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In the Soviet capital a million citizens queued outside the Pushkin Museum for a glimpse of the 'rescued' German collection that went on display before it was given back. Exhibition catalogues and posters of Raphael's Sistine Madonna sold out. Soviet magazines published interviews with members of the trophy brigades, who were presented as Red Army heroes who had rescued German art from the firing line.

Then in January 1957 another exchange was proposed. Soviet tanks had rolled into Budapest the previous November to crush a nationalist uprising. Poland too was in a state of unrest. On 8 January, Pravda reported that the USSR's First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and Otto Grotewohl, the GDR premier, had signed a protocol reaffirming fraternal ties. At the bottom of the statement was a pledge: 'Both sides affirmed their readiness to discuss questions connected with the return on a mutual basis of cultural valuables'.23

Two lists would be drawn up, one of art works 'that are in the Soviet Union for temporary storage' and another of Soviet art that was in East Germany. When the Soviet list was approved on 30 July 1958, it consisted of an incredible 1,990,000 art works that had been 'rescued' from Germany. Here was the altar of Zeus from Pergamum and many other items that had vanished at the end of the war and been secreted in Soviet stores. The Soviet trophy brigades had been far more industrious than even the Allies had suspected.

The East German list was delayed until 19 October 1958 and when it arrived the Soviet authorities realized why. 'No cultural valuables from the USSR [had been found] in the GDR.' Nothing. Not a stick of furniture could be returned to Moscow, as the Americans had already given back to the Soviet Union half a million valuables at the end of the war.

Moscow had a serious problem. The forthcoming exchanges had been publicized around the world. But now the Soviets would have to hand back nearly 2 million German art works and get nothing back. They would appear to be voracious thieves while the Germans, convicted at Nuremberg for the decimation of Soviet culture, would be portrayed as victims.

The Soviets launched a damage limitation exercise. In July 1958 the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the State Hermitage in Leningrad announced that they were to stage joint gala exhibitions of 'saved treasures'.24

Newspaper editors were called in and briefed on what stories to run. It was now that Kaliningradskaya Pravda (and then practically every other paper in the Motherland) published their dubious stories about the Amber Room. The articles revealed how 'the most valuable international art trophy in the world' had not been destroyed by fire in April 1945 but concealed by Nazis in a secret location known only to a handful of Germans. The story of the Amber Room helped to divert attention away from the embarrassing questions being asked in the Western media about why Moscow had lied for so long about looting German treasures? What else was concealed in its archives and stores?

Anatoly Kuchumov had revived the Amber Room story to save his career. Moscow had snapped his report up to ward off American allegations of Soviet impropriety. Now in 1958 revelations about the secret search for the world's most valuable missing art treasure would grab the headlines once again and save Soviet face.

Six months later East Germans joined the clamour for news about the Amber Room, having read the sensational articles in Freie Welt. It was fate that the Freie Welt articles appeared as would-be Stasi agent Paul Enke graduated from the Walter Ulbricht Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg. This was his cue to begin searching for the Amber Room in the GDR, forming the embryonic Amber Room study group that would play into Soviet hands by generating yet more rumours about the 'still-missing' Amber Room (while ascertaining what the Germans really knew about the truth).

And once Moscow had launched the story, they had to keep looking for it in the