Fatherland (24 page)

Charlotte Maguire drained her own glass and placed it next to his. "We have whisky in common, Herr March, at least." She smiled.

He turned to the window. This was her skill, he thought: to make him look stupid, a Teutonic flatfoot.

First she had failed to tell him about Stuckart's telephone call. Then she had maneuvered him into letting her join in his search of Stuckart's apartment. This morning, instead of waiting for him to contact her, she had talked to the American diplomat, Nightingale, about Swiss banks. Now this. It was like having a child forever at your heels—a persistent, intelligent, embarrassing, deceitful, dangerous child. Surreptitiously he felt his pockets again, to check that he still had the letter and key. She was not beyond stealing them while he was asleep.

The Junkers was coming in to land. Like a film gradually speeding up, the Swiss countryside began rushing past: a tractor in a field, a road with a few headlights in the smoky dusk, and then—one bounce, two—they were touching down.

Zürich airport was not how he had imagined it. Beyond the aircraft and hangars were wooded hillsides, with no evidence of a city. For a moment, he wondered if Globus had discovered his mission and had arranged for the plane to be diverted. Perhaps they had been set down in some remote air base in southern Germany? But then he saw ZÜRICH on the terminal building.

The instant the plane taxied to a halt, the passengers— professional commuters, most of them—rose as one. She was on her feet, too, pulling down her case and that ridiculous blue coat. He reached past her.

"Excuse me."

She shrugged on the coat. "Where to now?"

"I'm going to my hotel, Fräulein. What you do is your concern."

He managed to squeeze in front of a fat Swiss who was cramming documents into a leather attaché case. The maneuver left her trapped some way behind him. He did not look back as he shuffled down the aisle and off the aircraft.

He walked briskly through the arrivals hall to passport control, overtaking most of the other passengers to station himself near the head of the queue. Behind him, he heard a commotion as she tried to catch up.

The Swiss border official, a serious young man with a drooping mustache, leafed through his passport. "Business or pleasure, Herr March?"

"Business." Definitely business.

"One moment."

The young man picked up the telephone, dialed three digits, turned away from March and whispered something into the receiver. He said, "Yes. Yes. Of course." Then he hung up and returned the passport to March.

There were two of them waiting for him by the baggage carousel. He spotted them from fifty meters away: bulky figures with close-cropped hair, wearing stout black shoes and belted fawn raincoats. Policemen—they were the same the world over. He walked past them without a glance and sensed rather than saw them falling in behind him.

He went unchallenged through the green customs channel and out into the main concourse. Taxis. Where were taxis?

Clip-clop, clip-clop
. Coming up behind him.

The air outside was several degrees colder than in Berlin.
Clip-clop, clip-clop
. He wheeled around. There she was, in her coat, clutching her case, balanced on her high heels.

"Go away, Fräulein. Do you understand me? Do you need it in writing? Go back to America and publish your stupid story. I have business to attend to."

Without waiting for her reply, he opened the rear door of the waiting taxi, threw in his case, climbed in after it. "Baur au Lac," he said to the driver.

They pulled out of the airport and onto the highway, heading south toward the city. The day was almost gone. Craning his neck to look out of the back window, March could see a taxi tucked in ten meters behind them, with an

unmarked white Mercedes following it. Christ, what a comedy this was turning into. Globus was chasing Luther, he was chasing Globus, Charlie Maguire was chasing him and now the Swiss police wore on the tails of both of them. He lit a cigarette.

"Can't you read?" said the driver. He pointed to a sign: THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING.

"Welcome to Switzerland," muttered March. He wound down the window a few centimeters, and the cloud of blue smoke was plucked into the chilly air.

Zürich was more beautiful than he had expected. Its center reminded him of Hamburg. Old buildings clustered around the edge of the wide lake. Trams in a livery of green and white rattled along the front, past well-lit shops and cafes. The driver was listening to the Voice of America. In Berlin it was a blur of static; here it was clear. "I wanna hold your hand," sang a youthful English voice. "I wanna hold your ha-a-and!" A thousand teenage girls screamed.

The Baur au Lac was a street's width from the lake. March paid the taxi driver in Reichsmarks—every country on the continent accepted Reichsmarks, it was Europe's common currency—and went inside. It was as luxurious as Nebe had promised. His room had cost him half a month's salary. "A fine place for a condemned man to spend a night..." As he signed the register he glimpsed a flash of blue at the door, swiftly followed by the fawn raincoats. I'm like a movie star, thought March as he caught the elevator. Everywhere I go, I have two detectives and a brunette in tow.

He spread a map of the city on the bed and sat down beside it, sinking into the spongy mattress. He had so little time. The broad expanse of the Zürichsee thrust up into the complex of streets like a blue blade. According to his Kripo file, Hermann Zaugg had a place on See-Strasse. March found it. See-Strasse ran alongside the eastern

shore of the lake, about four kilometers south of the hotel.

Someone tapped softly on the door. A man's voice called his name.

Now what? He strode across the room, flung open the door. A waiter was in the corridor, holding a tray. He looked startled.

"Sorry, sir. With the compliments of the lady in room 277, sir."

"Yes. Of course." March stood aside to let him through. The waiter came in hesitantly, as if he thought March might hit him. He set down the tray, lingered fractionally for a tip and then, when none was forthcoming, left. March locked the door behind him.

On the table was a bottle of Glenfiddich, with a one-word note: "Détente?"

He stood at the window, his tie loosened, sipping the malt whisky, looking out across the Zürichsee. Traceries of yellow lanterns were strung around the black water; on the surface, pinpricks of red, green and white bobbed and winked. He lit yet another cigarette, his millionth of the week.

People were laughing in the drive beneath his window. A light moved across the lake. No Great Hall, no marching bands, no uniforms. For the first time in—what was it?—a year, at least, he was away from the iron and granite of Berlin. So. He held up his glass and studied the pale liquid. There
were
other lives, other cities.

He noticed, along with the bottle, that she had ordered two glasses.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the telephone. He drummed his fingers on the little table.

Madness.

She had a habit of thrusting her hands deep into her pockets and standing with her head on one side, half smiling. On the plane, he remembered, she had been wearing a red wool dress with a leather belt. She had good

legs, in black stockings. And when she was angry or amused, which was most of the time, she would flick at the hair behind her ear.

The laughter outside drifted away.

"Where have you been the past twenty years?"
Her contemptuous question to him in Stuckart's apartment.

She knew so much. She danced around him.

"The millions of Jews who vanished in the war. . ."

He turned her note over in his fingers, poured himself another drink and lay back on the bed. Ten minutes later he lifted the receiver and spoke to the operator.

"Room 277."

Madness,
madness
.

They met in the lobby, beneath the fronds of a luxuriant palm. In the opposite corner a string quartet scraped its way through a selection from
Die Fledermaus.

March said, "The Scotch is very good."

"A peace offering."

"Accepted. Thank you." He glanced across at the elderly cellist. Her stout legs were held wide apart, as if she were milking a cow. "God knows why I should trust you."

"God knows why I should trust you."

"Ground rules," he said firmly. "One: no more lies. Two: we do what I say, whether you want to or not. Three: you show me what you plan to print, and if I ask you not to write something, you take it out. Agreed?"

"It's a deal." She smiled and offered him her hand. He took it. She had a cool, firm grip. For the first time he noticed she had a man's watch around her wrist.

"What changed your mind?" she asked.

He released her hand. "Are you ready to go out?" She was still wearing the red dress.

"Yes."

"Do you have a notebook?"

She tapped her coat pocket. "Never travel without one."

"Nor do I. Good. Let's go."

Switzerland was a cluster of lights in a great darkness, enemies all around it: Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany north and east. Its survival was a source of wonder: "the Swiss miracle," they called it.

Luxembourg had become Moselland, Alsace-Lorraine was Westmark; Austria was Ostmark. As for Czechoslovakia—that bastard child of Versailles had dwindled to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia—vanished from the map. In the East, the German Empire was carved four ways into the
Reichskommissariate
Ostland, Ukraine, Caucasus, Muscovy.

In the West, twelve nations—Portugal, Spain, France, Ireland, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland—had been corralled by Germany, under the Treaty of Rome, into a European trading bloc. German was the official second language in all schools. People drove German cars, listened to German radios, watched German televisions, worked in German-owned factories, moaned about the behavior of German tourists in German-dominated holiday resorts, while German teams won every international sporting competition except cricket, which only the English played.

In all this, Switzerland alone was neutral. That had not been the Führer's intention. But by the time the Wehrmacht's planners had designed a strategy to subdue the Swiss state, the stalemate of the Cold War had begun. It remained a patch of no-man's-land, increasingly useful to both sides as the years went by, a place to meet and deal in secret.

"There are only three classes of citizen in Switzerland," the Kripo's expert had told March. "American spies, German spies and Swiss bankers trying to get hold of their money."

Over the past century those bankers had settled around the northern rim of the Zürichsee like a rich crust; a tidemark of money. As on Schwanenwerder, their villas presented to the world a blank face of high walls and stout gates, backed by dense screens of trees.

March leaned forward and spoke to the driver. "Slow down here."

They were quite a cavalcade by now: March and Charlie in a taxi followed by two cars, each occupied by a Swiss policeman. Bellerive-Strasse turned into See-Strasse. March counted off the numbers.

"Pull over here."

The taxi swerved up onto the curb. The police cars passed them; a hundred meters down the road, their brake lights glowed.

Charlie looked around. "Now what?"

"Now we take a look at the home of Dr. Hermann Zaugg."

March paid the taxi driver, who promptly turned and set off back toward the city center. The road was quiet.

All the villas were well protected, but Zaugg's—the third they came to—was a fortress. The gates were solid metal, three meters high, flanked on either side by a stone wall. A security camera scanned the entrance. March took Charlie's arm and they strolled past like lovers taking the air. They crossed the road and waited in a driveway on the other side. March looked at his watch. It was just after nine. Five minutes passed. He was about to suggest they leave when, with a clank and a hum of machinery, the gates began to swing open.

Charlie whispered, "Someone's coming out."

"No." He nodded up the road. "Coming in."

The limousine was big and powerful: a British car, a Bentley, finished in black. It came from the direction of the city, traveling rapidly, and swerved and swung into the drive. A chauffeur and another man in the front; in the back, a flash of silver hair—Zaugg's, presumably. March just had time to notice how low the bodywork hung to the ground. Then, one after another, the tires were absorbing the impact as the Bentley bounced over the curb—
whump, whump, whump, whump
—and it was gone.

The gates started to close, then stopped halfway. Two men appeared from the direction of the house, walking fast.

"You!" one of them shouted. "Both of you! Stay where you are!" He strode into the road. March seized Charlie by the elbow. At that instant, one of the police cars began backing toward them, gearbox howling. The man glanced to his right, hesitated and retreated.

The car skidded to a halt. The window was wound down. A weary voice said, "For fuck's sake, get in."