The Amber Room Page 0,41

if he was reading articles in his study, stashed more in his freezer, unfolded a German map in the den, and possessed a keen interest in a man heading for Germany to dig in forgotten caves? A huge leap from that to murder. Maybe Paul was right. She decided to let it lie with this guy.

"Nothing, Lieutenant. You're quite right. Just a tragic fall. Thanks for coming by." Rachel sat sullen in her office and thought back to when she was sixteen, her father explaining for the first time about Mauthausen, and how the Russians and Dutch worked the stone quarry, hauling tons of boulders up a long series of narrow steps to the camp where more prisoners chiseled them into bricks.

The Jews, though, weren't so lucky. Each day they were tossed down the cliff into the quarry simply for sport, their screams echoing as bodies flew through the air, bets taken by the guards on how many times flesh and bones would bounce before being silenced by death. Eventually, her father explained, the SS had to stop the hurling because it so disrupted the work.

Not because they were killing people, she remembered him saying, only because it affected the work.

Her father cried that day, one of the few times ever, and so had she. Her mother had told her about his war experiences and what he'd done afterward, but her father hardly mentioned the time. She'd always noticed the smeared tattoo on his left forearm, wondering when he'd explain.

They forced us to run into electric fence. Some did willingly, tired of torture. Others were shot, hanged, or injected in the heart. The gas came later.

She'd asked how many died in Mauthausen. And he told her without hesitation that 60 percent of the two hundred thousand never made it out. He arrived in April 1944. The Hungarian Jews came shortly thereafter, every one of them slaughtered like sheep. He'd helped heave the bodies from the gas chamber to the oven, a daily ritual, commonplace, like taking out the garbage, the guards used to say. She remembered him telling her about one night in particular, toward the end, when Hermann Goring marched into the camp wearing a pearl gray uniform.

Evil on two legs, he called him.

Goring had ordered four Germans murdered, her father part of the detail that poured water over their naked bodies until they froze to death. Goring stood impassive the whole time, rubbing a piece of amber, wanting to know something about the Amber Room. Of all the horror that happened in Mauthausen, her father said, that night with Goring was what stayed with him.

And set his course in life.

After the war, he was sent to interview Goring in prison during the N眉rnberg trials. Did he remember you? she'd asked.

My face in Mauthausen meant nothing to him.

But Goring recalled the torture, saying he greatly admired the soldiers for holding out. German superiority, breeding, he'd said. Her love for her father multiplied tenfold after finally hearing about Mauthausen. What he endured was unimaginable and just to survive was an accomplishment. But to survive with his sanity intact seemed nothing short of a miracle.

Sitting in the quiet of her chambers, Rachel cried. That precious man was gone. His voice forever silent, his love only a memory. For the first time in her life she was alone. Her parents' entire family had either perished in the war or were inaccessible, somewhere in Belarus, strangers really, linked merely by genes. Only her two children were left. She remembered how they'd ended that conversation about Mauthausen twenty-four years ago.

Daddy, did you ever find the Amber Room?

He stared back at her with woeful eyes. She wondered then and now if there was something he wanted to tell her. Something she needed to know. Or was it better she not know? Hard to tell. And his words didn't help.

Never did, my darling.

But his tone was reminiscent of when he once explained there really was a Santa Claus, an Easter Bunny, a Tooth Fairy. Hollow words that simply needed to be said. Now, after reading the letters between her father and Danya Chapaev and the note penned in his own hand, she was convinced that there was more to the story. Her father harbored a secret, and apparently had done so for years.

But he was gone.

Only one lead left.

Danya Chapaev.

And she knew what had to be done.

Rachel stepped off the elevator on the twenty-third floor and marched toward the paneled doors labeled PRIDGEN & WOODWORTH. The