"As far as I know. He mentioned something about transferring to New York."
"Good for him."
"You know, he mentioned to me that Jennifer Browne had called him. Asking after you. Apparently she got wind you'd been involved."
"And?" Tom said stonily, his eyes still fixed to the ground.
"And maybe you should call her. Look, I know I gave you a hard time about her before, what with her being a Fed and everything, but you two were good together. All this stuff with your father and Renwick and Viktor… it's messing with your head. I mean, what have you got to lose?"
"You see all this, Archie?" Tom gestured at the gravestones around them. "This is what I've got to lose. I've spent too much of my life in cemeteries. Buried too many people I've cared about over the years. It's easier this way. You can't mourn something you've never had."
"Tom? Archie?" Dominique's voice rang out, breaking into their conversation. "Over here. I've found him."
They picked their way over to where she was standing and found her at the foot of an open grave. A pile of frozen earth lay to her left, a shovel handle emerging from it like the mast of a half-buried ship.
"There." She pointed.
Tom could just about make out the brass plaque screwed into the coffin's lid and the name engraved onto its already dull and faded surface.
HENRY JULIUS RENWICK
"It's over, Tom," Dominique said gently.
Tom nodded. He knew he should feel glad that Renwick was gone; some sense of relief, elation even, that this man who had betrayed him, lied to him, and tried to kill him, was finally dead.
But instead he felt sad. Sad as the memories of the good times he had spent with Renwick as a boy came flooding back. Sad that he had lost someone who, for a long time, he had considered to be a friend and a mentor. Sad that yet another link to his father had been severed, never to be recovered.
"You all right?" asked Archie.
"Yeah," said Tom, gently taking out his father's gold pocket watch and twirling it by its chain between the fingers of his left hand, the case winking lazily as it turned and caught the sun.
"You don't really think your father…?" Archie began, catching sight of the watch.
"No, of course not," Tom said with a firm shake of his head. He allowed the watch to spin for a few seconds longer, barely blinking as his eyes followed it. Then in one firm movement he grabbed it and flung it into the grave, smashing it against the coffin lid.
For a few moments the three of them stood there, staring at the watch's white face, hands frozen, the shattered glass scattered around it like small drops of ice, springs and screws strewn like shrapnel.
"Let's go and get a drink," said Dominique eventually.
"Yeah," said Tom, a sad smile on his face. "Let's go and get several."
Archie threw his cigarette to the ground, where it flared for a few seconds, then flickered, then went out.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
In 1999 the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets finally admitted not only that the U.S. Army had been guilty of wrongly identifying the contents of the Hungarian Gold Train as enemy property after recovering it in 1945, but that several of its men had actively conspired in plundering it. Although the U.S. Department of Justice opposed all attempts at compensation, in 2005 the courts ruled in favor of a class-action suit brought by Holocaust survivors. A total of $25 million was ordered to be distributed to Hungarian survivors. A large number of paintings and other works of art taken from the Gold Train remain lost to this day.
Wewelsburg Castle, near Paderborn in northern Westphalia, Germany, was intended by Himmler to be the epicenter of the Aryan world. He had envisioned a vast complex radiating out from the castle's north tower, and over 1,250 concentration camp inmates died bringing the first phases of his plan to fruition. Today the castle operates as a museum and youth hostel. The crypt and the ceremonial chamber where twelve of his generals would meet around a round table, complete with the symbol of the Black Sun inlaid into the floor, are open to visitors.
The Nazis' nuclear research effort was centered at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under the physicist Werner Heisen-berg, although a military team under the scientific leadership of Professor Kurt Diebner was also in the chase. It is a matter of historical debate as to whether Heisenberg's team deliberately sabotaged their work or were simply lagging behind the Allies. Historians believe that Stalin deliberately ordered Marshals Zukhov and Konev to race each other to Berlin so as to secure the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute ahead of the Americans, sacrificing close to 70,000 men in the process. The special NKVD troops dispatched to the institute recovered over three tons of uranium oxide, a material the Russians were short of at the time, allowing them to kick-start Operation Borodino, their own nuclear program. The first Soviet nuclear test took place in August 1949, over four years after the first American explosion at the Trinity site in New Mexico in July 1945.
The Amber Room was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, and later presented to the Russian czar Peter the Great. It decorated the Catherine Palace, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, from 1770 until September 1941, when invading German troops carried it off to Konigsberg in East Prussia (now the Russian city of Kaliningrad). Fearing Allied bomb attacks, the room was again packed up in 1944 but then vanished. Opinions differ as to what happened to the room. Some believe that it was moved to an abandoned silver mine in Thuringia, others that it was buried in a lagoon in Lithuania. The latest theory suggests that the room was in fact burned by mistake by Soviet troops, with the Kremlin subsequently disguising their actions and propagating the myth of the Amber Room's survival as a negotiating ploy.
In 1997, the son of one of the German officers who had accompanied the wartime convoy from St. Petersburg to Konigsberg was arrested for trying to sell a small section of the room. Although it is not known how the officer got it, this fragment remains, along with an intricately inlaid chest, the only part of the original Amber Room known to have survived the war.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As ever my thanks to my agents, Jonathan Lloyd and Euan Thorneycroft at Curtis Brown in London, and George Lucas at Inkwell Management in New York, for their hard work and insight.
Thank you also to my editors, Wayne Brookes and Alison Callahan, who, along with the whole sales, editorial, marketing, and creative team at HarperCollins in both the UK and the US, have continued to work wonders for me. This novel is a real testament to your combined skill and enthusiasm, and I feel incredibly privileged and fortunate to work with you all.
In researching this novel I owe a huge debt of gratitude to three excellent books: The Spoils of World War II, by Kenneth D. Alford; The Order of the Death's Head, by Heinz Hohne; and Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, by Antony Beevor. I would also like to acknowledge the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg, Germany; the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, Maryland; and the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague.
Many people helped in the editing of this novel and in supporting me through the lonely months it took to write it, but special thanks go to Ann, Bob, and Joanna Twining; Roy, Claire, and Sarah Toft; Kate Gilmore; Jeremy Green; Anne O'Brien; Florian Reinaud; Nico Schwartz; Jeremy
Walton; Tom Weston; and, as ever, Rod Gillett. I am also indebted to the suggestions made by Adrian Loudermilk only a few days before he was tragically killed.
Victoria and Amelia, thank you for putting up with me. I love you. You make it all worthwhile.
London, October 2005