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TWO.....................................................................76
FATHERLAND
by Robert Harris
ISBN 0-09-926381-5
scanned by torinoblue
Table Of Contents
FATHERLAND .............................................................. 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank the Librarian and staff of the Wiener Library in
London for their help over several years.
I also wish to thank David Rosenthal and -especially -
Robyn Sisman, without whom this book would never
have been started, let alone finished.
neglected, diseased, illiterate cretins, in order that they
might have leisure to buzz along infinite Autobahnen,
admire the Strength-Through-Joy Hostel, the Party
headquarters, the Military Museum and the Planetarium
which their Führer would have built in Linz (his new
Hitleropolis), trot round local picture-galleries, and listen
The hundred million self-confident German masters
were to be brutally installed in Europe, and secured in
power by a monopoly of technical civilisation and the
slave-labour of a dwindling native population of
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Page 1 of 125
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over their cream buns to endless recordings of The
Merry Widow. This was to be the German Millennium,
from which even the imagination was to have no means
of escape.
the crackle of static, punctuated by jabbering bursts of
speech. The revolving light on its roof lit up the forest
beside the road: blue-black, blue-black, blue-black.
March looked around for the Orpo patrolmen, and saw
them sheltering by the lake under a dripping birch tree.
Something gleamed pale in the mud at their feet. On a
nearby log sat a young man in a black tracksuit, SS
insignia on his breast pocket. He was hunched forward,
elbows resting on his knees, hands pressed against the
sides of his head — the image of misery.
HUGH TREVOR-ROPER
The Mind of Adolf Hitler
People sometimes say to me: 'Be careful! You will have
twenty years of guerilla warfare on your hands!' I am
delighted at the prospect ... Germany will remain in a
state of perpetual alertness.
March took a last draw on his cigarette and flicked it
away. It fizzed and died on the wet road.
ADOLF HITLER
29 August 1942
As he approached, one of the policemen raised his
arm.
'Heil Hitler!'
PART ONE
March ignored him and slithered down the muddy bank
to inspect the corpse.
TUESDAY 14 APRIL 1964
It was an old man's body - cold, fat, hairless and
shockingly white. From a distance, it could have been
an alabaster statue dumped in the mud. Smeared with
dirt, the corpse sprawled on its back half out of the
water, arms flung wide, head tilted back. One eye was
screwed shut, the other squinted balefully at the filthy
sky.
I swear to Thee, Adolf Hitler,
As Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich,
Loyalty and Bravery.
I vow to Thee and to the superiors
Whom Thou shalt appoint
Obedience unto Death,
So help me God.
SS OATH
Tour name, Unterwachtmeister?' March had a soft
voice. Without taking his eyes off the body, he
addressed the Orpo man who had saluted.
'Ratka, Herr Sturmbannführer.'
ONE
Sturmbannführer was an SS title, equivalent in
Wehrmacht rank to major, and Ratka - dog-tired and
skin-soaked though he was -seemed eager to show
respect. March knew his type without even looking
round: three applications to transfer to the Kripo, all
turned down; a dutiful wife who had produced a football
team of children for the Führer; an income of 200
Reichsmarks a month. A life lived in hope.
Thick cloud had pressed down on Berlin all night, and
now it was lingering into what passed for the morning.
On the city's western outskirts, plumes of rain drifted
across the surface of Lake Havel, like smoke.
Sky and water merged into a sheet of grey, broken only
by the dark line of the opposite bank. Nothing stirred
there. No lights showed.
'Well, Ratka,'said March, in that soft voice again. 'What
time was he discovered?'
Xavier March, homicide investigator with the Berlin
Kriminalpolizei — the Kripo — climbed out of his
Volkswagen and tilted his face to the rain. He was a
connoisseur of this particular rain. He knew the taste of
it, the smell of it. It was Baltic rain, from the north, cold
and sea-scented, tangy with salt. For an instant he was
back twenty years, in the conning tower of a U-boat,
slipping out of Wilhelmshaven, lights doused, into the
darkness.
'Just over an hour ago, sir. We were at the end of our
shift, patrolling in Nikolassee. We took the call. Priority
One. We were here in five minutes.'
'Who found him?'
Ratka jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
The young man in the tracksuit rose to his feet. He
could not have been more than eighteen. His hair was
cropped so close the pink scalp showed through the
dusting of light brown hair. March noticed how he
avoided looking at the body.
He looked at his watch. It was just after seven in the
morning.
Drawn up on the roadside before him were three other
cars. The occupants of two were asleep in the drivers'
seats. The third was a patrol car of the Ordnungspolizei
- the Orpo, as every German called them. It was empty.
Through its open window, sharp in the damp air, came
'Your name?'
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Page 2 of 125
'SS-Schütze Hermann Jost, sir.' He spoke with a Saxon
accent - nervous, uncertain, anxious to please. 'From
the Sepp Dietrich training academy at Schlachtensee.'
March knew it: a monstrosity of concrete and asphalt
built in the 1950s, just south of the Havel. 'I run here
most mornings. It was still dark. At first, I thought it was
a swan,' he added, helplessly.
screwed a flash bulb on to his camera and carefully
planted his right foot on a lump of clay. He swore as the
lake lapped over his shoe.
'Shit!'
The flash popped, freezing the scene for an instant: the
white faces, the silver threads of rain, the darkness of
the woods. A swan came scudding out of some nearby
reeds to see what was happening, and began circling a
few metres away.
Ratka snorted, contempt on his face. An SS cadet
scared of one dead old man! No wonder the war in the
Urals was dragging on forever.
'Did you see anyone else, Jost?' March spoke in a
kindly tone, like an uncle.
'Protecting her nest,' said the young SS man.
'I want another here.' March pointed. 'And one here.'
'Nobody, sir. There's a telephone box in the picnic area,
half a kilometre back. I called, then came here and
waited until the police arrived. There wasn't a soul on
the road.'
Spiedel cursed again and pulled his dripping foot out of
the mud. The camera flashed twice more.
March bent down and grasped the body under the
armpits. The flesh was hard, like cold rubber, and
slippery.
March looked again at the body. It was very fat. Maybe
110 kilos.
'Let's get him out of the water.' He turned towards the
road. Time to raise our sleeping beauties.' Ratka,
shifting from foot to foot in the downpour, grinned.
'Help me.'
The Orpo men each took an arm and together, grunting
with the effort, they heaved, sliding the corpse out of
the water, over the muddy bank and on to the sodden
grass. As March straightened, he caught the look on
Jost's face.
It was raining harder now, and the Kladow side of the
lake had virtually disappeared. Water pattered on the
leaves of the trees and drummed on the car roofs.
There was a heavy rain-smell of corruption: rich earth
and rotting vegetation. March's hair was plastered to
his scalp, water trickled down the back of his neck. He
did not notice. For March, every case, however routine,
held - at the start, at least - the promise of adventure.
The old man had been wearing a pair of blue swimming
trunks which had worked their way down to his knees.
In the freezing water, the genitals had shriveled to a
tiny clutch of white eggs in a nest of black pubic hair.
He was forty-two years old - slim, with grey hair and
cool grey eyes that matched the sky. During the war,
the Propaganda Ministry had invented a nickname for
the men of the U-boats - the 'grey wolves' - and it would
have been a good name for March, in one sense, for he
was a determined detective. But he was not by nature a
wolf, did not run with the pack, was more reliant on
brain than muscle, so his colleagues called him 'the fox'
instead.
The left foot was missing.
It had to be, thought March. This was a day when
nothing would be simple. An adventure, indeed.
'Herr Doctor. Your opinion, please.'
With a sigh of irritation, Eisler daintily stepped forward,
removing the glove from one hand. The corpse's leg
ended at the bottom of the calf. Still holding the
umbrella, Eisler bent stiffly and ran his fingers around
the stump.
U-boat weather!
He flung open the door of the white Skoda, and was hit
by a gust of hot, stale air from the car heater.
'A propeller?' asked March. He had seen bodies
dragged out of busy waterways - from the Tegler See
and the Spree in Berlin, from the Alster in Hamburg -
which looked as if butchers had been at them.
'Morning, Spiedel!' He shook the police photographer's
bony shoulder. Time to get wet.' Spiedel jerked awake.
He gave March a glare.
'No.' Eisler withdrew his hand. 'An old amputation.
Rather well done in fact.' He pressed hard on the chest
with his fist. Muddy water gushed from the mouth and
bubbled out of the nostrils. 'Rigor mortis fairly
advanced. Dead twelve hours. Maybe less.' He pulled
his glove back on.
The driver's window of the other Skoda was already
being wound down as March approached it. 'All right,
March. All right.' It was SS-Surgeon August Eisler, a
Kripo pathologist, his voice a squeak of affronted
dignity. 'Save your barrack-room humour for those who
appreciate it.'
A diesel engine rattled somewhere through the trees
behind them.
THEY gathered at the water's edge, all except Doctor
Eisler, who stood apart, sheltering under an ancient
black umbrella he did not offer to share. Spiedel
'The ambulance,' said Ratka. They take their time.'
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Page 3 of 125
You can go back to sleep. Or...' He had sniggered: 'Or
whatever else it was you were doing.'
March gestured to Spiedel. Take another picture.'
Looking down at the corpse, March lit a cigarette. Then
he squatted on his haunches and stared into the single
open eye. He stayed that way a long while. The camera
flashed again. The swan reared up, flapped her wings,
and turned towards the centre of the lake in search of
food.
A gust of wind had slashed rain against the window,
rattling the pane.
There was a standard procedure when a body was
discovered: a pathologist, a police photographer and an
investigator had to attend the scene at once. The
investigators worked off a rota kept at Kripo
headquarters in Werderscher Markt.
TWO
'Who is on today, as a matter of interest?'
Kripo headquarters lie on the other side of Berlin, a
twenty-five-minute drive from the Havel. March needed
a statement from Jost, and offered to drop him back at
his barracks to change, but Jost said no: he would
sooner make his statement quickly. So once the body
had been stowed aboard the ambulance and
dispatched to the morgue, they set off in March's little
four-door Volkswagen through the rush-hour traffic.
'Max Jaeger.'
Jaeger. March shared an office with Jaeger. He had
looked at his alarm clock and thought of the little house
in Pankow where Max lived with his wife and four
daughters: during the week, breakfast was just about
the only time he saw them. March, on the other hand,
was divorced and lived alone. He had set aside the
afternoon to spend with his son. But the long hours of
the morning stretched ahead, a blank. The way he felt it
would be good to have something routine to distract
him.
It was one of those dismal Berlin mornings, when the
famous Berliner-luft seems not so much bracing as
merely raw, the moisture stinging the face and hands
like a thousand frozen needles. On the Potsdamer
Chaussee, the spray from the wheels of the passing
cars forced the few pedestrians close to the sides of
the buildings. Watching them through the rain-flecked
window, March imagined a city of blind men, feeling
their way to work.
'Oh, leave him in peace,' he had said. 'I'm awake. I'll
take it."
That had been nearly two hours ago. March glanced at
his passenger in the rear-view mirror. Jost had been
silent ever since they left the Havel. He sat stiffly in the
back seat, staring at the grey buildings slipping by.
It was all so normal. Later, that was what would strike
him most. It was like having an accident: before it,
nothing out of the ordinary; then, the moment; and after
it, a world that was changed forever. For there was
nothing more routine than a body fished out of the
Havel. It happened twice a month - derelicts and failed
businessmen, reckless kids and lovelorn teenagers;
accidents and suicides and murders; the desperate, the
foolish, the sad.
At the Brandenburg Gate, a policeman on a motorcycle
flagged them to a halt.
In the middle of Pariser Platz, an SA band in sodden
brown uniforms wheeled and stamped in the puddles. i
Through the closed windows of the Volkswagen came
the muffled thump of drums and trumpets, pounding out
an old Party marching song. Several dozen people had
gathered outside the Academy of Arts to watch them,
shoulders hunched against the rain.
The telephone had rung in his apartment in Ansbacher
Strasse shortly after six-fifteen. The call had not woken
him. He had been lying in the semi-darkness with his
eyes open, listening to the rain. For the past few
months he had slept badly.
It was impossible to drive across Berlin at this time of
year without encountering a similar rehearsal. In six
days' time it would be Adolf Hitler's birthday - the
Führertag, a public holiday — and every band in the
Reich would be on parade. ; The windscreen wipers
beat time like a metronome. i
'March? We've got a report of a body in the Havel.' It
was Krause, the Kripo's Night Duty Officer. 'Go and
take a look, there's a good fellow."
March had said he was not interested.
'Here we see the final proof,' murmured March, "
watching the crowd, 'that in the face of martial music,
the German people are mad.'
'Your interest or lack of it is beside the point.'
'I am not interested," said March, 'because I am not on
duty. I was on duty last week, and the week before.'
And the week before that, he might have added. This is
my day off. Look again at your list.'
He turned to Jost, who gave a thin smile.
A clash of cymbals ended the tune. There was a patter
of ''' damp applause. The bandmaster turned and
bowed. Behind him, the SA men had already begun
half-walking, half-running, back to their bus. The
motorcycle cop waited until the Platz was clear, then
There had been a pause at the other end, then Krause
had come back on the line, grudgingly apologetic. 'You
are in luck, March. I was looking at last week's rota.
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Page 4 of 125
blew a short blast on his whistle. With a white-gloved
hand he waved them through the Gate.
And somewhere between the other two, and blurring
into both, came the Kripo - Department V of the Reich
Main Security Office. They investigated straightforward
crime, from burglary, through bank robbery, violent
assault, rape and mixed marriage, all the way up to
murder. Bodies in lakes - who they were and how they
got there -they were Kripo business.
The Unter den Linden gaped ahead of them. It had lost
its lime trees in '36 - cut down in an act of official
vandalism at the time of the Berlin Olympics. In their
place, on either side of the boulevard, the city's
Gauleiter, Josef Goebbels, had erected an avenue of
ten-metre-high stone columns, on each of which
perched a Party eagle, wings outstretched. Water
dripped from their beaks and wingtips. It was like
driving through a Red Indian burial ground.
The elevator stopped at the second floor. The corridor
was lit like an aquarium. Weak neon bounced off green
linoleum and green-washed walls. There was the same
smell of polish as in the lobby, but here it was spiced
with lavatory disinfectant and stale cigarette smoke.
Twenty doors of frosted glass lined the passage, some
half open. These were the investigators' offices. From
one came the sound of a solitary finger picking at a
typewriter; in another, a telephone rang unanswered.
March slowed for the lights at the Friedrich Strasse
üntersection and turned right. Two minutes later they
were parking in a space opposite the Kripo building in
Werderscher Markt.
It was an ugly place - a heavy, soot-streaked,
Wilhelmine monstrosity, six storeys high, on the south
side of the Markt. March had been coming here, nearly
seven days of the week, for ten years. As his ex-wife
had frequently complained, it had become more familiar
to him than home. Inside, beyond the SS sentries and
the creaky revolving door, a board announced the
current state of terrorist alert. There were four codes, in
ascending order of seriousness: green, blue, black and
red. Today, as always, the alert was red.
' "The nerve centre in the ceaseless war against the
criminal enemies of National Socialism",' said March,
quoting a recent headline in the Party newspaper, the
Volkischer Beobachter. He paused, and when Jost
continued to look blank he explained: 'A joke.'
'Sorry?'
'Forget it.'
A pair of guards in a glass booth scrutinised them as
they entered the foyer. March showed his identity card
and signed in Jost.
He pushed open a door and switched on the light. His
office was little more than a gloomy cupboard, a cell, its
solitary window opening on to a courtyard of blackened
brick. One wall was shelved: tattered, leather-bound
volumes of statutes and decrees, a handbook on
forensic science, a dictionary, an atlas, a Berlin street
guide, telephone directories, box files with labels
gummed to them - 'Braune', 'Hundt', 'Stark', 'Zadek' -
every one a bureaucratic tombstone, memorialising
some long-forgotten victim. Another side of the office
was taken up by four filing cabinets. On top of one was
a spider plant, placed there by a middle-aged secretary
two years ago at the height of an unspoken and
unrequited passion for Xavier March. It was now dead.
That was all the furniture, apart from two wooden desks
pushed together beneath the window. One was
March's; the other belonged to Max Jaeger.
The Markt was busier than usual. The workload always
tripled in the week before the Führertag. Secretaries
with boxes of files clattered on high heels across the
marble floor. The air smelled thickly of wet overcoats
and floor polish. Groups of officers in Orpo-green and
Kripo-black stood whispering of crime. Above their
heads, from opposite ends of the lobby, garlanded
busts of the Führer and the Head of the Reich Main
Security Office, Reinhard Heydrich, stared at one
another with blank eyes.
March pulled back the metal grille of the elevator and
ushered Jost inside.
The security forces which Heydrich controlled were
divided into three. At the bottom of the pecking order
were the Orpo, the ordinary cops. They picked up the
drunks, cruised the Autobahnen, issued the speeding
tickets, made the arrests, fought the fires, patrolled the
railways and the airports, answered the emergency
calls, fished the bodies out of the lakes.
March hung his overcoat on a peg by the door. He
preferred not to wear uniform when he could avoid it,
and this morning he had used the rainstorm on the
Havel as an excuse to dress in grey trousers and a
thick blue sweater. He pushed Jaeger's chair towards
Jost. 'Sit down. Coffee?'
'Please.'
At the top were the Sipo, the Security Police. The Sipo
embraced both the Gestapo and the Party's own
security force, the SD. Their headquarters were in a
grim complex around Prinz-Albrecht Strasse, a
kilometre south-west of the Markt. They dealt with
terrorism, subversion, counterespionage and 'crimes
against the state'. They had their ears in every factory
and school, hospital and mess; in every town, in every
village, in every street. A body in a lake would concern
the Sipo only if it belonged to a terrorist or a traitor.
There was a machine in the corridor. 'We've got fucking
photographs. Can you believe it? Look at that.' Along
the passage March could hear the voice of Fiebes of
VB3 - the sexual crimes division - boasting of his latest
success. 'Her maid took them. Look, you can see every
hair. The girl should turn professional.'
What would this be? March thumped the side of the
coffee machine and it ejected a plastic cup. Some
Robert Harris, Fatherland
Page 5 of 125

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