Fatherland

March returns to Lake Havel. He drives around it, looking at the large houses in the stretch where the Party leaders live. On the road leading there, he meets a guard checking vehicles. He tells March that they always check visitors to ensure that they have a reason to be on the road. When March asks about Buhler, the guard tells him that he never has any visitors.

Jaeger calls March and tells him that Gestapo investigators are at the station. They’re taking over the case, and March is to stop investigating immediately. March considers it and then pretends that he can’t hear Jaegar and shuts off the radio.

March drives up to Buhler’s house. He finds it surrounded by a large gate, which he jumps. To his surprise, the front door is open.

Looking through the massive house, March notes its feel of “shabby luxury” (61) and massive paintings that haven’t been cleaned in a long time. He goes through several drawers in an office, one of which contains a diary.

Hearing a noise behind one of the doors, he opens it to find a large, muzzled dog, which runs out of the house. March notes that the dog’s shoulder is bloody.

March follows the dog outside and down to the water. He finds Buhler’s boat, which smells of fuel and has water in the bottom due to a clogged drain. He finds Buhler’s prosthetic floating in the water. Hearing an approaching vehicle, he hides next to the house to watch.

Three men in SS uniforms approach the gate. March notes that one is Odilo Globocnik (an SS general known as “Globus”); he’s surprised that someone of that rank is involved. As March watches, they cut the bolt on the gate and enter. When the dog runs up to them, Globus shoots it. March considers revealing himself, but his instincts tell him to remain hidden.

The men begin to search the house. March sneaks along the gate and toward the entrance. Along the way, he finds a mailbox. He takes a brown package from inside it and then quickly walks through the gate, wondering all the while if he’ll be shot from behind.

March visits Jost at the training barracks, warning him that the Gestapo has begun looking into the murder. He instructs him to adjust his story and say that he ran past something in the water but didn’t know what it was. As he got further down the road, he realized that it was a body, turned back, and then called the police.

March then pushes Jost on what exactly he saw that day. He questions how Jost could have seen the body from the road, and Jost finally admits that he saw a car pull up with three people in it. After March presses further, Jost confesses that he saw Globus.

Unable to open the package from Buhler’s mailbox yet, March goes to the lake and sits to eat lunch. Looking over the lake, he considers what could have happened. He realizes that the Party or the Gestapo wouldn’t have killed Buhler. If they wanted him gone, they could have just made him disappear discreetly. It seems more likely that Globus did it himself and then had the Gestapo take over the investigation to cover his tracks.

March opens the package. Inside is a box of chocolates that plays music when the lid is open. It has the inscription, “Birthday Greetings to Our Beloved Führer, 1964” (73) and plays a waltz from the operetta The Merry Widow (Hitler’s favorite).

Back at the station, the people gather for an announcement from the Party. The broadcast announces that the US government, specifically President John Kennedy, is visiting Berlin to discuss relations between the two countries. Currently, they’re locked in a cold war.

March talks with Jaeger about the case. He tells him what he learned from Jost. They then discuss the box of chocolates, noting that they were sent from Switzerland. March shows Jaeger Buhler’s journal. He had a meeting with two men, Wilhelm Stuckart and Martin Luther, just before he died.

March goes to the Kripo Registry to look up information on the two men. He learns that Luther was in the German Army during World War I and then began working in the Foreign Office. He retired in 1955. Stuckart was a lawyer that served in the Ministry of the Interior for 18 years before retiring in 1953. The information seems familiar to March, but he can’t recall why.

March tries to draw connections between the three men. He notes that they all retired around the same time in the 1950s. Buhler and Stuckart were state secretaries, while Luther served as an under state secretary. He then remembers why Stuckart’s information sounded familiar: He read his obituary in the newspaper last night.

He asks the registrar for more information about Stuckart. She searches for his file in archives, but it’s checked out to someone from the sexual crimes department of the Kripo.

March visits Walter Fiebes, who heads the sexual crimes division. Fiebes tells March about Stuckart’s past work. It was largely on “racial laws,” such as Germans marrying “non-Aryan” people and the necessity for medical examinations to check for gene impurities. Fiebes refers to it as the “foundation stone” for work now being done in Germany (87).

Stuckart’s file contains years of complaints against him. People accused him of taking money in exchange for illegal marriage licenses and of demanding sexual favors from women. Ten years ago, he began an affair with Maria Dymarski, an 18-year-old Polish girl. There are even photos of them in bed together, which shocks March, but Fiebes insists that the complaints were largely ignored.

An American journalist named Charlotte (“Charlie”) Maguire found Stuckart’s body. She claims that she saw two men in the stairwell of Stuckart’s apartment building and then found Stuckart in bed with Maria. He had apparently killed her and then died by suicide.

After, March calls Luther’s home. His wife answers and tells him that Luther is missing. March hears someone in the background, then Luther’s wife tells him that Globus is there with her. He wants to speak with whomever is on the phone. March hangs up.

March goes to Charlotte’s apartment. She’s gone, but a neighbor tells him that she’s at a bar nearby. She goes by “Charlie.”

March finds Charlie in the bar. She’s drinking with other members of the American press. She’s angry that she’s being kicked out of the country within a week, as her Visa was revoked after she found Stuckart’s body. She initially dismisses March but then agrees to meet with him.

Charlie takes March to Stuckart’s apartment so that he can see the scene. She tells him that she saw two men on the stairs leaving the apartment, but the porter insisted that no one was there.

When they reach the apartment, March breaks a wax seal on the door. Their search reveals nothing until Charlie opens a box of chocolates. It plays the same song and has the same inscription as the one from Buhler’s apartment. March then finds a locked safe.

March calls Jaeger, who comes to the apartment with Willi Stiefel, a former bank robber that the police often use.

Just as Stiefel finishes opening the safe, the SS arrive. March pulls out a stack of papers, mostly property deeds and bank certificates. He takes an unmarked blue envelope with letterhead that reads “Zaugg & Cie., Bankiers” (109) and puts it in his pocket.

As the SS officers come up the stairs, March, Charlie, Stiefel, and Jaeger take the elevator to the basement. Charlie and Stiefel go into an airshaft, but Jaeger is too big to fit. March decides that they have no choice but to wait for the SS, so he gives Charlie the envelope and insists that she tell no one she was there.