Fatherland

audiences to tears by the pathos of his playing). When the aircraft carrying Heinrich Himmler had blown up in midair two years ago, Heydrich had taken over as Reichsführer-SS . Now he was said to be in line to succeed the Führer. The whisper around the Kripo was that the Reich's chief policeman liked beating up prostitutes.
    March sat down. A numbing tiredness was seeping through him, a paralysis: the legs first, then the body, at last the mind. Despite himself, he drifted into a shallow sleep. Once, far away, he thought he heard a cry—human and forlorn—but it might have been a dream. Footsteps echoed in his mind. Keys turned. Cell doors clanged.
    He was jerked awake by a rough hand.
    "Good morning, gentlemen. I hope you had some rest?"
    It was Krebs.
    March felt raw. His eyes were gritty in the sickly fluorescent light. Through the window the sky was pearl gray with the approaching morning.
    Jaeger grunted and swung his legs to the floor. "Now what?"
    "Now we talk," said Krebs. "Come."
    "Who is this kid," grumbled Jaeger to March under his breath, "to push us about?" But he was wary enough to keep his voice low.
    They filed into the corridor, and March wondered again what game was being played. Interrogation is a nighttime art. Why leave it until the morning? Why give them a chance to regain their strength, to concoct a story?
    Krebs had recently shaved. His skin was studded with pinpricks of blood. He said, "Washroom on the right. You will wish to clean yourselves." It was an instruction rather than a question.
    In the mirror, red eyed and unshaven, March looked more convict than policeman. He filled the basin, rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie, splashed icy water on his face, his forearms, the nape of his neck, let it trickle down his back. The cold sting brought him back to life.
    Jaeger stood alongside him. "Remember what I said."
    March quickly turned the taps back on. "Be careful."
    "You think they wire the toilet?"
    "They wire everything."
    Krebs conducted them downstairs. The guards fell in behind them. To the cellar? They clattered across the vestibule—quieter now than when they had arrived—and out into the grudging light.
    Not the cellar.
    Waiting in the BMW was the driver who had brought them from Stuckart's apartment. The convoy moved off, north into the rush hour traffic that was already building up around Potsdamer-Platz. In the big shops, the windows piously displayed large gilt-framed photographs of the Führer—the official portrait from the mid-1950s by the English photographer Cecil Beaton. The frames were garlanded with twigs and flowers, the traditional decoration heralding the Führer's birthday. Four days to go, each of which would see a fresh sprouting of swastika banners. Soon the city would be a forest of red, white and black.
    Jaeger was gripping the armrest, looking sick. "Come on, Krebs," he said in a wheedling voice. "We're all the same rank. You can tell us where we're going."
    Krebs made no reply. The dome of the Great Hall loomed ahead. Ten minutes later, when the BMW turned left onto the East-West Axis, March guessed their destination.
    It was almost eight by the time they arrived. The iron gates of Buhler's villa had been swung wide open. The grounds were filled with vehicles, dotted with black uniforms. One SS trooper was sweeping the lawn with a proton magnetometer. Behind him, jammed into the ground, was a trail of red flags. Three more soldiers were digging holes. Drawn up on the gravel were Gestapo BMWs, a lorry and a large armored security van of the sort used for transporting gold bullion.
    March felt Jaeger nudge him. Parked in the shadows beside the house, its driver leaning against the bodywork, was a bulletproof Mercedes limousine. A metal pennant hung above the radiator grille: silver SS lightning flashes on a black background; in one corner, like a cabalistic symbol, the Gothic letter K.

2

    The head of the Reich Kriminalpolizei was an old man. His name was Artur Nebe, and he was a legend.
    Nebe had been head of the Berlin detective force even before the Party had come to power. He had a small head and the sallow, scaly skin of a tortoise. In 1954, to mark his sixtieth birthday, the Reichstag had voted him a large estate, including four villages, near Minsk in the Ostland, but he had never even been to look at it. He lived alone with his bedridden wife in Charlottenburg, in a large house marked by the smell of disinfectant and the whisper of pure