Fatherland

“Three months.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy it!” Jost turned his face to the window. “I had just begun studying at the university at Gottingen when my call-up came through. Let us say, it was not the happiest day of my life.”

“What were you studying?”

“Literature.”

“German?”

“What other sort is there?” Jost gave one of his watery smiles. “I hope to go back to the university when I have served my three years. I want to be a teacher; a writer. Not a soldier.”

March scanned his statement. “If you are so anti-military, what are you doing in the SS?” He guessed the answer.

“My father. He was a founder member of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. You know how it is: I am his only son; it was his dearest wish.”

“You must hate it.”

Jost shrugged. “I survive. And I have been told -unofficially, naturally — that I will not have to go to the front. They need an assistant at the officer school in Bad Tolz to teach a course on the degeneracy of American literature. That sounds more my kind of thing: degeneracy.”

He risked another smile. “Perhaps I shall become an expert in the field.”

March laughed and glanced again at the statement. Something was not right here, and now he saw it. “No doubt you will.” He put the statement to one side and stood up. “I wish you luck with your teaching.”

“Am I free to go?”

“Of course.”

With a look of relief, Jost got to his feet. March grasped the door handle. “One thing.” He turned and stared into the SS cadet’s eyes. “Why are you lying to me?”

Jost jerked his head back. “What… ?”

“You say you left the barracks at five-thirty. You call the cops at five past six. Schwanenwerder is three kilometres from the barracks. You are fit: you run every day. You do not dawdle: it is raining hard. Unless you suddenly developed a limp, you must have arrived at the lake quite some time before six. So there are — what? — twenty minutes out of thirty-five unaccounted for in your statement. What were you doing, Jost?”

The young man looked stricken. “Maybe I left the barracks later. Or maybe I did a couple of circuits of the running track there first…”

“ ‘Maybe, maybe…’ ” March shook his head sadly. These are facts that can be checked, and I warn you: it will go hard for you if I have to find out the truth and bring it to you, rather than the other way round. You are a homosexual, yes?”

“Herr Sturmbannfuhrer! For God’s sake …”

March put his hands on Jost’s shoulders. “I don’t care. Perhaps you run alone every morning so you can meet some fellow in the Grunewald for twenty minutes. That’s your business. It’s no crime in my book. All I’m interested in is the body. Did you see something? What did you really do?”

Jost shook his head. “Nothing. I swear.” Tears were welling in his wide, pale eyes.

“Very well.” March released him. “Wait downstairs. I’ll arrange transport to take you back to Schlachtensee.” He opened the door. “Remember what I said: better you tell me the truth now than I find it out for myself later.”

Jost hesitated, and for a moment March thought he might say something, but then he walked out into the corridor and was gone.

March rang down to the basement garage and ordered a car. He hung up and stared out of the grimy window at the wall opposite. The black brick glistened under the film of rainwater pouring down from the upper storeys. Had he been too hard on the boy? Probably. But sometimes the truth could only be ambushed, taken unguarded in a surprise attack. Was Jost lying? Certainly. But then if he was a homosexual, he could scarcely afford not to lie: anyone found guilty of’anti-community acts” went straight to a labour camp. SS men arrested for homosexuality were attached to punishment battalions on the Eastern front; few returned.

March had seen a score of young men like Jost in the past year. There were more of them every day. Rebelling against their parents. Questioning the state. Listening to American radio stations. Circulating their crudely printed copies of proscribed books — Gunter Grass and Graham Greene, George Orwell and J. D. Salinger. Chiefly, they protested against the war — the seemingly endless struggle against the American-backed Soviet guerillas, which had been grinding on east of the Urals for twenty years.

He felt suddenly ashamed of his treatment of Jost, and considered going down to apologise to him. But then he decided, as he always did, that his duty to the dead came first. His penance for his morning’s bullying would be to put a name to the body in the lake.

THE Duty Room of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei occupies most of Werderscher Markt’s third floor. March mounted the stairs two at a time. Outside the entrance, a guard armed with a machine gun demanded his pass. The door opened with a thud of electronic bolts.