Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Suspense,
Historical,
Thrillers,
Mystery & Detective,
History,
Nazis,
Murder,
Relics,
To 1500,
Poland,
Knights and Knighthood,
Museum curators
stand?’
Feliks handed Adam his glass. ‘Look at where the amber meets the sides of the coffin. It’s splintering.’
‘Like the bracelet?’
‘That’s not surprising given that we know the amber was heated and melted in a fire,’ Elizbieta contributed. ‘And I doubt whoever covered him was that fussy about air getting between the layers of amber.’
‘The whole thing looks real enough.’ Feliks retrieved his glass and picked up another photograph. ‘It’s also somewhat the worse for wear. As well as the splintering, there’s evidence of deeper cracks. See the way the flash has broken up the light on these fissures in the surface. They could be the result of exposure to frost, or damage that occurred when it was moved out of Konigsberg Castle. If it was a fake I think they would have taken more care with its appearance.’
‘Or they could be cleverer than you think,’ Elizbieta suggested.
‘Or it could be decay,’ Feliks said thoughtfully.
‘I thought amber lasted for ever.’ Adam’s mind was racing to absorb the implications of what Felix and Elizbieta were saying.
‘After it’s been exposed to air it can deteriorate with age if it’s not cared for properly.’
‘But we’ve got two thousand-year-old Roman beads made of the stuff in the museum,’ Adam protested.
‘Which Edmund keeps in a glass case at a fixed temperature.’
‘So, after listening to you two for half an hour, all I know for certain is that this might, or might not be a forgery?’
‘Does it matter?’ Elizbieta retrieved her threads of gold wire and laid them on the workbench beside her. ‘Put it on display anyway. People love corpses. They’ll flock to see one in amber.’
‘That’s supposing I can track it down.’
‘You don’t have it?’
‘Whoever has it sent a demand along with the photographs. They want bids in excess of fifty million dollars.’
‘American?’ Feliks asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Adam confirmed.
‘Old zlotys and you might be talking.’ Feliks picked up a ruler from the desk, measured the magazine in the photograph, scribbled down the dimensions and began measuring the coffin. ‘Give me the magazine and I’ll give you a rough estimate as to the quantity of amber you would need to fill that coffin.’
‘You don’t know the size of the body.’
‘To get in there he has to be short.’
‘Or they chopped his legs off,’ Elizbieta said practically. ‘Father Ignatious told me that medieval monks often used to cut down bodies to fit the coffins they had in stock. It was easier to re-shape the body than carve out a larger coffin.’
‘If this is a fake made with real amber, they would have needed more than the supply used by an average workshop in a year. I could ask around for you. See if anyone’s been buying in unusually large quantities lately, lucky sods.’
Elizbieta looked up. ‘You didn’t get any today?’
‘The consignment was hi-jacked.’
‘Stolen!’ Adam exclaimed.
‘Too late to make this, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Feliks returned the photographs to Adam. ‘It left Kaliningrad last night, but failed to arrive in Gdansk this morning.’
‘How was it being brought in?’ Adam stowed the photographs back in the envelope.
‘I value my poor hide too much to tell someone outside the business that. You want to know, go ask the Mafia, or a certain high ranking official. He’s paid enough to look the other way when it comes in.’
‘I don’t suppose either of you has Krefta’s address?’ Adam asked hopefully.
‘Last I heard he was in Konigsberg,’ Feliks answered.
‘Kaliningrad, Feliks,’ Elizbieta corrected him.
‘I can never remember new-fangled names.’
‘The Russians renamed it in 1945.’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Only to the senile.’ Elizbieta gave Adam the benefit of her most winsome smile. ‘Krefta moved to Kaliningrad after his wife died. I met him there a couple of times, but only at his workshop. I still have my father’s old