The Man from Berlin (38 page)

‘No,' said Goran, shortly.

There was a sudden air of decisiveness about him, and Reinhardt was afraid again. ‘Why did you shoot them?' he asked, pointing at the two Ustaše. He felt overwhelmingly the need to keep Goran talking, and it was the first thing that came into his head.

‘They deserved
it.'

‘Ljubčić does
not?'

‘Ljubčić will be dealt with differently.'

‘What about
me?'

‘What about you?' Goran's eyes gave nothing away.

‘Am I your prisoner?'

‘We are a raiding party, Captain. I have no time for prisoners.' Just a few words, but the weight behind them was inexorable, and Reinhardt found he had nothing to say. Goran looked at him. ‘Where are you going?'

‘I'm looking for the German 121st Division.'

‘I believe they're south of here. In Predelj.'

‘You could just let me go. Let me continue.' The words felt weak, and feeble.

‘I don't think so, Captain.'

‘Begović trusts me enough to let me know he is Senka,' Reinhardt blurted.

Goran's eyes narrowed. ‘He told you that?'

‘Yes,' Reinhardt lied. ‘The Shadow. There's no one the Gestapo want more.' It was a desperate throw of the dice, just something he had guessed from things Begović had said, but it was all he
had.

‘Why would he do that?'

‘Why…' Reinhardt repeated, then paused. He felt the ground teeter under him, his guts tighten as if in expectation of a fall. All of a sudden, he realised he could see more than those two proverbial steps ahead, but the path was not clearer for it. He stood on perilous ground. Untrodden. Very few of the steps that might lead him out of this would avoid betrayal. It lay here, suddenly, all around him, and there was the sense that he had to choose his way carefully, as there would be no path back. ‘He and I… we see some things the same
way.'

Goran took a long, slow breath, his eyes not leaving Reinhardt. ‘I must think about this,' he said, finally. ‘But first, I have something I must attend to. You will wait, and we will talk again.' He turned and left, a shift of movement at the door as a Partisan stood guard.

Reinhardt felt adrift, just that cold feeling in the pit of his belly anchoring him in place, a reptilian awareness of danger he was not yet out of. The dust settled in the room, spiralling and sparkling down through the lattice of light from the bullet holes, and he began to feel the outlines of an understanding of something he had heretofore only felt unconsciously. He forced himself to calm, to consider what he felt taking shape.

There was a fork here in his path, he realised. One path led onward. One path ended here. He could go on, try to follow his investigation, do it in the way that would let him remain true to himself, and maybe serve the wider cause Meissner had shown him. Or he could shrink back, turn away. If he went forward with what he felt taking shape, what would it cost him? What accommodation would he have to make? Betrayal was never to be taken lightly, but would that accommodation be any worse than the dozens – some mundane, some not – he had had to make over the last few years?

There was a low moan from Becker. Reinhardt knelt next to him. There was nothing he could do for him, but even if there were, would he do it? This realisation terrified him. He had never been in such a position before. Becker was an obstacle to him. He realised now that to make work what was taking shape in his mind, at least two men had to die. The chances were that both of them would, here, today. He remembered what he said to Begović, that everything good that had happened in his life had happened despite him. It was happening again.

‘Becker, can you hear
me?'

The Feldgendarme's mouth moved, his lips blue in the pallor of his face. ‘
Thirsty
,' he whispered.

‘You're dying, Becker. I can't help you. But you can help me. Can you do that? Can you tell me who is behind this?'

‘
Yes
,' Becker whispered.

‘Tell
me.'

‘Yes.'
Just a thread. His eyes quivered open, wet, slack, searching for Reinhardt, finding him.
‘The knife. It was the knife.'

‘What about the knife, Becker?'

‘Caught him. Putting… it… back. Red…'

‘Caught
who?'

‘… red-handed. Caught him…'

‘Who, Becker? Tell
me.'

Becker's head lurched. His eyes cleared.
‘You?'
He stared up.
‘I could… tell you. But… I won't.'
Then the focus in his gaze bled away and, amazingly, at the edge of his life, he laughed, a stuttering high in his throat.
‘If you… could see… your face. Gregor… the crow… Always…'
His eyes turned up, and he was gone.

Reinhardt paused there, staring down at him. He tried to care, but there was nothing. Not even any sense of triumph at having outlasted Becker, he who was the master manipulator, always managing to find the right angle to any situation.

He poured water over his hands again, scrubbing his face and smearing his hands dry on his uniform, painfully flexing his fingers, still not wanting to look. He paused, searching around the tangle of bodies, spotting the Bowie where it had been dropped, shoving it point down between the floorboards. Standing, he put his heel on the pommel and pushed. He strained, his knee twitching. He pushed harder, but the knife only bent against the floorboards. He gritted his teeth in anger, then reached down and flung it skittering away across the floor. The guard shouted, peering at him nervously as Reinhardt walked to the door. The guard stood to one side, distrust writ large across his broad features. Reinhardt stepped carefully outside and looked around the clearing. The surviving Ustaše and SS were lined up in front of what clearly were firing squads. A small group of German soldiers, mostly Feldgendarmerie – Claussen among them – made up a separate group huddled under the guns of a circle of Partisans, and there was a hush in the clearing, a clear focus of attention.

Stolić and Ljubčić were kneeling in front of a tree from which dangled two nooses while a Partisan read something from a piece of paper. Stolić looked dazed, Ljubčić contemptuous, and he had eyes only for Goran even as the Partisan commander gave the order to put the ropes around their necks and made them stand. There was a pause, and then Partisans hauled on the ropes. The two men arched up, then jerked like puppets, legs flailing as they fought to breathe. A hideous wet croaking slipped past the swell of their tongues, a macabre counterpoint to the gentle rustle of the tree's branches. The bodies bumped and snapped off each other, and with their popping eyes and contorted faces it was as if they played some childish game.

It seemed to take them a long time to die, but after they stilled two men jerked down on the bodies to make sure. Reinhardt looked up at Stolić. He had fouled himself as he died, and the stench was awful, but Reinhardt only saw him as an absence, the second man who needed to die. He realised Goran was standing next to him, looking at
him.

‘You object to our justice?'

Reinhardt swallowed hard. ‘Is that what it
was?'

‘They were condemned by a people's court a long time ago for crimes against the citizens of Yugoslavia. This was their sentence, and it was more justice than they deserved or ever gave.' He turned and looked back at the bodies as he spoke.

‘What was it between you and Ljubčić?'

Goran looked back at him, at the bodies where they hung like carcasses. ‘You noticed?' His mouth twisted. ‘We grew up together. Then he became
that
. An Ustaša. Obsessed with a world that had no room for those not like him, and a future that never will
be.'

‘And what of them?' Reinhardt indicated the other Ustaše and SS. ‘What of them?' The Germans. ‘And
me?'

‘What about you, Captain?'

‘Dr Begović was helping me. He believed doing that was helping you. Your cause.' Goran said nothing, and Reinhardt felt as if he scrabbled across a pane of glass.

‘Muamer is a good comrade. One of the best. If he believed that…' The Partisan shook his head. ‘He believes that whatever it is you are doing, it is causing confusion in your ranks.' He looked around the clearing. ‘And I must admit I have seen many things, but never a German soldier being tortured by a collection of Ustaše, Feldgendarmerie, and SS. So he may have a point. I need more than that, though.' He turned those flinty eyes back on Reinhardt. ‘He believes you are a member of the German resistance.'

‘I am,' said Reinhardt, and he felt the truth of it as he said it. It settled around him, through him, and it felt right.

‘Somehow, I have my doubts.'

‘I cannot prove it to you. But we do fight the same fight, if in different ways.' He could see Goran still hesitating. ‘You have nothing to lose,' Reinhardt continued. ‘You can send me on my way and hope I will do and act as Dr Begović thinks. Or you may keep me here. Either way, I am no threat to you or your men. But my way – Begović's way – I am… I am in your enemy's camp.' He swallowed around the word he should have said.
Ally
was the word, but he could not bring himself to say it. Not
yet.

Someone called from the forest, and Goran waved a hand in acknowledgment, never taking his eyes off Reinhardt, as if he could hear the word Reinhardt could not say. He had never in his life, Reinhardt realised, been the focus of such attention. Just like that moment in his dream, Goran's eyes were pivots around which his life might turn, or they were nails from which it would hang.

‘Very well. You may
go.'

‘Please, I need him,' said Reinhardt, pointing at Claussen, needing to make Goran turn and look somewhere else, if just for a moment, so he could escape the pressure of his gaze. ‘He is one of
us.'

Goran sighed, then nodded. He called something to the guards, who pulled Claussen out of the group, pushing him over to where ­Reinhardt stood. Reinhardt watched the faces of the others, saw the hope in their eyes that faded as only one of them was culled from their number, and he turned away from the voiceless expression of their need.

‘Go, now,' said Goran. Across the clearing, Partisans were filtering back into the forest, save for those guarding the prisoners.

Claussen said nothing as he walked next to Reinhardt, a huge bruise darkening the side of his head, an ugly, red welt. Two Partisans escorted them back to the road, to where the
kübelwagen
was parked behind the ruined wall, still loaded. A dead Feldgendarme lay there, flies already crawling over a wound in his neck. The Partisans melted back into the trees, and they were alone. Behind them, suddenly, came a rattle of gunfire, then, after a moment, the crack of single shots. The two of them looked at each other.

‘You look…' said Claussen, trailing
off.

‘You should see the other chap,' mumbled Reinhardt, thickly. He searched through the packs, finding the first-aid kit. He poured sulfanilamide over his fingers then bandaged them, wrapping three fingers together. He flexed them, wincing at the pain, and looked at Claussen.

‘I don't know what you said, or did… but, thank you,' said Claussen.

‘Let's get going, Sergeant,' replied Reinhardt, hoping a measure of formality would give him time to consider what had just happened.

39

R
einhardt unclipped the MP 40s and brought them in front, looking at the forest now with new eyes. They moved steadily south, and Reinhardt found his mind caught between what had happened to him at that village and what might happen to him ahead. He knew he ought to feel something – a fear that official sanction might catch up with him, and
a fear of what he had committed himself to. Stolić and Becker had to have been acting outside their authority, though, and there was no proof Reinhardt had ever been there. When he realised that, he breathed easier. For the rest of it, the implications of that fork in the road he had just taken, he put it aside.

The road wound on down the gorge, undulating above the Drina as it flowed torpidly north. They came up on the tail end of a convoy and stayed there, pulling their goggles down and wrapping scarves around their mouths to breathe through the dust. The miles fell away and they began to pass through lines of soldiers and trucks drawn up by the side of the road. There was an air of expectation that was palpable. Reinhardt could see it in the faces of the men around him, the imminence of action. The convoy slowed, lurching to the side under the directions of a pair of Feldgendarmes. Reinhardt's breath caught at the sight of them, but they simply made to pass by, banging on the
kübelwagen
's hood to pull over and park.

Up ahead, Reinhardt could see a pair of half-tracks with tall radio antennae, and a staff car. He figured they had to be controlling movements and might know of Verhein's whereabouts. Telling Claussen to wait, he stepped out and straightened his uniform. Reinhardt felt somewhat self-conscious as he walked past the waiting troops, remembering how it used to feel before an attack and, here, feeling only a distant echo of it. ‘Afternoon,' he said to a captain, who nodded back, not moving from where he leaned against a truck, his eyes taking Reinhardt in from his bandaged hand to his face. He looked tough and competent, the red slash of the Winter Campaign medal bright against his tunic. Shifting his MP 40 on its straps, Reinhardt lit an Atikah, then offered one to the captain.

‘Reinhardt, Abwehr,' he said, lighting the captain's cigarette.

‘Tiel,' the officer replied, nodding his thanks, drawing deeply. ‘121st.' He looked Reinhardt up and down. ‘Had some trouble?'

‘Been in worse. Mind telling me what's going
on?'

‘We're going up that hill any minute now,' Tiel said, motioning backwards with his head. A rutted track headed steeply into dense woods. There were soldiers on the track, beginning to make their way uphill. ‘Partisan brigade up there, somewhere. We dislodged them yesterday, and they're trying to move northwest.'

Up where the path began to merge into the trees, it looked like there was something of a commotion, a vague sense of shifting forms. ‘Is there something going on up there?'

‘General's inspecting the boys.' He gave a glimmer of a smile. ‘Like he always does,' as if anticipating a question Reinhardt might
ask.

Reinhardt gave a tight smile and hoped it did not show. ‘My lucky
day.'

‘You want the general?'

Reinhardt nodded. He felt Tiel's eyes harder on him, suddenly, as if Verhein were something to be protected. ‘Actually, I want his IIIa,' he said.

‘Intelligence?'

‘Colonel Gärtner,' said Reinhardt.

It seemed to satisfy the captain. Tiel nodded towards the half-tracks. ‘Over there.'

‘Wouldn't mind introducing me, would you? A friendly face'd go a long way to getting me some attention.'

‘Of course,' Tiel answered. Together they walked over to one of the half-tracks. The captain put his head inside, then extended an arm as Reinhardt joined him, pulling him into conversation with a colonel who was standing hunched over a fold-down map table in the vehicle's load
bed.

‘Fine,' the colonel was saying. ‘Just a few minutes. Your men ready, Captain? You're up next.'

‘Ready, yes, sir. And here he is.' Tiel nodded, then stepped away.

Colonel Gärtner's attention was fixed on a radio technician sitting just beyond him. ‘What do you want, Captain?'

‘I would ideally like to speak with the general, sir,' replied ­Reinhardt.

‘The general. Really?' said Gärtner, with a faintly disbelieving drawl, looking at his map. He looked up, frowning at the state Reinhardt was in. ‘Bloody hell, man, what happened to
you?'

‘It's nothing, sir, thank
you.'

‘Nothing?'

‘The general,
sir?'

‘About what?'

‘All due respect, sir, that is business best discussed with the ­general.'

‘I'm his IIIa, Captain. You're Abwehr. We're both in intelligence. If it's something affecting the division, you'd better tell me
now.'

‘No, sir. Nothing affecting the division.'

‘Very well,' said the colonel, his attention going back to his maps. ‘I suppose you can wait, but no promises.'

‘Thank you,
sir.'

‘And try and clean yourself up, would
you?'

Reinhardt felt alone, all of a sudden, flicking his finished cigarette into the bushes. His hand stole into his pocket, fingers running over the Williamson and its inscription. He calmed down a little, becoming aware of movement and activity around him. He saw Tiel heading up into the woods with his men spread out in a line on either side of him. Officers were clustered around Gärtner's half-track, and then the colonel stepped down out of the vehicle, talking to an officer with his back to Reinhardt. He had a bald patch on the back of his head, rather like a tonsure. Gärtner spotted Reinhardt over the other officer's shoulder and said something. The other officer turned.

It was Ascher. He looked at Reinhardt, and his eyes went wide, then flat. He turned back to Gärtner, the line of his shoulders stark with his anger. Gärtner's face creased in incomprehension as he listened, and then he straightened, looking accusingly at Reinhardt, then back at Ascher. He shook his head, backing away. ‘No, no,' Reinhardt heard him say. ‘He's your problem now, Clemens. You deal with
him.'

Ascher walked over to Reinhardt, his jaw clenched, and then looked around, as if searching for someone.
‘You?'
Reinhardt had the presence of mind to come to attention. Not that he was surprised to see Ascher. It was the man's tone, the way his eyes kept searching behind Reinhardt, then focused on his injuries. He was aware of danger, as if a chasm had opened up right before him. ‘What the
hell
are you doing here?' His eyes strayed away again, as if he could not help himself.

‘I beg your pardon, sir. I'm here to speak with General Verhein.'

‘About
what
?'

Reinhardt paused. He had no idea of this man. No idea what made him tick. He only knew he had been one of the officers who had complained to Freilinger about Reinhardt's behaviour that afternoon in the mess. ‘I'm sure you must know, sir. It's about the investigation.'

‘What?'

He took a risk. ‘About that woman.'

Ascher's nose wrinkled. ‘Woman?'

He was buying time, Reinhardt could feel it. ‘Vukić.'

‘
Her?!
You were supposed to have dropped this, Captain. As I recall, your superior was given specific instructions.'

‘Yes, sir,' Reinhardt said, retreating behind a façade of dumb ­obedience.

‘And…
?'

‘Rescinded, sir,' lied Reinhardt. ‘I was ordered to proceed.'

‘You cannot be serious, Captain. You wish to persist with this here?
Now?
'

‘If I must, sir,' replied Reinhardt.

‘This is
ridiculous
, do you hear? We're about to go into action and this is the moment you choose to come asking your questions about that woman?'

‘I would not say it's a moment I choose…'

‘Don't be
impertinent
, man!' snarled Ascher.

‘Impertinence?' came a deep voice behind him. ‘You know what I always say about impertinence, Clemens.' Reinhardt turned and snapped to attention. Standing there, tall and broad-chested, shock of white hair like a biblical patriarch's, was General Paul Verhein. He had glittering brown eyes, round and open under bushy white brows, framed and creased in a fine web of wrinkles like laugh lines. He wore a simple uniform, sleeves rolled up over his thick forearms, only his red collar flashes and epaulettes showing his rank. He appraised ­Reinhardt openly, his eyes flickering over his Iron Cross, his hand, back up to his face. Verhein's Knight's Cross hung at his neck, and the Winter Campaign ribbon cut across the front of his tunic next to the black-and-silver badge of the Pour le Mérite. A gold close-combat clasp was fixed to his left breast. Somewhat incongruously, hanging at his side, he carried a Russian PPSh submachine gun, its wooden stock burnished to a rich shine.

‘Yes, General,' replied Ascher, a slight air of suffering in his voice. ‘I know what you say about impertinence.'

‘Is he scolding you, Captain?' grinned Verhein, still looking at Reinhardt. ‘He's like a mother hen, always pecking around.' Ascher's mouth tightened in a strained smile, as if this were a long-running joke. ‘Would you know, Captain, about impertinence?'

‘I might hazard a guess,
sir.'

‘But you would feel impertinent doing so… ?' Verhein laughed. ‘I believe an impertinent officer will always look beyond the obvious, and more often than not will arrive at a pertinent answer. Impertinence is a quality I value highly, Captain… ?

‘Reinhardt,
sir.'

‘Are you an impertinent officer, Reinhardt?'

‘I believe I have been called that, or something similar, at times.'

Verhein laughed again, an open, honest laugh, and Reinhardt found himself smiling back. ‘Of course you are, Captain, else you wouldn't be here, would you? I know who you are, and I know why you're here, Reinhardt.' Verhein's words wiped the smile from his face. The general's eyes flicked to Ascher. ‘I had a fairly good idea you'd be turning up. Didn't I, Clemens?' The colonel said nothing, his face blank. ‘I've a feel for men like you, Reinhardt. Ex-copper, aren't you?'

‘Yes,
sir.'

‘Coppers can be stubborn sons of bitches. Never give up if they feel they're in the right. Right?'

‘General, if I may, there is not time for this,' said Ascher.

‘I think there may well be, Clemens,' replied Verhein, not taking his eyes off Reinhardt. ‘I think there may have to be…' He trailed off. ‘I will talk to you, Reinhardt, but not right now. I've got to get my boys into action. My car's up there. You can wait for me. Will you wait for
me?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Reinhardt, somewhat taken aback by this man, by his presence, his style. He had met him only a few minutes ago, and he already liked
him.

‘Good man,' exclaimed Verhein, clapping him on the shoulder, then striding off. Officers and men gathered around him as he walked over to the tree line. Faces turned to him, wreathed in smiles, his arms reaching out, bursts of laughter.