Peace with the Americans in “46 — a triumph for the Fuhrer’s scientific genius! When America defeated Japan by detonating an atomic bomb, the Fuhrer had sent a V-3 rocket to explode in the skies over New York to prove he could retaliate in kind if struck. After that, the war had dwindled to a series of bloody guerilla conflicts at the fringes of the new German Empire. A nuclear stalemate which the diplomats called the Cold War.
But still the broadcasts had gone on. When Goering had died in “51, there had been a whole day of solemn music before the announcement was made. Himmler had received similar treatment when he was killed in an aircraft explosion in “62. Deaths, victories, wars, exhortations for sacrifice and revenge, the dull struggle with the Reds on the Urals front with its unpronounceable battlefields and offensives — Oktyabr’skoye, Polunochnoye, Alapayevsk…
March looked at the faces around him. Forced humour, resignation, apprehension. People with brothers and sons and husbands in the East. They kept glancing at the screens.
“People of Germany, prepare yourselves for an important statement!”
What was coming now?
The canteen was almost full. March was pressed up against a pillar. He could see Max Jaeger a few metres away, joking with a bosomy secretary from VA(1), the legal department. Max spotted him over her shoulder and gave him a grin. There was a roll of drums. The room was still. A newsreader said: “We are now going live to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.”
A bronze relief glittered in the television lights. A Nazi eagle, clutching the globe, shot rays of illumination, like a child’s drawing of a sunrise. Before it, with his thick black eyebrows and shaded jowls, stood the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Drexler. March suppressed a laugh: you would have thought that, in the whole of Germany, Goebbels could have found one spokesman who did not look like a convicted criminal.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a brief statement for you from the Reich Ministry for Foreign Affairs.” He was addressing an audience of journalists, who were off-camera. He put on a pair of glasses and began to read.
“In accordance with the long-standing and well-documented desire of the Fuhrer and People of the Greater German Reich to live in peace and security with the countries of the world, and following extensive consultations with our allies in the European Community, the Reich Ministry for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Fuhrer, has today issued an invitation to the President of the United States of America to visit the Greater German Reich for personal discussions aimed at promoting greater understanding between our two peoples. This invitation has been accepted. We understand that the American administration has indicated this morning that Herr Kennedy intends to meet the Fuhrer in Berlin in September. Heil Hitler! Long live Germany!”
The picture faded to black and another drum roll signalled the start of the national anthem. The men and women in the canteen began to sing. March pictured them at that moment all over Germany — in shipyards and steelworks and offices and schools — the hard voices and the high merged together in one great bellow of acclamation rising to the heavens.
Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles!
Uber Alles in der Welt!
His own lips moved in conformity with the rest, but no sound emerged.
“MORE fucking work for us,” said Jaeger. They were back in their office. He had his feet on the desk and was puffing at a cigar. “If you think the Fuhrertag is a security nightmare -forget it. Can you imagine what it will be like with Kennedy in town as well?”
March smiled. “I think, Max, you are missing the historic dimension of the occasion.”
“Screw the historic dimension of the occasion. I’m thinking about my sleep. The bombs are already going off like fire crackers. Look at this.”
Jaeger swung his legs off the desk and rummaged through a pile of folders. “While you were playing around by the Havel, some of us were having to do some work.”
He picked up an envelope and tipped out the contents. It was a PPD file. Personal Possessions of the Deceased. From a mound of papers he pulled out two passports and handed them to March. One belonged to an SS officer, Paul Hahn; the other to a young woman, Magda Voss.
Jaeger said: “Pretty thing, isn’t she? They’d just married. Were leaving the reception in Spandau. On their way to their honeymoon. He’s driving. They turn into Nawener Strasse, A lorry pulls out in front of them. Guy jumps out the back with a gun. Our man panics. Goes into reverse. Wham! Up the kerb, straight into a lamp-post. While he’s trying to get back into first gear — bang! — shot in the head. End of groom. Little Magda gets out of the car, tries to make a run for it. Bang! End of bride. End of honeymoon. End of every fucking thing. Except it isn’t, because the families are still back at the reception toasting the newly-weds and nobody bothers to tell them what’s happened for another two hours.”
Jaeger blew his nose on a grimy handkerchief. March looked again at the girl’s passport. She was pretty: blonde and dark-eyed; now dead in the gutter at twenty-four.
“Who did it?” He handed the passports back.
Jaeger counted off on his fingers. “Poles. Latvians. Estonians. Ukrainians. Czechs. Croats. Caucasians.
Georgians. Reds. Anarchists. Who knows? Nowadays it could be anybody. The poor idiot stuck up an open invitation to the reception on his barracks noticeboard. The Gestapo reckon a cleaner, a cook, someone like that, saw it and passed on the word. Most of these barracks ancillaries are foreigners. They were all taken away this afternoon, poor bastards.”
He put the passports and identity cards back into the envelope and tossed it into a desk drawer.
“How did it go with you?”
“Have a chocolate.” March handed the box to Jaeger, who opened it. The tinny music filled the office.
“Very tasteful.”
“What do you know about it?”
“What? The Merry Widow? The Fuhrer’s favourite operetta. My mother was mad about it.”
“So was mine.”
Every German mother was mad about it. The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar. First performed in Vienna in 1905: as sugary as one of the city’s cream cakes. Lehar had died in 1948, and Hitler had sent a personal representative to his funeral.
“What else is there to say?” Jaeger took a chocolate in one of his great paws and popped it into his mouth. “Who are these from? A secret admirer?”
“I took them from Buhler’s mailbox.” March bit into a chocolate and winced at the sickly taste of liquid cherry. “Consider: you have no friends, yet someone sends you an expensive box of chocolates from Switzerland. With no message. A box that plays the Fuhrer’s favourite tune. Who would do that?” He swallowed the other half of the chocolate. “A poisoner, perhaps?”
“Oh Christ!” Jaeger spat the contents of his mouth into his hand, pulled* out his handkerchief and began wiping the brown smears of saliva from his fingers and lips. “Sometimes I have my doubts about your sanity.”
“I am systematically destroying state evidence” said March. He forced himself to eat another chocolate. “No, worse than that: I am consuming state evidence, thereby committing a double offence. Tampering with justice while enriching myself.”
Take some leave, man. I’m serious. You need a rest. My advice is to go down and dump those fucking chocolates in the trash as fast as possible. Then come home and have supper with me and Hannelore. You look as if you haven’t had a decent meal in weeks. The Gestapo have taken the file. The autopsy report is going straight to Prinz-Albrecht Strasse. It’s over. Done. Forget it.”