Fatherland

ONE

In July 1953, when Xavier March had not long turned thirty and his work as yet consisted of little more than the arresting of whores and pimps around the docks of Hamburg, he and Klara had taken a holiday. They had started in Freiburg, in the foothills of the Black Forest, had driven south to the Rhine, then eastwards in his battered KdF-wagen towards the Bodensee, and in one of the little riverside hotels, during a showery afternoon, with a rainbow cast across the sky, they had planted the seed that grew into Pili.

He could see the place still: the wrought-iron balcony, the Rhine valley beyond, the barges moving lazily in the wide water; the stone walls of the old town, the cool church; Klara’s skirt, waist to ankle, sunflower yellow.

And there was something else he could still see: a kilometre down-river, spanning the gulf between Germany and Switzerland — the glint of a steel bridge.

Forget about trying to escape through the main air or sea ports: they were watched and guarded as tightly as the Reich Chancellery. Forget about crossing the border to France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy — that was to scale the wall of one prison merely to drop into the exercise yard of another. Forget about mailing the documents out of the Reich: too many packages were routinely opened by the postal service for that to be safe. Forget about giving the material to any of the other correspondents in Berlin: they would only face the same obstacles and were, in any case, according to Charlie, as trustworthy as rattlesnakes.

The Swiss border offered the best hope; the bridge beckoned.

Now hide it. Hide it all.

He knelt on the threadbare carpet and spread out a single sheet of brown paper. He made a neat stack of the documents, squaring off the edges. From his wallet he took the photograph of the Weiss family. He stared at it for a moment, then added it to the pile. He wrapped the entire collection tightly in the paper, binding the clear sticky tape around and around it until the package felt as solid as a block of wood.

He was left with an oblong parcel, ten centimetres thick, unyielding to the touch, anonymous to the eye.

He let out a breath. That was better.

He added another layer, this time of gift paper. Golden letters spelled GOOD LUCK! and HAPPINESS!, the words curling like streamers amid balloons and champagne corks behind a smiling bride and groom.

By autobahn from Berlin to Nuremberg: five hundred kilometres. By autobahn from Nuremberg to Stuttgart: one hundred and fifty kilometres. From Stuttgart the road then wound through the valleys and forests of Wurttemberg to Waldshut on the Rhine: a hundred and fifty kilometres again. Eight hundred kilometres in all. “What’s that in miles?”

“Five hundred. Do you think you can manage it?”

“Of course. Twelve hours, maybe less.” She was perched on the edge of the bed, leaning forward, attentive. She wore two towels -one wrapped around her body, the other in a turban around her head.

“No need to rush it — you’ve got twenty-four. When you reckon you’ve put a safe distance between yourself and Berlin, telephone the Hotel Bellevue in Waldshut and reserve a room — it’s out of season, there should be no difficulty.”

“Hotel Bellevue. Waldshut.” She nodded slowly as she memorised it “And you?”

I’ll be following a couple of hours behind. I’ll aim to join you at the hotel around midnight.”

He could see she did not believe him. He hurried on: “If you’re willing to take the risk, I think you should carry the papers, and also this…” From his pocket he drew out the other stolen passport. Paul Hahn, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer, born Cologne, 16 August 1925. Three years younger than March, and looked it.

“She said: Why don’t you keep it?”

“If I’m arrested and searched, they’ll find it. Then they’ll know whose identity you’re using.”

“You’ve no intention of coming.”

“I’ve every intention of coming.”

“You think you’re finished.”

“Not true. But my chances of travelling eight hundred kilometres without being stopped are less than yours. You must see that. That’s why we go separately.”

She was shaking her head. He came and sat beside her, stroked her cheek, turned her face to his, her eyes to his. “Listen. You’re to wait for me — listen! — wait for me at the hotel until eight-thirty tomorrow morning. If I haven’t arrived, you drive across without me. Don’t wait any longer, because it won’t be safe.”

“Why eight-thirty?”

“You should aim to cross the border as close to nine as you can.” Her cheeks were wet. He kissed them. He kept on talking. She had to understand. “Nine is the hour when the beloved Father of the German People leaves the Reich Chancellery to travel to the Great Hall. It’s months since he’s been seen — their way of building excitement. You may be sure the guards will have a radio in the customs post, and be listening to it. If ever there’s a time when they’re more likely just to wave you through, that’s it.”

She stood and unwrapped the turban. In the weak light of the attic room, her hair gleamed white.

She let the second towel drop.

Pale skin, white hair, dark eyes. A ghost. He needed to know that she was real, that they were both alive. He stretched out a hand and touched her.

They lay entwined on the little wooden cot and she whispered their future to him. Their flight would land at New York’s Idlewild airport early tomorrow evening. They would go straight to the New York Times building. There was an editor there she knew. The first thing was to make a copy — a dozen copies — and then to get as much printed as possible, as soon as possible. The Times was ideal for that.

“What if they won’t print it?” This idea of people printing whatever they wanted was hard for him to grasp.

They’ll print it. God, if they won’t, I’ll stand on Fifth Avenue like one of those mad people who can’t get their novels published and hand out copies to passers-by. But don’t worry — they’ll print it, and we’ll change history.”

“But will anyone believe it?” That doubt had grown within him ever since the suitcase had been opened. “Isn’t it unbelievable?”

No, she said, with great certainty, because now they had facts, and facts changed everything. Without them, you had nothing, a void. But produce facts — provide names, dates, orders, numbers, times, locations, map references, schedules, photographs, diagrams, descriptions — and suddenly that void had geometry, was susceptible to measurement, had become a solid thing. Of course, this solid thing could be denied, or challenged, or simply ignored. But each of these reactions was, by definition, a reaction, a response to some thing which existed.

“Some people won’t believe it — they wouldn’t believe it no matter how much evidence we had. But there’s enough here, I think, to stop Kennedy in his tracks. No summit. No re-election. No detente. And five years from now, or fifty years, this society will fall apart. You can’t build on a mass grave. Human beings are better than that — they have to be better than that — I do believe it — don’t you?”

He did not reply.

He was awake to see another dawn in the Berlin sky. A familiar grey face at the attic window, an old opponent.

“Your name is?”

“Magda Voss.”

“Born?”

“Twenty-fifth October 1939.”

“Where?”

“Berlin.”

“Your occupation?”

“I live at home with my parents, in Berlin.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Waldshut, on the Rhine. To meet my fiance.”

“Name?”

“Paul Hahn.”

“What is the purpose of your visit to Switzerland?”

“A friend’s wedding.”

“Where?”

“In Zurich.”

“What is this?”

“A wedding present. A photograph album. Or a Bible? Or a book? Or a chopping board?” She was testing the answers on him.

“Chopping board — very good. Exactly the sort of gift a girl like Magda would drive eight hundred kilometres to give.” March had been pacing the room. Now he stopped and pointed at the package in Charlie’s lap. “Open it, please, Fraulein.”

She thought for a moment. “What do I say to that?”

There’s nothing you can say.”

Terrific.” She took out a cigarette and lit it. “Well, would you look at that? My hands are trembling.”

It was almost seven. Time to go.”

The hotel was beginning to wake. As they passed the lines of flimsy doors they heard water splashing, a radio, children laughing. Somewhere on the second floor, a man snored on regardless.

They had handled the package with care, at arm’s length, as if it were uranium. She had hidden it in the centre of her suitcase, buried in her clothes. March carried it down the stairs, across the empty lobby and out the narrow fire exit at the rear of the hotel. She was wearing a dark blue suit, her hair hidden by a scarf. The hired Opel stood next to his Volkswagen. From the kitchens came shouts, the smell of fresh coffee, the hiss of frying food.

“When you leave the Bellevue, turn right. The road follows the line of the valley. You can’t miss the bridge.”

“You’ve told me this already.”

Try and see what level of security they’re operating, before you commit yourself. If it looks as if they’re searching everything, turn round and try and hide it somewhere. Woods, ditch, barn — somewhere you can remember, a place where someone can go back and retrieve it. Then get out. Promise me.”

“I promise you.”

There’s a daily Swissair flight from Zurich to New York. It leaves at two.”

“At two. I know. You’ve told me twice.”

He took a step towards her, to hold her, but she fended him away. “I’m not saying goodbye. Not here. I shall see you tonight. / shall see you.”

There was a moment of anti-climax when the Opel refused to start. She pulled out the choke and tried again, and this time the engine fired. She reversed out of the parking space, still refusing to look at him. He had one last glimpse of her profile — and then she was gone, leaving a trail of blue-white vapour hanging in the chilly morning air.

March sat alone in the empty room, on the edge of the bed, holding her pillow. He waited until an hour had passed before putting on his uniform. he stood in front of the dressing-table mirror, buttoning his black tunic. It would be the last time he wore it, one way or the other.

“We’ll change history…”

He donned his cap, adjusted it. Then he took his thirty sheets of paper, his notebook and Buhler’s pocket diary, folded them together, wrapped them in the remaining sheet of brown paper, and slipped them into his inside pocket.

Was history changed so easily? he wondered. Certainly, it was his experience that secrets were an acid — once spilled, they could eat their way through anything: if a marriage, why not a presidency, why not a state? But talk of history — he shook his head at his own reflection — history was beyond him. Investigators turned suspicion into evidence. He had done that. History he would leave to her.

He carried Luther’s bag into the bathroom and shovelled into it all the rubbish that Charlie had left behind — the discarded bottles, the rubber gloves, the dish and spoon, the brushes. He did the same in the bedroom. It was strange how much she had filled these places, how empty they seemed without her. He looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. She should be well clear of Berlin by now, perhaps as far south as Wittenberg.

In the reception, the manager hovered.

“Good day, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. Is the interrogation finished?”

“It is indeed, Herr Brecker. Thank you for your patriotic assistance.”

“A pleasure.” Brecker gave a short bow. He was twisting his fat white hands together as if rubbing in oil. “And if ever the Sturmbannfuhrer feels the desire to do a little more interrogation…’His bushy eyebrows danced. “Perhaps I might even be able to supply him with a suspect or two…?”

March smiled. “Good day to you, Herr Brecker.”

“Good day to you, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.”

He sat in the front passenger seat of the Volkswagen and thought for a moment. Inside the spare tyre would be the ideal place, but he had no time for that. The plastic door panels were securely fastened. He reached under the dashboard until his fingers encountered a smooth surface. It would serve his purpose. He tore off two lengths of sticky tape and attached the package to the cold metal.

Then he dropped the roll of tape into Luther’s case and dumped the bag in one of the rubbish bins outside the kitchens. The brown leather looked too incongruous lying on the surface. He found a broken length of broom-handle and dug a grave for it, burying it at last beneath the coffee dregs, the stinking fish-heads, the lumps of grease and maggoty pork.

TWO

Yellow signs bearing the single word Fernverkher -long-distance traffic — pointed the way out of Berlin, towards the race-track autobahn that girdled the city. March had the southbound carriageway almost to himself- the few cars and buses about this early on a Sunday morning were heading the other way. He passed the perimeter wire of the Tempelhof aerodrome and abruptly he was into the suburbs, the wide road pushing through dreary streets of red-brick shops and houses, lined by sickly trees with blackened trunks.

To his left, a hospital; to his right, a disused church, shuttered and daubed with Party slogans. “Marienfelde,” said the signs. “Buckow.” “Lichtenrade.”

At a set of traffic lights he stopped. The road to the south lay open — to the Rhine, to Zurich, to America… Behind him someone hooted. The lights had changed. He flicked the indicator, turned off the main road and was quickly lost in the gridiron streets of the housing estate.

In the early ’fifties, in the glow of victory, the roads had been named for generals: Student Strasse, Reichenau Strasse, Manteuffel Alice. March was always confused. Was it right off Model into Dietrich? Or was it left into Paulus, and then Dietrich? He drove slowly along the rows of identical bungalows until at last he recognised it.

He pulled over in the familiar place and almost sounded the horn until he remembered that this was the third Sunday in the month, not the first — and therefore not his -and that in any case his access had been revoked. A frontal assault would be needed, an action in the spirit of Hasso Manteuffel himself.

There was no litter of toys along the concrete drive and when he rang the bell, no dog barked. He cursed silently. It seemed to be his fate this week to stand outside deserted houses. He backed away from the porch, his eyes fixed on the window beside it. The net curtain flickered.

“Pili! Are you there?” —

The corner of the curtain was abruptly parted, as if some hidden dignitary had pulled a cord unveiling a portrait, and there it was — his son’s white face staring at him.

“Can I come in? I want to talk!”

The face was expressionless. The curtain dropped back.

A good sign or bad? March was uncertain. He waved to the blank window and pointed to the garden. “I’ll wait for you here!”

He walked back to the little wooden gate and checked the street. Bungalows on either side, bungalows opposite. They extended in every direction, like the huts of an army camp. Old folks lived in most of them: veterans of the First War, survivors of all that followed — inflation, unemployment, the Party, the Second War. Even ten years ago, they were grey and bowed. They had seen enough, endured enough. Now they stayed at home, and shouted at Pili for making too much noise, and watched television all day.

March prowled around the tiny handkerchief of lawn. Not much of a life for the boy. Cars passed. Two doors down an old man was repairing a bicycle, inflating the tyres with a squeaky pump. Elsewhere, the noise of a lawnmower… No sign of Pili. He was wondering if he would have to get down on his hands and knees and shout his message through the letter box when he heard the door being opened.

“Good lad. How are you? Where’s your mother? Where’s Helfferich?” He could not bring himself to say “Uncle Erich”.

Pili had opened the door just enough to enable him to peer around it. “They’re out. I’m finishing my picture.”

“Out where?”

“Rehearsing for the parade. I’m in charge. They said so.”

“I bet. Can I come in and talk to you?” He had expected resistance. Instead, the boy stood aside without a word and March found himself crossing the threshold of his ex-wife’s house for the first time since their divorce. He took in the furniture -cheap, but good-looking; the bunch of fresh daffodils on the mantelpiece; the neatness; the spotless surfaces. She had done it as well as she could, without much to spend. He would have expected that. Even the picture of the Fuhrer above the telephone — a photograph of the old man hugging a child — was tasteful: Klara’s deity always was a benign god, New Testament rather than Old. He took off his cap. He felt like a burglar. He stood on the nylon rug and began his speech. “I have to go away, Pili. Maybe for a long time. And people, perhaps, are going to say some things to you about me. Horrible things, that aren’t true. And I wanted to tell you…” His words petered out. Tell you what? He ran his hand through his hair. Pili was standing with his arms folded, gazing at him. He tried again. “It’s hard not having a father around. My father died when I was very little -younger even than you are now. And sometimes, I hated him for that…” Those cool eyes…

“…But that passed, and then -1 missed him. And if I could talk to him now — ask him… I’d give anything…”

“…all human hair cut off in concentration camps should be utilised. Human hair will be processed for industrial felt and spun into thread…”

He was not sure how long he stood there, not speaking, his head bowed. Eventually he said: “I have to go now.” And then Pili was coming towards him and tugging at his hand. “It’s all right, papa. Please don’t go yet. Please. Come and look at my picture.”

The boy’s bedroom was like a command centre. Model Luftwaffe jets assembled from plastic kits swooped and fought, suspended from the ceiling by invisible lengths of fishing-line. On one wall, a map of the Eastern front, with coloured pins to show the positions of the armies. On another, a group photograph of Pili’s Pimpf unit — bare knees and solemn faces, photographed against a concrete wall.

As he drew, Pili kept up a running commentary, with sound effects. “These are our jets — rrroowww! — and these are the Reds” AA-guns. Pow! Pow!” Lines of yellow crayon streaked skywards. “Now we let them have it. Fire!” Little black ants” eggs rained down, creating jagged red crowns of fire. The commies call up their own fighters, but they’re no match for ours…” It went on for another five minutes, action piled on action.

Abruptly, bored by his own creation, Pili dropped the crayons and dived under the bed. He pulled out a stack of wartime picture magazines.

“Where did you get those?”

“Uncle Erich gave them to me. He collected them.”

Pili flung himself on the bed and began to turn the pages. “What do the captions say, papa?” He gave March the magazine and sat close to him, holding on to his arm.

“ ‘The sapper has worked his way right up to the wire obstacles protecting the machine gun position,’ ” read March. “ ‘A few spurts of flame and the deadly stream of burning oil has put the enemy out of action. The flame throwers must be fearless men with nerves of steel.’ ”

“And that one?”

This was not the farewell March had envisaged, but if it was what the boy wanted… He ploughed on: “ ‘I want to fight for the new Europe: so say three brothers from Copenhagen with their company leader in the SS training camp in Upper Alsace. They have fulfilled all the conditions relating to questions of race and health and are now enjoying the manly open-air life in the camp in the woods.’ ”

“What about these?”

He was smiling. “Come on, Pili. You’re ten years old.

You can read these easily.”

“But I want you to read them. Here’s a picture of a U-boat, like yours. What does it say?”

He stopped smiling and put down the magazine. There was something wrong here. What was it? He realised: the silence. For several minutes now, nothing had happened in the street outside -not a car, not a footstep, not a voice. Even the lawnmower had stopped. He saw Pili’s eyes flick to the window, and he understood.

Somewhere in the house: a tinkle of glass. March scrambled for the door, but the boy was too quick for him -rolling off the bed, grabbing his legs, curling himself around his father’s feet in a foetal ball, a parody of childish entreaty. “Please don’t go, papa,” he was saying, “please…” March’s fingers grasped the door-handle but he couldn’t move. He was anchored, mired. I have dreamed this before, he thought. The window imploded behind them, showering their backs with glass — now real uniforms with real guns were filling the bedroom — and suddenly March was on his back gazing up at the little plastic warplanes bobbing and spinning crazily at the ends of their invisible wires.

He could hear Pili’s voice: “It’s going to be all right, papa. They’re going to help you. They’ll make you better. Then you can come and live with us. They promised…”

THREE

His hands were cuffed tight behind his back, wrists outwards. Two SS men propped him against the wall, against the map of the Eastern front, and Globus stood before him. Pili had been hustled away, thank God. “I have waited for this moment,” said Globus, “as a bridegroom waits for his bride”, and he punched March in the stomach, hard. March folded, dropped to his knees, dragging the map and all its little pins down with him, thinking he would never breathe again. Then Globus had him by the hair and was pulling him up, and his body was trying to retch and suck in oxygen at the same time and Globus hit him again and he went down again. This process was repeated several times. Finally, while he was lying on the carpet with his knees drawn up, Globus planted his boot on the side of his head and ground his toe into his ear. “Look,” he said, “I’ve put my foot on shit” and from a long way away, March heard the sound of men laughing.

“Where’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

Globus slowly extended his stubby fingers in front of March’s face, then brought his hand arcing down in a karate blow to the kidneys.

This was much worse than anything else — a blinding white flash of pain that shot straight through him and put him on the floor again, retching bile. And the worst was to know that he was merely in the foothills of a long climb. The stages of torture stretched before him, ascending as notes on a scale, from the dull bass of a blow in the belly, through the middle register of kidney-punches, onwards and upwards to some pitch beyond the range of the human ear, a pinnacle of crystal.

“Where’s the girl?”

“What…girl…?”

They disarmed him, searched him, then they half-pushed, half-dragged him out of the bungalow. A little crowd had gathered in the road. Klara’s elderly neighbours watched as he was bundled, head bowed, into the back of the BMW. He glimpsed briefly along the street four or five cars with revolving lights, a lorry, troops. What had they been expecting? A small war? Still no sign of Pili. The handcuffs forced him to sit hunched forward. Two Gestapo men were jammed on the back seat, one on either side of him. As the car pulled away, he could see some of the old folks already shuffling back into their houses, back to the reassuring glow of their television sets.

He was driven north through the holiday traffic, up into Saarland Strasse, east into Prinz-Albrecht Strasse. Fifty metres past the main entrance to Gestapo headquarters, the convoy swung right, through a pair of high prison gates, into a brick courtyard at the back of the building.

He was pulled out of the car and through a low entrance, down steep concrete steps. Then his heels were scraping along the floor of an arched passage. A door, a cell, and silence.

They left him alone, to allow his imagination to go to work — standard procedure. Very well. He crawled into a corner and rested his head against the damp brick. Every minute which passed was another minute’s travelling time for her. He thought of Pili, of all the lies, and clenched his fists.

The cell was lit by a weak bulb above the door, imprisoned in its own rusty metal cage. He glanced at his wrist, a useless reflex, for they had taken away his watch. Surely she could not be far from Nuremberg by now? He tried to fill his mind with images of the Gothic spires — St Lorenz, St Sebaldus, St Jakob…

Every limb — every part of him to which he could put a name — ached, yet they could not have worked him over for more than five minutes, and still they had managed not to leave a mark on his face. Truly, he had fallen into the hands of experts. He almost laughed, but that hurt his ribs, so he stopped. *”

He was taken along the passage to an interview room: whitewashed walls, a heavy oak table with a chair on each side; in the corner, an iron stove. Globus had disappeared, Krebs was in command. The handcuffs were removed. Standard procedure again — first the hard cop, then the soft. Krebs even attempted a joke: “Normally, we would arrest your son and threaten him as well, to encourage your cooperation. But in your case, we know that such a course would be counter-productive.” Secret policeman’s humour! He leaned back in his chair, smiling, and pointed his pencil.’Nevertheless. A remarkable boy.”

“ ‘Remarkable’ — your word.” At some point during his beating, March had bitten his tongue. He talked now as if he had spent a week in a dentist’s chair.

“Your ex-wife was given a telephone number last night,” said Krebs, “in case you attempted contact. The boy memorised it. The instant he saw you, he called. He’s inherited your brains, March. Your initiative. You should feel some pride.”

“At this moment, my feelings towards my son are indeed strong.”

Good, he thought, let’s keep this up. Another minute, another kilometre.

But Krebs was already down to business, turning the pages of a thick folder. “There are two issues here, March. One: your general political reliability, going back over many years. That does not concern us today — at least, not directly. Two: your conduct over the past week — specifically, your involvement in the attempts of the late Party Comrade Luther to defect to the United States.”

“I have no such involvement.”

“You were questioned by an officer of the Ordnungs-polizei in Adolf Hitler Platz yesterday morning — at the exact time the traitor Luther was planning to meet the American journalist, Maguire, together with an official of the United States Embassy.”

How did they know that?

“Absurd.”

“Do you deny you were in the Platz?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then why were you there?”

“I was following the American woman.” Krebs was making notes. “Why?”

“She was the person who discovered the body of Party Comrade Stuckart. I was also naturally suspicious of her, in her role as an agent of the bourgeois democratic press.”

“Don’t piss me about, March.”

“All right. I had insinuated myself into her company. I thought: if she can stumble across the corpse of one retired state secretary, she might stumble across another.”

“A fair point.” Krebs rubbed his chin and thought for a moment, then opened a fresh pack of cigarettes and gave one to March, lighting it for him from an unused box of matches. March filled his lungs with smoke. Krebs had not taken one for himself, he noticed — they were merely a part of his act, an interrogator’s props.

The Gestapo man was leafing through his notes again, frowning. “We believe that the traitor Luther was planning to disclose certain information to the journalist Maguire. What was the nature of this information?”

“I have no idea. The art fraud, perhaps?”

“On Thursday, you visited Zurich. Why?”

“It was the place Luther went before he vanished. I wanted to see if there was any clue there which might explain why he disappeared.”

“And was there?”

“No, But my visit was authorised. I submitted a full report to Oberstgruppenfuhrer Nebe. Have you not seen it?”

“Of course not.” Krebs made a note. “The Oberstgruppenfuhrer shows his hand to no one, not even us. Where is Maguire?”

“How should I know?”

“You should know because you picked her up from Adolf Hitler Platz after the shooting yesterday.”

“Not me, Krebs.”

“Yes you, March. Afterwards, you went to the morgue and searched through the traitor Luther’s personal effects -this we know absolutely from Doctor Eisler.”

“I was not aware that the effects were Luther’s,” said March. “I understood they belonged to a man named Stark who was three metres away from Maguire when he was shot. Naturally, I was interested to see what he was carrying, because I was interested in Maguire. Besides, if you recall, you showed me what you said was Luther’s body on Friday night. Who did shoot Luther, as a matter of interest?”

“Never mind that. What did you expect to pick up at the morgue?”

“Plenty.”

“What? Be exact!”

“Fleas. Lice. A skin rash from his shitty clothes.” Krebs threw down his pencil. He folded his arms. “You’re a brainy fellow, March. Take comfort from the fact we credit you with that, at least. Do you think we’d give a shit if you were just some dumb fat fuck, like your friend Max Jaeger? I bet you could keep this up for hours. But we don’t have hours, and we’re less stupid than you think.” He shuffled through his papers, smirked, and then he played his ace.

“What was in the suitcase you took from the airport?” March looked straight back at him. They had known all along. “What suitcase?”

“The suitcase that looks like a doctor’s bag. The suitcase that doesn’t weigh very much, but might contain paper. The suitcase Friedman gave you thirty minutes before he called us. He got back to find a telex, you see, March, from Prinz-Albrecht Strasse — an alert to stop you leaving the country. When he saw that, he decided — as a patriotic citizen — he’d better inform us of your visit.”

“Friedman!” said March. “A ‘patriotic citizen’? He’s fooling you, Krebs. He’s hiding some scheme of his own.” Krebs sighed. He got to his feet and came round to stand behind March, his hands resting on the back of March’s chair. “When this is over, I’d like to get to know you. Really. Assuming there’s anything left of you to get to know. Why did someone like you go bad? I’m interested. From a technical point of view. To try to stop it happening in the future.”

“Your passion for self-improvement is laudable.” There you go again, you see? A problem of attitude. Things are changing in Germany, March — from within -and you could have been a part of it. The Reichsfuhrer himself takes a personal interest in the new generation -listens to us, promotes us. He believes in restructuring, greater openness, talking to the Americans. The day of men like Odilo Globocnik is passing.” He stooped and whispered in March’s ear: “Do you know why Globus doesn’t like you?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Because you make him feel stupid. In Globus’s book, that’s a capital offence. Help me, and I can shield you from him.” Krebs straightened and resumed, in his normal voice: “Where is the woman? What was the information Luther wanted to give her? Where is Luther’s suitcase?”

Those three questions, again and again.

Interrogations have this irony, at least: they can enlighten those being questioned as much — or more- than those who are doing the questioning.

From what Krebs asked, March could measure the extent of his knowledge. This was, on certain matters, very good: he knew March had visited the morgue, for example, and that he had retrieved the suitcase from the airport. But there was a significant gap. Unless Krebs was playing a fiendishly devious game, it seemed he had no idea of the nature of the information Luther was promising the Americans. Upon this one, narrow ground rested March’s only hope.

After an inconclusive half-hour, the door opened and Globus appeared, swinging a long truncheon of polished wood. Behind him stood two thick-set men in black uniforms.

Krebs leapt to attention.

Globus said: “Has he made a full confession?”

“No, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer.”

“What a surprise. My turn then, I think.”

“Of course/ Krebs stooped and collected his papers.

Was it March’s imagination, or did he see on that long, impassive face a flicker of regret, even of distaste?

After Krebs had gone, Globus prowled around, humming an old Party marching song, dragging the length of wood over the stone floor.

“Do you know what this is, March?” He waited. “No? No answer? It’s an American invention. A baseball bat. A pal of mine at the Washington Embassy brought it back for me.” He swung it around his head a couple of times. “I’m thinking of raising an SS team. We could play the US Army. What do you think? Goebbels is keen. He thinks the American masses would respond well to the pictures.”

He leant the bat against the heavy wooden table and began unbuttoning his tunic.

“If you want my opinion, the original mistake was in “thirty-six, when Himmler said every Kripo flat-foot in the Reich had to wear SS uniform. That’s when we were landed with scum like you, and shrivelled-up old cunts like Artur Nebe.”

He handed his jacket to one of the two guards and began rolling up his sleeves. Suddenly he was shouting.

“My God, we used to know how to deal with people like you. But we’ve gone soft. It’s not ‘Has he got guts?’ any more, it’s ‘Has he got a doctorate?’ We didn’t need doctorates in the East, in “forty-one, when there was fifty degrees of frost and your piss froze in mid-air. You should have heard Krebs, March. You’d’ve loved it. Fuck it, I think he’s one of your lot.” He adopted a mincing voice. “ ‘With permission, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer, I would like to question the suspect first. I feel he may respond to a more subtle approach.’ Subtle, my arse. What’s the point of you? If you were my dog, I’d feed you poison.”

“If I were your dog, I’d eat it.”

Globus grinned at one of the guards. “Listen to the big man!” He spat on his hands and picked up the baseball bat. He turned to March. “I’ve been looking at your file. I see you’re a great one for writing. Forever taking notes, compiling lists. Quite the frustrated author. Tell me: are you left-handed or right-handed?”

“Left-handed.”

“Another lie. Put your right arm on the table.”

March felt as if iron bands had been fastened around his chest. He could barely breathe. “Go screw yourself.”

Globus glanced at the guards and powerful hands seized March from behind. The chair toppled and he was being bent head first over the table. One of the SS men twisted his left arm high up his back, wrenched it, and March was roaring with the pain of that as the other man grabbed his free hand. The man half-climbed on to the table and planted his knee just below March’s right elbow, pinning his forearm, palm down, to the wooden planks.

In seconds, everything was locked in place except his fingers, which were just able to flutter slightly, like a trapped bird.

Globus stood a metre from the table, brushing the tip of the bat lightly across March’s knuckles. Then he lifted it, swung it in a great arc, like an axe, through three hundred degrees, and with all his force brought it smashing down.

He did not faint, not at first. The guards let him go and he slid to his knees, a thread of spit dribbling from the corner of his mouth, leaving a snail’s trail across the table. His arm was still stretched out. He stayed like that for a while, until he raised his head and saw the remains of his hand — some alien pile of blood and gristle on a butcher’s slab — and then he fainted.

Footsteps in the darkness. Voices. “Where is the woman?” Kick.

“What was the information?” Kick.

“What did you steal?” Kick. Kick.

A jackboot stamped on his fingers, twisted, ground them into the stone.

When he came to again he was lying in the corner, his broken hand resting on the floor next to him, like a stillborn baby left beside its mother. A man — Krebs perhaps -was squatting in front of him, saying something. He tried to focus.

“What is this?” Krebs’s mouth was saying. “What does it mean?”

The Gestapo man was breathless, as if he had been running up and down stairs. With one hand he grasped March’s chin, twisting his face to the light. In the other he held a sheaf of papers.

“What does it mean, March? They were hidden in the front of your car. Taped underneath the dashboard. What does it mean?”

March pulled his head away and turned his face to the darkening wall.

Tap, tap, tap. In his dreams. Tap, tap, tap.

Some time later — he could not be more accurate than that, for time was beyond measurement, now speeding, now slowing to an infinitesimal crawl — a white jacket appeared above him. A flash of steel. A thin blade poised vertically before his eyes. March tried to back away but fingers locked around his wrist, the needle was jabbed into a vein. At first, when his hand was touched, he howled, but then he felt the fluid spreading through his veins and the agony subsided.

The torture doctor was old and hunch-backed and it seemed to March, who brimmed with gratitude towards him, that he must have lived in the basement for many years. The grime had settled in his pores, the darkness hung in pouches beneath his eyes. He did not speak. He cleaned the wound, painted it with a clear liquid that smelled of hospitals and morgues, and bound it tightly in a white crepe bandage. Then, still without speaking, he and Krebs helped March to his feet. They put him back in his chair. An enamel mug of sweet, milky coffee was set on the table before him. A cigarette was slipped into his good hand.

FOUR

In his mind March had built a wall. Behind it he placed Charlie in her speeding car. It was a high — wall, made of everything his imagination could collect — boulders, concrete blocks, burnt-out iron bedsteads, overturned tramcars, suitcases, prams — and it stretched in either direction across the sunlit German countryside like a postcard of the Great Wall of China. In front of it, he patrolled the ground. He would not let them beyond the wall. Everything else, they could have.

Krebs was reading March’s notes. He sat with both elbows on the table, his chin resting on his knuckles. Occasionally he removed a hand to turn a page, replaced it, went on reading. March watched him. After his coffee and his cigarette and with the pain dulled he felt almost euphoric.

Krebs finished and momentarily closed his eyes. His complexion was white, as always. Then he straightened the pages and laid them in front of him, alongside March’s notebook and Buhler’s diary. He adjusted them by millimetres, into a line of parade-ground precision. Perhaps it was the effect of the drug, but suddenly March was seeing everything so clearly — how the ink on the cheap fibre pages had spread slightly, each letter sprouting minute hairs; how badly Krebs had shaved: that clump of black stubble in the fold of skin below his nose. In the silence he actually believed he could hear the dust falling, pattering across the table.

“Have you killed me, March?”

“Killed you?”

“With these.” Krebs’s hand hovered a centimetre above the notes.

“It depends who knows you have them.”

“Only some cretin of an Unterscharfuhrer who works in the garage. He found them when we brought in your car. He gave them directly to me. Globus doesn’t know a thing -yet.”

“Then that is your answer.”

Krebs started rubbing his face vigorously, as if drying himself. He stopped, his hands pressed to his cheeks, and stared at March through his spread fingers. “What is happening here?”

“You can read.”

“I can read, but I don’t understand.” Krebs snatched up the pages and leafed through them. “Here, for example — what is ‘Zyklon B’?”

“Crystallised hydrogen cyanide. Before that, they used carbon monoxide. Before that, bullets.”

“And here — ‘Auschwitz/Birkenau’. ‘Kulmhof’. ‘Belzec’. ‘Treblinka’. ‘Majdanek’. ‘Sobibor’.”

“The killing grounds.”

“These figures: eight thousand a day…”

“That’s the total they could destroy at Auschwitz/ Birkenau using the four gas chambers and crematoria.”

“And this ‘eleven million’?”

“Eleven million is the total number of European Jews they were after. Maybe they succeeded. Who knows? I don’t see many around, do you?”

“Here: the name ‘Globocnik’…”

“Globus was SS and Police Leader in Lublin. He built the killing centres.”

“I didn’t know.” Krebs dropped the notes on the table as if they were contagious. “I didn’t know any of this.”

“Of course you knew! You knew every time someone made a joke about ‘going East’, every time you heard a mother tell her child to behave or they’d go up the chimney. We knew when we moved into their houses, when we took over their property, their jobs. We knew but we didn’t have the facts.” He pointed to the notes with his left hand. “Those put flesh on the bones. Put bones where there was just clear air.”

“I meant: I didn’t know that Buhler, Stuckart and Luther were involved in this. I didn’t know about Globus…”

“Sure. You just thought you were investigating an art robbery.”

“It’s true! It’s true,” repeated Krebs. “Wednesday morning — can you remember back that far? — I was investigating corruption at the Deutsche Arbeitsfront: the sale of labour permits. Then, out of the blue, I am summoned to see the Reichfuhrer, one-to-one. He tells me retired civil servants have been discovered in a colossal art fraud. The potential embarrassment for the Party is huge. Obergruppenfuhrer Globocnik is in charge. I am to go at once to Schwanen-werder and take my orders from him.”

“Why you?”

“Why not? The Reichfuhrer knows of my interest in art. We have spoken of these matters. My job was simply to catalogue the treasures.”

“But you must have realised that Globus killed Buhler and Stuckart?”

“Of course. I’m not an idiot. I know Globus’s reputation as well as you. But Globus was acting on Heydrich’s orders, and if Heydrich had decided to let him loose, to spare the Party a public scandal — who was I to object?”

“Who were you to object?” repeated March. “Let’s be clear, March. Are you saying their deaths had nothing to do with the fraud?”

“Nothing. The fraud was a coincidence that became a useful cover story, that’s all.”

“But it made sense. It explained why Globus was acting as state executioner, and why he was desperate to head off an investigation by the Kripo. On Wednesday night I was still cataloguing the pictures on Schwanenwerder when he called in a rage — about you. Said you’d been officially taken off the case, but you’d broken in to Stuckart’s apartment. I was to go and bring you in, which I did. And I tell you: if Globus had had his way, that would have been the end of you right there, but Nebe wouldn’t have it. Then, on Friday night, we found what we thought was Luther’s body in the railway yard, and that seemed to be the end of it.”

“When did you discover the corpse wasn’t Luther’s?”

“Around six on Saturday morning. Globus telephoned me at home. He said he had information Luther was still alive and was planning to meet the American journalist at nine.”

“He knew this,” asserted March, “because of a tip-off from the American Embassy.”

Krebs snorted. “What sort of crap is that? He knew because of a wire-tap.”

“That cannot be…”

“Why can’t it be? See for yourself.” Krebs opened one of his folders and extracted a single sheet of flimsy brown paper. “It was rushed over from the wire-tappers in Charlottenburg in the middle of the night.”

March read:

Once more he could hear her voice; smell her; touch her. In a recess of his mind, something stirred. He slid the paper back across the table to Krebs, who returned it to the folder and resumed: “What happened next, you know. Globus had Luther shot the instant he appeared — and, let me be honest, that shocked me. To do such a thing in a public place … I thought: this man is mad. Of course, I didn’t know then quite why he was so anxious Luther shouldn’t be taken alive.” He stopped abruptly, as if he had forgotten where he was, the role he was supposed to be playing. He finished quickly. “We searched the body and found nothing. Then we came after you.”

March’s hand had started to throb again. He looked down and saw crimson spots soaking through the white bandage.

“What time is it?”

“Five forty-seven.”

She had been gone almost eleven hours. God, his hand… The specks of red were spreading, touching; forming archipelagos of blood.

“There were four of them in it altogether,” said March. “Buhler, Stuckart, Luther and Kritzinger.”

“Kritzinger?” Krebs made a note.

“Friedrich Kritzinger, Ministerialdirektor of the Reich Chancellery. 1 wouldn’t write any of this down if I were you.”

Krebs laid aside his pencil.

“What concerned them wasn’t the extermination programme itself — these were senior Party men, remember — it was the lack of a proper Fuhrer Order. Nothing was written down. All they had were verbal assurances from Heydrich and Himmler that this was what the Fuhrer wanted. Could I have another cigarette?”

After Krebs had given him one, and he had taken a few sweet draughts, he went on: This is conjecture, you understand?” His interrogator nodded. “I assume they asked themselves: why is there no direct written link between the Fuhrer and this policy? And I assume their answer was: because it is so monstrous, the Head of State cannot be seen to be involved. So where did this leave them? It left them in the shit. Because if Germany lost the war, they could be tried as war criminals, and if Germany won it, they might one day be made the scapegoats for the greatest act of mass-murder in history.”

Krebs murmured: “I am not sure I want to know this.”

“So they took out an insurance policy. They swore affidavits — that was easy: three of them were lawyers — and they removed documents whenever they could. And gradually they put together a documentary record. Either outcome was covered. If Germany won and action was taken against them, they could threaten to expose what they knew. If the Allies won, they could say: look, we opposed this policy and even risked our lives to collect information about it. Luther also added a touch of blackmail -embarrassing documents about the American Ambassador to London, Kennedy. Give me those.”

He nodded to his notebook and to Buhler’s diary. Krebs hesitated, then slid them across the table.

It was difficult to open the notebook with only one hand. The bandage was sodden. He was smearing the pages.

The camps were organised to make sure there were no witnesses. Special prisoners ran the gas chambers, the crematoria. Eventually, those special prisoners were themselves destroyed, replaced by others, who were also destroyed. And so on. If that could happen at the lowest level, why not the highest? Look. Fourteen people at the Wannsee conference. The first one dies in “fifty-four. Another in “fifty-five. Then one a year in “fifty-seven, “fifty-nine, “sixty, “sixty-one, “sixty-two. Intruders probably planned to kill Luther in “sixty-three, and he hired security guards. But time passed and nothing happened, so he assumed it was just a coincidence.” That’s enough, March.”

“By “sixty-three, it had started to accelerate. In May, Klopfer dies. In December, Hoffmann hangs himself. In March this year, Kritzinger is blown up by a car bomb. Now, Buhler is really frightened. Kritzinger is the trigger. He’s the first of the group to die.”

March picked up the pocket diary.

“Here — you see — he marks the date of Kritzinger’s death with a cross. But after that the days go by; nothing happens; perhaps they are safe. Then, on April the ninth — another cross! Buhler’s old colleague from the General Government, Schongarth, has slipped beneath the wheels of a U-bahn train in Zoo Station. Panic on Schwanenwerder! But by then it’s too late…”

“I said: that’s enough!”

“One question puzzled me: why were there eight deaths in the first nine years, followed by six deaths in just the last six months? Why the rush? Why this terrible risk, after the exercise of so much patience? But then, we policemen seldom lift our eyes from the mud to look at the broader picture, do we? Everything was supposed to be completed by last Tuesday, ready for the visit of our good new friends, the Americans. And that raises a further question—”

“Give me those!” Krebs pulled the diary and the notebook from March’s grasp. Outside in the passage: Globus’s voice…

“—Would Heydrich have done all this on his own initiative, or was he acting on orders from a higher level? Orders, perhaps, from the same person who would not put his signature to any document…?”

Krebs had the stove open and was stuffing in the papers. For a moment they lay smouldering on the coals, then ignited into yellow flame as the key turned in the cell door.

FIVE

“Kulmhof!” he shouted at Globus when the pain became too bad. “Belzec! Treblinka!”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Globus grinned at his two assistants.

“Majdanek! Sobibor! Auschwitz/Birkenau!” He held up the names like a shield to ward off the blows.

“What am I supposed to do? Shrivel up and die?” Globus squatted on his haunches and grabbed March by the ears, twisting his face towards him. “They’re just names, March. There’s nothing there any more, not even a brick. Nobody will ever believe it. And shall I tell you something? Part of you can’t believe it either.” Globus spat in his face — a gobbet of greyish-yellow phlegm. “That’s how much the world will care.” He thrust him away, bouncing his head against the stone floor.

“Now. Again. Where’s the girl?”

SIX

Time crawled on all fours, broken-backed. He was shivering. His teeth chattered like a clockwork toy. Other prisoners had been here years before him. In lieu of tombstones they had scratched on the cell’s walls with splintered fingernails. “J.F.G. 22.2.57. “Katja”. “H.K. May 44”. Someone had got no further than half the letter “E” before strength or time or will had run out on them. Yet still this urge to write …

None of the marks, he noticed, was more than a metre above the floor.

The pain in his hand was making him feverish. He had hallucinations. A dog ground his fingers between its jaws. He closed his eyes and wondered what time was doing now. When he had last asked Krebs it had been — what? — almost six. Then they had talked for perhaps another half-hour. After that there had been his second session with Globus -infinite. Now this stretch alone in his cell, slithering in and out of the light, tugged one way by exhaustion, the other by the dog.

The floor was warm to his cheek, the smooth stone dissolved.

He dreamed of his father — his childhood dream — the stiff figure in the photograph come to life, waving from the deck of the ship as it pulled out of harbour, waving until he had dwindled to a stick-figure, until he disappeared. He dreamed of Jost, running on the spot, intoning his poetry in his solemn voice: “You throw food to the beast in man/That it may grow…’He dreamed of Charlie. But most often he dreamed he was back in Pili’s bedroom at that dreadful instant when he understood what the boy had done out of kindness -kindness! — when his arms were reaching for the door but his legs were trapped — and the window was exploding and rough hands were dragging at his shoulders …

The jailer shook him awake.

“On your feet!”

He was curled up tight on his left side, foetus-like — his body raw, his joints welded. The guard’s push awoke the dog and he was sick. There was nothing in him to bring up, but his stomach convulsed anyway, for old time’s sake. The cell retreated a long way and came rushing back. He was pulled upright. The jailer swung a pair of handcuffs. Next to him stood Krebs, thank God, not Globus.

Krebs looked at him with distaste and said to the guard: “You’d better put them on at the front.”

His wrists were locked before him, his cap was stuffed on his head, and he was marched, hunched forward, along the passage, up the steps, into the fresh air.

A cold night, and clear. The stars sprayed across the sky above the courtyard. The buildings and the cars were silver-edged in the moonlight. Krebs pushed him into the back seat of a Mercedes and climbed in after him. He nodded to the driver: “Columbia House. Lock the doors.”

As the bolts slid home in the door beside him, March felt a flicker of relief.

“Don’t raise your hopes,” said Krebs. The Obergruppen-fuhrer is still waiting for you. We have more modern technology at Columbia, that’s all.”

They pulled out through the gates, looking to any who saw them like two SS officers and their chauffeur. A guard saluted.

Columbia House was three kilometres south of Prinz—

Albrecht Strasse. The darkened government buildings quickly yielded to shabby office blocks and boarded-up warehouses. The area close to the prison had been scheduled for redevelopment in the nineteen-fifties, and here and there Speer’s bulldozers had made destructive forays. But the money had run out before anything could be built to replace what they had knocked down. Now, overgrown patches of derelict land gleamed in the bluish light like the corners of old battlefields. In the dark side-streets between them dwelt the teeming colonies of East European gastarbeiter.

March was sitting stretched out, his head resting on the back of the leather seat, when Krebs suddenly leaned towards him and shouted: “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He turned to the driver: “He’s pissing himself. Pull over here.”

The driver swore, and braked hard.

“Open the doors!”

Krebs got out, came round to March’s side, and yanked him out. “Quickly! We haven’t got all night!” To the driver: “One minute. Keep the engine running.”

Then March was being pushed — stumbling across rough stones, down an alley, into the doorway of a disused church, and Krebs was unlocking the handcuffs.

“You’re a lucky man, March.”

“I don’t understand…”

Krebs said: “You’ve got a favourite uncle.”

Tap, tap, tap. From the darkness of the church. Tap, tap, tap.

“You should have come to me at once, my boy,” said Artur Nebe. “You would have spared yourself such agony.” He brushed March’s cheek with his fingertips. In the heavy shadows, March could not make out the detail of his face, only a pale blur.

“Take my pistol.” Krebs pressed the Luger into March’s left hand. Take it! You tricked me. Got hold of my gun. Understand?”

He was dreaming, surely? But the pistol felt solid enough …

Nebe was still talking — a low, urgent voice. “Oh March, March. Krebs came to me this evening — shocked! so shocked! — told me what you had. We all suspected it, of course, but never had the proof. Now you’ve got to get it out. For all our sakes. You’ve got to stop these bastards…” Krebs interrupted: “Forgive me, sir, our time is almost gone.” He pointed. “Down there, March. Can you see? A car.”

Parked under a broken street lamp at the far end of the alley March could just see a low shape, could hear a motor running.

“What is this?” He looked from one man to the other. “Walk to the car and get in. We’ve no more time. I count to ten, then I yell.”

“Don’t fail us, March.” Nebe squeezed his cheek. “Your uncle is an old man, but he hopes to live long enough to see those bastards hang. Go on. Get the papers out. Get them published. We’re risking everything, giving you a chance.

Take it. Go.”

Krebs said: “I’m counting: one, two, three…” March hesitated, started to walk, then broke into a loping run. The car door was opening. He looked back. Nebe had already disappeared into the dark. Krebs had cupped his hands to his mouth and was starting to shout.

March turned and struggled towards the waiting car where a familiar voice was calling: “Zavi! Zavi!”