Fatherland

Zaugg’s villa — raised his hand. March waved in return.

Their flight number was being called for the last time: “Passengers for Lufthansa flight 227 to Berlin must report immediately…”

He let his arm fall back and turned towards the departure gate.

TWO

No whisky on this flight, but coffee — plenty of it, strong and black. Charlie tried to read a newspaper but fell asleep. March was too excited to rest.

He had torn a dozen blank pages from his notebook, had ripped them in half and half again. Now he had them spread out on the plastic table in front of him. On each he had written a name, a date, an incident. He reshuffled them endlessly — the front to the back, the back to the middle, the middle to the beginning — a cigarette dangling from his lips, smoke billowing, his head in the clouds. To the other passengers, a few of whom stole curious glances, he must have looked like a man playing a particularly demented form of patience.

JULY 1942. On the Eastern Front, the Wehrmacht has launched Operation “Blue’: the offensive which will eventually win Germany the war. America is taking a hammering from the Japanese. The British are bombing the Ruhr, fighting in North Africa. In Prague, Reinhard Heydrich is recovering from an assassination attempt.

So: good days for the Germans, especially those in the conquered territories. Elegant apartments, girlfriends, bribes — packing cases of plunder to send back home. Corruption from high to low; from corporal to Kommissar; from alcohol to altar-pieces. Buhler, Stuckart and Luther have an especially good racket in play. Buhler requisitions art treasures in the General Government, sends them under cover to Stuckart at the Interior Ministry — quite safe, for who would dare tamper with the mail of such powerful servants of the Reich? Luther smuggles the objects abroad to sell — safe again, for who would dare order the head of the Foreign Ministry’s German Division to open his bags? All three retire in the 1950s, rich and honoured men.

And then, in 1964: catastrophe.

March shuffled his bits of paper, shuffled them again.

On Friday, 11 April, the three conspirators gather at Buhler s villa: the first piece of evidence which suggests a panic…

No. That was not right. He leafed back through his notes, to Charlie’s account of her conversation with Stuckart. Of course.

On Thursday, 10 April, the day before the meeting, Stuckart stands in Billow Strasse and notes the number of the telephone in the booth opposite Charlotte Maguire’s apartment. Armed with that, he goes to Buhlers’s villa on Friday. Something so terrible threatens to overwhelm them that the three men contemplate the unthinkable: defection to the United States of America. Stuckart lays out the procedure. They cannot trust the Embassy, because Kennedy has stuffed it with appeasers. They need a direct link with Washington. Stuckart has it: Michael Maguire’s daughter. It is agreed. On Saturday, Stuckart telephones the girl to arrange a meeting. On Sunday, Luther flies to Switzerland: not to fetch pictures or money, which they have in abundance in Berlin, but to collect something put there in the course of three visits, between the summer of 1942 and the spring of 1943.

But already it is too late. By the time Luther has made the withdrawal, sent the signal from Zurich, landed in Berlin, Buhler and Stuckart are dead. And so he decides to disappear, taking with him whatever he removed from the vault in Zurich.

March sat back and contemplated his half-finished puzzle. It was a version of events, as valid as any other.

Charlie sighed and stirred in her sleep, twisted to rest her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair. Today was Friday. The Fuhrertag was Monday. He had only the weekend left. “Oh, my dear Fraulein Maguire,” he murmured. “I fear we have been looking in the wrong place.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we shall shortly be beginning our descent to Flughafen Hermann Goering. Please return your seats to the upright position and fold away the tables in front of you…”

Carefully, so as not to wake her, March withdrew his shoulder from beneath Charlie’s head, gathered up his pieces of paper, and made his way, unsteadily, towards the back of the aircraft. A boy in the uniform of the Hitler Youth emerged from the lavatory and held the door open, politely. March nodded, went inside and locked it behind him. A dim light flickered.

The tiny compartment stank of stale air, endlessly recycled; of cheap soap; of faeces. He lifted the lid of the metal lavatory basin and dropped in the paper. The aircraft pitched and shook. A warning light pinged. ATTENTION! RETURN TO YOUR SEAT! The turbulence made his stomach lurch. Was this how Luther had felt, as the aircraft dropped towards Berlin? The metal was clammy to the touch. He pulled a lever and the lavatory flushed, his notes sucked from sight in a whirlpool of blue water.

Lufthansa had stocked the toilet not with towels but with moist little paper handkerchiefs, impregnated with some sickly liquid. March wiped his face. He could feel the heat of his skin through the slippery fabric. Another vibration, like a U-boat being depth-charged. They were falling fast. He pressed his burning forehead to the cool mirror. Dive, dive, dive …

She was awake, dragging a comb through her thick hair. “I was beginning to think you had jumped.”

“It’s true, the thought did enter my mind.” He fastened his seatbelt. “But you may be my salvation.”

“You say the nicest things.”

“I said 'may be'.” He took her hand. “Listen. Are you sure Stuckart told you he came on Thursday to check out that telephone opposite your apartment?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure. I remember it made me realise: this man is serious, he’s done his homework.”

“That’s what I think. The question is, was Stuckart acting on his own — trying to set up his own private escape route -or was ringing you a course of action he had discussed with the others?”

“Does it matter?”

“Very much. Think about it. If he agreed it with the others on Friday, it means Luther may know who you are, and know the procedure for contacting you.”

She pulled her hand back in surprise. “But that’s crazy. He’d never trust me.”

“You’re right, it’s crazy.” They had dropped through one layer of cloud; beneath them was another. March could see the tip of the Great Hall poking through it, like the top of a helmet. “But suppose Luther is still alive down there, what are his options? The airport is being watched. So are the docks, the railway stations, the border. He can’t risk going direct to the American Embassy, not after what’s happened about Kennedy’s visit. He can’t go home. What can he do?”

“I don’t believe it. He could have called me Tuesday or Wednesday. Or Thursday morning. Why would he wait?”

But he could hear the doubt in her voice. He thought: You don’t want to believe it. You thought you were clever, looking for your story in Zurich, but all the time your story might actually have been looking for you, in Berlin.

She had turned away from him, to stare through the window.

March felt suddenly deflated. In truth, he hardly knew her, despite everything. He said: The reason he would have waited is to try and find something better to do, something safer. Who knows? Maybe he’s found it.”

She did not answer.

They landed in Berlin, in a thin drizzle, just before two o’clock. At the end of the runway, as the Junkers