Fatherland

by Robert Harris

  People were laughing in the drive beneath his window. A light moved across the lake. No Great Hall, no marching bands, no uniforms. For the first time in – what was it? – a year, at least – he was away from the iron and granite of Berlin. So. He held up his glass and studied the pale liquid. There were other lives, other cities.

  He noticed, along with the bottle, that she had ordered two glasses.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the telephone. He drummed his fingers on the little table.

  Madness.

  She had a habit of thrusting her hands deep into her pockets and standing with her head on one side, half-smiling. On the plane, he remembered, she had been wearing a red wool dress with a leather belt. She had good legs, in black stockings. And when she was angry or amused, which was most of the time, she would flick at the hair behind her ear.

  The laughter outside drifted away.

  ‘Where have you been the past twenty years?’ Her contemptuous question to him in Stuckart’s apartment.

  She knew so much. She danced around him.

  ‘The millions of Jews who vanished in the war . . .’

  He turned her note over in his fingers, poured himself another drink and lay back on the bed. Ten minutes later he lifted the receiver and spoke to the operator.

  ‘Room 277.’

  Madness, madness.

  THEY met in the lobby, beneath the fronds of a luxuriant palm. In the opposite corner a string quartet scraped its way through a selection from Die Fledermaus.

  March said: ‘The Scotch is very good.’

  ‘A peace offering.’

  ‘Accepted. Thank you.’ He glanced across at the elderly cellist. Her stout legs were held wide apart, as if she were milking a cow. ‘God knows why I should trust you.’

  ‘God knows why I should trust you.’

  ‘Ground rules,’ he said firmly. ‘One: no more lies. Two: we do what I say, whether you want to or not. Three: you show me what you plan to print, and if I ask you not to write something, you take it out. Agreed?’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ She smiled and offered him her hand. He took it. She had a cool, firm grip. For the first time he noticed she had a man’s watch around her wrist.

  ‘What changed your mind?’ she asked.

  He released her hand. ‘Are you ready to go out?’ She was still wearing the red dress.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have a notebook?’

  She tapped her coat pocket. ‘Never travel without one.’

  ‘Nor do I. Good. Let’s go.’

  SWITZERLAND was a cluster of lights in a great darkness, enemies all around it: Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany north and east. Its survival was a source of wonder: ‘the Swiss miracle’, they called it.

  Luxembourg had become Moselland, Alsace-Lorraine was Westmark; Austria was Ostmark. As for Czechoslovakia – that bastard child of Versailles had dwindled to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia – vanished from the map. In the East, the German Empire was carved four ways into the Reichskommissariats Ostland, Ukraine, Caucasus, Muscovy.

  In the West, twelve nations – Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland – had been corralled by Germany, under the Treaty of Rome, into a European trading bloc. German was the official second language in all schools. People drove German cars, listened to German radios, watched German televisions, worked in German-owned factories, moaned about the behaviour of German tourists in German-dominated holiday resorts, while German teams won every international sporting competition except cricket, which only the English played.

  In all this, Switzerland alone was neutral. That had not been the Führer’s intention. But by the time the Wehrmacht’s planners had designed a strategy to subdue the Swiss state the stalemate of the Cold War had begun. It remained a patch of no man’s land, increasingly useful to both sides as the years went by, a place to meet and deal in secret.

  ‘There are only three classes of citizen in Switzerland,’ the Kripo’s expert had told March. ‘American spies, German spies, and Swiss bankers trying to get hold of their money.’

  Over the past century those bankers had settled around the northern rim of the Zürich See like a rich crust; a tide-mark of money. As on Schwanenwerder, their villas presented to the world a blank face of high walls and stout gates, backed by dense screens of trees.

  March leaned forward and spoke to the driver. ‘Slow down here.’

  They were quite a cavalcade by now: March and Charlie in a taxi, followed by two cars, each occupied by a Swiss policeman. Bellerive Strasse turned into See Strasse. March counted off the numbers.

  ‘Pull over here.’

  The taxi swerved up on to the kerb. The police cars overtook them; a hundred metres down the road, their brake lights glowed.

  Charlie looked around. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now we take a look at the home of Doctor Hermann Zaugg.’

  March paid the taxi driver, who promptly turned and set off back towards the city centre. The road was quiet.

  All the villas were well-protected, but Zaugg’s – the third they came to – was a fortress. The gates were solid metal, three metres high, flanked on either side by a stone wall. A security camera scanned the entrance. March took Charlie’s arm and they strolled past, like lovers taking the air. They crossed the road and waited in a driveway on the other side. March looked at his watch. It was just after nine o’clock. Five minutes passed. He was about to suggest they leave when, with a clank and a hum of machinery, the gates began to swing open.

  Charlie whispered: ‘Someone’s coming out.’

  ‘No.’ He nodded up the road. ‘Coming in.’

  The limousine was big and powerful: a British car, a Bentley, finished in black. It came from the direction of the city, travelling rapidly, swerved, and swung into the drive. A chauffeur and another man in the front; in the back, a flash of silver hair – Zaugg’s, presumably. March just had time to notice how low the bodywork hung to the ground. Then, one after another, the tyres were absorbing the impact as the Bentley bounced over the kerb – whump, whump, whump, whump – and it was gone.

  The gates started to close, then stopped halfway. Two men appeared from the direction of the house, walking fast.

  ‘You!’ one of them shouted. ‘Both of you! Stay where you are!’ He strode into the road. March seized Charlie by the elbow. At that instant, one of the police cars began reversing towards them, gearbox howling. The man glanced to his right, hesitated, and retreated.

  The car skidded to a halt. The window was wound down. A weary voice said: ‘For fuck’s sake, get in.’

  March opened the back door and ushered in Charlie, then slipped in after her. The Swiss policeman executed a rapid three-point turn, and accelerated away towards the city. Zaugg’s bodyguards had already disappeared; the gates were banging shut behind them.

  March twisted round to stare out of the rear window. ‘Are all your bankers as well-protected as that?’

  ‘Depends who they do business with.’ The policeman adjusted his mirror to look at them. He was in his late forties, with bloodshot eyes. ‘Are you planning any further adventures, Herr March? A brawl somewhere, perhaps? It would help if we had a little warning next time.’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be following us, not guarding us.’

  ‘“Follow and protect as necessary”: those are our orders. That’s my partner in the car behind, by the way. It’s been a fucking long day. Excuse my language, Fräulein – they never said there’d be a woman involved.’

  ‘Can you drop us back at the hotel?’ asked March.

  The policeman grumbled. ‘So now I am to add chauffeur to my list of duties?’ He switched on his radio and spoke to his partner. ‘Panic over. We’re going back to the Baur au Lac.’

  Charlie had her notebook open on her lap and was writing. ‘Who are these people?’

&nbs
p; March hesitated but then thought: what does it matter? ‘This officer and his partner are members of the Swiss Polizei, here to ensure I don’t attempt to defect while outside the borders of the Reich. And also to ensure I return in one piece.’

  ‘Always a pleasure, assisting our German colleagues,’ grunted a voice from the front.

  Charlie said: ‘There’s a danger you might not?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She wrote something down. He looked away. Off to their left, a couple of kilometres across the See, the lights of Zürich formed a yellow ribbon on the dark water. His breath misted the window.

  Zaugg must have been returning from his office. It was late, but the burghers of Zürich worked hard for their money – twelve or fourteen hours a day was common. The banker’s house could only be reached by travelling this road, which ruled out the most effective security precaution: varying his route each night. And See Strasse, bounded on one side by the lake, and with several dozen streets leading off the other, was a security man’s nightmare. That explained something.

  ‘Did you notice his car?’ he said to Charlie. ‘How heavy it was, the noise its tyres made? You see those often in Berlin. That Bentley was armour-plated.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Two bodyguards, a pair of prison gates, remote cameras and a bomb-proof car. What kind of banker is that?’

  He could not see her face properly in the shadows, but he could feel her excitement beside him. She said: ‘We’ve got the letter of authorisation, remember? Whatever kind of banker he is – he’s our banker now.’

  SEVEN

  hey ate at a restaurant in the old town – a place with thick linen napkins and heavy silver cutlery, where the waiters lined up behind them and whipped the covers from their plates like a troupe of conjurers performing a trick. If the hotel had cost him half a month’s salary, this meal would cost him the other half, but March didn’t care.

  She was unlike any other woman he had met. She was not one of the homebodies of the Party’s Women’s League, all ‘Kinder, Kirche und Kuche’ – her husband’s supper always ready on the table, his uniform freshly pressed, five children asleep upstairs. And while a good National Socialist girl abhorred cosmetics, nicotine and alcohol, Charlie Maguire made liberal use of all three. Her dark eyes soft in the candlelight, she talked almost without pause of New York, foreign reporting, her father’s days in Berlin, the wickedness of Joseph Kennedy, politics, money, men, herself.

  She had been born in Washington DC in the spring of 1939. (‘The last spring of peace, my parents called it – in all senses.’) Her father had recently returned from Berlin to work at the State Department. Her mother was trying to make a success as an actress, but after 1941 was lucky simply to escape internment. In the 1950s, after the war, Michael Maguire had gone to Omsk, capital of what was left of Russia, to serve in the US Embassy. It was considered too dangerous a place to take four children. Charlotte had been left behind to be educated at expensive schools in Virginia; Charlie had dropped out at seventeen – spitting and swearing and rebelling against everything in sight.

  ‘I went to New York. Tried to be an actress. That didn’t work. Tried to be a journalist. That suited me better. Enrolled at Columbia – to my father’s great relief. And then – what do you know? – I start an affair with Teacher.’ She shook her head. ‘How stupid can you get?’ She blew out a jet of cigarette smoke. ‘Is there any more wine in there?’

  He poured out the last of the bottle, ordered another. It seemed to be his turn to say something. ‘Why Berlin?’

  ‘A chance to get away from New York. My mother being German made it easier to get a visa. I have to admit: World European Features is not quite as grand as it sounds. Two men in an office on the wrong side of town with a telex machine. To be honest, they were happy to take anyone who could get a visa out of Berlin. Even me.’ She looked at him with shining eyes. ‘I didn’t know he was married, you see. The teacher.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Basic failure of research there, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘When did it end?’

  ‘Last year. I came to Europe to show them all I could do it. Him especially. That’s why I felt so sick about being expelled. God, the thought of facing them all again . . .’ She sipped her wine. ‘Perhaps I’ve got a father-fixation. How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-two.’

  ‘Bang in my age range.’ She smiled at him over the rim of her glass. ‘You’d better watch out. Are you married?’

  ‘Divorced.’

  ‘Divorced! That’s promising. Tell me about her.’

  Her frankness kept catching him off-guard. ‘She was,’ he began, and corrected himself. ‘She is . . .’ He stopped. How did you summarise someone you were married to for nine years, divorced from for seven, who had just denounced you to the authorities? ‘She is not like you,’ was all he could think to say.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘She does not have ideas of her own. She is concerned about what people think. She has no curiosity. She is bitter.’

  ‘About you?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Is she seeing anyone else?’

  ‘Yes. A Party bureaucrat. Much more suitable than me.’

  ‘And you? Do you have anyone?’

  A klaxon sounded in March’s mind. Dive, dive, dive. He had had two affairs since his divorce. A teacher who had lived in the apartment beneath his, and a young widow who taught history at the university – another friend of Rudi Halder’s: he sometimes suspected Rudi had made it his mission in life to find him a new wife. The liaisons had drifted on for a few months, until both women had tired of the last-minute calls from Werderscher Markt: ‘Something’s come up, I’m sorry . . .’

  Instead of answering her, March said: ‘So many questions. You should have been a detective.’

  She made a face at him. ‘So few answers. You should have been a reporter.’

  THE waiter poured more wine. After he had moved away, she said: ‘You know, when I met you, I hated you on sight.’

  ‘Ah. The uniform. It blots out the man.’

  ‘That uniform does. When I looked for you on the plane this afternoon I barely recognised you.’

  It occurred to March that here was another reason for his good mood: he had not caught a glimpse of his black silhouette in a mirror, had not seen people shrinking away at his approach.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what do they say of the SS in America?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh come on, March. Please. Don’t let’s ruin a good evening.’

  ‘I mean it. I’d like to know.’ He had to coax her into answering.

  ‘Well, murderers,’ she said eventually. ‘Sadists. Evil personified. All that. You asked for it. Nothing personal intended, you understand? Any other questions?’

  ‘A million. A lifetime’s worth.’

  ‘A lifetime! Well go ahead. I have nothing planned.’

  He was momentarily dumbfounded, paralysed by choice. Where to start?

  ‘The war in the East,’ he said. ‘In Berlin we hear only of victories. Yet the Wehrmacht has to ship the coffins home from the Urals front at night, on special trains, so nobody sees how many dead there are.’

  ‘I read somewhere that the Pentagon estimates a hundred thousand Germans killed since 1960. The Luftwaffe is bombing the Russian towns flat day after day and still they keep coming back at you. You can’t win because they’ve nowhere else to go. And you daren’t use nuclear weapons in case we retaliate and the world blows up.’

  ‘What else?’ He tried to think of recent headlines. ‘Goebbels says German space technology beats the Americans every time.’

  ‘Actually, I think that’s true. Peenemünde had satellites in orbit years ahead of ours.’

  ‘Is Winston Churchill still alive?’

  ‘Yes. He’s an old man now. In Canada. He lives there. So does the Queen.’ She noticed his puzzlement. ‘Elizabeth claims the English throne from her uncle.’

  ‘And the Jews?�
�� said March. ‘What do the Americans say we did to them?’

  She was shaking her head. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Please. The truth.’

  ‘The truth? How do I know what the truth is?’ Suddenly she had raised her voice, was almost shouting. People at the next table were turning round. ‘We’re brought up to think of Germans as something from outer space. Truth doesn’t enter into it.’

  ‘Very well then. Give me the propaganda.’

  She glanced away, exasperated, but then looked back with an intensity that made it difficult for him to meet her eyes. ‘All right. They say you scoured Europe for every living Jew – men, women, children, babies. They say you shipped them to ghettos in the East where thousands died of malnutrition and disease. Then you forced the survivors farther East, and nobody knows what happened after that. A handful escaped over the Urals into Russia. I’ve seen them on TV. Funny old men, most of them; a bit crazy. They talk about execution pits, medical experiments, camps that people went into but never came out of. They talk about millions of dead. But then the German ambassador comes along in his smart suit and tells everyone it’s all just communist propaganda. So nobody knows what’s true and what isn’t. And I’ll tell you something else – most people don’t care.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I.’ She reached for her cigarettes, then stopped and looked at him again. ‘That’s why you changed your mind at the hotel about bringing me along, isn’t it? Nothing to do with whisky. You wanted to pick my brains.’ She started to laugh. ‘And I thought I was using you.’

  AFTER that, they got on better. Whatever poison there was between them had been drawn. He told her about his father and how he had followed him into the Navy, about how he had drifted into police work and found a taste for it – a vocation, even.

  She said: ‘I still don’t understand how you can wear it.’

  ‘What?’