The Man from Berlin

by Luke McCallin

  ‘Sir, the police left it here two days ago.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘The city police, sir.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Reinhardt, with wide eyes and raised brows. ‘And did they show authorisation? Did they show identification? Did they give a reason?’ The sergeant’s mouth moved, searching for a response to Reinhardt’s questions. ‘No? Nothing? Fools!’ he shouted. ‘Incompetent fools! You allowed unknown individuals to park a vehicle of unknown origin within the premises of an army installation? What kind of idiots are you? What if there had been a bomb inside it? Well, what of it?’ He gave them a moment, just long enough for the sergeant to open his mouth. ‘NO!’ he raged, stamping forward. ‘No excuses. It is simply unacceptable behaviour. The kind that leads straight to a penal battalion on the Eastern Front. What do you have to say for yourselves? Well, then?’

  The corporal looked as if he were about to be sick. Again, he waited just long enough for the sergeant to start to say something, then cut him off. He had to be careful not to overdo it. ‘My task is to evaluate the state of alertness across the city. Our enemies, and they are many, may strike at any time, in any way. Remember that. Dismissed.’ He gave them both a withering look and stalked past and back through the kitchen, the other Feldgendarmes leaping rigidly to attention as he came through. He regally ignored them, muttering under his breath with his hands clasped behind his back and striding out to the kübelwagen, where a somewhat bemused Claussen was waiting for him. A car had just arrived, and a pair of soldiers, little and large in ill-fitting uniforms, jumped aside as Reinhardt stomped out.

  Reinhardt stared straight ahead as Claussen drove away and across the bridge, and then, little by little, allowed himself to relax. After a couple of kilometres, he recognised the spot where Padelin had directed them off the road the other day. He found he was terribly thirsty and hungry, and he needed to see what was in the file. He directed Claussen off the road, the kübelwagen bumping over the track until he parked it in front of the little restaurant. The same three-legged dog came hobbling up, and a few elderly men sitting around cups of coffee and a game of chess stopped talking to look at him a moment. Claussen said he was not hungry, so Reinhardt took a seat alone and ordered water and burek from the waiter, then sat back and looked at the file.

  It was just a plain, yellow, soft cardboard file. He took a long, slow breath, and opened it. There was no cover sheet, no index of contents. He flicked through the pages quickly, about a dozen reports containing typed and handwritten information, and some photographs, which slipped down and onto the table. Reinhardt pushed them back inside the file, feeling guilty, furtive, like a child spying on his parents, looking up as slowly as he dared to check if anyone was looking. Only Claussen, sitting in the kübelwagen, looking back at him.

  23

  The first item in the file was an after-action report, typed up by one Obersturmführer Gehrig, a member of Einsatzgrüp D, which had been active in Ukraine during the invasion of the USSR. It was dated 3 August 1941 and concerned an action taken to liquidate Jews and other undesirables in a town near Zhytomyr. The report was typed up in dry, bureaucratic language and detailed with painful exactitude the number of people shot (278, all men), rounds of ammunition expended (443), time taken (five hours and six minutes from start to finish, including transportation to and from the execution site), and so forth. Most of the report was devoted to recommendations concerning the logistics of future operations (an improvement here, an improvement there, all humbly suggested), and a rather detailed observation into the moral state of the men who had done the executions (mostly Ukrainian collaborators, with German assistance). One of the main improvements suggested concerned tighter cooperation with the army, with Gehrig noting the lack of assistance rendered from the divisional HQ staff of the 189th Infantry garrisoned in and around Zhytomyr.

  The second report, similar to the first, was written by an Untersturmführer Havel. Another action, this one much bigger, a week or so later. The third report came after the fall of Kiev at the end of September. Another SS officer, a Hauptsturmführer Kalb. Another major Einsatzgrüp operation. Thousands of Jews killed, now including women and children. Yet more details on how and when and how long it took, and more exhaustive examinations of the mental and physical state of the troops. An analysis of the recently introduced execution method known as ‘sardine packing’, which apparently had been hard on the morale of some of the men. There was a note on several soldiers who had broken down, and one who had refused to fire, and a recommendation to transfer them to other, less strenuous, duties.

  Reinhardt’s attention was distracted for a moment as an army car passed slowly in front of the restaurant. The waiter brought the food then, and Reinhardt paused, feeling cold, trying to imagine the horror these terse lines obscured. He knew horror, had seen it and experienced it in the first war, but not so far in this one. Not this butchery rendered as terse lines in poor ink on shabby paper. He imagined the officer writing it, hunched over his lists and reports by the light of a flickering lamp, probably cold, tired, hungry, wanting to be done with this so he could go to sleep, or join his friends for a drink and a game of cards, but wanting to get it done just right… He stared at the burek and could no longer stomach the idea of eating, but only sipped from the water and went back to reading.

  Apart from the similarities in the actions, something else linked the three reports together. He leafed back through them to be sure. It was the army. Lack of assistance. Obstruction. Criticism. The first two reports cited the divisional staff of the 189th; the third mentioned the chief of staff of the 128th Motorised Infantry. A colonel who refused to countenance his men being involved in such an operation and who, the report cited in particular, did not provide assistance to hunt down fugitives. The same officer, in fact, who had been part of the headquarters staff of the 189th. A Colonel Paul Verhein.

  Unlike the other reports, the one written by Kalb had been brought to the attention of the SD. Verhein’s actions were the subject of a ­follow-up report, also included in the file. Verhein defended his actions as refusing to become involved in activities unworthy of an officer, in addition to which his men were needed for combat duties, not police actions. Verhein’s commanding officer defended his rather impetuous subordinate by reference to his impeccable service record, which was attached. If only half of it was true, the man was as brave as a lion. A first war veteran, in this war Verhein had citations for battlefield valour and leadership from Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, and the USSR. Holder, among other decorations, of the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves of the Iron Cross, given to him by the Führer himself after the invasion of France. Holder, as well, of the Pour le Mérite, the Blue Max, the highest battlefield decoration of the old Imperial German Army.

  The inquiry exonerated Verhein but concluded by querying his ideological convictions – noting that the Führer had decreed that all activities that contributed to the destruction of world Jewry and Bolshevism were activities worthy of a German officer, and Verhein would do well to remember that – and recommending more ideological rigour.

  The fifth report was an internal one from the SD regional office in Kiev, reporting on a range of comments purported to have been made by Verhein, including disparaging remarks about fellow officers and units, derogatory assessments of his superior officers, and criticism of racial policy in the occupied territories. This note had been forwarded to the SD in Berlin, to a certain Sturmbannführer Varnhorst. The sixth, seventh, and eighth reports were replies received to queries sent by Varnhorst to the SD in France, Serbia, Greece, and Poland, inquiring after the conduct of Verhein during his postings there in 1940 and early 1941. Only the response from the SD in Paris offered anything out of the ordinary: details into an incident in July 1940 in a village called Chenecourt when he intervened in the treatment by an SS unit of captured French officers of Jewish origin, humiliating and injuring an Untersturmführer in the
process.

  The ninth report was another after-action report, very detailed, but not written by anyone in the military. It dated from September 1942, concerning an incident in southern Russia, not far from the Volga, near the town of Yagodnyy. A Sonderkommando, a detachment from the main Einsatzgrüp, had rounded up the region’s Jews and taken them out to an abandoned collective farm for execution. The action was getting under way when an army unit came through, moving up to provide reinforcements against a Soviet counter­attack. The two units became clogged up in the farm. The weather was foul, the roads mired in mud, the fields choked with unharvested wheat. Tempers frayed, cracked. Through it all the prisoners wept and wailed. Some were killed, most huddled like sheep. Some ran for their lives. A few fought back against their tormentors.

  The army commander and the chief of the Sonderkommando came to blows. The Sonderkommando chief was killed. Other members of his command were shot down as they tried to respond. Jews grabbed weapons from the dead and added their own weight to the fight. It did not last long, but when it was over, all the Sonderkommando were dead. The action was in ruins, Jews were fleeing all across the steppe, and then the Red Army joined in. The day ended with the Soviets in retreat, the farm in flames. All of it was witnessed by Marija Vukić, who was travelling with the Sonderkommando and had typed it up while the memories were still fresh. The photos were hers, Reinhardt saw. Black-and-white images of dilapidated buildings on fire, bodies strewn across streets, and a grainy photo of a soldier – tall, big, a head of white hair – standing with a drawn pistol over another German. He turned the photo over. A date, and a name. Verhein.

  There was an investigation, the possibility of a court martial, but Verhein was exonerated; there were no witnesses among his men, and in any case no one really cared as Stalingrad was pulling in all available troops. Verhein’s command was all but destroyed in the fighting in the city, but he survived. Wounded. Another medal. A transfer away from the front and an assignment to create a new unit – the 121st Jäger.

  It might have stopped there, but for chance. For one of those things that could make or break an investigation. The tenth and eleventh elements in the file were explosive. The tenth report was a sworn affidavit from one Lasse Künzer, made shortly before his execution for forgery in April 1942. Under interrogation, Künzer admitted to forging a variety of records over decades. He gave places, dates, what he did, and for whom. Several of the names caught the attention of the case officer, who forwarded them on to another department, who forwarded them on again until they came to the attention of Sturmbann­führer Varnhorst, who began to put two and two together. Two of those names were of Paul and Nora Verhein. Künzer swore Verhein had paid him to alter his, and his sister’s, birth records in November 1933.

  Reinhardt sighed as he read this. If the rumours one heard back then were true, it had been a common enough practice in the days after the Nazis came to power, though never easy. He remembered that more than one of his colleagues in Kripo had had it done in the frenzy and uncertainty that followed the Nazis’ coming-to-power in 1933, paying good money to have their birth records altered, removing Jewish or, in one case, Gypsy blood from the family tree. He even knew of at least one case in some convoluted power struggle within the SS where the reverse had been done, and an officer’s records altered to show a Jewish grandparent where there was none. The officer had ended up in Dachau. Becker had told him the story, laughing uproariously as he did.

  The eleventh report was a request, and response, from Varnhorst to Section VII of the Reich Main Security Office ordering a racial search made of Verhein’s parentage. The response was positive. Four German grandparents. Purer blood than that would be harder to find in Nazi Germany. If Künzer was telling the truth, his work lived on long after he was guillotined at Plötzensee prison.

  The last page was Hendel’s orders from Varnhorst. Hendel was actually an SD operative working under GFP cover. His orders dated from June 1942 and directed him to conduct surveillance on Verhein with an objective of gathering evidence of treasonable conduct. There was nothing in the file to show what, if anything, Hendel had found in the year he had been investigating Verhein, during which he had followed him from Russia to Poland, back to Germany where the 121st was being trained up, and then to Yugoslavia. But, Reinhardt mused, flicking back over the file, for sure probably the only things stopping this investigation becoming more overt were Verhein’s impeccable combat record, his abilities as a leader of men, and, he speculated further, his friends. A man like Verhein made friends as well as enemies. Almost certainly, someone was looking out for him. He could not fail to be aware he was being watched.

  Reinhardt took out his map of the investigation. He looked at the circle he had drawn for the suspect, then took his pen and wrote Verhein in it. The link was there, but what Vukić had on him to make him kill her, Reinhardt had no idea. Yes, she was a witness to the incident at the farm, but an inquiry had exonerated him. So what, then? He sipped some water and picked a corner off the burek. Vukić was a journalist. She found something out, he thought, as he chewed slowly. She dug. She connected with Hendel, and through him to Varnhorst.

  Paging through the reports, he added dates under Verhein’s name. July 1940, the first incident in France, in the Ardennes. August 1941, the first two incidents in Ukraine, near Zhytomyr. September 1941, near Kiev, the third. Nearly a year before the fourth, in September 1942 at Yagodnyy, but by which time Varnhorst already had Künzer’s statement, dated April 1942. He matched the dates to the notes he took when they had interviewed Jelić. They more or less matched. Verhein’s unit was undoubtedly the one they had travelled with, and ­Verhein was almost certainly the man with whom Vukić had been having an affair.

  His was also the name on Freilinger’s list that did not match with Thallberg’s. Reinhardt took the file, piling the reports neatly back inside it. He stared at it where it sat on the table, then looked at his map. Happenstance. Chance. Künzer’s evidence. It was a funny thing. What were the odds he was telling the truth, and that it would come to the attention of an SD officer? And, he thought, as he toyed with his pen, running it around and around one of the names on the map, what were the odds Künzer’s evidence would end up on the desk of that particular SD officer, Sturmbannführer Varnhorst who, one day in July 1940, was humiliated by Verhein, in France, over how he chose to treat a handful of French Jewish officers… ?

  It did not mean much. It meant everything, perhaps. But what it really meant, Reinhardt realised now, slumping to one side, was that General Paul Verhein, currently commanding the 121st Jäger Division, decorated officer, was almost certainly a Jew.

  24

  Claussen swung the kübelwagen into the broad, white gravel driveway of the Hotel Austria and parked the car in front of a low flight of steps. Getting out of the car, straightening his tunic, Reinhardt realised he should have come here already, here where all those generals and colonels had met for that planning conference. In Berlin, in any normal investigation, he would have, but here the simple things, the straightforward things, such as estab­lishing a timeline, establishing the presence of a suspect, were anything but.

  The hotel was not particularly large, and it was not particularly grand, but with its twin, the Hungary, facing it across a broad round swath of perfectly manicured lawn, it stood out, as it was meant to. This was the heart of the Austrian spa, itself built upon and around a much older town that dated back to Roman times. If Reinhardt remembered correctly, the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife had stayed here on their fateful visit to the city in June 1914. Reinhardt had been sixteen that month. They say the end of innocence comes for everyone, sooner or later. It came for him that summer. Military academy that year, the Eastern Front two years later.

  The hotel was fronted by a wide, arched portico supporting a terrace running the length of the building. Reinhardt walked into its shade and into the main entrance of the hotel. Across an expanse of creamy ca
rpet an elderly gentleman in a suit stood behind a reception desk of heavy, deeply carved wood. A pair of staircases rose up to either side of the desk. To the left was a bar with wicker chairs and tables and a grand piano with its top down. To the right was a dining area, a checkerboard of tables with white cloths, plush armchairs drawn rigidly against them. Waiters chinked and chimed among the tables, setting out cutlery and glassware.

  As Stern had done at the Ragusa, the receptionist behind the desk was able to size up Reinhardt as he walked across the lobby and to make his displeasure evident behind a façade of professional attentiveness. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ His German was fluent, the accent Austrian. He had white hair combed back from a high forehead, and a pair of spectacles hung around his neck on a golden chain.

  ‘Yes, you may. I am with the Abwehr,’ said Reinhardt. ‘I need to see the registry.’

  The man put on a slightly quizzical expression. ‘I’m not sure I understand you, sir.’

  ‘Your registry. I need to see it.’

  ‘May I ask why, sir?’

  ‘You may indeed,’ replied Reinhardt, leaning one elbow on the desk.

  The receptionist flushed but maintained his composure. ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but I’m afraid that will not do. We cannot give out that sort of information to just anyone who asks.’

  ‘I told you. I’m with the Abwehr. I’m not just anyone.’

  ‘That may well be, sir.’ Was it Reinhardt’s imagination, or did he have the faintest of smiles?

  ‘Something about this strike you as funny?’

  ‘Indeed not, sir. But you will have to forgive me… Captain,’ he said, with the slightest of pauses and a glance, a perfectly superfluous glance, Reinhardt was sure, at his insignia. Reinhardt had to give the old bastard credit. He was good. Much better than Stern at the Ragusa. Kept his nerve. He probably saw and dealt with a lot worse than Reinhardt on any given day. ‘We get many requests here, for all kinds of things, from all kinds of people. Most of them, shall we say… ­senior to you. This is a private establishment. We have the comfort and privacy of our guests to think about.’