Fatherland

by Robert Harris

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.

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.

PART ONE

TUESDAY 14 APRIL 1964

As Fuhrer 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.

ONE

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.

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.

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 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.

March took a last draw on his cigarette and flicked it away. It fizzed and died on the wet road.

As he approached, one of the policemen raised his arm.

“Heil Hitler!”

March ignored him and slithered down the muddy bank to inspect the corpse.

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.