Fatherland (21 page)

"Then came the war," said Charlie. They had reached the end of the Neuersee and were walking back. From beyond the trees came the hum of the traffic on the East- West Axis. The dome of the Great Hall rose above the trees. Berliners joked that the only way to avoid seeing it was to live inside it.

"After 1939, the demand for Swiss accounts increased dramatically, for obvious reasons. People were desperate to get their property out of Germany. So banks like Zaugg devised a new kind of deposit account. For a fee of 200
francs, you received a box and a number, a key and a letter of authorization."

"Exactly like Stuckart."

"Right. You simply needed to show up with the letter and the key, and it was all yours. No questions. Each account could have as many keys and letters of authorization as the holder was prepared to pay for. The beauty of it was, the banks were no longer involved. One day, if she could get the travel permit, some little old lady might turn up with her life savings. Ten years later, her son could turn up with a letter and a key and walk off with his inheritance."

"Or the Gestapo might turn up—"

"—and if they had the letter and the key, the bank could give them everything. No embarrassment. No publicity. No breaking the banking code."

"These accounts—they still exist?"

"The Swiss government banned them at the end of the war, under pressure from Berlin, and no new ones have been allowed since. But the old ones—they still exist, because the terms of the original agreement have to be honored. They've become valuable in their own right. People sell them to one another. According to Henry, Zaugg developed quite a specialty in them. God knows what he's got locked in those boxes."

"Did you mention Stuckart's name to this Mr. Nightingale?"

"Of course not. I told him I was writing a piece for
Fortune
about 'the lost legacies of the war.' "

"Just as you told me you were going to interview Stuckart for an article about 'the Führer's early years'?"

She hesitated and said quietly, "What's that supposed to mean?"

His head was throbbing, his ribs still ached. What did he mean? He lit a cigarette to give himself time to think.

"People who encounter violent death—they try to forget it, run away. Not you. Last night: your eagerness to go back to Stuckart's apartment, the way you opened has letters. This morning: turning up information about Swiss banks . . ."

He stopped speaking. An elderly couple passed on the footpath, staring at them. He realized they must look like an odd pair: an SS Sturmbannführer, unshaven and slightly bashed around, and a woman who was clearly a foreigner. Her accent might be perfect, but there was something about her, in her expression, her clothes, her stance—something that betrayed that she was not German.

"Let's walk this way." He led her off the path toward the trees.

"Can I have one of those?"

In the shadows, as he lit her a cigarette, she cupped the flame. Reflections of the fire danced in her eyes.

"All right." She stepped back a pace, hugging herself as if she were cold. "It's true my parents knew Stuckart before the war. It's true I went to see him before Christmas. But I didn't call him. He called me."

"When?"

"On Saturday. Late."

"What did he say?"

She laughed. "Oh, no, Sturmbannführer. In my business information is a commodity, exchangeable on the open market. But I'm willing to trade."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything. Why you had to break into that apartment last night. Why you're keeping secrets from your own people. Why the Gestapo almost killed you an hour ago."

"Oh,
that
." He smiled. He felt weary. He leaned back against the rough bark of the tree and stared across the park. It seemed to him he had nothing to lose.

"Two days ago," he began, "I fished a body out of the Havel."

He told her everything. He told her about Buhler's death and Luther's disappearance. He told her what Jost had seen, and what had happened to him. He told her about Nebe and Globus, about the art treasures and the

Gestapo file. He even told her about Pili's statement. And—something he had noticed about criminals confessing, even those who knew that their confessions would one day hang them—when he finished, he felt better.

She was silent a long time. "That's fair," she said. "I don't know how this helps, but this is what happened to me."

She had gone to bed early on Saturday night. The weather had been foul—the start of that great bank of rain that had washed over the city for three days. She was not feeling sociable, had not for weeks. You know how it is, Berlin can get to you like that: make you feel small and hopeless in the shade of those vast gray buildings; the endless uniforms; the unsmiling bureaucrats.

The phone rang about eleven-thirty, just as she was drifting off to sleep. A man's voice. Taut. Precise. "There is a telephone booth opposite your apartment. Go to it. I shall call you there in five minutes. If the booth is occupied, please wait."

She had not recognized who it was, but something in the man's tone had told her it was not a joke. She had dressed, grabbed her coat, hobbled down the stairs and into the street, trying to pull on her shoes and walk at the same time. The rain had hit her like a slap across the face. Across the street, outside the station, was an old wooden telephone booth—empty, thank God.

It was while she was waiting for the call that she remembered where she had first heard the voice.

"Go back a bit," said March. "Your first meeting with Stuckart. Describe it."

That was before Christmas. She had called him cold. Explained who she was. He seemed reluctant, but she had persisted, so he had invited her over for tea. He had a shock of white curly hair and one of those orangey tans, as if he had spent a long time in the sun or under an ultraviolet lamp. The woman, Maria, was also in the

apartment but behaved like a maid. She served some tea, then left them to it. Usual chat: how is your mother? Very well, thank you.

Ha, that was a joke.

She flicked ash from the end of her cigarette.

"My mother's career died when she left Berlin. My arrival buried it. As you can imagine, there wasn't a great demand for German actresses in Hollywood during the war."

And then he had asked about her father, in a gritted- teeth kind of way. And she had been able to take great pleasure in saying: very well, thank you. He had retired in '61, when Kennedy had taken over. Deputy Under Secretary of State Michael Maguire. God bless the United States of America. Stuckart had met him through Mom, had known him when he was at the embassy here.

March interrupted, "When was that?"

" 'Thirty-seven to 'thirty-nine."

"Go on."

Well, then he had wanted to know about the job and she had told him. World European Features: he had never heard of them. Not surprising, she said: nobody had. That sort of thing. Polite interest, you know. So when she left she had given him her card and he had bent to kiss her hand, had lingered over it, made a meal of it, made her feel sick. He had patted her bottom on the way out. And that had been that, she was glad to say. Five months: nothing.

"Until Saturday night?"

Until Saturday night. She had been in the telephone booth no more than thirty seconds when he called. Now all the arrogance was gone from his voice.

"Charlotte?" He had placed heavy emphasis on the second syllable. Shar-
lot
-te. "Forgive this melodrama. Your telephone is tapped."

"They say every foreigner's line is tapped."

"This is true. When I was in the ministry, I used to see transcripts. But phone booths are safe. I am in a phone booth now. I came on Thursday and took the number of

the one you're in. It's serious, you see. I need to contact the authorities in your country."

"Why not talk to the embassy?"

"The embassy is not safe."

He had sounded terrified. And tight. He had definitely been drinking.

"Are you saying you want to defect?"

A long silence. Then there had been a noise behind her, a sound of metal tapping on glass. She had turned to discover, in the rain and the dark, a man with his hands cupped around his eyes, peering into the booth, looking like a deep-sea diver. She must have let out a cry or something, because Stuckart had become even more frightened.

"What was that? What is it?"

"Nothing. Just someone wanting to use the phone."

"We must be quick. I deal only with your father, not the embassy."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Come to me tomorrow and I will tell you everything. Shar-
lot
-te, I will make you the most famous reporter in the world."

"Where? What time?"

"My apartment. Noon."

"Is that safe?"

"Nowhere is safe."

And then he had hung up. Those were the last words she had heard Stuckart speak.

She finished her cigarette, ground it under foot.

The rest he knew, more or less. She had found the bodies, called the police. They had taken her to the big city station in Alexander-Platz, where she had sat in a blank- walled room for more than three hours, going crazy. Then she had been driven to another building to give a statement to some creepy SS man in a cheap wig, whose office had been more like that of a pathologist than a detective.

March smiled at the description of Fiebes.

She had already made up her mind not to tell the Polizei about Stuckart's call on Saturday night, for an obvious reason. If she had hinted that she had been preparing to help Stuckart defect, she would have been accused of "activities incompatible with her status as a journalist" and arrested. As it was, they had decided to deport her anyway. So it goes.

The authorities were planning a fireworks display in the Tiergarten, to commemorate the Führer's birthday. An area of the park had been fenced off, and pyrotechnicians in blue overalls were laying their surprises, watched by a curious crowd. Mortar tubes, sandbagged emplacements, dugouts, kilometers of cable: they looked more like the preparations for an artillery bombardment than for a celebration. Nobody paid any attention to the SS-Sturmbannführer and the woman in the blue plastic coat.

He scribbled on a page of his notebook.

"These are my telephone numbers—office and home. Also, here are the numbers of a friend of mine called Max Jaeger. If you can't get hold of me, call him." He tore out the page and gave it to her. "If anything suspicious happens, anything worries you—it doesn't matter what the time is—call."

"What about you? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to try to get to Zürich tonight. Check out this bank account first thing tomorrow."

He knew what she would say even before she opened her mouth.

"I'll come with you."

"You'll be much safer here."

"But it's my story, too."

She sounded like a spoiled child. "It's not a story, for God's sake." He bit back his anger. "Look. A deal. Whatever I find out, I swear I'll tell you. You can have it all."

"It's not as good as being there."

"It's better than being dead."

"They wouldn't do anything like that abroad."

"On the contrary, that's exactly where they would do it. If something happens here, they're responsible. If something happens abroad ..." He shrugged. "Prove it."

They parted in the center of the Tiergarten. He strode briskly across the grass, toward the humming city. As he walked, he took the envelope out of his pocket, squeezed it to check that the key was still in it and—on impulse— raised it to his nose. Her scent. He looked back over his shoulder. She was walking through the trees with her back to him. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared; disappeared, reappeared—a tiny, birdlike figure—bright blue plumage against the dreary wood.

The door to March's apartment hung off its hinges like a broken jaw. He stood on the landing, listening, his pistol drawn. The place was silent, deserted.

Like Charlotte Maguire's, his apartment had been searched, but by hands of greater malevolence. Everything had been tipped into a heap in the center of the living room—clothes and books, shoes and old letters, photographs and crockery and furniture—the detritus of a life. It was as if someone had intended to make a bonfire but had been distracted at the last minute, before he could apply the torch.

Wedged upright on top of the pyre was a wooden- framed photograph of March, age twenty, shaking hands with the commander of the
U-Boot Waffe
, Admiral Dönitz. Why had it been left like that? What point was being made? He picked it up, carried it over to the window, blew dust off it. He had forgotten he even had it. Dönitz liked to come aboard every boat before it left Wilhelm-shaven: an awesome figure, ramrod straight, iron- gripped, gruff. "Good hunting," he had barked at March. He growled the same to everyone. The picture showed five young crewmen lined up beneath the conning tower to meet him. Rudi Halder was to March's left. The other three had died later that year, trapped in the hull of U-175.