Fatherland

ONE

A crack of light showed beneath her door. Inside her apartment a radio was playing. Lovers” music — soft strings and low crooning, appropriate for the night. A party? Was, this how Americans behaved in the presence of danger? He stood alone on the tiny landing and looked at his watch. It was almost two. He knocked and after a few moments the volume was turned down. He heard her voice.

“Who is it?”

“The police.”

A second or two elapsed, then there was a clatter of bolts and chains, and the door opened. She said: “You’re very funny,” but her smile was a false one, pasted on for his benefit. In her dark eyes exhaustion showed, and also — was it? — fear? He bent to kiss her, his hands resting lightly on her waist, and immediately felt a pricking of desire. My God, he thought, she’s turning me into a sixteen-year-old …

Somewhere in the apartment: a footstep. He looked up. Over her shoulder, a man loomed in the doorway of the bathroom. He was a couple of years younger than March: brown brogues, sports jacket, a bow tie, a white jersey pulled on casually over a business shirt. Charlie stiffened in March’s embrace and gently broke free of him. “You remember Henry Nightingale?”

He straightened, feeling awkward. “Of course. The bar in Potsdamer Strasse.”

Neither man made a move towards the other. The American’s face was a mask.

March stared at Nightingale and said softly: “What’s going on here, Charlie?”

She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “Don’t say anything. Not here. Something’s happened.’Then, loudly: “Isn’t this interesting, the three of us?” She took March’s arm and guided him towards the bathroom. “I think you should come into my parlour.”

In the bathroom, Nightingale assumed a proprietorial air. He turned on the cold water taps above the basin and the bath, increased the volume of the radio. The programme had changed. Now the clapboard walls vibrated to the strains of “German jazz” — a watery syncopation, officially approved, from which all traces of “Negroid influences” had been erased. When he had arranged everything to his satisfaction, Nightingale perched on the edge of the bath. March sat next to him. Charlie squatted on the floor.

She opened the meeting: “I told Henry about my visitor the other morning. The one you had the fight with. He thinks the Gestapo may have planted a bug.”

Nightingale gave an amiable grin. “Afraid that’s the way your country works, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.”

Your country…

“I’m sure — a wise precaution.”

Perhaps he isn’t younger than me, thought March. The American had thick blond hair, blond eyelashes, a ski-tan. His teeth were absurdly regular- strips of enamel, gleaming white. Not many one-pot meals in his childhood, no watery potato soups or sawdust sausages in that complexion. His boyish looks embraced all ages from twenty-five to fifty.

For a few moments nobody spoke. Euro-pap filled the silence. Charlie said to March: “I know you told me not to speak to anyone. But I had to. Now you have to trust Henry and Henry has to trust you. Believe me, there’s no other way.”

“And, naturally, we both have to trust you.”

“Oh come on…”

“All right.” He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Next to her, balanced on top of the lavatory, was the latest in American portable tape recorders. Trailing from one of its sockets was a cable, at the end of which, instead of a microphone, was a small suction cup.

“Listen,” she said. “You’ll understand.” She leaned across and pressed a switch. The spools of tape began to revolve.

“Fraulein Maguire?”

“Yes?”

“The same procedure as before, Fraulein, if you please.”

There was a click, followed by a buzz.

She pressed another switch, stopping the tape. “That was the first call. You said he’d ring. I was waiting for him.” She was triumphant. “It’s Martin Luther.”

This was a crazy business, the craziest he had ever known, like picking your way through a haunted house in the Tiergarten fun fair. No sooner did you plant your feet on solid ground than the floorboards gave way beneath you. You rounded a corner and a madman rushed out. Then you stepped back and found that all the time you had been looking at yourself in a distorting mirror.

Luther.

March said: “What time was that?”

“Eleven forty-five.”

Eleven forty-five: forty minutes after the discovery of the body on the railway tracks. He thought of the exultant look on Globus’s face, and he smiled.

Nightingale said: “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I’ll explain. What happened next?”

“Exactly as before. I went over to the telephone box and five minutes later he rang again.”

March raised his hand to his brow. “Don’t tell me you dragged that machine all the way across the street?”

“Damn it, I needed some proof!” She glared at him. “I knew what I was doing. Look.” She stood to demonstrate. The deck hangs from this shoulder strap. The whole thing fits under my coat. The wire runs down my sleeve. I attach the suction cup to the receiver, like this. Easy. It was dark. Nobody could have seen a thing.”

Nightingale, the professional diplomat, cut in smoothly: “Never mind how you got the tape, Charlie, or whether you should have got it.” He said to March: “May I suggest we simply let her play it?”

Charlie pushed a button. There was a fumbling noise, greatly magnified — the sound of her attaching the microphone to the telephone — and then:

“We have not much time. I am a friend of Stuckart.”

An elderly voice, but not frail. A voice with the sarcastic, sing-song quality of the native Berliner. He spoke exactly as March had expected. Then Charlie’s voice, in her good German:

“Tell me what you want.”

“Stuckart is dead.”

“I know. I found him.”

A long pause. On the tape, in the background, March could hear a station announcement. Luther must have used the distraction caused by the discovery of the body to make a phone call from the Gotenland platform.

Charlie whispered: “He went so quiet, I thought I’d frightened him away.”

March shook his head. “I told you. You’re his only hope.”

The conversation on the tape resumed.

“You know who I am?”

“Yes.”

Wearily: “You say: What do I want? What do you think I want? Asylum in your country.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“I can pay.”

“That won’t—”

“I have information. Certain facts.”

“Tell me where you are. I’ll come and fetch you. We’ll go to the Embassy.”

“Too soon. Not yet.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning. Listen to me. Nine o’clock. The Great Hall. Central steps. Have you got that?”

“Right”

“Bring someone from the Embassy. But you must be there as well.”

“How do we recognise you?”

A laugh. “No. / shall recognise you, show myself when I am satisfied.” Pause. “Stuckart said you were young and pretty.” Pause. “That was Stuckart all over.” Pause. “Wear something that stands out.”

“I have a coat. Bright blue.”

“Pretty girl in blue. It is good. Until the morning, Fraulein.”

Click.

Purr.

The clatter of the tape machine being switched off.

“Play it again,” said March.

She rewound the tape, stopped it, pressed PLAY. March looked away, watched the rusty water swirling down the plughole, as Luther’s voice mingled with the reedy sound of a single clarinet. “Pretty girl in blue…” When they had heard it through for the second time, Charlie reached over and turned off the machine.

“After he hung up, I came over here and dropped off the tape. Then I went back to the telephone box and tried to call you. You weren’t there. So I called Henry. What else could I do? He says he wants someone from the Embassy.”

“Got me out of bed/ said Nightingale. He yawned and stretched, revealing an expanse of pale, hairless leg. “What I don’t understand is why he didn’t just let Charlie pick him up and bring him straight to the Embassy tonight.”

“You heard him,” said March. Tonight is too soon. He daren’t show himself. He has to wait until the morning. By then the Gestapo’s search for him will probably have been called off.”

Charlie frowned. “I don’t understand…”

The reason you couldn’t reach me two hours ago was because I was on my way to the Gotenland marshalling yards, where the Gestapo were hugging themselves with joy that they had finally discovered Luther’s body.”

That can’t be.”

“No. It can’t.” March pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. It was hard to keep his mind clear. “My guess is Luther’s been hiding in the rail yard for the past four days, ever since he got back from Switzerland, trying to work out some way of contacting you.”

“But how did he survive all that time?”

March shrugged. “He had money, remember. Perhaps he picked out some drifter he thought he could trust, paid him to bring him food and drink; warm clothes, maybe. Until he had his plan.”

Nightingale said: “And what was his plan, Sturmbann-fuhrer?”

“He needed someone to take his place› to convince the Gestapo he was dead.” Was he talking too loudly? The Americans” paranoia was contagious. He leaned forward and said softly: “Yesterday, when it was dark, he must have killed a man. A man of roughly his age and build. Got him drunk, knocked him out — I don’t know how he did it -dressed him in his clothes, gave him his wallet, his passport, his watch. Then he put him under a goods train, with his hands and head on the rails. Stayed with him to make sure he didn’t move until the wheels went over him. He’s trying to buy himself some time. He’s gambling that by nine o’clock this morning, the Berlin Polizei will have stopped looking for him. A fair bet, I would say.”

“Jesus Christ.” Nightingale looked from March to Charlie and back again. “And this is the man I’m supposed to take in to the Embassy?”

“Oh, it gets better than that.” From the inside pocket of his tunic, March produced the documents from the archive. “On the twentieth of January 1942, Martin Luther was one of fourteen men summoned to attend a special conference at the headquarters of Interpol in Wannsee. Since the end of the war, six of those men have been murdered, four have committed suicide, one has died in an accident, two have supposedly died of natural causes. Today only Luther is left alive. A freak of statistics, you would agree?” He handed Nightingale the papers. “As you will see, the conference was called by Reinhard Heydrich to discuss the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe. My guess is Luther wants to make you an offer: a new life in America in exchange for documentary proof of what happened to the Jews.”

The water ran. The music ended. An announcer’s silky voice whispered in the bathroom: “And now, for you night-lovers everywhere, Peter Kreuder and his orchestra with their version of I’m in Heaven…”

Without looking at him, Charlie held out her hand. March took it. She laced her fingers into his and squeezed, hard. Good, he thought, she should be afraid. Her grip tightened. Their hands were linked like parachutists in free fall. Nightingale had his head hunched over the documents and was murmuring “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ” over and over again.

“We have a problem here,” said Nightingale. “I’ll be frank with you both. Charlie, this is off the record.” He was talking so quietly they had to strain to hear. “Three days ago, the President of the United States, for whatever reason, announced he was going to visit this Godforsaken country. At which point, twenty years of American foreign policy was turned upside down. Now this guy Luther, in theory -if what you say is true — could turn it upside down again, all in the space of seventy-two hours.”

Charlie said: “Then at least it would end the week the right way up.”

“That’s a cheap crack.”

He said this in English. March stared at him. “What are you saying, Mister Nightingale?”

“I’m saying, Sturmbannfuhrer, that I’m going to have to talk to Ambassador Lindbergh and Ambassador Lindbergh is going to have to talk to Washington. And my hunch is they’re both going to want a lot more proof than this—” he tossed the photocopies on to the floor “—before they open the Embassy gates to a man you say is probably a common murderer.”

“But Luther is offering you the proof.”

“So you say. But I don’t think Washington will want to risk all the progress that’s been made on detente this week just because of your…theories.”

Now Charlie was on her feet. “This is insane. If Luther doesn’t go straight with you to the Embassy, he’ll be captured and killed.”

“Sorry, Charlie. I can’t do that.” He appealed to her. “Come on! I can’t take in every old Nazi who wants to defect. Not without authorisation. Especially not with things as they are.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing.” She had her hands on her hips and was staring at the floor, shaking her head.

“Just think it through for a minute.” He was almost pleading. “This Luther character seeks asylum. The Germans say: hand him over, he’s just killed a man. We say: no, because he’s going to tell us what you bastards did to the Jews in the war. What will that do for the summit? No -Charlie — don’t just look away. Think. Kennedy put on ten points in the polls overnight on Wednesday. How’s the White House going to react if we drop this on them?” For a second time, Nightingale glimpsed the implications; for a second time he shuddered. “Jesus Christ, Charlie, what have you got yourself mixed up in here?”

The Americans argued back and forth for another ten minutes, then March said quietly: “Aren’t you overlooking something, Mister Nightingale?”

Nightingale switched his attention reluctantly from Charlie. “Probably. You’re the policeman. You tell me.”

“It seems to me that all of us — you, me, the Gestapo — we all keep underestimating good Party Comrade Luther. Remember what he said to Charlie about the nine o’clock meeting: "you must be there as well".”

“So what?”

“He knew this would be your reaction. Don’t forget he had worked at the Foreign Ministry. With a summit coming, he guessed the Americans might want to throw him straight back to the Gestapo. Otherwise, why did he not simply take a taxi from the airport to the Embassy on Monday night? That’s why he wanted to involve a journalist. As a witness.” March stooped and picked up the documents. “Forgive me, as a mere policeman I do not understand the workings of the American press. But Charlie has her story now, does she not? She has Stuckart’s death, the Swiss bank account, these papers, her tape-recording of Luther…” He turned to her. The fact that the American government chooses not to give Luther asylum, but abandons him to the Gestapo — won’t that just make it even more attractive to the degenerate US media?”

Charlie said: “You bet.”

Nightingale had started to look desperate again. “Hey. Come on, Charlie. All that was off the record. I never said I agreed with any of it. There are plenty of us at the Embassy who don’t think Kennedy should come here. At all. Period.” He fiddled with his bow-tie. “But this situation — it’s as tricky as hell.”

Eventually they reached an agreement. Nightingale would meet Charlie on the steps of the Great Hall at five minutes to nine. Assuming Luther turned up, they would hustle him quickly into a car which March would drive. Nightingale would listen to Luther’s story and decide on the basis of what he heard whether to take him to the Embassy. He would not tell the Ambassador, Washington, or anyone else what he was planning to do. Once they were inside the Embassy compound, it would be up to what he called “higher authorities” to decide Luther’s fate — but they would have to act in the knowledge that Charlie had the whole story, and would print it. Charlie was confident the State Department would not dare turn Luther away.

Exactly how they would smuggle him out of Germany was another matter.

“We have methods,” said Nightingale. “We have handled defectors before. But I’m not discussing it. Not in front of an SS officer. However trustworthy.” It was Charlie, he said, whom he was most worried about. “You’re going to come under a lot of pressure to keep your mouth shut.”

“I can handle it.”

“Don’t be so sure. Kennedy’s people-they fight dirty. All right. Let’s suppose Luther has got something. Let’s say it stirs everybody up — speeches in Congress, demonstrations, editorials — this is election year, remember? So suddenly the White House is in trouble over the summit. What do you think they’re going to do?”

“I can handle it.”

They’re going to tip a truckful of shit over your head, Charlie, and over this old Nazi of yours. They’ll say: what’s he got that’s new? The same old story we’ve heard for twenty years, plus a few documents, probably forged by the communists. Kennedy’11 go on TV and he’ll say: ‘My fellow Americans, ask yourselves: why has all this come up now? In whose interest is it to disrupt the summit?’ ” Nightingale leaned close to her, his face a few centimetres from hers. “First off, they’ll put Hoover and the FBI on to it. Know any left-wingers, Charlie? Any Jewish militants? Slept with any? Because, sure as hell, they’ll find a few who say you have, whether you’ve ever met them or not.”

“Screw you, Nightingale.” She shoved him away with her fist. “Screw you.”

Nightingale really was in love with her, thought March. Lost in love, hopeless in love. And she knew it, and she played on it. He remembered that first night he saw them together in the bar: how she had shrugged off his restraining hand. Tonight: how he had looked at March when he saw him kissing her; how he had absorbed her temper, watching her with his moony eyes. In Zurich, her whisper: “You asked if he was my lover …He’d like to be…”

And now, on her doorstep, in his raincoat: hovering, uncertain, reluctant to leave them behind together, then finally disappearing into the night.

He would be there to meet Luther tomorrow, thought March, if only to make sure she was safe.

After the American had gone they lay side by side on her narrow bed. For a long time neither spoke. The street lights cast long shadows, the window frame slanted across the ceiling like cell bars. In the slight breeze the curtains trembled. Once, there were the sounds of shouts and car doors slamming — revellers returning from watching the fireworks.

They listened to the voices fade along the street, then March whispered: “Last night on the telephone — you said you had found something.”

She touched his hand, climbed off the bed. In the sitting room he could hear her rummaging among the heaps of paper. She returned half a minute later carrying a large coffee-table book. “I bought this on the way back from the airport.” She sat on the edge of the bed, switched on the lamp, turned the pages. “There.” She handed March the open book.

It was a reproduction, in black and white, of the painting in the Swiss bank vault. The monochrome did not do it justice. He marked the page with his finger and closed the book to read its title. The Art of Leonardo da Vinci, by Professor Arno Braun of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin.

“My God.”

“I know. I thought I recognised it. Read it.”

The Lady with the Ermine, the scholars called it. “One of the most mysterious of all Leonardo’s works.” It was believed to have been painted circa 1483-6, and “believed to show Cecilia Gallerani, the young mistress of Lodovico Sforza, ruler of Milan”. There were two published references to it: one in a poem by Bernardino Bellincioni (died 1492); the other, an ambiguous remark about an “immature” portrait, written by Cecilia Gallerani herself in a letter dated 1498. “But sadly for the student of Leonardo, the real mystery today is the painting’s whereabouts. It is known to have entered the collection of the Polish Prince Adam Czartoryski in the late eighteenth century, and was photographed in Krakau in 1932. Since then it has disappeared into what Karl von Clausewitz so eloquently called "the fog of war". All efforts by the Reich authorities to locate it have so far failed, and it must now be feared that this priceless flowering of the Italian Renaissance is lost to mankind forever.”

He closed the book. “I think, another story for you.”

“And a good one. There are only nine undisputed Leonardos in the world.” She smiled. “If I ever get out of here to write it.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you out.” He lay back and closed his eyes. After a few moments he heard her put down the book, then she joined him on the bed, wriggling close to him.

“And you?” she breathed in his ear. “Will you come out with me?”

“We can’t talk now. Not here.”

“Sorry. I forgot.” Her tongue tip touched his ear.

A jolt, like electricity.

Her hand rested lightly on his leg. With her fingers, she traced the inside of his thigh. He started to murmur something, but again, as in Zurich, she placed a finger to his lips.

“The object of the game is: not to make a sound.”

Later, unable to sleep himself, he listened to her: the sigh of her breath, the occasional mutter — far away and indistinct. In her dreams, she turned towards him, groaning. Her arm was flung across the pillow, shielding her face. She seemed to be fighting some private battle. He stroked the tangle of her hair, waiting until whatever demon it was had released her, then he slipped out from beneath the sheets.

The kitchen floor was cold to his naked feet. He opened a couple of cupboards. Dusty crockery and a few half-empty packets of food. The refrigerator was ancient, might have been borrowed from some institute of biology, its contents blue-furred and mottled with exotic moulds. Self-catering, it was clear, was not a priority around here. He boiled a kettle, rinsed a mug and heaped in three spoonfuls of instant coffee.

He wandered through the apartment sipping the bitter drink. In the sitting room he stood beside the window and pulled back the curtain a fraction. Billow Strasse was deserted. He could see the telephone box, dimly illuminated, and the shadows of the station entrance behind it. He let the curtain fall back.

America. The prospect had never occurred to him before. When he thought of it, his brain reached automatically for the images Doctor Goebbels had thoughtfully planted there. Jews and Negroes. Top-hatted capitalists and smokestack factories. Beggars on the streets. Striptease bars. Gangsters shooting at one another from vast automobiles. Smouldering tenements and modern jazz bands, wailing across the ghettos like police sirens. Kennedy’s toothy smile. Charlie’s dark eyes and white limbs. America.

He went into the bathroom. The walls were stained by steam clouds and splashes of soap. Bottles everywhere, and tubes, and small pots. Mysterious feminine objects of glass and plastic. It was a long time since he had seen a woman’s bathroom. It made him feel clumsy and foreign — the heavy-footed ambassador of some other species. He picked up a few things and sniffed at them, squeezed a drop of white cream on to his finger and rubbed at it with his thumb. This smell of her mingled with the others already on his hands.

He wrapped himself in a large towel and sat down on the floor to think. Three or four times before dawn he heard her shout out in her sleep — cries of real fear. Memory or prophecy? He wished he knew.

TWO

Just before seven he went down into Bulow Strasse. His Volkswagen was parked a hundred metres up the street, on the left, outside a butcher’s shop. The owner was hanging plump carcasses in the window. A heaped tray of blood-red sausages at his feet reminded March of something.

Globus’s fingers, that’s what it was — those immense raw fists.

He bent over the back seat of the Volkswagen, tugging his suitcase towards him. As he straightened, he glanced quickly in either direction. There was nothing special to see — just the usual signs of an early Saturday morning. Most shops would open as normal but then close at lunchtime in honour of the holiday.

Back in the apartment he made more coffee, set a mug on the bedside table beside Charlie, and went into the bathroom to shave. After a couple of minutes he heard her come in behind him. She clasped her arms around his chest and squeezed, her breasts pressing into his bare back. Without turning round he kissed her hand and wrote in the steam on the mirror: PACK. NO RETURN. As he wiped away the message, he saw her clearly for the first time — hair tangled, eyes half-closed, the lines of her face still soft with sleep. She nodded and ambled back into the bedroom.

He dressed in his civilian clothes as he had for Zurich, but with one difference. He slipped his Luger into the right-hand pocket of his trench coat. The coat- old surplus Wehrmacht-issue, picked up cheaply long ago — was baggy enough for the weapon not to show. He could even hold the pistol and aim it surreptitiously through the material of the pocket, gangster-style: “Okay, buddy, let’s go.” He smiled to himself. America, again.

The possible presence of a microphone cast a shadow over their preparations. They moved quietly around the apartment without speaking. At ten past eight she was ready. March collected the radio from the bathroom, placed it on the table in the sitting room, and turned up the volume. “From the pictures sent in for exhibition it is clear that the eye of some men shows them things other than as they are — that there really are men who on principle feel meadows to be blue, the heavens green, the clouds sulphur-yellow…” It was the custom at this time to rebroadcast the Fuhrer’s most historic speeches. They replayed this one every year — the attack on modern painters, delivered at the inauguration of the House of German Art in 1937.

Ignoring her silent protests, March picked up her suitcase as well as his own. She donned her blue coat. From one shoulder she hung a leather bag. Her camera dangled from the other. On the threshold, she turned for a final look.

“Either these "artists" do really see things in this way and believe in that which they represent — then one has but to ask how the defect in vision arose, and if it is hereditary the Minister of the Interior will have to see to it that so ghastly a defect shall not be allowed to perpetuate itself- or, if they do not believe in the reality of such impressions but seek on other grounds to impose them upon the nation, then it is a matter for a criminal court.”

They closed the door on a storm of laughter and applause.

As they went downstairs, Charlie whispered: “How long does this go on?”

“All weekend.”

“That will please the neighbours.”

“Ah, but will anyone dare ask you to turn it down?”

At the foot of the stairs, as still as a sentry, stood the concierge — a bottle of milk in one hand, a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter tucked under her arm. She spoke to Charlie but stared at March: “Good morning, Fraulein.”

“Good morning, Frau Schustermann. This is my cousin, from Aachen. We are going to record the images of spontaneous celebration on the streets.” She patted her camera. “Come on, Harald, or we’ll miss the start.”

The old woman continued to scowl at March and he wondered if she recognised him from the other night. He doubted it: she would only remember the uniform. After a few moments she grunted and waddled back into her apartment.

“You lie very plausibly/ said March, when they were out on the street.

“A journalist’s training.” They walked quickly towards the Volkswagen. “It was lucky you weren’t wearing your uniform. Then she really would have had some questions.”

There is no possibility of Luther getting into a car driven by a man in the uniform of an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer. Tell me: do I look like an Embassy chauffeur?”

“Only a very distinguished one.”

He stowed the suitcases in the trunk of the car. When he was settled in the front seat, before he switched on the engine, he said: “You can never go back, you realise that? Whether this works or not. Assisting a defector — they’ll think you’re a spy. It won’t be a question of deporting you. It’s much more serious than that.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “I never cared for that place anyway.”

He turned the key in the ignition and they pulled out into the morning traffic.

Driving carefully, checking every thirty seconds to make sure they were not being followed, they reached Adolf Hitler Platz at twenty to nine. March executed one circuit of the square. Reich Chancellery, Great Hall, Wehrmacht High Command building — all seemed as it should be: masonry gleamed, guards marched; everything was as crazily out of scale as ever.

A dozen tour buses were already disgorging their awed cargoes. A crocodile file of children made its way up the snowy steps of the Great Hall, towards the red granite pillars, like a line of ants. In the centre of the Platz, beneath the great fountains, were piles of crush barriers, ready to be put into position on Monday morning, when the Fuhrer was due to drive from the Chancellery to the Hall for the annual ceremony of thanksgiving. Afterwards he would return to his residence to appear on the balcony. German television had erected a scaffolding tower directly opposite. Live broadcast vans clustered around its base.

March pulled into a parking space close to the tourist coaches. From here he had a clear view across the lanes of traffic to the centre of the Hall.

“Walk up the steps,” he said, “go inside, buy a guide book, look as natural as you can. When Nightingale appears, bump into him: you’re old friends, isn’t it marvellous, you stop and talk for a while.”

“What about you?”

“When I see you’ve made contact with Luther, I’ll drive across and pick you up. The rear doors are unlocked. Keep to the lower steps, close to the road. And don’t let him drag you into a long conversation — we need to get out of here fast.”

She was gone before he could wish her luck.

Luther had chosen his ground well. There were vantage points all around the Platz: the old man would be able to watch the steps without showing himself. Nobody would pay any attention to three strangers meeting. And if something did go wrong, the throngs of visitors offered the ideal cover for escape.

March lit a cigarette. Twelve minutes to go. He watched as Charlie climbed the long flight of steps. She paused at the top for breath, then turned and disappeared inside.

Everywhere: activity. White taxis and the long, green Mercedes of the Wehrmacht High Command circled the Platz. The television technicians checked their camera angles and shouted instructions at one another. Stallholders arranged their wares — coffee, sausages, postcards, newspapers, ice cream. A squadron of pigeons wheeled overhead in tight formation and fluttered in to land beside one of the fountains. A couple of young boys in Pimpf uniforms ran towards them, flapping their arms, and March thought of Pili — a stab — and closed his eyes for an instant, confining his guilt to the dark.

At five to nine exactly she came out of the shadows and began descending the steps. A man in a fawn raincoat strode towards her. Nightingale.

Don’t make it too obvious, idiot…

She stopped and threw her arms wide — a perfect mime of surprise. They began talking.

Two minutes to nine.

Would Luther come? If so, from which direction? From the Chancellery to the east? The High Command building to the west? Or directly north, from the centre of the Platz?

Suddenly, at the window beside him, a gloved hand appeared. Attached to it: the body of an Orpo traffic cop in leather uniform.

March wound down the window.

The cop said: “Parking here suspended.”

“Understood. Two minutes and I’m out of here.”

“Not two minutes. Now.” The man was a gorilla, escaped from Berlin Zoo.

March tried to keep his eyes on the steps, maintain a conversation with the Orpo man, while pulling his Kripo ID out of his inside pocket.

“You are screwing up badly, friend,” he hissed. “You are in the middle of a Sipo surveillance operation and, I have to tell you, you are blending into the background as well as a prick in a nunnery.”

The cop grabbed the ID and held it close to his eyes. “Nobody told me about any operation, Sturmbannfuhrer. What operation? Who’s being watched?”

“Communists. Freemasons. Students. Slavs.”

“Nobody told me about it. I’ll have to check.”

March clutched the steering wheel to steady his shaking hands. “We are observing radio silence. You break it and Heydrich personally will have your balls for cufflinks, I guarantee you. Now: my ID.”

Doubt clouded the Orpo man’s face. For an instant he almost looked ready to drag March out of the car, but then he slowly returned the ID. “I don’t know…”

“Thank you for your co-operation, Unterwachtmeister.” March wound up his window, ending the discussion.

One minute past nine. Charlie and Nightingale were still talking. He glanced in his mirror. The cop had walked a few paces, had stopped, and was staring back at the car. He looked thoughtful, then made up his mind, went over to his bike and picked up his radio.

March swore. He had two minutes, at the outside.

Of Luther: no sign.

And then he saw him.

A man with thick-framed glasses, wearing a shabby overcoat, had emerged from the Great Hall. He stood, peering around him, his hand touching one of the granite pillars as if afraid to let go. Then, hesitantly, he began to make his way down the steps.

March switched on the engine.

Charlie and Nightingale still had their backs to him. He was heading towards them.

Come on. Come on. Look round at him, for God’s sake.

At that moment Charlie did turn. She saw the old man and recognised him. Luther’s arm came up, like an exhausted swimmer reaching for the shore.

Something is going to go wrong, thought March suddenly. Something is not right. Something I haven’t thought of…

Luther had barely five metres to go when his head disappeared. It vanished in a puff of moist red sawdust and then his body was pitching forward, rolling down the steps, and Charlie was putting up her hand to shield her face from the sunburst of blood and brain.

A beat. A beat and a half. Then the crack of a high-velocity rifle howled around the Platz, scooping up the pigeons, scattering them like grey litter across the square.

People started to scream.

March threw the car into gear, flashed his indicator and cut sharply into the traffic, ignoring the outraged hooting-across one lane, and then another. He drove like a man who believed himself invulnerable, as if faith and willpower alone would protect him from collision. He could see a little group had formed around the body which was leaking blood and tissue down the steps. He could hear police whistles. Figures in black uniforms were converging from all directions — Globus and Krebs among them.

Nightingale had Charlie by the arm and was propelling her away from the scene, towards the road, where March was braking to a halt. The diplomat wrenched open the door and threw her into the back seat, crammed himself in after her. The door slammed. The Volkswagen accelerated away.

We were betrayed.

Fourteen men summoned; now fourteen dead.

He saw Luther’s hand outstretched, the fountain bursting from his neck, his trunk exploded toppling forwards. Globus and Krebs running. Secrets scattered in that shower of tissue; salvation gone …

Betrayed…

He drove to an underground parking lot just off Rosen Strasse, close to the Borse, where the Synagogue used to stand — a favourite spot of his for meeting informers. Was there anywhere more lonely? He took a ticket from the machine and pointed the car down the steep ramp. The tyres cried against the concrete; the headlights picked out ancient stains of oil and carbon on the floors and walls, like cave paintings.

Level two was empty — on Saturdays, the financial sector of Berlin was a desert. March parked in a central bay. When the engine died the silence was complete.

Nobody said anything. Charlie was dabbing at her coat with a paper handkerchief. Nightingale was leaning back with his eyes closed. Suddenly, March slammed his fists down on the top of the steering wheel.

“Whom did you tell?”

Nightingale opened his eyes. “Nobody.”

“The Ambassador? Washington? The resident spy-master?”

“I told you: nobody.” There was anger in his voice.

This is no help,” said Charlie.

“It’s also insulting and absurd. Christ, you two…”

“Consider the possibilities/ March counted them off on his fingers. “Luther betrayed himself to somebody -ridiculous. The telephone box in Billow Strasse was tapped — impossible: even the Gestapo does not have the resources to bug every public telephone in Berlin. Very well. So was our discussion last night overheard? Unlikely, as we could hardly hear it ourselves!”

“Why does it have to be this big conspiracy? Maybe Luther was just followed.”

Then why not pick him up? Why shoot him in public, at the very moment of contact?”

“He was looking straight at me…” Charlie covered her face with her hands.

“It needn’t have been me,” said Nightingale. “The leak could have come from one of you two.”

“How? We were together all night.”

“I’m sure you were.” He spat out the words and fumbled for the door. “I don’t have to take this sort of shit from you. Charlie — you’d better come back to the Embassy with me. Now. We’ll get you on a flight out of Berlin tonight and just hope to Christ no one connects you with any of this.” He waited. “Come on.”

She shook her head.

“If not for your sake, then think of your father.”

She was incredulous. “What’s my father got to do with it?”

Nightingale hauled himself out of the Volkswagen. “I should never have let myself be talked into this insanity. You’re a fool. As for him” — he nodded towards March -’he’s a dead man.”

He walked away from the car, his footsteps ricocheting around the deserted lot — loud at first, but fast becoming fainter. There was the clang of a metal door banging shut, and he was gone.

March looked at Charlie in the mirror. She seemed very small, huddled up in the back seat.

Far away: another noise. The barrier at the top of the ramp was being raised. A car was coming. March felt suddenly panicky, claustrophic. Their refuge could serve equally well as a trap.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. He switched on the engine. “We have to keep moving.”

“In that case I want to take more pictures.”

“Do you have to?”

“You assemble your evidence, Sturmbannfuhrer, and I’ll assemble mine.”

He glanced at her again. She had put aside her handkerchief and was staring at him with a fragile defiance. He took his foot off the brake. Crossing the city was risky, no question, but what else were they to do? Lie behind a locked door waiting to be caught?

He swung the car round in a circle and headed towards the exit as headlights flashed in the gloom behind them.

THREE

They parked beside the Havel and walked to the shore. March pointed to the spot where Buhler’s body had been found. Her camera clicked as Spiedel’s had four days before, but there was little left to record. A few footprints were just visible in the mud. The grass was flattened slightly where the corpse had been dragged from the water. But in a day or two these signs would disappear. She turned away from the water and drew her coat around her, shivering.

It was too dangerous to drive to Buhler’s villa so he stopped at the end of the causeway with the engine running. She leaned out to take a picture of the road leading to the island. The red and white pole was down. No sign of the sentry.

“Is that it?” she asked. “Life won’t pay much for these.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps there is another place.”

Numbers fifty-six to fifty-eight Am grossen Wannsee turned out to be a large nineteenth-century mansion with a pillared facade. It no longer housed the German headquarters of Interpol. At some point in the years since the war it had become a girls” school. March looked this way and that, up and down the leafy street where the blossom was in full pink bloom, and tried the gate. It was unlocked. He gestured to Charlie to join him.

“We are Herr and Frau March,” he said, as he pushed open the gate. “We have a daughter…”

Charlie nodded. “Yes, of course, Heidi. She is seven. With braids—”

“She is unhappy at her present school. This one was recommended. We wanted to look around…” They stepped into the grounds. March closed the gates behind them.

She said: “Naturally, if we are trespassing, we apologise…”

“But surely Frau March does not look old enough to have a sevenyear-old daughter?”

“She was seduced at an impressionable age by a handsome investigator…”

“A likely story.”

The gravel drive looped around a circular flower bed. March tried to picture it as it might have looked in January 1942. A dusting of snow on the ground, perhaps, or frost. Bare trees. A couple of guards shivering by the entrance. The government cars, one after the other, crunching over the icy gravel. An adjutant saluting and stepping forward to open the doors. Stuckart: handsome and elegant. Buhler: his lawyer’s notes carefully arranged in his briefcase. Luther: blinking behind his thick spectacles. Did their breath hang in the air after them? And Heydrich. Would he have arrived first, as host? Or last, to demonstrate his power? Did the cold impart colour even to those pale cheeks?

The house was barred and deserted. While Charlie took a picture of the entrance, March picked his way through a small shrubbery to peer through a window. Rows of dwarf-sized desks with dwarf-sized chairs up-ended and stacked on top. A pair of blackboards from which the pupils were being taught the Party’s special grace. On one:

On the other:

Childish paintings decorated the walls — blue meadows, green skies, clouds of sulphur-yellow. Children’s art was perilously close to degenerate art; such perversity would have to be knocked out of them …March could smell the school-smell even from here: the familiar compound of chalk dust, wooden floors and stale, institutional food. He turned away.

Someone in a neighbouring garden had lit a bonfire. Pungent white smoke — wet wood and dead leaves — drifted across the lawn at the back of the house. A wide flight of steps flanked by stone lions with frozen snarls led down to the lawn. Beyond the grass, through the trees, lay the dull, glassy surface of the Havel. They were facing south. Schwanenwerder, less than half a kilometre away, would be just visible from the upstairs windows. When Buhler bought his villa in the early 1950s, had the proximity of the two sites been a motive -was he the villain being drawn back to the scene of his crime? If so, what crime was it exactly?

March bent and dug up a handful of soil, sniffed at it, let it run through his fingers. The trail had gone cold years ago.

At the bottom of the garden were a couple of wooden barrels, green with age, used by the gardener to collect rainwater. March and Charlie sat on them side by side, legs dangling, looking across the lake. He was in no hurry to move on. Nobody would look for them here. There was something indescribably melancholy about it all — the silence, the dead leaves blowing across the lawn, the smell of the smoke — something that was the opposite of spring. It spoke of autumn, of the end of things.

He said: “Did I tell you that before I went away to sea, there were Jews in our town? When I got back, they were all gone. I asked about it. People said they had been evacuated to the East. For resettlement.”

“Did they believe that?”

“In public, of course. Even in private it was wiser not to speculate. And easier. To pretend it was true.”

“Did you believe it?”

“I didn’t think about it.

“Who cares?” he said suddenly. “Suppose everyone knew all the details. Who would care? Would it really make any difference?”

“Someone thinks so,” she reminded him. That’s why everyone who attended Heydrich’s conference is dead. Except Heydrich.”

He looked back at the house. His mother, a firm believer in ghosts, used to tell him that brickwork and plaster soaked up history, stored what they had witnessed, like a sponge. Since then March had seen his share of places in which evil had been done and he did not believe it. There was nothing especially wicked about Am grossen Wannsee 56/58. It was just a large, businessman’s mansion, now converted into a girls” school. So what were the walls absorbing now? Teenage crushes? Geometry lessons? Exam nerves?

He pulled out Heydrich’s invitation. “A discussion followed by luncheon.” Starting at noon. Ending at — what? — three or four in the afternoon. It would have been growing dark by the time they left. Yellow lamps in the windows; mist from the lake. Fourteen men. Well-fed; maybe some of them tipsy on the Gestapo’s wine. Cars to take them back to central Berlin. Chauffeurs who had waited a long time outside, with cold feet and noses like icicles…

And then, less than five months later, in Zurich in the heat of midsummer, Martin Luther had marched into the offices of Hermann Zaugg, banker to the rich and frightened, and opened an account with four keys.

“I wonder why he was empty-handed.”

“What?” She was distracted. He had interrupted her thoughts.

“I always imagined Luther carrying a small suitcase of some sort. Yet when he came down the steps to meet you, he was empty-handed.”

“Perhaps he had stuffed everything into his pockets.”

“Perhaps.” The Havel looked solid; a lake of mercury. “But he must have landed from Zurich with luggage of some sort. He had spent the night out of the country. And he had collected something from the bank.”

The wind stirred in the trees. March looked round. “He was a suspicious old bastard after all. It would have been in his character to have kept back the really valuable material. He wouldn’t have risked giving the Americans everything at once — otherwise how could he have bargained?”

A jet passed low overhead, dropping towards the airport, the pitch of its engines descending with it. Now that was a sound which did not exist in 1942…

Suddenly he was on his feet, lifting her down to join him, and then he was striding up the lawn towards the house and she was following — stumbling, laughing, shouting at him to slow down.

He parked the Volkswagen beside the road in Schlachten-see and sprinted into the telephone kiosk. Max Jaeger was not replying, neither at Werderscher Markt nor at his home. The lonely purr of the unanswered phone made March want to reach someone, anyone.

He tried Rudi Halder’s number. Perhaps he could apologise, somehow hint it had been worth the risk. Nobody was in. He looked at the receiver. What about Pili? Even the boy’s hostility would be contact of a sort. But in the bungalow in Lichtenrade there was no response either.

The city had shut down on him.

He was halfway out of the kiosk when, on impulse, he turned back and dialled the number of his own apartment. On the second ring, a man answered.

“Yes?” It was the Gestapo: Krebs’s voice. “March? I know it’s you! Don’t hang up!”

He dropped the receiver as if it had bitten him.

Half an hour later he was pushing through the scuffed wooden doors into the Berlin city morgue. Without his uniform he felt naked. A woman cried softly in one corner, a female police auxiliary sitting stiffly beside her, embarrassed at this display of emotion in an official place. He showed the attendant his ID and asked after Martin Luther. The man consulted a set of dog-eared notes.

“Male, mid-sixties, identified as Luther, Martin. Brought in just after midnight. Railway accident.”

“What about the shooting this morning, the one in the Plate?”

The attendant sighed, licked a nicotined forefinger and turned a page. “Male, mid-sixties, identified as Stark, Alfred. Came in an hour ago.”

That’s the one. How was he identified?”

“ID in his pocket.”

“Right.” March moved decisively towards the elevator, forestalling any objection. “I’ll make my own way down.”

It was his misfortune, when the elevator doors opened, to find himself confronted by Doctor August Eisler.

“March!” Eisler looked shocked and took a pace backwards. “The word is, you’ve been arrested.”

“The word is wrong. I’m working under cover.”

Eisler was staring at his civilian suit. “What as? A pimp?” This amused the SS surgeon so much he had to take off his spectacles and wipe his eyes. March joined in his laughter.

“No, as a pathologist. I’m told the pay is good and the hours are non-existent.”

Eisler stopped smiling. “You can say that. I’ve been here since midnight.” He dropped his voice. “A very senior man. Gestapo operation. Hush hush.” He tapped the side of his long nose. “I can say nothing.”

“Relax, Eisler. I am aware of the case. Did Frau Luther identify the remains?”

Eisler looked disappointed. “No,” he muttered. “We spared her that.”

“And Stark?”

“My, my, March — you are well-informed. I’m on my way to deal with him now. Would you care to join me?”

In his mind March saw again the exploding head, the thick spurt of blood and brain. “No. Thank you.”

“I thought not. What was he shot with? A Panzerfaust?”

“Have they caught the killer?”

“You’re the investigator. You tell me. "Don’t probe too deeply" was what I heard.”

“Stark’s effects. Where are they?”

“Bagged and ready to go. In the property room.”

“Where’s that?”

“Follow the corridor. Fourth door on the left.” March set off. Eisler shouted after him: “Hey March! Save me a couple of your best whores!” The pathologist’s high-pitched laughter pursued him down the passage.

The fourth door on the left was unlocked. He checked to make sure he was unobserved, then let himself in.

It was a small storeroom, three metres wide, with just enough room for one person to walk down the centre. On either side of the gangway were racks of dusty metal shelving heaped with bundles of clothing wrapped in thick polythene. There were suitcases, handbags, umbrellas, artificial legs, a pushchair — grotesquely twisted — hats…From the morgue the deceased’s belongings were usually collected by the next-of-kin. If the circumstances were suspicious, they would be taken away by the investigators, or sent direct to the forensic laboratories in Schonweld. March began inspecting the plastic tags, each of which recorded the time and place of death and the name of the victim. Some of the stuff here went back years — pathetic bundles of rags and trinkets, the final bequests of corpses nobody cared about, not even the police.

How typical of Globus not to admit to his mistake. The infallibility of the Gestapo must be preserved at all costs! Thus Stark’s body continued to be treated as Luther’s, while Luther would go to a pauper’s grave as the drifter, Stark.

March tugged at the bundle closest to the door, turned the label to the light. 18.4.64. Adolf Hitler PL Stark, Alfred.

So Luther had left the world like the lowest inmate of a KZ — violently, half-starved, in someone else’s filthy clothes, his body unhonoured, with a stranger picking over his belongings after his death. Poetic justice — about the only sort of justice to be found.

He pulled out his pocket knife and slit the, bulging plastic. The contents spilled over the floor like guts.

He did not care about Luther. All he cared about was how, in the hours between midnight and nine that morning, Globus had discovered Luther was still alive.

Americans!

He tore away the last of the polythene.

The clothes stank of shit and piss, of vomit and sweat- of every odour the human body nurtures. God only knew what parasites the fabric harboured. He went through the pockets. They were empty. His hands itched. Don’t give up hope. A left-luggage ticket is a small thing — tightly rolled, no bigger than a matchstick; an incision in a coat collar would conceal it. With his knife he hacked at the lining of the long brown overcoat, matted with congealing blood, his fingers turning brown and slippery …

Nothing. All the usual scraps that in his experience tramps will carry — the bits of string and paper, the buttons, the cigarette-ends -had been removed already. The Gestapo had searched Luther’s clothes with care. Naturally they had. He had been a fool to think they wouldn’t. Furious, he slashed at the material — right to left, left to right, right to left…

He stood back from the heap of rags panting like an assassin. Then he picked up a piece of rag and wiped his knife and hands.

“You know what I think?” said Charlie when he returned to the car empty-handed. “I think he never brought anything here from Zurich at all.”

She was still in the back seat of the Volkswagen. March turned to look at her. “Yes he did. Of course he did.” He tried to hide his impatience; it was not her fault. “But he was too scared to keep it with him. So he stored it, received a ticket for it — either at the airport or the station — and planned on collecting it later. I’m sure that’s it. Now Globus has it, or it’s lost for good.”

“No. Listen. I was thinking! Yesterday, when I was coming through the airport, I thanked God you stopped me trying to bring the painting back with us to Berlin. Remember the queues? They searched every bag. How could Luther have got anything past the Zollgrenzschutz?”

March considered this, massaging his temples. “A good question,” he said eventually. “Maybe,” he added a minute later, “the best question I ever heard.”

At the Flughafen Hermann Goring the statue of Hanna Reitsch was steadily oxidising in the rain. She stared across the concourse outside the departure terminal with rust-pitted eyes.

“You’d better stay with the car,” said March. “Do you drive?”

She nodded. He dropped the keys in her lap. “If the Flughafen Polizei try to move you on, don’t argue with them. Drive off and come round again. Keep circling. Give me twenty minutes.”

Then what?”

“I don’t know.” His hand fluttered in the air. “Improvise.”

He strode into the airport terminal. The big digital clock above the passport control zone flicked over: 13:22. He glanced behind him. He could measure his freedom probably in minutes. Less than that, if Globus had issued a general alert, for nowhere in the Reich was more heavily patrolled than the airport.

He kept thinking of Krebs in his apartment, and Eisler: “The word is, you’ve been arrested.”

A man with a souvenir bag from the Soldiers” Hall looked familiar. A Gestapo watcher? March abruptly changed direction and headed into the toilets. He stood at the urinal, pissing air, his eyes fixed on the entrance. Nobody came in. When he emerged, the man had gone.

“Last call for Lufthansa flight two-zero-seven to Tiflis…”

He went to the central Lufthansa desk and showed his ID to one of the guards. “I need to speak to your head of security. Urgently.”

“He may not be here, Sturmbannfuhrer.”

“Look for him.”

The guard was gone a long time. 13:27 said the clock. 13:28. Perhaps he was calling the Gestapo. 13:29. March put his hand in his pocket and felt the cold metal of the Luger. Better to make a stand here than crawl around the stone floor in Prinz-Albrecht Strasse spitting teeth into your hand.

13:30.

The guard returned. “This way, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. If you please.”

Friedman had joined the Berlin Kripo at the same time as March. He had left it five years later, one step ahead of a corruption investigation. Now he wore hand-made English suits, smoked duty-free Swiss cigars, and made five times his official salary by methods long suspected but never proved. He was a merchant prince, the airport his corrupt little kingdom.

When he realised March had come not to investigate him but to beg a favour he was almost ecstatic. His excellent mood persisted as he led March along a passage away from the terminal building. “And how is Jaeger? Spreading chaos I suppose? And Fiebes? Still jerking-off over pictures of Aryan maidens and Ukrainian window-cleaners? Oh, how I miss you all, I don’t think! Here we are.” Friedman transferred his cigar from his hand to his mouth and tugged at a large door. “Behold the cave of Aladdin!”

The metal slid open with a crash to reveal a small hangar stuffed with lost and abandoned property. The things people leave behind,” said Friedman. “You would not believe it. We even had a leopard once.”

“A leopard? A cat?”

“It died. Some idle bastard forgot to feed it. It made a good coat.” He laughed and snapped his fingers and from the shadows an elderly, stoop-shouldered man appeared — a Slav, with wide-set, fearful eyes.

“Stand up straight, man. Show respect.” Friedman gave him a shove that sent him staggering backwards. The Sturmbannfuhrer here is a good friend of mine. He’s looking for something. Tell him, March.”

“A case, perhaps a bag,” said March. “The last flight from Zurich on Monday night, the thirteenth. Either left on the aircraft, or in the baggage reclaim area.”

“Got that? Right?” The Slav nodded. “Well go on then!” He shuffled away and Friedman gestured to his mouth. “Dumb. Had his tongue cut out in the war. The ideal worker!” He laughed and clapped March on the shoulder. “So. How goes it?”

“Well enough.”

“Civilian clothes. Working the weekend. Must be something big.”

“It may be.”

This is the Martin Luther character, right?” March made no reply. “So you’re dumb, too. I see.” Friedman flicked cigar ash on the clean floor. “Fair enough by me. A brown-pants job. Possibly?”

“A what?”

“Zollgrenzschutz expression. Someone plans to bring in something they shouldn’t. They get to the customs shed, see the security, start shitting themselves. Drop whatever it is and run.”

“But this is special, yes? You don’t open every case every day?”

“Just in the week before the Fuhrertag.”

“What about the lost property, do you open that?”

“Only if it looks valuable!” Friedman laughed again. “No. A jest. We haven’t the manpower. Anyway, it’s been X-rayed, remember-no guns, no explosives. So we just leave it here, wait for someone to claim it. If no one’s turned up in a year, then we open it, see what we’ve got.”

“Pays for a few suits, I suppose.”

“What?” Friedman plucked at his immaculate sleeve. “These poor rags?” There was a sound and he turned round. “Looks like you’re in luck, March.”

The Slav was returning, carrying something. Friedman took it from him and weighed it in his hand. “Quite light. Can’t be gold. What do you think it is, March? Drugs? Dollars? Contraband silk from the East? A treasure map?”

“Are you going to open it?” March touched the gun in his pocket. He would use it if he had to.

Friedman appeared shocked. “This is a favour. One friend to another. Your business.” He handed the case to March. “You’ll remember that, Sturmbannfuhrer, won’t you? A favour? One day you’ll do the same for me, comrade to comrade?”

The case was of the sort that doctors carry, with brass-reinforced corners and a stout brass lock, dull with age. The brown leather was scratched and faded, the heavy stitching dark, the hand-grip worn smooth like a brown pebble by years of carrying, until it felt like an extension of the hand. It proclaimed reliability and reassurance; professionalism; quiet wealth. It was certainly pre-war, maybe even pre—

Great War- built to last a generation or two. Solid. Worth a lot.

All this March absorbed on the walk back to the Volkswagen. The route avoided the Zollgrenzschutz -another favour from Friedman.

Charlie fell upon it like a child upon a birthday present and swore with disappointment when she found it locked. As March drove out of the airport perimeter she fished in her own bag and retrieved a pair of nail scissors. She picked desperately at the lock, the blades making ineffective scrabblings on the brass.

March said: “You’re wasting your time. I’ll have to break it open. Wait till we get there.”

She shook the bag with frustration. “Get where?”

He ran a hand through his hair.

A good question.

Every room in the city was booked. The Eden with its roof-garden cafe, the Bristol on Unter den Linden, the Kaiserhof in Mohren Strasse — all had stopped taking reservations months ago. The monster hotels with a thousand bedrooms and the little rooming houses dotted around the railway termini were filled with uniforms. Not just the SA and the SS, the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht, the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls, but all the others besides: the National Socialist Empire War Association, the German Falconry Order, the National Socialist Leadership Schools…

Outside the most famous and luxurious of all Berlin’s hotels — the Adlon, on the corner of Pariser Platz and Wilhelm Strasse — the crowds were straining at the metal barriers for a glimpse of celebrity: a film star, a footballer, a Party satrap in town for the Fuhrertag. As March and Charlie passed it, a Mercedes was drawing up, its black- uniformed passengers bathed in the light of a score of flashguns.

March drove straight over the Platz into Unter den Linden, turned left and then right into Dorotheen Strasse. He parked among the dustbins at the back of the Prinz Friedrich Karl Hotel. It was here, over breakfast with Rudi Halder, that this business had really begun. When was that? He could not remember.

The manager of the Friedrich Karl was habitually clad in an old-fashioned black jacket and a pair of striped pants and he bore a striking resemblance to the late President Hindenburg. He came bustling out to the front desk, smoothing a large pair of white whiskers as if they were pets. “Sturmbannfuhrer March, what a pleasure! What a pleasure indeed! And dressed for relaxation!”

“Good afternoon, Herr Brecker. A difficult request. I must have a room.”

Brecker threw up his hands in distress. “It is impossible! Even for as distinguished a customer as yourself.”

“Come, Herr Brecker. You must have something. An attic would do, a broom cupboard. You would be rendering the Reichskriminalpolizei the greatest assistance…”

Brecker’s elderly eye travelled over the luggage and came to rest on Charlie, at which point a gleam entered it. “And this is Frau March?”

“Unfortunately, no.” March put his hand on Brecker’s sleeve and guided him into a corner, where they were watched with suspicion by the elderly receptionist. “This young lady has information of a crucial character, but we wish to interrogate her …how shall I put it?”

“In an informal setting?” suggested the old man. “Precisely!” March pulled out what was left of his life savings and began peeling off notes. “For this "informal setting" the Kriminalpolizei naturally would wish to reimburse you handsomely.”

“I see.” Brecker looked at the money and licked his lips. “And since this is a matter of security, no doubt you would prefer it if certain formalities — registration, for example -were dispensed with?”

March stopped counting, pressed the entire roll of notes into the manager’s moist hands and closed his fingers around it.

In return for bankrupting himself March was given a kitchen maid’s room in the roof, reached from the third floor by a rickety back staircase. They had to wait in the reception for five minutes while the girl was turned out of her home and fresh linen was put on the bed. Herr Brecker’s repeated offers to help with their luggage were turned down by March, who also ignored the lascivious looks which the old man kept giving Charlie. He did, however, ask for some food — some bread, cheese, ham, fruit, a flask of black coffee — which the manager promised to bring up personally. March told him to leave it in the corridor.

“It’s not the Adlon,” said March when he and Charlie were alone. The little room was stifling. All the heat in the hotel seemed to have risen and become trapped beneath the tiles. He climbed on a chair to tug open the attic window and jumped down in a shower of dust.

“Who cares about the Adlon?” She flung her arms around him, kissed him hard on the mouth.

The manager set down the tray of food as instructed outside the door. Climbing the stairs had almost done for him. Through three centimetres of wood, March listened to his ragged breathing, and then to his footsteps retreating along the passage. He waited until he was sure the old man had gone before retrieving the tray and setting it on the flimsy dressing table. There was no lock on the bedroom door, so he wedged a chair under the handle.

March laid Luther’s case on the hard wooden bed and took out his pocket knife.

The lock had been fashioned to withstand exactly this sort of assault. It took five minutes of hacking and twisting, during which he snapped one short blade, before the fastener broke free. He pulled the bag open.

That papery smell again — the odour of a long-sealed filing cabinet or desk drawer, a whiff of typewriter oil. And behind that, something else: something antiseptic, medicinal …

Charlie was at his shoulder. He could feel ^her warm breath on his cheek. “Don’t tell me. It’s empty.”

“No. It’s not empty. It’s full.”

He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his hands. Then he turned the case upside down and shook the contents out on to the counterpane.

FOUR

FIVE

Across the city the day died. The sun dropped behind the dome of the Great Hall, gilding it like the cupola of a giant mosque. With a hum, the floodlights cut in along the Avenue of Victory and the East-West Axis. The afternoon crowds melted, dissolved, re-formed as night-time queues outside the cinemas and restaurants, while above the Tiergarten, lost in the gloom, an airship droned.

“We can’t do this alone.”

“We must.”

“Please. Let me take them to the Embassy. They could smuggle them out through the diplomatic bag.”

“No!”

“You can’t be certain he betrayed us…”

“Who else could it be? And look at this. Do you really think American diplomats would want to touch it?”

“But if we’re caught with it… It’s a death warrant.”

“I have a plan.”

“A good one?”

“It had better be.”

Not far from the hotel, north of Unter den Linden, was an all-night pharmacy. It was owned, as all businesses were, by Germans, but it was run by Rumanians — the only people poor enough and willing enough to work such hours. It was stocked like a bazaar with cooking pans, paraffin heaters, stockings, baby food, greeting cards, stationery, toys, film …Among Berlin’s swollen population of guest workers it did a brisk trade.

They entered separately. At one counter, Charlie spoke to the elderly woman assistant who promptly disappeared into a back room and returned with an assortment of bottles. At another, March bought a school exercise book, two sheets of thick brown paper, two sheets of gift wrap paper and a roll of clear tape.

They left and walked two blocks to the Friedrich Strasse station where they caught the south-bound U-bahn train. The carriage was packed with the usual Saturday night crowd — lovers holding hands, families off to the illuminations, young men on a drinking spree — and nobody, as far as March could tell, paid them the slightest attention. Nevertheless, he waited until the doors were about to slide shut before he dragged her out on to the platform of the Tempelhof station. A ten-minute journey on a number thirty-five tram brought them to the airport.

Throughout all this they sat in silence.

Tempelhof was older than the Flughafen Hermann Goering — shabbier, more primitive. The departures terminal had been built before the war and was decorated with pictures of the pioneering days of passenger flight- old Lufthansa Junkers with corrugated fuselages, dashing pilots with goggles and scarves, intrepid women travellers with stout ankles and cloche hats. Innocent days”. March took up a position by the entrance to the terminal and pretended to study the photographs as Charlie approached the car rentals desk.

Suddenly, she was smiling, making apologetic gestures with her hands — playing to perfection the lady in distress.

She had missed the flight, her family was waiting …The rental agent was charmed, and consulted a typed sheet. For a moment, the issue hung in the balance- and then, yes, as it happened, Fraulein, he did have something. Something for someone with eyes as pretty as yours, of course …Your driving licence, please …

She handed it over. It had been issued the previous year in the name of Voss, Magda, aged twenty-four, of Mariendorf, Berlin. It was the licence of the girl murdered on her wedding day five days ago — the licence Max Jaeger had left in his desk, along with all the other papers from the Spandau shootings.

March looked away, forcing himself to study an old aerial photograph of the Tempelhof airfield. BERLIN was painted in huge white letters along the runway. When he glanced back, the agent was entering details of the licence on the rental form, laughing at some witticism of his own.

As a strategy it was not without risk. In the morning, a copy of the rental agreement would be forwarded automatically to the Polizei, and even the Orpo would wonder why a murdered woman was hiring a car. But tomorrow was Sunday, Monday was the Fuhrertag, and by Tuesday -the earliest the Orpo were likely to pull their fingers out of their backsides — March reckoned he and Charlie would either be safe or arrested, or dead.

Ten minutes later, with a final exchange of smiles, she was given the keys to a four-door black Opel, with ten thousand kilometres on the clock. Five minutes after that, March joined her in the parking lot. He navigated while she drove. It was the first time he had seen her behind the wheel: another side of her. In the busy traffic she displayed an exaggerated caution which he felt did not come naturally.

SKETCH OF INSTALLATION BY MARTIN LUTHER

[Dated 15 July 1943; handwritten; 1 page]

The lobby of the Prince Friedrich Karl was deserted: the guests were out for the night. As they passed through it towards the stairs the receptionist kept her head down. They were just another of Herr Brecker’s little scams — best not to know too much.

Their room had not been searched. The cotton threads hung where March had wedged them between door and frame. Inside, when he pulled Luther’s case out from beneath the bed, the single strand of hair was still laced through the lock.

Charlie stepped out of her dress and wrapped a towel around her shoulders.

In the bathroom at the end of the passage, a naked bulb lit a grimy sink. A bath stood on tiptoe, on iron claws.

March walked back to the bedroom, shut himself in, and once more propped the chair up against the door. He piled the contents of the case on the dressing table — the map, the various envelopes, the minutes and memoranda, the reports, including the one with the rows of statistics, typed on the machine with the extra-large letters. Some of the paper crackled with age. He remembered how he and Charlie had sat during the sunlit afternoon, with the rumble of traffic outside; how they had passed the evidence backwards and forwards to one another — at first with excitement, then stunned, disbelieving, silent, until at last they came to the pouch with the photographs.

Now he needed to be more systematic. He pulled up a chair, cleared a space, and opened the exercise book. He tore out thirty pages. At the top of each sheet he wrote the year and the month, beginning with July 1941 and ending in January 1944. He took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair. Then he began to work his way through the heap of papers, making notes in his clear script.

A railway timetable — badly printed on yellowing wartime paper:

…and so on, until, in the second week of February, a new destination appeared. Now almost all the times had been worked out to the minute:

…and so on again, until the end of the month.

A rusty paper clip had mottled the edge of the timetable. Attached to it was a telegraphic letter from the General Management, Directorate East, of the German Reich Railways, dated Berlin, 13 January 1943. First, a list of recipients:

Then, the main text:

March flicked back to the timetable and read it through again. Theresienstadt/Auschwitz, Auschwitz/Theresienstadt, Bialystok/Treblinka, Treblinka/Bialystok: the syllables drummed in his tired brain like the rhythm of wheels on a railway track.

He ran his finger down the columns of figures, trying to decipher the message behind them. So: a train would be loaded in the Polish town of Bialystok at breakfast time. By lunchtime, it would be at this hell, Treblinka. (Not all the journeys were so brief- he shuddered at the thought of the seventeen hours from Berlin to Auschwitz.) In the afternoon, the cars would be unloaded at Treblinka and fumigated. At nine o’clock that evening they would return to Bialystok, arriving in the early hours, ready to be loaded up again at breakfast.

On 12 February, the pattern breaks. Instead of going back to Bialystok, the empty train is sent to Grodno. Two days in the sidings there, and then — in the dark, long before dawn — the train is once more heading back, fully laden, to Treblinka. It arrives at lunchtime. Is unloaded. And that night begins rattling back westwards again, this time to Scharfenweise.

What else could an investigator of the Berlin Kriminal-polizei deduce from this document?

Well, he could deduce numbers. Say: sixty persons per car, an average of sixty cars per train. Deduction: three thousand six hundred persons per transport.

By February, the transports were running at the rate of one per day. Deduction: twenty-five thousand persons per week; one hundred thousand persons per month; one and a quarter million persons per year. And this was the average achieved in the depths of the Central European winter, when the points froze and drifts of snow blocked the tracks and the partisans materialised from the woods like ghosts to plant their bombs.

Deduction: the numbers would be even greater in the spring and summer.

He stood at the bathroom door. Charlie, in a black slip, had her back to him and was bending over the wash basin. With her hair wet she looked smaller; almost fragile. The muscles in her pale shoulders flexed as she massaged her scalp. She rinsed her hair a final time and stretched a hand out blindly behind her. He gave her a towel.

Along the edge of the bath she had set out various objects — a pair of green rubber gloves, a brush, a dish, a spoon, two bottles. March picked up the bottles and studied their labels. One contained a mixture of magnesium carbonate and sodium acetate, the other a twenty-volume solution of hydrogen peroxide. Next to the mirror above the basin she had propped open the girl’s passport. Magda Voss regarded March with wide and untroubled eyes.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

Charlie wound the towel around her head into a turban.

“First I go red. Then orange. Then white-blonde.” She took the bottles from him. “I was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl with a crush on Jean Harlow. My mother went crazy. Trust me.

She squeezed her hands into the rubber gloves and measured the chemicals into the dish. With the spoon she began to mix them into a thick blue paste.

March had read the minutes twice that afternoon. Nevertheless, he forced himself to wade through the pages again. “Around 11 million Jews are involved in this final solution of the Jewish problem…’Not just German Jews. The minutes listed more than thirty European nationalities, including French Jews (865,000), Dutch Jews (160,000), Polish Jews (2,284,000), Ukrainian Jews (2,994,684); there were English, Spanish, Irish, Swedish and Finnish Jews; the conference even found room for the Albanian Jews (all 200 of them).

“Brought under appropriate direction in a suitable manner …the toughest element will have to be dealt with appropriately…”

“Appropriate, appropriately”. The favourite words in the bureaucrat’s lexicon — the grease for sliding round unpleasantness, the funk-hole for avoiding specifics.

March unfolded a set of rough photostats. These appeared to be copies of the original draft minutes of the Wannsee conference, compiled by SS-Standartenfuhrer Eichmann of the Reich Main Security Office. It was a typewritten document, full of amendments and angry crossings-out in a neat hand which March had come to recognise as belonging to Reinhard Heydrich.

For example, Eichmann had written:

Against this, in the margin, Heyrich had written “No!” March checked in the final version of the minutes. This entire section of the conference had been reduced to a single phrase:

Thus sanitised, the minutes were fit for the archives.

March scribbled more notes: October, November, December 1941. Slowly the blank sheets were being filled. In the dim light of the attic room, a picture was developing: connections, strategies, causes and effects… He looked up the contributions of Luther, Stuckart and Buhler to the Wannsee conference. Luther foresaw problems in “the Nordic states” but “no major difficulties in south-eastern and western Europe”. Stuckart, when asked about persons with one Jewish grandparent, “proposed to proceed with compulsory sterilisation”. Buhler, characteristically, toadied to Heydrich: “He had only one favour to ask — that the Jewish question in the General Government be solved as rapidly as possible.”

He broke off for five minutes to smoke a cigarette, pacing the corridor, shuffling his papers, an actor learning his lines. From the bathroom: the sound of running water. From the rest of the hotel: nothing except creaks in the darkness, like a galleon at anchor.

SIX

March checked dates. Luther had visited Auschwitz on 15 July. On 17 July Buhler had forwarded the map locations of the six camps to Kritzinger of the Reich Chancellery. On 9 August the last deposit had been made in Switzerland. That same year, according to his wife, Luther had suffered a breakdown.

He made a note. Kritzinger was the fourth man. His name was everywhere. He checked with Buhler’s pocket diary. Those dates tallied also. Another mystery solved.

His pen moved across the paper. He was almost finished.

A small thing, it had passed unnoticed during the afternoon; one of a dozen or so scraps of paper stuffed at random into a torn folder. It was a circular from SS-Gruppenfuhrer Richard Glucks, Chief of Amtsgruppe D in the SS Economic Administration Main Office. It was dated 6 August 1942.

He read it again: “U-boat crews…”

“One. Two. Three. Four. Five…” March was underwater, holding his breath, counting. He listened to the muffled noises, saw patterns like strings of algae float past him in the dark. “Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen…” With a roar he rose above the surface, sucking in air, streaming water. He filled his lungs a few more times, took an immense gulp of oxygen, then went down again. This time he made it to twenty-five before his breath exploded and he burst upwards, slopping water on to the bathroom floor.

Would he ever be clean again?

Afterwards, he lay with his arms dangling over the sides of the tub, his head tilted back, staring at the ceiling, like a drowned man.