The Divided City

by Luke McCallin

  “And now?”

  “And now I’m here,” the man said, raising his hands around him. “Lab technician, again. But a nurse most of the time. People need nurses, and no one asks questions.”

  “This place is an air force hospital.”

  “It was,” said Endres, the first thing he had said. Even seated, Professor Endres seemed ramrod straight, as if clenched tight around the strictures of his self-possession. “It’s just a hospital, now.”

  Reinhardt felt soiled. “What happened to Rascher?”

  “He’s dead. He was executed at Dachau. He went too far with something or other. His Nazism was only equaled by his ego and desire for self-aggrandizement. Well, that was a dangerous game to play with our leaders. You played, you won. You played, you lost. All right? He lost. I don’t know what he did, but whatever it was, they put him up against a wall and shot him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The man nodded. “I was still at Dachau when they did it. May 1945.”

  “What about the other one in the photo?”

  “That’s Colonel Noell. He was more on the operations side. He was based somewhere else. Up north, I think. I don’t know where. He would take Rascher’s experimental results and operationalize them.”

  “‘Colonel’ Noell? You’re sure? Not ‘Captain’?”

  “Colonel,” the man said, nodding. “The other brother was the captain.”

  34

  Noell had a brother.

  Reinhardt cycled the darkened streets, his mind as mazed as the ruins.

  Noell had a brother. A twin brother.

  Ochs and Uthmann and the others at the apartment who had remarked on Noell’s mood changes. On his behavior. It was because there were two of them.

  A captain and a colonel.

  Andreas Noell, the pilot. Theodor Noell, the doctor.

  And one a cripple, unfit for duty.

  God, why had he not seen it sooner . . . ?

  It explained the gaps in Noell’s soldbuch. The man at the hospital had confirmed that Andreas had flown for a test unit. A unit that tested what Theodor developed. It meant Theodor had pulled his brother out of front-line service. It meant the other pilots, Prellberg and Gareis, had gone with him when he left IV./JG56, before it became a night-fighter unit.

  The light fell further, the streets sinking into gloom as Berlin’s ruins etched a serrated line across a sky tangled with clouds, limbed and lined with the furnace glow of the setting sun, as if a new world were being cast up above them. Reinhardt switched on his flashlight, holding it balanced across the handlebars as he pedaled on. It wobbled a vague patch of light along the road ahead and he fixed his mind on it, ignoring the pain in his knee.

  The technician had talked and talked, a sewage spill of memories and names. One of the names was known to Reinhardt. Haber. The man who had “drowned” in Hamburg. The technician had seen him several times with Theodor Noell running experiments in Dachau. Another name was Lütjens. A doctor. There had been someone called Cohausz, another researcher. Other men he remembered, but no names.

  The gates of the house were open when he arrived. He managed the last few feet before coming to an unsteady stop, crouching over the bicycle’s frame and breathing hard and heavy, feeling sweat cooling all over him. He leaned the bicycle against the wall by the door and rang the bell. He pulled himself together, wanting a cigarette very badly.

  “I hope you have a good explanation for this,” von Vollmer said, as he opened the door, his face drawn with disdain as he stared down at Reinhardt. “Otherwise I can assure you, your career is as good as finished.”

  “Is he here?” There was no reply, only a tautening of the disdainful lines on von Vollmer’s face, and so Reinhardt stepped into the house. As he did, another shape angled out of the light and a heavy hand came to rest on Reinhardt’s shoulder.

  “Mr. von Vollmer, while you may feel yourself sufficiently well-protected to try and brush me off, I can assure you that your driver is not.” Reinhardt looked into the driver’s face. The man was big enough, heavy around the shoulders, but the mood Reinhardt was in, he knew that if something started now, he would not be able to control himself. “Therefore, I advise you to tell him to get his hand off me before I break it, and to leave us alone, and for you and me and Mr. Bochmann to have that discussion.”

  Von Vollmer grunted something at the driver. “Follow me,” he snapped at Reinhardt. He followed von Vollmer to another room in the large house where Bochmann stood before a marble fireplace. The room was decorated with damascened wallpaper, and old leather tomes filled shelves of highly varnished wood. Lamps with opaque glass shades shaped like seashells or waves stood on small tables. It was surreal, the echoes of a former world, as if the building reverberated gently to its own past. The two of them—von Vollmer and Bochmann—stood side by side, falling effortlessly into their roles of commander and executive officer.

  “Now, Inspector, you will explain . . .”

  “Jürgen,” Reinhardt interrupted von Vollmer. “He was probably murdered on Monday night. He was not part of your factory, or your workforce, but he was a veteran of the Night Hawks, and of IV./JG56 before that. He came all the way from Cologne for more than the possibility of a commercial deal.” The two of them had gone very still. “Zuleger worked for you. He was killed on Friday night. He had an invitation for the Saturday to a gathering at your aunt’s ‘lodge,’” Reinhardt said, putting a little emphasis on the word. “Noell did not work for you. But he was at the celebration on Saturday night. And I found materials—pamphlets, manifestos—at his apartment that were the same or similar to those I found at Zuleger’s. Gentlemen, I reiterate: I am not interested in the politics of what you are doing. But I do need to know what you are doing. No more obfuscation.”

  The butler chose that moment to enter the room. Perhaps the old man felt the atmosphere, perhaps not. He poured three tumblers of whiskey, handing them to each man with a white-gloved hand. Bochmann was the one who finally began to speak, once the butler had left them, the door closing on the room with a murmur and click of wood.

  “You know, Inspector, of the situation of veterans of the German armed forces. Devoid of any purpose, bereft of any support, denied all rights . . . they are desperate, downtrodden, the scapegoats of all that went wrong. Living embodiments of the Führer’s failure, or the walking proof of their inability to kill or remove him.

  “The war has ended, and much has changed, and yet much remains the same. People like Mr. von Vollmer,” he said, indicating the Junker who stood stiffly next to him, expressionless, “with resources and a position independent of his military service, found themselves in positions similar to those of the days of the aristocracy: dispensing protection and largesse. Veterans began to coalesce around him. For solidarity. For comfort. But above all, for their very survival, but their attempts to organize themselves were disrupted by the Allies. Laws and directives were issued that forbade the association of veterans.

  “The situation of all these men was difficult, intolerable even. You must know this, Inspector. Depression and suicides are rife in the ranks of the demobilized. The situation is worse for the widows, the orphans, who are denied the pensions and disabilities their husbands and fathers so dearly won. Veterans from the first war, even, veterans who served between the wars, are also similarly bereft.”

  “Indeed,” grated von Vollmer, and his eyes were splintered with his outrage. “You must know this yourself, Inspector. Where, I ask you, is the justice in bereaving a man of his pension, whose only crime was to serve his country in the trenches? Of the rights of his children to their health and education?” Reinhardt said nothing. Von Vollmer spoke truly. Reinhardt’s first war pension was gone, as was his right to wear his medals. He had never thought he would miss the presence of his Iron Cross on his left breast, but its absence had left behind . . . something. Something more
like a mark, if it could be possible to mark something no longer there.

  “Such is the situation bequeathed us by the Allies,” Bochmann said softly. “And so, we began to organize ourselves. We decided to start bringing our former comrades together. It took some time, some months, but eventually I was able to track down everyone we could, and when finally we had found them, we decided to invite them to Berlin, to hold a gathering.”

  “You used the one-year anniversary of the factory as the excuse.”

  “Yes,” Bochmann said.

  “You called it the Ritterfeld Association.”

  “Yes,” Bochmann said, again, a slight frown on his face at that knowledge of Reinhardt’s. “So they came. The pilots of III./NJG64 and IV./JG56, together again after nearly three years. Together in comradeship. Together in solidarity, renewing old bonds and forging new ones.”

  Reinhardt shook his head slightly. “Mr. Bochmann, although I can . . . see . . . why you did what you did, it nevertheless was and is illegal.” He stopped, looked from face to face, and felt something surge up inside of him. “There is a reason veterans like ourselves maybe cannot or should not associate. I will tell you something of myself. I was with the Abwehr, with military intelligence, and then I was a military policeman, with the Feldjäegerkorps. I saw . . . terrible things. I did not stop them. Perhaps . . . I could not have. But I will never know because I tried my best not to be involved in them.

  “Later, I gained the power, and the courage, to oppose what I could, where and when I could. But I learned one thing, above all. I learned that cooperation need not always spring fully formed from our breasts for it to be cooperation. Those who turn away, who stay silent, they, too, cooperate. We all, gentlemen,” he said, his eyes swinging from von Vollmer to Bochmann and back again, “we all, willing or not, duped or not, were part of a terrible enterprise. And some suffering for that is inevitable.”

  “Dear God. Next you’ll be saying it may even be beneficial,” von Vollmer sneered.

  “Maybe it is.” Reinhardt tilted his tumbler to the light, watching the gentle play of light through the facets of its crystal. “Didn’t the Nazis say that great suffering would be needed for victory? Weren’t we all called upon to pay the highest price, if need be? So why should it be any different in defeat? We were willing enough to undergo pain in pursuit of victory. We should not be surprised at pain as payment for our failures.”

  “You sound like a damned Catholic,” snorted von Vollmer.

  “Well, I’m certainly one of the two things you accuse me of, sir,” Reinhardt replied. He put his glass down, untouched. “But like I said, your politics do not interest me insofar as they do not connect to this case. I do not wish to veer into arguments over reasons and ethics. I want simply to know why I have four dead bodies connected to your Group. I think you know more than you are telling me about the Ritterfeld Association. I think that someone is killing members of it. And not just any members. There is something linking the victims beyond service in the same Group or squadron. So I ask you,” he said, laying out his notes from the night before with his lists, “what linked these men to each other that someone is killing them, other than that they had served together?”

  Bochmann and von Vollmer leaned forward, their eyes going over the names. They must have seen something, because they both straightened, looking up at him. “Where did you get these names from?” von Vollmer breathed.

  “From the WASt.”

  “You’ve been in the WASt?” Von Vollmer sat back with a pert twist of his lips, shaking his head. Bochmann stayed longer, seeming to strain over the papers, but he, too, sat back, apparently defeated.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. I don’t know. And I feel I should, I, who was with the Group almost the whole way through the war.” The silt of his eyes was watery with something. Regret, perhaps? Chagrin?

  “Do either of you know anything of this?” Reinhardt asked, laying down the photograph he had found in Noell’s apartment, what he now knew to be a human experiment. “No guesses? What about a man named Carlsen? A man named Boalt?”

  “Nothing, Inspector,” said von Vollmer. “I am not sure what more use we can be to your inquiries.”

  “I will let you know when I feel the same, sir,” Reinhardt said, a little more waspishly than he would otherwise have wanted, but his irritation at himself was softened when he saw a smile flitter across Bochmann’s mouth and twinkle in the muddy darkness of his eyes.

  “Need I remind you, Inspector, that I am . . .”

  “Not without friends. Yes, you’ve told me, Mr. von Vollmer. Feel free to pick up the telephone to General Nares at any time.”

  “How? How do you . . . ?”

  “Know? I guessed.” Reinhardt threw a little caution to the winds, taking a sudden perverse pleasure in poking and prodding the Junker’s archaic authority. “There’s a framed photograph behind your desk of yourself with the British commandant. I’m sure there’s one of you and General Keating around somewhere as well. Perhaps one of General Kotikov, too,” Reinhardt said, listing the commanders of the American and Soviet sectors. “Perhaps not General Ganeval, though. I don’t imagine you and the French go down that well together.”

  “You impudent . . .”

  “Yes, I’ve been called that, too,” Reinhardt interrupted.

  “Perhaps, Inspector, you and I could examine your names further,” Bochmann interjected, in a low voice.

  “Capital idea!” said von Vollmer, clapping Bochmann on the shoulder, his face flushed. “Stay here and work, by all means. I, for one, have an engagement. And perhaps some telephone calls,” he said, darkly, darting meaningful eyes at Reinhardt. “The butler will look after you, so, by your leave, Inspector . . . ?”

  For the next hour or so, Bochmann and Reinhardt compared notes. Bochmann confirmed that all the men killed so far were in IV./JG56 together, but would not be drawn on whether they were all together at the same time. Pilots came and went, he said, transferred in and out, went on leave, were injured, were killed. It had been a long time since the war, longer still since he might have had any reason to remember which men flew in the squadron and when. On Reinhardt’s reasoning—that the one thing in common the dead men had that he had found so far was service in North Africa—Bochmann would not be drawn.

  To Reinhardt’s eyes, though, Bochmann was clearly uneasy about something, but he would not reveal it, insisting he had to check things against his own lists.

  But on one thing he was clear.

  “Gareis is alive,” he said, pointing at the name. “He was shot down during the war, and for a long time believed dead, but during our inquiries for the association, we discovered he was living in the Soviet zone and not answering our messages. I myself went out to see him. He’s living on a small farm, and told me he wanted nothing to do with the association.”

  “How many of these men on my lists were invited to your association’s meeting?”

  “I would have to check, Inspector.” Bochmann’s eyes quivered, clouding up. “The association’s list . . . well, you will understand it is private.”

  “This is a murder investigation, Mr. Bochmann. I will need to see that list.”

  “Of course. Only, I would ask you be discreet with it.”

  “How did you put it together? I mean, it can’t have been easy. It must have taken time.”

  “It did. We started with those we knew of. Those for whom we had contacts. That is why Jürgen’s death is . . . so shocking. He was one of the first we contacted. One of the first ones we found. He was still living at his old address. He put us in touch with another. We found others, they put us in contact with more. And so on.”

  “So, how many did you find, in the end?”

  “There were a few who were contacted by us, but who either never answered, were untraceable, or who had died during the war . . .” Bochmann paused, hesitated,
as if finally realizing something. “Or who had passed away.” He showed a sudden moment of panic. It passed like a glimmer of light across the muddy glaze of his eyes, but he calmed himself quickly. “We were never informed of any murders.”

  “How about deaths? Were you informed of those?”

  “Only one of them was what you might think suspicious,” Bochmann answered, a light of reminiscence in his eyes. “From early 1946. A death in Bad Oeynhausen. You know it?”

  “It’s a spa town in western Germany. Better known for being the British Occupation Authority’s headquarters,” said Reinhardt.

  “Yes. Well, we only classed that one as suspicious because we received a letter from the pilot’s son that hinted at some kind of scandal or cover-up.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “That was all we ever knew. The son wanted nothing to do with us, and we had no means to search further into his accusations.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Prellberg.”

  “The second squadron’s commanding officer?” Bochmann nodded. “He was demoted during the war. Do you remember? He was also transferred with Noell and Gareis.” Bochmann frowned, his head cocking slightly to one side, then he nodded, hesitantly. “How did you find Noell?”