Nothing. All the usual scraps that in his experience tramps will carry — the bits of string and paper, the buttons, the cigarette-ends -had been removed already. The Gestapo had searched Luther’s clothes with care. Naturally they had. He had been a fool to think they wouldn’t. Furious, he slashed at the material — right to left, left to right, right to left…
He stood back from the heap of rags panting like an assassin. Then he picked up a piece of rag and wiped his knife and hands.
“You know what I think?” said Charlie when he returned to the car empty-handed. “I think he never brought anything here from Zurich at all.”
She was still in the back seat of the Volkswagen. March turned to look at her. “Yes he did. Of course he did.” He tried to hide his impatience; it was not her fault. “But he was too scared to keep it with him. So he stored it, received a ticket for it — either at the airport or the station — and planned on collecting it later. I’m sure that’s it. Now Globus has it, or it’s lost for good.”
“No. Listen. I was thinking! Yesterday, when I was coming through the airport, I thanked God you stopped me trying to bring the painting back with us to Berlin. Remember the queues? They searched every bag. How could Luther have got anything past the Zollgrenzschutz?”
March considered this, massaging his temples. “A good question,” he said eventually. “Maybe,” he added a minute later, “the best question I ever heard.”
AT the Flughafen Hermann Goring the statue of Hanna Reitsch was steadily oxidising in the rain. She stared across the concourse outside the departure terminal with rust-pitted eyes.
“You’d better stay with the car,” said March. “Do you drive?”
She nodded. He dropped the keys in her lap. “If the Flughafen Polizei try to move you on, don’t argue with them. Drive off and come round again. Keep circling. Give me twenty minutes.”
Then what?”
“I don’t know.” His hand fluttered in the air. “Improvise.”
He strode into the airport terminal. The big digital clock above the passport control zone flicked over: 13:22. He glanced behind him. He could measure his freedom probably in minutes. Less than that, if Globus had issued a general alert, for nowhere in the Reich was more heavily patrolled than the airport.
He kept thinking of Krebs in his apartment, and Eisler: “The word is, you’ve been arrested.”
A man with a souvenir bag from the Soldiers” Hall looked familiar. A Gestapo watcher? March abruptly changed direction and headed into the toilets. He stood at the urinal, pissing air, his eyes fixed on the entrance. Nobody came in. When he emerged, the man had gone.
“Last call for Lufthansa flight two-zero-seven to Tiflis…”
He went to the central Lufthansa desk and showed his ID to one of the guards. “I need to speak to your head of security. Urgently.”
“He may not be here, Sturmbannfuhrer.”
“Look for him.”
The guard was gone a long time. 13:27 said the clock. 13:28. Perhaps he was calling the Gestapo. 13:29. March put his hand in his pocket and felt the cold metal of the Luger. Better to make a stand here than crawl around the stone floor in Prinz-Albrecht Strasse spitting teeth into your hand.
13:30.
The guard returned. “This way, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer. If you please.”
FRIEDMAN had joined the Berlin Kripo at the same time as March. He had left it five years later, one step ahead of a corruption investigation. Now he wore hand-made English suits, smoked duty-free Swiss cigars, and made five times his official salary by methods long suspected but never proved. He was a merchant prince, the airport his corrupt little kingdom.
When he realised March had come not to investigate him but to beg a favour he was almost ecstatic. His excellent mood persisted as he led March along a passage away from the terminal building. “And how is Jaeger? Spreading chaos I suppose? And Fiebes? Still jerking-off over pictures of Aryan maidens and Ukrainian window-cleaners? Oh, how
I miss you all, I don’t think! Here we are.” Friedman transferred his cigar from his hand to his mouth and tugged at a large door. “Behold the cave of Aladdin!”
The metal slid open with a crash to reveal a small hangar stuffed with lost and abandoned property. The things people leave behind,” said Friedman. “You would not believe it. We even had a leopard once.”
“A leopard? A cat?”
“It died. Some idle bastard forgot to feed it. It made a good coat.” He laughed and snapped his fingers and from the shadows an elderly, stoop-shouldered man appeared — a Slav, with wide-set, fearful eyes.
“Stand up straight, man. Show respect.” Friedman gave him a shove that sent him staggering backwards. The Sturmbannfuhrer here is a good friend of mine. He’s looking for something. Tell him, March.”
“A case, perhaps a bag,” said March. “The last flight from Zurich on Monday night, the thirteenth. Either left on the aircraft, or in the baggage reclaim area.”
