Donovans 01 - Amber Beach

factories. Some estate stuff that probably came from stolen World War Two household goods. A pretty decent replica of a corner table from the czar’s legendary Amber Room.”
    Only someone who had once played the game would have recognized the subtle tightening of Ellen’s features. Jake noticed the predatory sharpening of interest and felt a cold stone settle in his stomach.
    More than raw amber and less than nukes.
    The Amber Room.
    Jake had heard rumors that the Amber Room had been found . . . but there were always rumors about World War II’s most famous lost treasure. In 1941 the Nazis had dismantled one of the czar’s extraordinary palace rooms, a room whose ceiling, doors, wall coverings, and furnishings—tables, chairs, lamps, knickknacks, candlesticks, vases, knives, forks, spoons, snuff boxes, objets d’art, everything— were carved from solid amber or surfaced in mosaics of precious amber.
    The only exceptions to the amber rule were the tall, gilded mirrors that doubled and redoubled the play of light throughout the magical room. When the room was intact, walking into it must have been like walking into a shimmering golden paradise suspended within the vast, icy gray of the Russian winter.
    The Germans shipped their unique golden loot out of Saint Petersburg to Kaliningrad. From there, it vanished, thus beginning a treasure hunt that would endure as long as human imagination and greed or until the lost Amber Room was recovered, whichever came first.
    “The table was fake?” Ellen asked.
    “The mosaic inlay was real amber. The table itself was real and very well made, but it had never been part of the czar’s Amber Room.”
    “How can you be certain?”
    “It’s my job.”
    “Convince me.”
    Jake thought it over for a split second and decided to be gracious. That way he had a fallback position.
    “Quantities of Baltic amber are hard to come by,” he said, “unless you’re very well connected with a Baltic government or a local mafiya chieftain, take your pick. Mexican and Costa Rican amber are available to anyone with money. Whoever crafted the forged table was forced to use some clear amber from the New World.”
    “How can you tell the difference between New and Old World stuff?”
    “Ask your experts.”
    “You’re here. They’re not.”
    Wistfully he looked at the sky. Clouds were thickening off toward the Olympics, but there was still plenty of time to try out the Tomorrow before the weather got nasty.
    “Baltic amber is called succinite because of its high percentage of succinic acid,” he said. “It’s unique among ambers. In fact, some purists claim that succinite is the only real amber. All the rest is something else.”
    “All Baltic ambers are unique for the succinic acid content, no exceptions?” she asked.
    “None that matter.”
    “Tell me about the ones that don’t matter.”
    Jake looked at his watch. He would rather have been photocopying Kyle’s log than telling Ellen what any amber dealer could have told her. He hoped that a little patience now would pay big dividends later on.
    “About ten percent of Baltic ambers don’t have succinic acid,” he said, “but they didn’t end up in the czar’s palace.”
    “Why not?”
    “That kind of Baltic amber is too soft, too brittle, or too ugly for decorative use. It was turned into varnish or medicine or burned as incense. The amber I saw in the forged table was as clear and radiant as liquid sunshine. First-class amber in the New World. The Old World still prefers bastard amber.”
    “Bastard?”
    “Opaque or semi-opaque. Depending on its color and ‘feel,’ nontranslucent amber is called butter, bone, ivory, fatty, cloudy, semi-bastard—”
    “I get the picture,” she interrupted. “A lot of names.”
    “A lot of variations in color and transparency. Amber’s link with human culture is long and richly textured, especially in the Baltic regions. They spent as much time describing and naming minute differences in amber as we did counting angels and pinheads.”
    Polished red fingernails tapped in slow counterpoint to the dying wind while Ellen ran what she had just heard through her first-class brain.
    “Are color and clarity a reliable way to tell Baltic from other amber?” she asked.
    “No. What I just gave you only skims the surface. There are literally hundreds of words in the Baltic languages describing varieties of amber. Each variation of clarity and/or color has its own passionate