The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [105]
What we are left with in this binder is an intriguing hierarchy of code-names that we cannot decipher without help.
Günter Wermusch, the editor of Paul Enke's Bernsteinzimmer Report, lives in an eastern Berlin suburb where the past has been smothered with a forest of identical towers. As we walk past the sports centre, it echoes to the splash of a lone swimmer.
Before our fingers have left the buzzer a voice urges: 'You must walk up. Elevator is kaput.' We climb eighteen flights. A door is open. In the shadows stands a man who is younger than we had expected, wearing two days' stubble and a synthetic tracksuit. Giinter Wermusch looks like a bedraggled Soviet sports coach, the kind who shouted gruff instructions to shrimpy gymnasts on television in the 1970S. 'Better come in,' he mutters, limping back through the apartment.
We smell mildewed books, boredom and emptiness. In the kitchen a solitary supper is laid out on the grey Formica: a bottle of red wine, a tin of mushrooms, a knife and fork. The hallway is stuffed with old cardboard boxes spilling papers on to the floor, files stacked precariously on top of them beside a battered photocopier. Russian paperbacks prop up homemade shelves. We notice that there are no family photographs on the walls. No finger-paintings on the fridge.
'Zo, you've flown from London, eh? I hope not just to see me. I think
Günter Wermusch
I might disappoint.' Wermusch clears his throat and fills a briar pipe from a pouch of vanilla-scented tobacco. An English dictionary sits on the arm of his chair beside several boxes of pills. 'Who gave you my name? Who have you talked to?'
We do not mention 'Stolz' or the Ministry of Truth files just yet. We stick to the Bernsteinzimmer Report.
'I'm a Lektor,' Wermusch says defensively, rippling through the pages of his dictionary. 'Yes, an editor, not quite the right word but you know what I mean? I am a historian and with Bernsteinzimmer Report I did what my publishing house, Die Wirtschaft, asked of me.' He limps over to the picture window that fills the far wall with a distant view of the giant TV tower on Alexanderplatz.
And Paul Enke, we ask? How did you meet him?
Wermusch has boxed himself into a corner. 'He came to me in 1984,' he says, trapped between the shelves and a chair. I had edited a scientific book on amber. It contained a chapter on the Bernsteinzimmer. Enke rang up. He said he'd been researching the mystery since the 1950S. He had a manuscript he wanted me to look at.' A kiss-curl of smoke floats over Wermusch's head.
What did he tell you about his research, we ask?
'Enke told me he had seen the Amber Room in Konigsberg during the war and later became a research officer of the Volkspolizei. The Amber Room investigation was like his weekend thing. A hobby-Historiker, we call people like him. Why should I be suspicious?' We could think of a number of reasons but say nothing.
'At the time I presumed Enke had got interested the same way we all had. The Freie Welt articles in E959 got everyone very excited. Went and bought metal detectors.' Freie Welt again. Gerhard Strauss's articles obviously succeeded in generating a lasting clamour.
Wermusch ponders a stain on his carpet. 'In 1959 we all thought we would find something that everyone else had overlooked. The Amber Room story did that, ja} So when Enke came to Die Wirtschaft in E984, we thought it seemed like a great idea to publish his manuscript. Get people excited again.' The phone rings in the hall. Wermusch looks relieved. He limps out. 'Wer ist da? Nein. Nein. Nicht. Eine minute.' He drops the receiver and shuffles back into the room, distracted. 'All the time, these people call. I don't know who they are.'
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