Brutal Telling

“You might want to grab a seat,” she said. He found a sawn log and turned it on its end and sat on it. “The Charbonneau case was spectacular,” Superintendent Brunel went on. “But in many ways mundane. Most art theft rings, and most black market collectors, have one maybe two specialties. Because the market’s so specialized and there’s so much money involved, the thieves become experts, but only in one or two tiny areas. Italian sculpture from the 1600s. Dutch masters. Greek antiquities. But never all of those fields. They specialize. How else would they know they weren’t stealing forgeries, or replicas? That’s why with Charbonneau we found some astonishing things, but all in the same ‘family.’ Vous comprenez?”

“Oui. They were all Renaissance paintings, mostly by the same artist.”

“C’est ça. That’s how specialized most thieves are. But here,” she waved at the cabin, “there’re handmade silk tapestries, ancient leaded glass. Under that embroidered tablecloth do you know what we found? Our victim ate off the most exquisite inlaid table I’ve ever seen. It must be five hundred years old and made by a master. Even the table cloth was a masterpiece. Most museums would keep it under glass. The Victoria and Albert in London would pay a fortune for it.”

“Maybe they did.”

“You mean it might have been stolen from there? Could be. I have a lot of work to do.”

She looked as though she could hardly wait. And yet, she also looked as though she was in no hurry to leave this cabin, this garden.

“I wonder who he was.” She reached out and pulled a couple of runner beans from a vine, handing one to her companion. “Most unhappiness comes from not being able to sit quietly in a room.”

“Pascal,” said Gamache, recognizing the quote, and the appropriateness of it. “This man could. But he surrounded himself with objects that had a lot to say. That had stories.”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“What’s the Amber Room?”

“How do you know about that?” She turned a searching eye on him.

“When you were looking around you mentioned it.”

“Did I? You can see it from here. That orange thing in the kitchen window.” He looked and sure enough, there it was, glowing warm in what little light it caught. It looked like a large, thick piece of stained glass. She continued to stare, mesmerized, then finally came out of it. “Sorry. I just never expected to be the one to find it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Amber Room was created in the early 1700s in Prussia by Friedrich the First. It was a huge room made of amber and gold. Took artists and artisans years to construct and when it was completed it was one of the wonders of the world.” He could tell she was imagining what it looked like, her eyes taking on a faraway look. “He had it made for his wife, Sophia Charlotte. But a few years later it was given to the Russian Emperor and stayed in St. Petersburg until the war.”

“Which war?”

She smiled. “Good point. The Second World War. The Soviets apparently dismantled it once they realized the Nazis would take the city, but they didn’t manage to hide it. The Germans found it.”

She stopped.

“Go on,” said Gamache.

“That’s it. That’s all we know. The Amber Room disappeared. Historians, treasure hunters, antiquarians have been searching for it ever since. We know the Germans, under Albert Speer, took the Amber Room away. Hid it. Presumably for safe keeping. But it was never seen again.”

“What’re the theories?” the Chief Inspector asked.

“Well, the most accepted is that it was destroyed in the Allied bombing. But there’s another theory. Albert Speer was very bright, and many argue he wasn’t a true Nazi. He was loyal to Hitler, but not to most of his ideals. Speer was an internationalist, a cultured man whose priority became saving the world’s treasures from destruction, by either side.”

“Albert Speer may have been cultured,” said Gamache, “but he was a Nazi. He knew of the death camps, knew of the slaughter, approved it. He simply looked good while doing it.”

The Chief Inspector’s voice was cold and his eyes hard.

“I don’t disagree with you, Armand. Just the opposite. I’m simply telling you what the theories are. The one involving Speer had him hiding the Amber Room far from both the German and the Allied armies. In the Ore Mountains.”

“Where?”

“A mountain range between Germany and what’s now the Czech Republic.”

They both thought about that, and finally Gamache spoke. “So how did a piece of the Amber Room get here?”

“And where’s the rest of it?”

Denis Fortin sat across from Clara Morrow. He was younger than he had any right to be. Early forties probably. A failed artist who’d discovered another, greater, talent. He recognized talent in others.