Fatherland

typed:
    nothing.

    He wound the paper out of the typewriter, signed it and sealed it in an envelope. He called Nebe's office and was ordered to bring it up at once, personally. He hung up and stared out the window at the brickwork view.
    Why not?
    He stood and checked along the bookshelves until he found the Berlin area telephone directory. He took it down and looked up a number, which he dialed from the office next door so as not to be overheard.
    A man's voice answered, "Reichsarchiv."
    Ten minutes later his boots were sinking into the soft mire of Artur Nebe's office carpet.
    "Do you believe in coincidences, March?"
    "No, sir."
    "No," said Nebe. "Good. Neither do I." He put down his magnifying glass and pushed away March's report. "I don't believe two retired public servants of the same age and rank just happen to choose to commit suicide rather than be exposed as corrupt. My God"—he gave a harsh little laugh—"if every government official in Berlin took that approach, the streets would be piled high with the dead. Nor do they just happen to be murdered in the week an American president announces he will grace us with a visit."
    He pushed back his chair and hobbled across to a small bookcase lined with the sacred texts of National Socialism: Mein Kampf , Rosenberg's Der Mythus des XX. Jahr-hunderts , Goebbels' Tagebücher ... He pressed a switch and the front of the bookcase swung open to reveal a cocktail cabinet. The tomes, March saw now, were merely the spines of books, pasted onto the wood.
    Nebe helped himself to a large vodka and returned to his desk. March continued to stand before him, neither fully at attention nor fully at ease.
    "Globus works for Heydrich," said Nebe. "That's simple. Globus wouldn't wipe his own backside unless Heydrich told him it was time to do it."
    March said nothing.
    "And Heydrich works for the Führer most of the time, and all of the time he works for himself . . ."
    Nebe held the heavy tumbler to his lips. His lizard's tongue darted into the vodka, playing with it. He was silent for a while. Then he said, "Do you know why we're greasing up to the Americans, March?"
    "No, sir."
    "Because we're in the shit. Here is something you won't read in the little doctor's newspapers. Twenty million settlers in the East by 1960, that was Himmler's plan. Ninety million by the end of the century. Fine. Well, we shipped them out all right. Trouble is, half of them want to come back. Consider that cosmic piece of irony, March: living space that no one wants to live in. Terrorism"—he gestured with his glass, the ice clinked—"I don't need to tell an officer of the Kripo how serious terrorism has become. The Americans supply money, weapons, training. They've kept the Reds going for twenty years. As for us: the young don't want to fight and the old don't want to work."
    He shook his gray head at such follies, fished an ice cube out of his drink and sucked it noisily.
    "Heydrich's mad for this American deal. He'd kill to keep it sweet. Is that what's happening here, March? Buhler, Stuckart, Luther—were they a threat to it somehow?"
    Nebe's eyes searched his face. March stared straight ahead. "You're an irony yourself, March, in a way. Did you ever consider that?"
    "No, sir."
    " 'No, sir.'" Nebe mimicked him. "Well, consider it now. We set out to breed a generation of supermen to rule an empire, yes? We trained them to apply hard logic— pitilessly, even cruelly. Remember what the Führer once said? 'My greatest gift to the Germans is that I have taught them to think clearly.' And what happens? A few of you— perhaps the best of you—begin to turn this pitiless clear thinking onto us. I tell you, I'm glad I'm an old man. I fear the future." He was quiet for a minute, lost in his own thoughts. At length, disappointed, the old man picked up the magnifying glass. "Corruption it is, then." He read through March's report once more, then tore it up and dropped it into his wastebin.
    Clio, the Muse of History, guarded the Reichsarchiv: an Amazonian nude designed by Adolf Ziegler, the "Reich Master of the Pubic Hair." She frowned across the Avenue of Victory toward the Soldiers' Hall, where a long queue of tourists waited to file past Frederick the Great's bones. Pigeons perched on the slopes of her immense bosom, like mountaineers on the face of a glacier. Behind her, a sign had been carved above the entrance to the archive, gold leaf inlaid on polished granite. A quotation from the Führer: FOR