Fatherland

fragile defiance. He took his foot off the brake. Crossing the city was risky, no question, but what else were they to do? Lie behind a locked door waiting to be caught?
    He swung the car around in a circle and headed toward the exit as headlights flashed in the gloom behind them.

3

    They parked beside the Havel and walked to the shore. March pointed to the spot where Buhler's body had been found. Her camera clicked as Spiedel's had four days before, but there was little left to record. A few footprints were just visible in the mud. The grass was flattened slightly where the corpse had been dragged from the water. In another day or two even these signs would disappear. She turned away from the water and drew her coat around her, shivering.
    It was too dangerous to drive to Buhler's villa, so he stopped at the end of the causeway with the engine running. She leaned out to take a picture of the road leading to the island. The red-and-white pole was down. No sign of the sentry.
    "Is that it?" she asked. " Life won't pay much for these."
    He thought for a moment. "Perhaps there is another place."
    No. 56-58 Am grossen Wannsee turned out to be a large nineteenth-century mansion with a pillared façade. It no longer housed the German headquarters of Interpol. At some point in the years since the war it had become a girls' school. March looked this way and that, up and down the leafy street, where the blossom was in full pink bloom, and tried the gate. It was unlocked. He gestured to Charlie to join him.
    "We are Herr and Frau March," he said as he pushed open the gate. "We have a daughter—"
    Charlie nodded. "Yes, of course. Heidi. She's seven. With braids—"
    "She is unhappy at her present school. This one was recommended. We wanted to look around." They stepped into the grounds. March closed the gates behind them.
    She said, "Naturally, if we're trespassing, we apologize . . ."
    "But surely Frau March does not look old enough to have a seven-year-old daughter?"
    "She was seduced at an impressionable age by a handsome investigator . . ."
    "A likely story."
    The gravel drive looped around a circular flower bed. March tried to picture it as it might have looked in January 1942. A dusting of snow on the ground, perhaps, or frost. Bare trees. A couple of guards shivering by the entrance. The government cars, one after the other, crunching over the icy gravel. An adjutant saluting and stepping forward to open the doors. Stuckart: handsome and elegant. Buhler: his lawyer's notes carefully arranged in his briefcase. Luther: blinking behind his thick spectacles. Did their breath hang in the air after them? And Heydrich. Would he have arrived first, as host? Or last, to demonstrate his power? Had the cold imparted color even to those pale cheeks?
    The house was barred and deserted. While Charlie took a picture of the entrance, March picked his way through low shrubbery to peer through a window. Rows of dwarf-sized desks with dwarf-sized chairs upended and stacked on top. A pair of blackboards from which the pupils were being taught the Party's special grace. On one:

    Before meals—
    Führer, my Führer, bequeathed to me by the Lord,
    Protect and preserve me as long as I live!
    Thou hast rescued Germany from deepest distress,
    I thank thee today for my daily bread.
    Abideth thou long with me, forsaketh me not,
    Führer, my Führer, my faith and my light!
    Heil, mien Führer!
    On the other:

    After meals—
    Thank thee for this bountiful meal,
    Protector of youth and friend of the aged!
    I know thou hast cares, but worry not,
    I am with thee by day and by night.
    Lay thy head in my lap,
    Be assured, my Führer, that thou art great.
    Heil, mein Führer!
    Childish paintings decorated the walls—blue meadows, green skies, clouds of sulfur yellow. Children's art was perilously close to degenerate art; such perversity would have to be knocked out of them... March could smell the school smell even from here: the familiar compound of chalk dust, wooden floors and stale institutional food. He turned away.
    Someone in a neighboring garden had lit a bonfire. Pungent white smoke—wet wood and dead leaves— drifted across the lawn at the back of the house. A wide flight of steps flanked by stone lions with frozen snarls led down to the lawn. Beyond the grass, through the trees, lay the dull, glassy surface of the Havel. They were facing south. Schwanenwerder, less than half a kilometer away,
    would be just visible from the upstairs