The Man from Berlin (7 page)

Claussen twitched his eyes towards the rearview mirrors, then shot a quick look at Reinhardt. ‘Nearly twenty years. In Dusseldorf,' he replied.

‘Why'd you come back into the army?' asked Reinhardt.

Claussen took a moment to respond again. ‘Didn't much like some of the changes that were… you know, that we had to go through,' he said after the moment. ‘And the army, well, it was always sort of my first home.'

‘You mentioned Naroch. Back at Vukić's house.'

The sergeant nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Eastern Front 1915 to 1917. I was wounded, and sent home. Joined the police when the war ended.'

Reinhardt stared ahead at the road in front and the blank façades of the buildings on the left. Claussen's experience was close to his. Very close, but as much as it seemed they might have much in common, there was almost certainly as much, if not more, that separated them. A silence grew, and instead of welcoming it Reinhardt cursed himself at starting a conversation he did not know how to finish.

Claussen pulled up in front of HQ and Reinhardt, still feeling a prickling awkwardness, sat for a moment before turning to face the sergeant. ‘That was good work you did. At the Feldgendarmerie station, pointing me in the direction of Kessler.' Claussen said nothing, only looked back at him. ‘That's something I'll need from you, Sergeant. Any time you have something like that, a feeling, something to say about this investigation, speak
up.'

‘Very good,
sir.'

Reinhardt could not put a finger on how, or why, but he was sure Claussen felt he had just been insulted. Or patronised, he thought, remembering a time, long ago, a similar conversation with Brauer. Claussen was not Brauer, and Reinhardt did not have the time or strength to invest in forging a relationship with him that resembled in any way what Reinhardt and Brauer had once had as soldiers, then as policemen, as friends.

‘You have the address of this nightclub you mentioned Hendel went to? Let's pay it a visit tonight. Bring Hueber and meet me at the barracks at eight o'clock.' Reinhardt got out of the car, turning as he closed the door. ‘Until then, you are free to do as you will.'

Back at the offices, Reinhardt was told Freilinger had returned and was expecting him. On his way up, Reinhardt stopped quickly in his office and retrieved from his desk the notebook he used to record ­information within Abwehr. He flicked through the pages until he found what he needed, folding the top of the page to mark it. The major's orderly ushered him into Freilinger's spartan office, where the major was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out the window. Reinhardt came to attention.

‘Sit down, Captain,' Freilinger rasped, turning back and moving to sit down behind his desk. He shook a mint from his tin and leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me what has happened in this case. Just the facts, for
now.'

Reinhardt kept his report simple, especially as there was not much to report on. He told of the interviews with Frau Hofler and with Vukić's mother. He told of the failed attempt to elicit information from the Feldgendarmerie. Freilinger listened in silence, his clear blue eyes rarely blinking. When Reinhardt had finished, he sat silently for a moment, then folded one hand within the other under his chin. ‘Now, tell me of your impressions, your feelings about this case.' He twisted and flexed his hands, dry-washing them together.

‘Well, sir. I have an infamous Croatian journalist who worked hard and, apparently, partied harder. Influential. Well connected. Politically active. Who seemed to like soldiers, experienced ones. Older ones. To have some kind of fixation on them, judging by the photographs in her house.' He paused, going over what he had just said. It seemed to make sense, to fit with the nascent feelings he had about the investigation, about her. The dull rasp of Freilinger's hands did not change. ‘I have an unhappy and recalcitrant police officer for a partner and liaison with the local force.' An officer steeped, he did not say, in ideology and trained in police techniques that Reinhardt despised. That assigned crime and criminal impulses to people based on social and racial background, rather than motive and opportunity. ‘The Sarajevo police's methods seem a bit… dated' was all he said. ‘Because of the increasing political pressure that they are coming under to find someone to take the blame for Vukić's murder, I am concerned the Sarajevo police are not interested in finding the real culprit, only someone to blame it on. They are experiencing high-level pressure from Zagreb. Putković will want this wrapped up soon, I'm sure.'

‘Is it too early for a suspect of your own, Captain?'

Reinhardt looked back at Freilinger, at the shift and slither of his hands. ‘Yes, sir. Too early.'

‘The most likely, in your opinion?'

‘Sir, respectfully, I must decline to be drawn on that.'

‘Oh?' Freilinger's hands paused in their movements, fingers interlinking and falling still. ‘Your next steps, Captain,' he said, dropping the subject.

‘Sir, I have an appointment with Inspector Padelin tomorrow to speak with members of Vukić's production team. I will also speak with Major Gord. He is in the propaganda companies and was mentioned by Vukić's mother as being friends with her daughter. I will be visiting a nightclub tonight that Hendel and Vukić apparently frequented. I also hope I may have greater success with the Feldgendarmerie in reviewing their traffic records.'

‘Yes, that you should have,' rasped Freilinger. ‘I do not know what happened with my request, but I made it in good time and order. Becker may be playing games with you, and I'm sure not much I could say would change your mind about that. But someone over there is not treating this with the urgency I requested. If you do not have what you need tomorrow morning, I will personally intervene.'

‘Sir, in addition to their traffic records, I would like to see a list of attendees at the planning conference for Operation Schwarz.' He did not mention he had completely forgotten about it. He opened his notebook to the page he had marked. ‘We were briefed about it last week, on Tuesday,' he said, scanning his notes. ‘Final preparations for Operation Schwarz. All divisional commanders. Hotel Austria, in Ilidža.'

‘Why do you need that?'

‘I have Vukić's murder taking place close, far too close, to a gathering of soldiers who could have stepped out of her photos. I find it hard to believe she would not have known of such a gathering and taken steps to attend it. Personally and professionally, it would have been well worth her while to have done so. Additionally, I must assume the murderer was affected by what he had done. Emotionally, and physically. It would have been next to impossible for a civilian to move around unseen out there at that time. But a soldier might have been able
to.'

Freilinger watched him from under hooded eyes. ‘That information could be useful, and I could get it for you. But I will not give it to you until you can satisfy me more that there is a link.'

‘Sir, I must protest,' replied Reinhardt. He clenched his fingers hard around his notebook. ‘How can I make a link if information is denied to me simply because of whom it might importune?'

‘Reinhardt,' said Freilinger, as he shook a mint from his tin, holding it between the tips of his fingers. ‘I will not have you pestering every officer of general staff rank as to his whereabouts and whether he was familiar, or even intimate, with a woman like Vukić. Not without very good information that such questioning would be merited. Certainly not at this time.'

‘Sir, what you call “pestering” I would call –'

‘Call it what you want, Reinhardt,' Freilinger interrupted. Reinhardt felt a rush of blood rise to his face and knew that it showed. ‘Find out she was there; that would be a start. Establish that she knew any of the officers attending. That would be another. But I'm not having you
pestering
senior officers and their staff with this. Not until you have a lot more to pester them with.' He fixed Reinhardt with his cold blue eyes as he popped the mint into his mouth. ‘Dismissed.'

8

R
einhardt drove himself back to the barracks. The duty officer gave him a letter that, from the handwriting, was from Brauer, and he turned the envelope in his hands as he went back up to his room, feeling suddenly drained. He flopped onto his bed, watching the long light of the sun as it shone through his window, resting the envelope on his chest. A drink would be nice. In the little park in front of the barracks, down by the river. Or maybe on the square. He close
d his eyes.

T
he grass is heavy with a night's rain. The smoke from a thousand cook fires drifts through the trees like mist. The rustle and creak of the accoutrements on the men around the terrified young officer sound like thunder. Across the meadow, shapes move in the trees, commands shouted in a strange language. Somewhere, artillery rumbles across the sky. Grey-clad infantry are drawn up in ranks to either side, and the young Reinhardt tries desperately to swallow, finds he cannot. T
he rustling and shifting of the men suddenly quiets, and Reinhardt feels someone behind him. He turns, and the colonel is looking at him with those grey eyes. From across the meadow comes a guttural roar.

‘Ouraaah! Ouraaaaaaah!'

The colonel rests a gloved hand on the lieutenant's shoulder. ‘Are you frightened, sir?' All the lieutenant can do is nod. The colonel nods back, squeezes his shoulder firmly, leather gloves creaking softly. ‘Remember,' he says, as another battle cry rolls from the woods opposite, and the dim shapes swell and coalesce into a mass of men, rifles tipped with bayonets swaying into the wind of their passage, ‘so are they.'

Reinhardt gasped and sat up, the letter falling to the floor. A thin film of sweat covered his head, and the light had lengthened, but not by much. He could have been asleep only a few minutes, but the dream… He had not dreamed that one in a long time. His first taste of action, at the Battle of Kowel. The first time he had met the colonel. Tomas Meissner. The man who all but became the father he had always wanted, and a centre around which to build a life. Until he met Carolin and found that his centre was only one of two competing poles of attraction, and him in the middle. He had not contacted him in a while now. That was wrong of him, even if he had been told it would have to be that way. Reinhardt owed the man his life, many times over.

He leaned down and picked up the letter, then walked to the window. The park in front was in shade, and there was a band playing this evening. He could see them warming up, but he fancied something else. Picking up a fresh pack of cigarettes, he walked back out past the sentries and headed upriver. He crossed at the Emperor's Bridge, along a little alleyway and onto Baščaršija Square over to a small café on its western side. He sat at a table, ordered Turkish coffee from a thin waiter with distant eyes, and lit a cigarette, watching the world go by, letting his mind drift over the case and the slow shuffle of people along and through and around the square.

Women went by hunched under the burden of food or firewood, followed by an old man who leaned heavily on a cane. A pair of policemen with rifles on their shoulders; three children and their mother who gave them a wide berth. Men washed their hands and feet in the fountain at the top of the square, and the hammers of the metalsmiths in the tiny alleys that wound around the foot of the old Ottoman mosque that stood at the corner of the square never seemed to stop. The roofs of the wooden-walled shops and cafés that lined the square were all of red tile. A couple of shops had swastika flags hanging over the entrances, or the NDH's red-and-white checkerboard
Å¡ahovnica
, more an invitation to the soldiers who usually thronged the city than out of any political allegiance, he was sure. A group of tank officers in black uniforms saluted him as they went by and vanished into the alleys to visit the craft shops that sold trays and plates and cups of beaten and worked metal, and beer tankards with
Gruss aus Sarajevo
on them that the men sent home as souvenirs.

What little joy this city's citizens had, it seemed, they took together, in places like this, and it gave Reinhardt some peace of mind to watch them. Friends walked with friends, and couples strolled together. Children played across the square's cobbles. Elsewhere, in the ruins of the Jewish neighbourhoods, in the squalor where the thousands of refugees from the countryside eked out a precarious existence, and in the Serb quarters where people moved cautiously the city was dark, crouched around itself. And always, above and around, the mountains that sometimes seemed to cradle the town in the folds of their slopes, and sometimes seemed poised to clench and crush
it.

His coffee came in a little silver pitcher on a round tray, with a small glass of water. He dropped a piece of sugar into the foam at the top of the pitcher, letting it settle in as he had seen others do. The sugar turned brown and slid into the coffee with a ripple. Quicker than it used to. The coffee seemed weaker every time he came, but it was still better than the swill they poured out in the mess. He stared slowly around himself and thought again about how, despite the fear and loathing generated by the war, and which the city's narrow confines seemed to sometimes stir to crazed heights, despite the veiled glances that always came his way, the place sometimes still made him think of a costume party that never stopped.

The costumes he had once thought of as Eastern, as Oriental, were worn here by as wide a variety of men and women as he could never have imagined, many of them far less Oriental than the popular imagination he once was a part of would have had it. A man as blond as a Saxon went past dressed in the loose trousers and shirt that marked him as a Bosnian Muslim. There went a man in a suit and hat with the look of a lawyer who would have fit anyone's image of a Turk back home. A dark young woman in a headscarf sitting on a step averted bright green eyes as he looked at her. The crowd was dotted with men in black suits and red fez, or white turbans, or wide-brimmed hats of Western fashion. Peasant women in veils and baggy pantaloons and slippers that curved up at the toe and stooped under heavy loads walked by, talking and laughing quietly among themselves, followed by a pair of ladies in long dresses and jackets.

From Vratnik, he heard the call to prayer begin, and he glanced up at the mosque on the corner of the square to see the muezzin climb out of the top of the minaret and cup his hands to his mouth. Behind Reinhardt, around the corner at the big Husref Bey mosque, he heard the call taken up, then heard it to the left and right on the slopes of the city. He stirred his coffee, waiting a moment for it to settle, then poured it, and worked his mind around how the murderer, or murderers, was moving around. Ilidža was a long way out, and the murders had taken place late on Saturday night. It was not that there was no traffic along that road at that time, but not much that was not military, and just about every civilian car would have been checked either by the police or by the Feldgendarmerie checkpoints at Marijin Dvor and out at Ilidža itself.

He sipped from the little white cup. The coffee was thin, slippery in his mouth, but it still felt right to be drinking it, out here on the square. The murderer drove out to Ilidža, he thought, testing the way the idea sat in his mind. Hendel drove out there. The murderer had to have left. As he saw it, that was a lot of driving, and a multiplication of risk. Kessler had told him the Feldgendarmerie had nothing in their records, but he had to see for himself. And get Padelin to do the same for the traffic police. Someone who had done what the murderer had done, it would be sure to affect you. He might have been pulled over for speeding, or driving erratically. If he had been, the Feldgendarmerie ought to have noted his plate number. The Sarajevo traffic police might have stopped him, although they would not have been able to do anything with a German and were unlikely to have made a record of any such incidents.

He sat staring at nothing for a moment, then took Brauer's letter from his pocket. He held it by the bottom corners, then opened it slowly, pulling out two sheets of paper with Brauer's crabbed handwriting across it. He sipped from his coffee and began reading.

Brauer was Reinhardt's oldest and closest friend. It was not a friendship either of them had ever thought possible. Brauer was Reinhardt's company sergeant when the young Gregor arrived on the Eastern Front in 1916. Brauer was twenty-two and already a hard-bitten veteran soldier in Meissner's regiment. The two of them had lived and fought together for nearly four years. The Eastern Front, then the transfer into the stormtroops and assignment to the Western Front at the end of 1917 through to the end. Defeat. Retreat. Wounds. The turmoil of 1919, the drift into dissolution in 1920, then the offer of hope in the police.

If there was one bone of contention between them, unspoken for nearly all their friendship, it was the gulf in education. In the Wehr­macht, particularly in the army, education was key to an officer's promotion. Reinhardt had his military college training, and his higher degrees in criminology. Brauer had a secondary school education. When Reinhardt had got over the injury he sustained in September 1918, he had been accepted into the Weimar police as an inspector, but Brauer had walked a beat for several years until at last Meissner managed to use his influence to get Brauer accepted for the test for inspector, and Reinhardt had sat and coached him for the exams.

When the time came to go back into the army, Reinhardt's education and background had got him a captaincy. Brauer's had secured him an NCO's billet. In many ways, Hitler's army had not changed from the Kaiser's. It was still riven by divisions along class lines. Brauer had been mobilised into the infantry as an instructor. He lived in Berlin with his wife, but, he now wrote, they had moved out to the country to stay with his in-laws. The implication – unwritten, to get past the censors – was because of the bombing. Details followed, this and that, small things. Then the news that made Reinhardt go cold.

They have released more names of those fallen at Stalingrad
, Brauer wrote.
I am afraid Friedrich's name is not among them.

Reinhardt slumped in his chair. His son had been with the Sixth Army. A young lieutenant in a panzergrenadier regiment. Reinhardt had not wanted his son to have a military career. But in an echo of what Marija's mother had said that afternoon, what Reinhardt wanted had stopped being important to his son a long time ago. Much as it pained him to admit it, Reinhardt had lost his son to the Nazis. Not, he would sometimes comfort himself, that there was very much he could have done about it. Friedrich had been thirteen when the Nazis came to power in 1933. The Hitler Youth, the warping of history lessons in school, the endless parades, the oaths, the songs, the summer camps, the after-school activities, the discipline and uniforms and militarisation of school life, all produced a child increasingly alien to his parents.

It was a strange thing, Reinhardt remembered, to look at your child and look at a stranger. It was a stranger thing to feel scared of your child, to the point sometimes of not wanting to go home. There were stories in those days of children reporting on their parents. As a policeman then, he knew it sometimes happened. Father and son diverged on nearly everything, and only Carolin seemed able to maintain any sort of space where they could still, from time to time, be a family. Friedrich had watched Reinhardt's struggle with his conscience over the politicisation of the police with contempt, and had joined up himself on his eighteenth birthday. Reinhardt had not seen or spoken to him until last year, but only followed the news from Russia with increasing worry and trepidation.

Reinhardt was pulled out of North Africa in early September, wounded when a British aircraft strafed his convoy. Recuperating in Italy, with time on his hands and his mind skirting the implications of the censored news from the east, he finally wrote to his son. The first letter in years, written with a hand that trembled. When a reply finally came several weeks later, delivered by an officer on leave and thus free of the censor's black, Reinhardt could hardly bear to open it for fear the son still rejected the father.

Friedrich had been wounded and was recuperating at an army sanatorium on the coast of the Sea of Azov, not far from Mariupol. The letter was long, written over the space of several days, and not all of it made sense. Friedrich talked of many things. Of his war, his comrades. There were hints of things seen, and done, but not mentioned. Things perhaps too awful to contemplate. And nothing about the past. Nothing of them as a family. Reading the letter, Reinhardt could see, though, the spite and the spleen of his teenage years had been burned out of him. The Friedrich that came through the long, scrawled lines was purer, somehow. It was something Reinhardt recalled happening to him, in the first war. Everything not necessary for survival got burned away.

Mostly, Friedrich wrote about Stalingrad.

The worst thing, Father, the worst thing about it is nowhere is safe. Nowhere. They come at you from everywhere. Out of the sewers. Down from the roofs. From under the rubble. Out of factory chimneys. From ground you've fought over and liberated ten times. You live your life with your head down and your shoulders hunched. Every day is like a week, and you live every day as if it's your last.

But, Father, fear cannot be all I feel. Yes, I am scared. We all are. But there is purpose to this. I must believe that. I passed a hospital train, yesterday. It was full to the brim with casualties, mostly from Stalingrad. Looking at it, your heart twists around its own contradictions. You rejoice it is not you among them. You envy them their ticket home. You hope for yourself the end comes clean if ever it does. You wonder what the future holds for such as they.

If I could hide them from the world, I would, though. Some things bear a heavy price, and not all prices are worth revealing. I now understand better what you went through as a young man. No one can know what it's like who hasn't gone through it. No one, Father, no one must know what it's like. What we suffer for them. Promise me you'll tell no
one.