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help you unless I know a little more. Who has been murdered? How was the crime committed? And why will French interests be threatened if the killer continues to go unpunished?’
    Malaport slumped back against the chair, as if each question was a punch.
    ‘You are correct, Herr Stiffeniis,’ he said. He sat in moody silence, considering I knew not what, then he turned to his fellow-countryman. ‘Leave us alone, Claudet. You have other things to do, no doubt.’
    The most powerful man in Lotingen garrison glared at the most powerful man in northern Prussia. Then, the lieutenant-colonel saluted and strode stiffly out of the room, casting a black look at me. As the door closed more loudly than was necessary, General Malaport cast his tired eyes on mine.
    ‘You know the Baltic coast, I think? You know what goes on up there.’
    I sat up straighter. ‘Many things, sir. Fishing, smuggling . . .’
    ‘Important French interests, remember.’
    ‘The docks and harbours, then. Trade and the English blockade . . .’
    ‘Amber,’ he interrupted me in a hoarse whisper. ‘Amber is what interests the emperor.’
    Amber had been on everyone’s lips for a year. One night, a month or two before, a paper had been pinned to the door of Lotingen cathedral, and to the doors of many other churches in the canton. A melodramatic gesture, but an effective one. Luther’s ghost was walking the streets at night, the people said. He was pinning up his lamentations, trying to incite good Prussians to revolt against the foreign thieves. ‘ THEY ARE RIPPING IT OUT ,’ the title screeched. A rough drawing illustrated the theme: a large chunk of Baltic amber cut in the shape of a human heart. The Prussian eagle was imprisoned inside the resin, like a dead fly. And a threat. ‘ FRANCE MUST PAY !’
    I had been surprised by the motive for such anger. There were a thousand more important things that the French had ripped from Prussian hands. Our pride. Our liberty. Our independence. But then I thought of the ancient amber necklace that my mother had worn on every important occasion in Ruisling. The handles of our best knives and forks were amber inlaid with silver. So was the candlestick on my bedside table. The mouthpiece of my father’s pipe, the handle of my pocket-knife. If one had made an inventory of the Stiffeniis estate, there would have been a thousand items, large and small, which were decorated with amber from our Baltic shores. The portraits of my ancestors hanging up in the library were framed in sculpted amber. The paintings had faded, but the amber was as bright and fresh as the day it had been polished and set. Its very permanence seemed to highlight the weakness of the flesh that those ostentatious frames contained.
    ‘France has plans for the amber industry,’ he said.
    He did not say what those plans might be, though I could guess. Was there one crucial event in the history of my country—the financing of a war, the purchase of new cannons, new ships, new horses, swords and pikes—which had
not
been paid for with amber from the Baltic Sea? Was there a single item representing the wealth, the history and the culture of Prussia in the collections of other nations that did not contain a piece of amber? Was it any surprise that the French were interested?
    ‘A corpse was found in Nordcopp yesterday morning,’ GeneralMalaport went on. ‘A young woman. One of the amber-workers. She may not have been the first to die. Nor will she be the last, I fear.’
    ‘What makes you think that she was murdered, sir?’ I asked. ‘Gathering amber on the shore is not the safest way to live. The waves of the Baltic Sea . . .’
    Malaport’s hand came down flat on the desk, but there was no anger in the gesture.
    ‘Waves do not butcher bodies,’ he said. ‘You’ll be in a better position to judge when you have examined the corpse for yourself. What is happening in Spain has not gone unnoticed here in Prussia. I want to know whether