Fatherland

“We knew what we were looking for, you see.” Globus rubbed his hands. “Gentlemen, I guarantee you will never have clapped eyes on the likes of this in your entire lives.”

Beyond the panel was a chamber. When Globus turned on the lights, it was indeed dazzling: a sacristy; a jewelbox. Angels and saints; clouds and temples; high-cheeked noblemen in white furs and red damask; sprawling pink flesh on perfumed yellow silk; flowers and sunrises and Venetian canals…

“Go in,” said Globus. “The Reichsfuhrer is anxious that you should see it properly.”

It was a small room — four metres square, March guessed -with a bank of spotlights built into the ceiling, directed on to the paintings which covered every wall. In the centre was an old-fashioned swivel chair, of the sort a nineteenth-century clerk might have had in a counting-house. Globus placed a gleaming jackboot on the arm and kicked, sending it spinning.

“Imagine him, sitting here. Door locked. Like a dirty old man in a brothel. We found it yesterday afternoon. Krebs?”

Krebs took the floor. “An expert is on his way this morning from the Fuhrermuseum in Linz. We had Professor Braun of the Kaiser Friedrich, here in Berlin, give us a preliminary assessment last night.”

He consulted his sheaf of notes.

“At the moment, we know we have Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael, Portrait of a Young Man by Rembrandt, Christ Carrying the Cross by Rubens, Guardi’s Venetian Palace, Krakau Suburbs by Bellotto, eight Canalettos, at least thirty-five engravings by Durer and Kulmbach, a

Gobelin. The rest he could only guess at.”

Krebs reeled them off as if they were dishes in a restaurant. He rested his pale ringers on an altar-piece of gorgeous colours, raised on planks at the end of the room.

This is the work of the Nuremberg artist, Viet Stoss, commissioned by the King of Poland in 1477. It took ten years to complete. The centre of the triptych shows the Virgin asleep, surrounded by angels. The side panels show scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary. The predella” — he pointed to the base of the altar-piece- “shows the genealogy of Christ.”

Globus said: “Sturmbannfuhrer Krebs knows of these things. He is one of our brightest officers.”

“I’m sure” said Nebe. “Most interesting. And where did it all come from?”

Krebs began: “The Viet Stoss was removed from the Church of Our Lady in Krakau in November 1939—”

Globus interrupted: “It came from the General Government. Warsaw, mainly, we think. Buhler recorded it as either lost or destroyed. God alone knows how much else the corrupt swine got away with. Think what he must have sold just to buy this place!”

Nebe reached out and touched one of the canvases: the martyred Saint Sebastian, bound to a Doric pillar, arrows jutting from his golden skin. The varnish was cracked, like a dried river bed, but the colours beneath — red, white, purple, blue — were bright still. The painting gave off a faint smell of must and incense — the scent of pre-war Poland, of a nation vanished from the map. Some of the panels, March saw, had powdery lumps of masonry attached to their edges — traces of the monastery and castle walls from which they had been wrenched.

Nebe was rapt before the saint. “Something in his expression reminds me of you, March.” He traced the body’s outline with his fingertips and gave a wheezing laugh. “ ‘The willing martyr.’ What do you say, Globus?”

Globus grunted. “I don’t believe in saints. Or martyrs.” He glared at March.

“Extraordinary,” murmured Nebe, “to think of Buhler, of all people, with these…”

“You knew him?” March blurted out the question.

“Slightly, before the war. A committed National Socialist, and a dedicated lawyer. Quite a combination. A fanatic for detail. Like our Gestapo colleague here.”

Krebs gave a slight bow. "The Herr Oberstgruppenfuhrer is kind.”

“The point is this” said Globus, irritably. “We have known about Party Comrade Buhler for some time. Known about his activities in the General Government. Known about his associates. Unfortunately, at some point last week, the bastard found out we were on to him.”

“And killed himself?” Nebe asked. “And Stuckart?”

The same. Stuckart was a complete degenerate. He not only helped himself to beauty on canvas. He liked to taste it in the flesh. Buhler had the pick of what he wanted in the East. What were those figures, Krebs?”

“A secret inventory was compiled in 1940 by the Polish museum authorities. We now have it. Art treasures removed from Warsaw alone: two thousand seven hundred paintings of the European school; ten thousand seven hundred paintings by Polish artists; fourteen hundred sculptures.”