The Man from Berlin

by Luke McCallin

  As fast as it came, the anger flowed out of him. He felt it recede, from his fingers, up through his arms. He blinked once, twice, and it was gone. He pulled Stolić’s arm down from where he had wrapped it around his head. Stolić cried out, turned his head down into the ground. Reinhardt grabbed his ear and twisted, turning his head back up towards him. Stolić’s eyes were wild and rolled back like those of a cornered animal, and his breath gusted up, fetid and sour. Reinhardt lifted his fist up, the baton held high. Stolić fastened his eyes on it as if it were some kind of salvation.

  ‘Don’t look at that, look at me. At me, you shit,’ he hissed. Stolić rolled his eyes on him. ‘Did you kill Marija Vukić?’

  Stolić shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t…’ His eyes turned back to the baton.

  ‘At me, Stolić. Look at me. That’s right. You don’t what?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘I don’t know if it was me.’

  ‘What do you mean, Stolić?’

  ‘I don’t… blood. There was…’ He trailed off, his eyes folding away. Reinhardt struck him across the side of his thigh, above his knee, on his hip, his ankle. Stolić shuddered with pain, curling up tighter.

  ‘There’s always blood. Who killed her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ He hit him again on the knee. ‘I know you were there that night. Tell me about it.’

  ‘Wha… ?’ Reinhardt raised the baton, and Stolić’s eyes fastened onto it. ‘Yes, yes! All right. Yes, I was there.’

  ‘Where, Stolić?’

  ‘The hotel. At the hotel. But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t. Please. Tell me I didn’t.’

  ‘Was it Becker?’

  ‘I don’t know. Please.’

  ‘What did you see that night? What did you see?’

  ‘There was… I saw Becker. We were talking. Outside the hotel. Then… my room. I don’t remember. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Think, Stolić!’

  ‘There was someone. I saw someone. I think…’

  ‘Who, Stolić?’ The Standartenführer’s head dropped, away from the baton, and he seemed to go limp. Whatever fear or tension held him together drained out of him, and he folded against the floor. ‘Was it Verhein? Stolić!’ Reinhardt felt for his pulse. It was there, faint but rapid. He stood up, blinked, and suddenly realised the position he had put himself in. He collapsed the baton, putting it back in his pocket, looking down at an SS Standartenführer lying unconscious on the floor.

  It was quiet and he did not know how long he stood there, but the creak of the door and a sudden intake of breath made him turn. One of Stolić’s SS stood there, mouth agape. He seemed to remember himself, fumbling at his rifle and screaming over his shoulder. Reinhardt stood away from Stolić, hands wide at his side. The other SS erupted briefly into the doorway and then left.

  ‘Are kneeling and staying still,’ yelled the first SS, a Croatian accent thickening his German. ‘Are staying still! Are not moving!’ He called to Stolić once, twice, his eyes darting from the Standartenführer to Reinhardt. He knelt there, hands at his sides, and wondered how the hell he was going to get out of this.

  38

  He heard voices outside, and Becker stepped inside with a drawn pistol, followed by the two SS. A tight smile stretched across his face but did not meet his eyes. ‘Oh, Reinhardt. Reinhardt, my God, but aren’t you in the shit?’

  Reinhardt forced a smile. ‘The questioning got a bit out of hand.’

  Becker nodded tightly, his cheeks flushed against the pallor of his face. ‘Get him out of here,’ he said to the two SS, pointing at Stolić. He pushed the door shut behind them as they dragged him out. He waited an instant, listening, then turned to Reinhardt. ‘So?’

  ‘So what, Becker?’

  ‘Did he confess?’

  Reinhardt smiled. ‘What kind of an idiot do you take me for?’

  Becker’s mouth moved. ‘What’ve you done, then?’ he hissed.

  ‘What you wanted, no?’ Becker’s eyes narrowed. ‘You wanted this. Either for him to kill me, or me to kill him. What was the plan? That before killing me he would get me to confess about the file? Or that before me killing him he would confess to murdering Vukić?’

  ‘Reinhardt –’

  ‘Was I supposed to be grateful to you for delivering him to me? Was that it? And then I’d tell you about the file? Is that it?’

  ‘He was your killer, Reinhardt, you arse.’

  ‘I admit he was perfect.’

  ‘He is perfect! He even has the knife!’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  Becker went still, white, said nothing.

  ‘The knife’s a big part of it. The Bowie, left in Stolić’s hotel room. All covered in blood. Except I spoke to the maid. There was blood on the knife. But nowhere else. Not on his hands. Not on his uniform. Not in the bathroom. He’s been torturing prisoners here, and he’s covered in it. Vukić was stabbed twenty times, and he was spotless?’

  ‘He’s a killer, Reinhardt.’

  ‘But not mine. His knife killed her. He didn’t. You just wanted me to think that. You and whoever you’re working with. How did you know about the knife?’ Becker’s jaw clenched, and he said nothing. ‘This can’t go on, Becker. Who is it?’

  There was a commotion outside. ‘I can’t keep the Ustaše away,’ said Becker, looking over his shoulder. ‘Ljubčić will go berserk. I can only help you if you help me.’ There was a fury of voices, the sound of blows. ‘For God’s sake, Reinhardt.’

  Reinhardt shook his head. Becker’s face twisted, warped, and he stood back with the pistol aimed at Reinhardt’s head as the door crashed open and Ljubčić thrust his way in. Three of the Ustaše grabbed Reinhardt, slamming him up against the wall. ‘No more playing around, Reinhardt,’ Becker snarled, his eyes wide. ‘You give me what I want, and I let you live.’

  Reinhardt had to think his way out of this one, think around his fear. Becker could not stay here forever. He was too exposed and taking too many risks. He could not hope to control the Ustaše, but looking into Becker’s eyes, he could see that any pretence had been dropped. There was no more acting or posing here. Becker was desperate. ‘I don’t have anything to give you.’

  ‘You’re lying. You’re lying!’ screamed Becker. He seemed to check himself, took a lurching step over to Reinhardt, and put the pistol to his head. The Ustaše seemed to tighten, leaning their weight into him. ‘Give me what I want!’

  Reinhardt looked at him, up past the pistol, up the shortened length of Becker’s arm. He felt calm, suddenly. ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll kill you, Reinhardt, I swear I will,’ snarled Becker, but there was a twist to his voice, a hitch like that of a sulky child. ‘Don’t think I won’t.’ Reinhardt said nothing. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Don’t fucking look at me like that!’ Becker hit Reinhardt across the mouth with his pistol. Reinhardt’s head exploded in pain at the blow, and he fell sideways, the Ustaše hauling him back up. He felt a blow to his ribs, then his stomach, and his knees gave way.

  The Ustaše’s feet slithered and shifted as they fought his weight. They let him fall to the floor, twisting his arms up behind him, and one of them knelt on his back. Reinhardt writhed and heaved against the weight of him and the burn of frustration he felt. Becker ground his face into the floor, and he choked and coughed at the blood and dust that filled his mouth. He could not breathe. ‘Fucking stubborn son of a bitch! Tell me, Reinhardt,’ grated Becker, grinding the pistol into the back of his neck. Reinhardt groaned under his weight, turning his head away from the pistol. He felt a hand grabbing at his collar, and he was hauled back and up, where he slumped forward on his hands and knees. Becker’s hand wormed into his hair and yanked his head back, and the pistol went back against his forehead. ‘Just fucking tell
me.’

  ‘You can’t do anything to me I haven’t thought of doing myself,’ slurred Reinhardt, swallowing against the scum of blood in his mouth. All those nights he had lain alone in his bed, alone with his memories and regrets, letting it all spiral down into the gunmetal circle of a pistol’s muzzle. ‘A thousand times I’ve put a gun to my own head and been too weak to finish it. So finish it for me, Becker.’ He leaned forward against the pistol. ‘Do it.’

  ‘You think that’s the worst I can do. It’s not. I can do worse.’ ­Reinhardt said nothing. ‘I’ll do it,’ panted Becker. ‘I’ll let them do it.’

  ‘I know you will,’ Reinhardt replied. He looked at Becker, who looked at the Ustaše and nodded. Reinhardt was yanked back to his feet. Two of them held his arms as Ljubčić put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes, like he was measuring him. He had those eyes, like the priest’s, blank and shiny atop the pasty pale slump of his cheeks. Whatever was there, whatever looked out on the world, it was different. As if it moved sideways from reality. He raised his other hand, and he held Stolić’s knife. He put it close beneath Reinhardt’s eye, twisted it, the light smearing down its bloodied length. Ljubčić smiled, stepped back, switched the knife to his other hand and slammed his fist into Reinhardt’s stomach once, twice. As Reinhardt’s head came down over the blows, the Ustaša punched up. Reinhardt’s head pitched back, then down. He felt another blow, then a harsh mutter of words. What little breath there was burst from him as he was flung to the ground. He coughed on the dust, then felt a stab of pain in his hand. He was stretched on the floor, held down by the two Ustaše, Ljubčić’s foot on his left wrist. Their eyes met, and then Ljubčić dug the point of the Bowie under Reinhardt’s fingernail. Reinhardt screamed, tried to pull away, heaved his head around, scraping his cheeks raw on the boards. The pain stopped. He caught his breath. It started again, the same finger, the knife sliding and probing, and he felt himself slipping away into unconsciousness…

  … and sliding over the top of a trench into a British redoubt. Peering around a corner and seeing a file of Tommies slipping round-­shouldered through the smoke with bayonets on the end of their snub-nosed rifles. Striking a grenade and tossing it around the bend. An explosion, agonised cries, charging on across a splintered ruin of wood and flesh, his Bergmann blazing away until it was empty, his feet sliding on muddy duckboards, hurdling khaki-clad bodies, reloading, tossing more grenades down dugouts and around every corner. On and on, not stopping. He crashed into an Englishman who flung him against the trench wall and hacked a sharpened spade into his knee. He fired the Bergmann into him as he collapsed, leaving the Tommy quivering around the sodden ruin of his belly. They fell together, lying broken beside each other, the Englishman with a big watch gripped against his bloodied mouth, whispering, ‘Father, Father, it hurts.’ Reinhardt dragged his eyes from the mangled gash of his knee, looked up and around for help and saw them there. Brothers, twins perhaps, standing small and lost in each ­other’s arms at the end of the trench. He saw them, and they him, and he had but to reach out to them and he could take them, take them away from here. He knew it, they knew it, he saw himself doing it – he felt himself doing it – but then the boys were gone, taken away. The moment was past, a fading outline of possibilities…

  … He felt a sting of smoke and came to himself, those two memories clashing apart, his heart pumping what felt like ice. Ljubčić had his fingers in Reinhardt’s hair, wrenching his head back, but he was not looking at him.

  The men in the room were frozen, heads cocked as if they listened to something. Ljubčić was following something with his eyes, sliding over to the window. There was a suggestion of movement, a ripple of light through the slats of the walls. The Ustaša hauled his pistol out, snapping something at his men. He smashed a pane of glass and fired out. Two others grabbed their rifles and fired through the walls. The din was incredible, the silence deafening when they ceased fire. There was a thump from outside, the sound of something choking.

  ‘What’s going on?’ hissed Becker. The Ustaša ignored him, peering out, straining for sound. ‘What? What?!’

  ‘Partisans,’ snapped Ljubčić without looking around.

  ‘Here?! How is that possible?’

  There was a shatter of gunfire from outside, and the walls seemed to blow inward, the house filling with splinters and stabs of light. Two of the Ustaše twitched backwards and fell, the others hunched down and away from the shredding tear of the bullets.

  The gunfire stopped. The inside of the house was a craze of smoke and dust, webbed by the cones of light from the holes. There was a voice from outside. The Ustaše whispered frantically among themselves as two of them hauled Reinhardt to his feet again. The voice came again, a note of finality to it. Ljubčić yelled back, then put his pistol on the floor. His men did the same, the Ustaše motioning at Becker furiously. ‘Down! Pistol down!’

  Becker rocked his pistol to the tips of his fingers, then let it drop. Slipping slowly, he followed it to the floor, and Reinhardt saw the spreading red stains along his thigh and groin. He slumped into the angle of wall and floor and gave a keening groan as he slid sideways, his hands clutching at his wounds.

  None of the others spared him a moment’s glance as the door crashed open and a pair of men stepped inside. They looked rugged and solid, their eyes and rifles scanning around the room, one dressed like a farmer, the second in an old Royal Yugoslav Army uniform patched at the knees and elbows. One of them called something over his shoulder. A third man dressed in unmarked German combat fatigues and a pair of binoculars hanging on his chest stepped into the room. He had a hard face, all planes and angles beneath a short, thick beard, flinty eyes that fastened on Becker, on Reinhardt, the Ustaše holding him up, and they seemed to quail from him like dogs from a wolf.

  The Partisan stared at Ljubčić, and their gaze seemed to strike sparks. Something visceral, unforgiving. Like two forces of nature, neither with any concept of pity for the other. The Partisan looked past him to the Ustaše holding Reinhardt. Moving smoothly, unhurried, he drew a pistol and, aiming past Ljubčić, shot the two of them in the head. Reinhardt gasped at the spatter of brain and blood that slapped across his face. His legs shook, then folded, and he slumped back against the wall as the two Ustaše collapsed like empty sacks.

  Ljubčić went very still, but all the lines of his lumped body screamed outrage. The Partisan locked eyes with him again. The hate seemed to resonate between them, shimmering, like a mirage. The Partisan stepped back and snapped something at the Ustaša, who put his hands atop his head and walked out, head high, the two Partisans following him out.

  The Partisan shifted that stony gaze onto Becker, who shrank against the wall, hands up and out. ‘Don’t. Please.’ He pocketed ­Becker’s pistol, glanced at his wounds expressionlessly, then walked over to Reinhardt. There was a finality in how he turned his back on him that left Becker blinking after him in confused awareness that his wounds were fatal.

  The Partisan watched impassively as Reinhardt slid heavily to the floor and let his head hang down between his knees. His breath caught, hinging on a sob. He had no idea if this was the end, but it felt like it.

  ‘We have met, you and I,’ said the Partisan.

  Reinhardt looked up, narrowed his eyes. A memory sparked to life. ‘Goran?’ The man nodded. ‘Begović’s driver.’

  ‘When I have to be. Drink this,’ he said.

  Reinhardt took the canteen Goran offered, rinsed his mouth and spat, the water all bloody where it splashed on the floorboards, and then drank. He poured some into a cupped hand and wiped his face as best he could. He worked his mouth, running his tongue over his teeth. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You are welcome. So, Captain Reinhardt. Is this where your Ilidža investigation has led you?’

  Reinhardt shrugged, twisting his mouth as he rinsed and spat again. ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘Y
ou seem to have many friends, Captain.’ He stared at the bodies in the room. ‘I’ve never met a man so lucky.’ Becker shifted where he lay, his eyes gleaming wetly. The floor under him was sodden with his blood, and his face was very pale.

  ‘You forget the Partisans.’

  Goran gave a tight smile. ‘Some of them, for sure.’

  ‘Not you?’ Reinhardt put a hand on the floor and pushed himself upright. He leaned against the wall, straightening up against the pain in his stomach and ribs. His fist quivered as he closed his fingers around what Ljubčić had done to his hand.

  ‘I cannot tell what you are, Captain. That worries me.’

  ‘Dr Begović seems to trust me.’

  ‘Muamer is a good man,’ replied Goran. ‘Sometimes too good for his own good…’

  ‘Lucky he has you to watch over him. Is he here?’

  ‘No,’ said Goran, shortly.

  There was a sudden air of decisiveness about him, and Reinhardt was afraid again. ‘Why did you shoot them?’ he asked, pointing at the two Ustaše. He felt overwhelmingly the need to keep Goran talking, and it was the first thing that came into his head.

  ‘They deserved it.’

  ‘Ljubčić does not?’

  ‘Ljubčić will be dealt with differently.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’ Goran’s eyes gave nothing away.

  ‘Am I your prisoner?’

  ‘We are a raiding party, Captain. I have no time for prisoners.’ Just a few words, but the weight behind them was inexorable, and Reinhardt found he had nothing to say. Goran looked at him. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m looking for the German 121st Division.’

  ‘I believe they’re south of here. In Predelj.’

  ‘You could just let me go. Let me continue.’ The words felt weak, and feeble.

  ‘I don’t think so, Captain.’

  ‘Begović trusts me enough to let me know he is Senka,’ Reinhardt blurted.

  Goran’s eyes narrowed. ‘He told you that?’