The Amber Rooms

Author’s Note

You are reading the third book of the Saskia Brandt series. It may be read as a standalone novel, but it will spoil aspects of the first two books, Déjà Vu and Flashback. If you intend to read them at all, I recommend doing so before you continue.

Have you lost the plot? I’ve included summaries of Déjà Vu or Flashback at the end of this book. There you will also find an author interview.

At the end of Flashback, Saskia Brandt has used Jennifer Proctor’s time band to escape 2003. Her last moments in that book feature a vision of forested land and eastern European myths.

The keystone historical event in this book is real. The 1907 Tiflis (now Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi) heist, known also as the Yerevan Square Expropriation, took place on the 26th June, 1907 (Old Style calendar) and shocked the world for its daring and the unprecedented sum of money stolen. It was enacted by Bolshevik paramilitaries as a way of procuring funds for seditionist activities.

The courageous, chivalrous and murderous psychotic Bolshevik known as ‘Kamo’ is real. In our own world-line, Kamo languished after the revolution and passed through a series of jobs secured through his boyhood connection to Joseph Stalin. He was briefly a member of the feared All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Counter-revolution and Sabotage—its acronym is Cheka—but was forced to leave when his behaviour was considered too brutal even for them.

As an old man, Stalin said, ‘Kamo was a truly amazing person… A master of disguise.’

In 1922, Kamo had returned to Tiflis to write his memoirs, which would include Stalin’s days as a bandit, when he was killed under mysterious circumstances. It seems likely that he was removed to protect Stalin’s image as a statesman, and likely that Stalin gave the order.

His fate in my book is somewhat different.