‘And now‚’ said Stalin‚ ‘thanks to us‚ that is exactly what she’ll do.’
‘Is there any way we can get word to the Inspector?’ asked Kirov.
Stalin shook his head. ‘Out of the question. The best we can hope for is that he figures it out on his own, and kills the lieutenant before she gets to Engel.’
‘He won’t hurt Churikova,’ replied Kirov. ‘I don’t think he can.’
With a gravelly sigh, Stalin reached into his pocket for his crumpled box of cigarettes. Opening its dented cardboard lid, he fitted one of the white sticks between his lips and lit it with the gold lighter he always carried with him. ‘Let us hope you’re mistaken,’ Stalin whispered as he exhaled a jet of smoke towards the ceiling, ‘but you aren’t, and we both know it.’
‘What treasure?’
‘What treasure?’ asked Stefanov. ‘Where could it possibly be hidden?’
‘There is a secret room under this house‚’ replied Pekkala. ‘On the recommendation of his head of security, the Tsar ordered hiding places built into every residence on the estate.’
‘Hiding places?’
‘He called them “priest holes”, after the ones that were built for Catholics in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The hiding place in this cottage was based on a design used at Rangeley Manor, a house visited by the Tsar during a trip to see his cousin, King George V. The original was built by a Jesuit carpenter named Nicholas Owen, who was later tortured to death on the rack at the Tower of London.’ Pekkala nodded towards the hearth. ‘The entrance is right over there.’
Stefanov stared at the empty stone fireplace. ‘But there’s nowhere to put a hiding place.’
‘So it was made to appear,’ Pekkala replied, ‘but in fact the wall there is twice as thick as any other wall in the house. It contains a narrow stairway that leads down to the hidden room.’
‘What’s it like, this room?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Pekkala. ‘I never went down there, but the Tsar did. He knew I did not like to be confined so, as a challenge, he left behind a bottle of his finest slivovitz, hoping the reward of one of his precious bottles of brandy might lure me down into that tomb.’ Climbing to his feet, Pekkala walked over to the fireplace. Dropping to one knee, he reached up into the chimney. Tucked into a recess in the masonry, he found a metal ring attached to a chain. Pekkala grasped the ring and pulled, hearing the chain rattle somewhere deep inside the chimney. There was a dull clunk in the brickwork at the back of the hearth. He brushed his hand along the bricks until he came to the place where the bricks did not join evenly. With the tips of his fingers, he prised back a small doorway faced with brick‚ which had been set into an iron frame.
Behind him, Stefanov looked on in amazement. ‘Do you think the slivovitz might still be down there?’
‘Find out for yourself‚’ replied Pekkala. ‘But be quick. They could be here any minute.’
Stefanov struck a match and‚ holding it out in front of him‚ made his way down into the blackness of the priest hole. The wavering flame illuminated a flight of ten steps hewn into the khaki-coloured rock. At the base of the steps, a chamber opened out into the darkness.
At the sight of it, Pekkala felt his throat tighten. The blood began pulsing in his temples.
Moving away from the priest hole, Pekkala walked over to the window and peered through the gaps in the wooden shutters. As he looked out at the pathway which ran beside the cottage, a movement outside caught his eye. A figure walked slowly down the path. From the silhouette, he could tell it was a German soldier, his rifle unshouldered and held at the ready.
Pekkala’s heart slammed into his chest. Guessing that the soldier was likely part of a patrol and that they might decide to take a look inside the cottage, he ducked into the fireplace and slithered into the entrance of the priest hole‚ struggling against the claustrophobia which sent bile climbing into the back of his throat.
The glow of Stefanov’s match flickered at the bottom of the stairs. As Pekkala reached out to close the door of the priest hole, he could hear someone in hobnailed boots stepping into the house by the same entrance he had used. At that same moment Stefanov appeared from the shadows below, a dusty bottle gripped in his hand. He was smiling, but one look at the expression on Pekkala’s face told him that something had gone very wrong. With one sharp breath he extinguished the match and the priest hole was plunged into darkness.
Lying on his stomach, with his legs braced against the stone steps, Pekkala drew the Webley revolver from its holster. Although the door was closed, a tiny gap left between the brickwork and the floor, presumably for ventilation, showed as a faint, velvety blue line of half-light. Even with his head pressed to the floor, Pekkala could barely see out from under the gap, but he could make out the shadowy form of a man moving around the room. He heard the cautious pacing of boots upon the wooden floor. Then a second shadow appeared and after that a third.
Without a word spoken between them, the men searched the cottage, moving like ghosts from room to room. Then they met back in front of the fireplace.
‘Empty,’ said one of the soldiers.
One man paused to light a cigarette‚ flicking the dead match into the fireplace.
Pekkala let his breath trail out with relief, knowing that the patrol would now be moving on. A second later, however, he heard the voice of Gustav Engel.
‘Have you searched the entire building?’ snapped the professor.
And then he heard another voice. It was Polina Churikova‚ and the words she spoke made Pekkala’s blood run cold.
‘Pekkala told me they’d be waiting here,’ she said. ‘They have to be here.’
‘Maybe they were,’ said a soldier, ‘but there’s no sign of them now.’
‘You must find them, Professor,’ Churikova pleaded. ‘You can’t allow them to get back behind the Russian lines.’
As the words sank in, Pekkala realised that he had been betrayed.
‘Don’t worry,’ Engel reassured her. ‘They can’t have gone far. You’ll see. We’ll have them soon enough.’
‘The amber won’t be safe until Pekkala is dead.’
‘You worry too much, Polina,’ Engel tried to soothe her. ‘He is only one man, after all, with a single Russian soldier to command. We have killed a million of them already and we will kill ten million more before this war is done. Put your mind at rest. The amber is safe, thanks to you. To have come up with the solution for reattaching the glue in the panels was nothing short of brilliant.’
‘As soon as I heard about the problem from Semykin,’ she explained, ‘I felt certain that it could be solved. I began running my own experiments in the laboratory of the Kremlin Museum.’
‘Right under their noses!’ laughed Engel. ‘You still haven’t told me how you managed that.’
‘I discovered that modern glue would remain largely unaffected by temperature, due to chemicals used in its manufacture which didn’t exist two centuries ago. But the glue back then was primarily animal gelatine, and I realised that if it was possible to raise the temperature in the Amber Room by twenty degrees or more, as well as sharply increasing the level of humidity, the gelatine would soften rapidly, in spite of its age. This would allow the amber to re-adhere to the panels, which can then be safely transported out of Russia.’