summoned to see the Reichfuhrer, one-to-one. He tells me retired civil servants have been discovered in a colossal art fraud. The potential embarrassment for the Party is huge. Obergruppenfuhrer Globocnik is in charge. I am to go at once to Schwanen-werder and take my orders from him.”
“Why you?”
“Why not? The Reichfuhrer knows of my interest in art. We have spoken of these matters. My job was simply to catalogue the treasures.”
“But you must have realised that Globus killed Buhler and Stuckart?”
“Of course. I’m not an idiot. I know Globus’s reputation as well as you. But Globus was acting on Heydrich’s orders, and if Heydrich had decided to let him loose, to spare the Party a public scandal — who was I to object?”
“Who were you to object?” repeated March. “Let’s be clear, March. Are you saying their deaths had nothing to do with the fraud?”
“Nothing. The fraud was a coincidence that became a useful cover story, that’s all.”
“But it made sense. It explained why Globus was acting as state executioner, and why he was desperate to head off an investigation by the Kripo. On Wednesday night I was still cataloguing the pictures on Schwanenwerder when he called in a rage — about you. Said you’d been officially taken off the case, but you’d broken in to Stuckart’s apartment. I was to go and bring you in, which I did. And I tell you: if Globus had had his way, that would have been the end of you right there, but Nebe wouldn’t have it. Then, on Friday night, we found what we thought was Luther’s body in the railway yard, and that seemed to be the end of it.”
“When did you discover the corpse wasn’t Luther’s?”
“Around six on Saturday morning. Globus telephoned me at home. He said he had information Luther was still alive and was planning to meet the American journalist at nine.”
“He knew this,” asserted March, “because of a tip-off from the American Embassy.”
Krebs snorted. “What sort of crap is that? He knew because of a wire-tap.”
“That cannot be…”
“Why can’t it be? See for yourself.” Krebs opened one of his folders and extracted a single sheet of flimsy brown paper. “It was rushed over from the wire-tappers in Charlottenburg in the middle of the night.”
March read:
Forschungsamt Geheime Reichssache
G745,275
23:51
MALE: You say: What do I want? What do you think I want? Asylum in your country.
FEMALE: Tell me where you are.
MALE: I can pay.
FEMALE: [Interrupts]
MALE: I have information. Certain facts.
FEMALE: Tell me where you are. I’ll come and fetch you. We’ll go to the Embassy.
MALE: Too soon. Not yet.
FEMALE: When?
MALE: Tomorrow morning. Listen to me. Nine o’clock. The Great Hall. Central Steps. Have you got that?
Once more he could hear her voice; smell her; touch her. In a recess of his mind, something stirred. He slid the paper back across the table to Krebs, who returned it to the folder and resumed: “What happened next, you know. Globus had Luther shot the instant he appeared — and, let me be honest, that shocked me. To do such a thing in a public place … I thought: this man is mad. Of course, I didn’t know then quite why he was so anxious Luther shouldn’t be taken alive.” He stopped abruptly, as if he had forgotten where he was, the role he was supposed to be playing. He finished quickly. “We searched the body and found nothing. Then we came after you.”
March’s hand had started to throb again. He looked down and saw crimson spots soaking through the white bandage.
“What time is it?”
“Five forty-seven.”
She had been gone almost eleven hours. God, his hand… The specks of red were spreading, touching; forming archipelagos of blood.
“There were four of them in it altogether,” said March. “Buhler, Stuckart, Luther and Kritzinger.”
“Kritzinger?” Krebs made a note.
“Friedrich Kritzinger, Ministerialdirektor of the Reich Chancellery. 1 wouldn’t write any of this down if I were you.”
Krebs laid aside his pencil.
“What concerned them wasn’t the extermination programme itself — these were senior Party men, remember — it was the lack of a proper Fuhrer Order. Nothing was written down. All they had were verbal assurances from Heydrich and Himmler that this was what the Fuhrer wanted. Could I have another cigarette?”
After Krebs had given him one, and he had taken a few sweet draughts, he went on: This is conjecture, you understand?” His interrogator nodded. “I assume they asked themselves: why is there no direct written link between the Fuhrer and this policy? And I assume their answer was: because it is so monstrous, the Head of State cannot be seen to be involved. So where did this leave them? It left them in the shit. Because if Germany lost the war, they could be tried as war criminals, and if Germany won it, they might one day be made the scapegoats for the greatest act of mass-murder in history.”
Krebs murmured: “I am not sure I want to know this.”
“So they took out an insurance policy. They swore affidavits — that was easy: three of them were lawyers — and they removed documents whenever they could. And gradually they put together a documentary record. Either outcome was covered. If Germany won and action was taken against them, they could threaten to expose what they knew. If the Allies won, they could say: look, we opposed this policy and even risked our lives to collect information about it. Luther also added a touch of blackmail -embarrassing documents about the American Ambassador to London, Kennedy. Give me those.”
He nodded to his notebook and to Buhler’s diary. Krebs hesitated, then slid them across the table.
It was difficult to open the notebook with only one hand. The bandage was sodden. He was smearing the pages.
The camps were organised to make sure there were no witnesses. Special prisoners ran the gas chambers, the crematoria. Eventually, those special prisoners were themselves destroyed, replaced by others, who were also destroyed. And so on. If that could happen at the lowest level, why not the highest? Look. Fourteen people at the Wannsee conference. The first one dies in “fifty-four. Another in “fifty-five. Then one a year in “fifty- seven, “fifty-nine, “sixty, “sixty-one, “sixty-two. Intruders probably planned to kill Luther in “sixty-three, and he hired security guards. But time passed and nothing happened, so he assumed it was just a coincidence.” That’s enough, March.”
“By “sixty-three, it had started to accelerate. In May, Klopfer dies. In December, Hoffmann hangs himself. In March this year, Kritzinger is blown up by a car bomb. Now, Buhler is really frightened. Kritzinger is the trigger. He’s the first of the group to die.”
March picked up the pocket diary.
“Here — you see — he marks the date of Kritzinger’s death with a cross. But after that the days go by; nothing happens; perhaps they are safe. Then, on April the ninth — another cross! Buhler’s old colleague from the General Government, Schongarth, has slipped beneath the wheels of a U-bahn train in Zoo Station. Panic on Schwanenwerder! But by then it’s too late…”
