Fatherland

and that he had retrieved the suitcase from the airport. But there was a significant gap. Unless Krebs was playing a fiendishly devious game, it seemed he had no idea of the nature of the information Luther had promised the Americans. Upon this one, narrow ground rested March's only hope.
    After an inconclusive half hour, the door opened and Globus appeared, swinging a long truncheon of polished wood. Behind him stood two thick-set men in black uniforms.
    Krebs leapt to attention.
    Globus asked, "Has he made a full confession?"
    "No, Herr Obergruppenführer."
    "What a surprise. My turn then, I think."
    "Of course." Krebs stooped and collected his papers.
    Was it March's imagination, or did he see on that long, impassive face a flicker of regret, even of distaste?
    After Krebs had gone, Globus prowled around, humming an old Party marching song, dragging the length of wood over the stone floor.
    "Do you know what this is, March?" He waited. "No? No answer? It's an American invention. A baseball bat. A pal of mine at the Washington Embassy brought it back for me." He swung it around his head a couple of times. "I'm thinking of raising an SS team. We could play the U.S. Army. What do you think? Goebbels is keen. He thinks the American masses would respond well to the pictures."
    He leaned the bat against the heavy wooden table and began unbuttoning his tunic.
    "If you want my opinion, the original mistake was in '36, when Himmler said every Kripo flatfoot in the Reich had to wear SS uniform. That's when we were landed with scum like you and shriveled-up old cunts like Artur Nebe."
    He handed his jacket to one of the two guards and began rolling up his sleeves. Suddenly he was shouting: "My God, we used to know how to deal with people like you. But we've gone soft. It's not 'Has he got guts?' anymore, it's 'Has he got a doctorate?' We didn't need doctorates in the East, in '41, when there was fifty degrees of frost and your piss froze in midair. You should have heard Krebs, March. You'd have loved it. Fuck it, I think he's one of your lot." He adopted a mincing voice. " 'With permission, Herr Obergruppenführer, I would like to question the suspect first. I feel he may respond to a more subtle approach.' Subtle, my ass. What's the point of you? If you were my dog, I'd feed you poison."
    "If I were your dog, I'd eat it."
    Globus grinned at one of the guards. "Listen to the big man!" He spat on his hands and picked up the baseball bat. He turned to March. "I've been looking at your file. I see you're a great one for writing. Forever taking notes, compiling lists. Quite the frustrated fucking author. Tell me: are you left-handed or right-handed?"
    "Left-handed."
    "Another lie. Put your right arm on the table."
    March felt as if iron bands had been fastened around his chest. He could barely breathe. "Go screw yourself."
    Globus glanced at the guards and powerful hands seized March from behind. The chair toppled and he was being bent headfirst over the table. One of the SS men twisted his left arm high up his back and wrenched it, and he was roaring with the pain of that as the other man grabbed his free hand. The man half climbed onto the table and planted his knee just below March's right elbow, pinning his forearm, palm down, to the wooden planks.
    Within seconds, everything was locked in place except his fingers, which were just able to flutter slightly, like a trapped bird.
    Globus stood a meter from the table, brushing the tip of the bat lightly across March's knuckles. Then he lifted it, swung it in a great arc, like an ax, through three hundred degrees, and with all his force brought it smashing down.
    He did not faint, not at first. The guards let him go and he slid to his knees, a thread of spit dribbling from the corner of his mouth, leaving a snail's trail across the table. His arm was still stretched out. He stayed like that for a while, until he raised his head and saw the remains of his hand— some alien pile of blood and gristle on a butcher's slab— and then he fainted.
    Footsteps in the darkness. Voices. "Where is the woman?" Kick.
    "What was the information?" Kick.
    "What did you steal?" Kick. Kick.
    A jackboot stamped on his fingers, twisted, ground them into the stone.

    When he came to again, he was lying in the corner, his broken hand resting on the floor next to him like a stillborn baby left beside its mother. A man—Krebs, perhaps—was squatting in front of him, saying something. He tried to