Boalt and Carlsen. But no Skokov.
Whoever Boalt was, Reinhardt saw he had been into this section of the WASt several times. The name was strange, like nothing else he had seen or heard of, but the man must have been working for the Allies to have the access he had. Reinhardt noted the dates, seeing there were two entries: the first was in July 1946, not long after the WASt had relocated to Berlin from Fürstenhagen in the US zone, and reopened, the second time about five months ago.
“Were you here at that time?” Reinhardt asked De Massigny.
The Frenchman shook his head “Non. I do not think anyone working now from the French administration was here at the time. Semrau, maybe?”
But Semrau shook his head. “Like I said to the inspector, I recall him, but only vaguely.”
“What of Carlsen?”
“A quiet man. An Englishman, so with full access. He knew what he was looking for and asked for no help.”
“Can we do anything else for you, Inspector?”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. If you could, please look up the records for this soldier. Leyser. He was serving in Africa in 1942. That’s all I have.”
And a Reinhardt, Friedrich. The name was right there on the tip of Reinhardt’s tongue, but he swallowed it back.
“Just a name?” Semrau asked. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Of what interest is this name, Inspector?” De Massigny asked.
“The commander of the squadron was demoted for something to do with a failed mission. A short while later, he and two other pilots were involved in a fight with that soldier. One of those pilots was Noell. Could be nothing. Could be something. It’s just a lead.”
“We shall do our best, n’est-ce pas, Semrau?” De Massigny said jovially.
Reinhardt shook hands with Semrau, thanking the archivist for his help, and stood on the steps of the WASt with De Massigny. He offered him a Lucky and lit them both up. The day was almost gone, he saw to his surprise. He felt disoriented, and he breathed deeply, feeling lightened and light-headed. De Massigny glanced at him, his cigarette held elegantly at the height of his chest.
“It is quite something, is it not?” he asked, seeming to understand a little of what Reinhardt had felt and was feeling.
Reinhardt nodded. “Somewhere in there are my records. And those of my friends.” My son. “Just . . . pieces . . . in a structure.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the redbrick walls, down the long length of the street. “It is humbling. And I don’t fully understand what it all means.”
“For me, it is the perspective.” De Massigny blew smoke at the sky, straightening his glasses. “And the permanence. The mark we leave behind. Or the mark we choose to leave behind. It is not always the same thing. Searching for order in that, searching between the official for the unofficial. Searching for the small truths, or finding them by accident. For me, it is a great pleasure,” De Massigny said, an undertone of satisfaction to his words.
“I wish you luck with it,” Reinhardt smiled, extending his hand. “Should I need to get in touch with you again . . . ?”
“Of course! N’hésitez pas!” De Massigny exclaimed. “Tenez. My card.”
“And mine,” said Reinhardt. “You may reach me on that extension, or leave a message.”
A final handshake, and Reinhardt left him on the steps of the archive, feeling the bulk of it looming above him much larger than the building. He felt that if he turned around, he would see . . . something . . . rearing up and out. Something harrowed and clenched, rigid with the sorrow it bore. Reinhardt felt his back go clammy with sweat, and there was a hitched rhythm to his breath, like a child scared of the dark, or of the water. He clutched his papers to his chest and scurried down the street, ignoring the pain of his leg, walking until distance and the lowering light of the evening had put enough between him and the building that he could afford to slow, to look back, and see nothing.
At Gesundbrunnen he fairly flung himself through the U-bahn station’s turnstiles onto the platform, anything to get away from the oppressive weight of the archive. He began to calm down, waiting with dozens of others, eyes fixed on the gunmetal gleam of the tracks until, on a wash of dirty air and squeal of brakes, a train clashed into the station.
28
It was not until the doors shut and the train had closed the darkness of the tunnel around itself that he relaxed. He sat on a bench and watched his reflection, watched how lights flashing by outside would sharpen its haggard draw, watching how it collapsed back into watery focus. Back and forth. Back and forth.
He felt very lost.
A man in the flat cap of a laborer, his clothes and face seamed with a lifetime of toil, sat near him reading a newspaper. He held the paper close and high, as if nearsighted, his face screwed up in concentration, tongue protruding past the yellowed gaps of his teeth. Or perhaps in disbelief, thought Reinhardt, seeing the man’s head come up suddenly, blinking at the carriage around him as if not crediting what he saw and what he read.
At Alexanderplatz, Reinhardt waited until the train’s doors were closing, then slipped off the train, making his way to the A line platforms. At Stadtmitte, he changed to a southbound C line that would take him back to Paradestrasse, but he left the train at Hallesches Tor, three stops early. He walked slowly down the platform, head lost in thought until, with a quick sidestep, he slipped back into the train as the doors were closing. He did not think anyone had followed him, and he saw no swift repeated movement, but still. It paid to be safe. He got off again at Flughafen, one stop before his normal station, climbing heavily up out of the underground, feeling as if his muscles had turned to ash within him. Night had come down over the city. The streets were dark, only a few cars moving with their headlamps sweeping the darkness in fans of yellow light. He stopped at a small bar and ordered a beer, waiting. He tried to stay alert, but his mind drifted, again, lost in the overwhelming weight of the archives. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers, rubbing hard, as if the stamp of the archives had left a mark on him for everyone to see.
“You look like a shower of shit.”
He started, looking up as Brauer sat down next to him. “I don’t think anyone’s followed you, but there were a couple of people who lurked outside the WASt most of the day. I think you were in there so long, though, they got bored.” He focused his eyes on Reinhardt. “And you came out so fast, I barely kept up with you. You all right?”
Reinhardt nodded. The weight of the archives had pulped the fear he had had initially, of being followed and so asking Brauer to watch his back for anyone watching him. The police, the Soviets, the Americans, his son. It all felt trite, after the archives . . .
“Can you describe those men you saw at the WASt?”
“Pretty much aught-eight-fifteen. Run of the mill, ordinary. One was short, blocky. Dark hair cut close to his head. Nondescript clothes. Flat cap. He had a little barrow, full of bits and pieces. He sat on a bench across from the WASt until about four o’clock in the afternoon, smoking and drinking from a bottle in a paper bag. There was another, young bloke, blond hair, just sort of lurked along the street, not doing much. He didn’t stay long. Boredom, I’d have said. No staying power. The third was definitely a Russian. I asked them all for smokes, tried to exchange a few words. The one on the bench was German. A Berliner, I would have said. Said he came often because his son had been killed in the war, and he felt a connection with the records inside. He talked of how one day he would know what his son had done, but until then, he said he had to hold faith that his son had done well.” Brauer paused, seeing how Reinhardt’s face had clenched in on itself, but he could not know how close that other man’s vigil came to Reinhardt’s own worries of what Friedrich had seen and done in the east. “The second bloke told me to get lost. Didn’t say enough for me to get a sense of his accent. But the last one had a Russian accent so thick I could have fluffed it up and c
alled it a pillow.”
Reinhardt nodded. The description of the third man sounded like a Soviet agent sent to watch him. The second man, who knew? One of Kausch’s, perhaps? The first man could have been anyone. A father on some sort of pilgrimage for a lost son . . .
“Friedrich’s alive,” he blurted. Brauer frowned at him. “Friedrich’s alive.”
“I heard you. I just . . . What do you mean, he’s alive?”
“He’s back. From a camp. He came to see me the other night. The same night that Soviet officer came.”
“Friedrich’s back from the east?” Brauer took a long swig from his beer, caught Reinhardt’s eyes, and looked away.
“Say it.”
Brauer’s mouth twisted. “Why’s he home so early?”
“Why’s he home at all, you mean,” Reinhardt said, a snarl lying along the base of his words.
Brauer heard it, but his friend had seen and heard it all with Reinhardt, and he said nothing, only twisting his mouth again and sipping from his beer. “He’ll have some stories, I would imagine. I’ve got a story. The one you’ve been wanting to hear.”
“It’s all right, Rudi.”
“I know, Gregor. Now’s the time. I killed a boy. That Hitler Youth kid they put in charge of our Volkssturm squad. He was all fired up. Rabid. He had us on a street corner, and the . . . the Ivans were coming up the street. Right up the middle of Sonnenallee. Fucking T34s. Machine guns. Artillery. Mortars. Shooting up everything. Every door. Every window. There were Katyushas firing somewhere. Glass breaking. Someone was screaming. It was like nothing I had ever . . .”
Brauer lifted his beer, but seemed to forget he had done so. “The kid’s wet himself with excitement. He wants us to knock out the first T34. I tell him he’s mad. There’s infantry advancing down both sides of the street. We stick our heads out, they’ll get blown off. He pulls a gun on one of the men, tells him to fire his grenade. The man said no. The kid killed him. He aims at me. I snatched it off him and hit him on the head with it. He goes down. Blood everywhere. The others are looking at me. I tell them they can stay if they want, but I’ve already got an Iron Cross and I’m off. We all run. I looked back once and the kid’s lying there, and then the corner is blown to pieces, and a T34 comes round . . .” Brauer remembered his beer, drank deeply. “A kid. He was just a kid.”
They sat, the two of them lost in memories, until Brauer shook his head, firming his elbows on the table, and Reinhardt knew he was ready to talk.
“Friedrich said he’s in a halfway house out in Rummelsburg. Can you . . . can you do me a favor . . . ?” Reinhardt could not go on.
“You want me to have a look? Of course. You want him to see me?”
“No! No. Just . . .”
“Just tell you. I understand.”
Reinhardt felt the weight of Brauer’s story, another one to add to the weight of the day, but he knew Brauer did not want pity and so he said nothing. There would be a time, but not now. They left their beers half-drunk, too tepid and flat to finish, then Brauer proceeded them out into the night, back to Meissner’s house. Brauer left him there, continuing on alone. Reinhardt never knew where he went, and Brauer never said. Brauer had opened a crack into the core of what troubled him, but the crack offered little, and it could close again. Reinhardt did not have the right words to unlock Brauer’s intransigence, his self-imposed rigidity, the control, and right then he had no energy to try.
There was electricity on Meissner’s street, and he opened the front door to a waft of steam from the kitchen, and to find Mrs. Meissner mashing potatoes in a bowl. A huge sack of potatoes stood in a corner, and a can of oil upon the work surface.
“What good fortune is this?” Reinhardt asked.
Meissner smiled at him. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Me what?”
She frowned at him as she slid chopped herbs from her garden into the mash. Rosemary, thyme, a sprinkle of salt. “Didn’t you send these?”
“I did not.” He felt a creeping unease. “You must have an admirer.”
“A bit young for me,” she smiled, but unease gathered in the fine net of wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. A policeman’s wife, a conspirator’s spouse, Meissner recognized danger when she sensed it.
“Who was it?”
“A man came to the door with the sack, a can of oil, and a packet of salt. He said they were from you.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Of middle age, I would guess. Softly spoken. Polite. He wore a worker’s clothes, with a flat cap. He had a little handcart that he used to carry the sack. His hair was graying. He was clean-shaven, but for a little mustache. Of medium height, but . . . broad. Solid.”
“He came in? You talked?”
“A little. I gave him tea and honey. He seemed to know you, Gregor.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not what he said, but the way he said it.” She served up a dish, and laid it in front of him. “There was a level of familiarity. But it was respectful. As if from a man you might have served with. He remarked on your dedication, and on your fatigue.” They looked at each other in silence. “Who was he?” she asked, finally.
“I do not know.” But he did, and he wondered at the man’s daring and his close knowledge of him. Dedication and fatigue? Was the man challenging him? Putting him in shape for the hunt ahead . . . ? Reinhardt looked down at the mashed potatoes, his nostrils full with the scent of the crushed and warmed herbs. Meissner sat opposite him, and closed one hand about the other, waiting. “I think . . . I think it might be the man I am chasing. What else did you notice?”
“The man was a Berliner. But there was something in his voice. In his accent. Something else. Some other influence. I could be wrong.”
“You’re a Berliner born and bred, Mrs. Meissner. You would know.”
“You sound different, Gregor,” she answered. “Seven years elsewhere, I can hear other places in your voice, now. But then,” she said, smiling softly to take any sting out of her words, “you never were much of a Berliner. Far too polite. You should eat.”
“What about you?”
“Later,” Meissner replied, toying with the pages of a newspaper.
“More artwork?” Reinhardt asked, trying to change the subject.
Meissner smoothed the pages out, nodding. “A Belgian commission arrived, today,” she replied, but she was distracted and went up to bed shortly afterward. Reinhardt washed up the dishes, cleaning down the surfaces, then sat under the yellow glow of the bulb, his notes and papers from the WASt spread around him, and Skokov’s bottle of vodka and a glass. He looked at the bottle, hesitating, eyes flicking back and forth from the vodka and the papers. Mrs. Meissner showed little, gave less away, but she was upset. She had never talked of it, but Reinhardt knew she had had to go into hiding after Tomas’s arrest. Men watching, intrusions into her world, there would have been too many memories from the war.
He took a long breath, then began going through the notes he made, trying to put things together, to find a pattern in the information. He listed the pilots of IV./JG56, then those who had gone on to serve in III./NJG64. He listed those who had been killed during the war, eliminated them from the investigation. He drew up deployment dates, double-checking who had been where at the same time. He noted addresses he had taken from soldbuchs of wives, of next of kin, drawing up contact lists for Mrs. Dommes and her ladies to begin tracking down pilots living elsewhere. He stumbled on through the night, blinking back tiredness, feeling a headache rising up his back, seizing his neck and shoulders. He was not sure this was the best use of his time or the information he had, but he had no other way to analyze things, and when he was finished he had four lists, complete with a range of ancillary information.
He had Haber, Noell, Stucker, and Zuleger, the victims of the killer. Two killed by water, two
by sand. He had their prewar addresses, as noted in their soldbuchs and personnel files. In a second list he had Noell, again, and his mysterious break in service, resurfacing in Bergen, but he also had Prellberg and Gareis. They, too, had gone somewhere, and that destination had been redacted, and the chances were they and Noell had gone somewhere together. In the third list, he had the other pilots from the second squadron, and their addresses across Germany. And in the fourth list he had Haber, and the limited information he had secured from what was in the WASt that indicated he had done work for the Nazis. After thinking a moment, he added Prellberg’s, Noell’s, and Gareis’s names to that list as well. Thinking a little more, he added Leyser’s name to the mix. Maybe something. Maybe nothing, he thought, going back to the sergeant’s telling him about the man he had bumped into at Zuleger’s building. An ex-soldier, with a veteran’s slang. A man who wore a flat cap, like the man who had come here, to Mrs. Meissner’s house.
He looked at it all through eyes that stung and swam from tiredness, and thought it was not much, but then thought it was far more than he had mere days ago. It was the third list that interested him most, the list of those other pilots across Germany. God only knew where they were now, and if they could be found, but it was something to hang onto, a hook to cast into the flow of events.
Reinhardt shuffled his papers back together, and put the bottle away without touching it, noting it down as a small victory with himself. He went out into the garden to the latrine in the wooden shed he had built when he arrived here, made his ablutions, then stood a while in the chill and smoked a cigarette, staring up at the star-studded sky. He thought of Mrs. Meissner, of how she had survived the Red Army’s sack of Berlin by making a small den inside the brambles that hedged the bottom of her garden. She had seen the end coming, and steadily filled a small hollow with preserved food and bottles of water. With the Soviets at the city’s gates, she had broken open her own front door, smashed the ground floor windows, wrecked furniture and strewn the contents of the kitchen all over the floor and left a dozen bottles of the colonel’s old French brandy in evidence before retreating to her hideaway. She had stayed in it for several weeks, listening to the sack of the city, creeping out at night if she had to, and only emerging once things had calmed down. She found a Soviet captain living in the wreckage of her house who spoke a little German, and she had cooked and cleaned for him until he left, and this part of Berlin was occupied by the Americans, and at that moment Reinhardt realized what had bothered him in the WASt. He knew it had been something he had read, and now he knew.
The Divided City Page 22
