The Amber Room (20 page)

“So you don't think anything's down there,” Kurt asked.

“What difference does it make what I think? But the boys with the charts and the maps and the ties, they're starting to talk like no treasures came any closer to here than Ulm.”

The young man toyed with his coffee cup. “Story goes, when the Americans occupied here in 1945, back before the partition was worked out, they looked around here a little but didn't find anything. Then the Russians came in, and when
they started rebuilding this place they found bombs and gas canisters. Thousands and thousands stored in a field where they built that office block out back. There's one old man working with me who remembers it, said the Nazis stored munitions here because Weimar didn't have any industry and wasn't being bombed. Rumor was, though, the Nazis buried treasure
under
the bombs. But the Russians dug around and didn't find anything. Then the Americans found the Ulm treasures, and everybody figured that was where it had all been stored.”

Kurt knew the Ulm story. Every German his age did—how the Americans had needed over a hundred trucks to clear out the paintings and artwork and valuables stored in the Ulm depot, then spent years trying to track down the lawful owners. Finally what wasn't claimed had been parceled out among the victors and stuffed into museums around the world. The spoils of war.

Kurt decided he had enough. “I'll be back in a month or so,” he lied.

“Anytime, at least for as long as it takes for me to earn my one-way ticket.” Dark eyes followed him as he rose to his feet. “Just don't come empty-handed. Information costs a lot these days, like everything else. We're all busy learning the capitalist tricks, even you and your old mates, right? Buy whatever you want, because everything has its price. New laws for a new world.”

CHAPTER 18

Katya joined Jeffrey at the breakfast table with an announcement. “Frau Reining just called.”

“Where's my kiss?”

She greeted the approaching waiter, ordered breakfast, said, “She wants us to go to Dresden.”

“I asked you a question.” He was only half kidding. “I can't get my motor started just with coffee anymore.”

She leaned across the table, smacked him soundly. “You'll need to be awake for this one.”

“I'm all ears.”

She smiled mischievously. “Your mouth says one thing and your eyes another.”

He kept his voice flat for the benefit of the waiter pouring her coffee. “Take your pick.”

“I'd better not.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She waited until they were once again alone, then opened her heart and confessed as much with her eyes as with her words. “I dreamed about you last night.”

“Katya, I—”

“Don't say it.” Pleading now. “I need your help, Jeffrey. I have to have it. I'm not strong enough by myself.”

He nodded. The heat burned a dull ache in his belly.

She reached across the table for his hand. “I feel as if I'm walking along the edge of a cliff. Just the slightest push and I'll fall over.”

A thousand arguments crowded for place in his mind. He struggled, fought, won he knew not how, and remained silent. He raised his eyes to find hers resting upon him, gently pleading, openly yearning, full of the same conflict he battled against. “I love you, Katya.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

He hid behind his coffee, waited while the urge subsided to a slow, dull ache.

“Did I tell you Frau Reining called?” Her voice was as unsteady as his own inner balance.

“I can't hold on to this for very long,” he replied.

“I know,” she sighed. Softer, “I can't either.”

“What are we going to do?”

When she didn't answer he ventured another glance and found her looking very shy. “Did you want a big wedding?”

“No.” Emphatic.

“Me neither.” She hesitated. “I don't know if the girl is supposed to be talking about these things, but—”

“But why have a long engagement,” he finished for her, and knew a surging thrill.

“I've always dreamed of being a June bride,” she said softly. “If that's okay with you.”

“Perfect,” he managed, though from where he sat June seemed several lifetimes away.

Joy shone from her eyes. And something more. “I think I've just lost my appetite. Do you think there's time for a smooch upstairs before our appointment with Herr Diehl?”

He was already on his feet and reaching for her hand. Without really caring he asked, “So what's in Dresden?”

Katya almost skipped alongside him. “Nothing that can't wait.”

Their business was swiftly concluded, aided by a mutual desire to see their new relationship grow into permanence. With another hour before their train departed for Dresden, Herr Diehl guided them from his shop, eager to play the tour guide.

“In old Erfurt,” he told them as they strolled along the bridge's cobblestone length, “the houses had names, not numbers. Before, my own shop was the city's bellhouse, as the name says in German. It was the only place licensed by the city to sell bells. The blacksmiths would bid for the privilege
of making anything from cowbells to carriage bells to the great bells used in churches—but not by price. Prices were fixed by each guild, including the ironmongers' guild. So they could compete only on terms and quality.”

“All houses were named after the people's professions?” Jeffrey asked.

“Not necessarily.” He motioned toward a nearby shop, a bookstore, which had a hand-beaten copper sign of a stork hanging outside. “According to the old records, this was named the
Haus zum Storchen
, the Stork's House, because the family who lived here had forty-three children. They were weavers and embroiderers of fine linen, a very lucrative profession. It required a special training, one that was highly sought after because of its special combination of artwork and craft-training. No doubt the shrewd weaver decided the best way to keep his trained employees from leaving was to draw them all from his own family.

“There were sixty-two merchant houses along this bridge, all licensed by the king to do business with the international traders, and all carefully controlled. Then, as now, from no place could a passerby see the water. The houses formed continuous four-story walls along both sides. They sold and traded in the products of distant lands—pepper, sugar, saffron, soap, paper, silk, brass, bronze, gold, silver, jewels, ornaments, rare objects, illustrated manuscripts.

“For over five hundred years,” Herr Diehl continued, “this bridge was a key destination along the Paris-Kiev trade route. It is hard for us to comprehend how vital these overland routes once were. There was no alternative, you see, none at all. The seas were pirate-infested and governed by unruly gods of wind and storm, and dragons were believed to lurk just beneath the surface. No right-minded medieval businessman would dare place his life or the livelihood of his descendants in such a precarious position. So he and his caravans traveled overland. If he was poor, he joined a group of other traders, praying they were trustworthy, and carried his wares on his back.
With time and success and good fortune came first servants and donkeys, then horses, then wagons and armed guards.”

The dealer nodded his head in time to his words. “Yes, these land routes dominated international trade until Christians once again chose that most dreadful path—arguing over how to worship the Lord of love with swords in their hands.”

“The Reformation wars,” Jeffrey said.

“What a name,” Herr Diehl replied. “How in God's holy name could you ever reform faith with a sword?”

Jeffrey shook his head. “I don't know.”

“The Catholics and the Protestants between them poured a tide of blood over the land,” Herr Diehl went on, “and suddenly waterborne dragons seemed vastly more appealing than land-based madness. Many merchants began taking their wares to distant buyers by sea, and most of the land routes slowly shriveled and died.

“But before the flow of history was rerouted with a bloody and heretical sword, these very same land routes reigned supreme.” Herr Diehl's voice lifted as he swept his hand to encompass all the shops along the bridge. “Imagine what the merchants of that day and age must have seen. Each voyage from Paris to Kiev, a distance of over two thousand miles, could take as long as one year. There would be rumors of wars and new borders and greedy tax officials up ahead, many of them formed from thin air by local merchants who sought to separate the travelers from their goods at panic-stricken prices. The shopkeepers who manned this bridge were the gatherers of news and gossip, and they spiced it with their own self-interest before serving it to footsore travelers.”

Cathedral Hill dominated what once had been medieval Erfurt's central market. Herr Diehl led them across an ancient street and into the vast open market square. “After Martin Luther's proclamation sparked the rise of Protestantism,” he continued, “Erfurt was one of very few cities that stubbornly refused to declare itself for one faith or another. The people and the ruling princes were so adamantly unified that they
fought off the scalding rhetoric of both churches and clung to sanity.”

The frigid air had a metallic edge that burned the nostrils. Katya's voice was muffled by the scarf she kept wrapped around the bottom half of her face. “The prince and people demanded that both churches, Catholic and Protestant, be allowed to coexist,” Herr Diehl explained through her. “It balanced their power, you see, and kept either from dominating the government and private life. The ruling family, the government, and the royal court were all good Catholics. The tradesmen, farmers, guilds, and merchants were Protestants. As a result, during the unbounded horrors of religious conflict, all Christians were safe here. And Erfurt remained a successful center of international commerce long after the land routes began to decline and other merchant cities were either put to the torch or starved into legend-filled graveyards, inhabited by walking ghosts.”

The vast plaza was lined with ramshackle stalls selling everything from hand-knit shawls to imported oranges. The throngs of buyers were surprisingly quiet, silenced by the effort of walking and standing and shopping in the icy air. Jeffrey and Katya followed Herr Diehl beyond the market to where a broad staircase rose up almost three hundred feet. At the summit, a pair of colossal churches stood side by side.

“The first church is the one on the left,” Herr Diehl told them as they climbed. “It was erected in 1154 as a monastery and remained true to the faith, so the story goes, through kingdoms and centuries. During the Reformation, the monks ridiculed the Pope's political ambitions and refused to back his demands for a war against their Protestant brethren. In reply, the Pope commanded that a second church be built, close enough and big enough to dominate the original.”

One church alone would have been majestic. The two together looked ridiculous. Both were vast structures whose spires reached heavenward several hundred feet. Vast swatches of stained-glass windows arched between flanking buttresses
of stone and dark-stained mortar. Nearby four-story buildings were easily dwarfed by the twin churches.

“And so stands a warning to the church of today,” Herr Diehl said. “A witness to what can happen when doctrine becomes more important than the straightforward laws of love given us by the simple Carpenter. Whenever one of us opens our mouth to condemn the way another worships, we set another brick in the wall of such a monstrosity. We offer our beloved Savior up to the nonbelievers as a point of ridicule. If we as the saved cannot agree to disagree in peace and love and brotherhood, what do we show the nonbelievers but the same discord and disharmony from which they seek to escape?”

When they arrived at the top, Herr Diehl opened his arms to encompass the two churches and their outlying buildings. The stone path between the central structures was as broad as a two-lane highway, yet the churches' sheer mass narrowed and constricted the way to a choking tightness. There was no divine relief offered here, no hope or lightness, only an overbearing weight and looming threat.

“The Stasi closed both churches and the monastery,” Herr Diehl went on. “They took over all but the worship halls and made this compound the central headquarters for the region's security operations. They required no sign to remind the people of their presence. From this height they were seen by everyone who took to the streets of Erfurt.”

He faced them and said solemnly, “I tell you this with the sincerity of a man who has sought to live the life of a true believer. It was a just punishment for the church's maneuverings in the ways of this world, and for the misery their worldly ambitions caused the men of their day.”

The journey by train from Erfurt to Dresden lasted four hours and took them from the carefully tended farmlands of Thuringen through the industrial might of Leipzig and on into the old royal enclave of Saxony. Their entry into Dresden
was marked by more of the same—tall, dilapidated apartment buildings, bleak forests of smokestacks, aged factories, and everything dressed a dreary gray.

They stayed in the Ship-Hotel Florentine. It was only after a dozen or so telephone calls, Katya told him, that she had found them rooms at all. Like all the other major cities of the former East Germany, Dresden had become a boomtown. The few decent hotels were so packed with industrialists that enterprising Wessie hoteliers had floated tourist ships down the Elba River to Dresden, where they were wharfed and used as floating hotels.

Jeffrey deposited his bags, then returned to meet Katya by the ship's ramp. “I'm paying two hundred dollars a night for a room the size of a packing crate.”

“Every room is full,” Katya replied.

He was not through. “My bed is exactly eighteen inches wide. And my bathroom is smaller than an airplane toilet.”