Fatherland by Robert Harris Read Free Book Online Page B

passport-sized portraits of uniformed officials, each accompanied by a brief biography. Brün. Brunner. Buch. And Buhler.
    Halder said, " Guide to the Personalities of the NSDAP. 1951 edition ."
    "I know it well."
    "A pretty bunch, you'll agree."
    The body in the Havel had been Buhler's, no question of it. He stared up at March through his rimless spectacles, prim and humorless, his lips pursed. It was a bureaucrat's face, a lawyer's face; a face you might see a thousand times and never be able to describe; sharp in the flesh, fudged in memory; the face of a machine man.
    "As you will see," resumed Halder, "a pillar of National Socialist respectability. Joined the Party in '22— that's as respectable as they come. Worked as a lawyer with Hans Frank, the Führer's own attorney. Deputy president of the Academy of German Law."
    " 'State secretary, General Government, 1939,' " read
    March." 'SS-Brigadeführer.' " Brigadeführer , by God. He took out a notebook and began to write.
    "Honorary rank," said Halder, his mouth full of food. "I doubt if he ever fired a shot in anger. He was strictly a desk man. When Frank was sent out as governor in '39 to run what was left of Poland, he must have taken his old legal partner, Buhler, with him, to be chief bureaucrat. You should try some of this ham. Very good."
    March was scribbling quickly. "How long was Buhler in the East?"
    "Twelve years, I guess. I checked the Guide for 1952. There's no entry for Buhler. So '51 must have been his last year."
    March stopped writing and tapped his teeth with his pen. "Will you excuse me for a couple of minutes?"
    There was a telephone booth in the foyer. He-rang the Kripo switchboard and asked for his own extension. A voice growled "Jaeger."
    "Listen, Max." March repeated what Halder had told him. "The Guide mentions a wife." He held up the sheet of paper to the booth's dim electric light and squinted at it. "Edith Tulard. Can you find her? To get the body positively identified."
    "She's dead."
    "What?"
    "She died more than ten years ago. I checked with the SS records bureau—even honorary ranks have to give next of kin. Buhler had no kids, but I've traced his sister. She's a widow, seventy-two years old, named Elisabeth Trinkl. Lives in Fürstenwalde." March knew it: a small town about forty-five minutes' drive southeast of Berlin. "The local cops are bringing her straight to the morgue."
    "I'll meet you there."
    "Another thing. Buhler had a house on Schwanenwerder."
    So that explained the location of the body. "Good work, Max." March hung up and made his way back to the dining room.
    Halder had finished his breakfast. He threw down his napkin as March returned and leaned back in his chair. "Excellent. Now I can almost tolerate the prospect of sorting through fifteen hundred signals from Kleist's First Panzer Army." He began picking his teeth. "We should meet up more often. Ilse is always saying, 'When are you going to bring Zavi around?' " He leaned forward. "Listen: there's a woman at the archives working on the history of the Bund deutscher Mädel in Bavaria, 1935 to 1950. A stunner. Husband disappeared on the eastern front last year, poor devil. Anyway: you and she. What about it? We could have you both around, say, next week?"
    March smiled. "You're very kind."
    "That's not an answer."
    "True." He tapped the photocopy. "Can I keep this?"
    Halder shrugged. "Why not?"
    "One last thing."
    "Go ahead."
    "State secretary to the General Government. What would he have done, exactly?"
    Halder spread his hands. The backs were thick with freckles, wisps of reddish-gold hair curled from his cuffs. "He and Frank had absolute authority. They did whatever they liked. At that time, the main priority would have been resettlement."
    March wrote "Resettlement" in his notebook and circled it. "How did that happen?"
    "What is this? A seminar?" Halder arranged a triangle of plates in front of him—two smaller ones to the left, a larger one to the right. He pushed