The Pale House (47 page)

Dreyer, his friend, asking for his help. “I
know
Jansky is guilty,” he had said. Reinhardt saw it now; the all-but-open admission it was of Dreyer's own guilt.

Dreyer, the accomplice, reporting all Reinhardt found back to Erdmann, to Herzog, to whoever else was involved. How else had they known about the Greeks? And he remembered, a flash of memory, that last time they had talked, Dreyer mentioning Alexiou's name when Reinhardt never had. Dreyer had known. He had known who the “Greek” was.

Dreyer, taking the only way out he could. Some last desperate gamble, a gesture to the man he once was. A suicide that looked like murder. “I would shoot myself in the heart,” he had said, had he only the courage to do it. “I would never go out to that music,” he had said. All ways to arouse Reinhardt's suspicions, pull him deeper in, and further on.

Used. Manipulated.

All in plain sight.

Reinhardt stayed there a moment after the spasms in his belly subsided, wiped a sleeve across his mouth, and then walked out, his head as high as he could make it.

He kept it high, eyes focused somewhere far ahead, until he was back in the empty mess hall. He found a lukewarm cup of coffee and took a packet of iron rations from a pile of them by the door. He split the pack open, digging out the bread and jam, and then spreading all he had on a table. Three
soldbuchs
, the paper with the handwritten names, the files.

It all came down to the
soldbuchs
and the judicial files. He stared at the books as he chewed his bread and jam, trying to understand what they represented. Whatever information was in those
soldbuchs
, the military region from which these two men had been recruited would have backup information in the main registries, the
wehrstammbuchs
. You could change one thing somewhere, and it would not change something somewhere else. He realized, then, he was picking after process, looking for loopholes in a supposedly perfect plan. This—whatever this was, he thought, holding the two
soldbuchs
in his hand—did not need to be perfect. It needed to be good enough for a time and place, and that was here and now.

This was like no investigation he had ever conducted. He did not really even know if it was one. He had the shape of a crime, more than one, in fact. He had the names of conspirators—Erdmann and Metzler for sure, Herzog and Jansky probably, though his mind still turned from Dreyer. Without evidence, though, he had nothing to confront them with. The evidence he had,
soldbuchs
and trial transcripts, pointed in an unknown direction. They could damn or they could be explained, and so on their own they were just paper. He had just one witness, a frightened little boy who could not be pulled into this, a little boy who said he saw Feldgendarmes gun down other Germans, and something landed right in front of him with a crack of paper.

Reinhardt jumped back, startled, looking at the file that lay atop his evidence, and turned his head up and around. It took a moment before he recognized the man standing behind him.

“Dr. Henke.”

“You know, for a man who had my sleep ruined for two nights in a row, you didn't seem particularly interested in what I found for you.”

“I'm sorry, Doctor?”

“Yes, you bloody well should be.”

The doctor collapsed onto the bench next to Reinhardt, his back against the edge of the table and his legs splayed out in front of him. His head went back in a gargantuan yawn and then rocked forward. Henke blinked once or twice, then looked at Reinhardt, then down at the file.

“That's what you were after, wasn't it? An autopsy of those bodies.”

Reinhardt opened the file, fingering through five sheets of paper with handwritten notes.

“You did them?”

“You did ask so nicely, Captain.” Henke's fingertips played against each other, and Reinhardt saw how his nails, and the folds of skin across the backs of his knuckles, were crusted dark, flecks and spots of something dark and brown. “And then you never came looking for them.”

“I tried . . . we tried to contact you.”

“Well, no one found me. You're lucky I'm a man of my word, and that I happened to be stopping here before continuing on.”

“May I offer you a coffee?”

“You may.” Henke yawned, again. He nodded his thanks as Reinhardt came back with a cup from the urn at the mess hall's entrance, lifting his eyes from the evidence on the tabletop and putting down the
soldbuchs
. “It's all there in the notes. Four of them had eaten the same thing at about the same time.”

“What was that?”

Henke pointed at the packet on the tabletop. “Iron rations.”

“Iron rations?”

“And some sort of broth of goat and tubers. Rather unappetizing, I would have thought.”

“Goat?”

“Something wrong with your hearing, Captain? You keep repeating back to me what I say.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So you keep saying. But I'd say your suspicions were correct. They were probably soldiers. I don't know any other group of men who would have eaten the same thing at about the same time. The iron rations are rather definitive evidence, seeing as no one but us has them. Unless,” the doctor yawned, again, “someone's captured a stock of them.”

“The Partisans use Allied rations,” Reinhardt murmured, leafing through the notes. Soldiers. He had guessed right, and it was good, he supposed, to have it confirmed although he had more or less assumed it from the evidence of the past couple of days.

“Is that who they were?” Henke nodded at the
soldbuchs
. Reinhardt picked up Abler's, opened it to the photograph. Something seemed to slide into place over it, and his breathing stopped, caught dead in his throat with a sudden surge of excitement.

“What do you mean, Doctor?” Reinhardt managed, after a moment.

The doctor tipped his mug back for the last of the coffee. “Just that. I mean, granted, none of them have a face left, but these two could be matches for two or three of those bodies. Height, weight, hair color.”

“Average.”

“Average,” Henke repeated.

In plain sight.

And he had it.

D
awn had begun to paint the sky, lighting the long edges of the clouds that hung low over the city. On the hills to the north, the crackle of gunfire was continuous, plumes of dark smoke smudging the slate sky, and there were reports coming in already of heavy concentrations of Partisan forces on Sarajevo's eastern approaches, probing attacks slicing into the German and Ustaše lines. The fighting was heavy, and the German and Ustaše troops still in the city as rear guard were already under deepening pressure. Making matters worse, Valter's Partisans inside Sarajevo were out in force, with bombings, sabotage, and ambushes flaring up across the length and breadth of the city.

Taking only the time to rush up to his room and throw some belongings into a canvas shoulder bag, Reinhardt ran out into the barracks vehicle park, his eyes searching for the car and driver Scheller had promised him was still there. He had left the colonel in the all-but-deserted operations room, most of the Feldjaeger having moved out to establish positions across the road to Visoko. Scheller's mouth had curled with displeasure at the thought of their orders, to round up stragglers and deserters, the lost and the bewildered, and pack them back into the front lines.

“Well, that would be why they call us hero stealers,” Reinhardt had quipped, stuffing a pack of iron rations into his bag.

“Don't remind me,” Scheller had muttered darkly, looking Reinhardt over. “You'll make it, I trust, Reinhardt. We can't wait. The lines are going to collapse before the end of the day. Well before, I'd reckon.”

“I'll make it, sir,” Reinhardt had said, checking the action of his StG 44, strapping on webbing and pouches, and picking up a helmet.

“Something happen to make you as giddy as a girl?”

“What?”

“That was irony, Reinhardt. Remember that? You used to be rather good at it,” Scheller had said, his attention distracted by a messenger at the door. “Get going. Good luck.”

Reinhardt found he did indeed feel light, focused. The truth of what he had discovered seemed to have liberated him from whatever slough he had fallen into. He had laid most of it out to Scheller, the words tumbling out and over each other as he ran the colonel through what he had found. What he now knew, and what he still suspected. He had had to tell him; there was no other way Scheller would have allowed him back into the city, and the colonel had sat stunned in his chair when Reinhardt was done, watching him pace back and forth like a caged cat.

He found the car and blessed the colonel for his forethought. He had thought a
kubelwagen
, but the colonel had scrounged up an armored car with a radio, a
panzerfunkwagen
with the bedframe-like antenna folded flat around the top of the vehicle's chassis. Standing in front of it was Benfeld, the big Feldjaeger straightening as Reinhardt came up.

“Frenchie,” Reinhardt acknowledged, slinging his bag into the armored car, a wariness to his voice.

“Captain,” Benfeld replied.

“Scheller's told you what it's about?”

“He said to keep an eye on you, watch your back. Captain Lainer had a few words to say as well, sir. Bader, Pollmann, and Triendl were ours. And anyway,” Benfeld said, as he heaved himself up the side of the
panzerfunkwagen
, “we started this together, sir. I'd like to see it through.”

Bader, Pollmann, and Triendl were the three Feldjaeger killed at the construction site who had started all this. Except that was not true. It was three other bodies, burned and abandoned in a forest clearing, that had started it. It was the body of a man with a goatee, and a dead girl. He slid his StG 44 into the cabin and narrowed his eyes as he looked at Benfeld. The lieutenant was tired. They all were, but it was something else Reinhardt was looking for. Some remnant or sign of the obvious pressure Benfeld had been under these past couple of days. It was still there, Reinhardt fancied. Something lurking in the corner of Benfeld's eyes, in the set of his shoulders. There was something more. There was a reckoning to be had, but not here and not now, Reinhardt thought, as the engine roared to life, the whole vehicle shaking.

“You'll have to hang on up there, Benfeld,” Reinhardt shouted. “It's been a long time since I've driven anything . . . like . . .
this
,” he said, each word punctuated by a grinding of metal as he tried to force the stick into first gear and finding it, the
panzerfunkwagen
lurching forward. He turned it in a wide circle around the edge of the vehicle park, then inched it out through the barracks' fortified entrance. He trundled it down to the main road, paused, then twisted up to look at Benfeld.

“You sure you are all right to come with me? No harm in turning back.”

Benfeld peered down at him from the turret, his face backlit against the sky. “All's well up here, Captain.”

“Right you are,” Reinhardt muttered as he swung the vehicle onto the main road and floored the accelerator.

Most of the traffic was oncoming, trucks and cars filled with troops, a convoy of ambulances, a battery of artillery. Reinhardt slid the
panzerfunkwagen
close up behind a pair of trucks moving into the city, watched the pinched faces of the soldiers in the back, hunched around the uprights of their rifles. It could not be easy, heading up to the front when everything in them would be urging them the other way.

How did you ask a man to be the last man to die for a place like this, in a cause like theirs?

You did not ask, Reinhardt knew, as he surged the
panzerfunkwagen
out alongside the trucks and overtook them. You told him.

Reinhardt hauled the
panzerfunkwagen
right onto Kvaternik, following the sweep of the road next to the Miljacka. The streets were almost empty of people, but debris and detritus littered the sidewalk and spilled across the roads, and the windows of some buildings across the river showed the blackened traces of recent fire. He drove fast, drove straight, and pulled up in front of the Pale House without any difficulties.

Leaving Benfeld in the turret, Reinhardt hauled himself out of the
panzerfunkwagen
, pulling his assault rifle after him. On the pavement in front of the Pale House the barbed-wire entanglements had been pushed and pulled out of position. Scraps of clothing clung to the wire, belongings were scattered about: photo frames, a woman's bag, a lone shoe. The building's entrance was unguarded, the doors hanging ajar around the starred remnants of the windows. The foyer was empty and echoing; rubbish and junk patterned the stairs as Reinhardt took them two by two, up to the second floor, past the radiator with the manacles hanging from it, down to the end, to
office. His breathing coming high and quick, he pushed the door open, nosing his assault rifle into the room.

It was empty. He followed the StG 44's muzzle over to the curtains that hung half open. The darkness hung heavy and slanted down into the courtyard, a handful of crows pecking their way disconsolately across the churned earth. Reinhardt stood and listened, turning slowly in the room. Gunfire crackled thickly outside, the thud-thud of artillery coming in staccato rhythms, but the house was still. Whatever spirit had inhabited it, whatever had moved it, had caused it to come up thick and menacing around him those other times, it was gone.

His heart thudded hard, beating after a sense of failure, a scent that was strong but fading. His eyes fell on the liquor cabinet. Some spark flared along his veins, a challenge to madness, and he pulled it open, his chin bunched tight with his anger. Breathing hard through his nose, he pulled a bottle out, his fist clattering others aside. A bottle of slivovitz, clear, sparkling.

“Say what you like about the Serbs,” he whispered, his words a bitter echo of
that night Bunda had brought Reinhardt here. He twisted the cork out, lifting the bottle, turning it to the light. “They make the best slivovitz.” That challenge in his blood rose high, deafened him, and he tipped his head and sucked the bottle tight to his mouth, upending it. His mouth flooded, swelled, burned. He gagged, choked, flung the bottle away, and spat after it, the slivovitz spraying in crystal droplets through the heavy air. “
Bastard!
” he grated, as the bottle broke across the wall in a shatter of glass, and he did not know if he talked of himself or
, but he felt that challenge inside him subside and he knew, somehow, he had won something of a victory, if only against himself.

His feet crunched across the confetti spread of the smashed bottle as he walked slowly over to that second door that had caught his attention the last time he was here. The door was locked. There was no answer to his call, and he stepped back and fired a burst from his StG 44 into the lock. He shoved the door open through a smell of sawdust, then recoiled at the stench that flowed out over it. He waited a moment, hitched his assault rifle over his shoulder, and drew his pistol, crooking his arm across his nose.

The room was dark, curtains drawn against the pale dawn. There was a desk and a bed, a fireplace heaped with ash. A chest stood on the desk, a red chest, and what little light there was glinted across an array of small bottles and vials scattered around it. He swept the curtains back and dust and motes erupted up and circulated into the light, the shadows darkening the creases and curls of the body that lay beneath the window.

Reinhardt knelt by it, turning the body's head toward him with the back of his thumb. It was the soldier who had accompanied Jansky here that time Reinhardt had met him downstairs. The soldier who had been working up in the penal battalion's office the first time Reinhardt had gone up there and had been carrying the red chest that now sat on the nearby table. His throat had been cut, and his face hung slack above the blackened crescent that slashed across his neck.

Reinhardt coughed, gagged on the smell, and hauled himself up and away, breathing deeply through the thick serge of his coat. He paused by the fireplace and pushed the muzzle of his pistol through the humped ash, raking back a collection of pieces and shards of . . . something. He knelt, fingering through them, lifting one, turning the edge of thick cardboard against the light, squinting at the darkened tan of its color. He took one of the
soldbuchs
from his bag, comparing it to the shard he held. His eyes swiveled to the case, back to the fireplace. He rose and pawed through the bottles and vials and powders that lay around and inside the red chest. He ran a soft brush across the back of his hand, pressed a stamp against a scrap of paper, thinking he had never in his years as a policeman come across a more complete forger's kit. He understood, now, the clerk's nervous nature, and why he had never seen him parted from that chest. He must have been a forger, a master at his trade, scooped up by those behind all this and now discarded.