The bathroom at least had been left intact. He showered and shaved, inspecting himself in the mirror for damage. It felt worse than it looked: a large bruise developing nicely on his chest, more on the back of his legs and at the base of his spine; a livid mark at his throat. Nothing serious. What was it his father used to say — his paternal balm for all the batterings of childhood? “You’ll live, boy.” That was it. “You’ll live!”
Naked, he went back into the sitting room and searched through the wreckage, pulling out clean clothes, a pair of shoes, a suitcase, a leather hold-all. He feared they might have taken his passport but it was there, at the bottom of the mound. It had been issued in 1961, when March had gone to Italy to bring back a gangster being held in Milan. His younger self stared up at him, fatter-cheeked, half-smiling. My God, he thought, I have aged ten years in three.
He brushed down his uniform and put it back on, together with a clean shirt, and packed his suitcase. As he bent to snap it shut his eye was caught by something in the empty grate. The photograph of the Weiss family was lying face down. He hesitated, picked it up, folded it into a small square — exactly as he had found it five years earlier — and slipped it into his wallet. If he was stopped and searched, he would say they were his family.
Then he took a last look round and left, closing the broken door behind him as best he could.
AT the main branch of the Deutschebank, in Wittenberg Platz, he asked how much he held in his account.
“Four thousand two hundred and seventy-seven Reichsmarks and thirty-eight pfennigs.”
“I’ll take it.”
“All of it, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer?” The teller blinked at him through wire-framed spectacles. “You are closing the account?”
“All of it.”
March watched him count out forty-two one-hundred Mark notes, then stuffed them into his wallet, next to the photograph. Not much in the way of life savings.
This is what no promotions and seven years of alimony do to you.
The teller was staring at him. “Did the Herr Sturmbannfuhrer say something?”
He had given voice to his thoughts. He must be going mad. “No. Sorry. Thank you.”
March picked up his suitcase, went out into the square and caught a taxi to Werderscher Markt.
ALONE in his office, he did two things. He rang the headquarters of Lufthansa and asked the head of security- a former Kripo investigator he knew, called Friedman — to check if the airline had carried a passenger by the name of Martin Luther on any of its Berlin-Zurich flights on Sunday or Monday.
“Martin Luther, right?” Friedman was greatly amused. “Anyone else you want, March? Emperor Charlemagne? Herr von Goethe?”
“It’s important.”
“It’s always important. Sure. I know.” Friedman promised to find out the information at once. “Listen. When you get tired of chasing ambulances, there’s always a job for you here if you want it.”
“Thanks. I may well.”
After he hung up, March took the dead plant down from the filing cabinet. He lifted the atrophied roots out of the pot, put in the brass key, replaced the plant, and returned the pot to its old position.
Five minutes later, Friedman called him back.
ARTUR NEBE’S suite of offices was on the fourth floor- all cream carpets and cream paintwork, recessed lighting and black leather, sofas. On the walls were prints of Thorak’s sculptures. Herculean figures with gargantuan torsos rolled boulders up steep hills, in celebration of the building of the Autobahnen; Valkyries fought the triple demons Ignorance, Bolshevism and Slav. The immensity of Thorak’s statuary was a whispered joke. “Thorax” they called him: “The Herr Professor is not receiving visitors today — he is working in the left ear of the horse.”
Nebe’s adjutant, Otto Beck, a smooth-faced graduate of Heidelberg and Oxford, looked up as March came into the outer office.
March said: “I need to speak with the Oberstgruppenfuhrer.”
“He is seeing nobody.”
“He will see me.”
“He will not.”
March leaned very close to Beck’s face, his fists on his desk. “Ask.”
Behind him, he heard Nebe’s secretary say: “Shall I call security?”
“One moment, Ingrid.” It was fashionable among the graduates of the SS academy in Oxford to affect an English coolness. Beck flicked an invisible speck from the sleeve of his tunic. “And what name is it?”
“March.”
“Ah. The famous March.” Beck picked up the telephone. “Sturmbannfuhrer March is demanding to see you, Herr Oberstgruppenfuhrer.” He looked at March and nodded. “Very well.”
Beck pressed a button concealed beneath the desk, releasing the electronic bolts. “Five minutes, March. He has an appointment with the Reichsfuhrer.”
The door to the inner office was solid oak, six centimetres thick. Inside, the blinds were tightly drawn against the day. Nebe was curled over his desk in a puddle of yellow light, studying a typed list through a magnifying glass. He turned one vast and blurry fish eye upon his visitor.
“What have we here…?” He lowered the glass. “Sturmbannfuhrer March. Empty-handed, I assume?”
“Unfortunately.”
