Authors: Robert Harris
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 ANY NATION, THE RIGHT HISTORY IS WORTH 100 DIVISIONS.
Rudi Halder led March inside and up to the third floor. He pushed at the double doors and stood aside to let him walk through. A corridor with stone walls and a Stone floor seemed to stretch forever.
"Impressive, yes?" In his place of work, Halder spoke in the tone of a professional historian, conveying pride and sarcasm simultaneously. "We call the style mock Teutonic. This, you will not be surprised to hear, is the largest archive building in the world. Above us: two floors of administration. On this floor: researchers' offices and reading rooms. Beneath us:
six floors
of documents. You are treading, my friend, on the history of the Fatherland. For my part, I tend Clio's lamp in here."
It was a monkish cell: small, windowless, the walls made of blocks of granite. Papers were stacked on a table in piles half a meter high; they spilled over onto the floor. Books were everywhere—several hundred of them—each sprouting a thicket of markers: multicolored bits of paper, tram tickets, pieces of cigarette carton, spent matches.
"The historian's mission: to bring out of chaos—more chaos." Halder lifted a stack of old army signals off the solitary chair, brushed the dust off the seat and gestured to March to sit.
"I need your help, Rudi—again."
Halder perched on the edge of his desk. "I don't hear from you for months, then suddenly it's twice in a week. I presume this also has to do with the Buhler business? I saw the obituary."
March nodded. "I should say now that you are talking to a pariah. You may be endangering yourself merely by meeting with me."
"That only makes it sound more fascinating." Halder put his long fingers together and cracked the joints. "Go on."
"This is a real challenge for you." March paused, took a breath. "Three men: Buhler, Wilhelm Stuckart and Martin Luther. The first two dead; the last, a fugitive. All three senior civil servants, as you know. In the summer of 1942, they opened a bank account in Zürich. At first I assumed they'd put away a hoard of money or art treasures—as you suspected, Buhler was up to his armpits in corruption— but now I think it's more likely to have been documents."
"What sort of documents?"
"Not sure."
"Sensitive?"
"Presumably."
"You've got one problem straight away. You're talking about three different ministries—Foreign, Interior and General Government, which isn't really a ministry at all. That's tons of documents. I mean it, Zavi, literally— tons."
"Do you have their records here?"
"Foreign and Interior, yes. General Government is in Krakau."
"Do you have access to them?"
"Officially—no. Unofficially . . ." He wobbled a bony hand. "Perhaps, if I'm lucky. But Zavi, it would take a lifetime simply to look through them. What are you suggesting we do?"
"There must be some clue in there. Perhaps there are papers missing."
"But this is an impossible task."
"I told you it was a challenge."
"And how soon does this 'clue' need to be discovered?"
"I need to find it tonight."
Halder made an explosive sound—of mingled incredulity, anger, scorn. March said quietly, "Rudi, in three days' time, they're threatening to put me in front of an SS Honor Court. You know what that means.
I have to find it now.
"
Halder looked at him for a moment, unwilling to believe what he was hearing, then turned away, muttering, "Let me think . . ."
March said, "Can I have a cigarette?"
"In the hallway. Not in here—this stuff is irreplaceable."
As March smoked he could hear Halder in his office, pacing up and down. He looked at his watch. Six o'clock. The long hallway was deserted. Most of the staff must have gone home to begin the holiday weekend. March tried a couple of office doors, but both were locked. The third was open. He picked up the telephone, listened to the tone and dialed nine. The tone changed: an outside line. He called Charlie's number. She answered at once.
"It's me. Are you all right?"
She said, "I'm fine. I've discovered something—just a tiny thing."
"Don't tell me over an open line. I'll talk to you later." He tried to think of something else to say, but she had replaced the receiver.
Now Halder was on the telephone, his cheerful voice echoing down the flagstone hall. "Eberhard? Good evening to you . . . Indeed, no rest for some of us. A quick question, if I may. The Interior Ministry series . . . Oh, they have been? Good. On an office basis? ... I see. Excellent. And all that is done?"
March leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, trying not to think of the ocean of paper beneath his feet. Come on, Rudi.
Come on
.
He heard a bell tinkle as Halder hung up. A few seconds later Rudi appeared in the corridor, pulling on his jacket. A bunch of pen tops jutted from his breast pocket. "One small piece of luck. According to my colleague, the Interior Ministry files at least have been cataloged." He set off down the passage at a rapid pace. March strode beside him.
"What does that mean?"
"It means there should be a central index, showing us which papers actually crossed Stuckart's desk, and when." He hammered at the buttons beside the elevator. Nothing happened. "Looks as if they've turned this thing off for the night. We'll have to walk."
As they clattered down the wide spiral staircase, Halder shouted, "You appreciate this is completely against the rules? I'm cleared for Military, Eastern Front, not Administration, Internal. If we're stopped, you'll have to spin Security some yarn about Polizei business—something that'll take them a couple of hours to check. As for me, I'm just a poor sucker doing you a favor, right?"
"I appreciate it. How much farther?"
"All the way to the bottom." Halder was shaking his head. "An Honor Court! Dear God, Zavi, what's happened to you?"
Sixty meters beneath the ground the air circulated cool and dry and the lights were dimmed to protect the archives. "They say this place was built to withstand a direct hit from an American missile," said Halder.
"What's behind there?"
March pointed to a steel door covered with warning signs: ATTENTION! NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS! ENTRY FORBIDDEN! PASSES MUST BE SHOWN!
" 'The right history is worth a hundred divisions,' remember? That's the place where the wrong history goes. Shit. Look out."
Halder pulled March into a doorway. A security guard was coming toward them, bent like a miner in an underground shaft, pushing a metal cart. March thought he was certain to see them, but he went straight past, grunting with effort. He stopped at the metal barrier and unlocked it. There was a glimpse of a furnace, a roar of flames, before the door clanged shut behind him.
"Let's go."
As they walked, Halder explained the procedure. The archive worked on warehouse principles. Requisitions for files came down to a central handling area on each floor. Here, in ledgers a meter high and twenty centimeters thick, the main index was kept. Entered next to each file was a stack number. The stacks themselves were in fireproof storerooms leading off from the handling area. The secret, said Halder, was to know your way around the index. He paraded in front of the crimson leather spines, tapping each with his finger until he found the one he wanted, then lugged it over to the floor manager's desk.
March had once been below decks on the aircraft carrier
Grossadmiral Raeder
. The depths of the Reichsarchiv reminded him of that: low ceilings strung with lights, the sense of something vast pressing down from above. Next to the desk: a photocopier—a rare sight in Germany, where their distribution was strictly controlled to stop subversives' producing illegal literature. A dozen empty carts were drawn up by the lift shaft. He could see fifty meters in either direction. The place was deserted.
Halder gave a cry of triumph. "State Secretary: Office Files, 1939 to 1950! Oh, Christ: four hundred boxes. What years do you want to look at?"
"The Swiss bank account was opened in July '42, so let's say the first seven months of that year."
Halder turned the page, talking to himself. "Yes. I see what they've done. They've arranged the papers in four series: office correspondence, minutes and memoranda, statutes and decrees, ministry personnel. . ."
"What I'm looking for is something that connects Stuckart with Buhler and Luther."
"In that case, we'd better start with office correspondence. That should give us a feel for what was going on at the time." Halder was scribbling notes. "D/15/M/28-34. Okay. Here we go."
Storeroom D was twenty meters down on the left. Stack fifteen, section M was in the dead center of the room. Halder said, "Only six boxes, thank God. You take January to April, I'll do May to July."
The boxes, each the size of a large desk drawer, were made of cardboard. There was no table, so they sat on the floor. With his back pressed against the metal shelving, March opened the first box, pulled out a handful of papers and began to read.
You need a little luck in this life.
The first document was a letter dated January 2, from the under state secretary at the Air Ministry, regarding the distribution of gas masks to the
Reichsluftschutzbund
, the Air Raid Protection organization. The second, dated January 4, was from the Office of the Four-Year Plan and concerned the alleged unauthorized use of gasoline by senior government officials.
The third was from Reinhard Heydrich. March saw the signature first—an angular, spidery scrawl. Then his eyes traveled to the letterhead—the Reich Main Security Office, Berlin SW 11, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse 8—then to the date: January 6, 1942. And only then to the text:
This is to confirm that the interagency discussion followed by luncheon originally scheduled for December 9, 1941, has now been postponed to January 20, 1942, in the office of the International Criminal Police Commission, Berlin, Am grossen Wannsee, No. 56-58.
March leafed through the other letters in the box: carbon flimsies and creamy originals; imposing letterheads— Reichschancellery, Economics Ministry, Organisation-Todt invitations to luncheons and meetings; pleas, demands, circulars. But there was nothing else from Heydrich.
March passed the letter to Halder. "What do you make of this?"