Krebs started rubbing his face vigorously, as if drying himself. He stopped, his hands pressed to his cheeks, and stared at March through his spread fingers. “What is happening here?”
“You can read.”
“I can read, but I don’t understand.” Krebs snatched up the pages and leafed through them. “Here, for example — what is ‘Zyklon B’?”
“Crystallised hydrogen cyanide. Before that, they used carbon monoxide. Before that, bullets.”
“And here — ‘Auschwitz/Birkenau’. ‘Kulmhof’. ‘Belzec’. ‘Treblinka’. ‘Majdanek’. ‘Sobibor’.”
“The killing grounds.”
“These figures: eight thousand a day…”
“That’s the total they could destroy at Auschwitz/ Birkenau using the four gas chambers and crematoria.”
“And this ‘eleven million’?”
“Eleven million is the total number of European Jews they were after. Maybe they succeeded. Who knows? I don’t see many around, do you?”
“Here: the name ‘Globocnik’…”
“Globus was SS and Police Leader in Lublin. He built the killing centres.”
“I didn’t know.” Krebs dropped the notes on the table as if they were contagious. “I didn’t know any of this.”
“Of course you knew! You knew every time someone made a joke about ‘going East’, every time you heard a mother tell her child to behave or they’d go up the chimney. We knew when we moved into their houses, when we took over their property, their jobs. We knew but we didn’t have the facts.” He pointed to the notes with his left hand. “Those put flesh on the bones. Put bones where there was just clear air.”
“I meant: I didn’t know that Buhler, Stuckart and Luther were involved in this. I didn’t know about Globus…”
“Sure. You just thought you were investigating an art robbery.”
“It’s true! It’s true,” repeated Krebs. “Wednesday morning — can you remember back that far? — I was investigating corruption at the Deutsche Arbeitsfront: the sale of labour permits. Then, out of the blue, I am summoned to see the Reichfuhrer, one-to-one. He tells me retired civil servants have been discovered in a colossal art fraud. The potential embarrassment for the Party is huge. Obergruppenfuhrer Globocnik is in charge. I am to go at once to Schwanen-werder and take my orders from him.”
“Why you?”
“Why not? The Reichfuhrer knows of my interest in art. We have spoken of these matters. My job was simply to catalogue the treasures.”
“But you must have realised that Globus killed Buhler and Stuckart?”
“Of course. I’m not an idiot. I know Globus’s reputation as well as you. But Globus was acting on Heydrich’s orders, and if Heydrich had decided to let him loose, to spare the Party a public scandal — who was I to object?”
“Who were you to object?” repeated March. “Let’s be clear, March. Are you saying their deaths had nothing to do with the fraud?”
“Nothing. The fraud was a coincidence that became a useful cover story, that’s all.”
“But it made sense. It explained why Globus was acting as state executioner, and why he was desperate to head off an investigation by the Kripo. On Wednesday night I was still cataloguing the pictures on Schwanenwerder when he called in a rage — about you. Said you’d been officially taken off the case, but you’d broken in to Stuckart’s apartment. I was to go and bring you in, which I did. And I tell you: if Globus had had his way, that would have been the end of you right there, but Nebe wouldn’t have it. Then, on Friday night, we found what we thought was Luther’s body in the railway yard, and that seemed to be the end of it.”
“When did you discover the corpse wasn’t Luther’s?”
“Around six on Saturday morning. Globus telephoned me at home. He said he had information Luther was still alive and was planning to meet the American journalist at nine.”
“He knew this,” asserted March, “because of a tip-off from the American Embassy.”
Krebs snorted. “What sort of crap is that? He knew because of a wire-tap.”
“That cannot be…”
“Why can’t it be? See for yourself.” Krebs opened one of his folders and extracted a single sheet of flimsy brown paper. “It was rushed over from the wire-tappers in Charlottenburg in the middle of the night.”
March read:
Forschungsamt Geheime Reichssache
G745,275
23:51
MALE: You say: What do I want? What do you think I want? Asylum in your country.
FEMALE: Tell me where you are.
MALE: I can pay.
FEMALE: [Interrupts]
MALE: I have information. Certain facts.
FEMALE: Tell me where you are. I’ll come and fetch you. We’ll go to the Embassy.
MALE: Too soon. Not yet.
FEMALE: When?
MALE: Tomorrow morning. Listen to me. Nine o’clock. The Great Hall. Central Steps. Have you got that?
