Fatherland

ONE

The Berlin Borse had opened for trading thirty minutes earlier. In the window display of the Union des Banques Suisses on Zurich’s Bahnhof Strasse, the numbers clicked like knitting needles. Bayer, Siemens, Thyssen, Daimler -up, up, up, up. The only stock falling on news of detente was Krupp.

A smart and well-dressed crowd had gathered anxiously, as they did every morning, to watch this monitor of the Reich’s economic health. Prices on the Borse had been falling for six months and a mood close to panic had seized investors. But this week, thanks to old Joe Kennedy — he always knew a thing or two about markets, old Joe: made half a billion dollars on Wall Street in his day — yes, thanks to Joe, the slide had stopped. Berlin was happy. Everyone was happy. Nobody paid attention to the couple walking up the street from the lake, not holding hands but close enough for their bodies to touch occasionally, followed by a weary-looking pair of gentlemen in fawn raincoats.

March had been given a short briefing on the customs and practices of Swiss banking the afternoon he left Berlin.

“Bahnhof Strasse is the financial centre. It looks like the main shopping street, which it is. But it’s the courtyards behind the shops and the offices above them that matter. That’s where you’ll find the banks. But you’ll have to keep your eyes open. The Swiss say: the older the money, the harder to see it. In Zurich, the money’s so old, it’s invisible.”

Beneath the paving stones and tramlines of Bahnhof Strasse -ran the catacomb of vaults in which three generations of Europe’s rich had buried their wealth. March looked at the shoppers and tourists pouring along the street and wondered upon what ancient dreams and secrets, upon what bones they were treading.

These banks were small, family-run concerns: a dozen or two employees, a suite of offices, a small brass plate. Zaugg Cie was typical. The entrance was in a side-street, behind a jewellers, scanned by a remote camera identical to the one outside Zaugg’s villa. As March rang the bell beside the discreet door he felt Charlie brush his hand.

A woman’s voice over the intercom demanded his name and business. He looked up at the camera.

“My name is March. This is Fraulein Maguire. We wish to see Herr Zaugg.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“The Herr Direktor sees no one without an appointment.”

Tell him we have a letter of authorisation for account number 2402.”

“One moment, please.”

The policemen were lounging at the entrance to the side-street. March glanced at Charlie. It seemed to him her eyes were brighter, her skin more lustrous. He supposed he flattered himself. Everything looked heightened today- the trees greener, the blossom whiter, the sky bluer, as if washed with gloss.

She was carrying a leather shoulder bag, from which she now produced a camera, a Leica. “I think a shot for the family album.”

“As you like. But leave me out of it.”

“Such modesty.”

She took a photograph of Zaugg’s door and nameplate. The receptionist’s voice snapped over the intercom. “Please come to the second floor.” There was a buzz of bolts being released, and March pushed at the heavy door.

The building was an optical illusion. Small and nondescript from the outside, inside a staircase of glass and tubular chrome led to a wide reception area, decorated with modern art. Hermann Zaugg was waiting to meet them. Behind him stood one of the bodyguards from last night.

“Herr March, is it?” Zaugg extended his hand. “And Fraulein Maguire?” He shook her hand, too, and gave a slight bow. “English?”

“American.”

“Ah. Good. Always a pleasure to meet our American friends.” He was like a little doll: silver hair, shiny pink face, tiny hands and feet. He wore a suit of immaculate black, a white shirt, a pearl-grey tie. “I understand you have the necessary authorisation?”

March produced the letter. Zaugg held the paper swiftly to the light and studied the signature. “Yes indeed. The hand of my youth. I fear my script has deteriorated since those years. Come.”

In his office, he directed them to a low sofa of white leather. He sat behind his desk. Now the advantage of height lay with him: the oldest trick.

March had decided to be frank. “We passed your home last night. Your privacy is well protected.”

Zaugg had his hands folded on his desk. He made a non-committal gesture with his tiny thumbs, as if to say: You know how it is. “I gather from my associates that you had protection of your own. Do I take it this visit is official, or private?”

“Both. That is to say, neither.”

“I am familiar with the situation. Next you will tell me it is "a delicate matter".”

“It is a delicate matter.”

“My speciality.” He adjusted his cuffs. “Sometimes, it seems to me that the whole history of twentieth-century Europe has flowed through this office. In the 1930s, it was Jewish refugees who sat where you now sit — often pathetic creatures, clutching whatever they had managed to salvage. They were usually followed closely by gentlemen from the Gestapo. In the 1940s, it was German officials of- how shall we say? — recently-acquired wealth. Sometimes the very men who had once come to close the accounts of others now returned to open new ones on their own behalf. In the 1950s, we dealt with the descendants of those who had vanished during the 1940s. Now, in the 1960s, I anticipate an increase in American custom, as your two great countries come together once more. The 1970s I shall leave to my son.”

This letter of authorisation,” said March, “how much access does it give us?”

“You have the key?”

March nodded.

Then you have total access.”

“We would like to begin with the account records.”

“Very well.” Zaugg studied the letter, then picked up his telephone. “Fraulein Graf, bring in the file for 2402.”

She appeared a minute later, a middle-aged woman carrying a thin sheaf of papers in a manila binding. Zaugg took it. “What do you wish to know?”

“When was the account opened?”

He looked through the papers. “July 1942. The eighth day of that month.”

“And who opened it?”

Zaugg hesitated. He was like a miser with his store of precious information: parting with each fact was agony. But under the terms of his own rules he had no choice.

He said at last: “Herr Martin Luther.”

March was making notes. “And what were the arrangements for the account?”

“One box. Four keys.”

“Four keys?” March’s eyebrows rose in surprise. That was Luther himself, and Buhler and Stuckart, presumably. But who held the fourth key? “How were they distributed?”

They were all issued to Herr Luther, along with four letters of authorisation. Naturally, what he chose to do with them is not our concern. You appreciate that this was a special form of account-an emergency, wartime account-designed to protect anonymity, and also to allow ease of access for any heirs or beneficiaries, should anything happen to the original account-holder.”

“How did he pay for the account.”

“In cash. Swiss francs. Thirty years” rental. In advance. Don’t worry, Herr March — there is nothing to pay until 1972.”

Charlie said: “Do you have a record of transactions relating to the account?”

Zaugg turned to her. “Only the dates on which the box was opened.”

“What are they?”

The eighth of July 1942. The seventeenth of December 1942. The ninth of August 1943. The thirteenth of April 1964.”

April the thirteenth! March barely suppressed a cry of triumph. His guess had been right. Luther had flown to Zurich at the start of the week. He scribbled the dates in his notebook. “Only four times?” he asked.

“Correct.”

“And until last Monday, the box had not been opened for nearly twenty-one years?”

That is what the dates indicate.” Zaugg closed the file with a flick of annoyance. “I might add, there is nothing especially unusual about that. We have boxes here which have lain untouched for fifty years or more.”

“You set up the account originally?”

“I did.”

“Did Herr Luther say why he wanted to open it, or why he needed these particular arrangements?”

“Client privilege.”

“I’m sorry?”

That is privileged information between client and banker.”

Charlie interrupted. “But we are your clients.”

“No, Fraulein Maguire. You are beneficiaries of my client. An important distinction.”

“Did Herr Luther open the box personally on each occasion?” asked March.

“Client privilege.”

“Was it Luther who opened the box on Monday? What sort of mood was he in?”

“Client privilege, client privilege.” Zaugg held up his hands. “We can go on all day, Herr March. Not only am I under no obligation to give you that information, it would be illegal under the Swiss Banking Code for me to do so. I have passed on all you are entitled to know. Is there anything else?”

“Yes.” March closed his notebook and looked at Charlie. “We would like to inspect the box for ourselves.”

A SMALL elevator led down to the vault. There was just enough room for four passengers. March and Charlie, Zaugg and his bodyguard stood awkwardly pressed together. Close to, the banker reeked of eau de Cologne; his hair glistened beneath an oily pomade.

The vault was like a prison, or a mortuary: a white-tiled corridor which stretched ahead of them for thirty metres, with bars on either side. At the far end, next to the gate, a security guard sat at a desk. Zaugg pulled a heavy bunch of keys from his pocket, attached by a chain to his belt. He hummed as he searched for the right one.

The ceiling vibrated slightly as a tram passed overhead.

He let them into the cage. Steel walls gleamed in the neon light: banks of doors, each half a metre square. Zaugg moved in front of them, unlocked one at waist height and stood back. The security guard pulled out a long box, the size of a metal footlocker, and carried it over to a table.

Zaugg said: Tour key fits the lock on that box. I shall wait outside.”

There’s no need.”

Thank you, but I prefer to wait.”

Zaugg left the cage and stood outside, with his back to the bars. March looked at Charlie, and gave her the key.

“You do it.”

“I’m shaking…”

She inserted the key. It turned easily. The end of the box opened. She reached inside. There was a look of puzzlement on her face, then disappointment.

“It’s empty, I think.” Her expression changed. “No…”

She smiled and pulled out a flat cardboard box, about fifty centimetres square, five centimetres deep. The lid was sealed with red wax, with a typewritten label gummed on top: “Property of the Reich Foreign Ministry Treaty Archive, Berlin.” And underneath, in Gothic lettering: “Geheime Reichssache”. Top Secret State Document.

A treaty?

March broke the seal, using the key. He lifted the lid. The interior released a scent of mingled must and incense.

Another tram passed. Zaugg was still humming, jingling his keys.

Inside the cardboard box was an object wrapped in an oilcloth. March lifted it out and laid it flat on the desk. He drew back the cloth: a panel of wood, scratched and ancient; one of the corners was broken off. He turned it over.

Charlie was next to him. She murmured: “It’s beautiful.”

The edges of the panel were splintered, as if it had been wrenched from its setting. But the portrait itself was perfectly preserved. A young woman, exquisite, with pale brown eyes, was glancing to the right, a string of black beads looped twice around her neck. In her lap, in long, aristocratic fingers, she held a small animal with white fur. Not a dog, exactly; more like a weasel.

Charlie was right. It was beautiful. It seemed to suck in the light from the vault and radiate it back. The girl’s pale skin glowed -luminous, like an angel’s.

“What does it mean?” whispered Charlie.

“God knows.” March felt vaguely cheated. Was the deposit box no more than an extension of Buhler’s treasure chamber? “How much do you know about art?”

“Not much. But there is something familiar about it. May I?” She took it, held it at arm’s length. “It’s Italian, I think. You see her costume — the way the neckline of her dress is cut square, the sleeves. I’d say Renaissance. Very old, and very genuine.”

“And very stolen. Put it back.”

“Do we have to?”

“Of course. Unless you can think of a good story for the Zollgrenzschutz at Berlin Airport.”

Another painting: that was all! Cursing under his breath, March ran the oilcloth through his hands, checked the cardboard container. He turned the safety deposit box on its end and shook it. Nothing. The empty metal mocked him. What had he hoped for? He did not know. But something to give him a better clue than this.

“We must leave,” he said.

“One minute.”

Charlie propped the panel up against the box. She crouched and took half-a-dozen photographs. Then she rewrapped the picture, replaced it in its container, and locked the box.

March called: “We’ve finished here, Herr Zaugg. Thank you.”

Zaugg reappeared with the security guard — a fraction too quickly, March thought. He guessed the banker had been straining to overhear them.

Zaugg rubbed his hands. “All is to your satisfaction, I trust?”

“Perfectly.”

The guard slid the box back into the cavity, Zaugg locked the door, and the girl with the weasel was re-interred in darkness. “We have boxes here which have lain untouched for fifty years or more…” Was that how long it would be before she saw the light again?

They rode the elevator in silence. Zaugg shepherded them out at street-level. “And so we say goodbye.” He shook hands with each of them in turn.

March felt he had to say something more, should try one final tactic. “I feel I must warn you, Herr Zaugg, that two of the joint holders of this account have been murdered in the past week, and that Martin Luther himself has disappeared.”

Zaugg did not even blink. “Dear me, dear me. Old clients pass away and new ones” — he gestured to them -’take their place. And so the world turns. The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that — whoever wins — still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland. Good day to you.”

They were out on the street and the door was closing when Charlie shouted: “Herr Zaugg!”

His face appeared and before he could withdraw it, the camera clicked. His eyes were wide, his little mouth popped into a perfect O of outrage.

Zurich’s lake was misty-blue, like a picture from a fairy-story — a landscape fit for sea-monsters and heroes to do battle in. If only the world had been as we were promised, thought March. Then castles with pointed turrets would have risen through that haze.

He was leaning against the damp stone balustrade outside the hotel, his suitcase at his feet, waiting for Charlie to settle her bill.

He wished he could have stayed longer — taken her out on the water, explored the city, the hills; had dinner in the old town; returned to his room each night, to make love, to the sound of the lake … A dream. Fifty metres to his left, sitting in their cars, his guardians from the Swiss Polizei yawned.

Many years ago, when March was a young detective in the Hamburg Kripo, he had been ordered to escort a prisoner serving a life-sentence for robbery, who had been given a special day-pass. The man’s trial had been in the papers; his childhood sweetheart had seen the publicity and written to him; had visited him in gaol; agreed to marry him. The affair had touched that streak of sentimentality that runs so strong in the German psyche. There had been a public campaign to let the ceremony go ahead. The authorities had relented. So March took him to his wedding, stood handcuffed beside him throughout the service and even during the wedding pictures, like an unusually attentive best man.

The reception had been in a grim hall next to the church. Towards the end, the groom had whispered that there was a storeroom with a rug in it, that the priest had no objections… And March — young husband that he was -had checked the storeroom and seen there were no windows and had left the man and his wife alone for twenty minutes. The priest — who had worked as a chaplain in Hamburg’s docks for thirty years, and seen most things — had given March a grave wink.

On the way back to prison, as the high walls came into view, March had expected the man to be depressed, to plead for extra time, maybe even dive for the door. Not at all. He had sat smiling, finishing his cigar. Standing by the Zurich See, March realised how he had felt. It had been sufficient to know that the possibility of another life existed; one day of it had been enough.

He felt Charlie come up beside him. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

A SHOP at Zurich airport was piled high with brightly coloured gifts — cuckoo clocks, toy skis, ashtrays glazed with pictures of the Matterhorn, and chocolates. March picked out one of the musical boxes with “Birthday Greetings to Our Beloved Fuhrer, 1964” written on the lid and took it to the counter where a plump middle-aged woman was waiting.

“Could you wrap this and send it for me?”

“No problem, sir. Write down where you want it to go.”

She gave him a form and a pencil and March wrote Hannelore Jaeger’s name and address. Hannelore was even fatter than her husband, a lover of chocolates. He hoped Max would see the joke.

The assistant wrapped the box swiftly in brown paper, with skilled fingers.

“Do you sell many of these?”

“Hundreds. You Germans certainly love your Fuhrer.”

“We do, it is true.” He was looking at the parcel. It was wrapped exactly like the one he had taken from Buhler’s mailbox. “You don’t, I suppose, keep a record of the places to which you send these packages?”

“That would be impossible.” She addressed it, stuck on a stamp, and added it to the pile behind her.

“Of course. And you wouldn’t remember serving an elderly German here, about four o’clock on Monday afternoon? He had thick glasses and runny eyes.”

Her face was suddenly hard with suspicion. “What are you? A policeman?”

“It’s of no importance.” He paid for the chocolates, and also for a mug with “i LOVE ZURICH” printed on the side.

Luther would not have come all the way to Switzerland to put that painting in the bank vault, thought March. Even as a retired Foreign Ministry official, he could never have smuggled a package that size, stamped top secret, past the Zollgrenzschutz. He must have come here to retrieve something, to take it back to Germany. And as it was the first time he had visited the vault for twenty-one years, and as there were three other keys, and as he trusted nobody, he must have had doubts about whether that other thing would still be here.

He stood looking at the departure lounge and tried to imagine the elderly man hurrying into the terminal building, clutching his precious cargo, his weak heart beating sharply against his ribs. The chocolates must have been a message of success: so far, my old comrades, so good. What could he have been carrying? Not paintings or money, surely; they had plenty of both in Germany.

“Paper.”

“What?” Charlie, who had been waiting for him in the concourse, turned round in surprise.

“That must have been the link. Paper. They were all civil servants. They lived their lives by paper, on paper.”

He pictured them in wartime Berlin — sitting in their offices at night, circulating memos and minutes in a perpetual bureaucratic paper chase, building themselves a paper fortress. Millions of Germans had fought in the war: in the freezing mud of the Steppes, or in the Libyan desert, or in the clear skies over southern England, or — like March — at sea. But these old men had fought their war — had bled and expended their middle age — on paper.

Charlie was shaking her head. “You’re making no sense.”

“I know. To myself, perhaps. I bought you this.”

She unwrapped the mug and laughed; clasped it to her heart.

“I shall treasure it.”

They walked quickly through passport control. Beyond the barrier, March turned for a final look. The two Swiss policemen were watching from the ticket desk. One of them — the one who had rescued them outside Zaugg’s villa — raised his hand. March waved in return.

Their flight number was being called for the last time: “Passengers for Lufthansa flight 227 to Berlin must report immediately…”

He let his arm fall back and turned towards the departure gate.

TWO

No whisky on this flight, but coffee — plenty of it, strong and black. Charlie tried to read a newspaper but fell asleep. March was too excited to rest.

He had torn a dozen blank pages from his notebook, had ripped them in half and half again. Now he had them spread out on the plastic table in front of him. On each he had written a name, a date, an incident. He reshuffled them endlessly — the front to the back, the back to the middle, the middle to the beginning — a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke billowing, his head in the clouds. To the other passengers, a few of whom stole curious glances, he must have looked like a man playing a particularly demented form of patience.

JULY 1942. On the Eastern Front, the Wehrmacht has launched Operation “Blue’: the offensive which will eventually win Germany the war. America is taking a hammering from the Japanese. The British are bombing the Ruhr, fighting in North Africa. In Prague, Reinhard Heydrich is recovering from an assassination attempt.

So: good days for the Germans, especially those in the conquered territories. Elegant apartments, girlfriends, bribes — packing cases of plunder to send back home. Corruption from high to low; from corporal to Kommissar; from alcohol to altar-pieces. Buhler, Stuckart and Luther have an especially good racket in play. Buhler requisitions art treasures in the General Government, sends them under cover to Stuckart at the Interior Ministry — quite safe, for who would dare tamper with the mail of such powerful servants of the Reich? Luther smuggles the objects abroad to sell — safe again, for who would dare order the head of the Foreign Ministry’s German Division to open his bags? All three retire in the 1950s, rich and honoured men.

And then, in 1964: catastrophe.

March shuffled his bits of paper, shuffled them again.

On Friday, 11 April, the three conspirators gather at Buhler s villa: the first piece of evidence which suggests a panic…

No. That was not right. He leafed back through his notes, to Charlie’s account of her conversation with Stuckart. Of course.

On Thursday, 10 April, the day before the meeting, Stuckart stands in Billow Strasse and notes the number of the telephone in the booth opposite Charlotte Maguire’s apartment. Armed with that, he goes to Buhlers’s villa on Friday. Something so terrible threatens to overwhelm them that the three men contemplate the unthinkable: defection to the United States of America. Stuckart lays out the procedure. They cannot trust the Embassy, because Kennedy has stuffed it with appeasers. They need a direct link with Washington. Stuckart has it: Michael Maguire’s daughter. It is agreed. On Saturday, Stuckart telephones the girl to arrange a meeting. On Sunday, Luther flies to Switzerland: not to fetch pictures or money, which they have in abundance in Berlin, but to collect something put there in the course of three visits, between the summer of 1942 and the spring of 1943.

But already it is too late. By the time Luther has made the withdrawal, sent the signal from Zurich, landed in Berlin, Buhler and Stuckart are dead. And so he decides to disappear, taking with him whatever he removed from the vault in Zurich.

March sat back and contemplated his half-finished puzzle. It was a version of events, as valid as any other.

Charlie sighed and stirred in her sleep, twisted to rest her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair. Today was Friday. The Fuhrertag was Monday. He had only the weekend left. “Oh, my dear Fraulein Maguire,” he murmured. “I fear we have been looking in the wrong place.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we shall shortly be beginning our descent to Flughafen Hermann Goering. Please return your seats to the upright position and fold away the tables in front of you…”

Carefully, so as not to wake her, March withdrew his shoulder from beneath Charlie’s head, gathered up his pieces of paper, and made his way, unsteadily, towards the back of the aircraft. A boy in the uniform of the Hitler Youth emerged from the lavatory and held the door open, politely. March nodded, went inside and locked it behind him. A dim light flickered.

The tiny compartment stank of stale air, endlessly recycled; of cheap soap; of faeces. He lifted the lid of the metal lavatory basin and dropped in the paper. The aircraft pitched and shook. A warning light pinged. ATTENTION! RETURN TO YOUR SEAT! The turbulence made his stomach lurch. Was this how Luther had felt, as the aircraft dropped towards Berlin? The metal was clammy to the touch. He pulled a lever and the lavatory flushed, his notes sucked from sight in a whirlpool of blue water.

Lufthansa had stocked the toilet not with towels but with moist little paper handkerchiefs, impregnated with some sickly liquid. March wiped his face. He could feel the heat of his skin through the slippery fabric. Another vibration, like a U-boat being depth-charged. They were falling fast. He pressed his burning forehead to the cool mirror. Dive, dive, dive …

She was awake, dragging a comb through her thick hair. “I was beginning to think you had jumped.”

“It’s true, the thought did enter my mind.” He fastened his seatbelt. “But you may be my salvation.”

“You say the nicest things.”

“I said "may be".” He took her hand. “Listen. Are you sure Stuckart told you he came on Thursday to check out that telephone opposite your apartment?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure. I remember it made me realise: this man is serious, he’s done his homework.”

“That’s what I think. The question is, was Stuckart acting on his own — trying to set up his own private escape route -or was ringing you a course of action he had discussed with the others?”

“Does it matter?”

“Very much. Think about it. If he agreed it with the others on Friday, it means Luther may know who you are, and know the procedure for contacting you.”

She pulled her hand back in surprise. “But that’s crazy. He’d never trust me.”

“You’re right, it’s crazy.” They had dropped through one layer of cloud; beneath them was another. March could see the tip of the Great Hall poking through it, like the top of a helmet. “But suppose Luther is still alive down there, what are his options? The airport is being watched. So are the docks, the railway stations, the border. He can’t risk going direct to the American Embassy, not after what’s happened about Kennedy’s visit. He can’t go home. What can he do?”

“I don’t believe it. He could have called me Tuesday or Wednesday. Or Thursday morning. Why would he wait?”

But he could hear the doubt in her voice. He thought: You don’t want to believe it. You thought you were clever, looking for your story in Zurich, but all the time your story might actually have been looking for you, in Berlin.

She had turned away from him, to stare through the window.

March felt suddenly deflated. In truth, he hardly knew her, despite everything. He said: The reason he would have waited is to try and find something better to do, something safer. Who knows? Maybe he’s found it.”

She did not answer.

They landed in Berlin, in a thin drizzle, just before two o’clock. At the end of the runway, as the Junkers turned, the moisture scudded across the window, leaving threads of droplets. The swastika above the terminal building hung limp in the wet.

There were two queues at passport control: one for German and European Community nationals, one for the rest of the world.

This is where we part,” said March. He had persuaded her, with some difficulty, to let him carry her case. Now he handed it back. “What are you going to do?”

“Go back to my apartment, I guess, and wait for the telephone to ring. What about you?”

“I thought I would arrange myself a history lesson.” She looked at him, uncomprehending. He said: “I’ll call you later.”

“Be sure you do.”

A vestige of the old mistrust had returned. He could see it in her eyes, felt her searching it out in his. He wanted to say something, to reassure her. “Don’t worry. A deal is a deal.”

She nodded. An awkward silence. Then abruptly she stood on tiptoe and brushed her cheek against his. She was gone before he could think of a response.

The line of returning Germans shuffled one at a time, in silence, into the Reich. March waited patiently with his hands clasped behind his back while his passport was scrutinised. In these last few days before the Fuhrer’s birthday, the border checks were always more stringent, the guards more jittery.

The eyes of the Zollgrenzschutz officer were hidden in the shade of his visor. The Herr Sturmbannfuhrer is back with three hours to spare.” He drew a thick black line through the visa, scrawled Void” across it, and handed the passport back. “Welcome home.”

In the crowded customs hall March kept a. look out for Charlie, but could not see her. Perhaps they had refused to let her back into the country. He almost hoped they had: it would be safer for her.

The Zollgrenzschutz were opening every bag. Never had he seen such security. It was chaos. The passengers milling and arguing around the mounds of clothes made the hall look Hike an Indian bazaar. He waited his turn.

It was after three by the time March reached the left-luggage area and retrieved his case. In the toilets he changed back into his uniform, folded his civilian clothes and packed them away. He checked his Luger and slipped it into his holster. As he left, he glanced at himself in the mirror. A familiar black figure.

Welcome home.

THREE

When the sun shone the Party called it “Fuhrer weather”. They had no name for rain. Nevertheless, it had been decreed, drizzle or not, that this afternoon was to be the start of the three-day holiday. And so, with dogged National Socialist determination, the people set about their celebrations.

March was in a taxi heading south through Wedding. This was workers” Berlin, a communist stronghold of the 1920s. The factory whistles, in a festive gesture, had sounded an hour earlier than usual. Now the streets were dense with damp revellers. The Blockwarts had been active. From every second or third building, a banner hung -mostly swastikas, but also the occasional slogan, strung between the iron balconies of the fortress-tenements. WORKERS OF BERLIN SALUTE THE FUHRER ON HIS 75TH BIRTHDAY! LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! LONG LIVE OUR GUIDE AND FIRST COMRADE ADOLF HITLER! The back streets were in a delirium of colour, throbbing to the oohm-pah! of the local SA bands. And this was only Friday. March wondered what the Wedding authorities had planned for the day itself.

During the night, on the corner of Wolff Strasse, some rebellious spirit had added a piece of graffiti, in white paint: ANYONE FOUND NOT ENJOYING THEMSELVES WILL BE SHOT.

A couple of anxious-looking brownshirts were trying to clean it off.

March took the taxi as far as Fritz-Todt Platz. His Volkswagen was still outside Stuckart’s apartment, where he had parked it the night before last. He looked up at the fourth floor. Someone had drawn all the curtains.

At Werderscher Markt, he stowed his suitcase in his office and rang the Duty Officer. Martin Luther had not been located.

Krause said: “Between you and me, March, Globus is driving us all fucking mad. In here every half-hour, ranting and raving that someone will go to a KZ unless he gets results.”

“The Herr Obergruppenfuhrer is a very dedicated officer.”

“Oh, he is, he is.” Krause’s voice was suddenly panicky. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”

March hung up. That would give whoever was listening to his calls something to think about.

He lugged the typewriter across to his desk and inserted a single sheet of paper. He lit a cigarette.

March leaned back in his seat and blew a pair of neat smoke rings towards the ceiling. The thought of that painting in the hands of Nebe — dumped into his collection of bombastic, syrupy Schmutzlers and Kirchners — was repugnant, even sacrilegious. Better to leave her at peace in the darkness. He let his fingers rest on the typewriter keys for a moment, then tapped: nothing.

He wound the paper out of the typewriter, signed it, and sealed it in an envelope. He called Nebe’s office and was ordered to bring it up at once, personally. He hung up and stared out the window at the brickwork view.

Why not?

He stood and checked along the bookshelves until he found the Berlin area telephone directory. He took it down and looked up a number, which he dialled from the office next door, so as not to be overheard.

A man’s voice answered: “Reichsarchiv.”

Ten minutes later his boots were sinking into the soft mire of Artur Nebe’s office carpet.

“Do you believe in coincidences, March?”

“No, sir.”

“No,” said Nebe. “Good. Neither do I.” He put down his magnifying glass and pushed away March’s report. “I don’t believe two retired public servants of the same age and rank just happen to choose to commit suicide rather than be exposed as corrupt. My God” — he gave a harsh little laugh -’if every government official in Berlin took that approach, the streets would be piled high with the dead. Nor do they just happen to be murdered in the week an American president announces he will grace us with a visit.”

He pushed back his chair and hobbled across to a small bookcase lined with the sacred texts of National Socialism: Mein Kampf, Rosenberg’s Mythus der XX. Jahrhunderts, Goebbels’s Tagebucher… He pressed a switch and the front of the bookcase swung open to reveal a cocktail cabinet. The tomes, March saw now, were merely the spines of books, pasted on to the wood.

Nebe helped himself to a large vodka and returned to his desk. March continued to stand before him, neither fully at attention nor fully at ease.

“Globus works for Heydrich,” said Nebe. "That’s simple. Globus wouldn’t wipe his own arse unless Heydrich told him it was time to do it.”

March said nothing.

“And Heydrich works for the Fuhrer most of the time, and all of the time he works for himself…”

Nebe held the heavy tumbler to his lips. His lizard’s tongue darted into the vodka, playing with it. He was silent for a while. Then he said: “Do you know why we’re greasing up to the Americans, March?”

“No, sir.”

“Because we’re in the shit. Here is something you won’t read in the little Doctor’s newspapers. Twenty million settlers in the East by 1960, that was Himmler’s plan. Ninety million by the end of the century. Fine. Well, we shipped them out all right. Trouble is, half of them want to come back. Consider that cosmic piece of irony, March: living space that no one wants to live in. Terrorism” — he gestured with his glass, the ice clinked — “I don’t need to tell an officer of the Kripo how serious terrorism has become. The Americans supply money, weapons, training. They’ve kept the Reds going for twenty years. As for us: the young don’t want to fight and the old don’t want to work.”

He shook his grey head at such follies, fished an ice cube out of his drink and sucked it noisily.

“Heydrich’s mad for this American deal. He’d kill to keep it sweet. Is that what’s happening here, March? Buhler, Stuckart, Luther — were they a threat to it somehow?”

Nebe’s eyes searched his face. March stared straight ahead.

“You’re an irony yourself, March, in a way. Did you ever consider that?”

“No, sir.”

“ ‘No, sir.’ ” Nebe mimicked him. “Well consider it now. We set out to breed a generation of supermen to rule an empire, yes? We trained them to apply hard logic -pitilessly, even cruelly. Remember what the Fuhrer once said? "My greatest gift to the Germans is that I have taught them to think clearly." And what happens? A few of you -perhaps the best of you — begin to turn this pitiless clear thinking on to us. I tell you, I’m glad I’m an old man. I fear the future.” He was quiet for a minute, lost in his own thoughts.

At length, disappointed, the old man picked up the magnifying glass. “Corruption it is, then.” He read through March’s report once more, then tore it up and dropped it into his waste bin.

Clio, the Muse of History, guarded the Reichsarchiv: an Amazonian nude designed by Adolf Ziegler, the “Reich Master of the Pubic Hair”. She frowned across the Avenue of Victory towards the Soldiers” Hall, where a long queue of tourists waited to file past Frederick the Great’s bones. Pigeons perched on the slopes of her immense bosom, like mountaineers on the face of a glacier. Behind her, a sign had been carved above the entrance to the archive, gold leaf inlaid on polished granite. A quotation from the Fuhrer: FOR ANY NATION, THE RIGHT HISTORY IS WORTH 100 DIVISIONS.

Rudolf Halder led March inside, and up to the third floor. He pushed at the double-doors and stood aside to let him walk through. A corridor with stone walls and a stone floor seemed to stretch for ever.

“Impressive, yes?” In his place of work, Halder spoke in the tone of a professional historian, conveying pride and sarcasm simultaneously. “We call the style mock-Teutonic. This, you will not be surprised to hear, is the largest archive building in the world. Above us: two floors of administration. On this floor: researchers” offices and reading rooms. Beneath us: six floors of documents. You are treading, my friend, on the history of the Fatherland. For my part, I tend Clio’s lamp in here.”

It was a monkish cell: small, windowless, the walls made of blocks of granite. Papers were stacked in piles half a metre high on the table; they spilled over on to the floor. Books were everywhere — several hundred of them — each sprouting a thicket of markers: multi-coloured bits of paper, tram tickets, pieces of cigarette carton, spent matches.

“The historian’s mission. To bring out of chaos — more chaos.” Halder lifted a stack of old army signals off the solitary chair, knocked the dust off it, and gestured to March to sit.

“I need your help, Rudi — again.”

Halder perched on the edge of his desk. “I don’t hear from you for months, then suddenly it’s twice in a week. I presume this also has to do with the Buhler business? I saw the obituary.”

March nodded. “I should say now that you are talking to a pariah. You may be endangering yourself merely by meeting me.”

“That only makes it sound more fascinating.” Halder put his long fingers together and cracked the joints. “Go on.”

“This is a real challenge for you.” March paused, took a breath. Three men: Buhler, Wilhelm Stuckart and Martin Luther. The first two dead; the last, a fugitive. All three senior civil servants, as you know. In the summer of 1942, they opened a bank account in Zurich. At first I assumed they put away a hoard of money or art treasures -as you suspected, Buhler was up to his armpits in corruption — but now I think it is more likely to have been documents.”

“What sort of documents?”

“Not sure.”

“Sensitive?”

“Presumably.”

“You’ve got one problem straight away. You’re talking about three different ministries — Foreign, Interior and General Government, which isn’t really a ministry at all. That’s tons of documents. I mean it, Zavi, literally-tons.”

“Do you have their records here?”

“Foreign and Interior, yes. General Government is in Krakau.”

“Do you have access to them?”

“Officially — no. Unofficially…’He wobbled a bony hand.’…Perhaps, if I’m lucky. But, Zavi, it would take a lifetime simply to look through them. What are you suggesting we do?”

There must be some clue in there. Perhaps there are papers missing.”

“But this is an impossible task.”

“I told you it was a challenge.”

“And how soon does this "clue" need to be discovered?”.

“I need to find it tonight.”

Halder made an explosive sound, of mingled incredulity, anger, scorn. March said quietly: “Rudi, in three days” time, they’re threatening to put me in front of an SS Honour Court. You know what that means. I have to find it now.”

Halder looked at him for a moment, unwilling to believe what he was hearing, then turned away, muttering: “Let me think.”

March said: "Can I have a cigarette?”

“In the corridor. Not in here — this stuff is irreplaceable.”

As March smoked he could hear Halder, in his office, pacing up and down. He looked at his watch. Six o’clock. The long corridor was deserted. Most of the staff must have gone home, to begin the holiday weekend. March tried a couple of office doors, but both were locked. The third was open. He picked up the telephone, listened to the tone, and dialled nine. The tone changed: an outside line. He rang Charlie’s number. She answered at once.

“It’s me. Are you all right?”

She said: “I’m fine. I’ve discovered something- just a tiny thing.”

“Don’t tell me over an open line. I’ll talk to you later.” He tried to think of something else to say, but she had replaced the receiver.

Now Halder was on the telephone, his cheerful voice echoing down the flagstone corridor. “Eberhard? Good evening to you… Indeed, no rest for some of us. A quick question, if I may. The Interior Ministry series… Oh, they have been? Good. On an office basis? … I see. Excellent. And all that is done?…”

March leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, trying not to think of the ocean of paper beneath his feet. Come on, Rudi. Come on.

He heard a bell tinkle as Halder hung up. A few seconds later Rudi appeared in the corridor, pulling on his jacket. A bunch of pen-tops jutted from his breast pocket. “One small piece of luck. According to my colleague, the Interior Ministry files at least have been catalogued.” He set off down the passage at a rapid pace. March strode beside him.

“What does that mean?”

“It means there should be a central index, showing us which papers actually crossed Stuckart’s desk, and when.” He hammered at the buttons beside the elevator. Nothing happened. “Looks as if they’ve turned this thing off for the night. We’ll have to walk.”

As they clattered down the wide spiral staircase, Halder shouted: “You appreciate this is completely against the rules? I’m cleared for Military, Eastern Front, not Administration, Internal. If we’re stopped, you’ll have to spin Security some yarn about Polizei business — something that’ll take them a couple of hours to check. As for me, I’m just a poor sucker, doing you a favour, right?”

1 appreciate it. How much further?”

“All the way to the bottom.” Halder was shaking his head. “An Honour Court! Dear God, Zavi, what’s happened to you?”

Sixty metres beneath the ground the air circulated cool and dry, the lights were dimmed, to protect the archives. “They say this place was built to withstand a direct hit from an American missile,” said Halder.

“What’s behind there?”

March pointed to a steel door, covered with warning signs: “ATTENTION! NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORISED PERSONS!” “ENTRY FORBIDDEN!” “PASSES MUST BE SHOWN”.

“ "The right history is worth a hundred divisions", remember? That’s the place where the wrong history goes. Shit. Look out.”

Halder pulled March into a doorway. A security guard was coming towards them, bent like a miner in an underground shaft, pushing a metal cart. March thought he was certain to see them, but he went straight past, grunting with effort. He stopped at the metal barrier and unlocked it. There was a glimpse of a furnace, a roar of flame, before the door clanged shut behind him.

“Let’s go.”

As they walked, Halder explained the procedure. The archive worked on warehouse principles. Requisitions for files came down to a central handling area on each floor. Here, in ledgers a metre high and twenty centimetres thick, was kept the main index. Entered next to each file was a stack number. The stacks themselves were in fire-proof storerooms leading off from the handling area. The secret, said Halder, was to know your way round the index. He paraded in front of the crimson leather spines, tapping each with his finger until he found the one he wanted, then lugged it over to the floor manager’s desk.

March had once been below-decks on the aircraft carrier, Grossadmiral Raeder. The depths of the Reichsarchiv reminded him of that: low ceilings strung with lights, the sense of something vast pressing down from above. Next to the desk: a photocopier — a rare sight in Germany, where their distribution was strictly controlled, to stop subversives producing illegal literature. A dozen empty carts were drawn up by the lift-shaft. He could see fifty metres in either direction. The place was deserted.

Halder gave a cry of triumph. “State Secretary: Office Files, 1939 to 1950. Oh Christ: four hundred boxes. What years do you want to look at?”

“The Swiss bank account was opened in July ’42, so let’s say the first seven months of that year.”

Halder turned the page, talking to himself. “Yes. I see what they’ve done. They’ve arranged the papers in four series: office correspondence, minutes and memoranda, statutes and decrees, ministry personnel…”

“What I’m looking for is something that connects Stuckart with Buhler and Luther.”

“In that case, we’d better start with office correspondence. That should give us a feel for what was going on at the time.” Halder was scribbling notes. “D/15/M/28-34. Okay. Here we go.”

Storeroom D was twenty metres down on the left. Stack fifteen, section M was in the dead centre of the room. Halder said: “Only six boxes, thank God. You take January to April, I’ll do May to August.”

The boxes were made of cardboard, each the size of a large desk drawer. There was no table, so they sat on the floor. With his back pressed against the metal shelving, March opened the first box, pulled out a handful of papers, and began to read.

You need a little luck in this life.

The first document was a letter dated 2 January, from the under state secretary at the Air Ministry, regarding the distribution of gas masks to the Reichsluftschutzbund, the Air Raid Protection organisation. The second, dated 4 January, was from the Office of the Four-Year Plan and concerned the alleged unauthorised use of gasoline by senior government officials.

The third was from Reinhard Heydrich.

March saw the signature first — an angular, spidery scrawl. Then his eyes travelled to the letterhead — the Reich Main Security Office, Berlin SW 11, Prinz-Albrecht Strasse 8 — then to the date: 6 January 1942. And only then to the text:

March leafed through the other letters in the box: carbon flimsies and creamy originals; imposing letterheads -Reichschancellery, Economics Ministry, Organisation-Todt; invitations to luncheons and meetings; pleas, demands, circulars. But there was nothing else from Heydrich.

March passed the letter to Halder. “What do you make of this?”

Halder frowned. “Unusual, I would say, for the Main Security Office to convene a meeting of government agencies.”

“Can we find out what they discussed?”

“Should be able to. We can cross-reference it to the minutes and memoranda series. Let’s see: 20 January…”

Halder looked at his notes, pulled himself to his feet and walked along the stack. He dragged out another box, returned with it and sat, cross-legged. March watched him flick through the contents. Suddenly, he stopped. He said slowly: “My God…”

“What is it?”

Halder handed him a single sheet of paper, on which was typed: “In the interests of state security, the minutes of the inter-agency meeting of 20 January 1942 have been removed at the request of the Reichsfuhrer-SS.”

Halder said:’Look at the date.”

March looked. It was 6 April 1964. The minutes had been extracted by Heydrich eleven days earlier.

“Can he do that — legally, I mean?”

“The Gestapo can weed out whatever it wants on the grounds of security. They usually transfer the papers to the vaults in Prinz-Albrecht Strasse.”

There was a noise in the corridor outside. Halder held up a warning finger. Both men were silent, motionless, as the guard clattered past, wheeling the empty cart back from the furnace room. They listened as the sounds faded towards the other end of the building.

March whispered: “Now what do we do?”

Halder scratched his head. “An inter-agency meeting at the level of state-secretary…”

March saw what he was thinking. “Buhler and Luther would have been invited, as well?”

“It would seem logical. At that rank, they get fussy about protocol. You wouldn’t have a state secretary from one ministry attending, and only a junior civil servant from another. What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

They’re an hour ahead in Krakau.” Halder chewed his lip for a moment, then reached a decision. He stood. “I’ll telephone my friend who works at the archives in the General Government and ask if the SS have been sniffing around there in the past couple of weeks. If they haven’t, maybe I can persuade him to go in tomorrow and see if the minutes are still in Buhler’s papers.”

“Couldn’t we just check here, in the Foreign Ministry archives? In Luther’s papers?”

“No. Too vast. It could take us weeks. This is the best way, believe me.”

“Be careful what you say to him, Rudi.”

“Don’t worry. I’m aware of the dangers.” Halder paused at the door. “And no smoking while I’m gone, for Christ’s sake. This is the most inflammable building in the Reich.”

True enough, thought March. He waited until Halder had gone and then began walking up and down between the stacks of boxes. He wanted a cigarette, badly. His hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets.

What a monument to German bureaucracy this place was. Herr A, wishing to do something, asked permission of Doctor B. Doctor B covered himself by referring it upwards to Ministerialdirektor C. Ministerialdirektor C shuffled it to Reichsminister D, who said he would leave it to the judgement of Herr A, who naturally went back to Doctor B… The alliances and rivalries, traps and intrigues of three decades of Party rule wove in and out of these metal stacks; ten thousand webs, spun from paper threads, suspended in the cool air.

Halder was back within ten minutes. “The SS were in Krakau two weeks ago all right.” He was rubbing his hands uneasily. “Their memory is still vivid. A distinguished visitor. Obergruppenfuhrer Globocnik himself.”

“Everywhere I turn,” said March. “Globocnik!”

“He flew in on a Gestapo jet from Berlin, with special authorisation from Heydrich, personally signed. He gave them all the shits, apparently. Shouting and swearing. Knew exactly what he was looking for: one file removed. He was out of there by lunchtime.”

Globus, Heydrich, Nebe. March put his hand to his head. It was dizzying. “So here it ends?”

“Here it ends. Unless you think there might be something else in Stuckart’s papers.”

March looked down at the boxes. The contents seemed to him as dead as dust; dead men’s bones. The thought of sifting through them any more was repugnant to him. He needed to breathe some fresh air. “Forget it, Rudi. Thanks.”

Halder stooped to pick up Heydrich’s note. “Interesting that the conference was postponed, from December the ninth to January the twentieth.”

“What’s the significance of that?”

Halder gave him a pitying look. “Were you really so completely cooped-up in that fucking tin can we had to live in? Did the outside world never penetrate? On December the seventh, 1941, you blockhead, the forces of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, attacked the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. On December the eleventh, Germany declared war on the United States. Good reasons to postpone a conference, wouldn’t you say?” Halder was grinning, but slowly the grin faded, to be replaced by a more thoughtful expression. “I wonder…”

“What?”

He tapped the paper. There must have been an original invitation, before this one.”

“So what?”

“It depends. Sometimes our friends from the Gestapo are not quite as efficient at weeding out embarrassing details as they like to think, especially if they’re in a hurry…”

March was already standing in front of the stack of boxes, glancing up and down, his depression lifted. “Which one? Where do we start?7

Tor a conference at that level, Heydrich would have had to have given the participants at least two weeks” notice.” Halder looked at his notes. That would mean Stuckart’s office correspondence file for November 1941. Let me see. That should be box twenty-six, I think.”

He joined March in front of the shelves and counted off the boxes until he found the one he wanted. He pulled it down, cradled it. “Don’t snatch, Zavi. All in good time. History teaches us patience.”

He knelt, placed the box in front of him, opened it, pulled out an armful of papers. He glanced at each in turn, placing them in a pile to his left. “Invitation to a reception given by the Italian ambassador: boring. Conference organised by Walther Darre at the Agriculture Ministry: very boring…”

He went on like that for perhaps two minutes, with March standing, watching, nervously grinding his fist into his palm. Then suddenly Halder froze. “Oh shit.” He read it through again and looked up, “Invitation from Heydrich. Not boring at all, I’m afraid. Not boring at all.”

FOUR

The heavens were in chaos. Nebulae exploded. Comets and meteors rushed across the sky, dis-appeared for an instant, then detonated against green oceans of cloud.

Above the Tiergarten, the firework display was nearing its climax. Parachute flares lit up Berlin like an air raid.

As March waited in his car to turn left on to Unter den Linden, a gang of SA men lurched out in front of him. Two of them, their arms draped around one another, performed a drunken can-can in the beam of the headlights. The others banged on the Volkswagen’s body work, or pressed their faces against the windows — eyes bulging, tongues lolling; grotesque apes. March put the engine into first gear and skidded away. There was a thud as one of the dancers was sent spinning.

He drove back to Werderscher Markt. All police leave had been cancelled. Every window was ablaze with electric light. In the foyer, someone hailed him, but March ignored them. He clattered down the stairs to the basement.

Bank vaults and basements and underground store rooms … I am turning into a troglodyte, thought March; a cave-dweller, a recluse; a robber of paper tombs.

The Gorgon of the Registry was still sitting in her lair. Did she never sleep? He showed her his ID. There were a couple of other detectives at the central desk, leafing in a languid manner through the ubiquitous manila files. March took a seat in the farthest corner of the room. He switched on an angle-poise lamp, bent its shade low over the table. From inside his tunic he drew the three sheets of paper he had taken from the Reichsarchiv.

They were poor-quality photostats. The machine had been set too faint, the originals had been thrust into it, hastily and skewed. He did not blame Rudi for that. Rudi had not wanted to make the copies at all. Rudi had been terrified. All his schoolboy bravado had vanished when he read Heydrich’s invitation. March had been obliged virtually to drag him to the photocopier. The moment the historian had finished, he had darted back into the storeroom, shovelled the papers back into the boxes, put the boxes back on to the shelves. At his insistence, they had left the archive building by a rear entrance.

“I think, Zavi, we should not see one another for a long time now.”

“Of course.”

“You know how it is…”

Halder had stood, miserable and helpless, while above their heads the fireworks had whooshed and banged. March had embraced him -’Don’t feel bad; I know: your family come first” — and quickly walked away.

Document One. Heydrich’s original invitation, dated 19 November 1941:

Document Two. A photostat of a photostat, almost illegible in places, the words rubbed away like an ancient inscription on a tomb. Hermann Goering’s directive to Heydrich, dated 31 July 1941:

Document Three. A list of the fourteen people Heydrich had invited to the conference. Stuckart was third on the list; Buhler, sixth; Luther, seventh. March recognised a couple of the others.

He ripped a sheet from his notebook, wrote down eleven names and took it to the issuing desk. The two detectives had gone. The Registrar was nowhere to be seen. He rapped on the counter and shouted: “Shop!” From behind a row of filing cabinets came a guilty clink of glass on bottle. So that was her secret. She must have forgotten he was there. A moment later,.she waddled into view.

“What do we have on these eleven men?”

He tried to hand her the list. She folded a pair of plump arms across a greasy tunic. “No more than three files at any one time, without special authorisation”

“Never mind that.”

“It is not permitted.”

“It is not permitted to drink alcohol on duty, either, yet you stink of it. Now get me these files.”

To every man and woman, a number; to every number, a file. Not all files were held at Werderscher Markt. Only those whose lives had come into contact with the Reich Kriminalpolizei, for whatever reason, had left their spoor here. But by using the information bureau at Alexander Platz, and the obituaries of the Volkischer Beobachter (published annually as The Roll Call of the Fallen) March was able to fill in the gaps. He tracked down every name. It took him two hours.

The first man on the list was Doctor Alfred Meyer of the East Ministry. According to his Kripo file, Meyer had committed suicide in 1960 after undergoing treatment for various mental illnesses.

The second name: Doctor Georg Leibrandt, also of the East Ministry. He had died in an automobile accident in 1959, his car crushed by a truck on the autobahn between Stuttgart and Augsburg. The driver of the truck had never been found.

Erich Neumann, State Secretary in the Office of the Four Year Plan, had shot himself in 1957.

Doctor Roland Freisler, State Secretary from the Justice Ministry: hacked to death by a maniac with a knife on the steps of the Berlin People’s Court in the winter of 1954. An investigation into how his security guards had managed to let a criminal lunatic come so close had concluded that nobody was to blame. The assassin had been shot seconds after the attack on Freisler.

At this point, March had gone into the corridor for a cigarette. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, tilted back his head and let it out slowly, as if taking a cure.

He returned to find a fresh heap of files on his desk.

SS-Oberfuhrer Gerhard Klopfer, deputy head of the Party Chancellery, had been reported missing by his wife in May 1963; his body had been found by building-site workers in southern Berlin, stuffed into a cement mixer.

Friedrich Kritzinger. That name was familiar. Of course. March remembered the scenes from the television news: the familiar taped-off street, the wrecked car, the widow supported by her sons. Kritzinger, the former Ministerialdirektor from the Reich Chancellery, had been blown up outside his home in Munich just over a month ago, on 7 March. No terrorist group had yet claimed responsibility.

Two men were recorded by the Volkischer Beobachter as having died of natural causes. SS-Standartenfuhrer Adolf Eichmann of the Reich Main Security Office had succumbed to a heart attack in 1961. SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Doctor Rudolf Lange of KdS Latvia had died of a brain tumour in 1955.

Heinrich Muller. Here was another name March knew. The Bavarian policeman Muller, the former head of the Gestapo, had been on board Himmler’s plane when it crashed in 1962, killing everyone on board.

SS-Oberfuhrer Doctor Karl Schongarth, representing the security services of the General Government, had fallen beneath the wheels of a U-bahn train pulling into Zoo Station on 9 April 1964 — barely more than a week ago. There were no witnesses.

SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Otto Hoffmann of the Reich Security Office had been found hanging from a length of clothesline in his Spandau apartment on Boxing Day 1963.

That was all. Of the fourteen men who had attended the conference at Heydrich’s invitation, thirteen were dead. The fourteenth — Luther — was missing.

As part of its campaign to raise public awareness about terrorism, the Propaganda Ministry had produced a series of children’s cartoons. Someone had pinned one up on the noticeboard on the second floor. A little girl receives a parcel and begins opening it. In each succeeding picture she removes more layers of wrapping paper, until she is left holding an alarm clock with two sticks of dynamite attached to it. The last picture is an explosion, with the caption: “Warning! Do not open a parcel unless you know its contents!”

A good joke. A maxim for every German policeman. Do not open a parcel unless you know its contents. Do not ask a question unless you know the answer.

Endlosung: final solution. Endlosung. Endlosung. The word tolled in March’s head as he half-walked, half-ran along the corridor and into his office.

Endlosung.

He wrenched open the drawers of Max Jaeger’s desk and searched through the clutter. Max was notoriously inefficient about administrative matters, had often been reprimanded for his laxity. March prayed he had not taken the warnings to heart.

He had not.

Bless you, Max, you dumbhead.

He slammed the drawers shut.

Only then did he notice it. Someone had attached a yellow message slip to March’s telephone: “Urgent. Contact the Duty Office immediately.”

FIVE

In the marshalling yards of the Gotenland railway station, they had set up arc lights around the body. From a distance the scene looked oddly glamorous, like a film set.

March stumbled towards it, up and down, across the wooden sleepers and metal tracks, over the diesel-soaked stone.

Before it had been renamed Gotenland, this had been the Anhalter Bahnhof: the Reich’s main eastern railway terminus. It was from here that the Fuhrer had set out in his armoured train, Amerika, for his wartime headquarters in East Prussia; from here, too, that Berlin’s Jews — the Weisses among them — must have embarked on their journey east.

“…from 10 October onwards the Jews have been evacuated from Reich territory to the East in a continuous series of transports…”

In the air behind him, growing fainter: the platform announcements; somewhere ahead, the clank of wheels and couplings, a bleak whistle. The yard was vast — a dreamscape in the orange sodium lighting — at its centre, the one patch of brilliant white. As March neared it, he could make out a dozen figures standing in front of a high-sided goods train: a couple of Orpo men, Krebs, Doctor Eisler, a photographer, a group of anxious officials of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and Globus.

Globus saw him first, and slowly clapped his gloved hands in muffled and mocking applause. “Gentlemen, we can relax. The heroic forces of the Kriminalpolizei have arrived to give us their theories.”

One of the Orpo men sniggered.

The body, or what was left of it, was under a rough woollen blanket spread across the tracks, and also in a green plastic sack.

“May I see the corpse?”

“Of course. We haven’t touched him yet. We’ve been waiting for you, the great detective.” Globus nodded to Krebs, who pulled away the blanket.

A man’s torso, neatly cropped at either end, along the lines of the rails. He was belly down, slanted across the tracks. One hand had been severed, the head was crushed. Both legs had also been run over, but the bloodied shards of clothing made it difficult to gauge the precise point of amputation. There was a strong smell of alcohol.

“And now you must look in here.” Globus was holding the plastic sack up to the light. He opened it and brought it close to March’s face. “The Gestapo does not wish to be accused of concealing evidence.”

The stumps of feet, one of them still shod; a hand ending in ragged white bone and the gold band of a wristwatch. March did not close his eyes, which seemed to disappoint Globus. “Ach, well.” He dropped the sack. “They’re worse when they stink, when the rats have been at them. Check his pockets, Krebs.”

In his flapping leather coat, Krebs squatted over the body like carrion. He reached beneath the corpse, feeling for the inside of the jacket. Over his shoulder, Krebs said: “We were informed two hours ago by the Reichshahn Polizei that a man answering Luther’s description had been seen here. But by the time we got here…”

“He had already suffered a fatal accident.” March smiled bitterly. “How unexpected.”

“Here we are, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer.” Krebs had retrieved a passport and wallet. He straightened, and handed them to Globus.

“This is his passport, no question,” said Globus, flicking through it. “And here are several thousand Reichsmarks in cash. Money enough for silk sheets at the Hotel Adlon. But, of course, the bastard couldn’t show his face in civilised company. He had no choice but to sleep rough out here.”

This thought appeared to give him satisfaction. He showed March the passport: Luther’s ponderous face peered out from above his calloused thumb. “Look at it, Sturmbannfuhrer, then run along and tell Nebe it is all over. The Gestapo will handle everything from now on. You can clear off and get some rest.” And enjoy it, his eyes said, while you can.

The Herr Obergruppenfuhrer is kind.”

“You’ll discover how kind I am, March, that much I promise you.” He turned to Eisler. “Where’s that fucking ambulance?”

The pathologist stood to attention. “On its way, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer. Most definitely.”

March gathered he had been dismissed. He moved towards the railway workers, standing in a forlorn group about ten metres away. “Which of you discovered the body?”

“I did, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.” The man who stepped forward wore the dark blue tunic and soft cap of a locomotive driver. His eyes were red, his voice raw. Was that because of the body, wondered March, or was it fear at the unexpected presence of an SS general?

“Cigarette?”

“God, yes, sir. Thanks.”

The driver took one, giving a furtive glance towards Globus, who was now talking to Krebs.

March offered him a light. “Relax. Take your time. Has this happened to you before?”

“Once.” The man exhaled and looked gratefully at the cigarette. “It happens here every three or four months. The derelicts sleep under trie wagons, to keep out of the rain, poor devils. Then, when the engines start, instead of staying where they are, they try to get out of the way.” He put his hand to his eyes. “I must have reversed over him, but I never heard a thing. When I looked back up the track, there he was — just a heap of rags.”

“Do you get many derelicts in this yard?”

“Always a couple of dozen. The Reichsbahn Polizei try to keep them away, but the place is too big to patrol properly. Look over there. Some of them are making a run for it.”

He pointed across the tracks. At first, March could make out nothing, except a line of cattle-trucks. Then, almost invisible in the shadow of the train, he spotted a movement — a shape, running jerkily, like a marionette; then another; then more. They ran along the sides of the wagons, darted into the gaps between the trucks, waited, then scampered out again towards the next patch of cover.

Globus had his back to them. Oblivious to their presence, he was still talking to Krebs, smacking his right fist into the palm of his left hand.

March watched as the stick-figures worked their way to safety -then suddenly the rails were vibrating, there was a rush of wind, and the view was cut off by the sleeper train to Rovno, accelerating out of Berlin. The wall of double-decker dining cars and sleeping compartments took half a minute to pass and by the time it had cleared the little colony of drifters had vanished into the orangey dark.