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anything?’
    ‘A couple of pieces of amber.’
    ‘Good ones I hope.’ Edmund sat in the visitor’s chair.
    ‘Who said you were going to get them?’
    ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Keep faith with me and we’ll build a Salen Institute display to rival the Swedish exhibition in Malbork Castle.’ Edmund was proud of the museum’s amber collection that had blossomed under his guardianship from a few forlorn scraps into a four-hundred piece historical panorama detailing the history and working of the resin. ‘Come on, what did you get?’
    ‘A ring made by Krefta the elder in 1936. Nice piece of workmanship.’
    ‘Authenticated?’
    ‘What do you take me for? I found it in this.’ He tossed Dunst a catalogue emblazoned with a swastika.
    ‘“1936 Konigsberg exhibition”,’ Dunst read. ‘Please, tell me it’s this one?’ He pointed to a coloured sketch of an enormous ring set with a hunk of honey-coloured, opaque amber carved into an eagle’s head.
    ‘It is.’
    ‘I take back every evil thought I’ve ever had about you. And the other piece?’
    ‘A seventeenth-century powder horn, engraved with the von Bach Zalewski coat of arms.’
    ‘You fell for that?’
    ‘It was pretty.’
    ‘It’ll be a nineteenth-century forgery, the amber will be melted or pressed, not carved from a single piece, the workmanship shoddy and the silver mounting will turn out to be gilt, and bad gilt at that.’
    ‘Probably,’ Adam agreed, with irritating complacency.
    ‘But you couldn’t resist it because your great-great-grandfather changed his name from von Bach Zalewski to Salen when he reached America?’
    ‘Please, we’re the decayed branch. I’m proud of my peasant origins.’ Adam scanned a begging letter from a beleaguered museum that had lost its government funding. Binning the envelope, he tossed the letter into an empty tray before picking up another.
    ‘For Magdalena Janca?’ Edmund picked up the letter and read it.
    ‘Haven’t you any work to do?’
    ‘I could re-arrange the exhibits on the ground floor to make room for a ring and powder horn, but as I don’t know if I’m going to get them…’
    ‘Who else would I give them to? Don’t forget to close the door on the way out.’
     
     
    After Edmund left, Adam sat staring out of the window at the canal and the weed-choked ruins of a bombed-out warehouse opposite. The saviours of Gdansk had completed a Herculean task when they’d rebuilt the city from the rubble and ashes of World War II, but odd corners of dereliction still needed attention.
    Another perk of living in Europe, he decided. Time to sit and think. Folding his hands behind his head he contemplated the evening that lay ahead. The casino and Helga’s company were beginning to pall. Perhaps he needed a change.
    ‘Hard at it, I see?’ Edmund returned with a large brown envelope.
    ‘Nine-tenths of this job is planning.’
    ‘On whether to bed the luscious Helga, or ripe Elizbieta?’
    ‘Elizbieta belongs to Feliks.’
    ‘That’s not what I heard.’ Edmund dropped the envelope on the desk. ‘By the way, when can I expect the pieces?’
    ‘End of the month when the museum closes.’
    ‘I suppose it will have to do.’
    Pouring himself a coffee, Adam propped his feet on the desk and set to work.
    Half an hour later his waste-paper basket was overflowing and there were three neat piles of papers on his desk, all destined for Magdalena Janca. In the first he’d stacked appeals from museums and academic institutions; in the second, pleas for funding to save works of art and historical significance threatened with export and, in the third, scholarship applications from students who would otherwise have to abandon their studies.
    A sucker for a sob story, Adam knew his limitations. Magdalena Janca was better equipped to deal with begging letters, particularly Polish ones. If she resented him dumping all the appeals that landed on his desk on her, she hadn’t complained to him