No sooner had Ganz closed the door behind him than Reinhardt was walking away fast down the darkened streets, moving quickly, block by shattered block, while the sun set and the ruins rose black and stark before him, as if carved from the bottom of the sky, like cut-out versions of themselves.
He walked until he found the address he needed, a hostel for refugees and displaced people from the east, a place that stank of dilapidation and damp and sewage, a place that belonged thirty years in the past when Berlin’s working-class neighborhoods squatted close around their collective stench and squalor.
Upstairs, in the chill dark of the room that had been marked out, he settled in to wait. He waited, until steps shuffled to a stop outside the door, and it opened, slowly. A man stepped inside. The two of them blinked at each other.
“I made it,” Andreas Noell said.
47
Late as it became, the place was noisy. Men’s voices strident and loud, the accents of the east. Music coming from somewhere, the strident curls of a violin. Children crying, screaming, playing. The noise of feet in the hallway all the time. Somewhere, bedsprings banged rhythmically. He sat in the dark—the room lit only by what light came through the windows, enough of it to coat the hard edges of what little furniture there was—and went over the case in his mind, over and over, as well as this arrangement he had made.
This trap, to call it what it was.
The room had two entrances: a door, and a window that gave onto a fire escape that itself dropped down into a narrow refuse-strewn alley. Reinhardt heard noises from outside from time to time, from the alley, but although each one made his nerves stretch taut, somehow he felt that Leyser—if he came—would come through the door, and do so openly. None of the murders showed any sign that the victims had struggled. Reinhardt felt they knew the man they opened the door to. That, or they had no reason to mistrust the type of man who came through it. That they had opened the door to the kind of man they would have expected to have knocked.
An expected guest. A hotel concierge. A policeman.
Or a postman, he thought, remembering the last proper investigation he and Brauer had made under the Nazis. Dresner, the Postman. Who would not open the door to a postman . . . ?
The hours ticked by. The hostel quietened.
The knock at the door was firm. Not too loud. Authoritative. It jolted his heart from its well-worn track, froze him stiff in his seat with his skin feeling as if it had shrunk around him. Noell sat up in a sudden tangle of movement on the bed, saying nothing. The knock came again, and Reinhardt’s heart shuddered back into rhythm, and he gestured at Noell to get up. Noell shuffled to sit on the bed. With his vision accustomed to the room’s low light, Reinhardt saw Noell looking at the door with wide eyes. He blinked them at Reinhardt, who made an exaggerated nod with his head and hands, pointing at the door.
“Who is it?” Noell called, his voice faking that of a man just woken from sleep.
“Police,” came the muffled response. Reinhardt positioned himself to one side of the door, drawing the .45 Collingridge had given him but forgotten to take back. Noell unlocked the door, then stepped well back into the room. The door opened. There was little light in the hallway, but it carved form from darkness, and Reinhardt slitted his eyes to keep as much of his night vision as he could manage. A man came in, sculpted by shadow, a dense, compact man in a long coat and a hat pulled low over his brow. He moved smoothly, easily, his hands held at his sides.
“Who are you?” quavered Noell. “What do you want?”
“I am Leyser.”
Without looking, the man pushed the door shut. There was a moment of stillness, then Leyser was moving, slashing into Noell, who cried out as he crashed backward. Leyser followed, seeming to flow over the floor, a blotch of darkness against the dimness of the room. Reinhardt waited, almost frozen with fear. Waiting for the next act in this awful drama. Waiting, hearing, as Leyser hauled a gagging Noell up onto the bed. The pilot was speechless, wheezing for breath and powerless to stop his hands being dragged up and tied to the bedframe.
“STOP!” Reinhardt cried. He thumbed back the hammer on the .45, the sound slithering mechanically across the room. Leyser froze, whirling in surprise. Reinhardt watched his form spring off the bed, lowering himself into a fighter’s stance.
Reinhardt switched on a flashlight, aiming it square at Leyser. The light arrowed across the darkened room, lurched, steadied on his face. It bunched up, wrinkled into harsh incisions of light and shadow, and Leyser ducked down, showing the crown of his head.
“Look at me. Look at me, Leyser. Look at me. Or I will shoot you, and you will never have your story told.”
Leyser straightened slowly. He seemed to unfurl, little by little. His face came into view, etched, whittled from the darkness. Reinhardt needed more light, and he sidled over to the door and the light switch. The room’s bulb flickered on, steadied, lighting across a blunt expanse of forehead. A slim nose. The dark line of a mustache. It was a forgettable face, and the differences were hard to see, what Reinhardt knew and what he saw overlaying each other, quivering like a rung bell. They were subtle. The cheeks bunched out and the skin darkened. The eyebrows thicker. The chin pushed forward. But there was no doubt.
“Take off the mustache.”
The man smiled, then peeled the mustache away from his lip, leaving a line that glistened and then faded.
“The cheeks.”
The man dug a finger into each cheek and pushed and spat out wads of gum. The face fell in, thinned, became something else.
Someone else.
It was Markworth.
“Don’t move,” Reinhardt said, keeping his voice steady with an effort. Markworth was tense, coiled, ready to run. “Kneel down. Kneel down with your hands beneath your knees. Do it.”
Markworth moved slowly, kneeling, his eyes never leaving Reinhardt’s, who was terrified by the flat, implacable weight of them and the danger he represented.
“Noell? Noell are you all right?” Noell lay slumped half-on, half-off the bed, moaning as he clutched his chest with one free hand. A bruised line lay heavy across his face, from forehead to nose to mouth, one eye already swelling shut.
“What are you doing, Reinhardt?” Markworth asked.
Reinhardt jumped, the words were so sudden. “Putting an end to this, Leyser.”
Markworth frowned. He shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”
“You deny you are Leyser?”
“No. But you can’t stop me. Honestly, Reinhardt. You came so close with your reasoning. You came to understand me. You must know that you cannot stop me. Not so near the end.”
“It’s over, Leyser.”
“It can’t be, Reinhardt.” Markworth’s voice was implacable. “You can’t. I won’t let it happen.”
“This is insanity, Leyser. Markworth.” Reinhardt could not call him Leyser. The name felt wrong. It was not the name of the man he knew, kneeling before him. “Whatever your name is. It has to end. It makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense, Reinhardt. To me.”
“But to whom does it make sense? You are many things, Leyser. Markworth. I believe there were many choices open to you.” Reinhardt paused, remembering suddenly his conversation in Sarajevo with Begović, about what defined a person. “You are a German. You are an Englishman. Your father’s name was Leyser. Your mother’s maiden name was Markworth. We found their marriage records in Potsdam. I think when you were captured in Tobruk, you offered your services to the British, I think out of disillusion, maybe out of a sense of atonement. I think that when this war started, you were unsure which way to fall, and you somehow fell into the Germans’ ambit and you found yourself regretting it. You fell into the father’s camp. It is so often the case. Am I right?”
“Your son didn’t.”
“And to a young man like you, I think th
e German cause may have looked oh so attractive,” Reinhardt continued, ignoring that stabbing thrust from Markworth, hoping he did not show how close it had hit home. “The chance for adventure. That would be the young man in you. The chance to right old wrongs. That would be the father. Do I wrong you, Markworth?”
“No,” Markworth smiled. “To the point on nearly all points, Reinhardt. My father called me home in 1938. His discourse was always that of Versailles. And he was making a lot of money off the Nazis. For me it was an officer’s uniform, men to command, special training. It was a heady mix, Reinhardt, I’ll not deny it. But the darkness came out fast enough.”
“And your mother?”
“My mother stayed by my father’s side throughout the first war, but she would not do so for a second. She saw through the Nazis quick enough. I suppose, in a way, we all did, except some of us allowed the blinkers to stay on. But this is all nice enough, Reinhardt, and so, now what?”
“Now, it’s over.”
“No, it’s not. You can’t hold me. I am James Markworth. I am British. A member of the occupying forces.”
“You are Marius Leyser. A German.”
“You can’t prove that, apparently. Nothing remains to prove that.”
“Your British masters know. Someone among them knows who you were.”
“Someone does. Someone far from here. That won’t help you now.”
“It will be a shock to them. Who you are, what you’ve done.”
“They’ll get over it.”
“I have Semrau.”
Markworth smiled, but the light in his eyes glittered hard, like glass. “The archivist. Him . . . I could have killed him ten times over. I suppose I should have. But I don’t regret leaving him alive. It was my choice. He was my proof I was no longer fighting the war, and he’ll have to live with what he did. I chose those I killed. And why. If it were still the war, he would be dead. And so would you. And so we come back to it, Reinhardt. What do you do now?”
“The best I can, Markworth. Leyser. The best I can. I have caught a man who has murdered, by my count, fifteen men.”
“You’ve been counting.”
“Including the life of your friend, Carlsen.”
“Fifteen men used to be a day’s work for us, Reinhardt,” but Markworth’s eyes flickered at Carlsen’s name, perhaps a sign of guilt, and Reinhardt fastened on it as a hook, as something to use against this seemingly imperturbable man.
“For you, perhaps. But that was then, and this is now, and what you did was premeditated.”
“‘Premeditated,’ Reinhardt?”
“Prellberg was spontaneous, I think. He triggered something in you. But he led you to the others. Then you used the WASt, and when you could find no more, you created the Ritterfeld Association, and brought your victims to you. And when your friend Carlsen realized what you were doing, he tried to stop you.”
“Making me a ‘premeditated murderer.’ Don’t the police have better names for people like me? and besides, where’s your proof, Reinhardt?”
“I’ve got enough of it. I’ve got Semrau. I’ve got you in this room. And I don’t doubt that when I search you, I will find a tube, maybe a rubber hose, and a box of sand.”
“You don’t think a man of my ingenuity and training can explain that away?”
“I’ve got a concierge in the Hotel Am Zoo. I’ve got a war veteran in an apartment. I’ll find Carlsen’s evidence. And I’ve got Bochmann,” Reinhardt lied. Keeping the .45 on Markworth, Reinhardt shuffled over to the room’s wall and rapped on it. Markworth’s eyes followed him, narrowing, and Reinhardt watched his face closing in, a granite stillness coming over him, but Reinhardt was sure it betrayed rage. A rage so all-encompassing it consumed him. Markworth was right about one thing: Reinhardt had precious little proof, and it was unlikely in the extreme that he would be able to hold Markworth to account for his crimes. The British would take him and repatriate him, or something similar. The shape of Markworth’s crimes shifted in his mind, the pattern of this investigation, and Reinhardt knew that any resolution or justice he could aspire to would be personal. The system would never allow him anything else. What little justice there would be would have to be found here and now, and might only mean something to the two of them. The hunter and the hunted.
“What you want is vengeance, but it’s blind. Noell!” Reinhardt called. The pilot rolled over, moaning, blinking hard against his pain. “Noell. Do you know this man? Do you?” Noell lowered his head, shaking it. “Look closely, Noell. Look. This man, Leyser. Have you ever seen him?” Reinhardt shone his flashlight on Markworth, flicking his eyes between him and Noell. “This man was the man Prellberg and Gareis attacked in Tobruk, in October 1942. In a hospital. Do you remember that?” Noell nodded his head, weakly. “Do you remember why? Do you remember attacking a Berber encampment? Do you remember?”
“I don’t . . . I think so. I don’t know.”
“Did you know the encampment was not a Berber one? It was a German unit you attacked. A unit of Brandenburgers.”
Noell winced, shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t . . .” His face cleared. “Yes. But, it was so long ago, and it was an accident.”
“It might have stayed that way,” Markworth grated, “only some of your friends tried to kill me in hospital. And I remember the way the aircraft went round and round the encampment, making sure nothing moved . . . Remembrance is a strange thing, Reinhardt,” Markworth said, and his voice was coiled tight like a snake’s. “I will show you something. You remember the scars I showed you. I said they were from the cannon of my tank.” He moved slowly, taking his hands out from under his knees. With his left hand he pulled back the cuff of his coat and then his shirt. “They were from heat. That was no lie. But it was no gun.” The scars went all the way up his right arm, as far up as his clothes could be rolled. “It was the desert sun. Where they left me alone. Wounded. Bereft of friends and companions.” He unbuttoned his shirt. His chest was covered in a mottled drift of scar tissue and skin blotched red. “Days in the sun, Reinhardt. I don’t know how many. I never recovered from the burns. The doctors did what they could. The British did a little better. But this is what I was left with. The rest of me too. Only my head, which I covered, shows no sign of the sun, but what the sun could not burn without, it burned within.”
“Noell doesn’t remember, Markworth. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“It means nothing. They took everything from me, and they did not even know it. I was a speck of black upon the desert sand that they chased and machine-gunned. I was a mummy rolled in bandages in hospital and still they came for me. I was a fragment of myself, a kernel I held against the sun. And then, when I came across that first one—Prellberg—and I realized who he was and what he was doing, I was there again, on that sand, and they were above me, around me, and there was no escape.”
“Did he remember?” Reinhardt was mesmerized by the menace that Markworth gave off, and by the even roll of his voice. His German was smooth, fluent, the halting mispronunciations gone for the artful camouflage they had been. He knocked on the wall again.
“He said he did not. But he wet himself lying to save himself. He gave me Hauck. He knew where he was living. And he gave me the other one—Lütjens—as someone more deserving of vengeance. He told me about the test unit, what they did. That was justice. You were right, Reinhardt. I will give you that. It was about both. About justice and revenge. And you were right about consequences,” he laughed softly, as Reinhardt knocked on the wall a third time. “No one remembers what they did, no one remembers the consequences of their actions. People walk uncaring into the future and have no idea of what bloody ties stretch out behind them, and isn’t that part of the problem?”
The door opened, and Weber stepped inside. Reinhardt blinked at him, and Weber smiled.
“Expecting someone else?”
&
nbsp; 48
Two of the other young detectives followed Weber in. Schmidt and Frohnau, Weber’s two shadows. Schmidt had Ganz, and he had a pistol on him. Weber had a pistol as well and he pointed it at Reinhardt, holding out his other hand for Reinhardt’s .45.
“Weber. What do you think you’re doing?” Reinhardt managed.
“I’m not that sure,” Weber answered. His cheeks were flushed high with excitement, but his skin was pale beneath. “I overheard a rather lovely heart-to-heart. Something about justice and revenge. About Germans and British.” He looked at Markworth. “Is this the one you’ve been chasing? Quite the catch for the one who brings him in. Which will not be you, I’m afraid.” Weber’s smile, his self-satisfied smile, his mischievous smile, slipped, then faded under the withering pressure of Markworth’s eyes. He swallowed, turned his eyes half on Reinhardt. “Because aren’t you supposed to be in a cell in Linienstrasse?” The three young detectives grinned at one another, Schmidt poking Ganz with his pistol. “You’re easy to follow, old man. And Reinhardt, you’re under arrest, or at least under suspicion. Something about Stresemann’s murder?”
“He had nothing to do with that.”
“It speaks!” Weber quipped, looking at Markworth. “And how would you—whatever your name is—know that?”
Markworth looked at Reinhardt, and shook his head, a smile on the corner of his lips. “He knows. He’s the only one with a brain among the lot of you.”
“Weber. What are you doing?”
“Be quiet, Reinhardt. This is mine now.”
“Weber, you’ve no idea . . .”
Weber turned and cracked Reinhardt across the face with his open palm. The blow was hard enough, but it was meant to shock, not stun. The kind of blow made to make a point, put someone in his place.
“Weber . . .” he tried again and made no attempt to avoid the second slap. He felt his blood begin to boil at the humiliation, felt the animal desire to rip Weber’s throat out, but he held himself still.
The Divided City Page 40
