Fatherland

he thought, I have walked the earth and come to this.
    A crash. The hands slackened, withdrew. March came swimming back into the fight, at least as a spectator. The man had been knocked sideways, hit on the head by a chair of tubular steel. Blood masked his face, pulsing from a cut above his eye. Crash. The chair again. With one arm, the man tried to ward off the blows, with the other he wiped frantically at his blinded eyes. He began shuffling on his knees for the door, a devil on his back—a hissing, spitting fury, claws scrabbling to find his eyes. Slowly, as if carrying an immense weight, he raised himself onto one leg, then the other. AH he wanted now was to get away. He blundered into the door frame, turned and hammered his tormentor against it—once, twice.
    Only then did Charlie Maguire let the man go.

    Clusters of pain, bursting like fireworks: his head, the backs of his legs, his ribs, his throat.
    "Where did you learn to fight?"
    He was in the tiny kitchen, bent over the sink. She was mopping blood from the cut on the back of his head.
    "Try growing up as the only girl in a family with three brothers. You learn to fight. Hold still."
    "I pity the brothers. Ah." March's head hurt the most. The bloody water dripping into the greasy plates a few centimeters from his face made him feel sick. "In Hollywood, I think, it is traditional for the man to rescue the girl."
    "Hollywood is full of shit." She applied a fresh cloth. "This is deep. Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?"
    "No time."
    "Will that man come back?"
    "No. At least, not for a while. Supposedly this is still a clandestine operation. Thank you."
    He held the cloth to the back of his head and straightened. As he did so, he discovered a new pain, at the base of his spine.
    " 'A clandestine operation?'" she repeated. "You don't think he could have been an ordinary thief?"
    "No. He was a professional. An authentic, Gestapo- trained professional."
    "And I beat him!" The adrenaline had given luster to her skin; her eyes sparkled. Her only injury was a bruise on her shoulder. She was more attractive than he remembered. Delicate cheekbones, a strong nose, full lips, large brown eyes. She had brown hair, cut to the nape of her neck, which she wore swept back behind her ears.
    "If his orders had been to kill you, he would have done so."
    "Really? Then why didn't he?" Suddenly she sounded angry.
    "You're an American. A protected species, especially at the moment." He inspected the cloth. The flow of blood had stopped. "Don't underrate the enemy, Fräulein."
    "Don't underrate me . If I hadn't come home, he'd have killed you."
    He decided to say nothing. She clearly kept her temper on a hair trigger.
    The apartment had been thoroughly ransacked. Her clothes hung out of their drawers, papers had been spilled across the desk and onto the floor, suitcases had been upended. Not, he thought, that it could have been very neat before: the dirty dishes in the sink, the profusion of bottles (most of them empty) in the bathroom, the yellowing copies of The New York Times and Time , their pages sliced to ribbons by the German censors, stacked haphazardly around the walls. Searching it must have been a nightmare. Weak light filtered in through dirty net curtains. Every few minutes the walls shook as a train passed.
    "This is yours, I take it?" She pulled out the Luger from beneath a chair and held it up between finger and thumb.
    "Yes. Thank you." He took it. She had a gift for making him feel stupid. "Is anything missing?"
    "I doubt it." She glanced around. "I'm not sure I'd know if there was."
    "The item I gave you last night. . . ?"
    "Oh, that? It was here on the mantelpiece." She ran her hand along it, frowning. "It was here . . ."
    He closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was grinning.
    "Don't worry, Sturmbannführer. It's stayed close to my heart. Like a love letter."
    She turned her back to him, unbuttoning her shirt. When she turned around, she had the envelope in her hand. He took it over to the window. It was warm to the touch.
    It was long and slim, made of thick paper—a rich creamy blue with brown specks of age, like liver spots. It was luxurious, handmade, redolent of another age. There was no name or address.
    Inside the envelope was a small brass key and a letter on matching blue paper, as thick as cardboard. Printed in the top right-hand corner, in flowery copperplate, was: Zaugg & Cie., Bankiers, Bahnhof-Strasse 44, Z ü rich. A single