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By Root 1771 0

says gravely. Heads nod. 'We don't have a projector or a photocopy machine. So I'll pass these things around while I talk.' A ribbon of documents wraps itself around the room, members of the audience lingering over every item. 'We have only these few things, thanks to the curator's daughter,' Bolshoi Albina says as a photograph comes towards us of a picnic in Pavlovsk park, men in black berets puffing on cigarettes. All of them are enjoying a joke, including the man to the left. We recognize him. Anatoly Mikhailovich Kuchumov. We in the West are so accustomed to photographs of Soviet citizens in fur hats and great coats that it is disconcerting to see these comrades in such relaxed poses. We have caught a glimpse of the private world inhabited by museum curators like Kuchumov and Brusov.

Anatoly Kuchumov (left) and colleagues from the Leningrad palaces during the 1950s

As the lecture comes to an end, the room breaks up into smaller memory floes. A waistcoated clock repairer glides past. 'Can I tell you something?' he asks. 'Do you know why we all cling on, even though we are barely paid and rarely respected? Do you know why we never left? Because of those who came before us. Every night I walk through the halls of Pavlovsk, winding up the clocks in the dark, and I feel the souls of my predecessors watching me.'

We go from group to group, listening, introducing ourselves, meeting as many people as we can, explaining about our search for the Amber Room and how we were trying to find out why the story did not end in Konigsberg in 1945 with Professor Alexander Brusov's findings.

Heads shake. Eyebrows are raised. And then a dark-eyed woman shyly introduces herself. Nadezda Voronova. She tells us that her father worked with Kuchumov for decades, helping to research his book on the history of the Amber Room. 'You know very little,' she says. I hope you don't mind me being so direct.' Voronova stares at her feet. 'The search didn't end in 1945. Anatoly Mikhailovich went to Konigsberg in 1946 to reopen the investigation into the Amber Room. My father told me.'

But Professor Brusov's report had been emphatic: the Amber Room burned in the Knights' Hall between 9 and 11 April 194 5, we say. Voronova shrinks back: 'Sorry, I can't help you more. My father is dead. My mother is very old. Alone in our apartment in Tsarskoye Selo. I must leave. It's a long way. On the metro and then the bus.' She looks anxiously around the room and draws closer. 'Try the Pavlovsk library. Kuchumov's papers must be there. He was director of Pavlovsk for many years. Kuchumov knew the truth about the Amber Room.'

Vica Plauda, Kuchumov's granddaughter, had given us the same advice and we had forgotten to follow it up as we had become gripped by Brusov's mission to Konigsberg.

The next morning we head for Vitebsk Station and catch a train bound for the Catherine Palace's neighbour on the River Slavyanka, twenty miles south of the city, travelling the route taken by Vladimir Telemakov as he snatched interviews with Anatoly Kuchumov. It is early April and the rain has stopped so the train is crowded with families heading for their dachas.

A thin line of country men and women bustle down the aisle with handfuls of chewing gum and sticking plasters for sale. A raucous band follows, serenading passengers. A ragged veteran of Chechnya rolls along, with an outstretched hand and a missing foot. Every woman slips him roubles. The man sitting next to us tries furiously to get our attention. He motions towards a large glass bottle poking from his khaki pack. He mimes drinking the aquavit with an empty hand, pinging the bottle with his fingernail. 'Going for some fun in the countryside, eh? Don't you know? You only take a whore on the electric train! A lady goes by taxi.'

Half an hour later we are walking across the parkland, passing bronze figures cast after Bonaparte's return from Egypt with pharaonic trophies that started a craze for all things related to the Nile. Pavlovsk. A gift from Catherine the Great to Paul, her strange and ugly son, a boy with