The Pale House (56 page)

“Captain, what the fuck is going on?!” Benfeld yelled. “What the hell just happened?”

“Get back inside,” he shouted at Benfeld. He ducked inside the car, hearing Benfeld clamber up into the turret. He pulled the door shut, pausing only to spare a last glance at
, where he lay in a puddle of red. The
panzerfunkwagen
's engine exploded into life. Reinhardt paused, looked back at the street, at the bodies strewn across it, and drove the car the few dozen meters up to where
lay. Leaving the engine running, he slipped out of the car, his eyes stabbing across the shattered windows above. His fingers slithered across the Ustaša's body into the tunic pockets and pulled out a
soldbuch
, its cover matted red with blood. He backed away from the body. From windows above, pale faces peered down at him, tracked him back into the car. He dumped himself back into the seat, breathing heavily, and tore the car away from that street and the tumble of bodies that lay across it.

He drove the wrong way down Kvaternik, racing the river as it hurled itself along its rocky bed. Where the road joined with King Alexander Street at Marijin Dvor, Reinhardt merged the car into a broken flow of vehicles all streaming west out of the city. On a building, a red flag suddenly bloomed from a window; from roofs men and women waved crimson banners back and forth. A crowd of children shrieked as they hurled stones at the vehicles as they passed, and rocks clanged off the
panzerfunkwagen
's armored sides. The edges of Sarajevo flickered past through the vehicle's viewports, the steps and pillars of the National Museum on the left, the long white walls of the barracks on the right, the graded lines of its roofs dark and gray beneath a smog of ash and fumes from the burning inside. A train was pulling out of the station as he sped past, its engine belching thick smoke in frantic bursts as it struggled to build up speed. Then the buildings were gone, and it was only open countryside to left and right, fields that spread and bowled up into the mounded lines of the hills to north and south.

Weaving in and out of the traffic, Reinhardt spotted what he was looking for and pulled the car off the road, bouncing it up a dirt track to where a low hill afforded a view back east. He turned the engine off, and there was a moment when there was nothing, no sound. He savored it, feeling the silence flowing up finally into the space he had made for it, and he climbed out of the car. He walked a little way, lighting a cigarette, one hand rubbing the swelling on his wrist, looking back at Sarajevo.

Under a tumult of clouds, the city lay under a gray pall of smoke that rose and eddied to the vagaries of the wind. The valley wore its shadows deep, the sun shining in great shafts through towering thunderheads, and these shafts caught the lines of the city in a luminous gray glow. Thick smoke lay to the north where the fighting was heaviest, the slopes alive with fire, tongues of orange flame that bled up into the sky. Beyond it all, the mountains lifted their folded shoulders in great furls of dark purple and green, the highest peaks still white with snow. He looked out across the rolling plain, over the chaos of vehicles along the thread of the road, saw how the colors of the grasses shifted as the wind and light passed over them, and heard the soft footstep behind him and the slow slide of a pistol's action.

“You have a choice, Frenchie,” Reinhardt said, taking a long pull on his cigarette. He looked at the glowing end of it, where it flared brightly in the wind that flowed over this little hill, turned his head slightly to see Benfeld behind and to one side, a pistol held quivering in an outstretched arm. “You don't need to do what they tell you anymore.”

“What do they tell me, Reinhardt?” Benfeld grated, and Reinhardt felt relief that Benfeld would talk.

“They tell you to look, and listen. To wait and watch. To go where they want, and do what they say.” Reinhardt turned to look fully at Benfeld, the burning city etched across the dappled horizon behind him. “They say these things because they have a hold over you. What was it? Your brother?” Benfeld's eyes flickered wide, narrow, twitching back and forth, and his mouth moved, his knuckles tightening white on the pistol. “What did they say?”

“They said . . . they could take him out of where he was. From that penal battalion, on the Eastern Front.”

“Who said these things, Benfeld?”

“A general. And . . . a judge. They said, if I didn't help them, they would make sure he never survived. They talked of my father, and my mother. They said they could do anything. The general, he boasted of . . . other things. Betrayals. The judge, he . . . blathered on about the future.”

“Oh, Benfeld.” Reinhardt shook his head. “You know that your brother is gone. Men don't survive penal battalions. Not in the east. It's what they're for.”

“So what?” The younger man began to break down. “What could I have said? They knew everything. Everything about me.”

“So you told them what I was doing?” Benfeld nodded. “Where I was going? All those things I asked you to do, you did not do them.”

“Yes.”

“You told them of Koenig.”

“Yes.”

“They killed him. He was my friend, and they killed him.”

“I am sorry,” Benfeld whispered.

“You used the radio in the city. You told them, you told someone, where I was.”

“I didn't . . .” He stopped under Reinhardt's eyes, and the heavy glance Reinhardt put behind them at the
panzerfunkwagen
's raised antenna.

“You couldn't even have known what I was doing. You could not even have known if it was about Jansky.”

“They told me ‘everything,' Reinhardt.
Everything
you do.”

“So you radioed it in? To whom?”

“It doesn't matter. They just said to call in where you went. I'm sorry, Reinhardt.”

“No, it's me. I suspected you. I thought you were the only one to watch out for, but there was another, and you slipped my gaze. If I had known the hold they had over you, I would not have brought you. You . . . we . . . cost a good man his life.”

“That Partisan?”

“That ‘Partisan' was none other than Valter, Benfeld, the Partisans' will-o'-the-wisp. Dead on the last day of his war. And now, you must make your choice.”

Benfeld shook, his mouth bunched, and his eyes clenched shut. His forearm went up, and he placed the back of the pistol against his forehead. Reinhardt felt what was coming, and was close enough when Benfeld slid the pistol under his own chin. Reinhardt placed his hand over the gun, gripping it tight and shifting it just enough.

“That is not the way, Frenchie,” he whispered. The two stood almost nose to nose, eye to eye. Benfeld strained at the gun; Reinhardt's wrist shook and throbbed. He felt Benfeld's strength through the strain of their arms and knew he could not stop him, whatever the young Feldjaeger decided to do.

“But it is. It is. It goes on forever, Reinhardt. How can you ever fight them?”

“By taking apart what you see in front of you. Stone by stone. Brick by brick. Piece by piece. And before you know it you have a hole in a wall.”

“What use is that?”

“A wall with a hole's not much of a wall,” said Reinhardt, a wry edge to his voice, pushing, searching for some crack in Benfeld's misery. “It's not men we fight or move against. It's a system. It's men as pieces on a board. But you can only play the hand you're dealt.”

“It . . . what does that even mean, Reinhardt?”

“I don't have all the answers. I don't even know if I make sense to myself. But it's about the beauty or danger of a system, Frenchie. Do you see? In a system, who is responsible? Who is to blame? And if you find no one man is to blame, whom do you seek out . . . ? You seek out the ones you can find. Start with that. Start small. The rest will come.”

Benfeld wiped an angry hand across his eyes. “You sound so sure. I want . . . to believe you.”

Reinhardt put his hand on the back of Benfeld's neck, butted their heads together. “Believe, Frenchie. I know where they are. I know what they've done. We can end this little bit. You and me, and the others. And you have already made your choice, on that street, when you covered me from the turret when the SS were firing at me. And you've made it here. Now.”

T
he door creaked softly as Reinhardt eased it open. The room inside was empty, only a pair of battered tables standing against bare concrete walls. It was warm, though; the outlines of an iron stove in the middle of the room shimmered through the mirage of its heat, and there was that smell, that tubercular reek. He closed the door softly behind him, standing, listening. From the opposite wall, windows let in yellow daylight, a view through warped panes of a large courtyard bounded by high brick walls.

He walked slowly over to a door that was slightly ajar, pushing it open. Inside, that smell was stronger, and a shape lay humped on a camp bed, covered in a gray blanket. Reinhardt touched it with a finger, gently at first, then a little harder, and the shape rolled over, thin shoulders dropping to the bed, a skeletal head following. Eyes blinked up at him, and a hand came out from under the covers and touched the red band around Reinhardt's wrist, then the gorget hanging from his throat.

“It's you,” the old colonel whispered. Pistorius.

Reinhardt nodded, unfolding the piece of paper with the bloodstain, and the names written across its fine grain in that flowing, old-fashioned script. The colonel's eyes blinked at it, then up at Reinhardt.

“You understood.”

“Yes,” said Reinhardt. “It was you. You sent Kreuz to me, as well, and gave him those
soldbuchs
.”

“Yes,” Pistorius breathed, struggling to sit up. Reinhardt slid a hand under his back, feeling the blade of his shoulders clearly through the colonel's tunic, but the man waved him away, collapsing back onto the bed and coughing. Pistorius turned his head, hacking wetly into a handkerchief already stained with red. “It was me,” he managed, finally. “It was my last . . . throw . . . in this game of theirs. My last chance. When I saw . . . saw you, I knew . . .” His voice faded out.

“They used you, too.”

“Yes. They used me. One . . . indiscretion. A woman. That was all. Used my reputation. And they said . . . they said they would keep my family safe. Safe. I was dying, anyway.” Pistorius's eyes flickered open and shut to the tortured rhythm of his breath.

Someone came into the other room, a quick tap of feet. Reinhardt stood slowly, then paused as the colonel's hand plucked at his.

“Is it over, now?”

Reinhardt nodded, and Pistorius went limp in his bed, a small sigh escaping. He walked quietly to the door, then stepped softly into the other room. There was a man standing there, bent over papers on one of the tables. The man turned, and his eyes flared wide in panic. It was written broad across his face, just for a moment, before he looked past Reinhardt, searching for others. The two of them faced off, the air crackling between them, before Jansky turned back to his papers. “Captain Reinhardt. What a surprise. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Major Jansky, you are under arrest . . .”

“Oh, please.”

“. . . for the murders of George Abler, Carl Benirschke, Otto—”

“You are persistent, Captain Reinhardt, I'll give you that.”

“You are a shit, Major Jansky. I'll give
you
that.”

Jansky laughed. “Careful, Reinhardt. You're speaking to a senior officer.”

“Major Jansky, you are under arrest for the murders of—”

“Oh, spare me, Reinhardt.” Jansky sneered. “You don't know what you're ta—”

He stopped as Reinhardt flipped Keppel's
soldbuch
at him, flicking it like a playing card. “I can't figure that one out. What was it? A first attempt?”

Jansky opened the
soldbuch
, tossed it back at Reinhardt, where it flopped open against his boots. “A first attempt at what, Reinhardt?”

“That must have been when you were trying to forge the books, before someone hit on the idea of just issuing replacements.” Reinhardt opened the bloodied
soldbuch
he had taken off
body. The name on the book was that of Ulrich Vierow, one of the names from the paper the colonel had given him, but it was
face that stared up at him in elegant profile. He snapped the book at Jansky, where it bounced off the Feldgendarme's chest. “You still needed the forger, I suppose. Signatures, stamps, some level of authenticity. You know
killed him?”

“Killed who, Reinhardt?” Jansky smiled, but it was taut and tight at the corners as he glanced at
book, then tossed it aside onto the table.

“Your forger. He's lying dead in the Pale House.”

“If you say so. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Who shot those three men in the forest?”

“Which men?” Jansky turned away, rifling through his papers.

“I'm fairly sure it was you, and Lieutenants Brandt and Metzler. If you didn't know it already, Metzler's out of it. I left him for dead in the archives at the barracks, and Erdmann committed suicide. I found the trial transcripts . . .”

He broke off as Jansky whirled around, a pistol in his hand and his arm extending straight, but Reinhardt had seen it and had sidled closer to Jansky as the other man had his back turned. He stepped inside the length of Jansky's arm, gripped and held it under his own, and stripped the gun from the Feldgendarme's hand and threw it away. Jansky yelped as the pistol twisted free, and Reinhardt's elbow pistoned into his face. He staggered away but then surged back, his nose streaming blood. He wriggled and struck like an eel, all elbows and knees and hands like blades as he came at Reinhardt. The two of them traded blows, Jansky's fast, jabbing high and low, Reinhardt's more measured, heavier, using elbows and knees as he struck back with all the mounting frustration and anger he had been holding in, beating Jansky down until he swept his legs from under him and stunned him flat with a kick to the side of the head.

He stood over the Feldgendarme, breathing like a bellows and starting to feel the sting and swell of Jansky's blows where they lay over the ones Bunda had inflicted, feeling the cracked pain of his wrist most of all. Jansky pushed himself into a corner and slumped up into it, his eyes the rolling crescents of something beaten. The two of them glared at each other, and then Jansky leaned to one side, worked his mouth, and swore as he spat a tooth to the floor. Reinhardt watched the tooth bounce away, his mind jarring, and just for a moment he was back in that cell with the Gestapo and he envisoned his own tooth rattling across a floor of mismatched tiles.

“Listen, Reinhardt,” said Jansky, a finger in his mouth as he felt along its new geometry. “You're a good investigator. Whatever it all is, you found it all out. Bravo.”

“This is where it ends, Jansky.”

“
What
ends?” Jansky laughed, blood dribbling down his chin, and he sniffed back on his nose.

Reinhardt breathed in, long and slow, pursed his lips. “Very well,” he replied. He walked back to the door through which he had entered and made a wave with his hand. Moments later, Colonel Scheller's broad bulk cut across the door frame, Captain Lainer ducking beneath the lintel. The three Feldjaeger stared at Jansky, and the man's chin bunched, and he shifted with the nerves he must have been feeling.

Scheller glanced at his watch. “It is almost time, is it not?”

“Time for what?” Jansky asked, suspicion writ broad across his features. Behind the fan of blood across the bottom of his face, he had gone very white.

“Oh, I don't know. How about a roll call?” Scheller nodded to Lainer. The tall Feldjaeger strode past to the door to the courtyard, and Jansky quailed away from the look that must have been in his eyes. From outside, the strains of a bugle could be heard, and then the sound of men, hundreds of them, falling in across the courtyard, the sounds of their boots and the shuffle of their feet rising to an echoing din, then fading away.

“What are you doing? Reinhardt?”

“Putting an end to this charade, Jansky. Get up.”

“Reinhardt,” Jansky hissed, his eyes pinned on Reinhardt. “You don't get to have the cake and eat it. There are too many people in this.”

“So there is something.”

Jansky shook his head, eyes narrowing in frustration. “Most of these people are senior to you and me. So”—he ran a hand across his mouth—“pat yourself on the back. You've royally fucked things up for a lot of people. But just what do you think happens next?”

Reinhardt hauled Jansky to his feet and prodded him outside, into the luminous light of the early morning. Around the courtyard, the Zenica steelworks towered. Smokestacks and chimneys, girders and grids of reddened iron, and everywhere a stench of rust, and coal, and a granular feel to the air, as if it crept inside to coat men's innards with a flouring of dust and filth. Around three walls of the courtyard the men of the penal battalion were drawn up in ranks, a listless sense to their stance even though they stood at attention, but confusion in their faces as they looked at Scheller and Lainer, and behind them Jansky with his bloodied face, Reinhardt close against him. Scheller waved one arm, and the walls of the courtyard were suddenly lined with men, more pouring in through the gates, and the ranks of the penal battalion shifted, lost their cohesion as they bunched away from the newcomers. It was over in seconds, and the penal battalion was ringed with Feldjaeger.