The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [82]
What Kuchumov had to decide was whether Strauss really did not know or was playing a dangerous game. In an appendix to the official typed interrogation transcript that was compiled some time later, Kuchumov wrote:
In 1949, according to the decisions of the local party and the Soviet administration, a big and authoritative commission was organized A hundred soldiers and firemen, mobile generators and other equipment was provided. Giving evidence, Dr Strauss affirmed only those facts that were already known from the evidence of others and Rohde's correspondence. He didn't describe the exact location of the Amber Room in spite of our belief and hope that he must have known more about it.
There was more. Once the Soviets had decided to dig in Kaliningrad, Strauss had hindered the operation. The great curator concluded: 'Strauss tried, as Rohde also did by different means, to deflect the attention of our commission from heaps of bricks at the southern side of the castle, making recommendations to search in the north wing, discouraging the digging until the time that plans for the castle could be found.'8
Strauss stood accused of grave charges: wasting the time and resources of the Soviet government.
There is one last document in our packet from St Petersburg and it serves only to increase our uncertainty about Strauss's motives. We have before us a folded sheet of paper that carries obscure doodles, as well as maps, dates and names.
On one side, there is a message: 'To my best comrade from Leningrad. It's better to search in Henkanziskan! 7-19. XII.49'.9
The Cyrillic is poor. It's somebody's second language. But the dates are intriguing: 7-19 December 1949, the period during which Kuchumov interrogated Strauss in Kaliningrad. Only General Zorin, Soldier Kazakhov and the MGB were supposed to know about this classified mission.
The sheet is dominated by a large drawing of a man with little round glasses, wearing a pork-pie hat, a miniature shovel sticking out of the hatband like a feather. His nose has been coloured in blue, and beside this freezing figure is a thermometer measuring minus EO°C. Unlike the hand that painted Kuchumov's birthday cards, this artist is no professional, but there is no doubt about who is being caricatured.
The cartoon Kuchumov is carrying a magnifying glass inside which the word HENKANZISKAN appears again, in large wobbly letters. Although incorrectly spelt, this can only be a reference to Friedrich Henkensiefken, Schlossoberinspektor of Konigsberg Castle, one of the people near the top of Kuchumov's list of missing German officials. We wonder who is taunting the curator about this man and why.
Doodle of Anatoly Kuchumov searching for the Amber Room with a magnifying glass, 1949
Beside the cartoon Kuchumov's feet is a small sketch of the Knights' Hall in the north wing of Konigsberg Castle. And to the right is a globe, featuring a magnified detail of the Samland Peninsula and again the name 'Henkanziskan'. On the far right of the page is a strange kind of hieroglyphic: a cartoon depicting a bearded man floating in the clouds with a telephone to his ear. At the other end of the line (presumably down on earth) a Red Army soldier listens, standing amidst drawings of the Brandenburg Gate, a Christmas tree, a bottle labelled pivo (beer), a gun and a chicken, above which is written the name STRAUSS.
A Red Army officer stationed in Berlin (possibly Soldier Kazakhov) talks to God (maybe the MGB or Stalin) at Christmas time about a dangerous situation in which a chicken called Strauss is involved.
The reverse of the paper sheet is given over to a hand-drawn map of the Baltic coast, a railway line stretching between Leningrad and northern Germany, along which a steaming train chugs out of 'Detskoye Selo' (Pushkin) towards Kaliningrad and then on to a Berlin that is divided into sectors, each one highlighted by the occupier's national