Fatherland

by Robert Harris

  March rested his forehead against the cold pane of glass. The window was bolted shut. There was a sheer drop of fifteen metres to the ground.

  Behind him, the door opened. A swarthy man in shirt sleeves, stinking of sweat, came in and set two mugs of coffee on the table.

  Jaeger, who had been sitting with his arms folded, looking at his boots, asked: ‘How much longer?’

  The man shrugged – an hour? a night? a week? – and left. Jaeger tasted the coffee and pulled a face. ‘Pig’s piss.’ He lit a cigar, swilling the smoke around his mouth, before sending it billowing across the room.

  He and March stared at one another. After a while, Max said: ‘You know, you could have got out.’

  ‘And left you to it? Hardly fair.’ March tried the coffee. It was lukewarm. The neon light was flickering, fizzing, making his head throb. This was what they did to you. Left you until two or three in the morning, until your body was at its weakest, your defences at their most vulnerable. He knew this part of the game as well as they did.

  He swallowed the filthy coffee and lit a cigarette. Anything to keep awake. Guilt about the woman, guilt about his friend.

  ‘I’m a fool. I shouldn’t have involved you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Forget it.’ Jaeger waved away the smoke. He leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘You have to let me carry my share of the blame, Zavi. Good Party Comrade Jaeger, here. Brownshirt. Blackshirt. Every goddamn shirt. Twenty years dedicated to the sacred cause of keeping my arse clean.’ He grasped March’s knee. ‘I have favours to call in. I’m owed.’

  His head was bent. He was whispering. ‘They have you marked down, my friend. A loner. Divorced. They’ll flay you alive. Me, on the other hand? The great conformer Jaeger. Married to a holder of the Cross of German Motherhood. Bronze Class, no less. Not so good at the job, maybe –’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘– but safe. Suppose I didn’t tell you yesterday morning the Gestapo had taken over the Buhler case. Then when you got back I said let’s check out Stuckart. They look at my record. They might buy that, coming from me.’

  ‘It’s good of you.’

  ‘Christ, man – forget that.’

  ‘But it won’t work.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because this is beyond favours and clean sheets, don’t you see? What about Buhler and Stuckart? They were in the Party before we were even born. And where were the favours when they needed them?’

  ‘You really think the Gestapo killed them?’ Jaeger looked scared.

  March put his fingers to his lips and gestured to the picture. ‘Say nothing to me you wouldn’t say to Heydrich,’ he whispered.

  THE night dragged by in silence. At about three o’clock, Jaeger pushed some of the chairs together, lay down awkwardly, and closed his eyes. Within minutes, he was snoring. March returned to his post at the window.

  He could feel Heydrich’s eyes drilling into his back. He tried to ignore it, failed, and turned to confront the picture. A black uniform, a gaunt white face, silver hair – not a human countenance at all but a photographic negative of a skull; an X-ray. The only colour was in the centre of that death-mask face: those tiny pale blue eyes, like splinters of winter sky. March had never met Heydrich, or seen him; had only heard the stories. The press portrayed him as Nietzsche’s Superman sprung to life. Heydrich in his pilot’s uniform (he had flown combat missions on the Eastern front). Heydrich in his fencing gear (he had fenced for Germany in the Olympics). Heydrich with his violin (he could reduce audiences to tears by the pathos of his playing). When the aircraft carrying Heinrich Himmler had blown up in mid-air two years ago, Heydrich had taken over as Reichsführer-SS. Now he was said to be in line to succeed the Führer. The whisper around the Kripo was that the Reich’s chief policeman liked beating up prostitutes.

  March sat down. A numbing tiredness was seeping through him, a paralysis: the legs first, then the body, at last the mind. Despite himself, he drifted into a shallow sleep. Once, far away, he thought he heard a cry – human and forlorn – but it might have been a dream. Footsteps echoed in his mind. Keys turned. Cell doors clanged.

  HE was jerked awake by a rough hand.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen. I hope you had some rest?’

  It was Krebs.

  March felt raw. His eyes were gritty in the sickly neon. Through the window the sky was pearl-grey with the approaching morning.

  Jaeger grunted and swung his legs to the floor. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now we talk,’ said Krebs. ‘Come.’

  ‘Who is this kid,’ grumbled Jaeger to March under his breath, ‘to push us about?’ But he was wary enough to keep his voice low.

  They filed into the corridor and March wondered again what game was being played. Interrogation is a night-time art. Why leave it until the morning? Why give them a chance to regain their strength, to concoct a story?

  Krebs had recently shaved. His skin was studded with pinpricks of blood. He said: ‘Washroom on the right. You will wish to clean yourselves.’ It was an instruction rather than a question.

  In the mirror, red-eyed and unshaven, March looked more convict than policeman. He filled the basin, rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie, splashed icy water on his face, his forearms, the nape of his neck, let it trickle down his back. The cold sting brought him back to life.

  Jaeger stood alongside him. ‘Remember what I said.’

  March quickly turned the taps back on. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘You think they wire the toilet?’

  ‘They wire everything.’

  Krebs conducted them downstairs. The guards fell in behind them. To the cellar? They clattered across the vestibule – quieter now than when they had arrived – and out into the grudging light.

  Not the cellar.

  Waiting in the BMW was the driver who had brought them from Stuckart’s apartment. The convoy moved off, north into the rush-hour traffic which was already building up around Potsdamer Platz. In the big shops, the windows piously displayed large, gilt-framed photographs of the Führer – the official portrait from the mid-1950s, by the English photographer, Beaton. Twigs and flowers garlanded the frames, the traditional decoration heralding the Führer’s birthday. Four days to go, each of which would see a fresh sprouting of swastika banners. Soon the city would be a forest of red, white and black.

  Jaeger was gripping the arm rest, looking sick. ‘Come on, Krebs,’ he said, in a wheedling voice. ‘We’re all the same rank. You can tell us where we’re going.’

  Krebs made no reply. The dome of the Great Hall loomed ahead. Ten minutes later, when the BMW turned left on to the East-West Axis, March guessed their destination.

  IT was almost eight by the time they arrived. The iron gates of Buhler’s villa had been swung wide open. The grounds were filled with vehicles, dotted with black uniforms. One SS trooper was sweeping the lawn with a proton-magnetometer. Behind him, jammed into the ground, was a trail of red flags. Three more soldiers were digging holes. Drawn up on the gravel were Gestapo BMWs, a lorry, and a large armoured security van of the sort used for transporting gold bullion.

  March felt Jaeger nudge him. Parked in the shadows beside the house, its driver leaning against the bodywork, was a bulletproof Mercedes limousine. A metal pennant hung above the radiator grille: silver SS lightning flashes on a black background; in one corner, like a cabbalistic symbol, the gothic letter K.

  TWO

  he head of the Reich Kriminalpolizei was an old man. His name was Artur Nebe, and he was a legend.

  Nebe had been head of the Berlin detective force even before the Party came to power. He had a small head and the sallow, scaly skin of a tortoise. In 1954, to mark his sixtieth birthday, the Reichstag had voted him a large estate, including four villages, near Minsk in the Ostland, but he had never even been to look at it. He lived alone with his bed-ridden wife in Charlottenburg, in a large house marked by the smell of disinfectant and the whisper of pure oxygen. It was sometime
s said that Heydrich wanted to get rid of him, to put his own man in charge of the Kripo, but dared not. ‘Onkel Artur’ they called him in Werderscher Markt. Uncle Artur. He knew everything.

  March had seen Nebe from a distance but never met him. Now he was sitting at Buhler’s grand piano, picking out a high note with a single, yellowish claw. The instrument was untuned, the sound discordant in the dusty air.

  At the window, his broad back to the room, stood Odilo Globus.

  Krebs brought his heels together and saluted. ‘Heil Hitler! Investigators March and Jaeger.’

  Nebe continued to tap the piano key.

  ‘Ah!’ Globus turned round. ‘The great detectives.’

  Close up, he was a bull in uniform. His neck strained at his collar. His hands hung at his sides, bunched in angry red fists. There was a mass of scar tissue on his left cheek, mottled crimson. Violence crackled around him in the dry air, like static electricity. Every time Nebe struck a note, he winced. He wants to punch the old man, thought March, but he can’t. Nebe outranked him.

  ‘If the Herr Oberstgruppenführer has finished his recital,’ said Globus, through his teeth, ‘we can begin.’

  Nebe’s hand froze over the keyboard. ‘Why would anyone have a Bechstein, and leave it untuned?’ He looked at March. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘His wife was the musician, sir,’ said March. ‘She died eleven years ago.’

  ‘And nobody played in all that time?’ Nebe closed the lid quietly over the keys and drew his finger through the dust. ‘Curious.’

  Globus said: ‘We have much to do. Early this morning I reported certain matters to the Reichsführer. As you know, Herr Oberstgruppenführer, it is on his orders that this meeting is taking place. Krebs will put the position of the Gestapo.’

  March exchanged glances with Jaeger. It had gone up as far as Heydrich.

  Krebs had a typed memorandum. In his precise, expressionless voice he began to read.

  ‘Notification of Doctor Josef Buhler’s death was received by teleprinter message at Gestapo Headquarters from the Night Duty Officer of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei at two-fifteen yesterday morning, April fifteenth.

  ‘At eight-thirty, in view of Party Comrade Buhler’s honorary SS rank of Brigadeführer, the Reichsführer was personally informed of his demise.’

  March had his hands clasped behind his back, his nails digging into his palms. In Jaeger’s cheek, a muscle fluttered.

  ‘At the time of his death, the Gestapo was completing an investigation into the activities of Party Comrade Buhler. In view of this, and in view of the deceased’s former position in the General Government, the case was redesignated a matter of state security, and operational control was passed to the Gestapo.

  ‘However, due to an apparent breakdown in liaison procedures, this redesignation was not communicated to Kripo Investigator Xavier March, who effected an illegal entry to the deceased’s home.’

  The Gestapo was investigating Buhler? March struggled to keep his gaze fixed on Krebs, his expression impassive.

  ‘Next: the death of Party Comrade Wilhelm Stuckart. Inquiries by the Gestapo indicated that the cases of Stuckart and Buhler were linked. Once again, the Reichsführer was informed. Once again, investigation of the matter was transferred to the Gestapo. And once again, Investigator March, this time accompanied by Investigator Max Jaeger, conducted his own inquiries at the home of the deceased.

  ‘At zero-zero-twelve, sixteenth April, Investigators March and Jaeger were apprehended by myself at Party Comrade Stuckart’s apartment block. They agreed to accompany me to Gestapo Headquarters, pending clarification of this matter at a higher level.

  ‘Signed, Karl Krebs, Sturmbannführer.

  ‘I have dated it and timed it at six this morning.’

  Krebs folded the memorandum and handed it to the head of the Kripo. Outside, a spade rang on gravel.

  Nebe slipped the paper into his inside pocket. ‘So much for the record. Naturally, we shall prepare a minute of our own. Now, Globus: what is this really about? You are desperate to tell us, I know.’

  ‘Heydrich wanted you to see for yourself.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘What your man here missed on his little freelance excursion yesterday. Follow me, please.’

  IT was in the cellar, although even if March had smashed the padlock on the entrance and forced his way down, he doubted if he would have found it. Past the usual household rubbish – broken furniture, discarded tools, rolls of filthy carpet bound with rope – was a wood-panelled wall. One of the panels was false.

  ‘We knew what we were looking for, you see.’ Globus rubbed his hands. ‘Gentlemen, I guarantee you will never have clapped eyes on the likes of this in your entire lives.’

  Beyond the panel was a chamber. When Globus turned on the lights, it was indeed dazzling: a sacristy; a jewelbox. Angels and saints; clouds and temples; high-cheeked noblemen in white furs and red damask; sprawling pink flesh on perfumed yellow silk; flowers and sunrises and Venetian canals . . .

  ‘Go in,’ said Globus. ‘The Reichsführer is anxious that you should see it properly.’

  It was a small room – four metres square, March guessed – with a bank of spotlights built into the ceiling, directed on to the paintings which covered every wall. In the centre was an old-fashioned swivel chair, of the sort a nineteenth-century clerk might have had in a counting-house. Globus placed a gleaming jackboot on the arm and kicked, sending it spinning.

  ‘Imagine him, sitting here. Door locked. Like a dirty old man in a brothel. We found it yesterday afternoon. Krebs?’

  Krebs took the floor. ‘An expert is on his way this morning from the Führermuseum in Linz. We had Professor Braun of the Kaiser Friedrich, here in Berlin, give us a preliminary assessment last night.’

  He consulted his sheaf of notes.

  ‘At the moment, we know we have Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man by Rembrandt, Christ Carrying the Cross by Rubens, Guardi’s Venetian Palace, Krakau Suburbs by Bellotto, eight Canalettos, at least thirty-five engravings by Dürer and Kulmbach, a Gobelin. The rest he could only guess at.’

  Krebs reeled them off as if they were dishes in a restaurant. He rested his pale fingers on an altar-piece of gorgeous colours, raised on planks at the end of the room.

  ‘This is the work of the Nuremberg artist, Viet Stoss, commissioned by the King of Poland in 1477. It took ten years to complete. The centre of the triptych shows the Virgin asleep, surrounded by angels. The side panels show scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary. The predella’ – he pointed to the base of the altar-piece – ‘shows the genealogy of Christ.’

  Globus said: ‘Sturmbannführer Krebs knows of these things. He is one of our brightest officers.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Nebe. ‘Most interesting. And where did it all come from?’

  Krebs began: ‘The Viet Stoss was removed from the Church of Our Lady in Krakau in November 1939 –’

  Globus interrupted: ‘It came from the General Government. Warsaw, mainly, we think. Buhler recorded it as either lost or destroyed. God alone knows how much else the corrupt swine got away with. Think what he must have sold just to buy this place!’

  Nebe reached out and touched one of the canvases: the martyred Saint Sebastian, bound to a Doric pillar, arrows jutting from his golden skin. The varnish was cracked, like a dried river bed, but the colours beneath – red, white, purple, blue – were bright still. The painting gave off a faint smell of must and incense – the scent of pre-war Poland, of a nation vanished from the map. Some of the panels, March saw, had powdery lumps of masonry attached to their edges – traces of the monastery and castle walls from which they had been wrenched.

  Nebe was rapt before the saint. ‘Something in his expression reminds me of you, March.’ He traced the body’s outline with his fingertips and gave a wheezing laugh. ‘“The willing martyr.” What do you say, Globus?’

  Globus grunted. ‘I don’t believe
in saints. Or martyrs.’ He glared at March.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ murmured Nebe, ‘to think of Buhler, of all people, with these . . .’

  ‘You knew him?’ March blurted out the question.

  ‘Slightly, before the war. A committed National Socialist, and a dedicated lawyer. Quite a combination. A fanatic for detail. Like our Gestapo colleague here.’

  Krebs gave a slight bow. ‘The Herr Oberstgruppenführer is kind.’

  ‘The point is this,’ said Globus, irritably. ‘We have known about Party Comrade Buhler for some time. Known about his activities in the General Government. Known about his associates. Unfortunately, at some point last week, the bastard found out we were on to him.’

  ‘And killed himself?’ Nebe asked. ‘And Stuckart?’

  ‘The same. Stuckart was a complete degenerate. He not only helped himself to beauty on canvas. He liked to taste it in the flesh. Buhler had the pick of what he wanted in the East. What were those figures, Krebs?’

  ‘A secret inventory was compiled in 1940 by the Polish museum authorities. We now have it. Art treasures removed from Warsaw alone: two thousand seven hundred paintings of the European school; ten thousand seven hundred paintings by Polish artists; fourteen hundred sculptures.’

  Globus again: ‘We’re digging up some of the sculptures in the garden right now. Most of this stuff went where it was intended: the Führermuseum, Reichsmarschall Göring’s museum at Carinhall, galleries in Vienna, Berlin. But there’s a big discrepancy between the Polish lists of what was taken and our lists of what we got. It worked like this. As State Secretary, Buhler had access to everything. He would ship the stuff under escort to Stuckart at the Interior Ministry. Everything legal-looking. Stuckart would arrange for it to be stored, or smuggled out of the Reich to be exchanged for cash, jewels, gold – anything portable and non-traceable.’