Fatherland (17 page)

In the mirror, red eyed and unshaven, March looked more convict than policeman. He filled the basin, rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie, splashed icy water on his face, his forearms, the nape of his neck, let it trickle down his back. The cold sting brought him back to life.

Jaeger stood alongside him. "Remember what I said."

March quickly turned the taps back on. "Be careful."

"You think they wire the toilet?"

"They wire everything."

Krebs conducted them downstairs. The guards fell in behind them.
To the cellar?
They clattered across the vestibule—quieter now than when they had arrived—and out into the grudging light.

Not the cellar.

Waiting in the BMW was the driver who had brought them from Stuckart's apartment. The convoy moved off, north into the rush hour traffic that was already building up around Potsdamer-Platz. In the big shops, the windows piously displayed large gilt-framed photographs of the Führer—the official portrait from the mid-1950s by the English photographer Cecil Beaton. The frames were garlanded with twigs and flowers, the traditional decoration heralding the Führer's birthday. Four days to go, each of which would see a fresh sprouting of swastika banners. Soon the city would be a forest of red, white and black.

Jaeger was gripping the armrest, looking sick. "Come
on, Krebs," he said in a wheedling voice. "We're all the same rank. You can tell us where we're going."

Krebs made no reply. The dome of the Great Hall loomed ahead. Ten minutes later, when the BMW turned left onto the East-West Axis, March guessed their destination.

It was almost eight by the time they arrived. The iron gates of Buhler's villa had been swung wide open. The grounds were filled with vehicles, dotted with black uniforms. One SS trooper was sweeping the lawn with a proton magnetometer. Behind him, jammed into the ground, was a trail of red flags. Three more soldiers were digging holes. Drawn up on the gravel were Gestapo BMWs, a lorry and a large armored security van of the sort used for transporting gold bullion.

March felt Jaeger nudge him. Parked in the shadows beside the house, its driver leaning against the bodywork, was a bulletproof Mercedes limousine. A metal pennant hung above the radiator grille: silver SS lightning flashes on a black background; in one corner, like a cabalistic symbol, the Gothic letter K.

The head of the Reich Kriminalpolizei was an old man. His name was Artur Nebe, and he was a legend.

Nebe had been head of the Berlin detective force even before the Party had come to power. He had a small head and the sallow, scaly skin of a tortoise. In 1954, to mark his sixtieth birthday, the Reichstag had voted him a large estate, including four villages, near Minsk in the Ostland, but he had never even been to look at it. He lived alone with his bedridden wife in Charlottenburg, in a large house marked by the smell of disinfectant and the whisper of pure oxygen. It was sometimes said that Heydrich wanted to get rid of him, to put his own man in charge of the Kripo, but dared not. "Onkel Artur" they called him in Werderscher-Markt: Uncle Artur. He knew everything.

March had seen Nebe from a distance but had never met him. Now he was sitting at Buhler's grand piano, picking at a high note with a single yellowish claw. The instrument was untuned, the sound discordant in the dusty air.

At the window, his broad back to the room, stood Odilo Globocnik.

Krebs brought his heels together and saluted. "Heil Hitler! Investigators March and Jaeger."

Nebe continued to tap the piano key.

"Ah!" Globus turned around. "The great detectives."

Close up, he was a bull in uniform. His neck strained at his collar. His hands hung at his sides, bunched in angry red fists. There was a mass of scar tissue on his left cheek, mottled crimson. Violence crackled around him in the dry air like static electricity. Every time Nebe struck a note, he winced. He wants to punch the old man, thought March, but he can't. Nebe outranks him.

"If the Herr Oberstgruppenführer has finished his recital," said Globus through his teeth, "we can begin."

Nebe's hand froze over the keyboard. "Why would anyone have a Bechstein and leave it untuned?" He looked at March. "Why would he do that?"

"His wife was the musician, sir," said March. "She died eleven years ago."

"And nobody played in all that time?" Nebe closed the lid quietly over the keys and drew his finger through the dust. "Curious."

Globus said, "We have much to do. Early this morning I reported certain matters to the Reichsführer. As you know, Herr Oberstgruppenführer, it is on his orders that this meeting is taking place. Krebs will state the position of the Gestapo."

March exchanged glances with Jaeger. So: it had gone up as far as Heydrich.

Krebs had a typed memorandum. In his precise, expressionless voice he began to read.

"Notification of Doctor Josef Buhler's death was received by teleprinter message at Gestapo Headquarters from the night duty officer of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei at two-fifteen yesterday morning, April fifteenth.

"At eight-thirty, in view of Party Comrade Buhler's honorary SS rank of Brigadeführer, the Reichsführer was personally informed of his demise."

March had his hands clasped behind his back, his nails
digging into his palms. In Jaeger's cheek, a muscle fluttered.

"At the time of his death, the Gestapo was completing an investigation into the activities of Party Comrade Buhler. In view of this, and in view of the deceased's former position in the General Government, the case was redesignated a matter of state security, and operational control was passed to the Gestapo.

"However, due to an apparent breakdown in liaison procedures, this redesignation was not communicated to Kripo investigator Xavier March, who effected an illegal entry into the deceased's home."

The Gestapo was investigating Buhler?
March struggled to keep his gaze fixed on Krebs, his expression impassive.

"Next: the death of Party Comrade Wilhelm Stuckart. Inquiries by the Gestapo indicated that the cases of Stuckart and Buhler were linked. Once again, the Reichsführer was informed. Once again, investigation of the matter was transferred to the Gestapo. And once again, Investigator March, this time accompanied by Investigator Max Jaeger, conducted his own inquiries at the home of the deceased.

"At zero-zero-twelve on April 16, Investigators March and Jaeger were apprehended by myself at Party Comrade Stuckart's apartment. They agreed to accompany me to Gestapo Headquarters, pending clarification of this matter at a higher level.

"Signed, Karl Krebs, Sturmbannführer.

"I have dated it and timed it at six this morning."

Krebs folded the memorandum and handed it to the head of the Kripo. Outside, a spade rang on gravel.

Nebe slipped the paper into his inside pocket. "So much for the record. Naturally, we shall prepare a report of our own. Now, Globus: what is this really about? You are desperate to tell us, I know."

"Heydrich wanted you to see for yourself."

"See what?"

"What your man here missed on his little free-lance excursion yesterday. Follow me, please."

It was in the cellar, although even if March had smashed the padlock on the entrance and forced his way down, he doubted if he would have found it. Past the usual household rubbish—broken furniture, discarded tools, rolls of filthy carpet bound with rope—was a wood-paneled wall. One of the panels was false.

"We knew what we were looking for, you see." Globus rubbed his hands together. "Gentlemen, I guarantee you will never have clapped eyes on the likes of this in your entire lives."

Beyond the panel was a chamber. When Globus turned on the lights, it was indeed dazzling: a sacristy; a jewel- box. Angels and saints; clouds and temples; high-cheeked noblemen in white furs and red damask; sprawling pink flesh on perfumed yellow silk; flowers and sunrises and Venetian canals . . .

"Go in," said Globus. "The Reichsführer is anxious that you should see it properly."

It was a small room—four meters square, March guessed—with a bank of spotlights built into the ceiling, directed onto the paintings that covered every wall. In the center was an old-fashioned swivel chair, of the sort a nineteenth-century clerk might have had in a counting house. Globus placed a gleaming jackboot on the arm and kicked, sending it spinning.

"Imagine him, sitting here. Door locked. Like a dirty old man in a brothel. We found it yesterday afternoon. Krebs?"

Krebs took the floor. "An expert is on his way this morning from the Führermuseum in Linz. We had Professor Braun of the Kaiser Friedrich, here in Berlin, give us a preliminary assessment last night."

He consulted his sheaf of notes.

"At the moment, we know we have
Portrait of a Young

Man
by Raphael,
Portrait of a Young Man
by Rembrandt,
Christ Carrying the Cross
by Rubens, Guardi's
Venetian Palace, Krakau Suburbs
by Bellotto, eight Canalettos, at least thirty-five engravings by Dürer and Kulmbach, a Gobelin. The rest he could only guess at."

Krebs reeled them off as if they were dishes in a restaurant. He rested his pale fingers on an altarpiece of gorgeous colors, raised on planks at the end of the room.

"This is the work of the Nuremberg artist Veit Stoss, commissioned by the King of Poland in 1477. It took ten years to complete. The center of the triptych shows the Virgin asleep, surrounded by angels. The side panels show scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary. The predella—" he pointed to the base of the altarpiece—"shows the genealogy of Christ."

Globus said, "Sturmbannführer Krebs knows about these things. He is one of our brightest officers."

"Pm sure," said Nebe. "Most interesting. And where did it all come from?"

Krebs began, "The Veit Stoss was removed from the Church of Our Lady in Krakau in November 1939—"

Globus interrupted, "It came from the General Government. Warsaw, mainly, we think. Buhler recorded it as either lost or destroyed. God alone knows how much else the corrupt swine got away with. Think what he must have sold just to buy this place!"

Nebe reached out and touched one of the canvases: the martyred Saint Sebastian bound to a Doric pillar, arrows jutting from his golden skin. The varnish was cracked, like a dried riverbed, but the colors beneath—red, white, purple, blue—were bright still. The painting gave off a faint smell of must and incense—the scent of prewar Poland, of a nation vanished from the map. Some of the panels, March saw, had powdery lumps of masonry attached to their edges—traces of the monastery and castle walls from which they had been wrenched.

Nebe was rapt before the saint. "Something in his expression reminds me of you, March." He traced the body's
outline with his fingertips and gave a wheezing laugh. " The willing martyr.' What do you say, Globus?"

Globus grunted. "I don't believe in saints. Or martyrs." He glared at March.

"Extraordinary," murmured Nebe, "to think of Buhler, of all people, with these—"

"You knew him?" March blurted out the question.

"Slightly, before the war. A committed National Socialist and a dedicated lawyer. Quite a combination. A fanatic for detail. Like our Gestapo colleague here."

Krebs gave a slight bow. "The Herr Oberstgruppenführer is kind."

"The point is this," said Globus irritably. "We have known about Party Comrade Buhler for some time. Known about his activities in the General Government. Known about his associates. Unfortunately, at some point last week, the bastard found out we were on to him."

"And killed himself?" Nebe asked. "And Stuckart?"

"The same. Stuckart was a complete degenerate. He not only helped himself to beauty on canvas, he liked to taste it in the flesh. Buhler had the pick of what he wanted in the East. What were those figures, Krebs?"

"A secret inventory was compiled in 1940 by the Polish museum authorities. We now have it. Art treasures removed from Warsaw alone: two thousand seven hundred paintings of the European school; ten thousand seven hundred paintings by Polish artists; fourteen hundred sculptures."

Globus again: "We're digging up some of the sculptures in the garden right now. Most of this stuff went where it was intended: the Führermuseum, Reichsmarschall Göring's museum at Carinhall, galleries in Vienna, Berlin. But there's a big discrepancy between the Polish lists of what was taken and our lists of what we got. It worked like this. As state secretary, Buhler had access to everything. He would ship the stuff under escort to Stuckart at the Interior Ministry. Everything legal looking.

Stuckart would arrange for it to be stored, or smuggled out of the Reich to be exchanged for cash, jewels, gold— anything portable and nontraceable."

March could see that Nebe was impressed despite himself. His little eyes were drinking in the art. "Was anyone else of high rank involved?"

"You're familiar with the former undersecretary of state at the Foreign Ministry, Martin Luther?"

"Of course."

"He is the man we seek."