The Pale House (A Gregor Reinhardt Novel)

by Luke McCallin

  “And are getting their own back, now,” finished Reinhardt. “You said three of them had gone missing? What were their names?”

  “Three? When did I say that?”

  “At the briefing you gave, on the first day we arrived here.” Reinhardt kicked himself, mentally, for mentioning “three.” It was who had mentioned three missing Ustaše. Langenkamp had only referred to “a number,” and it was on such small details that anything—an investigation, a secret, a conspiracy—could come apart.

  “If you say so; I do not recall.”

  “Their names?”

  “Bozidar , Zvonimir Saulan, and Tomislav Dubreta. Why?”

  Reinhardt shrugged noncommittally. “Does anyone have any idea where they have gone?” he asked, feeling those same names on that piece of paper Simo had given him, feeling them as if they were burning a hole in his pocket. The cheese was disgusting, and Reinhardt spread thick, gelatinous jam across a second slice of bread. “Murdered? Deserted?”

  “No ideas, and if the Ustaše know otherwise, they have not told me.”

  “What were they doing before they vanished?”

  “ and Dubreta were in internal security. The Ustaše equivalent of the Gestapo, I suppose. Saulan was the commandant of the prison.”

  “So . . . they all worked for, or with, ?”

  “Yes. And he’s got no idea, before you ask. He’s as furious as about them.”

  “What else do they say?”

  “Well . . .” Langenkamp paused, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “They say money is missing. Gold. Other valuables. Cash. Including cash sent down from Zagreb.”

  “Where is that gold and whatnot supposed to have come from?”

  “The Ustaše have been stripping this place bare of anything worth taking for the last few years. Factor in corruption and extortion, and it all adds up, I am told.”

  “Tell me another thing, Langenkamp,” Reinhardt said, taken aback by the captain’s acerbic honesty. “How do they see their future?”

  Langenkamp drank slowly from his cup of coffee, considering. “Will they fight to the death, like their propaganda says they should? It is anyone’s guess. I would think not. But I have learned to be surprised by the Ustaše. You never quite know what they will do. And with that,” he said, rising, “I wish you good day, Captain.”

  Reinhardt watched him go, dunking his bread and jam in his coffee in a vain effort to improve the taste, but the food tasted like cardboard, and the coffee was truly vile. He glanced around the mess hall, at the hunched shoulders and desultory conversation of his fellow officers, the monotony of the food, thinking that if this was what they were down to, they would be breaking out the iron rations fairly soon. He glanced at his watch. Kreuz was over an hour late for the meeting. Reinhardt had a few hours before he was on duty, and so he decided to go and find him.

  He commandeered a vehicle and drove it up to Vratnik. He slowed on the road as it twisted beneath the steep tumble of the hill beneath the fortress’s walls. Higher up the snow-shrouded slope, at a gap in the walls, he could see men looking down, the foreshortened lines of arms pointing at something. He slowed, stopped, tried to see what they were looking at. One of the men threw something, a rock, which plunged into a dip Reinhardt could not see from where he was. He heard a clack of stone, a faint burst of laughter from higher up, and a bird flapped up heavily into the air, cocked its head, and squawked raucously. It was a crow, perhaps. Or a raven, although Reinhardt did not know if those larger birds roosted around the city. He felt a chill as he restarted the car, a sense of foreboding that did not fade as he pulled up at the fortress’s gates and asked for Major Jansky.

  “Gone,” was their sergeant’s reply as he huddled over a brazier. “Gone to Zenica. With most of the battalion. Only the runts left, and we’re s’pposed to be off tomorrow.”

  “Who is in charge?”

  “That’d be Lieutenant Reche. But he’s not here.”

  “Do you know anything about what’s attracted the men to the walls?” The Feldgendarmes looked blankly among one another, shrugged. “Well, I’ll have a look if you don’t mind,” he said, walking past them. He heard an intake of breath, a rustle of boots as someone moved, but no one stopped him. Inside, he could see and feel straightaway the fortress was all but deserted, the courtyard empty of vehicles, of material. Across its width, a small crowd had gathered around an old breach, where blocks of stone had once spilled out and tumbled down a steep plunge of brush-choked slope. He pushed through the men, angry mutters and queries fading away as they saw his uniform, his gorget, and space opened up and he looked down the slope.

  There was a body in a dip in the ground, a handful of crows playing court around it, bouncing languidly from side to side and across it. The body lay facedown, the gray of its uniform blending well with the rock and icy snow.

  “Anyone know who it is?” he asked, looking around. Men avoided his gaze, most looking away, mouths downturning in unspoken no’s. A face caught his gaze, dark and swarthy, heavy cheeks under black eyes. “You,” he said, pointing at one of the Greeks he remembered from . “You’ll help bring it up. And you,” he said, pointing at the nearest soldier. “Find rope. Long enough to get down there. Move. Now!”

  He pointed at the Greek, then pointed over the wall. The man moved slowly, looking elsewhere for a moment as if for support or salvation, but none was forthcoming. He went reluctantly and, as Reinhardt climbed carefully over the wall, he understood it was not just an apparent reluctance to obey orders that made the man move slowly. The slope was treacherous, sheeted in scree and rubble and icy cold. He slipped, slid, caught himself, and his knee flared, and he grimaced down the slope, no one to see his face twist in pain. He moved as carefully as he could, following the other man down, until they crouched over the body, the crows watching them with cocked heads from safer perches. Reinhardt motioned for the man to turn the body over.

  It was Kreuz. His skull had been caved in, a dark red ruin of a wound against his forehead.

  Reinhardt looked at the body as he had once been trained to do. From top to toe, then back up, and for a moment he forgot the chill in the air, the wet stench of the fortress, the stiffness in his knee that never went away anymore. He saw the matted hair, the grimy crescents of fingernails, the filthy tunic, the greasy collar of a gray shirt. He saw how the wound on Kreuz’s head had not bled. The front of Kreuz’s tunic was frozen, a wide, dark stain of alcohol, the fabric caught in long creases. A broken bottle lay smashed at his side. He pushed back Kreuz’s sleeves, then his trousers. The skin was unblemished. He opened his tunic, pulling up his shirt. His torso was bruised, sheeted with blood, crisscrossed with livid welts and long cuts, made while he was still alive. He heaved the body onto its back, but there was nothing there. Reinhardt looked at the bruising on Kreuz’s torso, again, looking up the slope, wondering if it was the fall that had done that, or someone’s fists. The body showed marked signs of hypostasis, the skin on Kreuz’s front mottled purple with the blood that had pooled inside him once it stopped flowing. He was no doctor, but hypostasis was fairly reliable as an indicator and he had seen enough bodies in his time to estimate that Kreuz had been dead and lying here at least six hours.

  “Who is Dreyer?”

  Reinhardt frowned, started. The Greek was looking at him, crouched in an easy stance, squatting down with his elbows between his knees, his feet splayed out wide for balance. There was something immediately foreign but immediately natural about the way he lounged there, as if he squatted in the shade of a far-off, sun-kissed land, where life moved at a slower pace.

  “Who is Dreyer?” the man said again, looking at Reinhardt with his dark eyes limpid in his sun-browned face. “Is not such a difficult question.”

  Maybe it was not a difficult question, but the answer had implications. All answers did. Certainly, the day was young, it had room for surprises, thou
ght Reinhardt. Maybe he was tired, and maybe that made him reckless, and maybe he was tired of worrying about the shape of what was out there, so he sloughed off some of the weight of caution that bogged him down. “A judge,” he said, finally.

  “What kind of judge?”

  “I will tell that to Alexiou,” said Reinhardt, making the one throw he could, making it here and now with the man he had chosen, hoping it would hit something, and not just fall silently. He need not have worried, as the man’s eyes went flat with menace.

  “What do you want of Alexiou?”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “What about?”

  “That is between him and me.”

  There was a call from higher up, and a rope unfurled itself down against the light gray sky, thumping to the earth next to them. Reinhardt wound and fastened it around Kreuz’s ankles, then began pulling himself up it, hearing the Greek coming up behind him. At the top, breathless, he watched the men haul the body up. Reinhardt watched it come, seeing how the dead always lay at the wrong angle. Limbs were never meant to move that way. As if in death a body assumed a freedom it could never achieve in life. A last heave up and over the breach, and Kreuz’s body lolled across the ground. Heads peered in and down.

  “Drunk again,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Looks like he fell. Bashed his head in,” said a Feldgendarme, kneeling and pointing needlessly at Kreuz’s skull. “Stupid bugger.”

  “Couldn’t’a happened to a nicer man.”

  “Anyone see him yesterday?” Reinhardt asked. Again, that space opened up around him, heads turning down and away. He looked for the Greek and saw the man walking away, toward an archway in the courtyard’s walls. Reinhardt decided to give him time, and then he would go looking himself. “No one? Someone must have. I just want a when and where, otherwise I’ll have this whole unit drawn up for punishment detail,” he said, putting iron in his voice, challenging them with his eyes, his stance. “A time and place. That’s all.”

  “Latrine block,” said a voice. It was a skinny soldier, his hands hunched deep into his coat. Space opened up around him as Reinhardt walked toward him. “About midnight. He was in one of the stalls. Talking to himself. Like he usually did.”

  “What was he saying?”

  “Nonsense, Captain. It’s what usually came out of his mouth. Muttering and giggling about tickets and judges. Sounded like he’d won the lottery or something.”

  “Show me the latrine block.”

  The man’s mouth fell, and then he nodded, sighing out through his nose. Reinhardt followed him across the courtyard, pointing at Kreuz’s body and looking at the Feldgendarme. “He’s all yours, Corporal,” he said.

  The man led Reinhardt to a sagging structure of wood and timber, the stench from which was eye-watering even before he ducked into it. The man pointed to a stall at the end, its door hanging half open in front of a hole in the sodden ground, a pair of duckboards all the support there was. The stench was appalling, and Reinhardt had to cover his nose and mouth with his sleeve as he pushed his eyes from corner to corner of the stall, but he could see nothing, and when he came back out into the fresh air the man was gone, but the Greek was back.

  “You come,” the man said. “Alexiou will talk.”

  Reinhardt was led through the archway into a small courtyard, trucks and cars parked tightly around it. Reinhardt followed the Greek around a half-track with no tracks sitting slumped to one side. There were men dotted around the courtyard, but his eyes were drawn to two big men warming their hands over a brazier in front of the entrance to what looked like it had once been a stable. They were twins, stocky, broad shouldered, thick black hair cut close to the blocks of their heads. They looked Reinhardt over, and then one of them glanced inside the room. There was a third man in there, sitting back in the shadows. Dimly seen, a hand gestured, and the twins stood aside, motioning Reinhardt to pass inside.

  He squeezed past the brazier’s glow, his skin pulling at its heat, then into the dimness of the room. The man sitting at the back leaned forward slightly, and Reinhardt could see immediately the resemblance the twins bore to him, such that it was obvious he was their father. Feeling self-conscious but feeling it was the right thing to do, Reinhardt extended his right hand to the man, who, after a moment, took it and shook. The man’s hand was large, the skin warm and hard. It was a firm shake, one squeeze of the hand, and the man nodded slightly and sat back. He motioned with the other hand, and one of the twins pulled out a stool and offered it to Reinhardt. He sat, stretching his left leg out.

  “My name is Captain Reinhardt, of the Feldjaegerkorps.”

  “Alexiou,” said the man. He said something else, and one of the twins turned to Reinhardt and translated his father’s words. “My father asks would you like coffee?”

  “Only if it is Greek.”

  Alexiou smiled as he understood—a thin curl of his lips, but a smile nevertheless—though his eyes stayed flinty, and he and Reinhardt sized each other up as the twins busied themselves over the brazier. They sat in silence as the smell of roasting coffee filled the room, and the twins returned with mismatched cups. Reinhardt took his, turning it in his hands and lifting it to inhale the scent. His eyes closed a moment, and he was back on , the city moving toward high summer, and it was late afternoon, the square filling with people, with friends and families, the air thick with conversation. He opened his eyes, saw the old man looking at him, and he saluted him with the cup, taking a hot sip.

  “Excellent. I thank you.”

  “My father says you are welcome,” said the twin who had spoken. “My name is Kostas. I will translate for you. This is Panos,” he continued, indicating the other twin. “Now, my father wonders what you would like to talk to him about.”

  “May we speak freely, and openly?” Reinhardt looked at Alexiou as he spoke, waiting until the man finally nodded. The man was a patriarch, and patriarchs expected a certain mode and rhythm of conversation, and if he expected deference, Reinhardt would give him that too. “Did you kill Kreuz?”

  “No,” Alexiou answered, finally, the word dropping into an aching silence.

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No. But I can guess.” Reinhardt waited. “He was killed by those he served.”

  “By the Feldgendarmerie?” Alexiou’s head came down in a slow nod. “Why?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Kreuz was afraid of you. Of all of you,” Reinhardt said, drawing the twins in with his eyes. “He was a spy for the Feldgendarmerie. For Jansky. He was afraid you would kill him for it.”

  “Better is the devil where you can see him, Captain. Kreuz knew and heard what we wanted.”

  “Who were Berthold and Seymer?”

  All three of the Greeks leaned back, just slight movements, shifts of shoulders, tightening of necks. Alexiou’s mouth twisted as he turned his head to one side to sip from his cup, keeping his eyes fixed on Reinhardt. “They were friends of ours.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They disappeared. About a week ago.”

  “How?”

  “Working.”

  “Where?”

  “In the forest. Outside the city.”

  “Where?”

  Alexiou frowned, irritation unfurling itself across his eyes before he calmed himself. “At the camp for wood.”

  Reinhardt frowned at Kostas. “Camp for wood?”

  “For cutting wood,” Kostas nodded.

  “The logging camp,” Reinhardt said to himself, quietly. “Tell me about this camp.”

  “Nothing to tell. It was a place for taking wood. For the city. But it was unlucky work.”

  “Why?”

  “The camp was attacked by the Partisans. Several times.”

  “Men went missing?” Alexiou nodded, slowly. “How many went missin
g?”

  The Greeks looked among themselves. Panos said something quietly to his father. Alexiou shrugged, gestured with a jut of his chin, and Kostas turned to Reinhardt. “Four, maybe five men disappeared in the forest.”

  “Kreuz found out the deaths had not been reported,” said Alexiou. “That the men’s soldbuchs were still here. They had not been reported missing. And that the books were with Thun, one of the men who works in Jansky’s office.”

  “Who is Thun?”

  “A snitch—it is the word?—a snitch, like Jansky. But good with papers.”

  “Who was in charge of the logging camp?”

  “Lieutenant Metzler.”

  “Have other men gone missing?”

  “What kind of question is that, Captain? This is war. Men go missing. This is a punishment unit. Men will go missing here, first. Who will care? Who will count? And now,” Alexiou said, leaning his elbows on his knees, “you talk. Tell me of Judge Dreyer. What is he?”

  “A war crimes judge,” said Reinhardt, after a moment’s consideration, watching the man’s face. There was no reaction he could see.

  “War crimes judge. What is this?”

  “He works for the War Crimes Bureau. An investigation unit,” said Reinhardt. “It reports to the armed forces high command.”

  “You work together?” Alexiou pointed at Reinhardt’s armband.

  “No. It’s different. The bureau researches allegations of war crimes. By anyone, allied or enemy.”

  “And then what?”

  “If there is evidence, military courts launch proceedings. Trials,” he said. There was a reaction then, a flare and pinch of the man’s nostrils. “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Kreuz told us some things about you, Captain. Jansky told us some things. We found out some more. You were a policeman. You still are,” Alexiou said, glancing at Reinhardt’s gorget, pausing to drink. “I will tell you some things, Captain Reinhardt. Things you may find interesting. But first, I will ask you, are you ready to deal with the devil?”