Fatherland

into his office. When the door had closed he heard her begin singing again.
    It was not yet nine. He hung his cap by the door and unbuttoned his tunic. There was a large brown envelope on his desk. He opened it and shook out the contents, the scene-of-crime photographs. Glossy color pictures of Buhler's body, sprawled like a sunbather's at the side of the lake.
    He lifted the ancient typewriter from the top of the filing cabinet and carried it across to his desk. From a wire basket he took two pieces of much-used carbon paper, two flimsy sheets and one standard report form, arranged them in order and wound them into the machine. Then he lit a cigarette and stared at the dead plant for a few minutes.
    He began to type.
    TO: Chief, VB 3 (a)
    SUBJECT: Unidentified body (male)
    FROM: X. March, SS-Sturmbannführer             4/15/64
    I beg to report the following.

At 0628 yesterday, I was ordered to attend the recovery of a body from the Havel. The body had been discovered by SS-Schütze Hermann Jost at 0602 and reported to the Ordnungspolizei (statement attached).
No male of the correct description having been reported missing, I arranged for the fingerprints of the subject to be checked against records.
This has enabled the subject to be identified as Doctor Josef Buhler, a Party member with the honorary rank of SS-Brigadeführer. The subject served as state secretary in the General Government, 1939-51.
A preliminary investigation at the scene by SS-Sturmbannführer Doctor August Eisler indicated the likely cause of death as drowning and the likely time of death as sometime on the night of 13 April.
The subject lived on Schwanenwerder, close to where the body was found.
There were no obvious suspicious circumstances.
A full autopsy examination will be carried out following formal identification of the subject by next of kin.
    March pulled the report out of the typewriter, signed it and left it with a messenger in the foyer on his way out.
    The old woman was sitting erect on a hard wooden bench in the Seydel-Strasse mortuary. She wore a brown tweed suit, brown hat with a drooping feather, sturdy brown shoes and gray woolen stockings. She was staring straight ahead, a handbag clasped in her lap, oblivious to the medical orderlies, the policemen, the grieving relatives passing in the corridor. Max Jaeger sat beside her, arms
    folded, legs outstretched, looking bored. As March arrived, he took him to one side.
    "Been here ten minutes. Hardly spoken."
    "In shock?"
    "I suppose."
    "Let's get it over with."
    The old woman did not look up as March sat on the bench beside her. He said softly, "Frau Trinkl, my name is March. I am an investigator with the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. We have to complete a report on your brother's death, and we need you to identify his body. Then we'll take you home. Do you understand?"
    Frau Trinkl turned to face him. She had a thin face, thin nose (her brother's nose), thin lips. A cameo brooch gathered a blouse of frilly purple at her bony throat.
    "Do you understand?" he repeated.
    She gazed at him with clear gray eyes, unreddened by crying. Her voice was clipped and dry: "Perfectly."
    They moved across the corridor into a small, window- less reception room. The floor was made of wood blocks. The walls were lime green. In an effort to lighten the gloom, someone had stuck up tourist posters given away by the Deutsche Reichsbahngesellschaft : a nighttime view of the Great Hall, the Führer Museum at Linz, the Starnberger See in Bavaria. The poster that had hung on the fourth wall had been torn down, leaving pockmarks in the plaster, like bullet holes.
    A clatter outside signaled the arrival of the body. It was wheeled in, covered by a sheet, on a metal trolley. Two attendants in white tunics parked it in the center of the floor—a buffet lunch awaiting its guests. They left and Jaeger closed the door.
    "Are you ready?" asked March. She nodded. He turned back the sheet and Frau Trinkl stationed herself at his shoulder. As she leaned forward, a strong smell—of peppermint lozenges, of perfume mingled with camphor, an old lady's smell—washed across his face. She stared at the corpse for a long time, then opened her mouth as if to say something, but all that emerged was a sigh. Her eyes closed. March caught her as she fell.
    "It's him," she said. "I haven't set eyes on him for ten years, and he's fatter, and I've never seen him before without his spectacles, not since he was a child. But