Fatherland

another junction to reach, another corner to peer around. Who were the Weiss family, and what had happened to them? Whose was the body in the lake? What linked the deaths of Buhler and Stuckart? It kept him going, his blessing or his curse, this compulsion to know . And so, in the end, there was no choice.
    He tossed the paper cup into the trash can and went upstairs.

6

    Walter Fiebes was in his office drinking schnapps. Watching him from a table beneath the window was a row of five human heads—white plaster casts with hinged scalps, all raised like lavatory seats, displaying their brains in red and gray sections—the five strains that made up the German Empire.
    Placards announced them from left to right, in descending order of acceptability to the authorities. Category One: Pure Nordic. Category Two: Predominantly Nordic or Phalic. Category Three: Harmonious Bastard with Slight Alpine Dinaric or Mediterranean Characteristics. These groups qualified for membership in the SS. The others could hold no public office and stared reproachfully at Fiebes. Category Four: Bastard of Predominantly East Baltic or Alpine Origin. Category Five: Bastard of Extra-European Origin.
    March was a One/Two; Fiebes, ironically, a borderline Three. But then, the racial fanatics were seldom the blue- eyed Aryan supermen—they, in the words of Das Schwarzes Korps , were "too inclined to take their membership in the Volk for granted." Instead, the swampy
    frontiers of the German race were patrolled by those less confident of their bloodworthiness. Insecurity breeds good border guards. The knock-kneed Franconian schoolmaster, ridiculous in his Lederhosen ; the Bavarian shopkeeper with his pebble glasses; the red-haired Thuringian accountant with a nervous tic and a predilection for the younger members of the Hitler Youth; the lame and the ugly, the runts of the national litter—these were the loudest defenders of the Volk .
    So it was with Fiebes—the myopic, stooping, buck- toothed, cuckolded Fiebes—whom the Reich had blessed with the one job he really wanted. Homosexuality and miscegenation had replaced rape and incest as capital offenses. Abortion, "an act of sabotage against Germany's racial future," was punishable by death. The permissive 1960s were showing a strong increase in such sex crimes. Fiebes, a sheet sniffer by temperament, worked all the hours the Führer sent and was as happy, in Max Jaeger's words, as a pig in horseshit.
    But not today. Now, he was drinking in the office, his eyes were moist and his bat-wing toupee hung slightly askew.
    March said, "According to the newspapers, Stuckart died of heart failure."
    Fiebes blinked.
    "But according to the Registry, the file on Stuckart is out to you."
    "I cannot comment."
    "Of course you can. We are colleagues." March sat down and lit a cigarette. "I take it we're in the familiar business of 'sparing the family embarrassment.' "
    Fiebes muttered, "Not just the family." He hesitated. "Could I have one of those?"
    "Sure." March gave him a cigarette and flicked his lighter. Fiebes took an experimental draw, like a schoolboy.
    "This affair has left me pretty well shaken, March, I don't mind admitting. The man was a hero to me."
    "You knew him?"
    "By reputation, naturally. I never actually met him. Why? What is your interest?"
    "State security. That is all I can say. You know how it is."
    "Ah. Now I understand." Fiebes poured himself another large helping of schnapps. "We're very much alike, , March, you and I."
    "We are?"
    "Sure. You're the only investigator who's in this place as often as I am. We've got rid of our wives, our children—all that shit. We live for the job. When it goes well, we're well. When it goes badly..." His head fell forward. Presently he said, "Do you know Stuckart's book?"
    "Unfortunately, no."
    Fiebes opened a desk drawer and handed March a battered, leather-bound volume: A Commentary on the German Racial Laws . March leafed through it. There were chapters on each of the three Nuremberg Laws of 1935: the Reich Citizenship Law, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, the Law for the Protection of the Genetic Health of the German People. Some passages were underlined in red ink, with exclamation marks beside them. "For the avoidance of racial damage, it is necessary for couples to submit to medical examination before marriage." "Marriage between persons suffering from venereal disease, feeblemindedness, epilepsy or genetic