Fatherland

he pushed. The outside cover yielded and crashed to the ground. The night air rushed in. For a moment, he felt an almost overpowering urge to crawl out into it, but instead he wriggled backward and lowered himself into the basement shelter. He landed, dusty and grease smeared.
    The woman was pointing his pistol at him.
    "Bang, bang," she said. "You're dead." She smiled at his alarm. "American joke."
    "Not funny." He took the Luger and put it back into his holster.
    "Okay," she said. "Here's a better one. Two murderers are seen by a witness leaving a building and it takes the police four days to work out how they did it. I'd say that was funny, wouldn't you?"
    "It depends on the circumstances." He brushed the dust off his shirt. "If the police found a note beside one of the victims in his own handwriting saying it was suicide,
    I could understand why they wouldn't bother looking any further."
    "But then you come along and you do look further."
    "I'm the curious type."
    "Clearly." She smiled again. "So Stuckart was shot and the murderers tried to make it look like suicide?"
    He hesitated. "It's a possibility."
    He regretted the words the moment he uttered them. She had led him into disclosing more than was wise about Stuckart's death. Now a faint light of mockery played in her eyes. He cursed himself for underrating her. She had the cunning of a professional criminal. He considered taking her back to the bar and going on alone but dismissed the idea. It was no good. To know what had happened, he needed to see it through her eyes.
    He buttoned his tunic. "Now we must inspect Party Comrade Stuckart's apartment."
    That, he was pleased to see, knocked the smile off her face. But she did not refuse to go with him. They climbed the stairs and it struck him again that she was almost as anxious to see Stuckart's flat as he was.
    They took the elevator to the fourth floor. As they stepped out, he heard, along the corridor to their left, a door being opened. He grabbed the American's arm and steered her around the corner, out of sight. When he looked back, he could see a middle-aged woman in a fur coat heading for the elevator. She was carrying a small dog.
    "You're hurting my arm."
    "Sorry."
    He was hiding from shadows. The woman talked quietly to the dog and disappeared into the lift. March wondered whether Globus had retrieved the file from Fiebes yet, whether he had discovered that the keys were missing. They would have to hurry.
    The door to Stuckart's apartment had been sealed that day, close to the handle, with red wax. A note informed the curious that these premises were now under the juris diction of the Geheime Staatspolizei , the Gestapo, and that entry was forbidden. March pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves and broke the seal. The key turned easily in the lock.
    He said, "Don't touch anything."
    More luxury, to match the building: elaborate gilt mirrors, antique tables and chairs with fluted legs and ivory damask upholstery, a carpet of royal blue with Persian rugs. The spoils of war, the fruits of Empire.
    "Tell me again what happened."
    "The porter opened the door. We came into the hall." Her voice had risen. She was trembling. "He shouted and there was no reply, so we both came right in. I opened that door first."
    It was the sort of bathroom March had seen only in glossy magazines. White marble and brown smoky mirrors, a sunken bathtub, twin basins with gold taps . . . Here, he thought, was the hand of Maria Dymarski, leafing through German Vogue at the Ku'damm hairdresser's while her Polish roots were bleached Aryan white.
    "Then I came into the sitting room."
    March switched on the light. One wall consisted of tall windows looking out over the square. The other three had large mirrors. Wherever he turned, he could see images of himself and the girl: the black uniform and the shiny blue coat incongruous among the antiques. Nymphs were the decorative conceit. Fashioned in gilt, they draped themselves around the mirrors; cast in bronze, they supported table lamps and clocks. There were paintings of nymphs and statues of nymphs; wood nymphs and water nymphs; Amphitrite and Thetis.
    "I heard the porter scream. I went to help."
    March opened the door of the bedroom. She turned away. Blood in half light looks black. Dark shapes, twisted and grotesque, leaped up the walls and across the ceiling like the shadows of trees.
    "They were on the bed?"
    She nodded.
    "What did you do?"
    "Called the police."
    "Where was