Fatherland

But who are they? Where are they now? What happened to them?"
    He took the photograph, folded it into quarters, put it back into his wallet.
    "What do you do," he said, "if you devote your life to discovering criminals, and it gradually occurs to you that the real criminals are the people you work for? What do you do when everyone tells you not to worry, you can't do anything about it, it was a long time ago?"
    She was looking at him in a different way. "I suppose you go crazy."
    "Or worse. Sane."
    Despite his protests, she insisted on paying half the bill. It was almost midnight by the time they left the restaurant. They walked in silence toward the hotel. Stars arched across the sky; at the bottom of the steep cobbled street, the lake waited.
    She took his arm. "You asked me if that man at the embassy—Nightingale—if he was my lover."
    "That was rude of me. I'm sorry."
    "Would you have been disappointed if I'd said he was?"
    He hesitated.
    She went on, "Well, he isn't. He'd like to be. Sorry. That sounds like boasting."
    "It doesn't at all. I'm sure many would like to be."
    "I hadn't met anyone . . ."
    Hadn't. . .
    She stopped. "I'm twenty-five. I go where I like. I do what I like. I choose whom I like." She turned to him, touched him lightly on the cheek with a warm hand. "God, I hate getting this sort of thing out of the way, don't you?"
    She drew his head to hers.
    How odd it is, thought March afterward, to live your life in ignorance of the past, of your world, yourself. Yet how easy to do it! You go along from day to day, down paths other people prepare for you, never raising your head— enfolded in their logic, from swaddling clothes to shroud. It's a kind of fear.
    Well, good-bye to that. And good to leave it behind— whatever happens now.
    His feet danced on the cobblestones. He slipped his arm around her. He had so many questions.
    "Wait, wait." She was laughing, holding on to him. "Enough. Stop. I'm starting to worry that you only want me for my mind ."
    In his hotel room, she unknotted his tie and reined him to her once more, her mouth soft on his. Still kissing him, she smoothed the jacket from his shoulders, unbuttoned his shirt, parted it. Her hands skimmed over his chest, around his back, across his stomach.
    She knelt and tugged at his belt.
    He closed his eyes and coiled his fingers in her hair.
    After a few moments he pulled away gently, and knelt to face her, lifted her dress. Freed from it, she threw back her head and shook her hair. He wanted to know her completely. He kissed her throat, her breasts, her stomach; inhaled her scent, felt the firm flesh stretching smooth and taut beneath his hands, her soft skin on his tongue.
    Later she guided him onto the bed and settled herself above him. The only light was cast by the lake. Rippling shadows all around them. When he opened his mouth to say something, she put a finger to his lips.

FRIDAY, APRIL 17

    The Gestapo, the Kriminalpolizei and the security services are enveloped in the mysterious aura of the political detective story.
    REINHARD HEYDRICH

1

    The Berlin stock exchange had opened for trading thirty minutes earlier. In the window display of the Union des Banques Suisses on Zürich's Bahnhof-Strasse, the Borse's numbers clicked like knitting needles. Bayer, Siemens, Thyssen, Daimler—up, up, up, up. The only stock falling on the news of detente was Krupp.
    A small well-dressed crowd had gathered anxiously, as it did every morning, to watch this monitor of the Reich's economic health. Prices on the Börse had been falling for six months, and a mood close to panic had seized investors. But this week, thanks to old Joe Kennedy—he always knew a thing or two about markets, did old Joe: made half a billion dollars on Wall Street in his day—yes, thanks to Joe, the slide had stopped. Berlin was happy, so everyone was happy. Nobody paid attention to the couple walking up the street from the lake, not holding hands but close enough for their bodies to touch occasionally, followed by a weary-looking pair of gentlemen in fawn raincoats.
    March had been given a short briefing on the customs and practices of Swiss banking the afternoon he had left Berlin.
    "Bahnhof-Strasse is the financial center. It looks like the main shopping street, which it is. But it's the courtyards behind the shops and the offices above them that matter. That's where you'll find the banks. But you'll have to keep your eyes open. The Swiss say: the older the money, the