infirmities’ (see 1933 Sterilisation Law) will be permitted only after production of a sterilisation certificate.” There were charts: “An Overview of the Admissibility of Marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans”, The Prevalence of Mischling of the First Degree”.
It was all gobbledygook to Xavier March.
Fiebes said: “Most of it is out of date now. A lot of it refers to Jews, and the Jews, as we know” — he gave a wink — “have all gone east. But Stuckart is still the bible of my calling. This is the foundation stone.”
March handed him the book. Fiebes cradled it like a baby. “Now what I really need to see”, said March, “is the file on Stuckart’s death.”
He was braced for an argument. Instead, Fiebes merely made an expansive gesture with his bottle of schnapps. “Go ahead.”
The Kripo file was an ancient one. It went back more than a quarter of a century. In 1936, Stuckart had become a member of the Interior Ministry’s “Committee for the Protection of German Blood” — a tribunal of civil servants, lawyers and doctors who considered applications for marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans. Shortly afterwards, the police had started receiving anonymous allegations that Stuckart was providing marriage licences in exchange for cash bribes. He had also apparently demanded sexual favours from some of the women involved.
The first name complainant was a Dortmund tailor, a Herr Maser, who had protested to his local Party office that his fiancee had been assaulted. His statement had been passed to the Kripo. There was no record of any investigation. Instead, Maser and his girlfriend had been dispatched to concentration camps. Various other stories from informants, including one from Stuckart’s wartime Block-wart, were included in the file. No action had ever been taken.
In 1953, Stuckart had begun a liaison with an eighteen-year-old Warsaw girl, Maria Dymarski. She had claimed German ancestry back to 1720 in order to marry a Wehrmacht captain. The conclusion of the Interior Ministry’s experts was that the documents were forged. The following year, Dymarski had been given a permit to work as a domestic servant in Berlin. Her employer’s name was listed as Wilhelm Stuckart.
March looked up. “How did he get away with it for ten years?”
“He was an Obergruppenfuhrer, March. You don’t make complaints about a man like that. Remember what happened to Maser when he complained? Besides, nobody had any evidence — then.”
“And there is evidence now?”
“Look in the envelope.’”
Inside the file, in a manila envelope, were a dozen colour photographs, of startlingly good quality, showing Stuckart and Dymarski in bed. White bodies against red satin sheets. The faces — contorted in some shots, relaxed in others — were easy to identify. They were all taken from the same position, alongside the bed. The girl’s body, pale and undernourished, looked fragile beneath the man’s. In one shot she sat astride him — thin white arms clasped behind her head, face tilted towards the camera. Her features were broad, Slavic. But with her shoulder-length hair dyed blonde she could have passed as a German.
“These weren’t taken recently?”
“About ten years ago. He turned greyer. She put on a bit of weight. She looked more of a tart as she got older.”
“Do we have any idea where they are?” The background was a blur of colours. A brown wooden bedhead, red-and-white striped wallpaper, a lamp with a yellow shade; it could have been anywhere.
“It’s not his apartment — at least, not the way it’s decorated now. A hotel, maybe a whorehouse. The camera is behind a two-way mirror. See the way they sometimes seem to be staring into the camera? I’ve seen that look a hundred times. They’re checking themselves in the mirror.”
March examined each of the pictures again. They were glossy and unscratched — new prints from old negatives. The sort of pictures a pimp might try and sell you in a back street in Kreuzberg.
“Where did you find them?”
“Next to the bodies.”
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.
