The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [33]
Telemakov's manuscript peters out at this point and at the bottom he has scrawled, 'Please call me.' But his phone is out of order. An operator says that it has been this way for a year or more. We will have to return to Ozerki. It is too late to make the journey tonight. The phone is ringing. We dash down the hallway and snatch up the handset. For once we are on time. But someone is trying to send us a fax.
Slowly the message unfurls.
Thank you so much for your interest in the Catherine Palace. It was good to meet the other day. All the materials we have are the result of our staff's work that has taken years and years to pick up, crumbs of information, and we intend to publish this material in a book currently being written by our curators, headed by Alexander Kedrinsky, whom you met some days ago. I find it beyond our physical powers to answer your questions or meet the scheme suggested by you. I find it just the same as to write another book. With respect.. ,23
What can we do? It took us five months to secure a meeting with Director Sautov and three weeks for him to reject us. Maybe we should have done nothing after all. We recall that some of the Catherine Palace archive was uploaded in Russian on to the Internet. We log on to the official Catherine Palace website (www.Tzar.ru) and a message pops up where once there were essays and articles. 'Under Construction. Thank you for your interest. Please return later.' The next morning the local television news carries a report that the replica Amber Room being constructed in the Catherine Palace has now been closed to visitors and will not reopen until May 2003. Months after beginning our investigation into the fate of the Amber Room, we have still not seen any original documents. Now we face another 15 months of official obfuscation, until the reconstructed room is unveiled.
We are back out in the cold. We remind ourselves of the city's favourite saying and catch a marshrutki to Pushkin. We will find Alexander Kedrinsky and explain the situation to him. He was more helpful than Sautov. We punch the code into the inconspicuous side door, guarded by the hissing babushka. At least no one has thought to change it. 'Kedrinsky,' we say, brushing past her and up the flights of cast-iron stairs. But the door to the old architect's studio is locked, even though he has told us that he works every day.
We hear a noise from above and gingerly climb the last flight. A tiny door is ajar and we push it open. We are in the first of three low-ceilinged rooms. Every inch of every wall is plastered with black-and-white photographs of the Catherine Palace, some of which show goose-stepping Nazis parading across the Great Courtyard. A young woman emerges, ashen-faced, huddled in sweaters, her neck wrapped in scarves and, around the acrylic swathes, an enormous red cardigan. 'Yes?' she asks abruptly. 'And you are?' We say nothing. She reaches for the phone. She is dialling for the guards. Two of her colleagues, whose socks spill over their calf-length plastic boots, pop their heads up over the partition, pointing and gawping. Foreigners are in the private archive of the Catherine Palace.
Like phosphorus dropped in water, the more we speak the more our English words transform the room into a hubbub of spinning and whirling, gesticulating arms and raised voices. We throw in Alexander Kedrinsky's name. We are friends from London, researching the lives of Catherine Palace curators. The women relax. The handset is replaced. Tidying away the wisps of hair that fly around her button-round face, the woman in the red cardigan asks: 'Who? Anyone in particular?'
Kuchumov, we say. Anatoly Mikhailovich.
She smiles,