Fatherland

away the last of the polyurethane.
    The clothes stank of shit and piss, of vomit and sweat— of every odor the human body nurtures. God only knew what parasites the fabric harbored. He went through the pockets. They were empty. His hands itched. Don't give up hope. A left-luggage ticket is a small thing—tightly rolled, no bigger than a matchstick; an incision in a coat collar would conceal it. With his knife he hacked at the lining of the long brown overcoat matted with congealing blood, his fingers turning brown and slippery . . .
    Nothing. All the usual scraps that in his experience tramps carry—the bits of string and paper, the buttons, the cigarette ends—had been removed already. The Gestapo had searched Luther's clothes with care. Naturally they had. He had been a fool to think they wouldn't. Furious, he slashed at the material—right to left, left to right, right to left. . .
    He stood back from the heap of rags, panting like an assassin. Then he picked up a piece of rag and wiped his knife and hands.
    "You know what I think?" said Charlie when he returned to the car empty-handed. "I think he never brought anything here from Zürich at all."
    She was still in the backseat of the Volkswagen. March turned to look at her. "Yes, he did. Of course he did." He tried to hide his impatience; it was not her fault. "But he was too scared to keep it with him. So he stored it, received a ticket for it—either at the airport or at the station—and planned on collecting it later. I'm sure that's it. Now Globus has it, or it's lost for good."
    "No, Listen. I was thinking. Yesterday, when I was coming through the airport, I thanked God you stopped me from trying to bring the painting back with us to Berlin. Remember the lines? They searched every bag. How could Luther have gotten anything past the Zollgrenzschutz?"
    March considered this, massaging his temples. "A good question," he said eventually. "Maybe," he added a minute later, "the best question I ever heard."
    At the Flughafen Hermann Göring the statue of Hanna Reitsch was steadily oxidizing in the rain. She stared across the concourse outside the departure terminal with corrosion-pitted eyes.
    "You'd better stay with the car," said March. "Do you drive?"
    She nodded. He dropped the keys into her lap. "If the Flughafenpolizei try to move you on, don't argue with them. Drive off and come around again. Keep circling. Give me twenty minutes."
    "Then what?"
    "I don't know." His hand fluttered in the air. "Improvise."
    He strode into the airport terminal. The big digital clock above the passport control zone flicked over: 13:22. He glanced behind him. He could measure his freedom probably in minutes. Less than that if Globus had issued a general alert, for nowhere in the Reich was more heavily patrolled than the airport.
    He kept thinking of Krebs in his apartment, and Eisler: "The word is, you've been arrested."
    A man with a souvenir bag from the Soldiers' Hall looked familiar. A Gestapo watcher? March abruptly changed direction and headed into the toilets. He stood at the urinal, pissing air, his eyes fixed on the entrance. Nobody came in. When he emerged, the man was gone.
    "Last call for Lufthansa flight 270 to Tiflis ..."
    He went to the central Lufthansa desk and showed his ID to one of the guards. "I need to speak to your head of security. Urgently."
    "He may not be here, Herr Sturmbannführer."
    "Look for him."
    The guard was gone a long time. 13:27, said the clock. 13:28. Perhaps he was calling the Gestapo. 13:29. March put his hand into his pocket and felt the cold metal of the Luger. Better to make a stand here than crawl around the stone floor in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse spitting teeth into your hand.
    13:30.
    The guard returned. "This way, Herr Sturmbannführer. If you please."
    Friedman had joined the Berlin Kripo at the same time as March. He had left it five years later, one step ahead of a corruption investigation. Now he wore handmade English suits, smoked duty-free Swiss cigars and made five times his official salary by methods long suspected but never proved. He was a merchant prince, the airport his corrupt little kingdom.
    When he realized March had come not to investigate him but to beg a favor, he was almost ecstatic. His excellent mood persisted as he led March along a passage away from the terminal building. "And how is Jaeger? Spreading chaos, I suppose? And Fiebes? Still jerking off over pictures of Aryan maidens and Ukrainian window