Fatherland Read online

  Ahead of them, searchlights picked out the eagle on top of the Great Hall. It seemed to hang in the sky, a golden bird of prey hovering over the capital.

  She noticed his grin. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He turned right at the European Parliament. The flags of the twelve member nations were lit by spots. The swastika which flew above them was twice the size of the other standards. ‘Tell me about Stuckart. How well did you know him?’

  ‘Hardly at all. I met him through my parents. My father was at the Embassy here before the war. He married a German, an actress. She’s my mother. Monika Koch, did you ever hear of her?’

  ‘No. I don’t believe so.’ Her German was flawless. She must have spoken it since childhood; her mother’s doing, no doubt.

  ‘She’d be sorry to hear that. She seems to think she was a big star over here. Anyway, they both knew Stuckart slightly. When I arrived in Berlin last year, they gave me a list of people to go and talk to – contacts. Half of them turned out to be dead, one way or another. Most of the rest didn’t want to meet me. American journalists don’t make healthy company, if you know what I mean. Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Go ahead. What was Stuckart like?’

  ‘Awful.’ Her lighter flared in the darkness; she inhaled deeply. ‘He made a grab at me, even though this woman of his was in the apartment at the same time. That was just before Christmas. I kept away from him after that. Then, last week, I got a message from my office in New York. They wanted a piece for Hitler’s seventy-fifth birthday, talking to some of the people who knew him from the old days.’

  ‘So you rang Stuckart?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And arranged to meet him on Sunday, and when you got there, he was dead?’

  ‘If you know it all,’ she said irritably, ‘why do you need to talk to me again?’

  ‘I don’t know it all, Fräulein. That’s the point.’

  After that, they drove in silence.

  Fritz Todt-Platz was a couple of blocks from the Avenue of Victory. Laid out in the mid–1950s as part of Speer’s redevelopment of the city, it was a square of expensive-looking apartment buildings, erected around a small memorial garden. In the centre stood an absurdly heroic statue of Todt, the creator of the Autobahnen, by Professor Thorak.

  ‘Which one was Stuckart’s?’

  She pointed to a block on the other side of the square. March drove round and parked outside it.

  ‘Which floor?’

  ‘Fourth.’

  He looked up. The fourth floor was in darkness. Good.

  Todt’s statue was floodlit. In the reflected light, her face was white. She looked as if she was about to be sick. Then he remembered the photographs Fiebes had shown him of the corpses – Stuckart’s skull had been a crater, like a guttered candle – and he understood.

  She said: ‘I don’t have to do this, do I?’

  ‘No. But you will.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you want to know what happened as much as I do. That’s why you’ve come this far.’

  She stared at him again, then stubbed out her cigarette, twisting it and breaking it in the ashtray. ‘Let’s do it quickly. I want to get back to my friends.’

  The keys to the building were still in the envelope which March had removed from Stuckart’s file. There were five in all. He found the one that fitted the front door and let them into the foyer. It was vulgarly luxurious, in the new imperial style – white marble floor, crystal chandeliers, nineteenth-century gilt chairs with red plush upholstery, the air scented with dried flowers. No porter, thankfully: he must have gone off duty. Indeed, the entire building seemed deserted. Perhaps the tenants had left for their second homes in the country. Berlin could be unbearably crowded in the week before the Führertag. The smart set always fled the capital.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  ‘The porter was at the desk, here,’ she said. ‘I asked for Stuckart. He directed me to the fourth floor. I couldn’t take the elevator, it was being repaired. There was a man working on it. So I walked.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Noon. Exactly.’

  They climbed the stairs.

  She went on: ‘I had just reached the second floor when two men came running towards me.’

  ‘Describe them, please.’

  ‘It all happened too quickly for me to get a very good look. Both in their thirties. One had a brown suit, the other had a green anorak. Short hair. That’s about it.’

  ‘What did they do when they saw you?’

  ‘They just pushed past me. The one in the anorak said something to the other, but I couldn’t hear what it was. There was a lot of drilling going on from the elevator shaft. After that, I carried on up to Stuckart’s apartment and rang the bell. There was no reply.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I walked down to the porter and asked him to open Stuckart’s door, to check he was okay.’

  ‘Why?’

  She hesitated. ‘There was something about those two men. I had a hunch. You know: that feeling when you knock on a door and nobody answers but you’re sure someone’s in.’

  ‘And you persuaded the porter to open the door?’

  ‘I told him I’d call the police if he didn’t. I said he would have to answer to the authorities if anything had happened to Doctor Stuckart.’

  Shrewd psychology, thought March. After thirty years of being told what to do, the average German was careful not to take final responsibility for anything, even for not opening a door. ‘And then you found the bodies?’

  She nodded. ‘The porter saw them first. He screamed and I came running.’

  ‘Did you mention the two men you’d seen on the stairs? What did the porter say?’

  ‘He was too busy throwing up to talk at first. Then he just insisted he’d seen nobody. He said I must have imagined it.’

  ‘Do you think he was lying?’

  She considered this. ‘No, I don’t. I think he genuinely didn’t see them. On the other hand, I don’t see how he could have missed them.’

  They were still on the second floor landing, at the point at which she said the men had passed her. March walked back down the flight of stairs. She waited for a moment, then followed him. At the foot of the steps a door led off to the first floor corridor.

  He said, half to himself: ‘They could have hidden along here, I suppose. Where else?’

  They continued down to the ground floor. Here there were two more doors. One led to the foyer. March tried the other. It was unlocked. ‘Or they could have got out down here.’

  Bare concrete steps, neon-lit, led down to the basement. At the bottom was a long passage, with doors off it. March opened each in turn. A lavatory. A store-room. A generator room. A bomb shelter.

  Under the 1948 Reich Civil Defence Law, every new building had to be equipped with a bomb shelter; those beneath offices and apartment blocks were also required to have their own generators and air-filtration systems. This one was particularly well-appointed: bunk beds, a storage cupboard, a separate cubicle with toilet facilities. March carried a metal chair across to the air vent, set into the wall two and a half metres above the ground. He grasped the metal cover. It came away easily in his hands. All the screws had been removed.

  ‘The Ministry of Construction specifies an aperture with a diameter of half a metre,’ said March. He unbuckled his belt and hung it and his pistol over the back of the chair. ‘If only they appreciated the difficulties that gives us. Would you mind?’

  He took off his jacket and handed it to the woman, then mounted the chair. Reaching into the shaft, he found something hard to hold on to, and pulled himself in. The filters and the fan had both been removed. By working his shoulders against the metal casing he was able to move slowly forwards. The darkness was complete. He choked on the dust. His hands, stretched out in front of him, touched metal, and he pushed. The outside cover
yielded and crashed to the ground. The night air rushed in. For a moment, he felt an almost overpowering urge to crawl out into it, but instead he wriggled backwards and lowered himself into the basement shelter. He landed, dusty and grease-smeared.

  The woman was pointing his pistol at him.

  ‘Bang, bang,’ she said. ‘You’re dead.’ She smiled at his alarm: ‘American joke.’

  ‘Not funny.’ He took the Luger and put it back in his holster.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘here’s a better one. Two murderers are seen by a witness leaving a building and it takes the police four days to work out how they did it. I’d say that was funny, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It depends on the circumstances.’ He brushed the dust off his shirt. ‘If the police found a note beside one of the victims in his own handwriting, saying it was suicide, I could understand why they wouldn’t bother looking any further.’

  ‘But then you come along and you do look further.’

  ‘I’m the curious type.’

  ‘Clearly.’ She smiled again. ‘So Stuckart was shot and the murderers tried to make it look like suicide?’

  He hesitated. ‘It’s a possibility.’

  He regretted the words the moment he uttered them. She had led him into disclosing more than was wise about Stuckart’s death. Now a faint light of mockery played in her eyes. He cursed himself for underrating her. She had the cunning of a professional criminal. He considered taking her back to the bar and going on alone, but dismissed the idea. It was no good. To know what had happened, he needed to see it through her eyes.

  He buttoned his tunic. ‘Now we must inspect Party Comrade Stuckart’s apartment.’

  That, he was pleased to see, knocked the smile off her face. But she did not refuse to go with him. They climbed the stairs, and it struck him again that she was almost as anxious to see Stuckart’s flat as he was.

  They took the elevator to the fourth floor. As they stepped out, he heard, along the corridor to their left, a door being opened. He grabbed the American’s arm and steered her round the corner, out of sight. When he looked back, he could see a middle-aged woman in a fur coat heading for the elevator. She was carrying a small dog.

  ‘You’re hurting my arm.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He was hiding from shadows. The woman talked quietly to the dog and disappeared into the lift. March wondered whether Globus had retrieved the file from Fiebes yet, whether he had discovered that the keys were missing. They would have to hurry.

  The door to Stuckart’s apartment had been sealed that day, close to the handle, with red wax. A note informed the curious that these premises were now under the jurisdiction of the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, and that entry was forbidden. March pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves and broke the seal. The key turned easily in the lock.

  He said: ‘Don’t touch anything.’

  More luxury, to match the building: elaborate gilt mirrors, antique tables and chairs with fluted legs and ivory damask upholstery, a carpet of royal blue with Persian rugs. The spoils of war, the fruits of Empire.

  ‘Now tell me again what happened.’

  ‘The porter opened the door. We came into the hall.’ Her voice had risen. She was trembling. ‘He shouted and there was no reply, so we both came right in. I opened that door first.’

  It was the sort of bathroom March had seen only in glossy magazines. White marble and brown smoky mirrors, a sunken bathtub, twin basins with gold taps . . . Here, he thought, was the hand of Maria Dymarski, leafing through German Vogue at the Ku-damm hairdressers, while her Polish roots were bleached Aryan white.

  ‘Then, I came into the sitting room . . .’

  March switched on the light. One wall consisted of tall windows, looking out over the square. The other three had large mirrors. Wherever he turned, he could see images of himself and the girl: the black uniform and the shiny blue coat incongruous among the antiques. Nymphs were the decorative conceit. Fashioned in gilt, they draped themselves around the mirrors; cast in bronze, they supported table lamps and clocks. There were paintings of nymphs and statues of nymphs; wood nymphs and water nymphs; Amphitrite and Thetis.

  ‘I heard him scream. I went to help . . .’

  March opened the door of the bedroom. She turned away. Blood in half-light looks black. Dark shapes, twisted and grotesque, leapt up the walls and across the ceiling, like the shadows of trees.

  ‘They were on the bed, yes?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Rang the police.’

  ‘Where was the porter?’

  ‘In the bathroom.’

  ‘Did you look at them again?’

  ‘What do you think?’ She brushed her sleeve angrily across her eyes.

  ‘All right, Fräulein. It’s enough. Wait in the sitting room.’

  The human body contains six litres of blood: sufficient to paint a large apartment. March tried to avoid looking at the bed and the walls as he worked – opening the cupboard doors, feeling the lining of every item of clothing, skimming every pocket with his gloved hands. He moved on to the bedside cabinets. These had been unlocked and searched before. The contents of the drawers had been emptied out for inspection, then stuffed back haphazardly – a typical, clumsy Orpo job, destroying more clues than it uncovered.

  Nothing, nothing. Had he risked everything for this?

  He was on his knees, with his arm stretched beneath the bed, when he heard it. It took a second for the sound to register.

  Love unspoken

  Faith unbroken

  All life through . . .

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, when he rushed in. ‘I shouldn’t have touched it.’

  He took the chocolate box from her, carefully, and closed the lid on its tune.

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘On that table.’

  Someone had collected Stuckart’s mail for the past three days and had inspected it, neatly slicing open the envelopes, pulling out the letters. They were heaped up next to the telephone. He had not noticed them when he came in. How had he missed them? The chocolates, he could see, had been wrapped exactly as Buhler’s had been, postmarked Zürich, 16.00 hours, Monday afternoon.

  Then he saw she was holding a paper knife.

  ‘I told you not to touch anything.’

  ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  ‘Do you think this is a game?’ She’s crazier than I am. ‘You’re going to have to leave.’ He tried to grab her, but she twisted free.

  ‘No way.’ She backed away, pointing the knife at him. ‘I reckon I have as much right to be here as you do. You try and throw me out and I’ll scream so loudly I’ll have every Gestapo man in Berlin hammering on that door.’

  ‘You have a knife, but I have a gun.’

  ‘Ah, but you daren’t use it.’

  March ran his hand through his hair. He thought: You believed you were so clever, finding her, persuading her to come back. And all the time, she wanted to come. She’s looking for something . . . He had been an idiot.

  He said: ‘You’ve been lying to me.’

  She said: ‘You’ve been lying to me. That makes us even.’

  ‘This is dangerous. I beg you, you have no idea . . .’

  ‘What I do know is this: my career could have ended because of what happened in this apartment. I could be fired when I get back to New York. I’m being thrown out of this lousy country, and I want to find out why.’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

  They stood like that for perhaps half a minute: he with his hand to his hair, she with the silver paper knife still pointed at him. Outside, across the Platz, a clock began to chime. March looked at his watch. It was already ten.

  ‘We have no time for this.’ He spoke quickly. ‘Here are the keys to the apartment. This one opens the door downstairs. This one is for the main door up here. This fits the bedside cabinet. That is a desk key.
This one’ – he held it up – ‘this, I think, is the key to a safe. Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Seeing his look of disbelief, she added: ‘I swear.’

  They searched in silence for ten minutes, shifting furniture, pulling up rugs, looking behind paintings. Suddenly she said: ‘This mirror is loose.’

  It was a small antique looking glass, maybe thirty centimetres square, above the table on which she had opened the letters. March grasped the ormolu frame. It gave a little but would not come away from the wall.

  ‘Try this.’ She gave him the knife.

  She was right. Two-thirds down the left-hand side, behind the lip of the frame, was a tiny lever. March pressed it with the tip of the paper knife, and felt something yield. The mirror was on a hinge. It swung open to reveal the safe.

  He inspected it and swore. The key was not enough. There was also a combination lock.

  ‘Too much for you?’ she asked.

  ‘“In adversity,”’ quoted March, ‘“the resourceful officer will always discover opportunity.”’ He picked up the telephone.

  EIGHT

  cross a distance of five thousand kilometres, President Kennedy flashed his famous smile. He stood behind a cluster of microphones, addressing a crowd in a football stadium. Banners of red, white and blue streamed behind him – ‘Re-elect Kennedy!’ ‘Four More in Sixty-Four!’ He shouted something March did not understand and the crowd cheered back.

  ‘What is he talking about?’

  The television cast a blue glow in the darkness of Stuckart’s apartment. The woman translated. ‘“The Germans have their system and we have ours. But we are all citizens of one planet. And as long as our two nations remember that, I sincerely believe: we can have peace.” Cue loud applause from dumb audience.’

  She had kicked off her shoes and was lying full-length on her stomach in front of the set.

  ‘Ah. Here’s the serious bit.’ She waited until he finished speaking, then translated again. ‘He says he plans to raise human rights questions during his visit in the Fall.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘God, Kennedy is so full of shit. The only thing he really wants to raise is his vote in November.’