Fatherland

Havel as an excuse to dress in gray trousers and a thick blue sweater. He pushed Jaeger's chair toward Jost. "Sit down. Coffee?"
    "Please."
    There was a machine in the corridor. "We've got fucking photographs . Can you believe it? Look at that." Along the passage March could hear the voice of Fiebes of VB3—the sexual crimes division—toasting of his latest success. "Her maid took them. Look, you can see every hair. The girl should turn professional."
    What would this be? March thumped the side of the coffee machine and it ejected a plastic cup. Some officer's wife, he guessed, and a Polish laborer shipped in from the General Government to work in the garden. It was usually a Pole—a dreamy, soulful Pole plucking at the heart of a wife whose husband was away at the front. It sounded as if they had been photographed in flagrante by some jealous girl from the Bund deutscher Mädel , anxious to please the authorities. This was a sexual crime, as defined in the 1935 Race Defilement Act.
    He gave the machine another thump.
    There would be a hearing in the People's Court, salaciously recorded in Der Stürmer as a warning to others. Two years in Ravensbrück for the wife. Demotion and disgrace for the husband. Twenty-five years for the Pole, if he was lucky; death if he was not.
    "Fuck!" A male voice muttered something, and Fiebes, a weasel inspector in his mid-fifties whose wife had run off with an SS ski instructor ten years before, gave a shout of laughter. March, a cup of black coffee in either hand, retreated to his office and slammed the door behind him as loudly as he could with his foot.

    Reichskriminalpolizei
    Werderscher-markt 5-6
    Berlin
    Statement of Witness
    My name is Hermann Friedrich Jost. I was born on 2-23-45 in Dresden. I am a cadet at the Sepp Dietrich Academy, Berlin. At 0530 this morning, I left for my regular training run. I prefer to run alone. My normal route takes me west through the Grunewald Forest to the Havel, north along the lakeshore to the Lindwerder Restaurant, then south to the barracks in Schlachtensee. Three hundred meters north of the Schwanenwerder causeway, I saw an object lying in the water at the edge of the lake. It was the body of a male. I ran to a telephone half a kilometer along the lake path and informed the police. I returned to the body and waited for the arrival of the authorities. During all this time it was raining hard and I saw nobody.
    I am making this statement of my own free will in the presence of Kripo investigator Xavier March.
    SS-Schütze H. F. Jost.
    0824 hours
    4/14/64
    March leaned back in his chair and studied the young man as he signed his statement. There were no hard lines to his face. It was as pink and soft as a baby's, with a clamor of acne around the mouth, a whisper of blond hair on the upper lip. March doubted if he shaved.
    "Why do you run alone?"
    Jost handed back his statement. "It gives me a chance to think. It is good to be alone once in the day. One is not often alone in a barracks."
    "How long have you been a cadet?"
    "Three months."
    "Do you enjoy it?"
    "Enjoy it!" Jost turned his face to the window. "I'd just begun studying at the university at Göttingen when my call-up came through. Let us say it was not the happiest day of my life."
    "What were you studying?"
    "Literature."
    "German?"
    "What other sort is there?" Jost gave one of his watery smiles. "I hope to go back to the university when I have served my three years. I want to be a teacher; a writer. Not a soldier."
    March scanned his statement. "If you're so antimilitary, what are you doing in the SS?" He could guess the answer.
    "My father. He was a founder member of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler , You know how it is: I'm his only son; it was his dearest wish."
    "You must hate it."
    Jost shrugged. "I survive. And I've been told—unofficially, naturally—that I will not have to go to the front. They need an assistant at the officers' school in Bad Tölz to teach a course on the degeneracy of American literature. That sounds more like my kind of thing: degeneracy." He risked another smile. "Perhaps I shall become an expert in the field."
    March laughed and glanced again at the statement. Something was not right here, and now he saw it. "No doubt you will." He put the statement to one side and stood up. "I wish you luck with your teaching."
    "Am I free to go?"
    "Of course."
    With a look of relief, Jost got to his feet. March grasped the door handle. "One thing." He turned and