“The Swiss bank account was opened in July “42, so let’s say the first seven months of that year.”
Halder turned the page, talking to himself. “Yes. I see what they’ve done. They’ve arranged the papers in four series: office correspondence, minutes and memoranda, statutes and decrees, ministry personnel…”
“What I’m looking for is something that connects Stuckart with Buhler and Luther.”
“In that case, we’d better start with office correspondence. That should give us a feel for what was going on at the time.” Halder was scribbling notes. “D/15/M/28-34. Okay. Here we go.”
Storeroom D was twenty metres down on the left. Stack fifteen, section M was in the dead centre of the room. Halder said: “Only six boxes, thank God. You take January to April, I’ll do May to August.”
The boxes were made of cardboard, each the size of a large desk drawer. There was no table, so they sat on the floor. With his back pressed against the metal shelving, March opened the first box, pulled out a handful of papers, and began to read.
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 Reichsfuhrer-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. Obergruppenfuhrer 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?7
Tor 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.”