The Pale House (15 page)

“It happened down the street from it, so I understand. At three in the morning or some other ungodly hour.”

“It didn't stop your men showing up at the equally ungodly hour of four thirty.”

“That's true.” Jansky grinned. “We drive them hard. No point to them being here, otherwise.”

“Another five bodies were found in the construction site itself.”

“There wouldn't be much point in just telling you to get lost, would there?” Reinhardt said nothing. There was no need; a Feldjaeger's aura and authority were right there, between them. Jansky's jaw clenched, and he nodded, the sharp edges he presented to the world seeming to soften. “How can I help you? Make it quick, please.”

“We'll make it as long as it needs to be,” said Reinhardt. Jansky's face went blank, and Reinhardt checked himself, wondering how much of this was him talking, and how much was Dreyer talking through him, how much of it was his friend's dislike for this man. It was easy, Reinhardt realized, to see something of Dreyer's fixation. There was something mesmerizing about Jansky. Like a wound, or a bruise, you could not help but probe and pick at. Like that gap in his teeth he could not leave alone. “I'd like to talk to the officer on duty at the site yesterday.”

“That would be Lieutenant Metzler. I have to see the general off. Wait in the command post, and I'll send him to you.”

Reinhardt stepped into the command post, where an iron stove shimmered in a corner producing far too much heat. The door to the commander's office was half open and, looking in, Reinhardt saw the old colonel with a handkerchief clasped to his mouth as he coughed. There was a musty smell of sickness from in there, a kind of tubercular stench. It reminded him of the trenches, of bunkers crammed to the brim with men, the whites of their eyes like arcs as the ceilings shook to the rolling thunder of a bombardment overhead.

Two men came to attention in the outer office: a sergeant behind a wide desk, and another man, a clerk, tucked away in the corner, almost hidden behind a red wooden chest. His desk was a rampart of piles of paper, forms, pay books, and ration cards, bastioned with ink bottles and jars of pens and pencils that seemed to wall him off from the rest of the room. As if he felt Reinhardt's eyes on him, the man glanced up, then seemed to hunch away and down, his arm curling protectively over whatever he was writing on like a schoolboy not wanting his homework copied.

“Who is out there?”

The querulous voice came from the colonel's office. Reinhardt and the other two men exchanged glances, and the sergeant made to close the officer's door but the colonel's hand came around the edge of it, spidery fingers blanched white at the tips as he held on tight.

“Colonel Pistorius, sir,” protested the sergeant.

The old colonel ignored him, peering at Reinhardt and squinting at his Iron Cross.

“Who are you? You don't have the air of a condemned man to me.”

“Captain Reinhardt, sir,” said Reinhardt, coming to attention. “Feldjaegerkorps.”

Pistorius frowned at him, clasping a handkerchief to his mouth as he coughed. He waved Reinhardt in, shuffling over to a long trestle table.

“Tell me then,” Pistorius said, wiping his mouth. “How did it go? Outside.”

“Sir?” asked Reinhardt, confused at the question. Behind him, the sergeant hovered in the doorway, unsure what to do, before closing the door quietly.

“How did my men perform, Captain? Outside.”

“Creditably enough, sir.”

The colonel's eyes lifted. They were bloodshot and watery, but there was a sudden glint in them. “
‘Creditably'?
Careful, Captain. That sounds perilously like what an old-school officer might have said. Or a damn, obfuscating sergeant. Say what you mean, man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“It was a harsh welcome, sir.”

Pistorius wheezed, his handkerchief blotting at his mouth and coming away bloody. “Harsh?” he managed.

“Personally, I was never convinced it did much to motivate a man.”

The colonel blinked at Reinhardt's Iron Cross again, his neck thrusting forward, wattled like a turkey's and burdened with the gorget that swung back and forth like a tavern's sign. “Only real war was the first war, and the only real Cross is a first-war Cross,” he muttered, sounding like nothing more than a crotchety old man musing in a dark corner while life surged past without him. He erupted again into a fit of coughing, his hand reaching blindly backward for a chair, collapsing back into it. Reinhardt looked at him anew, wondering who he was and where he had been. “What are you doing here?” Pistorius managed, finally, his eyes suddenly clear.

“Major Jansky is helping my inquiries into the deaths of three Feldjaeger last night.”

“What's he . . .” he wheezed, his voice petering out. “What's he got to do with that?”

“Colonel, sir, is everything all right?” Jansky stood in the door, then stalked into the room, a mug of something steaming in his hands. He handed it solicitously to Pistorius, who took it gratefully, folding it against his wracked chest.

“Fine, Jansky, fine,” Pistorius breathed, folding himself back into his chair. Whatever fire might have sparked the old officer to life, it was gone. Reinhardt stared at Jansky, who motioned out with his head.

“A brave, brave man,” Jansky murmured as he shut the door, quietly. “By all rights he should have been invalided out, but he won't go.”

A lieutenant of the Feldgendarmerie waiting in the outer office came to attention. Looking closely at him, Reinhardt realized he had seen him before as well, at the checkpoint in the car with Major Jansky and Brandt.

“Lieutenant Metzler,” said Jansky.

“Major Jansky has told you what I want?” The lieutenant nodded. “Tell me about the construction site.”

“It's an anti-aircraft installation, sir,” Lieutenant Metzler responded.

“Go on.”

“We were building site emplacements for four flak guns.”

“Go on.”

“We were tasked with grading the place flat. We had a section from an engineering company to help with the heavy work, bringing the walls down and such. A couple of demining people as well.”

“Why?”

“Unexploded munitions, sir. The Allies bombed the place a few weeks ago. Could be anything left in there.” Reinhardt nodded for him to continue. “That's it, really, sir.”

The door opened and a sergeant put his head in the command post. “Major, sir. You're needed in the transportation unit.”

“It can wait,” Jansky said.

“Begging your pardon, sir, Alexiou says it's urgent.”

Jansky sighed, his eyes on Reinhardt. “Can I trust you not to mishandle my lieutenant, Captain Reinhardt?”

“I'll give him back just as I found him, Major.”

“Very well, then. Mind your p's and q's, Lieutenant,” Jansky said as he followed the sergeant out the door.

“We'll do the same, Lieutenant. Outside, please.” Reinhardt followed him out, unable to stay in that stifling room with its fungal reek. He took a long, low breath, clearing his lungs. The lieutenant watched Jansky go, feet stabbing the ground across the courtyard, over to a cluster of tents and the remnants of white Ottoman walls, then turned back to him, small brown eyes peering up at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. He had big, drooping cheeks, making him look like a hound. It made him seem hangdog harmless, but watching his eyes, and with a glance at the man's heavy knuckles, Reinhardt was not so sure.

“What time did you finish yesterday?” Reinhardt asked as he pulled out his cigarettes. “Smoke?”

“Thank you, sir, no. Umm, we finished at sunset, thereabouts.”

“Why?”

“No point staying longer, sir. No light.”

“Right. Notice anything unusual?” asked Reinhardt, lighting his cigarette and waving out his match. The lieutenant shook his head, inclining it slightly, making him look more like a dog than he usually did. “People hanging around?”

“No, sir.”

“Someone there who wouldn't normally be?”

“No, sir.”

“Vehicles? That sort of thing?” asked Reinhardt, building up the rhythm, keeping his eyes direct and level.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Any trouble with the locals?”

“Never, sir.”

“Any UstaÅ¡e poking about?”

“None, sir.”

“So, it gets dark here early, doesn't it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“About when . . . ?”

“We start losing the light at about seven o'clock in the afternoon.”

“And you stop work?”

“No lights. Like I said, sir.”

“No lights. And there's nothing else you could be doing up there?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Just putting away tools. That kind of thing.”

“You saw nothing and no one?” Reinhardt said, a little smile on his face, inviting Metzler to play the game.

“Nothing, sir,” the lieutenant said, relaxing, those heavy fists of his uncurling slightly.

“What time does the sun come up?”

“About . . . six thirty.”

“Six thirty. And it's dark before then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nothing to see. Nothing to be done.”

“Not unless you want to go stumbling around in the dark,” said Metzler, allowing a little levity into his voice.

“So what was Lieutenant Brandt doing there with fifty men at four thirty in the morning?” Light had begun flushing the dark from the eastern sky, graying upward from the mounded horizon, at around six o'clock as Reinhardt was finishing up at the construction site, and the sun was fully up around thirty minutes later. The lieutenant's mouth moved, and then he swallowed, and his fists bunched tight again. Reinhardt said nothing, letting Metzler work out the implications of what he had just admitted.

“I don't . . .”

“What might you have been doing at that time up there?” asked Reinhardt, tightening the screws a little.

“I don't . . .”

“Just think. Give me an idea,” said Reinhardt, poking, prodding. “Anything.”

“I'm sure I would have had a reason, sir,” said Metzler, his eyes blanking out, and the whole of him tightening back up as if drawn tight by a thread.

“Amaze me, Lieutenant.”

“I think you'd have to ask Lieutenant Brandt that, sir.”

“And where do I find him?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Who might know?”

“Major Jansky, sir.”

Full circle.

R
einhardt dismissed Metzler, telling him to find Major Jansky for him. He wondered he was not more frustrated than he was with this kind of obtuseness from men like Metzler, and wondered if it had anything to do with his being a Feldjaeger and had an expectation that he would be obeyed. He examined that thought a moment but decided to put it aside for later. He could ill afford his habitual introspection now.

He watched Metzler hurry across the muddy expanse of the inner courtyard. Old stone buildings stood here and there hard against the walls, the stables and barracks of the Ottoman troops who had once garrisoned this place, and mixed in with them or extending from them, more recent structures of brick and timber and canvas. Smoke drifted up from some of them, and a hammer rang somewhere. Over in the far corner, past where Metzler had gone, stood a row of trucks, men working around one of them, waist-deep in the engine compartment. A sergeant bawled at a group of men who were doing punishment drills along one of the walls, kneeling, crawling, running, falling face-first, rising again to the discordant rhythm of his orders. Not far from that, a group of men in mismatched uniforms holding shovels and picks was marshaled under the harsh bellows of a pair of Feldgendarmes, then loaded onto a truck, aided by kicks and blows from rifle butts. Reinhardt watched the truck rock past and out under the fortress's entrance.

Next to the command post was a stone building with a heavy wooden door. Moving without thinking, he pushed it open, stepping down into a long, low, darkened space, and immediately knew it for a barracks. Wooden bunks rose to the left and right, and the air was tight with the closed-in fug of sleeping men. There was a low susurration, slow and heavy like the tide, the breathing of exhausted men. A soldier by the door, woken by the light and cold, blinked open fuddled eyes, saw Reinhardt, and pulled himself out of his bed. The man's uniform was filthy, the bottoms of his trousers and the cuffs of his shirt caked in mud, and his eyes were sunk far back beneath the spare line of his brow.

“As you were,” Reinhardt said, quietly. The man made no protest, just folded himself back into his bunk as Reinhardt backed outside, closing the door quietly, then followed the smells to the mess tent. It was largely empty inside, only one or two soldiers sitting at long, wooden benches and crates of iron rations—the army's emergency supplies—standing open along the wall of the tent. A cook was breaking the hard, all-but-tasteless black bread from the ration packs into a vat of soup. In the cauldron the water foamed and roiled, pulling Reinhardt's gaze, and a waxen shape appeared. A skull with a caprine eye stared gravely through ribboned flesh. It turned and sank away, bobbing up again as though eager for a last glimpse of this world. Reinhardt watched fixedly as the cook ladled soup into a man's bowl, then watched him find a table to sit alone at.

He ducked out of the tent and walked slowly over to the parapet, to a break in the saw-toothed line of the old Ottoman walls. The mist had lifted, and the edges of the low cloud were silvered by a weak sun shining over the western hills. Like a memory, the washed-out form of the city beneath was overlaid with another image, a sepia-toned recall of what it used to be. There was no color anymore. The town was, he thought self-consciously, rather like himself. Sarajevo used to stand proud, or at least unbowed. Filled with memories of better times, better masters. A rose,
had called it. A rose, in the shelter of her mountains. Bad times were transitory in Sarajevo, like her masters. Ottomans. Austrians. Ustaše. Germans. Coming and going. Forever flowing, rolling through, like the waters of the rivers that flowed through this valley, sometimes raging high, sometimes curling low, as the city and its people endured.

“
Hey.
Copper.”

The voice was a low hiss. Reinhardt frowned, looking around for the voice. “Over here. Hey, copper. Share a smoke with an old soldier?”

A man was standing behind a pile of boxes and barrels, up against the wall. When Reinhardt saw him, the man backed farther into the shadows, his eyes and head shifting from side to side. He was a thin man, quite tall, in an ill-fitting coat, his hands and wrists hanging well below the edge of its cuffs. He smiled, a wet gleam of teeth.

“Got a smoke, Captain?” the man asked, again.

Reinhardt looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching, then stepped toward him, offering the packet. The man took a cigarette, smoothed it between his fingers, then under his nose. “Nice,” he murmured. “Light?” The flared match Reinhardt offered pulled the man's face out of the shadows, all vertical lines, pinched, drawn, before the light faded out. “Thanks.” The cigarette glowed, faded out, glowed again.

“I've heard of you Feldjaeger,” the man said, quietly. He could not seem to stay still. “They say there's not much you can't do. D'you think you could get me out of this unit?” The man pointed at his tunic, where a red triangle was the only insignia he bore.

“Why would I do that?”

The cigarette glowed again. “I could make it worth your while, Captain.”

“Go on, then.” The man frowned, looking startled, but said nothing. “Cat got your tongue?”

The man winced, bouncing his weight from one place to another, and a grimace of a smile flickered across his face and was gone. “Cat's not got my tongue, but he's got my bloody balls. I reckon you're my ticket, copper. My big one. It's finally come in.”

“I don't see a finishing line, do you? So, in your own time, which you'd better make quick, what is it you want to tell me? And what's your name, anyway?”

“Later.” The man shook his head. “If you stop at the corner by
, when you leave, I'll meet you there.”

“Why would I want to?”

“You're a good copper. You might be interested.”

Reinhardt opened his mouth to protest, but the man was gone, slipping backward and away. Reinhardt stepped back out into the open space of the courtyard. A group of men walked slowly past. They were dressed in German uniforms, but only a red badge adorned their tunics. They were stocky, heavy men, with dark skin and darker hair. They looked at him as they crossed the far side of the courtyard, an open appraisal, no hint of subservience, no acknowledgment of his authority over them. For some reason, Reinhardt felt a chill, and then the pressure of more eyes. Under an archway of dressed white stone, back in its shadow, another pair of men watched him, an enormous dog panting at their feet.

Reinhardt walked back across the courtyard to the command post. Jansky looked up from the orderly's table as he came in, and a little smile crossed his face.

“You're still here?” Jansky asked.

“I sent Metzler to find you.”

“Oh? He didn't find me. But here I am. Working,” he said, spreading his arms to encompass the room, with its desks and the sludge of paperwork atop them. “
‘Even hell has its rights
,'” he said, looking inquiringly at Reinhardt, as if he challenged him to state the source of that particular quotation.

“Goethe,” Reinhardt guessed, again.

“Indeed.” Jansky cocked his head, birdlike. “I'm surprised to find you still here.”

“I had a bit of a look around. While I was waiting for you.”

From the desk in the corner, the little clerk's head peeped up from behind his red chest, then ducked back down. Jansky stepped closer, his mouth stretching in a wet gleam of a smile. “Let me walk you to your car, Captain,” he said, placing a firm hand in Reinhardt's back. Reinhardt allowed himself to be steered outside, as much in surprise as from anything else. “I've been asking around about you,” said Jansky, closing the door, rubbing his hands together briskly against the chill. He began walking over to Reinhardt's car. “I've been told that as you are leading something of an investigation into those Feldjaeger's deaths, you are to be afforded every cooperation. You've had that from me this morning, wouldn't you say?”

“Lieutenant Metzler was interesting, sir. If not as informative as I might have hoped.”

“An accurate description of Lieutenant Metzler, Captain.
Limited
might best describe his character. He ought to have known why Lieutenant Brandt and his men were there.”

“So Lieutenant Metzler did find you?”

Jansky smiled, something small and conspiratorial. “Forgive my little games, Captain. When you have spent as much time as I have around thieves and liars and blackguards, such as those men sent to serve in these ranks, well, I'm afraid truth is not always the best currency to use. I do apologize.”

“Brandt said he was there for work. He said he had fifty men and a job to do.”

“Lieutenant Brandt was there to collect some materials needed for work elsewhere.”

“Where elsewhere?”

“Zenica, Captain,” said Jansky.

Reinhardt stopped walking, feeling Jansky's hand fall away from his back. “Zenica is about eighty kilometers north of here.”

Jansky nodded. “Which meant Brandt had a long drive in front of him, hence the early start. Zenica's where the next defense line's being built. It means the decision's been made that Sarajevo will be abandoned to the Partisans, but I'm not sure that secret's been shared with the UstaÅ¡e. Nor with our high command,” he finished, with something of a portentous tone, as if to imply which of those two particular devils was the worst.

“It's no secret we're evacuating the city,” said Reinhardt.

“No. But it's a secret we're giving it up without much of a fight. So, please, Captain? I know you need to conduct your affairs, but I would appreciate your keeping that information to yourself.” His hand came to rest firmly on Reinhardt's arm. “Your word on this?”

Reinhardt nodded slowly, trying hard not to cringe away from Jansky's pincerlike grip. “Very well, then.”

“If there's nothing else, Captain?” said Jansky, drawing himself up and away, suddenly, all hard and angular.

“Nothing else, sir.”

“A pleasant day, Captain.”

Reinhardt saluted and then walked over to his car. He stood by the door, lit a cigarette, and ran his eyes around the inside of that courtyard. Here, there, dotted around the walls, little knots of men—two here, three there—looked back at him.

“
,” he said to the driver, a corporal with an Iron Cross ribbon on his coat. He passed him a cigarette, then leaned over to light it for him. “Take your time about it. There may be someone to meet on the way.”