‘That uniform.’
He poured himself another glass of wine. ‘Oh, there’s a simple answer to that. In 1936, the Kriminalpolizei was merged into the SS; all officers had to accept honorary SS rank. So I have a choice: either I am an investigator in that uniform, and try to do a little good; or I am something else without that uniform, and do no good at all.’
And the way things are going, I shall soon not have that choice, he thought.
She tilted her head to one side and nodded. ‘I can see that. That seems fair.’
He felt impatient, sick of himself. ‘No it’s not. It’s bullshit, Charlie.’ It was the first time he had called her that since she had insisted on it at the beginning of the dinner; using it sounded like a declaration. He hurried on: ‘That’s the answer I’ve given everybody, including myself, for the past ten years. Unfortunately, even I have stopped believing it.’
‘But what happened – the worst of what happened – was during the war, and you weren’t around. You told me: you were at sea.’
He looked down at his plate, silent. She went on: ‘And anyway, wartime is different. All countries do wicked things in wartime. My country dropped an atom bomb on Japanese civilians – killed a quarter of a million people in an instant. And the Americans have been allies of the Russians for the past twenty years. Remember what the Russians did?’
There was truth in what she said. One by one, as they advanced eastwards, beginning with the bodies of 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest, the Germans had discovered the mass graves of Stalin’s victims. Millions had died in the famines, purges, deportations of the 1930s. Nobody knew the exact figure. The execution pits, the torture chambers, the gulags inside the Arctic Circle – all were now preserved by the Germans as memorials to the dead, museums of Bolshevik evil. Children were taken round them; ex-prisoners acted as guides. There was a whole school of historical studies devoted to investigating the crimes of communism. Television showed documentaries on Stalin’s holocaust – bleached skulls and walking skeletons, bulldozed corpses and the earth-caked rags of women and children bound with wire and shot in the back of the neck.
She put her hand on his. ‘The world is as it is. Even I see that.’
He spoke without looking at her. ‘Yes. Fine. But everything you’ve said, I’ve already heard. “It was a long time ago.” “That was war.” “The Ivans were worst of all.” “What can one man do?” I’ve listened to people whisper that for ten years. That’s all they ever do, by the way. Whisper.’
She withdrew her hand and lit another cigarette, turning the little gold lighter over and over in her fingers. ‘When I first came to Berlin, and my parents gave me that list of people they knew in the old days, there were lots of theatre people on it, artists – friends of my mother. I suppose quite of few them, in the way of things, must have been Jews, or homosexuals. And I went looking for them. All of them had gone, of course. That didn’t surprise me. But they hadn’t just vanished. It was as if they’d never existed.’
She tapped the lighter gently against the tablecloth. He noticed her fingers – slim, unmanicured, unadorned.
‘Of course, there were people living in the places my mother’s friends used to live in. Old people, often. They must have known, mustn’t they? But they just looked blank. They were watching television, having tea, listening to music. There was nothing left at all.’
March said: ‘Look at this.’
He pulled out his wallet, took out the photograph. It looked incongruous amid the plushness of the restaurant – a relic from someone’s attic, rubbish from a flea market stall.
He gave it to her. She studied it. A strand of hair fell over her face and she brushed it away. ‘Who are they?’
‘When I moved into my apartment after Klara and I split, it hadn’t been decorated for years. I found that tucked behind the wallpaper in the bedroom. I tell you, I took that place to pieces, but that was all there was. Their surname was Weiss. But who are they? Where are they now? What happened to them?’
He took the photograph, folded it into quarters, put it back in his wallet.
‘What do you do,’ he said, ‘if you devote your life to discovering criminals, and it gradually occurs to you that the real criminals are the people you work for? What do you do when everyone tells you not to worry, you can’t do anything about it, it was a long time ago?’
She was looking at him in a different way. ‘I suppose you go crazy.’
‘Or worse. Sane.’
SHE insisted, despite his protests, on paying half the bill. It was almost midnight by the time they left the restaurant. They walked in silence towards the hotel. Stars arched across the sky; at the bottom of the steep cobbled street, the lake waited.
She took his arm. ‘You asked me if that man at the Embassy – Nightingale – if he was my lover.’
‘That was rude of me. I’m sorry.’
‘Would you have been disappointed if I’d said he was?’
He hesitated.
She went on: ‘Well he isn’t. He’d like to be. Sorry. That sounds like boasting.’
‘It doesn’t at all. I’m sure many would like to be.’
‘I hadn’t met anyone . . .’
Hadn’t . . .
She stopped. ‘I’m twenty-five. I go where I like. I do what I like. I choose whom I like.’ She turned to him, touched him lightly on the cheek with a warm hand. ‘God, I hate getting this sort of thing out of the way, don’t you?’
She drew his head to hers.
How odd it is, thought March afterwards, to live your life in ignorance of the past, of your world, yourself. Yet how easy to do it! You went along from day to day, down paths other people had prepared for you, never raising your head enfolded in their logic, from swaddling clothes to shroud. It was a kind of fear.
Well, goodbye to that. And good to leave it behind whatever happened now.
His feet danced on the cobblestones. He slipped his arm around her. He had so many questions.
‘Wait, wait,’ she was laughing, holding on to him. ‘Enough. Stop. I’m starting to worry you only want me for my mind.’
IN his hotel room, she unknotted his tie and reined him to her once more, her mouth soft on his. Still kissing him, she smoothed the jacket from his shoulders, unbuttoned his shirt, parted it. Her hands skimmed over his chest, around his back, across his stomach.
She knelt and tugged at his belt.
He closed his eyes and coiled his fingers in her hair.
After a few moments he pulled away gently, and knelt to face her, lifted her dress. Freed from it, she threw back her head and shook her hair. He wanted to know her completely. He kissed her throat, her breasts, her stomach; inhaled her scent, felt the firm flesh stretching smooth and taut beneath his hands, her soft skin on his tongue.
Later she guided him on to the bed and settled herself above him. The only light was cast by the lake. Rippling shadows all around them. When he opened his mouth to say something, she put a finger to his lips.
PART FOUR
FRIDAY 17 APRIL
The Gestapo, the Kriminalpolizei and the security services are enveloped in the mysterious aura of the political detective story.
REINHARD HEYDRICH
ONE
he Berlin Börse had opened for trading thirty minutes earlier. In the window display of the Union des Banques Suisses on Zürich’s Bahnhof Strasse, the numbers clicked like knitting needles. Bayer, Siemens, Thyssen, Daimler –up, up, up, up. The only stock falling on news of détente was Krupp.
A smart and well-dressed crowd had gathered anxiously, as they did every morning, to watch this monitor of the Reich’s economic health. Prices on the Börse had been falling for six months and a mood close to panic had seized investors. But this week, thanks to old Joe Kennedy – he always knew a thing or two about markets, old Joe: made half a billion dollars on Wall Street in his day – yes, thanks to Joe, the slide had stopped. Berlin was happy. Everyone was happy. Nobody paid attentio
n to the couple walking up the street from the lake, not holding hands but close enough for their bodies to touch occasionally, followed by a weary-looking pair of gentlemen in fawn raincoats.
March had been given a short briefing on the customs and practices of Swiss banking the afternoon he left Berlin.
‘Bahnhof Strasse is the financial centre. It looks like the main shopping street, which it is. But it’s the courtyards behind the shops and the offices above them that matter. That’s where you’ll find the banks. But you’ll have to keep your eyes open. The Swiss say: the older the money, the harder to see it. In Zürich, the money’s so old, it’s invisible.’
Beneath the paving stones and tramlines of Bahnhof Strasse ran the catacomb of vaults in which three generations of Europe’s rich had buried their wealth. March looked at the shoppers and tourists pouring along the street and wondered upon what ancient dreams and secrets, upon what bones they were treading.
These banks were small, family-run concerns: a dozen or two employees, a suite of offices, a small brass plate. Zaugg & Cie was typical. The entrance was in a side-street, behind a jewellers, scanned by a remote camera identical to the one outside Zaugg’s villa. As March rang the bell beside the discreet door he felt Charlie brush his hand.
A woman’s voice over the intercom demanded his name and business. He looked up at the camera.
‘My name is March. This is Fräulein Maguire. We wish to see Herr Zaugg.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘No.’
‘The Herr Direktor sees no one without an appointment.’
‘Tell him we have a letter of authorisation for account number 2402.’
‘One moment, please.’
The policemen were lounging at the entrance to the side-street. March glanced at Charlie. It seemed to him her eyes were brighter, her skin more lustrous. He supposed he flattered himself. Everything looked heightened today – the trees greener, the blossom whiter, the sky bluer, as if washed with gloss.
She was carrying a leather shoulder bag, from which she now produced a camera, a Leica. ‘I think a shot for the family album.’
‘As you like. But leave me out of it.’
‘Such modesty.’
She took a photograph of Zaugg’s door and nameplate. The receptionist’s voice snapped over the intercom. ‘Please come to the second floor.’ There was a buzz of bolts being released, and March pushed at the heavy door.
The building was an optical illusion. Small and nondescript from the outside, inside a staircase of glass and tubular chrome led to a wide reception area, decorated with modern art. Hermann Zaugg was waiting to meet them. Behind him stood one of the bodyguards from last night.
‘Herr March, is it?’ Zaugg extended his hand. ‘And Fräulein Maguire?’ He shook her hand, too, and gave a slight bow. ‘English?’
‘American.’
‘Ah. Good. Always a pleasure to meet our American friends.’ He was like a little doll: silver hair, shiny pink face, tiny hands and feet. He wore a suit of immaculate black, a white shirt, a pearl-grey tie. ‘I understand you have the necessary authorisation?’
March produced the letter. Zaugg held the paper swiftly to the light and studied the signature. ‘Yes indeed. The hand of my youth. I fear my script has deteriorated since those years. Come.’
In his office, he directed them to a low sofa of white leather. He sat behind his desk. Now the advantage of height lay with him: the oldest trick.
March had decided to be frank. ‘We passed your home last night. Your privacy is well protected.’
Zaugg had his hands folded on his desk. He made a non-committal gesture with his tiny thumbs, as if to say: You know how it is. ‘I gather from my associates that you had protection of your own. Do I take it this visit is official, or private?’
‘Both. That is to say, neither.’
‘I am familiar with the situation. Next you will tell me it is “a delicate matter”.’
‘It is a delicate matter.’
‘My speciality.’ He adjusted his cuffs. ‘Sometimes, it seems to me that the whole history of twentieth-century Europe has flowed through this office. In the 1930s, it was Jewish refugees who sat where you now sit – often pathetic creatures, clutching whatever they had managed to salvage. They were usually followed closely by gentlemen from the Gestapo. In the 1940s, it was German officials of – how shall we say? – recently-acquired wealth. Sometimes the very men who had once come to close the accounts of others now returned to open new ones on their own behalf. In the 1950s, we dealt with the descendants of those who had vanished during the 1940s. Now, in the 1960s, I anticipate an increase in American custom, as your two great countries come together once more. The 1970s I shall leave to my son.’
‘This letter of authorisation,’ said March, ‘how much access does it give us?’
‘You have the key?’
March nodded.
‘Then you have total access.’
‘We would like to begin with the account records.’
‘Very well.’ Zaugg studied the letter, then picked up his telephone. ‘Fräulein Graf, bring in the file for 2402.’
She appeared a minute later, a middle-aged woman carrying a thin sheaf of papers in a manila binding. Zaugg took it. ‘What do you wish to know?’
‘When was the account opened?’
He looked through the papers. ‘July 1942. The eighth day of that month.’
‘And who opened it?’
Zaugg hesitated. He was like a miser with his store of precious information: parting with each fact was agony. But under the terms of his own rules he had no choice.
He said at last: ‘Herr Martin Luther.’
March was making notes. ‘And what were the arrangements for the account?’
‘One box. Four keys.’
‘Four keys?’ March’s eyebrows rose in surprise. That was Luther himself, and Buhler and Stuckart, presumably. But who held the fourth key? ‘How were they distributed?’
‘They were all issued to Herr Luther, along with four letters of authorisation. Naturally, what he chose to do with them is not our concern. You appreciate that this was a special form of account – an emergency, wartime account – designed to protect anonymity, and also to allow ease of access for any heirs or beneficiaries, should anything happen to the original account-holder.’
‘How did he pay for the account.’
‘In cash. Swiss francs. Thirty years’ rental. In advance. Don’t worry, Herr March – there is nothing to pay until 1972.’
Charlie said: ‘Do you have a record of transactions relating to the account?’
Zaugg turned to her. ‘Only the dates on which the box was opened.’
‘What are they?’
‘The eighth of July 1942. The seventeenth of December 1942. The ninth of August 1943. The thirteenth of April 1964.’
April the thirteenth! March barely suppressed a cry of triumph. His guess had been right. Luther had flown to Zürich at the start of the week. He scribbled the dates in his notebook. ‘Only four times?’ he asked.
‘Correct.’
‘And until last Monday, the box had not been opened for nearly twenty-one years?’
‘That is what the dates indicate.’ Zaugg closed the file with a flick of annoyance. ‘I might add, there is nothing especially unusual about that. We have boxes here which have lain untouched for fifty years or more.’
‘You set up the account originally?’
‘I did.’
‘Did Herr Luther say why he wanted to open it, or why he needed these particular arrangements?’
‘Client privilege.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That is privileged information between client and banker.’
Charlie interrupted. ‘But we are your clients.’
‘No, Fräulein Maguire. You are beneficiaries of my client. An important distinction.’
‘Did Herr Luther open the box personally on each occasion?’ as
ked March.
‘Client privilege.’
‘Was it Luther who opened the box on Monday? What sort of mood was he in?’
‘Client privilege, client privilege.’ Zaugg held up his hands. ‘We can go on all day, Herr March. Not only am I under no obligation to give you that information, it would be illegal under the Swiss Banking Code for me to do so. I have passed on all you are entitled to know. Is there anything else?’
‘Yes.’ March closed his notebook and looked at Charlie. ‘We would like to inspect the box for ourselves.’
A SMALL elevator led down to the vault. There was just enough room for four passengers. March and Charlie, Zaugg and his bodyguard stood awkwardly pressed together. Close to, the banker reeked of eau de Cologne; his hair glistened beneath an oily pomade.
The vault was like a prison, or a mortuary: a white-tiled corridor which stretched ahead of them for thirty metres, with bars on either side. At the far end, next to the gate, a security guard sat at a desk. Zaugg pulled a heavy bunch of keys from his pocket, attached by a chain to his belt. He hummed as he searched for the right one.
The ceiling vibrated slightly as a tram passed overhead.
He let them into the cage. Steel walls gleamed in the neon light: banks of doors, each half a metre square. Zaugg moved in front of them, unlocked one at waist height and stood back. The security guard pulled out a long box, the size of a metal footlocker, and carried it over to a table.
Zaugg said: ‘Your key fits the lock on that box. I shall wait outside.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Thank you, but I prefer to wait.’
Zaugg left the cage and stood outside, with his back to the bars. March looked at Charlie, and gave her the key.
‘You do it.’
‘I’m shaking . . .’
She inserted the key. It turned easily. The end of the box opened. She reached inside. There was a look of puzzlement on her face, then disappointment.
‘It’s empty, I think.’ Her expression changed. ‘No . . .’
She smiled and pulled out a flat cardboard box, about fifty centimetres square, five centimetres deep. The lid was sealed with red wax, with a typewritten label gummed on top: ‘Property of the Reich Foreign Ministry Treaty Archive, Berlin.’ And underneath, in Gothic lettering: ‘Geheime Reichssache’. Top Secret State Document.