The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [42]
The German civilian population was being squeezed through a security sieve, although now there were only 193,000 people left in a city that was once populated by 2.2 million.12 The city was encircled by nine NKVD regiments sent by Stalin's security chief Lavrenty Beria, who had succeeded Karlik, after the Dwarf had himself become a victim of the purges in 1938. Beria's men were bolstered by 400 operatives from the NKVD's special department (christened SMERSH in 1943, a name chosen by Stalin that was an acronym for 'Kill All Spies'). SMERSH acted as the Soviets' counter-intelligence service, snuffling around Konigsberg for collaborators, fascists, double agents and traitors.
On 2 June, Professor Brusov and Tatyana Beliaeva were permitted to begin searching the ruins, assisted by German recruits. They headed straight for Konigsberg Castle, whose barrelling watchtowers and arrow-slits still dominated the city. According to Brusov: 'It is in complete ruins. Only a few rooms remain untouched - in the north wing. On the top floor we are collecting things, using it as a storeroom.' Large sections of the roof had collapsed on all four wings of the gigantic cloisters that rose above the River Pregel. The sixteenth-century southern wing was smashed to pieces. The west wing, constructed at a similar time, was also largely destroyed. Only the north-western corner, the oldest part of the castle, dating to the thirteenth century, incorporating a ceremonial Knights' Hall, remained relatively unscathed.
Beneath this hall was a complex of deep cellars, lit by chandeliers suspended from iron trapezes. The dank walls were lined with giant kegs of wine and beer and the flagstone floors were covered in planks upon which stood refectory tables and banquettes. Here the Nazis had eaten off red-rimmed china plates embossed with the Prussian eagle and the name of the restaurant, Blutgericht, the Blood Court.
Amateur painting of the post-war remains of Konigsberg Castle
It is hard to imagine the scale of the operation and the conditions under which the Soviet team toiled. The castle site was enormous and perilously fragile, with sixty-foot-high walls threatening to topple and fallen castel-lations so widely scattered that a rope was required to clamber over them. And then there was the dust, choking, all-pervasive, leaching into every crevice and pore, making work inside the ruin intolerable. Brusov and his comrades were starved of resources. He had nothing more advanced with which to excavate than a pair of shovels. There was no paraffin, he had been told by the military. And therefore there was little light by day or night. There was also no sign of the Amber Room.
After a few days conducting random surveys, the professor came across an old German man. He was wandering through the castle rubble, a shambling figure who, with his penny-round spectacles, bore an uncanny likeness to Himmler, Brusov noted.
Somehow this man had bypassed the security cordon Brusov had him arrested and under interrogation the old man admitted to having worked for the Konigsberg Castle Museum. He had come back only to see if the Soviets needed help clearing it. He identified himself as Alfred Rohde. Brusov thought little about him. Rohde cooperated but seemed distracted, repeatedly denying knowledge of Soviet treasures. In his former life he was possibly a figure of consequence, but now every time he pointed to the destruction around him his eyes welled up. Alfred Rohde had been severely