Fatherland (20 page)

To travel on the central U-bahn line is, in the words of the Reich Ministry for Propaganda and Cultural Enlightenment, to take a trip through German history. Berlin-Gotenland, Bülow-Strasse, Nollendorf-Platz, Wittenberg- Platz, Nürnberger-Platz, Hohenzollern-Platz—the stations succeed one another like pearls on a string.

The carriages that work this line are prewar. Red cars for smokers, yellow for nonsmokers. Hard wooden seats have been rubbed shiny by three decades of Berlin backsides. Most passengers stand, holding on to the worn leather hand grips, swaying with the rhythm of the train. Signs urge them to turn informer. "The fare dodger's profit is the Berliner's loss! Notify the authorities of all wrongdoing!" "Has he given up his seat to a woman or veteran? Penalty for failure: 25 Reichsmarks!"

March had bought a copy of the
Berliner Tageblatt
from a platform newsstand and was leaning next to the doors, skimming through it. Kennedy and the Führer, the Führer and Kennedy—that was all there was to read. The regime was clearly investing heavily in the success of the talks. That could only mean that things in the East were even worse than everyone thought. "A permanent state of war on the eastern front will help to form a sound race of men," the Führer had once said, "and will prevent us from relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself." But people
had
grown soft. What else was the point of victory? They had Poles to dig their gardens and Ukrainians to sweep their streets, French chefs to cook their food and English maids to serve it. Having tasted the comforts of peace, they had lost their appetite for war.

Way down on an inside page, in type so small it was barely readable, was Buhler's obituary. He was reported as having died in a "bathing accident."

March stuffed the paper into his pocket and got out at Bülow-Strasse. From the open platform he could see across to Charlotte Maguire's apartment. A shape moved against the curtain. She was at home. Or rather, someone was at home.

The concierge was not in her chair, and when he knocked on the apartment door there was no reply. He knocked again, more loudly.

Nothing.

He walked away from the door and clattered down the first flight of steps. Then he stopped, counted to ten and crept back up again, sideways, with his back pressed to the wall—one step, pause; another step, pause—wincing whenever he made a noise, until he stood once more outside the door. He drew his pistol.

Minutes passed. Dogs barked, cars and trains and planes went by, babies cried, birds sang: the cacophony of silence. And at one point, inside the apartment, loud above it all, a floorboard creaked.

The door opened a fraction.

March spun, rammed into it with his shoulder. Whoever was on the other side was knocked back by the force of the blow. And then March was in and on him, pushing him through the tiny hall and into the sitting room. A lamp fell to the floor. He tried to bring up the gun, but the man had grabbed his arms. And now it was he who was being pushed backward. The back of his legs made contact with a low table and he toppled over, cracking his head on something, the Luger skittering across the floor.

Well, now, this was quite funny, and in other circumstances March might have laughed. He had never been very good at this sort of thing, and now—having started with the advantage of surprise—he was on his back, unarmed, with his head in the fireplace and his legs still resting on top of the coffee table, in the position of a pregnant woman undergoing an internal examination.

His assailant fell on top of him, winding him. One gloved hand clawed at his face, the other seized his throat. March could neither see nor breathe. He twisted his head from side to side, chewed on the leather hand. He flailed at the other man's head with his fists but could put no force behind his blows. What was on him was not human. It had the remorseless power of machinery. It was grinding him. Steel fingers had found that artery—the one March could never remember, let alone locate—and he felt himself surrendering to the force, the rushing blackness obliterating the pain. So, he thought,
I have walked the earth and come to this.

A crash. The hands slackened, withdrew. March came swimming back into the fight, at least as a spectator. The man had been knocked sideways, hit on the head by a chair of tubular steel. Blood masked his face, pulsing from a cut above his eye. Crash. The chair again. With one arm, the man tried to ward off the blows, with the other he wiped frantically at his blinded eyes. He began shuffling on his knees for the door, a devil on his back—a hissing, spitting fury, claws scrabbling to find his eyes. Slowly, as if carrying an immense weight, he raised himself onto one leg, then the other. AH he wanted now was to get away. He blundered into the door frame, turned and hammered his tormentor against it—once, twice.

Only then did Charlie Maguire let the man go.

Clusters of pain, bursting like fireworks: his head, the backs of his legs, his ribs, his throat.

"Where did you learn to fight?"

He was in the tiny kitchen, bent over the sink. She was mopping blood from the cut on the back of his head.

"Try growing up as the only girl in a family with three brothers. You learn to fight. Hold still."

"I pity the brothers. Ah." March's head hurt the most. The bloody water dripping into the greasy plates a few centimeters from his face made him feel sick. "In Hollywood, I think, it is traditional for the man to rescue the girl."

"Hollywood is full of shit." She applied a fresh cloth. "This is deep. Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?"

"No time."

"Will that man come back?"

"No. At least, not for a while. Supposedly this is still a clandestine operation. Thank you."

He held the cloth to the back of his head and straightened. As he did so, he discovered a new pain, at the base of his spine.

" 'A clandestine operation?'" she repeated. "You don't think he could have been an ordinary thief?"

"No. He was a professional. An authentic, Gestapo- trained professional."

"And I beat him!" The adrenaline had given luster to her skin; her eyes sparkled. Her only injury was a bruise on her shoulder. She was more attractive than he remembered. Delicate cheekbones, a strong nose, full lips, large brown eyes. She had brown hair, cut to the nape of her neck, which she wore swept back behind her ears.

"If his orders had been to kill you, he would have done so."

"Really? Then why didn't he?" Suddenly she sounded angry.

"You're an American. A protected species, especially at the moment." He inspected the cloth. The flow of blood had stopped. "Don't underrate the enemy, Fräulein."

"Don't underrate
me
. If I hadn't come home, he'd have killed you."

He decided to say nothing. She clearly kept her temper on a hair trigger.

The apartment had been thoroughly ransacked. Her clothes hung out of their drawers, papers had been spilled across the desk and onto the floor, suitcases had been upended. Not, he thought, that it could have been very neat before: the dirty dishes in the sink, the profusion of bottles (most of them empty) in the bathroom, the yellowing copies of
The New York Times
and
Time
, their pages sliced to ribbons by the German censors, stacked haphazardly around the walls. Searching it must have been a nightmare. Weak light filtered in through dirty net curtains. Every few minutes the walls shook as a train passed.

"This is yours, I take it?" She pulled out the Luger from beneath a chair and held it up between finger and thumb.

"Yes. Thank you." He took it. She had a gift for making him feel stupid. "Is anything missing?"

"I doubt it." She glanced around. "I'm not sure I'd know if there was."

"The item I gave you last night. . . ?"

"Oh, that? It was here on the mantelpiece." She ran her hand along it, frowning. "It
was
here . . ."

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was grinning.

"Don't worry, Sturmbannführer. It's stayed close to my heart. Like a love letter."

She turned her back to him, unbuttoning her shirt. When she turned around, she had the envelope in her hand. He took it over to the window. It was warm to the touch.

It was long and slim, made of thick paper—a rich creamy blue with brown specks of age, like liver spots. It
was luxurious, handmade, redolent of another age. There was no name or address.

Inside the envelope was a small brass key and a letter on matching blue paper, as thick as cardboard. Printed in the top right-hand corner, in flowery copperplate, was: Zaugg & Cie., Bankiers, Bahnhof-Strasse 44, Z
ü
rich. A single sentence, typed beneath, identified the bearer as a joint holder of account number 2402. The letter was dated July 8, 1942. It was signed Hermann Zaugg, Director.

March read it through again. He was not surprised that Stuckart had kept it locked in his safe: it was illegal for a German citizen to possess a foreign bank account without the permission of the Reichsbank. The penalty for noncompliance was death.

He said, "I was worried about you. I tried to call you a couple of hours ago, but there was no answer."

"I was out doing research."

"Research?"

She grinned again.

At March's suggestion, they went for a walk in the Tiergarten, the traditional rendezvous for Berliners with secrets to discuss. Even the Gestapo had yet to devise a means of bugging a park. Daffodils poked through the rough grass at the foot of the trees. Children fed the ducks on the Neuersee.

Getting out of Stuckart's apartment building had been easy, she said. The air shaft had emerged into the alley almost at ground level. There had been no SS men; they had all been at the front. So she had simply walked down the side of the building to the street at the rear and caught a taxi home. She had stayed up half the night waiting for him to call, rereading the letter until she knew it by heart. When by nine o'clock she had still heard nothing, she had decided not to wait.

She wanted to know what had happened to him and

Jaeger. He told her only that they had been taken to Gestapo headquarters and released that morning.

"Are you in trouble?"

"Yes. Now tell me what you discovered."

She had gone first to the public library in Nollendorf-Platz—she had nothing better to do now that her press accreditation had been withdrawn. In the library was a directory of European banks. Zaugg & Cie. still existed. The bank's premises remained in Bahnhof-Strasse. From the library she had gone to the U.S. Embassy to see Henry Nightingale.

"Nightingale?"

"You met him last night."

March remembered: the young man in the sport jacket and the button-down shirt, with his hand on her arm. "You didn't tell him anything?"

"Of course not. Anyway, he's discreet. We can trust him."

"I prefer to make my own judgments about whom I can trust." He felt disappointed in her. "Is he your lover?"

She stopped in her tracks. "What kind of a question is that?"

"I have more at stake in this than you have, Fräulein. Much more. I have a right to know."

"You have no right to know
at all.
" She was furious.

"All right." He held up his hands. The woman was impossible. "Your business."

They resumed walking.

Nightingale, she explained, was an expert in Swiss commercial matters, having dealt with the affairs of several German refugees in the United States trying to extract their money from banks in Zürich and Geneva.

It was almost impossible.

In 1934, a Gestapo agent named Georg Hannes Thomae had been sent to Switzerland by Reinhard Heydrich to find out the names of as many German account holders as possible. Thomae had set up house in Zürich, begun affairs with several lonely female cashiers, be
friended minor bank officials. When the Gestapo had suspicions that a certain individual had an illegal account, Thomae would visit the bank posing as an intermediary and try to deposit money. The moment any cash was accepted, Heydrich knew an account existed. Its holder was arrested and tortured into revealing the details, and soon the bank would receive a detailed cable requesting, in proper form, the repatriation of all assets.

The Gestapo's war against the Swiss banks had become increasingly sophisticated and extensive. Telephone calls, cables and letters between Germany and Switzerland were intercepted as a matter of routine. Clients were executed or sent to concentration camps. In Switzerland, there was an outcry. Finally, the Swiss National Assembly rushed through a new banking code making it illegal for banks to disclose any details of their clients' holdings, on pain of imprisonment. Georg Thomae was exposed and expelled.

Swiss banks had come to regard doing business with German citizens as too dangerous and time consuming to countenance. Communication with clients was virtually impossible. Hundreds of accounts had simply been abandoned by their terrified owners. In any case, respectable bankers had no desire to become involved in these life-and-death transactions. The publicity was damaging. By 1939 the once lucrative German numbered-account business had collapsed.