Luther, Luther. March lit a cigarette. Hearing seventy with a nervous heart and rheumy eyes. Too paranoid to trust even your wife. They came for you six months earlier, and by luck you escaped. Why did you make a run for it from Berlin airport? Did you come through customs and decide to call your confederates? In Stuckart’s apartment, the telephone would have rung unanswered, next to the silent, blood-washed bedroom. In Schwanenwerder, if Eisler’s estimate of the time of death was accurate, Buhler must already have been surprised by his killers. Had they let the telephone ring? Or had one of them answered it, while the others held Buhler down?
Luther, Luther: something happened to make you run for your life — out into the freezing rain of that Monday night.
He got out at Gotenland station. It was yet another piece of architectural fantasy come true — mosaic floors, polished stone, stained glass windows thirty metres high. The regime closed churches and compensated by building railway termini to look like cathedrals.
Gazing down from the overhead walkway on to the thousands of hurrying passengers, March almost gave in to despair. Myriad lives — each with its own secrets and plans and dreams, its individual luggage of guilt — criss-crossed beneath him, not one touching the other, separate and distinct. To think that he, alone, could possibly track down one old man among so many — for the first time, the idea struck him as fantastic, absurd.
But Globus could do it. Already, March could see, the police patrols had been increased in strength. That must have happened in the last half-hour. The Orpo men were scrutinising every male over sixty. A derelict without papers was being led away, complaining.
Globus! March turned away from the handrail and stepped on to the descending escalator, in search of the one person in Berlin who might be able to save his life.
To travel on the central U-bahn line is, in the words of the Reich Ministry for Propaganda and Cultural Enlightenment, to take a trip through German history. Berlin-Gotenland, Billow Strasse, Nollendorf Platz, Wittenberg Platz, Nurnberger Platz, Hohenzollern Platz — the stations succeed one another like pearls on a string.
The carriages which work this line are pre-war. Red cars for smokers, yellow for non-smokers. Hard wooden seats have been rubbed shiny by three decades of Berlin backsides. Most passengers stand, holding on to the worn leather hand-grips, swaying with the rhythm of the train. Signs urge them to turn informer. The fare-dodger’s profit is the Berliner’s loss! Notify the authorities of all wrongdoing!”
“Has he given up his seat to a woman or veteran? Penalty for failure: 25 Reichsmarks!”
March had bought a copy of the Berliner Tageblatt from a platform kiosk and was leaning next to the doors, skimming through it. Kennedy and the Fuhrer, the Fuhrer and Kennedy — that was all there was to read. The regime was clearly investing heavily in the success of the talks. That could only mean that things in the East were even worse than everyone thought. “A permanent state of war on the Eastern front will help to form a sound race of men,” the Fuhrer had once said, “and will prevent us relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself.” But people had grown soft. What else was the point of victory? They had Poles to dig their gardens and Ukrainians to sweep their streets, French chefs to cook their food and English maids to serve it. Having tasted the comforts of peace they had lost their appetite for war.
Way down on an inside page, in type so small it was barely readable, was Buhler’s obituary. He was reported as having died in a “bathing accident”.
March stuffed the paper into his pocket and got out at Billow Strasse. From the open platform he could see across to Charlotte Maguire’s apartment. A shape moved against the curtain. She was at home. Or, rather, someone was at home.
The concierge was not in her chair, and when he knocked on the apartment door there was no reply. He knocked again, more loudly.
Nothing.
He walked away from the door and clattered down the first flight of steps. Then he stopped, counted to ten, and crept back up again, sideways, with his back pressed to the wall — one step, pause; another step, pause — wincing whenever he made a noise, until he stood once more outside the door. He drew his pistol.
Minutes passed. Dogs barked, cars and trains and planes went by, babies cried, birds sang: the cacophony of silence. And at one point, inside the apartment, loud above it all, a floorboard creaked.
The door opened a fraction.
