“Hello, Eugene. I never thought I’d see you again. I’m happy that you and your brother are safe,” she said earnestly.
“What have you been doing here, Asiyah?” Eugene said.
“I’ve been sitting here ever since that Weinstock bastard got me and threw me in here. All this time I’ve been trying to get my mind off this damned yacht. This damned dining room, and the damned water. I feel like I’m on the Olympia again, and it’s driving me crazy.”
The thought made him feel a surge of the same fear he had experienced inside the sunken yacht, and he could only imagine how much worse it was for her.
“But it’s only a minor nuisance,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all over for me. They won’t let me live. There’s nothing else they can do except put a bullet in my head. I hope they let you go, but I’m as good as dead.”
“It’s not over. Nothing is over yet, Asiyah. We’re still together. We will all make it out. I promise you.”
A few moments passed before she said, “I’m afraid you’re wrong this time. There isn’t a chance. You need to worry about yourself and Constantine. You don’t know what you’re up against. Just forget about me.”
Her last words made Eugene want to cry out, telling her to keep fighting, but there was nothing he could do as he saw her dejection.
“Asiyah,” Constantine said. “Maybe what Frolov is going to tell us will change everything. Maybe we should all still keep the faith?”
“Do I have a choice?” she said, uncaring.
A coarse laugh sounded.
“You don’t!”
Frolov’s voice boomed from behind as he entered the salon. His bodyguard was nowhere to be seen, but it didn’t mean Frolov was vulnerable. There was nothing to come out of it had any of them threatened him. Frolov crossed the room and occupied a plush sofa at the other end so that all three of his captives remained in view.
“So much for the introductions,” he said. “I’m sure we’re in for a very amusing conversation. There will be plenty of interesting facts to hear from everyone — but most of all, from Ms. Kasymova.”
“You’re mistaking me for someone else, Mr. Frolov,” Asiyah said calmly, but her eyes flashed with malevolence. An almost palpable wave of cold emanated from her now, accentuated by a morbid beat of silence. “There is nothing I can tell you.”
“Maybe not at once,” Frolov said. “I can’t force you to talk, but I can force you to listen. Much of what you hear won’t be news to you. You won’t be able to feign innocence all the time. And eventually I’ll have you cornered.” Frolov chuckled. “Now all of you sit down so I can begin.”
Warily, Eugene and Constantine occupied the nearest chairs. Asiyah assumed her previous position across the table, closing her eyes again, blocking the madness out. Frolov gave no attention to her attitude.
“Before Asiyah cooperates,” Frolov said, “I’ll start from a different angle — that of the only other person who links everything. Dead men speak no tales so I’ll do it for him. The missing treasures, the Sochi disaster, and the assassination attempts each of you has survived are all related to one another by the enigmatic Maxim Malinin.”
“And how did that come about, may I ask?” Eugene said. “Who was Malinin anyway to start all this?”
“Malinin was not the man who originated these catastrophic events. He had played an active — albeit minor — role in the conspiracy, and remained a watchful bystander since. But information can be either a blessing or a curse. And the knowledge Malinin possessed was the kind that he would be killed for sooner or later. When he felt the heat rising, he decided not to wait for some freak accident happening to him, and disappeared. But the people from his past had always kept an eye on their own. You see, Malinin was a former member of the Fourth International.”
Ilia’s horrifying words haunted Eugene.
“So it’s real? What Ilia told me is true?”
“It’s real, but what Ilia told you is definitely not true. None of the drivel that we fed Ilia bears any resemblance with reality. Do you seriously believe we could allow him to go babbling state secrets? But the Fourth International does exist… and at the same time, it doesn’t. It is a phantom, one myth hidden within another, rooted in the Second World War and then reborn from the ashes. The Fourth International no longer has any members, it has nothing, but yet it wields unimaginable power. That power is information. Revealing just a portion of it would have been enough to destroy them. It all began in Kazakhstan and it will all end in Kazakhstan. That is the location of the Kremlin collection.”
“The treasures? All the death and destruction was wreaked for relics?” Eugene’s voice rose in incredulous outrage. “For gold?”
“The treasures are not the reward but the means,” Frolov replied. “There’s something else apart from the icons. A bigger treasure. A mystery dating all the way back in history to the beginning of modern Russia as we know it. A Russia emerging from decades of bloodshed and unrest, tyranny and mass murder, to become a superpower built on human bones.”
“Again, the revolution?” Eugene muttered under his breath, but he was wrong.
Constantine shook his head.
“Three hundred years ago, in the reign of Peter the Great. And it’s not about the gold. It’s amber,” Frolov said. “The Amber Room.”
15
The Eighth Wonder of the World.
It was the most apt description for the Amber Room.
Six tons of amber were rendered into panels of awe-inspiring beauty. The Room consisted of three full-sized walls, their surface measuring fifty-five square meters — each centimeter adorned with carvings and ornate mosaics. Its rich patterns accented by gold leaf and mirrors made the Room a glorious masterpiece in its own right.
Few beholders could remain immune to the amber’s bewitching qualities. Whenever light filled the Amber Room, the sun saturated it with flowing radiance. The walls flooded from inside with waves of captured sunrays, as if the amber’s energy longed to break free.
During his visit to Prussia in 1716, Peter the Great was so mesmerized by the Amber Room’s luxurious brilliance, that Friedrich Wilhelm I gifted it to the Russian czar.
By 1770 the Room took final shape, refined, expanded and enriched by Russian craftsmen. It remained in Tsarskoe Selo, a small town south of St. Petersburg, until 1941 when the town fell to the looting Nazis. From that moment on, nothing had ever been learned about the fate of the legendary masterpiece, its mystery becoming a part of the legend.
Frolov began. “After Germany and the Soviet Union signed their non-aggression pact in 1939, Stalin wanted to honor the growing ties with Hitler, as well as amaze him, by presenting a stunning gift. He chose no better souvenir than the Amber Room, which had previously found its way from a German king to a Russian czar. Stalin thought the nice touch would be appreciated.”
Stalin wanted to give the Amber Room to the Nazis? Eugene wondered as Frolov talked.
“Lazar Kaganovich didn’t like the idea. He convinced Stalin that something as valuable as the Amber Room would be of good use to Stalin himself, and Hitler could manage fine as he were without it. However, Stalin would hear none of it, especially not from his subordinate. He was adamant about treating his new German partner with opulence never seen before. Of course, at the same time the idea of keeping the Amber Room appealed to him. So it got him thinking, and soon Stalin found a way out of the dilemma. He came up with the most obvious answer. Create a copy of the Amber Room for Hitler and keep the original. It was a daunting task, no doubt. But not impossible. Nothing was impossible in the USSR if it was an order from Joseph Stalin. If He wanted to create the Amber Room again, it had to be done.” Frolov rose, pacing the salon.