back of Chapeav's skull and considered his request. "Dasvidè°İniya, Comrade."
TWENTY-NINE
"Weren't you a little rough on him?" Rachel said.
They were speeding north on the autobahn, Kehlheim and Danya Chapaev an hour south. She was driving. Knoll had said he'd take over in a little while and navigate the twisting roads through the Harz Mountains.
He glanced up from the sketch Chapaev had drawn. "You must understand, Rachel, I have been doing this many years. People lie far more than they tell the truth. Chapaev says the Amber Room rests in one of the Harz caves. That theory has been explored a thousand times. I pushed to be sure if he was being truthful."
"He appeared sincere."
"I am suspicious that, after all these years, the treasure is simply waiting at the end of a dark tunnel."
"Didn't you say there are hundreds of tunnels and most haven't been explored? Too dangerous, right?"
"That's correct. But I am familiar with the general area Chapaev describes. I have searched caves there myself."
She told him about Wayland McKoy and the ongoing expedition.
"Stod is only forty kilometers from where we will be," Knoll said. "Lots of caves
there, as well, supposedly full of loot. If you believe what the treasure hunters say." "You don't?"
"I have learned that anything worth having is usually already owned. The real hunt is for those who possess it. You would be surprised how many missing treasures are simply lying on a table in somebody's bedroom or hanging on the wall, as free as a trinket bought in a department store. People think time protects them. It doesn't. Back in the 1960s, a Monet was found in a farmhouse by a tourist. The owner had taken it in exchange for a pound of butter. Stories like that are endless, Rachel." "That what you do? Search for those opportunities?"
"Along with other quests."
They drove on, the terrain flattening and then rising as the highway crossed central
Germany and veered northwest into mountains. After a stop on the side of the road, Rachel moved to the passenger seat. Knoll pulled the car back on the highway. "These are the Harz. The northernmost mountains in central Germany."
The peaks were not the towering snowy precipices of the Alps. Instead the slopes rose at gentle angles, rounded at the top, covered in fir, beech, and walnut trees. Towns and villages were nestled throughout in tiny valleys and wide ravines. Off in the distance the silhouette of even higher peaks were visible.
"Reminds me of the Appalachians," she said.
"This is the land of Grimm," Knoll said. "The kingdom of magic. In the Dark Ages, it was one of the final venues for paganism. Fairies, witches, and goblins were supposed to roam out there. It is said the last bear and lynx in Germany were killed somewhere nearby."
"It's gorgeous," she said.
"Silver used to be mined here, but that stopped in the tenth century. Then came gold, lead, zinc, and barium oxide. The last mine closed before the war in the 1930s. That's where most of the caves and tunnels came from. Old mines the Nazis made good use of. Perfect hiding places from bombers, and tough for ground troops to invade."
She watched the winding road ahead and thought about Knoll's mention of the Brothers Grimm. She half expected to see the goose that laid the golden egg, or the two black stones that were once cruel brothers, or the Pied Piper luring rats and children with a tune.
An hour later they entered Warthberg. The dark outline of a bulwark wall encased the
compact village, softened only by arching tresses and conical-roofed bastions. The architectural difference from the south was obvious. The red roofs and timeworn ramparts of Kehlheim were replaced with half-timbered facades sheathed in dull slate. Fewer flowers adorned the windows and the houses. There was a definite glow of medieval color, but it seemed tempered by a shellac of self-consciousness. Not a whole lot different, she concluded, from the contrast between New England and the Deep South.
Knoll parked in front of an inn with the interesting name of Goldene Krone. "Golden Crown," he told her before disappearing inside. She waited outside and studied the busy street. An air of commercialism sprang from the shop windows lining the cobbled lane. Knoll returned a few minutes later.
"I obtained two rooms for the night. It is nearly five o'clock, and daylight will last another five or six hours. But we'll head up into the hills in the morning. No rush. It has waited fifty years."
"It stays daylight that long