The Ustaše laughed and came downstairs, screwing on their caps. The German officer stood in the doorway until the Italians had left. The Ustaše seemed not to care, sniggering among themselves. One of them turned and saw him, and Reinhardt recognised him as the one who had been at Stolić’s table back at the Ragusa. Ljubčić, Freilinger said his name was. Then the captain was gesturing them out, and Reinhardt did not know if the Ustaša had recognised him. They gave the captain a mocking salute and were gone, laughing and nudging each other.
‘You are… ?’ the captain asked as the Ustaše drove away, people cowering to either side of the car as it cut through the crowded streets.
‘Reinhardt, Abwehr,’ he said, shaking hands with the officer.
‘Seigler,’ sighed the captain as he removed his cap and ran a hand through thinning hair.
‘What was all that about?’
Seigler shook his head. ‘The Italians claim the Ustaše have been… that they destroyed a village south of here and massacred everyone in it. The village was once Serbian, until they were all… killed. Then Muslims moved into it after they were displaced by Četniks.’ He sighed again. ‘He’s probably right.’
‘He is right,’ said Reinhardt, looking out at the slow shuffle of refugees.
‘What?’
‘They are our allies.’
Seigler shrugged. ‘Yes. Well, we usually can control the… worst… of it with them, but with the operation, everything’s committed to that and they are pretty much free to…’ He trailed off. ‘Although now the colonel’s saying it’s the SS encouraging the Ustaše.’
Reinhardt swallowed slowly, keeping his eyes as uninterested as possible. ‘SS? In this area?’
‘Liaison unit. Arrived about a day ago. I think they’re down near Foča. Maybe Kalinovik.’ The captain’s eyes drifted away.
‘Town’s full,’ said Reinhardt.
Seigler nodded. ‘They started coming in two days ago. There’s been fighting up along the approaches to Čajniče,’ he said, motioning behind and across the river where the hills swelled up into the distance. He frowned. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’
Reinhardt shook his head. ‘Just updated route information to Foča. Your operations people have already helped me.’
‘Good. Well, drive carefully.’
Reinhardt stood there a moment after Seigler left. The hotel was near the river, and there was a sandbank out in the flow, a smooth teardrop shape, white sand shining in the sun. Children were playing on it, seemingly oblivious to the choked tenor of the streets, and their laughter drifted faintly across the rush of the river as it purred along over its rocky bed. He felt very afraid, and very cold. An SS unit could mean anything, but it almost certainly meant Stolić, and if, as it seemed, he was in a killing mood, Reinhardt had no idea how he would approach him, nor what the presence of that Ustaša might mean. He told Claussen what he had learned. The sergeant swigged from a canteen, screwing his eyes shut as he lifted his face to the light and wiped the back of his mouth with a blocky fist.
‘Change of plan?’
Reinhardt shook his head. ‘Let’s get going. We should be able to make Foča in an hour, maybe less.’
The drive to Foča was uneventful but particularly beautiful. The Drina flowed in broad, languid sweeps and bends to the left, now bottle green, now turquoise, now a lather of foam where it ran shallow over its stony bed, rocks lying like mosaics. The land along the river was good, the rich alluvial soil ripe for crops, the banks dotted with small hamlets and settlements, but the signs of war were everywhere. Many of the villages were empty or destroyed, fields and crops unkempt and uncared for, and on the far bank, smoke ribboned up from burning houses. The fighting along the Drina had been bitter and internecine since the war first came here in 1941, with Četniks massacring Muslims, Ustaše massacring Serbs, and the land suffering under the succession of German, Italian, Croat, and Partisan armies.
The road was busier, mostly German traffic coming up from Foča, but they passed a bus trailing a plume of filthy exhaust, horse carts, and men, women, and children on foot. More refugees, haunted and hunched under what little they had, herded and pressed to the side of the road by soldiers in Croatian Army uniforms.
Despite the thickening traffic, they made good time to Foča, the road crossing over an iron bridge with sheet metal flooring that clanked and clattered under the car’s wheels. The town was much narrower and darker than Goražde, and like Rogatica showed the signs of fighting: bullet holes in walls, the heaped remnants of destroyed houses like rotted teeth in the lines of streets. As for the townspeople, it seemed most of them were gone, and the place had an empty, haunted feel despite the troops who thronged through it – German and Croat mostly. They passed a group of Četniks gathered on the steps of a dilapidated building that looked like it had once been something official, a shambles of shaggy ponies and rickety carts, and men with thick beards and long hair that splayed out from under rectangular caps and who watched them go by with sullen expressions, distrust writ large across their heavy features.
They followed the tactical signs to the local headquarters building. While Claussen went in search of fuel, Reinhardt searched through the scrum of activity inside, finally cornering a harassed operations lieutenant who pointed at a map to a location west of Foča. ‘121st were at Brod last night. They were supposed to advance on Predelj today,’ he continued, tapping the map farther south. ‘Last information is their reconnaissance battalion is stalled somewhere here,’ he said, pointing to the long, twisting route that led south from Brod towards Šćepan Polje, on the Montenegrin border. If you’re looking for them, they’re around there.’
‘How’s the operation going?’
‘Well, I think. Early days. Some pretty stiff fighting over by Čajniče. Lots of confirmed kills. That’s all I can tell you for now,’ he finished, as he turned to answer a telephone.
Reinhardt stared at the map a moment, feeling a sudden wash of nerves as he contemplated how close he suddenly was. Reinhardt felt someone behind him and turned to see Claussen standing in the doorway, his face drawn tight.
35
‘I think we have trouble, sir,’ he said quietly. There was a window with a view onto the street. ‘There.’ Following his finger, Reinhardt saw a Feldgendarmerie unit parked, two motorcycles with sidecars. There was one man standing by the machines, his uniform dirty and lined with white dust. ‘They came down the Kalinovik road about five minutes ago,’ said Claussen. ‘Don’t know if they’re after us, but I got the strong sense they were in a hurry. They went into the Feldgendarmerie post right after they arrived,’ he continued. He paused, as if waiting for Reinhardt to say something, but nothing was forthcoming. ‘Where to, sir?’ he asked.
‘The 121st was in Brod,’ Reinhardt said after a moment. ‘West of here, bit less than half an hour’s drive if we’re lucky.’
‘I don’t think we should take any chances,’ said Claussen, panning his eyes across the street. ‘There’s a parking lot around the back. I can meet you there. I doubt they’re looking for me.’
Stepping out into the back of the building, Reinhardt passed through a crowded parking area, trucks and cars and troop carriers in serried rows. There was a wall and fence of dry-looking wood topped with a twist of barbed wire along the length of the parking area where it ran along a lane around the back of the headquarters. He made himself walk easily past the vehicles, skirting a platoon of soldiers as they boarded trucks under the hoarse instructions of a sergeant. He lit a cigarette as he came up to the sentry at the back gate, just as Claussen pulled up in the lane. Reinhardt saluted the sentry as he went past, ignoring him but feeling himself tense up as he waited for a challenge, but none came.
Claussen pulled away gently, bumping the car over the rutted lane past dishevelled houses that seemed to sag under the weight of unkempt roofs. The place reeked of despondency
, the whole town seeming to be holding its breath, as if in expectation of more violence than it had already suffered. After a few minutes’ driving, they found the tarred road that ran through the centre of town, with the Drina a long stone’s throw to their right. ‘Left, now,’ said Reinhardt, unfolding a map, ‘then find somewhere to pull over.’
The houses petered out into a jumble of scrubland, and Claussen pulled over in front of a house with a gaping hole in its second floor. The two of them looked at Reinhardt’s map. ‘The 121st is somewhere along this road, leading south from Brod,’ Reinhardt said. ‘To get there we’ll need to get through the crossroads at Brod, and there’s bound to be controls there. If those Feldgendarmerie came down the road from Miljevina,’ he said, his finger tracing the road that headed south from Sarajevo and then swung east and ran through Trnovo to Foča, ‘and if they’re looking for us, then chances are the controls may have been reinforced.’ He paused, running his eyes over and over the map, looking for a way, any way, to get through Brod. If Thallberg had been with them, he might have known a way, or he would probably just have taken them through any control, trusting in the authority of the GFP.
‘I’ve got no bright ideas, sir,’ said Claussen. ‘I don’t know this country at all, but’ – he paused, looking back over his shoulder – ‘that platoon is coming up behind us. We might tag along with them. Safety in numbers.’ The trucks clanked past, open-topped and filled with soldiers, some of whom glanced over at them incuriously, and Reinhardt nodded at Claussen.
The sergeant accelerated the kübelwagen after them, keeping a short way back as the road wound along the steep sides of the hills along the south bank of the Drina. Ahead, one of the soldiers flicked his cigarette butt out into the road, where it bounced and sparked. Reinhardt followed it as it rolled to the side of the road and saw movement out of the corner of his eye behind them. Shifting in his seat to look back down the road, he saw a flash of grey through the trees.
‘Trouble?’ asked Claussen, as he straightened in his seat.
‘I think those motorcycles are behind us.’
Claussen glanced into the kübelwagen’s wing mirrors. Reinhardt could hear them after a moment, the high pitch of their engines getting louder and louder. ‘It’s those two, sure enough,’ said Claussen, tightly. He shifted the car to the side of the road and waved them by. They went past in a surge of noise and dust, the rider of each sidecar holding on to a mounted machine gun. The second one seemed to pause, just a moment, the passenger’s eyes lost behind his goggles as he looked at them. Reinhardt went cold, a chill erupting all over him as he forced himself to remain still, and then the motorcycles were onto the road ahead of them. Reinhardt’s breath came short and high as he waited for them to stop, to pull them over, but they caught up to the trucks, weaved around them, and were gone.
Claussen puffed out a breath and exchanged a wry look with him. Reinhardt laughed, an explosive release of tension, and Claussen laughed back. The sergeant shook his head. ‘Like geese before Christmas, the pair of us,’ he snorted. Ahead and below them, a cluster of buildings stood inside a tight bend in the Drina, the river flowing up from the south and swinging sharply to the east. A road wound out of a steep-sided valley ahead of them and split, one fork continuing south on the far bank of the river, another crossing the Drina over a stone bridge. From here, they could see that the crossroads was busy, vehicles backed up on all three of its forks.
‘Not out of the woods yet, seems like,’ muttered Claussen as he followed the trucks down into the town, which, apart from the military traffic through it, seemed abandoned.
‘Listen, Claussen, if it goes bad, you say you knew nothing. Understood? You were just following my orders to drive me here.’
Claussen did not look back at him. ‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we, sir?’ he said, as he braked behind the last truck. They moved forward slowly, the soldiers in the truck in front engrossed in a card game, and Reinhardt’s nervousness grew as they crawled through the town and then over the bridge. They could see the checkpoint up ahead on the far side: sandbagged machine gun emplacements, a half-track, a tent with a radio mast. ‘Here they come,’ said Claussen, softly. A Feldgendarme walked up to the cab of the truck in front, said something to the driver, then waved it on. The truck pulled away, following the others as they went south. Reinhardt saw what he took to be one of the two motorcycles with its crew parked by the tent as the Feldgendarme waved them up, standing in front of a block of concrete placed in the road at the end of the bridge.
‘Papers.’ The Feldgendarme’s eyes were hard and focused under the brim of his helmet. He checked their documents, then handed them back. ‘Very well, proceed.’
Claussen pulled away, then paused as a convoy began passing in front of them. A space opened up between a truck and a pair of Kettenkrad half-tracks, and at a nod from Reinhardt, Claussen slipped the kübelwagen into the convoy. Reinhardt craned his neck to look in the mirror but saw no one at the checkpoint paying any attention to them, and then it was gone. He breathed out and exchanged a look with Claussen. The sergeant shrugged, no words needing to be said, the release of tension almost palpable.
The road ran almost due south here, clinging to the steep western bank of the Drina, the river flowing up from Montenegro down a narrow gorge thick with trees. The tarred road petered out soon after Brod, becoming a dirt track the engineers had resurfaced and reinforced in places. The trucks lifted plumes of white dust into the air, and Reinhardt and Claussen were soon covered in it until the sergeant was able to overtake them, and then the road was open to them, unrolling before them like a ribbon in twists and turns around the sides of the gorge. It was midafternoon, now, and very hot.
Reinhardt had no idea how far they would have to drive to find the 121st. If the unit was still in Predelj, it was about a dozen kilometres or so south of Brod, but on these roads that could take well over an hour. Thinking about it, he saw the first signs of fighting. A pair of burned-out trucks, a swath of forest that looked like it had been shelled, and farther on a chunk of earth gouged from the embankment that looked like it had been mined. As the road swung around the flank of the gorge, he saw, far off over the humped back of a ridge, plumes of smoke rising up into the sky and a spotter plane, a Storch, scribing tight circles over the hills. It swooped up, and moments later it seemed there was a shiver in the air, studs of light along the underside of the smoke as an artillery barrage came down. Seconds later came a ripple of noise, the crackle of explosions.
Claussen snaked around a big crater, and there was more wreckage by the roadside. Down in the trees above the river the back end of a half-track poked up from a cradle of bent and burned trees. Houses appeared, ones, twos, a ruined hamlet that still smoked, and then there, in the road, a Feldgendarmerie motorcycle with a trooper hunched over the foreshortened barrel of a machine gun. A second Feldgendarme stood in the road. As Claussen braked hard, Reinhardt spotted two more behind the cover of a low wall. He watched the Feldgendarme walk up to them. The man’s MP 40 was held in both hands, not exactly aiming at them, but not turned away either. He looked at them expressionlessly, eyes tracking from one to the other.
‘Pull the car over there.’
‘What is the problem, Sergeant?’ asked Reinhardt, putting an emphasis on the man’s rank and holding his eyes. He was scared, again. From his breast pocket, he took Thallberg’s paper naming him a GFP auxiliary.
‘No problem. Sir. Over there, please.’
‘Better.’
Claussen drove slowly to the side of the road and parked by the Feldgendarme behind the wall, the machine gunner on the sidecar following them all the way. ‘Out of the car,’ one of them snapped.
‘What the hell is going on?’ demanded Reinhardt, rising up in his seat.
There was a metallic rattle as the Feldgendarmes levelled their MP 40s at them. ‘Out. Now.’ Reinhardt and Claussen exchanged glan
ces and stepped out of the car. ‘Hands up.’
‘I am with the GFP, Sergeant.’
‘Shut up. And get your hands up.’ The sergeant took the paper, gave the order to disarm them, and then at gunpoint ordered them up a narrow track towards a house. Farther up the path, across an open patch of ground, was another cluster of houses, with men lined up in front of it who had the hunch-shouldered look of prisoners, but that was neither here nor there as the Feldgendarmes pushed them inside, and face to face with Becker.
36
‘Well, well, look what the cat brought in.’ Becker smiled as he said it, but there was a tightness to his jaw, to his eyes, that belied his levity. He glanced at the paper as the sergeant handed it to him. ‘Wait outside,’ he said to the Feldgendarmes. There was a surge of light as the door opened and closed, and Reinhardt saw that Becker was holding a pistol against his leg. He smiled again. ‘Quite a merry chase you’ve led us on, Gregor.’
‘Well, if I’d known you wanted to play, Major, I’d have made a bit more of an effort for you,’ said Reinhardt, forcing a levity into his voice that he did not feel.
Becker’s eyes flicked to Claussen, and his brow creased slightly, as if trying to remember if he had ever met the sergeant. ‘Who is this?’
‘My driver.’
Becker flushed, as he always did when Reinhardt did not address him by rank. ‘You. Wait outside with the other Feldgendarmes.’
Claussen did not move, and Becker’s flush deepened. ‘Wait outside, Sergeant,’ said Reinhardt, after a moment. ‘I’ll call you if I need you.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Claussen.
Becker smiled as the door closed. ‘You have a habit of backing the wrong horse, Gregor. And you’ve done it again.’
‘Which horse would that be?’
The Man from Berlin Page 35