The Pale House (52 page)

“People would . . .”

“. . . know? Who? Who would know?” Reinhardt forced himself to speak slowly, calmly, around the excitement he felt building up in him. “The men organizing this were clever. They chose their victims carefully. Volksdeutsche for the most part. Ethnic Germans. That would explain any accents, any doubts about a knowledge of German or Germany. They chose men who had no photographic identity, therefore no way to compare these photos. They chose men with no families. No wives, no children, no parents. No one waiting. And they chose men who had been consigned to a penal battalion. Men the world had turned its back on. But also men who, when the war ended, would elicit pity. Who would question a man sentenced to a penal battalion?”

mouth moved, but nothing came out. It was
who took up the questions.

“
does not know?”

Reinhardt shook his head. “He cannot. He could not allow it. He is a believer.
is not. When I pushed him to answer how he saw the future, he was evasive, and
was furious about those three UstaÅ¡e who vanished first, the ones you told me of.”

“But what of those organizing this, then?”

“I do not know,” Reinhardt admitted. “I have met some of them. Some are motivated by faith, by ideology. A conviction that the reverses Germany and its allies suffer now are only temporary, and that if they are not then something must be preserved for the future. And some are motivated by money. This whole thing began with criminals who sought asylum in a place they thought no one would look, and they paid well for it. Somehow, someone began to extend that idea. To offer not just asylum, but identities. The UstaÅ¡e are paying too. Paying well.”

“I cannot believe it,”
whispered. Reinhardt looked at her, and although she still held herself tight, as if wrapped around some inner pain, still she was at home, here, among these fighters. She had that air, as if authority and respect gathered around her.
glanced at her, and he shook his head as well.

“This must stop,” he grated.

“It has,” Reinhardt said.

“How can you know?” Simo demanded.

Reinhardt looked at the floor, feeling exhausted all of a sudden. “I stopped it,” he said, simply, and as he said it he felt the truth of it, and it was good. “It worked for as long as they could hide it in plain sight. But when I began digging, it began to come apart. I was asking too many questions, making too many links. They have ended it, I believe. I found their forger, dead. They had no more use for him. But it would have gone on. It would have gone far.”

“Rats.” Simo's face twisted.

“Rats abandoning a ship.” Reinhardt's mouth twisted, no matter that he tried to give the words a sense of irony.

held the books in his two hands, cocked his head as he looked hard at Reinhardt. “This is much more than we asked of you, Captain. Why have you done this?”

“Because this is not all that I am.” Reinhardt shook his head, a rueful smile on his face. “For a long time, I just wanted to survive this war. But surviving was not living and for a long time, I dreaded being asked to die in this war. But living was not surviving. Eventually, I found people like me, who thought like me, but I would be lying if I said we accomplished anything. And then, here, I found that men—ordinary men, men who might have been you or I—were simply vanishing. As if they never existed. All that they were was just gone, and something else filled the space that had been theirs. I thought, then, someone should speak for them. Someone should remember them. Someone should . . . bring back at least the rumor of who they were.”

He stopped, looking down, feeling embarrassed. “For the longest time, I wanted . . . I wanted to do something in this war. I wanted to strike a blow. A glorious blow, because I felt I would not survive, and I wanted to be remembered. Because this,” he said, fingering his uniform—the Iron Cross, the eagle and swastika, the dirty gray of his coat and the brass gleam of his gorget, “is not all that I am. I am more than this. That,” he continued, pointing at the
soldbuchs
, “was my act of resistance. That was my war.”

“I must . . . I must decide what to do about this,” said
, and Reinhardt glanced up at the tone of worry he heard in his voice. “I may have to ask you to help us more.”

The three Partisans moved away, talking with their heads close together. Reinhardt watched them, caught
eyes a moment, and there was something in them, some grave appreciation of what he had done for them, perhaps, before she turned away. He fished his cigarettes from his pocket, leaning with one hand on the slanting beams of the roof and looking out of the skylight. His other hand, the one injured by Bunda, he cradled against his chest, working his fingers and wrist against the pain, working his jaw against the swelling he could feel coming on.