Fatherland (35 page)

A jet passed low overhead, dropping toward the air
port, the pitch of its engines descending with it. Now
that
was a sound that had not existed in 1942 . . .

Suddenly he was on his feet, lifting her down to join him, and then he was striding up the lawn toward the house and she was following—stumbling, laughing, shouting at him to slow down.

He parked the Volkswagen beside the road in Schlachtensee and sprinted into the telephone booth. Max Jaeger was not replying, neither at Werderscher-Markt nor at his home. The lonely purr of the unanswered phone made March want to reach someone, anyone.

He tried Rudi Halder's number. Perhaps he could apologize, somehow hint that it had been worth the risk. Nobody was in. He looked at the receiver. What about Pili? Even the boy's hostility would be contact of a sort. But in the bungalow in Lichtenrade there was no response either.

The city had shut down on him.

He was halfway out of the booth when, on impulse, he turned back and dialed the number of his own apartment. On the second ring, a man answered.

"Yes?" It was the Gestapo: Krebs's voice. "March? I know it's you! Don't hang up!"

He dropped the receiver as if it had bitten him.

Half an hour later he was pushing through the scuffed wooden doors into the Berlin city morgue. Without his uniform he felt naked. A woman was crying softly in one corner, a female police auxiliary sitting stiffly beside her, embarrassed at this display of emotion in an official place. He showed the attendant his ID and asked about Martin Luther. The man consulted a set of dogeared notes.

"Male, mid-sixties, identified as Luther, Martin. Brought in just after midnight. Railway accident."

"What about the shooting this morning, the one in the Platz?"

The attendant sighed, licked a nicotined forefinger and turned a page. "Male, mid-sixties, identified as Stark, Alfred. Came in an hour ago."

"That's the one. How was he identified?"

"ID in his pocket."

"Right." March moved decisively toward the elevator, forestalling any objection. "I'll make my own way down."

It was his misfortune, when the elevator doors opened, to find himself confronted by SS surgeon August Eisler.

"March!" Eisler looked shocked and took a pace backward. "The word is, you've been arrested."

"The word is wrong. I'm working undercover."

Eisler was staring at his civilian suit. "What as? A pimp?" This amused the SS surgeon so much that he had to take off his spectacles and wipe his eyes. March joined in his laughter.

"No, a pathologist. I'm told the pay is good and the hours are nonexistent."

Eisler stopped smiling. "
You
can say that.
I've
been here since midnight." He dropped his voice. "A very senior man. Gestapo operation. Hush-hush." He tapped the side of his long nose. "I can say nothing."

"Relax, Eisler. I'm aware of the case. Did Frau Luther identify the remains?"

Eisler looked disappointed. "No," he muttered. "We spared her that."

"And Stark?"

"My, my, March—you
are
well informed. I'm on my way to deal with him now. Would you care to join me?"

In his mind March saw again the exploding head, the thick spurt of blood and brain. "No. Thank you."

"I thought not. What was he shot with? A Panzerfaust?"

"Have they caught the killer?"

"You're the investigator. You tell me. 'Don't probe too deeply' was what I heard."

"Stark's effects. Where are they?"

"Bagged and ready to go. In the property room."

"Where's that?"

"Follow the corridor. Fourth door on the left."

March set off. Eisler shouted after him, "Hey, March! Save me a couple of your best whores!" The pathologist's high-pitched laughter pursued him down the passage.

The fourth door on the left was unlocked. He checked to make sure he was unobserved, then let himself in.

It was a small storeroom, three meters wide, with just enough room for one person to walk down the center. On either side of the gangway were racks of dusty metal shelving heaped with bundles of clothing wrapped in thick polyurethane. There were suitcases, handbags, umbrellas, artificial legs, a wheelchair—grotesquely twisted—hats . . . From the morgue the deceased's belongings were usually collected by the next of kin. If the circumstances were suspicious, they would be taken away by the investigators or sent directly to the forensic laboratories in Schönweld. March began inspecting the plastic tags, each of which recorded the time and place of death and the name of the victim. Some of the stuff here went back years—pathetic bundles of rags and trinkets, the final bequests of corpses nobody cared about, not even the police.

How typical of Globus not to admit to his mistake. The infallibility of the Gestapo must be preserved at all costs! Thus Stark's body would continue to be treated as Luther's, while Luther's would go to a pauper's grave as that of the drifter Stark.

March tugged at the bundle closest to the door, turned the label to the light.
4/18/64. Adolf-Hitler-PL Stark, Alfred.

So Luther had left the world like the lowest inmate of a KZ—violently, half starved, in someone else's filthy clothes, his body unhonored, with a stranger picking over his belongings after his death. Poetic justice—about the only sort of justice to be found.

He pulled out his pocketknife and slit the bulging plastic. The contents spilled over the floor like guts.

He did not care about Luther. All he cared about was how, in the hours between midnight and nine that morning, Globus had discovered that Luther was still alive.

Americans!

He tore away the last of the polyurethane.

The clothes stank of shit and piss, of vomit and sweat— of every odor the human body nurtures. God only knew what parasites the fabric harbored. He went through the pockets. They were empty. His hands itched.
Don't give up hope. A left-luggage ticket is a small thing—tightly rolled, no bigger than a matchstick; an incision in a coat collar would conceal it.
With his knife he hacked at the lining of the long brown overcoat matted with congealing blood, his fingers turning brown and slippery . . .

Nothing. All the usual scraps that in his experience tramps carry—the bits of string and paper, the buttons, the cigarette ends—had been removed already. The Gestapo had searched Luther's clothes with care. Naturally they had. He had been a fool to think they wouldn't. Furious, he slashed at the material—right to left, left to right, right to left. . .

He stood back from the heap of rags, panting like an assassin. Then he picked up a piece of rag and wiped his knife and hands.

"You know what I think?" said Charlie when he returned to the car empty-handed. "I think he never brought anything here from Zürich at all."

She was still in the backseat of the Volkswagen. March turned to look at her. "Yes, he did. Of course he did." He tried to hide his impatience; it was not her fault. "But he was too scared to keep it with him. So he stored it, received a ticket for it—either at the airport or at the station—and planned on collecting it later. I'm sure that's it. Now Globus has it, or it's lost for good."

"No, Listen. I was thinking. Yesterday, when I was coming through the airport, I thanked God you stopped me from trying to bring the painting back with us to Berlin. Remember the lines? They searched every bag. How could Luther have gotten
anything
past the Zollgrenzschutz?"

March considered this, massaging his temples. "A good question," he said eventually. "Maybe," he added a minute later, "the best question I ever heard."

At the Flughafen Hermann Göring the statue of Hanna Reitsch was steadily oxidizing in the rain. She stared across the concourse outside the departure terminal with corrosion-pitted eyes.

"You'd better stay with the car," said March. "Do you drive?"

She nodded. He dropped the keys into her lap. "If the Flughafenpolizei try to move you on, don't argue with them. Drive off and come around again. Keep circling. Give me twenty minutes."

"Then what?"

"I don't know." His hand fluttered in the air. "Improvise."

He strode into the airport terminal. The big digital clock above the passport control zone flicked over: 13:22. He glanced behind him. He could measure his freedom probably in minutes. Less than that if Globus had issued a general alert, for nowhere in the Reich was more heavily patrolled than the airport.

He kept thinking of Krebs in his apartment, and Eisler:
"The word is, you've been arrested."

A man with a souvenir bag from the Soldiers' Hall looked familiar. A Gestapo watcher? March abruptly changed direction and headed into the toilets. He stood at the urinal, pissing air, his eyes fixed on the entrance. Nobody came in. When he emerged, the man was gone.

"Last call for Lufthansa flight 270 to Tiflis ..."

He went to the central Lufthansa desk and showed his ID to one of the guards. "I need to speak to your head of security. Urgently."

"He may not be here, Herr Sturmbannführer."

"Look for him."

The guard was gone a long time. 13:27, said the clock. 13:28. Perhaps he was calling the Gestapo. 13:29. March put his hand into his pocket and felt the cold metal of the Luger. Better to make a stand here than crawl around the stone floor in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse spitting teeth into your hand.

13:30.

The guard returned. "This way, Herr Sturmbannführer. If you please."

Friedman had joined the Berlin Kripo at the same time as March. He had left it five years later, one step ahead of a corruption investigation. Now he wore handmade English suits, smoked duty-free Swiss cigars and made five times his official salary by methods long suspected but never proved. He was a merchant prince, the airport his corrupt little kingdom.

When he realized March had come not to investigate him but to beg a favor, he was almost ecstatic. His excellent mood persisted as he led March along a passage away from the terminal building. "And how is Jaeger? Spreading chaos, I suppose? And Fiebes? Still jerking off over pictures of Aryan maidens and Ukrainian window cleaners? Oh, how I miss you all—I don't think! Here we are." Friedman transferred his cigar from his hand to his mouth and tugged at a large door. "Behold the cave of Aladdin!"

The metal slid open with a crash to reveal a small hangar stuffed with lost and abandoned property. "The things people leave behind," said Friedman. "You wouldn't believe it. We even had a leopard once."

"A leopard? A cat?"

"It died. Some idle bastard forgot to feed it. It made a
good coat." He laughed and snapped his fingers, and from the shadows an elderly, stoop-shouldered man appeared—a Slav, with wide-set, fearful eyes.

"Stand up straight, man. Show respect." Friedman gave him a shove that sent him staggering backward. "The Sturmbannführer here is a good friend of mine. He's looking for something. Tell him, March."

"A case, perhaps a bag," said March. "The last flight from Zürich on Monday night, the thirteenth. Left either on the aircraft or in the baggage claim area."

"Got that? Right?" The Slav nodded. "Well, go on, then!" He shuffled away and Friedman gestured to his mouth. "Dumb. Had his tongue cut out in the war. The ideal worker!" He laughed and clapped March on the shoulder. "So. How goes it?"

"Well enough."

"Civilian clothes. Working the weekend. Must be something big."

"It may be."

"This is the Martin Luther character, right?" March made no reply. "So you're dumb, too. I see." Friedman flicked cigar ash onto the clean floor. "Fair enough by me. A brown-pants job, possibly?"

"A what?"

"Zollgrenzschutz expression. Someone plans to bring in something they shouldn't. They get to the customs shed, see the security, start shitting themselves. Drop whatever it is and run."

"But this is special, yes? You don't open every case every day?"

"Just in the week before the
Führertag.
"

"What about the lost property? Do you open that?"

"Only if it looks valuable!" Friedman laughed again. "No. A jest. We haven't the manpower. Anyway, it's been X-rayed, remember—no guns, no explosives. So we just leave it here, wait for someone to claim it. If no one's turned up in a year, then we open it, see what we've got."

"Pays for a few suits, I suppose."

"What?" Friedman plucked at his immaculate sleeve. "These poor rags?" There was a sound, and he turned around. "Looks like you're in luck, March."

The Slav was returning, carrying something. Friedman took it from him and weighed it in his hand. "Quite light. Can't be gold. What do you think it is, March? Drugs? Some dollars? Contraband silk from the East? A treasure map?"

"Are you going to open it?" March touched the gun in his pocket. He would use it if he had to.

Friedman appeared shocked. "This is a favor. One friend to another. Your business." He handed the case to March. "You'll remember that, Sturmbannführer, won't you? A favor? One day you'll do the same for me, comrade to comrade?"