“It seems . . .” trembled, her arms tightening spasmodically around Reinhardt as she looked at Bunda’s body, “it seems like forever that he was there. Always there. Always looking . . . at . . . me. I knew . . . I felt . . .”
“We cannot stay here.”
nodded, rose unsteadily to her feet, smoothing down the twisted folds of her clothes. Neven rose with her, holding hard to her side. “A moment,” she whispered, taking the boy out of the room with her. Reinhardt twisted one knee underneath him, tugged Neven’s knife free, and pushed himself up. He paused, then lifted Bunda’s jacket. He laid it over the table and dug through its pockets, his fingers closing around something smooth. He paused again, then took out a soldbuch. He stared at its tan cover, swallowed, then opened it, letting out a long, slow breath.
A picture of Bunda stared up at him, a profile in angle, the head turned to the right. His hair was combed, his face serious. On the facing page were all the particulars of a soldier named Carl Benirschke, from Marburg in Slovenia.
“I am ready.”
Reinhardt turned. stood with her coat on, Neven close beside her. She pointed her eyes at the soldbuch as Reinhardt put it into his bag.
“Part of what needs to hear,” he said as he wiped the knife on Bunda’s shirt. He looked at Neven, then offered him back the knife, but the boy shook his head, and Reinhardt put it carefully on the table, then holstered his pistol. He picked up the StG 44 from the hallway, then led them downstairs. She froze at the entrance at the sight of the armored car, shied back as Benfeld jumped down, his face narrowing as he took Reinhardt in.
“Fucki . . . bloody hell, sir. What the hell happened?”
“Never mind, Frenchie. We’ve got two passengers.”
Benfeld’s mouth worked, but he nodded. “It’ll be a squeeze, but we’ll manage.”
“I must ride in the turret,” said . She shook her head as both Reinhardt and Benfeld made to protest. “I must. If the Partisans see me, they will not fire. And we must hope any Germans or Ustaše will be too surprised to open fire immediately.”
With much grumbling, Benfeld dropped down into the car, where he squeezed himself into the back. Reinhardt helped up, where she took two long strips of red cloth from her pocket. He gave her a last look, which she returned coolly, saying nothing, and he urged Neven into the car, the boy wedging himself behind the driver’s seat. Reinhardt looked up at where she perched with her back against the turret rim.
“You need to head toward the theater,” said. “I can’t promise he’ll be there. If he’s not, we can ask.”
Reinhardt drove fast through the narrow streets, his knee twitching painfully on the clutch and his injured wrist jarring on the wheel, hoping their luck would hold out, and although they heard a lot of gunfire, most of it was clearly to the east and north. Only once did they come across the remnants of any fighting, Reinhardt slowing and bumping the car over a meager barricade of rubble and paving stones where a handful of bodies in civilian clothing scattered across the road. Once, faces peered at them from the windows of a building at the end of the street, the slivers of rifles poking out and down, but shouted something and the faces cheered, arms reaching out to pump the air.
Reinhardt raced the car down Kvaternik, past the frothy skirl of the river, up to the theater. He braked at shout, and men emerged from the side streets, heavily armed, to slow and surround the car. From inside, through the vehicle’s viewports, Reinhardt watched their faces, dark with suspicion and mistrust even as talked to them, until a tall man stepped through their midst, and he recognized Simo. The Partisan called up to , and then his eyes swiveled to the viewports—all the Partisans’ eyes did—a collective shift as men turned, tightened their stance.
Reinhardt turned off the engine and pushed open the door. He led with his hands, shifting his body awkwardly to climb out of the car to stand with his arms up and out. Even though they were forewarned, there was still a hush from the Partisans, men shifting away from him. Simo stepped in close, removing Reinhardt’s pistol. The Partisan shook his head, something rueful in his eyes as he looked down at Reinhardt, eyes flicking to Neven as the boy slithered out.
“Impressive, Captain. And resourceful,” he said, looking up at .
“I need to see . I have that information he wanted.”
Simo’s eyes rose and his head went back, and then he nodded. “Your car stays here.”
“I have a man inside. I don’t want him harmed.”
“If he does nothing foolish, he will not be.”
“Frenchie.” Reinhardt put his head in the car. “You stay put.”
Benfeld’s eyes were wide as he stared through the viewports, then at him. “Sir? What the hell is going on?”
“Unfinished business, Lieutenant. Stay put.”
Reinhardt followed Simo into the building, and Neven at his side, a pair of Partisans bringing up the rear. The Partisans led him into the hushed warren of tunnels and passages, moving up and across and through buildings rendered silent by the noise from outside. At the top of the ladder, Reinhardt climbed awkwardly around his injured hand into that same attic where Simo had brought him the first time to meet , the space brightly lit by the light that poured in from the skylights. Almost empty the first time, the space was a veritable war room now, with a radio and a bank of telephones, maps and charts festooned across the walls. The bustle of men froze as they saw him pull himself up behind Simo, and then the crowd opened out and stood up from a table. The Partisan breathed out heavily, then nodded to the other men and the bustle renewed itself. He walked over to Reinhardt, his eyes narrowing as first , then Neven pulled themselves up into the attic.
“You have something for me?”
Reinhardt nodded, twisting his bag around off his shoulder. “I know where they are going. The Ustaše. The ones you are interested in.” eyes lit up, his gaze following Reinhardt’s hands as he pulled out three soldbuchs. Reinhardt opened the one he had taken from Bunda, his hands covering the first page, showing only the photo to and Simo. “Who is that?”
The Partisans’ eyes narrowed as they looked at the picture of Bunda. “Picku materinu,” muttered. “That is Bunda.”
“No,” said Reinhardt, “it is Corporal Carl Benirschke. Who is this?” he asked, holding up a second soldbuch, one of those he had taken from the Albanians he had killed.
“That is . . . Pero Labaš.”
“Wrong. This is Sergeant Marius Maywald. This?”
The Partisans reacted strongly. “That is Branimir Zulim. The torturer. Bunda’s right hand.”
“Wrong again. This is Private George Abler. But you don’t have to worry about him. He’s dead. The Ustaše killed him themselves.”
“Are you sure?” hissed , his eyes fixed on Abler’s soldbuch.
“A scar down the side of his head and neck, here? He’s very dead. I suspect Bunda killed him because Zulim had drawn too much attention to himself. He was the one,” Reinhardt said, turning to , “who arrested the survivors of that massacre in the forest. The old man and the old woman.”
“Bunda killed him?”
“And I killed Bunda.”
“You killed Bunda?” and Simo exchanged glances. “You killed Bunda. How? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Reinhardt replied, feeling eyes on him, and his stomach heaved, a heavy roll of memory at that fight in her apartment.
fingered through the soldbuchs. “What does this mean, Reinhardt?”
“When you spoke to me of the Ustaše vanishing, I did not know what to think. You told me of the Albanians you captured, with uniforms with no insignia. I knew they were uniforms from a penal battalion, and I was already looking at the battalion because of my investigation into the murders of three Feldjaeger, and the discovery of five bodies near where they had been killed. I found out men were disappearing from this battalion. Just vanishing. Everywhere,
it seemed, I was finding bodies, or hearing of people vanishing, and no one knew where, or how, or why.
“That same night I met you, the Ustaše were waiting for me downstairs.” nodded. “Bunda showed me four Ustaše he said you—the Partisans—had killed and mutiliated. One of them was this Zulim, now called Abler. Bunda brought me to . He showed me all the bodies in the Pale House, all the people the Ustaše had taken and killed, and he told me how, if he needed someone to vanish, he would just order it done and not hide it. All this showing, and all I could think was, ‘What is he hiding?’ I asked myself, what is the best way to hide something?” He looked from one to the other. “You hide it in plain sight. You hide it right in front of you.”
“You . . .” paused. “You are telling me the Ustaše are hiding by going into the German Army.”
“More than that. I found out quite quickly that this penal battalion we talked of had many foreigners in it. And many of those foreigners had a past, one that would never let them be. I thought some of the Ustaše would take that same route, and I was right and wrong. Some are taking that route. Some kind of cabal, a small group. But they are not just becoming drivers, or cooks. They are becoming someone else.” He took the books back from , holding them up. “They are becoming these men. These men—the real men—were killed. Executed. Their bodies destroyed—by fire, by disfigurement—so their identities could be adopted by these men, these Ustaše.”
“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 Ustaše 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 Ustaše 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.
The window was open, and a cold wind slapped at his face and collar with the frenzy of an injured bird. The skylight was angled in such a way that he could see down the roof and look along a strip of the opposite sidewalk. To one side he saw the end of the street where the panzerfunkwagen was parked with its square antenna mounted in the upright position, the machine gun in the turret making an angled line at the sky. To the other side there was nothing, only an empty cross street. On the roofs as far as he could see nothing moved, and the sky was empty but for hanging black threads, birds and scavengers that rode the high winds.
He frowned at the sky.
Something was not right.
Reinhardt stubbed his cigarette out on the window frame. As he turned, he caught sight of motion, down the road where there had been nothing. He craned his neck out and saw trucks pull to a stop, men in uniforms piling out. He was not sure, but from here, they looked like SS troopers, and he knew a company of them had been left as part of the rear guard. A quick glance back at the panzerfunkwagen, and he pulled his head back into the room as the door burst open, and Partisans poured in.
The newcomers were all excitement, a raucous blare of information. stood and listened, then straightened, and then he and and Simo were looking at him, and Simo was striding across the room.
“Did you betray us?” He gripped Reinhardt’s coat, pulled him close. “Did you betray us?!”
“No! What are you talking about?”
“Germans in the streets. And Ustaše. All coming here. How would they know we are here?”
“I don’t know!” protested Reinhardt.
“Izlazite svi!” snapped .
The room exploded into motion at his order, Reinhardt watching maps coming down, weapons gathered up, last messages passed ove
r the radio and telephones, and then the Partisans were pouring out of the room, out the door, down the ladder, out the windows on the opposite side to the street. Simo peered out the skylight, looking both ways, and when he ducked back in his face was grim.
“They are everywhere down there,” he said, and his eyes flicked at Reinhardt.
“I had nothing to do with it,” Reinhardt repeated. “Anyway, they do not know what you look like, do they?”
“No. But they might know what you look like,” said , ducking his head through the strap of an MP 40. “So this is good-bye, Captain. And thank you.” He paused, then offered his hand. “Be safe, Reinhardt.”
“I will go with the captain,” said . and Simo just nodded, and then they were moving. Simo handed Reinhardt’s pistol, and he was following out the window, and the space was empty, suddenly.
“Back the way we came,” said . She handed Reinhardt back his pistol, and she was moving, as if she wished to preempt any word she and Reinhardt might have shared. She started down the ladder, Neven darting in front of her. Back down, back through the tunnels, the walls now echoing to shouts, orders, the stamp of feet and, once, a burst of gunfire and a woman’s scream. At the hidden door, paused, listening. She turned to Reinhardt, her eyes wide, and Reinhardt heard it as well, the clatter of feet behind them, and and Simo pushed into the small space with them.
“No way out,” breathed.
There were no words, only the labored breath of the Partisans.
“I can try to get you out,” said Reinhardt. They looked at him. “I can take you prisoner. I am a Feldjaeger. No one will stop me or countermand my orders.”
The Pale House Page 33