The Pale House (51 page)

“You have something for me?”

Reinhardt nodded, twisting his bag around off his shoulder. “I know where they are going. The UstaÅ¡e. The ones you are interested in.”
eyes lit up, his gaze following Reinhardt's hands as he pulled out three
soldbuchs
. Reinhardt opened the one he had taken from Bunda, his hands covering the first page, showing only the photo to
and Simo. “Who is that?”

The Partisans' eyes narrowed as they looked at the picture of Bunda. “
Picku materinu
,”
muttered. “That is Bunda.”

“No,” said Reinhardt, “it is Corporal Carl Benirschke. Who is this?” he asked, holding up a second
soldbuch
, one of those he had taken from the Albanians he had killed.

“That is . . . Pero LabaÅ¡.”

“Wrong. This is Sergeant Marius Maywald. This?”

The Partisans reacted strongly. “That is Branimir Zulim. The torturer. Bunda's right hand.”

“Wrong again. This is Private George Abler. But you don't have to worry about him. He's dead. The UstaÅ¡e killed him themselves.”

“Are you sure?” hissed
, his eyes fixed on Abler's
soldbuch
.

“A scar down the side of his head and neck, here? He's very dead. I suspect Bunda killed him because Zulim had drawn too much attention to himself. He was the one,” Reinhardt said, turning to
, “who arrested the survivors of that massacre in the forest. The old man and the old woman.”

“Bunda killed him?”

“And I killed Bunda.”

“You killed
Bunda
?”
and Simo exchanged glances. “You killed Bunda. How? Why?”

“It doesn't matter,” Reinhardt replied, feeling
eyes on him, and his stomach heaved, a heavy roll of memory at that fight in her apartment.

fingered through the
soldbuchs
. “What does this mean, Reinhardt?”

“When you spoke to me of the UstaÅ¡e vanishing, I did not know what to think. You told me of the Albanians you captured, with uniforms with no insignia. I knew they were uniforms from a penal battalion, and I was already looking at the battalion because of my investigation into the murders of three Feldjaeger, and the discovery of five bodies near where they had been killed. I found out men were disappearing from this battalion. Just vanishing. Everywhere, it seemed, I was finding bodies, or hearing of people vanishing, and no one knew where, or how, or why.

“That same night I met you, the UstaÅ¡e were waiting for me downstairs.”
nodded. “Bunda showed me four UstaÅ¡e he said you—the Partisans—had killed and mutiliated. One of them was this Zulim, now called Abler. Bunda brought me to
. He showed me all the bodies in the Pale House, all the people the UstaÅ¡e had taken and killed, and he told me how, if he needed someone to vanish, he would just order it done and not hide it. All this showing, and all I could think was, ‘What is he hiding?' I asked myself, what is the best way to hide something?” He looked from one to the other. “You hide it in plain sight. You hide it right in front of you.”

“You . . .”
paused. “You are telling me the UstaÅ¡e are hiding by going into the German Army.”

“More than that. I found out quite quickly that this penal battalion we talked of had many foreigners in it. And many of those foreigners had a past, one that would never let them be. I thought some of the UstaÅ¡e would take that same route, and I was right and wrong. Some are taking that route. Some kind of cabal, a small group. But they are not just becoming drivers, or cooks. They are becoming someone else.” He took the books back from
, holding them up. “They are
becoming
these men. These men—the
real
men—were killed. Executed. Their bodies destroyed—by fire, by disfigurement—so their identities could be adopted by
these
men, these UstaÅ¡e.”