Fatherland полностью

She went on: “Well he isn’t. He’d like to be. Sorry. That sounds like boasting.”

“It doesn’t at all. I’m sure many would like to be.”

“I hadn’t met anyone…”

Hadn’t…

She stopped. “I’m twenty-five. I go where I like. I do what I like. I choose whom I like.” She turned to him, touched him lightly on the cheek with a warm hand. “God, I hate getting this sort of thing out of the way, don’t you?”

She drew his head to hers.

How odd it is, thought March afterwards, to live your life in ignorance of the past, of your world, yourself. Yet how easy to do it! You went along from day to day, down paths other people had prepared for you, never raising your head — enfolded in their logic, from swaddling clothes to shroud. It was a kind of fear.

Well, goodbye to that. And good to leave it behind -whatever happened now.

His feet danced on the cobblestones. He slipped his arm around her. He had so many questions.

“Wait, wait” she was laughing, holding on to him. “Enough. Stop. I’m starting to worry you only want me for my mind.”

IN his hotel room, she unknotted his tie and reined him to her once more, her mouth soft on his. Still kissing him, she smoothed the jacket from his shoulders, unbuttoned his shirt, parted it. Her hands skimmed over his chest, around his back, across his stomach.

She knelt and tugged at his belt.

He closed his eyes and coiled his fingers in her hair.

After a few moments he pulled away gently, and knelt to face her, lifted her dress. Freed from it, she threw back her head and shook her hair. He wanted to know her completely. He kissed her throat, her breasts, her stomach; inhaled her scent, felt the firm flesh stretching smooth and taut beneath his hands, her soft skin on his tongue.

Later she guided him on to the bed and settled herself above him. The only light was cast by the lake. Rippling shadows all around them. When he opened his mouth to say something, she put a finger to his lips.

The Berlin Borse had opened for trading thirty minutes earlier. In the window display of the Union des Banques Suisses on Zurich’s Bahnhof Strasse, the numbers clicked like knitting needles. Bayer, Siemens, Thyssen, Daimler -up, up, up, up. The only stock falling on news of detente was Krupp.

A smart and well-dressed crowd had gathered anxiously, as they did every morning, to watch this monitor of the Reich’s economic health. Prices on the Borse had been falling for six months and a mood close to panic had seized investors. But this week, thanks to old Joe Kennedy — he always knew a thing or two about markets, old Joe: made half a billion dollars on Wall Street in his day — yes, thanks to Joe, the slide had stopped. Berlin was happy. Everyone was happy. Nobody paid attention to the couple walking up the street from the lake, not holding hands but close enough for their bodies to touch occasionally, followed by a weary-looking pair of gentlemen in fawn raincoats.

March had been given a short briefing on the customs and practices of Swiss banking the afternoon he left Berlin.

“Bahnhof Strasse is the financial centre. It looks like the main shopping street, which it is. But it’s the courtyards behind the shops and the offices above them that matter. That’s where you’ll find the banks. But you’ll have to keep your eyes open. The Swiss say: the older the money, the harder to see it. In Zurich, the money’s so old, it’s invisible.”

Beneath the paving stones and tramlines of Bahnhof Strasse -ran the catacomb of vaults in which three generations of Europe’s rich had buried their wealth. March looked at the shoppers and tourists pouring along the street and wondered upon what ancient dreams and secrets, upon what bones they were treading.

These banks were small, family-run concerns: a dozen or two employees, a suite of offices, a small brass plate. Zaugg Cie was typical. The entrance was in a side-street, behind a jewellers, scanned by a remote camera identical to the one outside Zaugg’s villa. As March rang the bell beside the discreet door he felt Charlie brush his hand.

A woman’s voice over the intercom demanded his name and business. He looked up at the camera.

“My name is March. This is Fraulein Maguire. We wish to see Herr Zaugg.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“The Herr Direktor sees no one without an appointment.”

Tell him we have a letter of authorisation for account number 2402.”

“One moment, please.”

The policemen were lounging at the entrance to the side-street. March glanced at Charlie. It seemed to him her eyes were brighter, her skin more lustrous. He supposed he flattered himself. Everything looked heightened today- the trees greener, the blossom whiter, the sky bluer, as if washed with gloss.