Fatherland

Fiebes opened a desk drawer and handed March a battered, leather-bound volume. A Commentary on the German Racial Laws. March leafed through it. There were chapters on each of the three Nuremberg Laws of 1935: the Reich Citizenship Law, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, the Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People. Some passages were underlined in red ink, with exclamation marks beside them. “For the avoidance of racial damage, it is necessary for couples to submit to medical examination before marriage.”

“Marriage between persons suffering from venereal disease, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy or ‘genetic infirmities’ (see 1933 Sterilisation Law) will be permitted only after production of a sterilisation certificate.” There were charts: “An Overview of the Admissibility of Marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans”, The Prevalence of Mischling of the First Degree”.

It was all gobbledygook to Xavier March.

Fiebes said: “Most of it is out of date now. A lot of it refers to Jews, and the Jews, as we know” — he gave a wink — “have all gone east. But Stuckart is still the bible of my calling. This is the foundation stone.”

March handed him the book. Fiebes cradled it like a baby. “Now what I really need to see”, said March, “is the file on Stuckart’s death.”

He was braced for an argument. Instead, Fiebes merely made an expansive gesture with his bottle of schnapps. “Go ahead.”

THE Kripo file was an ancient one. It went back more than a quarter of a century. In 1936, Stuckart had become a member of the Interior Ministry’s “Committee for the Protection of German Blood” — a tribunal of civil servants, lawyers and doctors who considered applications for marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans. Shortly afterwards, the police had started receiving anonymous allegations that Stuckart was providing marriage licences in exchange for cash bribes. He had also apparently demanded sexual favours from some of the women involved.

The first name complainant was a Dortmund tailor, a Herr Maser, who had protested to his local Party office that his fiancee had been assaulted. His statement had been passed to the Kripo. There was no record of any investigation. Instead, Maser and his girlfriend had been dispatched to concentration camps. Various other stories from informants, including one from Stuckart’s wartime Block-wart, were included in the file. No action had ever been taken.

In 1953, Stuckart had begun a liaison with an eighteen-year-old Warsaw girl, Maria Dymarski. She had claimed German ancestry back to 1720 in order to marry a Wehrmacht captain. The conclusion of the Interior Ministry’s experts was that the documents were forged. The following year, Dymarski had been given a permit to work as a domestic servant in Berlin. Her employer’s name was listed as Wilhelm Stuckart.

March looked up. “How did he get away with it for ten years?”

“He was an Obergruppenfuhrer, March. You don’t make complaints about a man like that. Remember what happened to Maser when he complained? Besides, nobody had any evidence — then.”

“And there is evidence now?”

“Look in the envelope.’”

Inside the file, in a manila envelope, were a dozen colour photographs, of startlingly good quality, showing Stuckart and Dymarski in bed. White bodies against red satin sheets. The faces — contorted in some shots, relaxed in others — were easy to identify. They were all taken from the same position, alongside the bed. The girl’s body, pale and undernourished, looked fragile beneath the man’s. In one shot she sat astride him — thin white arms clasped behind her head, face tilted towards the camera. Her features were broad, Slavic. But with her shoulder-length hair dyed blonde she could have passed as a German.

“These weren’t taken recently?”

“About ten years ago. He turned greyer. She put on a bit of weight. She looked more of a tart as she got older.”

“Do we have any idea where they are?” The background was a blur of colours. A brown wooden bedhead, red-and-white striped wallpaper, a lamp with a yellow shade; it could have been anywhere.

“It’s not his apartment — at least, not the way it’s decorated now. A hotel, maybe a whorehouse. The camera is behind a two-way mirror. See the way they sometimes seem to be staring into the camera? I’ve seen that look a hundred times. They’re checking themselves in the mirror.”

March examined each of the pictures again. They were glossy and unscratched — new prints from old negatives. The sort of pictures a pimp might try and sell you in a back street in Kreuzberg.

“Where did you find them?”

“Next to the bodies.”