Halder gave him a pitying look. “Were you really so completely cooped-up in that fucking tin can we had to live in? Did the outside world never penetrate? On December the seventh, 1941, you blockhead, the forces of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, attacked the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. On December the eleventh, Germany declared war on the United States. Good reasons to postpone a conference, wouldn’t you say?” Halder was grinning, but slowly the grin faded, to be replaced by a more thoughtful expression. “I wonder…”
“What?”
He tapped the paper. There must have been an original invitation, before this one.”
“So what?”
“It depends. Sometimes our friends from the Gestapo are not quite as efficient at weeding out embarrassing details as they like to think, especially if they’re in a hurry…”
March was already standing in front of the stack of boxes, glancing up and down, his depression lifted. “Which one? Where do we start?7
Tor a conference at that level, Heydrich would have had to have given the participants at least two weeks” notice.” Halder looked at his notes. That would mean Stuckart’s office correspondence file for November 1941. Let me see. That should be box twenty-six, I think.”
He joined March in front of the shelves and counted off the boxes until he found the one he wanted. He pulled it down, cradled it. “Don’t snatch, Zavi. All in good time. History teaches us patience.”
He knelt, placed the box in front of him, opened it, pulled out an armful of papers. He glanced at each in turn, placing them in a pile to his left. “Invitation to a reception given by the Italian ambassador: boring. Conference organised by Walther Darre at the Agriculture Ministry: very boring…”
He went on like that for perhaps two minutes, with March standing, watching, nervously grinding his fist into his palm. Then suddenly Halder froze. “Oh shit.” He read it through again and looked up, “Invitation from Heydrich. Not boring at all, I’m afraid. Not boring at all.”
The heavens were in chaos. Nebulae exploded. Comets and meteors rushed across the sky, dis-appeared for an instant, then detonated against green oceans of cloud.
Above the Tiergarten, the firework display was nearing its climax. Parachute flares lit up Berlin like an air raid.
As March waited in his car to turn left on to Unter den Linden, a gang of SA men lurched out in front of him. Two of them, their arms draped around one another, performed a drunken can-can in the beam of the headlights. The others banged on the Volkswagen’s body work, or pressed their faces against the windows — eyes bulging, tongues lolling; grotesque apes. March put the engine into first gear and skidded away. There was a thud as one of the dancers was sent spinning.
He drove back to Werderscher Markt. All police leave had been cancelled. Every window was ablaze with electric light. In the foyer, someone hailed him, but March ignored them. He clattered down the stairs to the basement.
Bank vaults and basements and underground store rooms … I am turning into a troglodyte, thought March; a cave-dweller, a recluse; a robber of paper tombs.
The Gorgon of the Registry was still sitting in her lair. Did she never sleep? He showed her his ID. There were a couple of other detectives at the central desk, leafing in a languid manner through the ubiquitous manila files. March took a seat in the farthest corner of the room. He switched on an angle-poise lamp, bent its shade low over the table. From inside his tunic he drew the three sheets of paper he had taken from the Reichsarchiv.
They were poor-quality photostats. The machine had been set too faint, the originals had been thrust into it, hastily and skewed. He did not blame Rudi for that. Rudi had not wanted to make the copies at all. Rudi had been terrified. All his schoolboy bravado had vanished when he read Heydrich’s invitation. March had been obliged virtually to drag him to the photocopier. The moment the historian had finished, he had darted back into the storeroom, shovelled the papers back into the boxes, put the boxes back on to the shelves. At his insistence, they had left the archive building by a rear entrance.
“I think, Zavi, we should not see one another for a long time now.”
“Of course.”
“You know how it is…”
Halder had stood, miserable and helpless, while above their heads the fireworks had whooshed and banged. March had embraced him -’Don’t feel bad; I know: your family come first” — and quickly walked away.
Document One. Heydrich’s original invitation, dated 19 November 1941:
On 31.7.1941, the Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich charged me, in co-operation with all the other relevant central agencies, to make all the necessary preparations with regard to organisational, technical and material measures for a complete solution of the Jewish question in Europe and to present him shortly with a complete draft proposal on this matter. I enclose a photocopy of this commission.
