The Amber Room Page 0,18
The castle complex was huge. Eight massive towers adorned with half timbers accommodated more than a hundred rooms. Mullion and dormer windows enlivened the outside and provided exquisite views of the rich forested valleys beyond. The towers were grouped in an octagon around a spacious inner courtyard. Four halls connected them, all the buildings topped by a steeply pitched slate roof that bore witness to harsh German winters.
He turned at the base of the stairs and followed a series of slate tiled corridors toward the chapel. Barrel vaults loomed overhead. Battle-axes, spears, pikes, visored helmets, suits of mail-all collectors' pieces-lined the way. He'd personally acquired the largest piece of armor, a knight standing nearly eight feet tall, from a woman in Luxembourg. Flemish tapestries adorned the walls, all originals. The lighting was soft and indirect, the rooms warm and dry.
An arched door at the far end opened out to a cloister. He exited and followed a breezeway to a pillared doorway. Three stone faces carved into the castle facade watched his steps. They were a remnant of the original seventeenth-century structure, their identities unknown, though one legend proclaimed them to be of the castle's master builder and two assistants, the men killed and walled into the stone so that they could never build another similar structure.
He approached the Chapel of Saint Thomas. An interesting label, since it was not only the name of an Augustinian monk who founded a nearby monastery seven centuries ago, but also the first name of old Martin Fellner's head steward.
He shoved the heavy oak door inward.
She was standing in the center aisle, just beyond a gilded grille that separated the foyer from six oak pews. Incandescent fixtures illuminated a black-and-gold rococo altar beyond and cast her in shadows. The bottle-glass and bull's-eye windows left and right were dark. The stained-glass heraldic signs of castle knights loomed unimpressive, awaiting revivement by the morning sun. Little worship occurred here. The chapel was now a display room for gilded reliquaries-Fellner's collection, one of the most extensive in the world, rivaled most European cathedrals.
He smiled at his host.
Monika Fellner was thirty-four and the eldest daughter of his employer. The skin that covered her tall, svelte frame carried the swarthy tint of her mother's, who'd been a Lebanese her father passionately loved forty years before. But old Martin had not been impressed with his son's choice of wife and eventually forced a divorce, sending her back to Lebanon, leaving two children behind. He often thought Monika's cool, tailored, almost untouchable air the result of her mother's rejection. But that wasn't something she would ever voice or he would ever ask. She stood proud, like always, her tangled dark curls falling in carefree wisps. A flick of a smile creased her lips. She wore a taupe brocade jacket over a tight chiffon skirt, the slit rising all the way up to thin supple thighs. She was the sole heir to the Fellner fortune, thanks to the untimely death of her older brother two years ago. Her name meant "devout to God." Yet she was anything but.
"Lock it," she said.
He snapped the lever down.
She strutted toward him, her heels clicking off the ancient marble floor. He met her at the open gate in the grille. Immediately below her was the grave of her grandfather, MARTIN FELLNER1868-1941 etched into the smooth gray marble. The old man's last wish was that he be buried in the castle he so loved. No wife accompanied him in death. The elder Fellner's head steward lay beside him, more letters carved in stone marking that grave.
She noticed his gaze down to the floor.
"Poor grandfather. To be so strong in business, yet so weak in spirit. Must have been a bitch to be queer back then."
"Maybe it's genetic?"
"Hardly. Though I have to say, a woman can sometimes provide an interesting diversion."
"Your father wouldn't want to hear that."
"I don't think he'd care right now. It's you he's rather upset with. He has a copy of the Rome newspaper. There's a front-page story on the death of Pietro Caproni." "But he also has the match case."
She smiled. "You think success smooths anything?"
"I've found it to be the best insurance for job security."
"You didn't mention killing Caproni in your note yesterday."
"It seemed an unimportant detail."
"Only you would consider a knife in the chest unimportant. Father wants to talk with you. He's waiting."
"I expected that."
"You don't seem concerned."
"Should I be?"
She stared hard. "You're a hard bastard, Christian."
He realized that she possessed none of