YOU need a little luck in this life.
The first document was a letter dated 2 January, from the under state secretary at the Air Ministry, regarding the distribution of gas masks to the Reichsluftschutzbund, the Air Raid Protection organisation. The second, dated 4 January, was from the Office of the Four-Year Plan and concerned the alleged unauthorised use of gasoline by senior government officials.
The third was from Reinhard Heydrich.
March saw the signature first – an angular, spidery scrawl. Then his eyes travelled to the letterhead – the Reich Main Security Office, Berlin SW 11, Prinz-Albrecht Strasse 8 – then to the date: 6 January 1942. And only then to the text:
This is to confirm that the inter-agency discussion followed by luncheon originally scheduled for 9 December 1941 has now been postponed to 20 January 1942 in the office of the International Criminal Police Commission, Berlin, Am grossen Wannsee, Nr. 56/58.
March leafed through the other letters in the box: carbon flimsies and creamy originals; imposing letterheads – Reichschancellery, Economics Ministry, Organisation-Todt; invitations to luncheons and meetings; pleas, demands, circulars. But there was nothing else from Heydrich.
March passed the letter to Halder. ‘What do you make of this?’
Halder frowned. ‘Unusual, I would say, for the Main Security Office to convene a meeting of government agencies.’
‘Can we find out what they discussed?’
‘Should be able to. We can cross-reference it to the minutes and memoranda series. Let’s see: 20 January . . .’
Halder looked at his notes, pulled himself to his feet and walked along the stack. He dragged out another box, returned with it and sat, cross-legged. March watched him flick through the contents. Suddenly, he stopped. He said slowly: ‘My God . . .’
‘What is it?’
Halder handed him a single sheet of paper, on which was typed: ‘In the interests of state security, the minutes of the inter-agency meeting of 20 January 1942 have been removed at the request of the Reichsführer-SS.’
Halder said: ‘Look at the date.’
March looked. It was 6 April 1964. The minutes had been extracted by Heydrich eleven days earlier.
‘Can he do that – legally, I mean?’
‘The Gestapo can weed out whatever it wants on the grounds of security. They usually transfer the papers to the vaults in Prinz-Albrecht Strasse.’
There was a noise in the corridor outside. Halder held up a warning finger. Both men were silent, motionless, as the guard clattered past, wheeling the empty cart back from the furnace room. They listened as the sounds faded towards the other end of the building.
March whispered: ‘Now what do we do?’
Halder scratched his head. ‘An inter-agency meeting at the level of state-secretary . . .’
March saw what he was thinking. ‘Buhler and Luther would have been invited, as well?’
‘It would seem logical. At that rank, they get fussy about protocol. You wouldn’t have a state secretary from one ministry attending, and only a junior civil servant from another. What time is it?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
‘They’re an hour ahead in Krakau.’ Halder chewed his lip for a moment, then reached a decision. He stood. ‘I’ll telephone my friend who works at the archives in the General Government and ask if the SS have been sniffing around there in the past couple of weeks. If they haven’t, maybe I can persuade him to go in tomorrow and see if the minutes are still in Buhler’s papers.’
‘Couldn’t we just check here, in the Foreign Ministry archives? In Luther’s papers?’
‘No. Too vast. It could take us weeks. This is the best way, believe me.’
‘Be careful what you say to him, Rudi.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m aware of the dangers.’ Halder paused at the door. ‘And no smoking while I’m gone, for Christ’s sake. This is the most inflammable building in the Reich.’
True enough, thought March. He waited until Halder had gone and then began walking up and down between the stacks of boxes. He wanted a cigarette, badly. His hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets.
What a monument to German bureaucracy this place was. Herr A, wishing to do something, asked permission of Doctor B. Doctor B covered himself by referring it upwards to Ministerialdirektor C. Ministerialdirektor C shuffled it to Reichsminister D, who said he would leave it to the judgement of Herr A, who naturally went back to Doctor B . . . The alliances and rivalries, traps and intrigues of three decades of Party rule wove in and out of these metal stacks; ten thousand webs, spun from paper threads, suspended in the cool air.
Halder was back within ten minutes. ‘The SS were in Krakau two weeks ago all right.’ He was rubbing his hands uneasily. ‘Their memory is still vivid. A distinguished visitor. Obergruppenführer Globocnik himself.’
‘Everywhere I turn,’ said March. ‘Globocnik!’
‘He flew in on a Gestapo jet from Berlin, with special authorisation from Heydrich, personally signed. He gave them all the shits, apparently. Shouting and swearing. Knew exactly what he was looking for: one file removed. He was out of there by lunchtime.’
Globus, Heydrich, Nebe. March put his hand to his head. It was dizzying. ‘So here it ends?’
‘Here it ends. Unless you think there might be something else in Stuckart’s papers.’
March looked down at the boxes. The contents seemed to him as dead as dust; dead men’s bones. The thought of sifting through them any more was repugnant to him. He needed to breathe some fresh air. ‘Forget it, Rudi. Thanks.’
Halder stooped to pick up Heydrich’s note. ‘Interesting that the conference was postponed, from December the ninth to January the twentieth.’
‘What’s the significance of that?’
Halder gave him a pitying look. ‘Were you really so completely cooped-up in that fucking tin can we had to live in? Did the outside world never penetrate? On December the seventh, 1941, you blockhead, the forces of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, attacked the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. On December the eleventh, Germany declared war on the United States. Good reasons to postpone a conference, wouldn’t you say?’ Halder was grinning, but slowly the grin faded, to be replaced by a more thoughtful expression. ‘I wonder . . .’
‘What?’
He tapped the paper. ‘There must have been an original invitation, before this one.’
‘So what?’
‘It depends. Sometimes our friends from the Gestapo are not quite as efficient at weeding out embarrassing details as they like to think, especially if they’re in a hurry . . .’
March was already standing in front of the stack of boxes, glancing up and down, his depression lifted. ‘Which one? Where do we start?’
‘For a conference at that level, Heydrich would have had to have given the participants at least two weeks’ notice.’ Halder looked at his notes. ‘That would mean Stuckart’s office correspondence file for November 1941. Let me see. That should be box twenty-six, I think.’
He joined March in front of the shelves and counted off the boxes until he found the one he wanted. He pulled it down, cradled it. ‘Don’t snatch, Zavi. All in good time. History teaches us patience.’
He knelt, placed the box in front of him, opened it, pulled out an armful of papers. He glanced at each in turn, placing them in a pile to his left. ‘Invitation to a reception given by the Italian ambassador: boring. Conference organised by Walther Darre at the Agriculture Ministry: very boring . . .’
He went on like that for perhaps two minutes, with March standing, watching, nervously grinding his fist into his palm. Then suddenly Halder froze. ‘Oh shit.’ He read it through again and looked up. ‘Invitation from Heydrich. Not boring at all, I’m afraid. Not boring at all.’
FOUR
he heavens were in chaos. Nebulae exploded. Comets and meteors rushed across the sky, disappeared for an instant, then detonated against green oceans of cloud.
Above the Tiergarten, the firework display was nearing its climax. Parachute flares lit up Berlin like an air raid.
As March waited in his car to turn left on to Unter den Linden, a gang of SA men lurched out in front of him. Two of them, their arms draped around one another, performed a drunken can-can in the beam of the headlights. The others banged on the Volkswagen’s body work, or pressed their faces against the windows – eyes bulging, tongues lolling; grotesque apes. March put the engine into first gear and skidded away. There was a thud as one of the dancers was sent spinning.
He drove back to Werderscher Markt. All police leave had been cancelled. Every window was ablaze with electric light. In the foyer, someone hailed him, but March ignored them. He clattered down the stairs to the basement.
Bank vaults and basements and underground store rooms . . . I am turning into a troglodyte, thought March; a cave-dweller, a recluse; a robber of paper tombs.
The Gorgon of the Registry was still sitting in her lair. Did she never sleep? He showed her his ID. There were a couple of other detectives at the central desk, leafing in a languid manner through the ubiquitous manila files. March took a seat in the farthest corner of the room. He switched on an angle-poise lamp, bent its shade low over the table. From inside his tunic he drew the three sheets of paper he had taken from the Reichsarchiv.
They were poor-quality photostats. The machine had been set too faint, the originals had been thrust into it, hastily and skewed. He did not blame Rudi for that. Rudi had not wanted to make the copies at all. Rudi had been terrified. All his schoolboy bravado had vanished when he read Heydrich’s invitation. March had been obliged virtually to drag him to the photocopier. The moment the historian had finished, he had darted back into the storeroom, shovelled the papers back into the boxes, put the boxes back on to the shelves. At his insistence, they had left the archive building by a rear entrance.
‘I think, Zavi, we should not see one another for a long time now.’
‘Of course.’
‘You know how it is . . .’
Halder had stood, miserable and helpless, while above their heads the fireworks had whooshed and banged. March had embraced him –‘Don’t feel bad; I know: your family come first’ – and quickly walked away.
Document One. Heydrich’s original invitation, dated 19 November 1941:
On 31.7.1941, the Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich charged me, in co-operation with all the other relevant central agencies, to make all the necessary preparations with regard to organisational, technical and material measures for a complete solution of the Jewish question in Europe and to present him shortly with a complete draft proposal on this matter. I enclose a photocopy of this commission.
In view of the extraordinary importance which must be accorded to these questions, and in the interest of securing a uniform view among the relevant central agencies of the further tasks concerned with the remaining work on this final solution, I propose to make these problems the subject of a general discussion. This is particularly necessary since from 10 October onwards the Jews have been evacuated from Reich territory, including the Protectorate, to the East in a continuous series of transports.
I therefore invite you to join me and others, whose names I enclose, at a discussion followed by luncheon on 9 December 1941 at 12.00 in the office of the International Criminal Police Commission, Berlin, Am grossen Wannsee, Nr. 56/58.
Document Two. A photostat of a photostat, almost illegible in places, the words rubbed away like an ancient inscription on a tomb. Hermann Goering’s directive to Heydrich, dated 31 July 1941:
To supplement the task that was assigned to you on 24 January 1939, which dealt with the solution of the Jewish problem by emigration and evacuation in the most suitable way, I hereby charge you with making all necessary preparations with regard to organisational, technical and material matters for bringing about a complete solution of the Jewish question within the German sphere of influence in Europe.
Wherever other governmental agencies are involved, these are to co-operate with you.
I request you further to send me, in the near future, an overall plan covering the organisational, technical and material measures necessary for the accomplishment of the final solution of the Jewish question which we desire.
Document Three. A list of the fourteen people Heydrich had invited to the conference. Stuckart was third on the list; Buhler, sixth; Luther, seventh. March recognised a couple of the others.
He ripped a sheet from his notebook, wrote down eleven names and took it to the issuing desk. The two detectives had gone. The Registrar was nowhere to be seen. He rapped on the counter and shouted: ‘Shop!’ From behind a row of filing cabinets came a guilty clink of glass on bottle. So that was her secret. She must have forgotten he was there. A moment later, she waddled into view.
‘What do we have on these eleven men?’
He tried to hand her the list. She folded a pair of plump arms across a greasy tunic. ‘No more than three files at any one time, without special authorisation.’
‘Never mind that.’
‘It is not permitted.’
‘It is not permitted to drink alcohol on duty, either, yet you stink of it. Now get me these files.’
To every man and woman, a number; to every number, a file. Not all files were held at Werderscher Markt. Only those whose lives had come into contact with the Reich Kriminalpolizei, for whatever reason, had left their spoor here. But by using the information bureau at Alexander Platz, and the obituaries of the Völkischer Beobachter (published annually as The Roll Call of the Fallen) March was able to fill in the gaps. He tracked down every name. It took him two hours.
The first man on the list was Doctor Alfred Meyer of the East Ministry. According to his Kripo file, Meyer had committed suicide in 1960 after undergoing treatment for various mental illnesses.
The second name: Doctor Georg Leibrandt, also of the East Ministry. He had died in an automobile accident in 1959, his car crushed by a truck on the autobahn between Stuttgart and Augsburg. The driver of the truck had never been found.
Erich Neumann, State Secretary in the Office of the Four Year Plan, had shot himself in 1957.
Doctor Roland Freisler, State Secretary from the Justice Ministry: hacked to death by a maniac with a knife on the steps of the Berlin People’s Court in the winter of 1954. An investigation into how his security guards had managed to let a criminal lunatic come so close had concluded that nobody was to blame. The assassin had been shot seconds after the attack on Freisler.
At this point, March had gone into the corridor for a cigarette. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, tilted back his head and let it out slowly, as if taking a cure.
He returned to find a fresh heap of files on his desk.
SS-Oberführer Gerhard Klopfer, deputy head of the Party Chancellery, had been reported missing by his wife in May 1963; his body had been found by building-site workers in southern Berlin, stuffed into a cement mixer.
Friedrich Kritzinger. That name was familiar. Of course. March remembered the scenes from the television news: the familiar taped-off street, the wrecked car, the widow supported by her sons. Kritzinger, the former Ministerialdirektor from the Reich Chancellery, had been blown up outside his home in Munich just over a month ago, on 7 March. No terrorist group had yet claimed responsibility.
Two men were recorded by the Völkischer Beobachter as having died of natural causes. SS-Standartenführer Adolf Eichmann of the Reich Main Security Office had succumbed to a heart attack in 1961. SS-Sturmbannführer Doctor Rudolf Lange of KdS Latvia had died of a brain tumour in 1955.
Heinrich Müller. Here was another name March knew. The Bavarian policeman Müller, the former head of the Gestapo, had been on board Himmler’s plane when it crashed in 1962, killing everyone on board.
SS-Oberführer Doctor Karl Schöngarth, representing the security services of the General Government, had fallen beneath the wheels of a U-bahn train pull
ing into Zoo Station on 9 April 1964 – barely more than a week ago. There were no witnesses.
SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Otto Hoffmann of the Reich Security Office had been found hanging from a length of clothesline in his Spandau apartment on Boxing Day 1963.
That was all. Of the fourteen men who had attended the conference at Heydrich’s invitation, thirteen were dead. The fourteenth – Luther – was missing.
AS part of its campaign to raise public awareness about terrorism, the Propaganda Ministry had produced a series of children’s cartoons. Someone had pinned one up on the noticeboard on the second floor. A little girl receives a parcel and begins opening it. In each succeeding picture she removes more layers of wrapping paper, until she is left holding an alarm clock with two sticks of dynamite attached to it. The last picture is an explosion, with the caption: ‘Warning! Do not open a parcel unless you know its contents!’
A good joke. A maxim for every German policeman. Do not open a parcel unless you know its contents. Do not ask a question unless you know the answer.
Endlösung: final solution. Endlosung. Endlosung. The word tolled in March’s head as he half-walked, half-ran along the corridor and into his office.
Endlösung.
He wrenched open the drawers of Max Jaeger’s desk and searched through the clutter. Max was notoriously inefficient about administrative matters, had often been reprimanded for his laxity. March prayed he had not taken the warnings to heart.
He had not.
Bless you, Max, you dumbhead.
He slammed the drawers shut.
Only then did he notice it. Someone had attached a yellow message slip to March’s telephone: ‘Urgent. Contact the Duty Office immediately.’
FIVE
n the marshalling yards of the Gotenland railway station, they had set up arc lights around the body. From a distance the scene looked oddly glamorous, like a film set.
March stumbled towards it, up and down, across the wooden sleepers and metal tracks, over the diesel-soaked stone.
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