Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

The night I gave him with my own hands a panel from the Amber Room.”
    Honor didn’t know what to say.
    Jake did. “ Shit . I told Kyle that you were trouble.”
    “It is I who have trouble,” Marju said, weeping soundlessly. “He said he would sell the panel and we would live in Brazil, where we would be warm and safe for the rest of our lives. I believed him! I betrayed my family, my people, my country. All of them. For him.” She crossed herself quickly. “May God forgive me, I still love him. I still believe he will telephone me . . .”
    With a disgusted sound, Jake shoved a wad of tissues into Marju’s hand. “Here. Wipe your nose.”
    Honor just closed her eyes and tried to balance Marju’s description of Kyle with the brother she had always loved.
    It was impossible.
    An irrational anger burned through Honor, a primitive hatred for the beautiful stranger who was damning Kyle with every word, every tear. In that instant she understood completely why tyrants killed messengers who brought bad news. Right now Honor hated everything about the divine Miss “Jones.”
    “Who was Kyle going to sell the panel to?” Jake asked as Marju’s tears subsided.
    “He did not tell me.”
    Jake grunted. “How did you get your hands on this supposed piece of the Amber Room in the first place?”
    “ ‘Supposed’? There is no doubt!”
    “Bullshit. There’s always doubt.”
    “If you could see, you would not doubt,” Marju said.
    “How did you see it?” Honor asked before Jake could say anything.
    “There is an old patriotic group known as the Forest Brotherhood,” she began. “They began in the—”
    “Forget the history lesson,” Jake said impatiently. “How did they get the Amber Room?”
    “History is necessary,” Marju countered, her voice cracking with anger. “Only Americans live in a world that is new each day. The rest of us live with the past every moment!”
    “Yeah. And then you spend the future rehashing wars your ancestors lost,” Jake said.
    “You are so American!” Marju said, throwing up her hands in despair.
    “Thank you.”
    Honor cleared her throat. “About the Forest Brotherhood and the Amber Room . . . ?”
    For a moment longer Marju glared at Jake. Then she turned back to Honor. “At the end of World War Two, the Germans tried to steal the Amber Room from Russia. Some of the Forest Brotherhood worked loading German ships at Königsberg, what we now call Kaliningrad. The Brotherhood told others, loyal Lithuanians in the Russian navy, which ship to sink. Afterward, they salvaged the Amber Room from the sunken ship and hid it deep beneath the altar of an ancient church, in the catacombs. They waited for Lithuania to become free once more.” Her mouth turned down bitterly. “But the Russians conquered.”
    Honor looked at Jake. He shrugged and didn’t say anything. He had heard similar stories about the Amber Room for so many years that it was impossible to say which one was more or less plausible than the others.
    “How did the Brotherhood keep a secret for so long?” Honor asked Marju. “Especially one that big.”
    “Dead men do not gossip,” she said simply. “The Russians slaughtered all but one or two of the Brotherhood. Knowledge of the Amber Room came down through the men of my mother’s family. A cousin told me.”
    “Why?” Honor asked.
    “He wanted me.”
    Honor didn’t doubt that. “And you ran to Kyle with the good news.”
    “I did not know Kyle very well at that time.”
    “Too bad it couldn’t have stayed that way,” Jake said sardonically. “When did you tell him?”
    “Six weeks ago. That is when he talked of love and marriage and Brazil. Poor fool that I am, I b-believed—that he loved m-me!”
    Honor ripped a tissue out of the box and stuffed it into the other woman’s hand. “Blow.”
    The brisk sympathy steadied Marju. She blew into the tissue, wiped her nose, and blotted her widely spaced, incredible eyes. Part of Honor took a mean pleasure in the fact that even an exotic like Marju couldn’t cry and get away with it entirely. The red nose definitely detracted from the rest of the package.
    Marju gave a shuddering sigh, sipped coffee, and collected herself.
    “How big is the panel?” Jake asked.
    “Perhaps one by two meters,” Marju said.
    “Heavy?”
    “Not in the way of stone. But the wood backing, the frame, made the whole awkward to handle.”
    “Who helped you?” Jake asked.
    “No one! I could trust no