Aleksei's Grandfather and the Blue Notebook

Aleksei's grandfather was named Professor Ivan Volkov, and he was, Aleksei explained as they walked up the beach path to the town, the sort of person about whom stories accumulated naturally. He had been studying Baltic amber and the Eocene fauna it preserved for forty years.

He had identified seventeen previously unknown insect species from amber inclusions. He had written the standard Russian-language textbook on Baltic amber palaeontology, which was, Aleksei said, not a bestseller but was used in every relevant university in the country.

He had also, for the past fifteen years, maintained that there was a primary lizard-bearing amber deposit somewhere along the Samland coast that had never been formally identified or excavated, based on his analysis of the distribution of lizard inclusions among pieces found on this section of beach. Lizard inclusions in Baltic amber were extremely rare: fewer than twenty complete specimens had ever been scientifically documented worldwide. Yet this section of the Samland coast produced a disproportionate number of fragmentary lizard inclusions relative to other Baltic amber sources.

Something was here. He had been convinced of it for fifteen years. He had been unable to find it.

"And now you've found it," said Mila.

"The storm found it," Aleksei corrected. "I just happened to be on the beach."

"Same thing," said Mila.

Aleksei's grandfather was in a hospital in Kaliningrad city, forty minutes away. He was recovering from a heart procedure, not life-threatening, but requiring rest and monitoring.

Aleksei visited him every other day on the bus. He had not told his grandfather about the amber discovery yet because he wanted to know more before he did, because his grandfather's doctor had said that excitement was to be managed carefully.

"Can I come with you?" Mila asked.

Aleksei considered this. "Why?"

"Because your grandfather will want to talk about the deposit and I can talk about it intelligently, which means the conversation will be productive rather than frustrating, and because I might understand things he says that you don't."

Aleksei looked at her for a moment. Then he said, "My grandfather's research notes are at his flat. I have a key. Before we go to the hospital, we should look at the notes."

Professor Volkov's flat was on the third floor of a building near the university, small and extremely dense with books. The research notes were in his study, in a series of blue notebooks arranged by year on a shelf behind the desk. Aleksei took down the most recent three, and they sat at the professor's desk and read.

The professor's handwriting was small and meticulous and in Russian, which Aleksei translated as they went. The most recent notebook contained his analysis of the lizard inclusion distribution along the Samland coast, with maps and calculations and a section he had titled in Russian which Aleksei rendered as The Theoretical Source Location. The professor had narrowed his estimate for the location of the primary deposit to a three-kilometre section of cliff, and within that section, to a specific stretch of perhaps four hundred metres characterised by a particular combination of geological features: a fold in the cliff stratigraphy, a layer of marine clay above the amber-bearing zone, and the presence of certain types of associated mineral deposits in beach finds.

Mila checked the map coordinates against the location of the exposed band that Aleksei had shown her.

The centre of the estimated location matched within fifty metres.

She looked up at Aleksei. "He knew exactly where it was," she said. "He'd calculated it. He just couldn't find the exposed layer."

Aleksei looked at the map. His expression was the complex one of someone feeling several things at once. "He spent fifteen years on this," he said quietly. "And the storm just..." He did not finish.

"The storm didn't do the fifteen years," said Mila. "The fifteen years told you where to look when the storm showed you something. Without the notebooks, you would have found a piece of red amber on a beach. With them, you know what you have."

Aleksei was quiet for a moment. Then he closed the notebook. "We go to see him tomorrow," he said. "Today, we go back to the cliff and document the deposit properly before anyone else finds it."

Mila thought about her father, who was at the field station and who she had told she would be back by noon. She looked at her watch. It was nine thirty.

"I need to tell my father where I'm going," she said. "He can help with the documentation. He's a forestry researcher, he knows field survey methods. And he has a proper camera."

Aleksei hesitated. "More people means more attention."

"More people means better documentation," said Mila. "And my father won't tell anyone who shouldn't know until we're ready. I promise you that."

Aleksei looked at her for a long moment with his serious, watchful face. "You have been here two days," he said. "Why should I trust you?"

It was a fair question. Mila thought about how to answer it honestly. "Because I know what this is," she said. "Because I understand what it means scientifically and I would not do anything to damage it. And because," she paused, "you showed me the amber on the beach. You didn't have to do that. You chose to. I think that means you already decided to trust me."

Aleksei was quiet. Then he almost smiled. "Your father must be a good researcher," he said.

"You think like one."