The Man from Berlin

by Luke McCallin

  Reinhardt paused, then related the incident in the bar. Woodenly. No expression. At the end of it, Claussen just stared at him and shook his head slightly.

  ‘What does that mean?’ hissed Reinhardt through tight lips, life surging back into his voice. ‘I didn’t ask to get dragged into entertaining a bunch of colonels like that.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Claussen replied, imperturbable in the face of Reinhardt’s anger. What was it about sergeants and their ability to do that to him? Brauer had had the same effect on him. Like a father staring down a guilty son, although Reinhardt was sure he had never managed that same stare with Friedrich. Perhaps, if he had been able to, things between them might have been different. ‘But you didn’t walk away from it, either.’ The two of them stared at each other, but it was Claussen who stepped back. ‘Will you be needing anything else for the time being, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Reinhardt. ‘Find out who Peter Krause was. Is. I’ve no rank, but I’m guessing he was a lieutenant like Hendel. You are dismissed for now.’

  With Claussen gone, Reinhardt had nothing to occupy his mind while he waited for the inevitable summons from Freilinger. He unfolded his map, stared at it, put it away, unfolded it again, and added Stolić to the names on it, linking it to Vukić’s, thinking of the way Dragan described Stolić and his knife. He checked in on Maier and Weninger. He found Weninger this time, a small and taciturn man, who pointed at Hendel’s sorted files with a pencil and had his head back down in his own material as Reinhardt walked out with them back up to his office. There was a lot going on in the building. Frantic last-minute arrangements for Schwarz, mostly. Reinhardt passed through it, feeling detached, alone.

  Hendel’s material was not much, Reinhardt thought, as he looked at the stack of paper and cardboard standing in the middle of his desk, but he should have looked at it earlier himself. He checked that it was ordered chronologically and then began to go through the files one after the other, starting with Hendel’s activity log. Hendel’s work was internal army security. He had made log entries fairly regularly upon arrival in Sarajevo at the end of December, but they had begun to tail off around the beginning of March. Flipping through the log, he saw no references to Vukić. He went back through the log more carefully, looking for euphemisms, initials, some kind of internal code, and found nothing.

  He sat back, drumming his fingers quietly on the desktop, not sure what to make of that absence. He lifted the case files one by one, glancing at the titles as he went. A couple were for operations he knew of, mostly targeting the Croatian Army for Partisan infiltrators or leaks. Unlike the Ustaše, the Croatian Army – the Domobranstvo – was not what anyone would call ideologically inclined or committed and suffered high rates of desertion and low levels of morale, particularly among its Bosnian Muslim conscripts. Most of the Croats in its ranks were from Croatia proper, far from home and desperately homesick. At the command level there was a sustained level of mutual loathing and distrust between the Domobrantsvo’s officers and the Ustaše. In that, they were not too different from the way many German officers felt about the SS. Some of the files had the names and ranks of soldiers on them, mostly Germans, none of whom he knew, and none above the rank of major, with the exception of one file belonging to a colonel of the Domobranstvo, one Tihomir Grbić.

  Out of interest more than anything else, Reinhardt opened the file, which, from the date stamped on the cover, was one of the last files that Hendel opened before his death. The case against Grbić seemed to be one of cowardice in the face of the enemy. He scanned down the front page, and the name of Standartenführer Mladen Stolić leaped out at him. Reinhardt flipped to the after-action report, which stated that Grbić’s men had failed to press home an attack against the Partisans made in conjunction with units from the 7th SS. It was not the first time Grbić’s men had failed in action, but from reading over a summary of Grbić’s service record, it was clear the man himself was anything but a coward. He had served with the Croatian Army in the USSR until he was seriously wounded in the fighting around Stalingrad. The man was a veteran, thought Reinhardt. It was his troops, all new and mostly conscripts, who were probably unwilling. That seemed to be the emerging gist of Hendel’s investigation, such as it was recorded in the file.

  Reinhardt sat back, not knowing what, if anything, to make of this. There was a clear connection from Hendel to Stolić, and from them both to Vukić. It was clear Stolić knew of, and disliked, Hendel. What was wrong here? Too obvious, perhaps? Too clear a link? For a moment, he seemed to hear his old probationary officer’s voice. It’s the little things, Gregor. Always the little things. Where was the little thing in this, he wondered, seeing Claussen appear at the door.

  ‘What do you have, Sergeant?’ Reinhardt asked, shaking an Atikah loose from a packet.

  ‘Lieutenant Peter Krause, sir,’ said Claussen, stepping into the room and reading from the page. He passed through the beam of light, the light snapping and dividing around him, sending the motes of dust into a new frenzy of movement. ‘Works in transportation. Movement supply officer. Been posted here since June last year.’ He passed the paper across Reinhardt’s desk.

  Reinhardt scanned down the handwritten notes. ‘They’ve reported him missing?’ he asked as he lit his cigarette.

  ‘Reported missing to the Feldgendarmerie yesterday morning.’

  ‘And yet we know Becker’s been looking for him since Sunday.’ Reinhardt snapped back in his chair, staring hard at Claussen. He clicked his fingers and pulled his cigarette from his mouth, pointing his fingers at the sergeant. ‘That’s where I know Krause’s name from. The list of deserters and wanted men. He was on that list I saw in the Feldgendarmerie’s HQ while I was waiting to see Becker yesterday afternoon.’ He twisted his mouth in an ironic smile. ‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered. He took a long drag on the cigarette, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs.

  ‘One interesting thing, sir,’ said Claussen. He leaned over the desk and pointed to the bottom of the page. ‘Krause is Volksdeutsche. His mother was Slovenian. He speaks the language.’

  Reinhardt nodded. ‘So if he’s gone to ground, he’ll get by a lot easier than we would.’ He trailed off, twisting around to look at the map again, imagining where someone like Krause might run to from Ilidža. Not only where, but to whom. He glanced back at the files on his desk. What would Hendel, an Abwehr officer on post here less than five months, be doing with a lieutenant of transportation troops? What was the link between them? There had to be one, beyond the fact that the pair of them seemed to like to drink and chase skirts together.

  ‘Captain Reinhardt?’ A corporal stood in the door at attention. ‘Major Freilinger’s compliments, sir, and you are requested to report to him immediately.’

  ‘Inform the major I will be there directly.’ Reinhardt stood, tugging his uniform into place, and breathed out heavily through pursed lips as he stubbed his cigarette out. He exchanged a glance with Claussen, who looked back at him expressionlessly. ‘Wish me luck,’ Reinhardt muttered, walking out.

  15

  Freilinger’s offices were one floor up, in the corner looking west along King Aleksander Street. The sun was low, barely over Mount Igman, and the light was short and bright. Freilinger was standing at his window again. He looked around, moved his mouth around as if there were something in it, then motioned Reinhardt to take the seat in front of the desk and turned to look back out.

  ‘There’s something about this city. In the evenings,’ Freilinger said, the rasp in his voice low and leathery. ‘Sometimes it seems like a labyrinth. No way out. And then, there’s times like this when it seems there’s openness and light.’ Reinhardt looked at Freilinger, hearing the echo of thoughts he had had himself, so often, since he first came here. Freilinger was looking out the window, into the light. His eyes, always so pale, were almost invisible, and with a lurch Reinhardt saw Freilinger’s face as he saw it in his nightmares, awash in the b
laze from the fire, and he stiffened in his seat as he imagined the acrid stench of smoke. He looked down, breathing slow and deep to cover his fear, and when he looked up Freilinger was staring hard at him.

  ‘Reinhardt, was I not clear enough last night?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Freilinger walked back to his desk, never shifting his gaze. ‘Do not “sir” me like some damned sergeant,’ he snapped. ‘Was I not clear enough last night?’

  ‘You were, sir,’ said Reinhardt.

  ‘Remind me, what was it I was clear about?’

  ‘That I was not to go pestering officers about this investigation.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Freilinger. ‘And so why,’ he shouted, with a hoarse roar, slamming his hand on the desktop, ‘do I find myself dealing with a half dozen complaints about your inappropriate behaviour this afternoon in the officers’ mess? Accusations. Insinuations.’ He picked up a piece of paper by its corner. ‘Alibis? For Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Sir, if I may explain?’

  ‘It was a rhetorical question, Reinhardt,’ replied Freilinger. ‘I’m not interested in explanations. I’m only interested in dealing with the consequences, which so far,’ he said, fingering through some of the pages on his desk, ‘have involved me talking to four colonels, an SS Standartenführer, and a general. Put up to the task by his chief of staff, Colonel Forster. A civilised sort of dressing-down. Nevertheless, dressing-down and complaint it was. From a general.’

  He stopped, screwing up his mouth and swallowing hard against the tightness in his throat. Reinhardt sat as still as he could, feeling the cold sweat in the small of his back and the flush he knew was colouring his cheeks.

  ‘Reinhardt, I gave you this investigation for several reasons. The first is that Hendel was one of ours. The second was that I am not blind to what you are going through here.’ Reinhardt locked eyes with the major. ‘You are not happy.’ He paused. ‘None of us is. We have all seen, and done, things that might make lesser men weep. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that work similar to what you did in the past, and did well, might be of some help. The third… well, Reinhardt, have you forgotten so quickly the consequences to the local population for the death of a German soldier? Have you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ he managed, finally.

  ‘Perhaps you will remind me of them,’ said Freilinger, quietly, sitting down. His eyes bored into Reinhardt. They both knew what the other was thinking. ‘Remind me of General Kuntze’s directive.’

  ‘Sir. When a German soldier is wounded, the lives of fifty prisoners or civilians are forfeit as a reprisal. When a German soldier is killed, the lives of one hundred prisoners or civilians are forfeit.’

  ‘Correct, Captain,’ said Freilinger, picking up a piece of paper. ‘Let me perhaps refresh your memory further. Directive of 19 March 1942, from the commander of 12th Army, Belgrade. I quote: “No false sentimentalities! It is preferable that fifty suspects are liquidated than one German soldier lose his life. If it is not possible to produce the people who have participated in any way in the insurrection or to seize them, reprisal measures of a general kind may be deemed advisable, for instance, the shooting to death of all male inhabitants from the nearest villages, according to a definite ratio.” ’ He put the paper down. ‘One wounded German, fifty dead Serbs. One dead German, one hundred dead Serbs.’

  Freilinger sighed and looked down for a moment. ‘I wanted you on this case because I thought we could avoid something like this,’ he said, pointing at Kuntze’s directive, ‘coming to pass if you found me a suspect, or the one who pulled the trigger. Not that I thought such reprisals were that likely. Not here. There aren’t enough Serbs in any case, and it’s not as if Hendel was killed in an uprising. Still’ – he swallowed – ‘stranger things have happened. And now, thanks to this incident in the mess, I am being asked why the directive is not being applied. I know that at least one, if not two, of the colonels you offended this afternoon are making these points to the army staff in Banja Luka.’

  He sighed again, his throat moving painfully as he fumbled open his tin and popped a mint into his mouth. ‘Why are we wasting manpower and resources on an investigation of this kind, at this time? Why are we not letting the Sarajevo police take care of it? These are the sorts of questions I am fielding. And so, with all that, what can you tell me of your investigation, Captain?’ He clasped his hands under his chin and waited.

  Reinhardt licked his lips, thinking carefully. ‘Sir, I can almost certainly confirm one thing. The police only began investigating on Monday morning, when the maid reported it. But Hendel’s death was known to the Feldgendarmerie on Sunday already.’

  Freilinger’s brow creased as his hands continued their slow movement. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘One of the last places Hendel visited was a nightclub, called the Ragusa, also frequented by Vukić. The Feldgendarmerie interrogated staff there on Sunday, and they interrogated two singers who were, apparently, intimate with Hendel. On Sunday, and again on Monday. But they weren’t looking for Hendel, or searching for evidence as to who killed him. They were looking for a Lieutenant Peter Krause, and for something that they thought he might have. Photographs, or film. Someone tipped off the Feldgendarmerie before even the Sarajevo police. I can only believe Major Becker’s stalling tactics from yesterday afternoon were not only bureaucratic, but also deliberate.’

  Freilinger sighed, running a palm up and then down each side of his face. ‘You see, that is what I was afraid you might say.’ He raised a hand to forestall Reinhardt’s protest. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, Captain. I’m just saying you’ve no proof to make such an accusation. I know you and he have a long and tortured history and I know he is not always quite what we would expect in our Feldgendarmerie, but why would he do that? What would be his motivation? Who might ask him to do that? Becker will tell you he was looking for a deserter, this Peter Krause. Perhaps it is simply coincidence Krause was a friend of Hendel’s. For now you cannot place Krause at the murder scene. Although…’ He trailed off. ‘Although I will admit it is strange. Very strange…’ His hands resumed their dry-washing. ‘What else?’

  ‘Sir, I have come across one common element between Hendel’s death, his work, and my investigation.’ Freilinger raised his eyebrows. ‘An SS officer. Standartenführer Mladen Stolić. 7th Prinz Eugen.’

  Freilinger nodded, his eyes slipping sideways. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He has been hostile and vocal in opposing my inquiries. It would seem he objected to, or was jealous of, whatever relationship Hendel had with Vukić. In addition, he seemed to take an instant dislike to me.’

  Freilinger smiled, a faint twitch of his lips. ‘Yes, he would. I know of him. Stolić is an angry man. And a rather violent one. He’s Volksdeutsche, on his mother’s side. He joined the Ustaše in the thirties, hung around Italy with Pavelić and the other exiles, then came back with them in 1941 and joined the Croatian Army. When the Seventh was formed, though, he transferred out, and there’s the problem. He’s angry not to have seen enough action. If he’d stayed with the Croatian Army, he’d have gone to the USSR, and probably gone out in a blaze of glory at Stalingrad like the rest of them are supposed to have done. He tried to leave the Seventh but was refused. No action, or not enough. No decorations.’ Freilinger’s eyes strayed to Reinhardt’s Iron Cross. ‘He won’t have liked you on sight just because of that. And he wouldn’t have liked Vukić because she was a woman who refused him. To make matters worse, she was a woman who followed the Croats in the USSR almost to the end, and he was jealous of that, too. She went where he could not.’

  ‘Sir, how do you know this?’

  ‘I have my sources,’ responded Freilinger, simply. ‘I speak to my counterparts in the Domobranstvo, even in the Ustaše. Stolić is well known to them. Mostly for the wrong reasons. And don’t forget, Hendel was Abwehr. He reported to me.’

  ‘I see.’

 
; ‘The case Hendel was working on, involving that Croatian Army colonel… ?’

  ‘Grbić, sir,’ supplied Reinhardt.

  ‘Grbić was anathema to Stolić because of his service record and because he was a decorated veteran. Stolić detested him. There was always trouble between them.’

  ‘I see,’ said Reinhardt, again. It seemed to be all he could manage.

  ‘So you keep saying,’ said Freilinger, drily. Reinhardt flushed. ‘You might find this interesting. The only real action Stolić has ever seen was in Spain, back in thirty-seven. He volunteered for the nationalists and came back with a reputation for being rather brutal with captured prisoners. A reputation he has wasted no time expanding upon here in Bosnia. He favours knives and hatchets, apparently, and is known to frequent a particularly nasty Ustaše officer, called Ljubčić. One of those Black Legion men –’ Freilinger paused, and Reinhardt wondered whether that could have been the Ustaša at Stolić’s table at the Ragusa the other night. ‘What else?’

  ‘We interviewed Duško Jelić, a member of Vukić’s film crew, with Inspector Padelin. He provided a lot of background information on Vukić’s movements over the past few months, as well as some personal details on her… predilections. Apparently she had rather distinctive tastes in men, preferring older men, especially decorated soldiers.’ Freilinger raised his eyebrows, and there was the ghost of a smile at the edge of his mouth that Reinhardt affected not to notice. ‘She also had particular sexual tastes and a rather voracious sexual appetite. According to what Jelić said, and from what I have been able to determine, neither Hendel nor Stolić would have been attractive to her, and I know Stolić took that badly.

  ‘The reason I mention her sexual activity,’ he continued, ‘is after the interview with Jelić I found a hidden room in her house containing a film camera but no film. Her darkroom had been ransacked – that, I noticed on my initial visit to the scene – and I believe the Feldgendarmerie, and whoever has asked them to assist, know or suspect Krause has the film and the film shows her with her murderer.’