March was in a taxi heading south through Wedding. This was workers” Berlin, a communist stronghold of the 1920s. The factory whistles, in a festive gesture, had sounded an hour earlier than usual. Now the streets were dense with damp revellers. The Blockwarts had been active. From every second or third building, a banner hung -mostly swastikas, but also the occasional slogan, strung between the iron balconies of the fortress-tenements. WORKERS OF BERLIN SALUTE THE FUHRER ON HIS 75TH BIRTHDAY! LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION! LONG LIVE OUR GUIDE AND FIRST COMRADE ADOLF HITLER! The back streets were in a delirium of colour, throbbing to the oohm-pah! of the local SA bands. And this was only Friday. March wondered what the Wedding authorities had planned for the day itself.
During the night, on the corner of Wolff Strasse, some rebellious spirit had added a piece of graffiti, in white paint:
ANYONE FOUND NOT ENJOYING THEMSELVES WILL BE SHOT.
A couple of anxious-looking brownshirts were trying to clean it off.
March took the taxi as far as Fritz-Todt Platz. His Volkswagen was still outside Stuckart’s apartment, where he had parked it the night before last. He looked up at the fourth floor. Someone had drawn all the curtains.
At Werderscher Markt, he stowed his suitcase in his office and rang the Duty Officer. Martin Luther had not been located.
Krause said: “Between you and me, March, Globus is driving us all fucking mad. In here every half-hour, ranting and raving that someone will go to a KZ unless he gets results.”
“The Herr Obergruppenfuhrer is a very dedicated officer.”
“Oh, he is, he is.” Krause’s voice was suddenly panicky. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”
March hung up. That would give whoever was listening to his calls something to think about.
He lugged the typewriter across to his desk and inserted a single sheet of paper. He lit a cigarette.
To: Artur Nebe, SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer, Reich Kriminalpolizei
FROM: X. March, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer 17.4.64
1. I have the honour to inform you that at 10.00 this morning I attended the premises of Zaugg Cie, Bankiers, Bahnhof Strasse, Zurich.
2. The numbered account, whose existence we discussed yesterday, was opened by Foreign Ministry Under State Secretary Martin Luther on 8.7.42. Four keys were issued.
3. The box was subsequently opened on three occasions: 17.12.42,9.8.43,13.4.64.
4. On inspection by myself, the box was found to contain
March leaned back in his seat and blew a pair of neat smoke rings towards the ceiling. The thought of that painting in the hands of Nebe — dumped into his collection of bombastic, syrupy Schmutzlers and Kirchners — was repugnant, even sacrilegious. Better to leave her at peace in the darkness. He let his fingers rest on the typewriter keys for a moment, then tapped: nothing.
He wound the paper out of the typewriter, signed it, and sealed it in an envelope. He called Nebe’s office and was ordered to bring it up at once, personally. He hung up and stared out the window at the brickwork view.
Why not?
He stood and checked along the bookshelves until he found the Berlin area telephone directory. He took it down and looked up a number, which he dialled from the office next door, so as not to be overheard.
A man’s voice answered: “Reichsarchiv.”
TEN minutes later his boots were sinking into the soft mire of Artur Nebe’s office carpet.
“Do you believe in coincidences, March?”
“No, sir.”
“No,” said Nebe. “Good. Neither do I.” He put down his magnifying glass and pushed away March’s report. “I don’t believe two retired public servants of the same age and rank just happen to choose to commit suicide rather than be exposed as corrupt. My God” — he gave a harsh little laugh -’if every government official in Berlin took that approach, the streets would be piled high with the dead. Nor do they just happen to be murdered in the week an American president announces he will grace us with a visit.”
He pushed back his chair and hobbled across to a small bookcase lined with the sacred texts of National Socialism: Mein Kampf, Rosenberg’s Mythus der XX. Jahrhunderts, Goebbels’s Tagebucher… He pressed a switch and the front of the bookcase swung open to reveal a cocktail cabinet. The tomes, March saw now, were merely the spines of books, pasted on to the wood.
Nebe helped himself to a large vodka and returned to his desk. March continued to stand before him, neither fully at attention nor fully at ease.
“Globus works for Heydrich,” said Nebe. "That’s simple. Globus wouldn’t wipe his own arse unless Heydrich told him it was time to do it.”
March said nothing.
“And Heydrich works for the Fuhrer most of the time, and all of the time he works for himself…”
Nebe held the heavy tumbler to his lips. His lizard’s tongue darted into the vodka, playing with it. He was silent for a while. Then he said: “Do you know why we’re greasing up to the Americans, March?”
“No, sir.”
“Because we’re in the shit. Here is something you won’t read in the little Doctor’s newspapers. Twenty million settlers in the East by 1960, that was Himmler’s plan. Ninety million by the end of the century. Fine. Well, we shipped them out all right. Trouble is, half of them want to come back. Consider that cosmic piece of irony, March: living space that no one wants to live in. Terrorism” — he gestured with his glass, the ice clinked — “I don’t need to tell an officer of the Kripo how serious terrorism has become. The Americans supply money, weapons, training. They’ve kept the Reds going for twenty years. As for us: the young don’t want to fight and the old don’t want to work.”
He shook his grey head at such follies, fished an ice cube out of his drink and sucked it noisily.
“Heydrich’s mad for this American deal. He’d kill to keep it sweet. Is that what’s happening here, March? Buhler, Stuckart, Luther — were they a threat to it somehow?”
Nebe’s eyes searched his face. March stared straight ahead.
“You’re an irony yourself, March, in a way. Did you ever consider that?”
“No, sir.”
“ ‘No, sir.’ ” Nebe mimicked him. “Well consider it now. We set out to breed a generation of supermen to rule an empire, yes? We trained them to apply hard logic -pitilessly, even cruelly. Remember what the Fuhrer once said? "My greatest gift to the Germans is that I have taught them to think clearly." And what happens? A few of you -perhaps the best of you — begin to turn this pitiless clear thinking on to us. I tell you, I’m glad I’m an old man. I fear the future.” He was quiet for a minute, lost in his own thoughts.
At length, disappointed, the old man picked up the magnifying glass. “Corruption it is, then.” He read through March’s report once more, then tore it up and dropped it into his waste bin.
CLIO, the Muse of History, guarded the Reichsarchiv: an Amazonian nude designed by Adolf Ziegler, the “Reich Master of the Pubic Hair”. She frowned across the Avenue of Victory towards the Soldiers” Hall, where a long queue of tourists waited to file past Frederick the Great’s bones. Pigeons perched on the slopes of her immense bosom, like mountaineers on the face of a glacier. Behind her, a sign had been carved above the entrance to the archive, gold leaf inlaid on polished granite. A quotation from the Fuhrer:
FOR ANY NATION, THE RIGHT HISTORY IS WORTH 100 DIVISIONS.
Rudolf Halder led March inside, and up to the third floor. He pushed at the double-doors and stood aside to let him walk through. A corridor with stone walls and a stone floor seemed to stretch for ever.