The Pale House (45 page)

Reinhardt found a smile for the colonel's dry attempt at humor. “First time for everything” he said, quietly. “I suppose I expected it. But I'm surprised, to say the least, that you accept what I said after what happened tonight.”

“Don't get me wrong, Reinhardt,” said Scheller, swirling his drink. “You put me in a bind. You should have kept me informed of what you were doing. But I have to say,” he said, eyeing Reinhardt as he took a sip of his slivo, “Herzog is a complete arse.” Reinhardt swallowed hard, choked, and coughed. “And when a complete arse like that says one thing, I tend to think another. Take a moment, get your breath back,” he said, deadpan.

“Yes, sir,” Reinhardt wheezed.

“Well, it's not that I want to do it, but . . . things being the way they are”—Scheller sighed—“it looks like we'll have to chalk Lainer's men up to bad luck. But when we're out of here, I want you to come and see me about this Major Jansky. Let's have a look at what you've got, and we'll see what we can do when things are quieter. Sound fair?”

“It's fair, sir,” said Reinhardt, and was surprised to feel himself relieved. As if, in recounting what he had, what he knew, what he suspected, he had come to a realization that there was too much for one man, for this time and place. “Perhaps, sir, you'll allow me to wrap up a few loose ends.”

“Like?”

“I have a few pieces of hard evidence, some names to follow up on, and a doctor who promised an autopsy on those five bodies. I would like to finish up what I can on those.” And find some way to contact the Partisans and tell them where to find their UstaÅ¡e.

“I can't let you do that, Reinhardt.”

“Just today, sir. That's it. A few hours.”

Scheller worked his lips one against the other, keeping Reinhardt still with his eyes. “Why?”

That was a good question. Why?

Reinhardt realized that he had come to a simple truth during the night as he had lain in
arms. He had felt abandoned and ill-used since his epiphany two years ago, high on the side of that mountain, after his decision to play a different role in this war. He had searched for men who thought like him, and he had found them, and once again he had found choices, but once again made no decisions. He had been in search of a cause, but thought that cause had to be something grandiose. He realized now that he did not always have to have his eyes on the far horizon, on some goal or objective so much greater than him or his abilities, waiting for a summons, a clarion call to action. It was enough, Reinhardt now realized, that the cause be right to him, and be the right thing to do.

“Someone is committing murder, and . . . seeking justice for that has to be a cause worth fighting for,” he said, finally, feeling suddenly the weight of Dreyer's death.

“Maybe dying for?” Reinhardt's mouth opened, moved, but nothing came out. Scheller shook his head. “Forget it. Nothing so grandiose. But sometimes, Reinhardt, it's worthwhile to remember we're not about justice. We're about discipline.” The colonel sighed, knocking back the last of his drink. “Fine. I'll give you one day and a driver. And then that's it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“How did Benfeld shape up?”

“Well, sir.”

“You can have him, if you want.”

“You'll need him, won't you?”

“If he helps you get the job done faster, take him.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

But at the door, as Reinhardt made to open it, Scheller called him back.

“Reinhardt? Can you guess who did it? Killed our men?”

Reinhardt paused at the door, his hand tight on the handle. “The simplest things are usually where the truth lies, sir,” he said, turning around. “All these people—our men included—were killed because they knew or saw something. What they knew or saw . . .” He shook his head, and sighed, trying to navigate his tired mind around what he knew, and what he had to hold back. “If I had to guess, I would say the UstaÅ¡e. I can place them nearly everywhere this investigation has taken me. They almost certainly killed four of their own and weren't afraid to flaunt them to me. I'm pretty sure a few of them are taking the chance to get out of this war early. Maybe the five from that construction site were witnesses to their plan or were involved but got cold feet and had to be gotten rid of. I know they went after those witnesses to the forest massacre, which means those survivors saw something. And as it was the UstaÅ¡e who went after them, it stands to reason they were involved up in the forest as well. Everything points to them.” Everything except the fact that, according to Neven, it had been Feldgendarmes who had shot those refugees in the forest, and the three men, and he still could not work out why they had done that. And Dreyer had to have been killed by a German, but he could not understand that either, nor bring together the links between it all. It was there, just out of reach, he knew it, and given time he knew he could put it together.

“A falling-out among thieves,” considered Scheller, softly, his eyes considering, weighing, and Reinhardt wondered if the colonel sensed his own unease, that he was holding something back.

“It could be.”

“It could be a lot of things, is what I'm hearing. And what I'm hearing is we probably have to walk away from this. Even if it was the UstaÅ¡e, we've no proof.”

“I'm afraid you are right, sir.”

“I'll break it to Lainer. Won't it make him happy, us pointing the finger at the UstaÅ¡e and not able to do a damn thing about it.”

T
hey just killed him.

That litany was in his head, again, like a clock, marking down the time left him to make some sense of this.

“Who do we have on the main switchboard, and who is on duty now?”

The sergeant on duty at the radio blinked at his watch, then up at Reinhardt. “Corporal Ossig.”

“Have you seen Lieutenant Benfeld?”

“Not for several hours, sir. I believe he's off duty.”

Reinhardt walked away, back into the corridors, making his way to the barracks' main switchboard and radio room. He showed his identification to the guard on duty and asked for Corporal Ossig to be brought to him.

They just killed him.

This was bigger than corruption, or bribery. No matter how much money was being made on what Reinhardt suspected, he could not think why they would have killed him. Nor who the hell “they” were, and if he was not careful, he would start to be thought of as mad. Cracked. Obsessed. Like Dreyer. Dreyer had been considered a buffoon. He had been a buffoon with the thankless task of looking into the activities of the UstaÅ¡e. He had had a fixation on Jansky, about whom he suspected a lot but knew nothing. He had suspected a lot and known nothing for a long time. So why now? What had happened
now
?

Reinhardt had whispered he was sorry and not known why, but now he did. He was what was different. He had changed things. He had added something different, an edge to Dreyer's suspicions. He had skirted the edge of what Dreyer believed was out there, found evidence Dreyer had never known existed.

They just killed him.

Corporal Ossig was middle-aged, the image of a grocer—portly, solid, thinning hair combed over his head in damp strands, and a pencil behind his ear—but he wore the Winter Campaign medal and infantry assault badge on his tunic together with his Iron Cross, and a scar ribboned its way down the side of his head. He stood calmly before Reinhardt, not flinching when Reinhardt took his elbow and drew him to one side.

“I need to contact someone, as soon as possible, and I need to do so in confidence. Is that possible?”

“Yes, sir. Where is your contact?”

“Vienna. This is the extension where he is barracked,” he said, handing over a slip of paper, hoping the details were still accurate. “You are to tell him Captain Gregor Reinhardt needs to speak with him urgently.”

“You'll wait, sir?”

“Yes. Is it telephone or radio to Vienna?”

“We still have lines, so we'll try the telephone, first.”

Reinhardt took a seat in a corner as Ossig vanished back into the communications center. He took the
soldbuchs
from his pocket, looking through them again, one by one, slowly, comparing them to his own. With the exception that his own
soldbuch
had no photograph—the older books, like his, were not required to have one—he could find nothing amiss in them. They seemed in order, and yet there had to be something. The very fact of how and where he had found them made that obvious, he thought, returning again to Abler's
soldbuch
, thinking how the photograph was familiar. He looked at it carefully: a thin man, narrow face looking to its right with a curve of ear visible, hair carefully parted, uniform collar buttoned up but hanging loose around a thin neck. He unfolded the list, read the names again in that flowing copperplate, the numbers next to each of them.

They just killed him.

Nothing. He could not make anything out. He put his head back against the wall, feeling sick, nauseated with fatigue, thinking that the last time he ate was yesterday, that quick mug of soup before he went looking for Kostas. He closed his eyes, and he dreamed hard and suddenly, a morass of images that came swirling up at him.

He stood in a forest clearing under a sky empty but for hanging black filaments, birds and scavengers that rode the high winds, gyring up and around and down, a frenzy of wings and raucous calls as they stooped and dived on something on the ground. He looked down and the boys from Kragujevac stood there, and they blended, merged into Neven, who held up a bloodied gorget in his two hands. An Ustaša loomed up behind him, and Neven was gone, the gorget falling slowly to earth, trailed by its chain, each link winking and moving. It landed gently on the body of a girl, lying as if asleep in the long grass, the chain molding itself to the curve of her shoulder.

The patrol made it back just in time, just as the weld between sky and land was loosened with the ribbon of the day's first sunlight. The tangled scrawl of no-man's-land etched itself across the light, the blasted angles of trees, the skirl of wire and the humped roll of the earth. Reinhardt knew they had to get into cover as otherwise the light would silhouette them perfectly to the British behind them.

Shoving the Tommy they had taken prisoner in front of them, the stormtroopers tumbled over the lip of their trench as first one shot, then a few more, then dozens blazed across at them from the British trenches. A machine gunner opened up from the bunker to the left, the noise deafening. For a moment all was pandemonium and then, as it always seemed to, as if by some unspoken accord, the firing dipped, then stopped, as if honor had been assured, and there was silence.

Brauer was the first to chuckle. Then Rosen. Lebert and Topp giggled like a pair of girls, and even Olbrich's normally taciturn face cracked a smile. The Tommy rolled furious among them across the bottom of the trench, his eyes ablaze above the filthy cloth they had gagged him with, and Rosen pointed at him and they laughed the harder for the man's outraged glare, and because they were alive.

They handed the prisoner over to the guard, watching as he was led away down the trench. At the point where a hole had been blasted in the parapet the guards shoved the Tommy to his knees, and they all bent double past the gap. Past the sign that said
BEWARE—SNIPER
, past the fluttering red rags and the skull that some wag had stuck on a pole and topped with a British tin helmet. They had christened the skull “George” in honor of Britain's king, and would wave it in the gap when bored, taking bets on whether the British snipers would stir themselves to take a shot at it.

“Oh, for Christ's sake, would you look at that,” Rosen muttered.

They all looked. Squeezing to one side to let the guard and prisoner through, a soldier was struggling through the sludge of the trench's floor. His uniform was largely clean, save for the streaks of mud at knee and elbow where he must have fallen, and a pair of rich-looking leather boots climbed to his knees. He was a tall man, all gangly limbs, a round head perched upon wide shoulders. The patrol watched as the newcomer surged up to the gap in the parapet without seeing it, watching with the morbid curiosity of those inured to violence to see what would happen.

“Ten to one he doesn't make it,” Lebert offered.

“Ten to one he does,” retorted Olbrich.

“He won't,” said Topp. “The Tommies are awake. He's got the sun behind him.”

Reinhardt watched as the man gasped and staggered right into the gap, where he paused, straightened, and brushed at his uniform. There was a collective intake of breath from the patrol. The man ducked his head as he picked a clod of mud from his tunic and a bullet slit the air where his skull had been a second ago. The man heard the crack of the shot and straightened, peering around, craning his head on his neck. Another shot whipped past.

“Talk about the luck of fools or children,” Brauer muttered.

“Will you for God's sake get down! DOWN!” roared Reinhardt.

The man looked at him, turning his head, and a third shot missed. The man's eyes widened as he realized what was happening and he flung himself to the floor as a fourth shot flattened itself against the back of the trench. From across no-man's-land, Reinhardt could hear the British jeering and laughing.

“You missed, you tossers,” Reinhardt yelled back as he walked over to the man. He twisted his fist into the soldier's collar and hauled him to his feet. “What the fuck is the matter with you? Are you crazy?”

“No,” the man gasped, his mouth wide as he looked helplessly at the ruin of his uniform. “Just new.”

“Are you lost?”

“I'm looking for Lieutenant Reinhardt.”

“That's me.”

“Ah. I'm pleased to meet you. I'm Lieutenant Dreyer. Your new company quartermaster.”

“A quartermaster's stirred himself to come visit us at the front?” Brauer frowned.

“A rarity, is it?”

“Somewhat.”

“I understand these might be rare, too,” Dreyer said, as he swung a haversack off his shoulder and pulled out a wooden box of cigars. There was a murmur of appreciation as he handed them around. “These really ought to be smoked as soon as possible. Plenty more where these came from, if only the gentlemen would ask no questions.”

“If you've a bottle of brandy in there, I'll call you a saint,” said Topp.

“Say no more,” Dreyer quipped as a bottle came out of the bag, and the murmurs got louder.

Brauer saluted him with the bottle. “If you can manage this often, then you're worth your weight in gold.”

“And he is a large lad,” observed Rosen.

“Always take care of the quartermaster,” said Brauer, sagely, as he drank deeply.

“What's the occasion, Lieutenant?” asked Reinhardt.

“None. Nothing. I assure you, no ulterior motives,” Dreyer answered.

“What are you doing?” Reinhardt asked, again. “People like you don't normally come up here.”

“People like me?” Dreyer repeated. Reinhardt said nothing, and Dreyer looked from face to face. The others had gone silent, everyone watching. “It's true, I didn't need to come. But how can you form objective opinions about a situation without experiencing it firsthand?”

“‘Objective opinions?'
”
Brauer's face creased in incomprehension. “What are you, a lawyer?”

“Yes,” Dreyer replied, simply. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, and coughed. “I needed to come. How else can I look after you if I don't know how you live?”

Reinhardt saw it then, that the man was terrified, and taking refuge in what he knew best. The patrol was silent, and then Olbrich leaned forward and clapped Dreyer on the arm, offering him the bottle. “Have some of this, it's really quite good.”

There was a wave of laughter, Dreyer joining in sheepishly. He took a swig of the brandy, swallowed, and coughed. The men laughed again. With his mouth closed, Dreyer sucked a breath through his nose. He coughed again, his eyes popping wide as he snorted brandy through his nose, gasping for air. The others rolled about, laughing helplessly.

Reinhardt watched as Dreyer heaved air through his mouth, his eyes clenched shut.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Dreyer shook his head. “It's the smell. I don't . . . How can you stand it?”

Reinhardt looked at him, then caught Brauer's eyes. His sergeant shrugged. They looked at each other: mud-smeared, festooned with weapons, unshaven, eyes like pits beneath the dark lines of their brows. Reinhardt let his eyes roam the heavy muddied walls of the trench, seeing it suddenly anew, like Dreyer would. The detritus and refuse and ruin, the flat, brown glaze of water where it dotted and pooled the floor, and there, just above their heads, the stark and blackened lines of fingers where a corpse's hand had pierced the bogged curve of the parapet. Reinhardt breathed deeply, as deep as he could, and only at the end of his breath did it catch on something. Some hint of the stench that Dreyer could barely handle.

He frowned, his mood darkening, and when the bottle came his way he turned it skyward and let the brandy flood his throat.

“Captain.”

Reinhardt woke, his mind almost seared blank by his tiredness, and that tangled spasm of images. He blinked at Ossig.

“I have your call, sir. It is not your contact, but someone else. This way.”

He escorted Reinhardt into the communications center proper, a long room that hummed with energy, long banks of radios with black buttons and white dials, a dozen operators with headphones hunched over them. Ossig led Reinhardt to a partitioned section with a radio telephone and left him to it.

“Hello?” Reinhardt said into the receiver.

“
Hello?
” came a voice back, made tinny by the seashore purr of the line.

“I am looking for Captain Hannes Koenig. Who is this?”

“
Who are you?
” came the voice back. “
Do you know the time?
”