Fatherland

He gave him a gentle push into the living room.
    March said, "Never mind her, Willi. Look at this."
    He switched on the lamp, angling it upward.
    Willi Stiefel took in the safe at a glance. "English," he said. "Casing: one and a half centimeters, high-tensile steel. Fine mechanism. Eight-figure code. Six, if you're lucky." He appealed to March: "I beg you, Herr Sturmbannführer. It's the guillotine for me next time."
    "It'll be the guillotine for you this time," said Jaeger, "if you don't get on with it."
    "Fifteen minutes, Herr Sturmbannführer. Then I'm out of here. Agreed?"
    March nodded. "Agreed."
    Stiefel gave the woman a last, nervous look. Then he removed his hat and jacket, opened his case and took out a pair of thin rubber gloves and a stethoscope.
    March took Jaeger over to the window and whispered, "Did he take much persuading?"
    "What do you think? But then I told him he was still covered by Forty-two. He saw the light."
    Paragraph forty-two of the Reich Criminal Code stated that all "habitual criminals and offenders against morality" could be arrested on suspicion that they might commit an offense. National Socialism taught that criminality was in the blood—something you were born with, like musical talent or blond hair. Thus the character of the criminal rather than his crime determined the sentence. A gangster stealing a few marks after a fistfight could be sentenced to death, on the grounds that he "displayed an inclination toward criminality so deep rooted that it precluded his ever becoming a useful member of the folk community." But the next day, in the same court, a loyal
    Party member who had shot his wife for an insulting remark might merely be bound over to keep the peace.
    Stiefel could not afford another arrest. He had recently served nine years in Spandau for a bank robbery. He had no choice but to cooperate with the Polizei, whatever they asked him to be—informant, agent provocateur or safe- breaker. These days, he ran a watch repair business in Wedding and swore he was going straight: a protestation of innocence that was hard to believe, watching him now. He had placed the stethoscope against the safe door and was twisting the dial a digit at a time. His eyes were closed as he listened for the click of the lock's tumblers falling into place.
    Come on, Willi . March rubbed his hands. His fingers were numb with apprehension.
    "Jesus Christ," said Jaeger under his breath. "I hope you know what you're doing."
    "I'll explain later."
    "No, thanks. I told you: I don't want to know."
    Stiefel straightened and let out a long sigh. "One," he said. One was the first digit of the combination.
    Like Stiefel, Jaeger kept glancing at the woman. She was sitting demurely on one of the gilt chairs, her hands folded in her lap. "A foreign woman, for God's sake!"
    "Six."
    So it went on, one digit every few minutes, until, at 11:35, Stiefel said to March, "The owner: when was he born?"
    "Why?"
    "It would save time. I think he's set this with the date of his birth. So far, I've got one-one-one-six-one-nine. The eleventh month, sixteenth day, nineteen . .
    March checked his notes from Stuckart's Wer Ist's? entry.
    "Nineteen hundred two."
    "Zero-two." Stiefel tried the combination, then smiled. "It's usually the owner's birthday," he said, "or the Führer's birthday or the Day of National Reawakening." He pulled open the door.
    The safe was small: a twenty-centimeter cube containing no bank notes or jewelry, just paper—old paper, most of it. March piled it onto the table and began rifling through it.
    "I'd like to leave now, Herr Sturmbannführer."
    March ignored him. Tied up in red ribbon were the title deeds to a property in Wiesbaden—the family home, by the look of it. There were stock certificates. Hoesch, Siemens, Thyssen: the companies were standard, but the sums invested looked astronomical. Insurance papers. One human touch: a photograph of Maria Dymarski in a 1950s cheesecake pose.
    Suddenly, from the window, Jaeger gave a shout of warning: "Here they come, you fucking, fucking fool!"
    An unmarked gray BMW was driving around the square, fast, followed by an army truck. The vehicles swerved to a halt outside, blocking the street. A man in a belted leather coat leaped out of the car. The tailgate of the truck was kicked down and SS troops carrying automatic rifles began jumping out.
    "Move! Move!" yelled Jaeger. He began pushing Charlie and Stiefel toward the door.
    With shaking fingers, March