Fatherland (7 page)

In 1940, they set a target density of one hundred Germans per square kilometer. And they managed it in the first three years. An incredible operation, considering the war was still on."

"How many people were involved?"

"One million. The SS eugenics bureau found Germans in places you'd never have dreamed of—Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia. If your skull had the proper measurements and you came from the right village—you were just given a ticket."

"And Buhler?"

"Ah. Well. To make room for a million Germans in the new Reichsgaue, they had to move out a million Poles."

"And they went to the General Government?"

Halder turned his head and glanced around furtively to make sure he was not overheard—"the German look," people called it. "They also had to cope with the Jews being expelled from Germany and the western territories—France, Holland, Belgium."

"Jews?"

"Yes, yes. Keep your voice down." Halder was speaking so quietly, March had to lean across the table to hear. "You can imagine—it was chaos. Overcrowding. Starvation. Disease. From what one can gather, the place is still a shithole, despite what they say."

Every week the newspapers and television carried appeals from the East Ministry for settlers willing to move to the General Government. "Germans! Claim your birthright! A farmstead—free! Income guaranteed for the first five years." The advertisements showed happy colonists living in luxury. But word of the real story had filtered back—an existence conditioned by poor soil, backbreaking work, and drab satellite towns to which the Germans had to return at dusk for fear of attack from local partisans. The General Government was worse than the Ukraine; worse than Ostland; worse, even, than Muscovy.

A waiter came over to offer more coffee. March waved him away. When the man was out of earshot, Halder continued in the same low tone, "Frank ran everything from Wawel Castle in Krakau. That would have been where Buhler was based. I have a friend who works in the official archives there. God, he has some stories. . . . Apparently the luxury was incredible. Like something out of the Roman Empire. Paintings, tapestries, looted treasures from the church, jewelry. Bribes in cash and bribes in kind, if you know what I mean." Halder's blue eyes shone at the thought, his eyebrows danced.

"And Buhler was involved in this?"

"Who knows? If not, he must have been about the only one who wasn't."

"That would explain why he had a house on Schwanenwerder."

Halder whistled softly. "There you are, then. We had the wrong sort of war, my friend. Cooped up in a stinking metal coffin two hundred meters under the Atlantic, when we could have been in a Silesian castle sleeping on silk with a couple of Polish girls for company."

There was more March would have liked to ask him, but he had no time. As they were leaving, Halder said, "So you'll come to dinner with my BdM woman?"

"I'll think about it."

"Maybe we can persuade her to wear her uniform." Standing outside the hotel with his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his long scarf wrapped twice around his neck, Halder looked even more like a student. Suddenly he struck his forehead with the flat of his hand. "I clean forgot! I meant to tell you. My memory ... A couple of Sipo guys were around at the archive last week asking about you."

March felt his smile shrink. "The Gestapo? What did they want?" He managed to keep his tone light, offhand.

"Oh, the usual sort of stuff. 'What was he like during the war? Does he have any strong political views? Who are his friends?' What's going on, Zavi? You up for promotion or something?"

"I must be." He told himself to relax. It was probably only a routine check. He must remember to ask Max if he had heard anything about a new screening.

"Well, when they've made you head of the Kripo, don't forget your old friends."

March laughed. "I won't." They shook hands. As they parted, March said, "I wonder if Buhler had any enemies."

"Oh, yes," said Halder. "Of course."

"Who were they, then?"

Halder shrugged. "Thirty million Poles, for a start."

The only person on the second floor at Werderscher-Markt was a Polish cleaning woman. Her back was to March as he came out of the lift. All he could see was a large rump resting on the soles of a pair of black rubber boots and the red scarf tied around her hair bobbing as she scrubbed the floor. She was singing softly to herself in her native language. As she heard him approach she stopped and turned her head to the wall. He squeezed past her and went into his office. When the door had closed he heard her begin singing again.

It was not yet nine. He hung his cap by the door and unbuttoned his tunic. There was a large brown envelope on his desk. He opened it and shook out the contents, the scene-of-crime photographs. Glossy color pictures of Buhler's body, sprawled like a sunbather's at the side of the lake.

He lifted the ancient typewriter from the top of the filing cabinet and carried it across to his desk. From a wire basket he took two pieces of much-used carbon paper, two flimsy sheets and one standard report form, arranged them in order and wound them into the machine. Then he lit a cigarette and stared at the dead plant for a few minutes.

He began to type.

TO: Chief, VB
₃
(a)

SUBJECT: Unidentified body (male)

FROM: X. March, SS-Sturmbannführer
           
4/15/64

I beg to report the following.

1. At 0628 yesterday, I was ordered to attend the recovery of a body from the Havel. The body had been discovered by SS-Schütze Hermann Jost at 0602 and reported to the Ordnungspolizei (statement attached).
   
2. No male of the correct description having been reported missing, I arranged for the fingerprints of the subject to be checked against records.
   
3. This has enabled the subject to be identified as Doctor Josef Buhler, a Party member with the honorary rank of SS-Brigadeführer. The subject served as state secretary in the General Government, 1939-51.
   
4. A preliminary investigation at the scene by SS-Sturmbannführer Doctor August Eisler indicated the likely cause of death as drowning and the likely time of death as sometime on the night of 13 April.
   
5. The subject lived on Schwanenwerder, close to where the body was found.
   
6. There were no obvious suspicious circumstances.
   
7. A full autopsy examination will be carried out following formal identification of the subject by next of kin.
   

March pulled the report out of the typewriter, signed it and left it with a messenger in the foyer on his way out.

The old woman was sitting erect on a hard wooden bench in the Seydel-Strasse mortuary. She wore a brown tweed suit, brown hat with a drooping feather, sturdy brown shoes and gray woolen stockings. She was staring straight ahead, a handbag clasped in her lap, oblivious to the medical orderlies, the policemen, the grieving relatives passing in the corridor. Max Jaeger sat beside her, arms

folded, legs outstretched, looking bored. As March arrived, he took him to one side.

"Been here ten minutes. Hardly spoken."

"In shock?"

"I suppose."

"Let's get it over with."

The old woman did not look up as March sat on the bench beside her. He said softly, "Frau Trinkl, my name is March. I am an investigator with the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. We have to complete a report on your brother's death, and we need you to identify his body. Then we'll take you home. Do you understand?"

Frau Trinkl turned to face him. She had a thin face, thin nose (her brother's nose), thin lips. A cameo brooch gathered a blouse of frilly purple at her bony throat.

"Do you understand?" he repeated.

She gazed at him with clear gray eyes, unreddened by crying. Her voice was clipped and dry: "Perfectly."

They moved across the corridor into a small, window- less reception room. The floor was made of wood blocks. The walls were lime green. In an effort to lighten the gloom, someone had stuck up tourist posters given away by the
Deutsche Reichsbahngesellschaft
: a nighttime view of the Great Hall, the Führer Museum at Linz, the Starnberger See in Bavaria. The poster that had hung on the fourth wall had been torn down, leaving pockmarks in the plaster, like bullet holes.

A clatter outside signaled the arrival of the body. It was wheeled in, covered by a sheet, on a metal trolley. Two attendants in white tunics parked it in the center of the floor—a buffet lunch awaiting its guests. They left and Jaeger closed the door.

"Are you ready?" asked March. She nodded. He turned back the sheet and Frau Trinkl stationed herself at his shoulder. As she leaned forward, a strong smell—of peppermint lozenges, of perfume mingled with camphor, an old lady's smell—washed across his face. She stared at the corpse for a long time, then opened her mouth as if to say something, but all that emerged was a sigh. Her eyes closed. March caught her as she fell.

"It's him," she said. "I haven't set eyes on him for ten years, and he's fatter, and I've never seen him before without his spectacles, not since he was a child. But it's him." She was on a chair under the poster of Linz, leaning forward with her head between her knees. Her hat had fallen off. Thin strands of white hair hung down over her face. The body had been wheeled away.

The door opened and Jaeger returned carrying a glass of water, which he pressed into her skinny hand. "Drink this." She held it for a moment, then raised it to her lips and took a sip. "I never faint," she said. "Never." Behind her, Jaeger made a face.

"Of course," said March. "I need to ask some questions. Are you well enough? Stop me if I tire you." He took out his notebook. "Why had you not seen your brother for ten years?"

"After Edith died—his wife—we had nothing in common. We were never close in any case. Even as children. I was eight years older than him."

"His wife died some time ago?"

She thought for a moment. "In '53, I think. Winter. She had cancer."

"And in all the time since then you never heard from him? Were there any other brothers and sisters?"

"No. Just the two of us. He did write occasionally. I had a letter from him on my birthday two weeks ago." She fumbled in her handbag and produced a single sheet of notepaper—good quality, creamy and thick, with an engraving of the Schwanenwerder house as a letterhead. The writing was copperplate, the message as formal as an official receipt: "My dear sister! Heil Hitler! I send you greetings on your birthday. I earnestly hope that you are in good health, as I am. Josef." March refolded it and handed it back. No wonder nobody missed him.

"In his other letters, did he ever mention anything worrying him?"

"What had he to be worried about?" She spat out the words. "Edith inherited a fortune in the war. They had money. He lived in fine style, I can tell you."

'There were no children?"

"He was sterile." She said this without emphasis, as if describing his hair color. "Edith was so unhappy. I think that was what killed her. She sat alone in that big house— it was cancer of the soul. She used to love music—she played the piano beautifully. A Bechstein, I remember. And he—he was such a cold man."

From the other side of the room Jaeger grunted, "So you didn't think much of him?"

"No, I did not. Not many people did." She turned back to March. "I have been a widow for twenty-four years. My husband was a navigator in the Luftwaffe, shot down over France. I was not left destitute—nothing like that. But the pension... very small for one who was used to something a little better. Not once in all that time did Josef offer to help me."

"What about his leg?" It was Jaeger again, his tone antagonistic. He had clearly decided to take Buhler's side in this family dispute. "What happened to that?" His manner suggested he thought she might have stolen it.

The old lady ignored him and gave her answer to March. "He would never speak of it himself, but Edith told me the story. It happened in 1951, when he was still in the General Government. He was traveling with an escort on the road from Krakau to Kattowitz when his car was ambushed by Polish partisans. A land mine, she said. His driver was killed. Josef was lucky only to lose a foot. After that, he retired from government service."

"And yet he still swam?" March looked up from his notebook. "You know that we discovered him wearing swimming trunks?"

She gave a tight smile. "My brother was a fanatic about everything, Herr March, whether it was politics or health.

He did not smoke, he never touched alcohol and he took exercise every day, despite his ... disability. So, no: I am not in the least surprised that he should have been swimming." She set down her glass and picked up her hat. "I would like to go home now, if I may."

March stood up and held out his hand, helping her to her feet. "What did Doctor Buhler do after 1951? He was only—what?—in his early fifties?"

"That's the strange thing." She opened her handbag and took out a small mirror. She checked that her hat was on straight, tucking stray hairs out of sight with nervous, jerky movements of her fingers. "Before the war, he was so ambitious. He would work eighteen hours a day, every day of the week. But when he left Krakau, he gave up. He never even returned to the law. For more than ten years after poor Edith died, he just sat alone in that big house all day and did nothing."