife, I arranged for us to have access to the site,’ she explained to Adam. ‘I’ll tell them we’ve arrived.’

The driver parked opposite a row of tourist coaches. A party of children ran towards them, heading for the ice cream and snack shop at the side of the old barracks. Adam left the car. It was a clear, warm day, more like mid-summer than spring. A party of Germans were crowding around a souvenir booth that sold DVD’s of the ruins, cheap amber jewellery, and a selection of books on Hitler. Birds were singing in the trees, a Vivaldi concerto played softly on a car radio.

‘It’s not easy to imagine this place as it must have been fifty years ago,’ he said, when Magdalena emerged from the office with her police guard in tow.

‘It will be once we get further into the complex.’ She crouched down and tucked the bottoms of her jeans into her socks.

‘Local custom?’ he asked.

‘Mosquitoes.’ She rummaged in the bulging knapsack she’d brought and handed him a spray. ‘When the local breed attack, it feels as though they’ve come armed with knives and forks.’

‘They don’t like me.’

‘Then you don’t have sweet blood.’

‘Sour, like the rest of me.’ He looked back at their two guards and resigned himself to being dogged by them for the rest of the day.

‘I told the warden we’ll contact him if we need help. Here.’ She handed him an official-looking badge. ‘Pin that to your jacket and no one will stop you going into dangerous or restricted areas.’

‘What dangerous areas? I thought this place was a bona fide tourist attraction?’

‘It’s safe if you stick to the paths but some of the parts we’ll be crawling into are unstable.’ She soaked her scarf with the spray and tied it around her neck. He looked ahead and saw the beginning of a woodland walk. ‘You’ll need a map to get your bearings.’ She pushed the spray back into her bag and handed him a plan of the complex. ‘We’ll walk around so you can get the feel of the place and also look for signs of recent disturbance. Fresh scratches or marks in the concrete, churned up ground or tyre marks, anything that looks suspicious.’

‘What’s that on our left?’ He unfolded the plan which had been written in German, a language he was barely acquainted with.

‘The SS escort detachment barracks. Ahead is the site of the old inner gates.’

‘Hitler knew what he was doing when he built his HQ here. It would have taken a brave spotter plane to have ventured this far over enemy territory.’

‘They wouldn’t have seen much, even if they had. Camouflage nets were slung above all the main areas and changed with the seasons.’

As they walked forward he caught glimpses of towering blocks of grey concrete shimmering through the trees. He blinked and they were still there. ‘I can’t make up my mind whether those are real, or shadows.’

‘It gets even more confusing at twilight.’

‘How convenient, they numbered the buildings for us.’

‘Number two is the Security Service and SS barracks.’

‘More barracks?’

‘It took fifty thousand people to build this place, and several thousand lived here when Hitler was in residence, including a large contingent of civilians. You need a lot of space to accommodate that many staff.’

‘But surely the whole complex has been thoroughly explored?’

‘Depends what you mean by thoroughly,’ she qualified. ‘When the Red Army came into East Prussia they found the surrounding areas heavily mined. It took ten years to clear them.’

‘You really have studied this place.’

‘My father’s brother worked with the bomb disposal squads after the war. The officer in command of his unit believed that the charges had been laid by the SS to deliberately block a lot of the tunnels and bunkers.’

‘There’s no number on that bunker.’ Adam pointed to a structure opposite the second barracks.

‘Unnamed bunker, there are a lot of them, and you’ll find more marked as general purpose bunkers.’

‘You must have some idea what they were used for,’ he said.

‘Can you imagine this place during the war? It was a self-contained city. Thousands of troops, typists, telephonists, secretaries, barbers, valets and personal servants lived here who all needed food and accommodation. Just think of the storage space that was needed for supplies alone.’

‘Were the bunkers connected underground?’

‘We believe some of them were, but I told you, the German commander who blew this place up knew his business. More than half the underground tunnels we know about caved in when the SS engineers blasted the place and most of the ones that remain are in danger of collapse.’

He paused before a low mound of lichen and weed-encrusted stones. In front of it lay a modest memorial slab carved in the shape of an open book.

‘The Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg memorial. This is all that’s left of the wooden conference room where he tried to kill Hitler,’ she explained.