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By Root 1875 0

poisoned. Others were simply crumbling and filled with the smell of gangrene, the gasses of decomposition that could kill a man as easily. 'Forty Soviet specialists died,' Kuchumov wrote without comment, as if forty men killed in one incident was an unremarkable fact. Given what we know about the culture of checking, cross-checking and counter-checking in Moscow then, the incident was certainly investigated by another agency. We have no idea whether these deaths were connected in any way to the search for the Amber Room.

When Kpichumov and Tronchinsky began inspecting the ruined castle itself, they immediately made discoveries. Kuchumov wrote to Moscow: 'In different parts of the structure that was burned and destroyed we found a great number of fragments of furniture from the Catherine and Alexander palaces (including furniture from the Great Hall, the Karelian Reception Room of Alexander I, the Chinese Room and many others).' Then, in the East Wing: 'Near the main gate, we discovered big bronze locks that had once belonged to the Lyons Hall of the Catherine Palace.'

All of these pieces had been found within a few days and yet Brusov claimed in his report to have made a thorough search of the castle. But perhaps it was not entirely surprising, as Brusov was an archaeologist with no specialist knowledge about the Leningrad collections. And he had been working just weeks after the German surrender.

According to Tronchinsky's secret letters home, he and Kuchumov soon discovered more:

Dear Katya, we have found fragments of the Catherine Palace floor. Broken furniture from the Bolshoi Hall and the Chinese Drawing Room, as well as a cabinet from Alexander I. Anatoly Mikhailovich has to be careful. He was in the east wing when he fell through two floors, masonry pouring down on his head, he was only stopped from crashing into the cellars and killing himself by an old oak beam.

Kuchumov wrote to Moscow: 'While surveying the castle, in a small ground-floor room in one of the semi-ruined towers in the middle of the south wall, we also found among the rubbish more copies of Rohde's official correspondence.' One of the letters was from General George von Kuchler, who in 1942 had replaced General Wilhelm von Leeb as commander of Army Group North, which was barracked in the Catherine Palace. Kuchler asked his 'good friend Alfred Rohde' about the safe arrival of the Amber Room 'that had been sent to East Prussia'. This new letter proved that Rohde had some useful and influential connections.

Kuchumov and Tronchinsky systematically worked their way through the north wing. The Knights' Hall was to be the focus of their investigation. Kuchumov wrote to Moscow: 'Here, according to Rohde, was where the Amber Room was located at different times.' Here too Kuchumov and Tronchinsky quickly found items that Brusov had missed. Kuchumov wrote: 'Our detailed searches of layers of soot, garbage and debris that covered the stone floor of the Knights' Hall where the Amber Room had possibly been burned have revealed gilded pieces of wood varnish and great amounts of furniture springs and iron parts from German wardrobes.'11 Kuchumov concluded that he had discovered more of Countess Keyserlingk's incinerated furniture collection - pieces that Rohde had told Brusov had been packed beside the Amber Room.

Entrance to the Knight's Hall of Konigsberg Castle

Hinges, cornices, iron strips. Kuchumov ventured that if the entire Amber Room had burned here then there would be far more evidence still lying in the rubble. There had to be something left of the twenty-two large and medium-sized amber wall panels, the four amber frames that contained the four Florentine stone mosaic pictures and the stone mosaics themselves, commissioned by Catherine the Great.

Then, on 22 March, Tronchinsky wrote to his wife that Kuchumov had found something significant, something that they could directly connect to the Amber Room: 'Dear Katya, We found copper frames from the stone mosaics, but only three of them. Here they were, literally under my feet.'12

Kuchumov