Not that there was much about this rather florid, Renaissance-style building that looked worth fighting for now. Its facade blackened by smoke, the Reichstag looked like a volcano which had seen its last and most spectacular eruption. But the fire had been more than merely the burnt offering of the 1918 Republic; it was also the clearest piece of pyromancy that Germany could have been given as to what Adolf Hitler and his third nipple had in store for us.
I walked up to the north side and what had been Portal V, the public entrance, through which I had walked once before, with my mother, more than thirty years ago.
I left my flashlight in my coat pocket. A man with a torch in his hand at night needs only to paint a few coloured circles on his chest to make a better target of himself. And anyway, there was more than enough moonlight shining through what was left of the roof for me to see where I was going. Still, as I stepped through the north vestibule, into what had once been a waiting-room, I worked the Mauser's slide noisily to let whoever was expecting me know that I was armed. And in the eerie, echoing silence, it sounded louder than a troop of Prussian cavalry.
'You won't need that,' said a voice from the galleried floor above me.
'All the same, I'll just hang on to it awhile. There might be rats about.'
The man laughed scornfully. 'The rats left here a long time ago.' A torch beam shone in my face. 'Come on up, Gunther.'
'Seems like I should know your voice,' I said, starting up the stairs.
'I'm the same way. Sometimes I recognize my voice, but I just don't seem to know the man using it. There's nothing unusual in that, is there? Not these days.' I took out my flashlight and pointed it at the man I now saw retreating into the room ahead of me.
'I'm interested to hear it. I'd like to hear you say that sort of thing over at Prinz Albrecht Strasse.' He laughed again.
'So you do recognize me after all.'
I caught up with him beside a great marble statue of the Emperor Wilhelm I that stood in the centre of a great, octagonally-shaped hall, where my torch finally picked out his features. There was something cosmopolitan about these, although he spoke with a Berlin accent. Some might even have said that he looked more than a little Jewish, if the size of his nose was anything to go by. This dominated the centre of his face like the arm on a sundial, and tugged the upper lip into a thin sneer of a smile. His greying, fair hair he wore closely cropped, which had the effect of accentuating the height of his forehead. It was a cunning, wily sort efface, and suited him perfectly.
'Surprised?' he said.
'That the head of Berlin's Criminal Police should send me an anonymous note? No, that happens to me all the time.'
'Would you have come if I had signed it?'
'Probably not.'
'And if I had suggested that you come to Prinz Albrecht Strasse instead of this place? Admit you were curious.'
'Since when has Kripo had to rely on suggestion to get people down to headquarters?'
'You've got a point.' His smirk broadening, Arthur Nebe produced a hip flask from his coat pocket. 'Drink?'
'Thanks. I don't mind if I do.' I swigged a cheekful of the clear grain alcohol thoughtfully provided by the Reichskriminaldirektor, and then took out my cigarettes. After I had lit us both I held the match aloft for a couple of seconds.
'Not an easy place to torch,' I said. 'One man, acting on his own: he'd have to have been a fairly agile sort of bugger. And even then I reckon it would have taken Van der Lubbe all night to get this little campfire blazing.' I sucked at my cigarette and added: 'The word is that Fat Hermann had a hand in it. A hand holding a piece of burning tinder, that is.'
'I'm shocked, shocked to hear you make such a scandalous suggestion about our beloved prime minister.' But Nebe was laughing as he said it. 'Poor old Hermann, getting the unofficial blame like that. Oh, he went along with the arson, but it wasn't his party.'
'Whose was it, then?'
'Joey the Cripp. That poor fucking Dutchman was an added bonus for him. Van der Lubbe had the misfortune to have decided to set fire to this place on the same night as Goebbels and his lads. Joey thought it was his birthday, especially as Lubbe turned out to be a Bolshie. Only he forgot that the arrest of a culprit meant a trial, which meant that there would have to be the irritating formality of producing evidence. And of course right from the start it was obvious to a man with his head in a bag that Lubbe couldn't have acted on his own.'
'So why didn't he say something at the trial?
'They pumped him full of some shit to keep him quiet, threatened his family. You know the sort of thing.' Nebe walked round a huge bronze chandelier that lay twisted on the dirty marble floor. 'Here. I want to show you something.'
He led the way into the great Hall of the Diet, where Germany had last seen some semblance of democracy. Rising high above us was the shell of what had once been the Reichstag's glass dome. Now all the glass was blown out and, against the moon, the copper girders resembled the web of some gigantic spider. Nebe pointed his torch at the scorched, split beams that surrounded the Hall.
They're badly damaged by the fire, but those half figures supporting the beams can you see how some of them are also holding up letters of the alphabet?'
'Just about.'
'Yes, well, some of them are unrecognizable. But if you look hard you can still see that they spell out a motto.'
'Not at one o'clock in the morning I can't.'
Nebe ignored me. 'It says Country before Party.' He repeated the motto almost reverently, and then looked at me with what I supposed to be a meaning.
I sighed and shook my head. 'Oh, that really knocks over the heap. You? Arthur Nebe? The Reichskriminaldirektor? A beefsteak Nazi? Well, I'll eat my broom.'
'Brown on the outside, yes,' he said. 'I don't know what colour I am on the inside, but it's not red I'm no Bolshevik. But then it's not brown either. I am no longer a Nazi.'
'Shit, you're one hell of a mimic, then.'
'I am now. I have to be to stay alive. Of course, it wasn't always that way. The police force is my life, Gunther. I love it. When I saw it corroded by liberalism during the Weimar years I thought that National Socialism would restore some respect for law and order in this country. Instead, it's worse than ever. I was the one who helped get the Gestapo away from the control of Diels, only to find him replaced with Himmler and Heydrich, and '
' and then the rain really started to come in at the eaves. I get the picture.'
'The time is coming when everyone will have to do the same. There's no room for agnosticism in the Germany that Himmler and Heydrich have got planned for us.
It'll be stand up and be counted or take the consequences. But it's still possible to change things from the inside. And when the time is right we'll need men like you. Men on the force who can be trusted. That's why I've asked you here to try and persuade you to come back.'
'Me? Back in Kripo? You must be joking. Listen, Arthur, I've built up a good business, I make a very good living now. Why should I chuck all that away for the pleasure of being on the force again?'
'You might not have much choice in the matter. Heydrich thinks that you might be useful to him if you were back in Kripo.'
'I see. Any particular reason?'
'There's a case he wants you to handle. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that Heydrich takes his Fascism very personally. He generally gets what he wants.'
'What's this case about?'
'I don't know what he's got in mind; Heydrich doesn't confide in me. I just wanted to warn you, so that you'd be prepared, so that you didn't do anything stupid like tell him to go to hell, which might be your first reaction. We
