The Amber Room Read Free

talked in the tones of those most comfortable with secrets.
    The one they called Ferret sat as usual between the two others, his head buried in a sheaf of papers. His eyes were so poor he read with his nose almost touching the page. Those who knew him said it was because he rarely saw the light of day.
    He had the body of a worm and the mind of a camera—whatever the eye scanned the memory never lost. In days gone by he had used this mind to protect his body, shielding himself behind the strength of others who used his abilities for gaining and holding power. Now the power holders were disgraced, either in hiding or in prison. It was only a matter of days before the investigators started working one rank further down and came upon Ferret.
    The majority of the Communist overlords had held on to power so long they had not believed the cowed East Germans would dare take it back. Ferret had watched the first mob gather before the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig and had known differently. He had listened to the mob sing freedom songs and spent the long night hours stuffing files with any possible importance into boxes and bags and wastebaskets. Hauling them down to the loading platform and stuffing them into the city maintenance van had been the most strenuous exercise Ferret had done in his entire life.
    He had driven the entire next day, stopping only when darkness and exhaustion forced him to pull off the narrow, rutted excuse for a road and sleep. Every passing car had jerked him awake, foggy-brained and panic-stricken, but his hunch had paid off. The police had been too overwhelmed with concern over their own future to worry about a dilapidated van and a few missing files.
    The second day of driving had brought him to Schwerin, the capital of the former East German state known as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Ferret had used a set of false identification documents, prepared years before for a contingency just such as this, to check into a lakeside resort with a walled-in parking area. The following day he had bribed his wayinto a filthy cellar storage room turned into an illegal studio apartment—no ventilation, no windows, a one-ring cooker plugged into the overhead light socket, bathroom one floor up via an outside stairway. With the eleven-year apartment waiting list, this was the only room available anywhere and his only because he had Western marks to slip the landlady.
    In the old days, Ferret’s official title had been that of Prokurist for the Local Workers’ Council in Leipzig. It was as high a position as the Ferret could manage and still maintain his invisibility, but Prokurist was pretty high indeed. The Prokurist was the man with power to sign—that is, the power to approve checks, authorize contracts, organize budgets. Ferret had kept his position by making no decisions at all, only furthering the decisions of those who knew the value of a Ferret and courted him with the dedication of a love-addled Romeo.
    What the title did not say was that the Ferret was also the Stasi’s local mole.
    It had been a perfect match—the secret police whom everyone feared, hated, and refused to speak of, and a man who preferred invisibility to all other powers. Ferret had fed Stasi the information it used as fuel. The Stasi had shielded Ferret with its might.
    Until the night Ferret saw his carefully constructed world go up in the flickering flames of a hundred thousand candles.
    ----
    â€œHad the belly pains again this morning, I did.” Kurt, the man at Ferret’s right, was a former Stasi spy, and Ferret’s contact in the secret police. He and numerous other mid-level henchmen remained safe from the West German prosecutors simply because there were so many of them. Those who were being picked up tended to be the targets of strong grudges, and those who could be found. Kurt was not immune to grudge holders, but a set of false documents and a different name kept him safe. For the