Fatherland

Studied law and economics at Munich and Frankfurt-am-Main universities. Graduated magna cum laude, June 1928. Joined the Party in Munich, 1922. Various SA and SS positions. Mayor of Stettin, 1933. State secretary, Ministry of the Interior, 1935-53. Publication: A Commentary on the German Racial Laws (1936). Promoted to honorary SS-Obergruppenführer, 1944. Returned to private legal practice, 1953.
    Here was a character quite different from Luther. An intellectual; an alter Kämpfer, like Buhler; a high flyer. To be mayor of Stettin, a port city of nearly 300,000, at the age of thirty-one... Suddenly March realized he had read all this before, very recently. But where? He could not remember. He closed his eyes. Come on.
    Wer Ist's? added nothing new except that Stuckart was unmarried whereas Luther was on his third wife. He found a clean double page in his notebook and drew three columns; headed them Buhler, Luther and Stuckart ; and began making lists of dates. Compiling a chronology was a favorite tool of his, a method of finding a pattern in what seemed otherwise to be a fog of random facts.
    They had all been born in roughly the same period. Buhler was sixty-four; Luther, sixty-eight; Stuckart, sixty- one. They had all become civil servants in the 1930s— Buhler in 1939, Luther in 1936, Stuckart in 1935. They had all held roughly similar ranks—Buhler and Stuckart had been state secretaries; Luther, an under state secretary. They had all retired in the 1950s—Buhler in 1951, Luther in 1955, Stuckart in 1953. They must all have known one another. They had all met at 10 a.m. the previous Friday. Where was the pattern?
    March tilted back in his chair and stared up at the tangle of pipes chasing one another like snakes across the ceiling.
    And then he remembered. He pitched himself forward onto his feet. Next to the entrance were loosely bound volumes of the Berliner Tageblatt , the Völkischer Beobachter and the SS paper, Das Schwarze Korps . He wrenched back the pages of the Tageblatt , back to yesterday's issue, back to the obituaries. There it was. He had seen it last night.

    Party Comrade Wilhelm Stuckart, formerly state secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, who died suddenly of heart failure on Sunday, April 13, will be remembered as a dedicated servant of the National Socialist cause . . .
    The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet. He was aware of the registrar staring at him.
    "Are you ill, Herr Sturmbannführer?"
    "No. I'm fine. Do me a favor, will you?" He picked up a file requisition slip and wrote out Stuckart's full name and date of birth. "Will you see if there's a file on this person?"
    She looked at the slip and held out a hand. "ID." He gave her his identity card. She licked her pencil and entered the twelve digits of March's service number onto
    the requisition form. By this means a record was kept of which Kripo investigator had requested which file, and at what time. His interest would be there for the Gestapo to see, a full eight hours after he had been ordered off the Buhler case. Further evidence of his lack of National Socialist discipline. It could not be helped.
    The registrar had pulled out a long wooden drawer of index cards and was marching her square-tipped fingers along the tops of them. "Stroop," she murmured. "Strunck. Struss. Stülpnagel. . ."
    March said, "You've gone past it."
    She grunted and pulled out a slip of pink paper. " 'Stuckart, Wilhelm.' " She looked at him. "There is a file. It's out."
    "Who has it?"
    "See for yourself."
    March leaned forward. Stuckart's file was with Sturmbannführer Fiebes of Kripo Department VB 3 : the sexual crimes division.
    The whisky and the dry air had given him a thirst. In the corridor outside the Registry was a water cooler. He poured himself a drink and considered what to do.
    What would a sensible man have done? That was easy. A sensible man would have done what Max Jaeger did every day. He would have put on his hat and coat and gone home to his wife and children. But for March that was not an option. The empty apartment in Ansbacher-Strasse, the quarreling neighbors and yesterday's newspaper, these held no attractions for him. He had narrowed his life to such a point that the only thing left was his work. If he betrayed that, what else was there?
    And there was something else, the instinct that propelled him out of bed every morning into each unwelcoming day, and that was the desire to know. In police work, there was always