March felt faint again. He twisted his body and wound down the window with his left hand. Above the sound of the wind and the tyres: a noise. What was it? He put his head out and looked up. He could not see it, but he could hear it overhead. The clatter of a helicopter. He closed the window.
He remembered the telephone transcript. “What do I want? What do you think 1 want? Asylum in your country…”
The car’s dials and gauges shone a soft green in the darkness. The upholstery smelled of fresh leather.
He said: “Where did you get the car, Max?” It was a Mercedes he saw: the latest model.
“From the pool at Werderscher Markt. A beauty, yes? She’s got a full tank. We can go anywhere you want. Anywhere at all.”
March began to laugh then. Not very hard and not for very long because his aching ribs soon forced him to stop. “Oh Max, Max,” he said, “Nebe and Krebs are such good liars, and you’re so lousy, I almost feel sorry for them, having to have you on their team.”
Jaeger stared ahead. “They’ve pumped you full of drugs, Zavi. They’ve hurt you. You’re confused, believe me.”
“If they’d picked any other driver but you, I might almost have fallen for it. But you …Tell me, Max: why is the road behind so empty? I suppose, if you’re following a shiny new car that’s packed with electronics and transmitting a signal, you needn’t come closer than a kilometre. Especially if you can use a helicopter.”
“I risk my life,” whined Jaeger, “and this is my reward.”
March had Krebs’s Luger in his hand — his left hand, it was awkward to hold. Nevertheless he managed a convincing enough show of digging the barrel into the thick folds of Jaeger’s neck. “Krebs gave me his gun. To add that essential touch of authenticity. Not loaded, I’m sure. But do you want to take that risk? I think not. Keep your left hand on the wheel, Max, and your eyes on the road, and with your right hand give me your Luger. Very slowly.”
“You’ve gone mad.”
March increased the pressure. The barrel slid up the sweaty skin and came to rest just behind Jaeger’s ear.
“All right, all right
Jaeger gave him the gun.
“Excellent. Now, I’m going to sit with this pointed at your fat belly, and if you try anything, Max — anything — I’ll put a bullet in it. And if you have any doubts about that, just sit there and work it out. And you’ll conclude I’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Zavi…”
“Shut up. Just keep driving on this road until we reach the outer Autobahn.”
He hoped Max could not see his hand trembling. He rested the gun in his lap. It was good, he reassured himself. Really good. It proved they had not picked her up. Nor had they discovered where she was. Because if they had managed either, they would never have resorted to this.
TWENTY-FIVE kilometres south of the city, the lights of the Autobahn looped across the darkness like a necklace.
Great slabs of yellow thrust out of the ground bearing in black the names of the Imperial cities: clockwise from Stettin, through Danzig, Konigsberg, Minsk, Posen, Krakau, Kiev, Rostov, Odessa, Vienna; then up through Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Hanover to Hamburg.
At March’s direction, they turned anti-clockwise. Twenty kilometres later, at the Friedersdorf intersection, they forked right.
Another sign: Liegnitz, Breslau, Kattowitz…
The stars arched. Little flecks of luminous cloud shone above the trees.
THE Mercedes flew down the slip road and joined the moonlit Autobahn. The road gleamed like a wide river. Behind them, sweeping round to follow, he pictured a dragon’s tail of lights and guns.
He was the head. He was pulling them after him — away from her, along the empty highway towards the east.
Pain and exhaustion stalked him. To keep awake he talked.
“I suppose,” he said, “we have Krause to thank for this.”
Neither of them had spoken for almost an hour. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the drumming of the wheels on the concrete road. Jaeger jumped at March’s voice. “Krause?”
“Krause mixed up the rotas, ordered me to Schwanen-werder instead of you.”
“Krause!” Jaeger scowled. His face was a stage demon’s, painted green by the glow of the instrument panel. All the troubles in his life could be traced back to Krause!
“The Gestapo fixed it so you’d be on duty on Monday night, didn’t they? What did they tell you? ‘There’ll be a body in the Havel, Sturmbannfuhrer. No hurry about identifying it. Lose the file for a few days…’ ”
Jaeger muttered: “Something like that.”
“And then you overslept, and by the time you got to the Markt on Tuesday I’d taken over the case. Poor Max. Never could get up in the mornings. The Gestapo must have loved you. Whom were you dealing with?”
“Globocnik.”
“Globus himself!” March whistled. “I bet you thought it was Christmas! What did he promise you, Max? Promotion? Transfer to the Sipo?”
“Fuck you, March.”
