The Amber Room Page 0,23

garish swastika bookplate inside, the inscription reading: EX LIBRIS ADOLF HITLER. Two thousand of Hitler's books, all from his personal library, had been hastily evacuated from Berchtesgaden and stashed in a nearby salt mine just days before the end of the war. American soldiers later found them, and they were eventually cataloged into the Library of Congress. But some were stolen before that happened. Several had turned up through the years. Loring owned none, desiring no reminders of the horror of Nazism, but he knew other collectors who did.

She slipped the book off the shelf. Loring would be pleased with this added treasure.

She turned to leave.

Jeremy stood naked in the darkened doorway.

"Is it the same one you looked at before?" he asked. "Grandmother has so many

books. She'll not miss one."

She approached close and quickly decided to use her best weapon. "I enjoyed tonight."

"So did I. You didn't answer my question."

She gestured with the book. "Yes. It's the same one."

"You require it?"

"I do."

"Will you come back?"

A strange question considering the situation, but she realized what he truly wanted. So she reached down and grasped him where she knew he could not resist. He

instantly responded to her gentle strokes. "Perhaps," she said.

"I saw you in the piano room. You're not some woman who just got out of a bad marriage, are you?"

"Does it matter, Jeremy? You enjoyed yourself." She continued to stroke him. "You're enjoying yourself now, aren't you?"

He sighed.

"And everything here is your grandmother's anyway. What do you care?" "I don't."

She released her hold. His organ stood at attention. She kissed him gently on the lips.

"I'm sure we'll be seeing one another again." She brushed past him and headed for the front door.

"If I hadn't given in, would you have harmed me to get the book and the box?" She turned back. Interesting that someone so immature about life could be perceptive enough to understand the depths of her desires. "What do you think?"

He seemed to genuinely consider the inquiry. Perhaps the hardest he'd considered anything in a while.

"I think I'm glad I fucked you."

TWELVE

Volary, Czech Republic

Friday, May 9, 2:45 p.m.

Suzanne angled the porsche hard to the right, and the 911 Speedster's coil-spring suspension and torque steering grabbed the tight curve. She'd earlier hinged the

glassfiber hood back, allowing the afternoon air to whip her layered bob. She kept the car parked at the Ruzynè airport, the 120 kilometers from Prague to southwestern Bohemia an easy hour's drive. The car was a gift from Loring, a bonus two years ago after a particularly productive year of acquisitions. Metallic slate gray, black leather interior, plush velvet carpet. Only 150 of the model were produced. Hers bore a gold insigne on the dash.Drahá."Little darling," the nickname Loring bestowed upon her in childhood.

She'd heard the tales and read the press on Ernst Loring. Most portrayed him as baleful, stern, and dismissive, with the energy of a zealot and the morals of a despot. Not far off the mark. But there was another side of him. The one she knew, loved, and respected.

Loring's estate occupied a three-hundred-acre tract in southwestern Czech, only kilometers from the German border. The family had flourished under Communist rule, their factories and mines in Chomutov, Most, and Teplice vital to the old Czechoslovakia's once supposed self-sufficiency. She'd always thought it amusing that the family uranium mines north in Jáchymov, manned with political prisoners-the worker death toll nearly 100 percent-were officially considered irrelevant by the new government. It was likewise unimportant that, after years of acid rain, the Sad Mountains had been transformed into eerie graveyards of rotting forests. A mere footnote that Teplice, once a thriving spa town near the Polish border, was renowned more for the short life expectancy of its inhabitants than for its refreshing warm water. She'd long ago noticed that no photos of the region were contained in the fancy picture books vendors hawked outside Prague Castle to the millions who visited each year. Northern Czech was a blight. A reminder. Once a necessity, now something to be forgotten. But it was a place where Ernst Loring profited, and the reason why he lived in the south.

The Velvet Revolution of 1989 assured the demise of the Communists. Three years later Czech and Slovakia divorced, hastily dividing the country's spoils. Loring benefited from both events, quickly allying himself with Havel and the new government of the Czech Republic, a name he thought dignified but lacking in punch. She'd heard his views about the changes. How his factories and