“What does that mean?”
“It means there should be a central index, showing us which papers actually crossed Stuckart’s desk, and when.” He hammered at the buttons beside the elevator. Nothing happened. “Looks as if they’ve turned this thing off for the night. We’ll have to walk.”
As they clattered down the wide spiral staircase, Halder shouted: “You appreciate this is completely against the rules? I’m cleared for Military, Eastern Front, not Administration, Internal. If we’re stopped, you’ll have to spin Security some yarn about Polizei business — something that’ll take them a couple of hours to check. As for me, I’m just a poor sucker, doing you a favour, right?”
1 appreciate it. How much further?”
“All the way to the bottom.” Halder was shaking his head. “An Honour Court! Dear God, Zavi, what’s happened to you?”
Sixty metres beneath the ground the air circulated cool and dry, the lights were dimmed, to protect the archives. “They say this place was built to withstand a direct hit from an American missile,” said Halder.
“What’s behind there?”
March pointed to a steel door, covered with warning signs: “ATTENTION! NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORISED PERSONS!” “ENTRY FORBIDDEN!” “PASSES MUST BE SHOWN”.
“ 'The right history is worth a hundred divisions', remember? That’s the place where the wrong history goes. Shit. Look out.”
Halder pulled March into a doorway. A security guard was coming towards them, bent like a miner in an underground shaft, pushing a metal cart. March thought he was certain to see them, but he went straight past, grunting with effort. He stopped at the metal barrier and unlocked it. There was a glimpse of a furnace, a roar of flame, before the door clanged shut behind him.
“Let’s go.”
As they walked, Halder explained the procedure. The archive worked on warehouse principles. Requisitions for files came down to a central handling area on each floor. Here, in ledgers a metre high and twenty centimetres thick, was kept the main index. Entered next to each file was a stack number. The stacks themselves were in fire- proof storerooms leading off from the handling area. The secret, said Halder, was to know your way round the index. He paraded in front of the crimson leather spines, tapping each with his finger until he found the one he wanted, then lugged it over to the floor manager’s desk.
March had once been below-decks on the aircraft carrier, Grossadmiral Raeder. The depths of the Reichsarchiv reminded him of that: low ceilings strung with lights, the sense of something vast pressing down from above. Next to the desk: a photocopier — a rare sight in Germany, where their distribution was strictly controlled, to stop subversives producing illegal literature. A dozen empty carts were drawn up by the lift-shaft. He could see fifty metres in either direction. The place was deserted.
Halder gave a cry of triumph. “State Secretary: Office Files, 1939 to 1950. Oh Christ: four hundred boxes. What years do you want to look at?”
“The Swiss bank account was opened in July ’42, so let’s say the first seven months of that year.”
Halder turned the page, talking to himself. “Yes. I see what they’ve done. They’ve arranged the papers in four series: office correspondence, minutes and memoranda, statutes and decrees, ministry personnel…”
“What I’m looking for is something that connects Stuckart with Buhler and Luther.”
“In that case, we’d better start with office correspondence. That should give us a feel for what was going on at the time.” Halder was scribbling notes. “D/15/M/28-34. Okay. Here we go.”
Storeroom D was twenty metres down on the left. Stack fifteen, section M was in the dead centre of the room. Halder said: “Only six boxes, thank God. You take January to April, I’ll do May to August.”
The boxes were made of cardboard, each the size of a large desk drawer. There was no table, so they sat on the floor. With his back pressed against the metal shelving, March opened the first box, pulled out a handful of papers, and began to read.
You need a little luck in this life.
The first document was a letter dated 2 January, from the under state secretary at the Air Ministry, regarding the distribution of gas masks to the Reichsluftschutzbund, the Air Raid Protection organisation. The second, dated 4 January, was from the Office of the Four-Year Plan and concerned the alleged unauthorised use of gasoline by senior government officials.
The third was from Reinhard Heydrich.
March saw the signature first — an angular, spidery scrawl. Then his eyes travelled to the letterhead — the Reich Main Security Office, Berlin SW 11, Prinz-Albrecht Strasse 8 — then to the date: 6 January 1942. And only then to the text:
This is to confirm that the inter-agency discussion followed by luncheon originally scheduled for 9 December 1941 has now been postponed to 20 January 1942 in the office of the International Criminal Police Commission, Berlin, Am grossen Wannsee, Nr. 56/58.
March leafed through the other letters in the box: carbon flimsies and creamy originals; imposing letterheads -Reichschancellery, Economics Ministry, Organisation-Todt; invitations to luncheons and meetings; pleas, demands, circulars. But there was nothing else from Heydrich.
March passed the letter to Halder. “What do you make of this?”
Halder frowned. “Unusual, I would say, for the Main Security Office to convene a meeting of government agencies.”
“Can we find out what they discussed?”
“Should be able to. We can cross-reference it to the minutes and memoranda series. Let’s see: 20 January…”
Halder looked at his notes, pulled himself to his feet and walked along the stack. He dragged out another box, returned with it and sat, cross-legged. March watched him flick through the contents. Suddenly, he stopped. He said slowly: “My God…”
“What is it?”
Halder handed him a single sheet of paper, on which was typed: “In the interests of state security, the minutes of the inter-agency meeting of 20 January 1942 have been removed at the request of the Reichsfuhrer- SS.”
Halder said:’Look at the date.”
March looked. It was 6 April 1964. The minutes had been extracted by Heydrich eleven days earlier.
“Can he do that — legally, I mean?”
“The Gestapo can weed out whatever it wants on the grounds of security. They usually transfer the papers to the vaults in Prinz-Albrecht Strasse.”
There was a noise in the corridor outside. Halder held up a warning finger. Both men were silent, motionless, as the guard clattered past, wheeling the empty cart back from the furnace room. They listened as the sounds faded towards the other end of the building.
March whispered: “Now what do we do?”
Halder scratched his head. “An inter-agency meeting at the level of state-secretary…”
March saw what he was thinking. “Buhler and Luther would have been invited, as well?”
“It would seem logical. At that rank, they get fussy about protocol. You wouldn’t have a state secretary from one ministry attending, and only a junior civil servant from another. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock.”
They’re an hour ahead in Krakau.” Halder chewed his lip for a moment, then reached a decision. He stood. “I’ll telephone my friend who works at the archives in the General Government and ask if the SS have been sniffing around there in the past couple of weeks. If they haven’t, maybe I can persuade him to go in tomorrow and see if the minutes are still in Buhler’s papers.”
“Couldn’t we just check here, in the Foreign Ministry archives? In Luther’s papers?”
“No. Too vast. It could take us weeks. This is the best way, believe me.”
