The Pale House (19 page)

“Did the police come?”

The woman shook her head to
translated question.

“Please. Ask her just to name one thing about the UstaÅ¡e who came. The leader,” Reinhardt said looking at the woman. “He was big?
Veliki?
” he asked, raising a hand up high. The woman stared at him, her head shaking, quivering. Reinhardt cast his mind back to that checkpoint, the UstaÅ¡e with Bunda. Just men. Only Bunda had that definitive size. “Please. Just one word. Anything.”

murmured quietly at the woman, soothing tones, and then the woman swallowed, a careful movement, her eyes fixed on Reinhardt with the whites showing all around, and her finger made a slow line down the side of her neck.

“A scar,” he remembered, suddenly. He looked at
, urging her to translate. “There was one with a scar? A scar,” he said to the woman, pointing at his neck, drawing his finger down its side, to his collar, as
said, “
Ožiljak
,” and the woman's eyes met his, and she nodded. He smiled, opened his hands, and stepped back.

“
Hvala
,” he said, thanking her, then turning to
. “That's it. Please thank her. Tell her no harm will come to her. Tell her if anyone troubles her, she must ask for Captain Reinhardt. Feldjaegerkorps,” he said, pointing at his armband. He did not know what good it would do. It might do some, and it was all he could leave her for her troubles.

Back outside, a glance at his watch told him his hour was almost up. “If the UstaÅ¡e took them, where would they have gone?”

“To the Pale House.”

He looked back at her, looking through her, thinking.

“May I escort you somewhere?”

She nodded, and he offered her his arm again and they began walking in a silence that locked each of them into their own thoughts.

“Do you think they took the boy when they came for the elderly couple?” Reinhardt asked at last.
arm tensed against his side, but she said nothing. “I saw no trace of him there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw nothing of his, only the old man's suitcase, hat, and coat. Cutlery for two people.”
blinked back at him with wide eyes. “I can place the old man there, maybe the old lady. What happened to the boy?”

“You are going to the Pale House, aren't you?”
asked as they reached the Latin Bridge. Reinhardt nodded.
eyes searched his face. “Captain, this may sound strange, but . . . you have given me something important. I should like to give you something in return. After this, maybe later tonight, you might want to accompany me somewhere that may surprise you. No,” she said, raising a hand, allowing a little smile to come to her eyes, “I will say nothing more. Only, come, if you can.”

They looked at each other a moment, and then the city seemed to come rushing back in on him: the cold, the noise, the passage of people past them on either side, and the pinprick pressure of eyes that watched and measured. He had nowhere else he needed to be, he realized.

“I will come with you, then.”

She brushed a wave of hair from her eyes, strands of blond and ash folding over her fingers, and put her hands over his. “Thank you again, Captain, for the truth of my daughter. And I will see you tonight.” Though phrased as a statement, Reinhardt heard it as the question it was meant to be, and he nodded, again, listening as
gave him an address off Kvaternik Street. He parted from her there, watching her walk away, folded tight into her black coat with the spill of her hair a moving curtain across her back in the wind.

He made swift time back to
and caught the driver as he was about to leave, a shout and a hobbled run taking him the last steps. He let himself fall into the car's seat, his knee afire and his breath short, cursing himself for the shape he was in, and ordered the driver down to Kvaternik Street, to the junction not far from the
Bridge, about where he thought the Pale House should be. The driver nosed the car through the maze of one-way streets and little alleys, the directions coming back to Reinhardt as much from memory as from feel, some long-lost finger to the city's pulse and ebb and flow of its traffic. Eventually, the
kubelwagen
emerged onto Kvaternik, and a quick glance to the right showed him the Pale House.