Fatherland (42 page)

"Kulmhof!" he shouted at Globus when the pain became too bad. "Belzec! Treblinka!"

"Now we're getting somewhere." Globus grinned at his two assistants.

"Majdanek! Sobibor! Auschwitz-Birkenau!" He held up the names like a shield to ward off the blows.

"What am I supposed to do? Shrivel up and die?" Globus squatted on his haunches and grabbed March by the ears, twisting his face toward him. "They're just names, March. There's nothing there anymore, not even a brick. Nobody will ever believe it. And shall I tell you something?
Part of you can't believe it either
." Globus spat in his face—a gobbet of grayish-yellow phlegm. "That's how much the world will care." He thrust him away, bouncing his head against the stone floor.

"Now. Again: where's the girl?"

Time crawled on all fours, broken-backed. He was shivering. His teeth chattered like a clockwork toy.

Other prisoners had been here years before him. In lieu of tombstones they had scratched on the cell's walls with splintered fingernails. "J.F.G. 2-22-57." "Katja." "H.K. May 44." Someone had gotten no further than half the letter "E" before strength or time or will had run out. Yet still this urge to write . . .

None of the marks, he noticed, was more than a meter above the floor.

The pain in his hand was making him feverish. He was having hallucinations. A dog ground his fingers between its jaws. He closed his eyes and wondered what time was doing now. When he had last asked Krebs it had been— what?—almost six. Then they had talked for perhaps another half hour. After that there had been his second session with Globus—infinite. Now this stretch alone in his cell, slithering in and out of the light tugged one way by exhaustion, the other by the dog.

The floor was warm to his cheek, the smooth stone dissolved.

* * * *

He dreamed of his father—his childhood dream—the stiff figure in the photograph come to life, waving from the deck of the ship as it pulled out of the harbor, waving until he dwindled to a stick figure, until he disappeared. He dreamed of Jost, running on the spot, intoning his poetry in his solemn voice: "You throw food to the beast in man, / That it may grow . . ." He dreamed of Charlie.

But most often he dreamed he was back in Pili's bedroom at that dreadful instant when he had understood what the boy had done out of kindness—
kindness!
— when his arms were reaching for the door but his legs were trapped—and the window was exploding and rough hands were dragging at his shoulders . . .

The jailer shook him awake.

"On your feet!"

He was curled up tightly on his left side, fetuslike—his body raw, his joints welded. The guard's push awoke the dog and he was sick. There was nothing in him to bring up, but his stomach convulsed anyway, for old time's sake. The cell retreated a long way and came rushing back. He was pulled upright. The jailer swung a pair of handcuffs. Next to him stood Krebs, thank God, not Globus.

Krebs looked at him with distaste and said to the guard, "You'd better put them on at the front."

His wrists were locked before him, his cap was stuffed onto his head and he was marched, hunched forward, along the passage, up the steps, into the fresh air.

A cold night, and clear. The stars were sprayed across the sky above the courtyard. The buildings and the cars were silver edged in the moonlight. Krebs pushed him into the backseat of a Mercedes and climbed in after him. He nodded to the driver: "Columbia House. Lock the doors."

As the bolts slid home in the door beside him, March felt a flicker of relief.

"Don't raise your hopes," said Krebs. "The Obergruppenführer is still waiting for you. We have more modern technology at Columbia, that's all."

They pulled out through the gates, looking to any who saw them like two SS officers and their chauffeur. A guard saluted.

Columbia House was three kilometers south of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. The darkened government buildings quickly yielded to shabby office blocks and boarded-up warehouses. The area close to the prison had been scheduled for redevelopment in the 1950s, and here and there Speer's bulldozers had made destructive forays. But the money had run out before anything could be built to replace what they had knocked down. Now, overgrown patches of derelict land gleamed in the bluish light like the corners of old battlefields. In the dark side streets between them dwelled the teeming colonies of East European
Gastarbeiter
.

March was sitting stretched out, his head resting on the back of the leather seat, when Krebs suddenly leaned toward him and shouted, "Oh, for fuck's sake!" He turned to the driver. "He's pissing himself. Pull over here."

The driver swore and braked hard.

"Open the doors!"

Krebs got out, came around to March's side and yanked him out. "Quickly! We haven't got all night!" To the driver: "One minute. Keep the engine running."

Then March was being pushed—stumbling across rough stones, down an alley, into the doorway of a disused church, and Krebs was unlocking the handcuffs.

"You're a lucky man, March."

"I don't understand—"

Krebs said, "You've got a favorite uncle."

Tap, tap, tap
. From the darkness of the church.
Tap, tap, tap.

* * * *

"You should have come to me at once, my boy," said Artur Nebe. "You would have spared yourself such agony." He brushed March's cheek with his fingertips. In the heavy shadows, March could not make out the details of his face, only a pale blur.

"Take my pistol." Krebs pressed the Luger into March's left hand. "Take it! You tricked me. Got hold of my gun. Understand?"

He was dreaming, surely? But the pistol felt solid enough. . .

Nebe was still talking—a low, urgent voice. "Oh, March, March. Krebs came to me this evening—shocked! so shocked!—told me what you had. We all suspected it, of course, but never had the proof. Now you've got to get it out. For all our sakes. You've got to stop these bastards!"

Krebs interrupted, "Forgive me, sir, our time is almost gone." He pointed. "Down there, March. Can you see? A car."

Parked under a broken streetlamp at the far end of the alley, March could just see a low shape, could hear a motor running.

"What is this?" He looked from one man to the other.

"Walk to the car and get in. We've no more time. I count to ten, then I yell."

"Don't fail us, March." Nebe squeezed his cheek. "Your uncle is an old man, but he hopes to live long enough to see those bastards hang. Go on. Get the papers out. Get them published. We're risking everything, giving you a chance. Take it. Go."

Krebs said, "I'm counting: one, two, three . . ."

March hesitated, started to walk, then broke into a loping run. The car door was opening. He looked back. Nebe had already disappeared into the dark. Krebs had cupped his hands to his mouth and was starting to shout.

March turned and struggled toward the waiting car, where a familiar voice was calling, "Zavi! Zavi!"

The railway to Krakau continues north-east past Auschwitz (348 kilometers from Vienna), an industrial town of 12,000 inhabitants, the former capital of the Piast Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator (Hotel Zator 20 bedrooms), whence a secondary railway runs via Skawina to Krakau (69 kilometers in three hours)...

BAEDEKER'S
General Government
, 1943

Midnight peals of bells rang out to welcome the day. Drivers whipped past, flashing their headlights, hammering their horns, leaving a smear of sound hanging over the road behind them. Factory hooters called to one another across Berlin, like stationary trains.

"My dear old friend, what have they done to you?"

Max Jaeger was trying to concentrate on driving, but every few seconds his head would swivel to the right, in horrified fascination, toward the passenger seat beside him.

He kept repeating it: "What have they done to you?"

March was in a daze, uncertain what was dream and what reality. He had his back half turned and was staring out of the rear window. "Where are we going, Max?"

"God only knows. Where do you want to go?"

The road behind was clear. March carefully pulled himself around to look at Jaeger. "Didn't Nebe tell you?"

"Nebe said
you'd
tell
me.
"

March looked away, at the buildings sliding by. He did not see them. He was thinking of Charlie in the hotel room in Waldshut. Awake, alone, waiting for him. There were still more than eight hours to go. He and Max would have the
Autobahnen
almost to themselves. They could probably make it.

"I was at the Markt," Jaeger was saying. "This was about nine. The telephone rings. It's Uncle Artur. 'Sturmbannführer! How good a friend is Xavier March?' "There's nothing I wouldn't do,' I said—by this time, the word was out about where you were. He said, very quietly, 'All right, Sturmbannführer, we'll see how good a friend you are. Kreuzberg. Corner of Axmann-Weg, north of the abandoned church. Wait from quarter to midnight to quarter past. And not a word to anyone or you'll be in a KZ by morning.' That was it. He hung up."

There was a sheen of sweat on Jaeger's forehead. He glanced from the road to March and back again. "Fuck it, Zavi. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm scared. I'm heading south. Is that okay?"

"You're doing fine."

"Aren't you glad to see me?" asked Jaeger.

"Very glad."

March felt faint again. He twisted his body and wound down the window with his left hand. Above the sound of the wind and the tires: a noise. What was it? He put his head out and looked up. He could not see it, but he could hear it overhead. The clatter of a helicopter. He closed the window.

He remembered the telephone transcript:
"What do I want? What do you think I want? Asylum in your country."

The car's dials and gauges shone a soft green in the darkness. The upholstery smelled of fresh leather.

He said, "Where did you get the car, Max?" It was a Mercedes: the latest model.

"From the pool at Werderscher-Markt. A beauty, yes? She's got a full tank. We can go anywhere you want. Anywhere at all."

Then March began to laugh. Not very hard and not for very long, because his aching ribs soon forced him to stop.

"Oh, Max, Max," he said, "Nebe and Krebs are such good liars, and you're so lousy, I almost feel sorry for them, having to have you on their team."

Jaeger stared straight ahead. "They've pumped you full

of drugs, Zavi. They've hurt you. You're confused, believe me."

"If they'd picked any other driver but you, I might almost have fallen for it. But you ... tell me, Max: why is the road behind so empty? I suppose, if you're following a shiny new car that's packed with electronics and transmitting a signal, you needn't come closer than a kilometer. Especially if you can use a helicopter."

"I risk my life," whined Jaeger, "and this is my reward."

March had Krebs's Luger in his hand—his left hand, it was awkward to hold. Nevertheless he managed a convincing enough show of digging the barrel into the thick folds of Jaeger's neck. "Krebs gave me his gun. To add that essential touch of authenticity. Not loaded, I'm sure. But do you want to take that risk? I think not. Keep your left hand on the wheel, Max, and your eyes on the road, and with your right hand give me your Luger. Very slowly."

"You've gone mad."

March increased the pressure. The barrel slid up the sweaty skin and came to rest just behind Jaeger's ear.

"All right, all right."

Jaeger gave him the gun.

"Excellent. Now, I'm going to sit with this pointed at your fat belly, and if you try anything, Max—anything— I'll put a bullet in it. And if you have any doubts about that, just sit there and work it out. And you'll conclude I've got nothing to lose."

"Zavi—"

"Shut up. Just keep driving on this road until we reach the outer autobahn."

He hoped Max could not see his hand trembling. He rested the gun in his lap. It was good, he reassured himself. Really good. It proved they had not picked her up. Nor had they discovered where she was. Because if they had managed either, they would never have resorted to this.

Twenty-five kilometers south of the city, the lights of the autobahn looped across the darkness like a necklace. Great slabs of yellow thrust out of the ground bearing in black the names of the Imperial cities: clockwise from Stettin, through Danzig, Königsberg, Minsk, Posen, Krakau, Kiev, Rostov, Odessa, Vienna; then up through Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Hanover to Hamburg.

At March's direction, they turned counterclockwise. Twenty kilometers later, at the Friedersdorf intersection, they forked right.

Another sign: Liegnitz, Breslau, Kattowitz . . .

The stars arched. Little flecks of luminous cloud shone above the trees.

The Mercedes flew down the slip road and joined the moonlit autobahn. The road gleamed like a wide river, Behind them, sweeping around to follow, he pictured a dragon's tail of lights and guns.