Fatherland

from his ex-wife, dated Tuesday. He glanced through it. She had decided he was not to see Pili in the future. It upset the boy too much. She hoped he would agree that this was for the best. If necessary, she would be willing to swear a deposition before the Reich Family Court, giving her reasons. She trusted this would not be necessary, both for his sake and the boy's. It was signed "Klara Eckart." So she had gone back to her maiden name. He screwed the letter up and threw it next to the photograph with the rest of the rubbish.
    The bathroom, at least, had been left intact. He showered and shaved, inspecting himself in the mirror for damage. It felt worse than it looked: a large bruise developing nicely on his chest, more on the backs of his legs and at the base of his spine; a livid mark at his throat. Nothing serious. What was it his father used to say—his paternal balm for all the batterings of childhood? "You'll live, boy." That was it. "You'll live!"
    Naked, he went back into the living room and searched through the wreckage, pulling out clean clothes, a pair of shoes, a suitcase, a leather holdall. He feared they might have taken his passport, but it was there at the bottom of the mound. It had been issued in 1961, when March had
    gone to Italy to bring back a gangster being held in Milan. His younger self stared up at him, fatter cheeked, half smiling. My God, he thought, I've aged ten years in three.
    He brushed his uniform and put it back on, together with a clean shirt, and packed his suitcase. As he bent to snap it shut, his eye was caught by something in the empty grate. The photograph of the Weiss family was lying facedown. He hesitated, picked it up, folded it into a small square—exactly as he had found it five years earlier—and slipped it into his wallet. If he were stopped and searched, he would say they were his family.
    Then he took a last look around and left, closing the broken door behind him as best he could.
    At the main branch of the Deutsche Bank in Wittenberg-Platz, he asked how much he had in his account.
    "Four thousand two hundred seventy-seven marks and thirty-eight pfennigs."
    "I'll take it."
    "All of it, Herr Sturmbannführer?" The teller blinked at him through wire-framed spectacles. "You're closing the account?"
    "All of it."
    March watched him count out forty-two one-hundred- mark notes, then stuffed them into his wallet, next to the photograph. Not much in the way of life savings.
    This is what no promotions and seven years of alimony do to you.
    The teller was staring at him. "Did the Herr Sturmbannführer say something?"
    He had given voice to his thoughts. He must be going mad. "No. Sorry. Thank you."
    March picked up his suitcase, went out into the square
    and caught a taxi to Werderscher-Markt.

    Alone in his office, he did two things. He called the headquarters of Lufthansa and asked the head of security—a former Kripo investigator he knew named Friedman—to check if the airline had carried a passenger by the name of Martin Luther on any of its Berlin-Zürich flights on Sunday or Monday.
    "Martin Luther, right?" Friedman was greatly amused. "Anyone else you want, March? Emperor Charlemagne? Herr von Goethe?"
    "It's important."
    "It's always important. Sure. I know." Friedman promised to find out the information at once. "Listen. When you get tired of chasing ambulances, there's always a job for you here if you want it."
    "Thanks. I may well."
    After he hung up, March took the dead plant down from the filing cabinet. He lifted the atrophied roots out of the pot, put the brass key in, replaced the plant and returned the pot to its old position.
    Five minutes later, Friedman called him back.
    Artur Nebe's suite of offices was on the fourth floor—all cream carpets and cream paint work, recessed lighting and black leather sofas. On the walls were prints of Thorak's sculptures: herculean figures with gargantuan torsos rolled boulders up steep hills in celebration of the building of the Autobahnen ; Valkyries fought the triple demons Ignorance, Bolshevism and Slav. The immensity of Thorak's statuary was a whispered joke. "Thorax" they called him: "The Herr Professor is not receiving visitors today— he is working in the left ear of the horse."
    Nebe's adjutant, Otto Beck, a smooth-faced graduate of Heidelberg and Oxford, looked up as March came into the outer office.
    March said, "I need to speak with the Oberstgruppenführer."
    "He is seeing nobody."
    "He will see