Fatherland

The Volkswagen’s 1300 cc engine rattled behind them. March drove carefully: west along Billow Strasse, around the Berlin-Gotenland station, north up the Avenue of Victory. The captured artillery from the Barbarossa campaign lined the boulevard, barrels tilted towards the stars. Normally this section of the capital was quiet at night, Berliners preferring the noisy cafes behind the K-damm, or the jumbled streets of Kreuzberg. But on this evening, people were everywhere — standing in groups, admiring the guns and the floodlit buildings, strolling and window shopping.

“What kind of person wants to go out at night and look at guns?” She shook her head in wonderment.

Tourists,” said March. “By the twentieth, there’ll be more than three million of them.”

It was risky, taking the American woman back to Stuckart’s place, especially now Globus knew someone from the Kripo was looking for Luther. But he needed to see the apartment, to hear the woman’s story. He had no plan, no real idea of what he might find. He recalled the Fuhrer’s words — “I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker” — and he smiled.

Ahead of them, searchlights picked out the eagle on top of the Great Hall. It seemed to hang in the sky, a golden bird of prey hovering over the capital.

She noticed his grin. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing.” He turned right at the European Parliament. The flags of the twelve member nations were lit by spots. The swastika which flew above them was twice the size of the other standards. “Tell me about Stuckart. How well did you know him?”

“Hardly at all. I met him through my parents. My father was at the Embassy here before the war. He married a German, an actress. She’s my mother. Monika Koch, did you ever hear of her?”

“No. I don’t believe so.” Her German was flawless. She must have spoken it since childhood; her mother’s doing, no doubt.

“She’d be sorry to hear that. She seems to think she was a big star over here. Anyway, they both knew Stuckart slightly. When I arrived in Berlin last year, they gave me a list of people to go and talk to — contacts. Half of them turned out to be dead, one way or another. Most of the rest didn’t want to meet me. American journalists don’t make healthy company, if you know what I mean. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead. What was Stuckart like?”

“Awful.” Her lighter flared in the darkness; she inhaled deeply. “He made a grab at me, even though this woman of his was in the apartment at the same time. That was just before Christmas. I kept away from him after that. Then, last week, I got a message from my office in New York. They wanted a piece for Hitler’s seventy-fifth birthday, talking to some of the people who knew him from the old days.”

“So you rang Stuckart?”

“Right.”

“And arranged to meet him on Sunday, and when you got there, he was dead?”

“If you know it all,” she said irritably, “why do you need to talk to me again?”

“I don’t know it all, Fraulein. That’s the point.”

After that, they drove in silence.

Fritz Todt-Platz was a couple of blocks from the Avenue of Victory. Laid out in the mid-1950s as part of Speer’s redevelopment of the city, it was a square of expensive-looking apartment buildings, erected around a small memorial garden. In the centre stood an absurdly heroic statue of Todt, the creator of the Autobahnen, by Professor Thorak.

“Which one was Stuckart’s?”

She pointed to a block on the other side of the square. March drove round and parked outside it.

“Which floor?”

“Fourth.”

He looked up. The fourth floor was in darkness. Good.

Todt’s statue was floodlit. In the reflected light, her face was white. She looked as if she was about to be sick. Then he remembered the photographs Fiebes had shown him of the corpses — Stuckart’s skull had been a crater, like a guttered candle — and he understood.

She said: “I don’t have to do this, do I?”

“No. But you will.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to know what happened as much as I do. That’s why you’ve come this far”

She stared at him again, then stubbed out her cigarette, twisting it and breaking it in the ashtray. “Let’s do it quickly. I want to get back to my friends.”

The keys to the building were still in the envelope which March had removed from Stuckart’s file. There were five in all. He found the one that fitted the front door and let them into the foyer. It was vulgarly luxurious, in the new imperial style — white marble floor, crystal chandeliers, nineteenth-century gilt chairs with red plush upholstery, the air scented with dried flowers. No porter, thankfully: he must have gone off duty. Indeed, the entire building seemed deserted. Perhaps the tenants had left for their second homes in the country. Berlin could be unbearably crowded in the week before the Fuhrertag. The smart set always fled the capital.

“Now what?”

“Just tell me what happened.”