“There was only one man capable of standing up to the challenge,” he continued. “Kaganovich summoned Russia’s greatest art restorer of the time — the quiet genius who lived in a tiny wooden house, behind the walls of the Novodevichy Convent. The famous architect, Peter Baranovsky. Ironically, he was Kaganovich’s nemesis. It was Baranovsky who had saved St. Basil’s Cathedral from destruction by the Bolsheviks, and now he was called upon to do work for the very barbarians he hated. Together with his apprentices, Baranovsky was assigned with recreating the Amber Room, sworn to secrecy, and dispatched to Tsarskoe Selo. He pushed himself right to the limit, working day and night until he suffered a heart attack. Nonetheless, two years later he completed the work. He had produced an exact replica of the Amber Room. He finished it on June 20th, 1941. Just two days before the war. By that time it was already too late to think about presents. When the war broke out, Kaganovich personally oversaw the evacuation of valuables, most notably from Leningrad and Moscow. In particular, he ordered that the authentic Amber Room be dismantled. The newly-created copy was installed in its place. On July 6th, a train running from Leningrad to Tashkent carried the treasure away from the doomed city. And when the Nazis ransacked Tsarskoe Selo, they took the copy of the Room back to Germany, not knowing that the real one had been removed. Lazar Kaganovich had high hopes resting on the passage of the train from Leningrad, serial number FD-382. Disguised as a freighter of heavy machinery for relocated factories, it carried four carriages filled to the brim with the most precious artifacts looted by the Bolsheviks, including the Amber Room and, indeed, the object of Ilia’s search, the Kremlin collection.”
Frolov poured himself a drink. “Sadly, the war eroded Lazar’s infallible loyalty to his master. He was overwhelmed by the uncertainty of his future, fearing that his lifestyle, the foundation of his existence, could now be shattered. Stalin’s judgement of Hitler had been so erroneous that it led to an inevitable tragedy. Kaganovich believed that the war was hopeless, and, obeying his self-preservation instinct, he intended to scamper off the sinking ship. He was going to defect to the USA. Having all of Russia’s sacred riches aboard a single train was too much a temptation and too great a chance to ignore. The train would never reach its final destination. The trick, of course was actually pulling it off; someone had to hijack the train for him. Kaganovich couldn’t rely on anyone in the mighty NKVD which was headed by Beria, his lethal foe. Picking the wrong cadres for the job meant instant death, but dealing with personnel was a skill Kaganovich excelled in. The NKGB, which was NKVD’s sister department created in February of 1941, had continuously warned Stalin about Hitler’s impeding invasion, and some intelligence officers there became disgusted with Stalin.
“Kaganovich discovered such NKGB officers and coerced them into effecting his scheme. Kaganovich placed one of them, a man named Yehlakov, to command the cargo’s protective detail, and instructed Yehlakov to seize the train once it reached the desolate Kazakh steppes, where the rest of his rogue NKGB team would meet them. Among those NKGB officers was an infiltrator of the Fourth International. The original Fourth International, created by Trotsky to undermine Stalin’s rule in Russia. Even after Trotsky’s death, the secret organization operated from across the Atlantic. Heavy firearms were unattainable at the time, as everything was given to the front, so the welcoming committee, fully comprised of Trotskyites, had smuggled American machine guns. They got their revenge for being annihilated in the 1930’s, capturing enough financial resources to ignite a permanent global revolution. As soon as Stalin learned that the train had disappeared, he banished Kaganovich from his duties and eventually replaced him with Beria as his closest servant. The debacle also spelled the liquidation of the NKGB,” Frolov added some historic insight from his own realm. “It was merged with the NKVD on July 20th.”
Eugene and Constantine exchanged glances. Frolov studied their reaction.
“Amber Room became lost to the world, but in reality it remained hidden. The Trotskyites had no capability to take the cargo out of the country. They were behind the most strictly protected border in the world, where everyone was scrutinized as a potential saboteur. The ingenuity of their plan was that they wouldn’t have to do anything to get out. Hitler would do everything for them. Operation Barbarossa implied the capture of Moscow within forty days of the invasion. As soon as Moscow fell, Russia would plunge into chaos, so the Trotskyites could bring their stash out and escape with it freely. Unfortunately for them, the Battle of Moscow was won — Hitler was pushed back and their hopes were crushed. The cargo remained locked in at the secret location in Kazakhstan. In the coming years, the Fourth International disintegrated — its agents inside Russia eradicated, the cell across the Atlantic dwindling and finally perishing after the war. They had never had any chance to carry out the plan even when the treasures were in their possession, and their secret outlived them.
“But the Fourth International survived, becoming a entry in the CIA database. American intelligence services had been monitoring its activities, and when it crumbled, they took over what was left of it, incorporating all the information of its inner workings. Over the years, the project which is now a mass of digits in a computer in Langley has evolved into a network of the CIA’s assets in Kazakhstan. However, the Amber Room is still a huge factor affecting its functions. For example, the spooks in charge of running the Fourth International played a decisive part during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Only months before the country fell apart, they learned that the aged Lazar Kaganovich was about to reveal the story of the Amber Room. Had the real location of the Amber Room been unveiled, Gorbachev would have attempted to keep Kazakhstan from breaking off by force. A lot of blood would flow in the ensuing conflict — not to mention the CIA’s own plans for the region being disrupted by these complications. Ever since the start of the perestroika, the CIA had a growing number of ‘agents of influence’ working in Moscow, particularly among the higher-level apparatchiks. One such man was Maxim Malinin, a Communist staffer and part-time employee of the KGB. We still have a file on him archived somewhere.” Frolov smiled. “Malinin had always been a scumbag, doing the kind of work for us that I personally take no pride in — spying on his colleagues, reporting dissent overheard in conversation, sliming his way up the career ladder. Always filled the profile of a traitor, and so he’d been subverted by the CIA in the late 1980’s when he travelled to Canada as a member of some visiting Soviet delegation. Malinin was acquainted with Kaganovich, and he had no remorse when he killed the old bastard in cold blood. In return Malinin was awarded with a rich life in England, and a consultant’s position within the revamped Fourth International.”
Constantine frowned.
The FSB Director took a sip from his glass and went on.
“The obvious question is, Why didn’t they extract the treasure after Kazakhstan became independent? A new country like Kazakhstan would not part with such an earth-shattering discovery. And for all his nationalism, President Nazarbaev always leaned towards Russia as his ally instead of the U.S. Nazarbaev was an old Soviet hard man by nature, one they couldn’t risk dealing with. The CIA decided they needed their own man as the Kazakhstani President — and they got Timur Kasymov. A new breed of the ambitious Kazakhstani elite, successful in business, eager to take his country forward.”