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By Root 1893 0

George Stein thought he had telephoned and even quoted in his articles, without realizing that he was actually dealing with a Stasi agent. Now Stein had arrived to meet Kohler in person and, with the real archivist on leave, Enke was brought out of retirement to maintain the deception. Enke obviously felt comfortable enough in his relationship with Semyonov to bemoan the state of play that had reduced the Stasi and KGB dialogue on the Amber Room to a circuitous correspondence, with Stein acting as witless intermediary.

'Translation from the Russian. Dear Paul' - an undated letter from Julian Semyonov to Paul Enke:

I was happy to receive a letter from you, many thanks. Following my Latin American impressions - I had been from January to April in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua - I have in spite of everything arrived at the full conviction that Bormann had been alive here. Especially since they mentioned to me the day of his death in Asuncion. He died seven years ago from [line blacked out]. He was too old (he did not deserve to live that long). The matter of George Stein is more complicated: his wife had died and this had affected him very much and then somebody - this has been my feeling - had begun to work against us, to try and influence him subtly against us, because he knew too much about the Nazis - this is very rare in the West. I am not going to write anything about this in the letter, better when we have a chance to meet face-to-face. I embrace you [name blacked out]. Kindest regards to all the buddies, comrades and friends, until we meet again, Julian Semyonov.55

What had led Semyonov to write in such a conspiratorial tone? We search newspaper archives in Hamburg and discover something shocking. Two years before this letter was sent, George Stein had reported to the police that on Good Friday he had been attacked by masked men who had stormed his house in Stelle, drugged him, tortured him and interrogated him about the Amber Room. Stein woke up later covered in blood and found a sheet of paper lying beside him on the floor with a strange motto in Latin scrawled upon it: 'If your disgraced servant is White, then Christ should spray his blood. If he is Red, Christ should extinguish him. If he is Black, Christ should let him die.'56 Another newspaper report revealed that, in the following summer, Elisabeth Stein was found hanged in the cellar of the family home. Semyonov claimed that Stein 'knew too much' and that 'somebody had begun to work against us', and yet while he suggested that Stein's injuries and his wife's death were somehow connected to the Amber Room search, he didn't want to write down who was responsible, possibly fearing that the letter would be intercepted.

We had taken lightly the Kaliningradskaya Pravda claim that Alfred Rohde had been murdered to stop him revealing the location of the Amber Room. In the 1960S it was revealed that his children, Lotti and Wolfgang, had in fact survived the war and were living in West Germany. Yet Semyonov was hinting at another possible murder. Was someone so desperate to keep the location of the Amber Room a secret that they were willing to kill? We read on and see that the last letter to Julian Semyonov was from an entirely different correspondent in the West. We have no idea how it ended up in the Stasi files.

8 December 1984. My dear Julian, I have not heard from you for some time. I do hope your health has improved. Good health is the most important thing in life... Amber Room: I am often corresponding and telephoning Stein. He really has no more money to carry on with his research trips and I am the only one who supports him financially. The sums I have lent him are already considerable. I do hope the two of us achieve positive results soon otherwise it would be a great pity for the pair of us to have made such a big effort. I wish you and your family a Happy New Year. Please tell your cousin Serge, I will bring his stomach pills with me when I visit in the spring (I have just received his order through TASS). Eduard.57