Fatherland

Stuckart had shot his mistress first. According to the autopsy report, she had lain, fully clothed, face down on the bed in Stuckart’s apartment in Fritz Todt-Platz. He had put a bullet in the back of her head with his SS Luger (if that was so, thought March, it was probably the first time the old pen-pusher had ever used it). Traces of impacted cotton and down in the wound suggested he had fired the bullet through a pillow. Then he had sat on the edge of the bed and apparently shot himself through the roof of his mouth. In the scene-of-crime photographs neither body was recognisable. The pistol was still clutched in Stuckart’s hand. “He left a note,” said Fiebes, “on the dining room table.”

“By this action I hope to spare embarrassment to my family, the Reich and the Fuhrer. Heil Hitler! Long live Germany! Wilhelm Stuckart.”

“Blackmail?”

“Presumably.”

“Who found the bodies?”

“This is the best part.” Fiebes spat out each word as if it were poison: “An American woman journalist.”

Her statement was in the file: Charlotte Maguire, aged 25, Berlin representative of an American news agency, World European Features.

“A real little bitch. Started shrieking about her rights the moment she was brought in. Rights!” Fiebes took another swig of schnapps. “Shit, I suppose we have to be nice to the Americans now, do we?”

March made a note of her address. The only other witness questioned was the porter who worked in Stuckart’s apartment block. The American woman claimed to have seen two men on the stairs immediately before the discovery of the bodies; but the porter insisted there had been no one.

March looked up suddenly. Fiebes jumped. “What is it?”

“Nothing. A shadow at your door, perhaps.”

“My God, this place…” Fiebes flung open the frosted glass door and peered both ways along the corridor. While his back was turned, March detached the envelope pinned to the back of the file and slipped it into his pocket.

“Nobody.” He shut the door. “You’re losing your nerve, March.”

“An over-active imagination has always been my curse.” He closed the folder and stood up.

Fiebes swayed, squinting. “Don’t you want to take it with you? Aren’t you working on this with the Gestapo?”

“No. A separate matter.”

“Oh.” He sat down heavily. “When you said "state security", I assumed… Doesn’t matter. Out of my hands. The Gestapo have taken it over, thank God. Obergruppenfuhrer Globus has assumed responsibility. You must have heard of him? A thug, it is true, but he’ll sort it out.”

THE information bureau at Alexander Platz had Luther’s address. According to police records, he still lived in Dahlem. March lit another cigarette, then dialled the number. The telephone rang for a long time — a bleak, unfriendly echo, somewhere in the city. Just as he was about to hang up, a woman answered.

“Yes?”

“Frau Luther?”

“Yes.” She sounded younger than he had expected. Her voice was thick, as if she had been crying.

“My name is Xavier March. I am an investigator with the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. May I speak to your husband?”

“I’m sorry … I don’t understand. If you’re from the Polizei, surely you know…”

“Know? Know what?”

That he is missing. He disappeared on Sunday.” She started to cry.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” March balanced his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray.

God in heaven, another one.

“He said he was going on a business trip to Munich and would be back on Monday.” She blew her nose. “But I have already explained all this. Surely you know that this matter is being dealt with at the very highest level. What…?”

She broke off. March could hear a conversation at the other end. There was a man’s voice in the background: harsh and questioning. She said something he could not hear, then came back on the line.

“Obergruppenfuhrer Globocnik is with me now. He would like to talk to you. What did you say your name was?”

March replaced the receiver.

ON his way out, he thought of the call at Buhler’s place that morning. An old man’s voice:

“Buhler? Speak to me. Who is that?”

“A friend.”

Click.

SEVEN

Bulow Strasse runs west to east for about a kilometre, through one of the busiest quarters of Berlin, close to the Gotenland railway station. The American woman’s address proved to be an apartment block midway down.

It was seedier than March had expected: five storeys high, black with a century of traffic fumes, streaked with bird shit. A drunk sat on the pavement next to the entrance, turning his head to follow each passer-by. On the opposite side of the street was an elevated section of the U-bahn. As he parked, a train was pulling out of the Billow Strasse station, its red and yellow carriages riding blue-white flashes of electricity, vivid in the gathering dark.

Her apartment was on the fourth floor. She was not in. “Henry,” read a note written in English and pinned to her door, “I’m in the bar on Potsdamer Strasse. Love, Charlie.”