He was pulled out of the car and through a low entrance, down steep concrete steps. Then his heels were scraping along the floor of an arched passage. A door, a cell, and silence.
THEY left him alone, to allow his imagination to go to work — standard procedure. Very well. He crawled into a corner and rested his head against the damp brick. Every minute which passed was another minute’s travelling time for her. He thought of Pili, of all the lies, and clenched his fists.
The cell was lit by a weak bulb above the door, imprisoned in its own rusty metal cage. He glanced at his wrist, a useless reflex, for they had taken away his watch. Surely she could not be far from Nuremberg by now? He tried to fill his mind with images of the Gothic spires — St Lorenz, St Sebaldus, St Jakob…
Every limb — every part of him to which he could put a name — ached, yet they could not have worked him over for more than five minutes, and still they had managed not to leave a mark on his face. Truly, he had fallen into the hands of experts. He almost laughed, but that hurt his ribs, so he stopped. *”
HE was taken along the passage to an interview room: whitewashed walls, a heavy oak table with a chair on each side; in the corner, an iron stove. Globus had disappeared, Krebs was in command. The handcuffs were removed. Standard procedure again — first the hard cop, then the soft. Krebs even attempted a joke: “Normally, we would arrest your son and threaten him as well, to encourage your cooperation. But in your case, we know that such a course would be counter-productive.” Secret policeman’s humour! He leaned back in his chair, smiling, and pointed his pencil.’Nevertheless. A remarkable boy.”
“ ‘Remarkable’ — your word.” At some point during his beating, March had bitten his tongue. He talked now as if he had spent a week in a dentist’s chair.
“Your ex-wife was given a telephone number last night,” said Krebs, “in case you attempted contact. The boy memorised it. The instant he saw you, he called. He’s inherited your brains, March. Your initiative. You should feel some pride.”
“At this moment, my feelings towards my son are indeed strong.”
Good, he thought, let’s keep this up. Another minute, another kilometre.
But Krebs was already down to business, turning the pages of a thick folder. “There are two issues here, March. One: your general political reliability, going back over many years. That does not concern us today — at least, not directly. Two: your conduct over the past week — specifically, your involvement in the attempts of the late Party Comrade Luther to defect to the United States.”
“I have no such involvement.”
“You were questioned by an officer of the Ordnungs-polizei in Adolf Hitler Platz yesterday morning — at the exact time the traitor Luther was planning to meet the American journalist, Maguire, together with an official of the United States Embassy.”
How did they know that?
“Absurd.”
“Do you deny you were in the Platz?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then why were you there?”
“I was following the American woman.” Krebs was making notes. “Why?”
“She was the person who discovered the body of Party Comrade Stuckart. I was also naturally suspicious of her, in her role as an agent of the bourgeois democratic press.”
“Don’t piss me about, March.”
“All right. I had insinuated myself into her company. I thought: if she can stumble across the corpse of one retired state secretary, she might stumble across another.”
“A fair point.” Krebs rubbed his chin and thought for a moment, then opened a fresh pack of cigarettes and gave one to March, lighting it for him from an unused box of matches. March filled his lungs with smoke. Krebs had not taken one for himself, he noticed — they were merely a part of his act, an interrogator’s props.
The Gestapo man was leafing through his notes again, frowning. “We believe that the traitor Luther was planning to disclose certain information to the journalist Maguire. What was the nature of this information?”
“I have no idea. The art fraud, perhaps?”
“On Thursday, you visited Zurich. Why?”
“It was the place Luther went before he vanished. I wanted to see if there was any clue there which might explain why he disappeared.”
“And was there?”
“No, But my visit was authorised. I submitted a full report to Oberstgruppenfuhrer Nebe. Have you not seen it?”
“Of course not.” Krebs made a note. “The Oberstgruppenfuhrer shows his hand to no one, not even us. Where is Maguire?”
“How should I know?”
“You should know because you picked her up from Adolf Hitler Platz after the shooting yesterday.”
“Not me, Krebs.”
“Yes you, March. Afterwards, you went to the morgue and searched through the traitor Luther’s personal effects -this we know absolutely from Doctor Eisler.”
“I was not aware that the effects were Luther’s,” said March. “I understood they belonged to a man named Stark who was three metres away from Maguire when he was shot. Naturally, I was interested to see what he was carrying, because I was interested in Maguire. Besides, if you recall, you showed me what you said was Luther’s body on Friday night. Who did shoot Luther, as a matter of interest?”
“Never mind that. What did you expect to pick up at the morgue?”
“Plenty.”
“What? Be exact!”
“Fleas. Lice. A skin rash from his shitty clothes.” Krebs threw down his pencil. He folded his arms. “You’re a brainy fellow, March. Take comfort from the fact we credit you with that, at least. Do you think we’d give a shit if you were just some dumb fat fuck, like your friend Max Jaeger? I bet you could keep this up for hours. But we don’t have hours, and we’re less stupid than you think.” He shuffled through his papers, smirked, and then he played his ace.
“What was in the suitcase you took from the airport?” March looked straight back at him. They had known all along. “What suitcase?”
“The suitcase that looks like a doctor’s bag. The suitcase that doesn’t weigh very much, but might contain paper. The suitcase Friedman gave you thirty minutes before he called us. He got back to find a telex, you see, March, from Prinz-Albrecht Strasse — an alert to stop you leaving the country. When he saw that, he decided — as a patriotic citizen — he’d better inform us of your visit.”
“Friedman!” said March. “A ‘patriotic citizen’? He’s fooling you, Krebs. He’s hiding some scheme of his own.” Krebs sighed. He got to his feet and came round to stand behind March, his hands resting on the back of March’s chair. “When this is over, I’d like to get to know you. Really. Assuming there’s anything left of you to get to know. Why did someone like you go bad? I’m interested. From a technical point of view. To try to stop it happening in the future.”
“Your passion for self-improvement is laudable.” There you go again, you see? A problem of attitude. Things are changing in Germany, March — from within -and you could have been a part of it. The Reichsfuhrer himself takes a personal interest in the new generation -listens to us, promotes us. He believes in restructuring, greater openness, talking to the Americans. The day of men like Odilo Globocnik is passing.” He stooped and whispered in March’s ear: “Do you know why Globus doesn’t like you?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Because you make him feel stupid. In Globus’s book, that’s a capital offence. Help me, and I can shield you from him.” Krebs straightened and resumed, in his normal voice: “Where is the woman? What was the information Luther wanted to give her? Where is Luther’s suitcase?”
Those three questions, again and again.
Interrogations have this irony, at least: they can enlighten those being questioned as much — or more- than those who are doing the questioning.
From what Krebs asked, March could measure the extent of his knowledge. This was, on certain matters, very good: he knew March had visited the morgue, for example, and that he had retrieved the suitcase from the airport. But there was a significant gap. Unless Krebs was playing a fiendishly devious game, it seemed he had no idea of the nature of the information Luther was promising the Americans. Upon this one, narrow ground rested March’s only hope.