The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [108]
Geissler leads Wermusch off, down towards the lake. We can see them gesticulating vigorously, looking back, towards us, before Wermusch places a steadying hand on his acquaintance's forearm and guides him up the path. And as we squeeze around a small plastic table we notice the family of pottery gnomes peeking out of the shrubbery. For a retired collaborator at peace in his garden, Geissler's eyes are remarkably bloodshot. He complains to Wermusch that these days he cannot sleep. He lights a cigarette and dissolves into a whooping cough, while Wermusch stares longingly at the pile of stubs ground into the ashtray.
Geissler sets some rules. Never betrayed anyone, got it? Was never a sneak, right? 'We've all been betrayed by the Ministry of Truth. I never spied. I was just trying to help. It's my natural impulse.' Wermusch stares into space. 'The Soviets were dealt such a terrible blow in the war, losing so much more than anyone else,' Geissler says. 'It was only right that we Germans help find what was stolen from them.'
Geissler's eyes track a delicate woman with prematurely grey hair who emerges from the chalet behind us. 'Liebling, get our guests something to eat,' he barks. Geissler's liebling must be half his age and she silently shakes our hands with the grip of a jailer, before retreating into the chalet.
What was Geissler's role in the Amber Room study group, we ask?
'The "fraternal authorities" [KGB] were trying to locate all the old East Prussian aristocrats, those whom Alfred Rohde had corresponded with in 1944 as he struggled to find a hiding place for the Amber Room: Keyserlingk, Dohna, Schwerin. Also the high-ranking castle and museum officials: Henkensiefken, Will, Friesen, Gall, Zimmerman. Would you like a Danish butter cookie? Pass them around, liebling.' These names are becoming familiar to us. All are on Anatoly Kuchumov's list of missing Germans; in Freie Welt and Kaliningradskaya Pravda. We still do not know what role any of them played in the Amber Room story.
So did you find them, we ask?
Geissler isn't listening. He's talking. For a man who is supposed to have spent a lifetime keeping his mouth shut, he seems incapable of doing so. 'We were remarkably successful.' Wermusch shudders as Geissler wedges a large biscuit in his mouth.
I tell you. The Soviets made a mistake throwing out all the eyewitnesses.' By 1949, the authorities in Kaliningrad had expelled all Germans from East Prussia, filling their homes and farms with Soviet settlers. Did Geissler ever point out the short-sightedness of the policy? 'Well, I could have done,' he splutters, 'but I was too busy. On the road. Rounding them all up again.'
Dark clouds gather overhead and the candy-striped awning above us flaps loudly. We try and steer the conversation to what we have come here to learn. What was the new intelligence about the Amber Room that the security services had obtained? 'Freie Welt. More than 1,OOO eyewitnesses came forward after the articles were published and we went checking them all out. Soldiers who'd been looting in Leningrad. Konigsberg residents who'd seen the Amber Room,' he says, thunder echoing across Lake Krossinsee.
But what was the impetus for publishing the articles in the first place, we ask? Freie Welt was surely the second stage. We recall Herr 'Stolz's' theory but do not mention it. Rain begins to whip the chalet, water pouring down off the awning. 'There are a lot of liars out there,' Geissler shouts above the deluge. 'Sad, deluded people who wanted to be part of the mystery, wanted to be part of something special. Some of them even tried to find the Amber Room themselves. We had to stamp on that right away.' Imagine sending a letter to the editor of The Times, we think, and finding an MI5 agent on the doorstep.
Geissler's eyes flicker skywards. 'Looks like rain,' he says, noticing it for the first time, pushing past us into the cabin where his liebling kneels on the