Collingridge nodded. “Good work, here. I wasn’t sure if Reinhardt’s gamble would pay off, but it looks like it has. And we got something unexpected. Right, Reinhardt?”
“We got a pilot,” Reinhardt nodded.
“You got a pilot?” Markworth asked.
“One of those that Leyser’s been after. You remember Noell? The first victim we found, when we found Carlsen? Turns out he had a brother. A twin brother. And he’s a pilot.”
“What are you going to do with him?” Markworth asked.
“Have a word,” said Reinhardt, leaning his head back against the doorjamb. “But we’ve got nothing on him. Noell’s done nothing wrong, so we won’t hold him, but I don’t think he can really stay in Berlin. We won’t be able to protect him, and the Soviets will want him.” He felt Friedrich stiffen against him. “And Leyser’s still around. Even if I don’t see how Leyser can get to him, we’re no closer to getting him either.”
“You’re not going to give Noell to the Soviets, surely?” asked Markworth.
Collingridge shook his head. “Not till Reinhardt’s done with him, and even then, not if we can avoid it. We have a nice little haul of Nazis. It’s been a while since we bagged a lot like that. We’ll run Kausch and his merry men through CROWCASS, see if any of our side wants them. If not, we’ll give Kausch to the Russkies. They’ll want him, for sure. That should buy Reinhardt some time.”
“Reinhardt, you know the British are going to want to hear what Noell knows about the British connection. We will need to speak to him at some point. We’re clear about that, aren’t we?”
Reinhardt looked embarrassed, and it was Collingridge who spoke up. “Look, Markworth. You’ll understand if we want to give the German police some time with Noell. I mean, I understand your concerns, but Reinhardt’s got some murders to solve. And as these murders have been occurring mostly in the American sector, and that’s where we caught Noell, the US authorities are happy to back the police on this.”
“Well, well. Are the Americans lining up with the Germans against the Brits then?” Markworth asked. His mouth carried a little smile, and his tone was ironic, but there was a hard glitter in the corner of his eyes.
“Of course you can speak to him,” Reinhardt said. “We just need to speak to Noell first while his head is straight. Otherwise, you and then the Soviets will just confuse him.”
“I understand. I’m not so sure Whelan will, or any of the others. It’s them you’ll have to deal with, as I’ve got to go back to Bad Oeynhausen in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Reinhardt murmured, running a hand over his brow. “I mean it. Thank you for everything.”
46
Once again, Reinhardt’s sleep was broken and ragged. Too many thoughts, too many worries for anything resembling rest or even sleep that gave oblivion. He rose early, dressed mechanically, and went down to the latrine. As was his wont, he smoked a cigarette in the garden afterward. The sky was a thunderous riot of clouds, their formations towered, banked, and buttressed like a fortress of the gods. The sky was about all he saw of nature these days, he realized, that one trip out to the Soviet zone the exception, and he treasured those memories of fields and forests, matching them with other, older memories of Bosnia and the wild challenge of its mountains and valleys. Now, what he knew of the changing of the seasons and the year’s march, he saw and read in the clouds and it felt wrong, it felt singular, as if a greater story was out there to be read if only the nature of the words could be revealed.
He realized, suddenly, he was not alone. Sergeant Dudgeon was standing statue-still in the corner made by the hedge and house wall. Their eyes met, and Reinhardt nodded to him and the man nodded back, gravely, the only move he made. Reinhardt finished dressing and left the house quietly, past Corporal Hilton, where he stood at the window of Meissner’s old study. Outside, he took a couple of steps down the little driveway and Sergeant Northam seemed to coalesce from the early morning shadows, the leather of his jacket creaking softly.
“Going somewhere, sir?”
“I still have a job, Sergeant. I will be fine.”
“We’ll keep an eye here the rest of the day, like Lieutenant Markworth asked.”
“I thank you, Sergeant, for my life and the lives of my son and friends.”
“A friend of the lieutenant’s a friend of mine, sir,” Northam said.
—
The Zoo Station’s iron superstructure hung over the platforms like the grid of an immense board game. All the panes of glass that had filled the interstices in the structure were gone, or else they existed only as serrated fragments that caught the light that streamed and pillared through the roof’s fretwork. Despite its damage, the station, for all journeys west, was a heaving and bustling hive, the same heaving and bustling hive it had always been, and a thriving black market hub as well.
Reinhardt nursed a cup of what had been sold to him as some kind of ersatz chocolate from one of the little kiosks that had reopened in the station’s concourse. Even for Berlin’s low standards, it was awful, but it was warm. The station carried the chill of metal and concrete, a chill that sank deep and could only be dislodged by moving around. All he could do was shift his weight from side to side, nursing the pain in his knee and feeling his feet go ever more numb with the cold as the crowds and noise throbbed and ebbed all around him. Farmers bartered jars of drippings or crocks of butter. He saw women selling jewels, someone else selling soap, and a man sold packs of cigarettes from a sack, two toughs flanking him. He knew that over on one of the farther platforms, false papers could be obtained or real ones altered. Children ghosted the crowds, heads and eyes alert for opportunities. Anything and everything was for sale except, it seemed, a way out.
Seeing what he needed, he left the kiosk and walked as quickly as his heavy feet and the crowds would allow to the ticket inspectors who controlled access to the platforms. He pushed through the Berliners that eddied along the line of platforms like forlorn waves upon a desolate shore, past men in cast-off military dress or in black coats with PW in faded letters on the backs, past women bundled almost shapeless in disparate layers. Most of them had no tickets, no hope of getting out of the city. The Allies were letting almost no one out anymore, not without special passes or permits, claiming the pressure on their zones from the millions of Germans expelled from Prussia and from Eastern Europe was too great to allow more immigration. Reinhardt showed his police identification to the ticket officers, feeling the avalanche pressure of hundreds of eyes behind him, and slipped out onto the platforms, walking down past a train idling in wafts of steam to a man standing alone next to an open carriage door.
“I’m surprised you’re not taking the plane from RAF Gatow.”
Markworth turned, the slight frown on his face washing away when he recognized Reinhardt.
“Trains give you time to think. And they’re useful for observing what’s going on in the Soviet zone.”
“I came to say good-bye. And to thank you again for your help.”
“For my help, think nothing of it. I left word at your station. Someone on General Nares’s staff will want to be involved in questioning Noell, then almost certainly some people in Bad Oeynhausen will want to speak with him. I’ll have a word with them, see what I can do to give you some time.”
“Thank you. We will need it.”
“Still no sign of Leyser?”
“Nothing. But Leyser has nowhere to go now,” Reinhardt said. “I wanted to offer you a last thought about him. It may be helpful to you in your inquiries in Bad Oeynhausen.”
“I’m all ears. I’d offer you a last molle to go with it, but I don’t think there’s either time or place.”
Reinhardt shook a cigarette out, nodding his thanks as Markworth lit it for him, and continued speaking quietly. “You know we keep wondering at Leyser’s state of mind. What he must be trying to say with his g
estures. Wondering what must have happened to him to make him do what he has done.”
“I think it’s justice of some kind,” Markworth said. “If I learned one thing during the war, it is that justice can be sought for the strangest things, and take the strangest forms.” His eyes met Reinhardt’s, and he knew Markworth was thinking of Bosnia and of what Reinhardt had told him he had done with the Ustaše.
“But if it’s justice, it’s justice for something those being murdered don’t even remember. None of the pilots remember what they did. I’m sure of it. Not unless Leyser reminded them of it just before the end.”
“Maybe that’s reason enough for him. Maybe it’s enough the murders mean something to him.”
“Desert and sea,” Reinhardt murmured around a long pull on his cigarette. Whistles shrilled up and down the platform. People began to step up into the carriages, but Markworth stayed still, listening. “Sand and water. That’s what they symbolize. Desert and sea. Leyser is remembering his . . . agony . . . in the desert when he forces sand down the throats of those he murders. But those he murdered, he found, did other things, with other men. Experiments on humans. Experiments in water. Sand and water. Revenge and justice.”
Markworth blinked, nodded. “I think you may be right,” he said, his words almost lost as whistles blasted anew.
“In Bad Oeynhausen, you need to look for men working on your denazification programs, or something like that, who might have had access to information like Leyser seems to have had. It must not be a long list.”
“It should not be,” Markworth answered, his eyes alight. He clapped Reinhardt on the shoulder. “Well done, man!” he exclaimed, waving away an irate platform guard. He pulled himself up into his carriage, leaning heavily on his good leg and angling toward the window, looking down as the train juddered into motion. “I’ll be in touch. Don’t finish all this off without me, now, you hear?”
—
The late daylight did nothing for the ruins of the house on Sedanstrasse, leaving enough of the original construction’s elegance to make its damage all the more evident. Reinhardt took the same staircase up to the floor where the Americans had captured Kausch, then followed a sturdy wooden staircase higher, his feet crunching in dust and plaster. The place stank of damp and mold, of wet and charred wood, of sewage and waste, the myriad tangle of odors and scents that a building gave up when it had been blown out and open.
He found the room on the top floor, where Brauer had said to look. He had to worm past a fall of wreckage where roof beams had pitched down into a corridor, splaying themselves like sheaves of wheat, and where the floor was holed like moth-eaten cloth. He walked carefully, watching crumbs and shards of debris clatter down onto the floors below, hearing them crack and bounce like pebbles. The door, when he reached it, was half-hidden behind another beam that lay athwart it, but if he angled himself just right, the passage past it was easy.
The room beyond was a tangled mound of debris. A huge wooden cupboard had been cracked in two, and its contents strewn across the floor. The windows were all smashed, only a couple of panes remained intact, but Reinhardt stood and looked and saw the order that emerged, slowly, as if submitting itself for his inspection. He saw the boards that had been cut to the size of the windows, and that could be locked into place if needed. He saw the metal curve of a lantern winking out from beneath a heap of rags, he saw the bed where it lay propped, as if haphazardly, across a jumble of bricks that were waiting to be stacked to support it. He picked up one of the cupboard doors, and his reflection wobbled and lurched back at him as he steadied it against the wall. Inside the cupboard, beneath a dusty swirl of rags and tattered cloth, he found tinned food, a mess kit, a small cooker and, searching further, a bundle tied with a leather belt. He unwrapped it, laying out on the bed a quilted jacket, of the type a Russian would wear, a shirt and trousers, a flat cap, and a pair of black boots with the leather scarred white.
Inside a packet in one of the jacket’s pockets, he found a mix of objects, the significance of which escaped him before he realized he was looking at a kit to disguise oneself. A stick of charcoal, packets of gum that could be used to insert in the mouth and cheeks. A small mirror and set of brushes. A pot of paste of some kind, sticky to the touch. And lastly, in an empty tin of shoe polish, what looked like fuzz or hair, and which was, he realized, a set of fake mustaches.
“There’s more.”
Reinhardt had heard the steps, recognized the rhythm, and was not startled when Brauer spoke.
“There’s uniforms. All four occupying powers. Weapons. Knives, mostly. Garottes. Clubs. Silent stuff. Like what we used to carry in the trenches, eh?”
“That’s in keeping with his training, I suppose.”
“God, this is very far from being nought-eight-fifteen. I can tell you. What must he have been thinking . . . ?”
“I suppose it was a lair, of some kind,” answered Reinhardt, looking up and around, seeing the order amid the disorder.
“And now he’s up and running. I wonder where’s he gone to ground?”
“If he’s as smart as I think he is, he’s probably got a dozen places like this across the city.”
“Bit sentimental and risky of him to use his old home then, wouldn’t you think?” Brauer speculated, idly tapping his boot against the skirting boards.
“What did you find out in Potsdam?”
Brauer nodded, and from the way his mouth moved, Reinhardt knew the news would be bad, or not what he wanted to hear. “I found them. Like you said.”
“In the parish records?”
Brauer nodded again. “The church in Potsdam was damaged, but the records were saved. I found them in the marriage registry. They had a church wedding, as would’ve been the norm back then.”
“And . . . ?”
“As you suspected.”
Reinhardt tilted his head back. “Ah, Christ,” he swore, quietly.
“I’m sorry, Gregor,” Brauer said, putting his hand on Reinhardt’s shoulder. “What about Noell?”
“He’s told us what he knows. Which is nothing about Leyser.”
“So he’s out?”
“He will be soon.”
“Reinhardt!”
“I’m coming, Ganz,” Reinhardt called back, distracted by the information Brauer had given him. “We should go. Are you still with me?”
“Does a timid dog ever get fat? I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Brauer grinned.
Ganz was waiting on the street with a battered car huffing behind him, its engine giving off a reek of charcoal and seemingly on the edge of giving out with every stutter of its motor.
“We need to get moving, Reinhardt,” Ganz said, before stopping and peering more closely at Brauer. “Good God. Is that Rudi Brauer?”
“Good to see you too, Ganz,” Brauer grinned.
“Dick and bloody Doof,” Ganz muttered, shaking his head, looking at the pair of them. “Back together for one last show.”
“You’ve missed our Laurel and Hardy act, then, have you?”
“Like a hole in the head. I’d break out the beers, lads, but you’ve got problems, Reinhardt. Dommes said you were here.”
“What problems?” Reinhardt asked.
“Your baton’s turned up. Covered in Stresemann’s brains and whatnot. And I don’t doubt it’s got your fingerprints all over it.”
“Where? Where was it found?”
“At the Stresemann murder scene. They shoved a bunch of refugees from out east into the place, and the municipal authorities found it. The call came through the Neukölln station. Dommes took it, and she told me.”
“You’re sitting on it?”
“For now.”
“What are you going to do?” Brauer asked.
“Now, that’s an interesting question, Rudi. Reinhardt knows something of the answer. The easy opti
on—the survivor’s option—has me bringing you in to Linienstrasse for questioning, and they tend to get a bit nasty with their questioning up in Mitte, as you know. But quite frankly, I find it strange that the two times Stresemann’s murder has shown up, it’s been to trip you up, Reinhardt. I’m starting to suspect your theories are right. So you’ve got one shot at wrapping this up, tonight. Because tomorrow I’m going to have to do something about that baton, and getting rid of it’s not an option.”
“One night’s all we need,” Reinhardt said. He said it with far more confidence than he felt, and suddenly pieces shifted and he watched and felt them, carefully, testing the new shape as he talked. “You said Linienstrasse. Take me there, instead. I can go straight in the front and out the back. It will look good,” he pressed, raising a hand to Ganz’s and Brauer’s objections. “It will help if he thinks I’m in there, and out of his way. It will give him confidence. Otherwise, it’s one of the holes in the plan. He needs to know where I am. You know it can help, so let’s just do it, and make a show of it.”
Ganz drove, the car hiccupping and wheezing its sorry way through the darkening streets. At a street corner he slowed enough for Brauer to step out into the lines of shadow that cleaved the rubbled frontage of a block of ruins, then pushed on to Linienstrasse. Ganz parked on the narrow street and they waited, timing things for the shift change, and when they saw men beginning to drift into the building and others begin to drift out, he walked Reinhardt through the front entrance of Berlin’s main police station, past the curious gaze of the police guard on duty. Inside, Ganz hustled him into the warren of cells along the building’s rear, mostly deserted now at this late hour, and then out a small door into Lothringerstrasse.
“Go, quickly. I’ll take care of the paperwork. It’ll look like you’re in here, but it won’t hold up forever.”
“You’re sure of things?”
“Yes, yes. Noell will be released in about half an hour. Unforgiveable. Really. I will need to have a word with Mrs. Dommes about the state of administration. A real clerical balls-up. The British will be furious and make a stink. Collingridge knows. He’ll stand back and leave things to us. You need to move, now, so go.”
The Divided City Page 39
