The rest of it had come. Names, places, the genesis of the idea, starting when Jansky had been approached by Alexiou, offered money in exchange for being able to hide himself and his men in the ranks of a unit no one would think to look in. Then, as the penal battalion retreated shattered and broken through Montenegro, Herzog and Erdmann appeared to him one night, long speeches about the rightness of their cause, the need to preserve for the future. “I thought they were mad,” Jansky had said, carefully stubbing out his cigarette, one hand supporting his wrist. “And they were, but they weren’t going to take no for an answer. They brought that doddering bemedaled old fool of a colonel—Pistorius, that one hacking his lungs up in the next room—and said he would provide the respectability needed to make sure disreputable things could happily take place.”
“To be managed by you,” Reinhardt had said.
“By yours truly.” Jansky had nodded. “Not that I had a choice. Herzog and Erdmann were nothing if not peruasive. And I was already halfway to their ideas anyway.” He spoke of how the two of them had revealed to Jansky their knowledge of his corruption, of his selling asylum to the highest bidder, and winding him tight to their cause with cords of his own making. That was a surprise, Reinhardt acknowledged, that Jansky had fallen into their clutches as well. He had always considered Jansky an instigator of the scheme, not a pawn in it, and in a way that was true. Herzog’s and Erdmann’s cabal had roped him in, but Jansky had played along willingly. The thrill of it, Reinhardt reminded himself.
The first victim had been killed in Montenegro, his life taken for an Albanian from the SS Skanderbeg Division. Two more had followed as Jansky and the cabal perfected their techniques, but the forgeries were always tricky, even after Erdmann found the forger, dredged up from who knew where.
“Their names?” Jansky had stuttered when Reinhardt interrupted him.
“Their names,” Reinhardt repeated. “The names of those men whose identities you took.”
Jansky’s eyes drifted sideways, rolling and bloodshot. “I can’t . . . Roesing? Roese . . . ? And . . . Kaubisch? I really can’t . . . remember.” He trailed off at the look on Reinhardt’s face, the fury boiling out of his eyes at the thought of those men simply erased from the earth.
Jansky talked on, and Dreyer reappeared, tried to resume his contact with him. “He was pitiful,” sniggered Jansky. “Thinking he had something on me, when it was the other way around.” The iron jaws of the cabal and the web of blackmail closed itself around Dreyer and reminded him of that one moment of weakness in Poland, and he found himself presiding over courts-martial, but selective ones, targeting a particular type of soldier, and at that time, as the army began to crumble, there was no lack of raw material for the cabal’s scheme. “And then we came to Sarajevo, and the feelers went out to the Ustaše, and oh my, were there takers for it!” Jansky cackled, pointing at the soldbuchs.
The Ustaše had provided the photographer, getting rid of him at the end in the forest. But the Partisans were pressing harder and faster than anyone thought, and time was short. It had been Jansky’s idea to use replacement soldbuchs, instead of trying to add forged entries to existing ones. It had been Jansky’s idea as well to “steal” the defense plans so as to cause confusion and accelerate the city’s evacuation, with the subsequent compromising of Colonel Wedel and the pressure on him to accept responsibility for the “theft.” It all came delivered in a mumbled monotone through broken lips except when Jansky laughed, remembering particularly ironic moments while, with one finger, he traced the pattern of the tabletop, his nail dipping into the whorls of the wood, sticking, moving on.
“Why these Ustaše? Why not others?”
Jansky shrugged. “I don’t know. Herzog and Erdmann considered to be worth something. In any case, there was no way they’d be able to shelter someone like , even if they could’ve convinced him. was worth it, I suppose, and he was the one who brought along the others. His henchmen. His clan. And of course, it helped that they paid. Handsomely. Money up front, or no soldbuch.” He giggled. “In any case, ten was about the right number.”
“Ten Ustaše?”
“Ten Volksdeutsche.” Jansky smiled, teeth like needles behind a scum of blood. “Dreyer was doing his best to round up as many as he could, but it was hard to find the right profiles. ’Specially ones as big as Bunda and .”
“Who is behind it all?”
Jansky had shaken his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anyone other than Herzog and Erdmann.”
“There are others.”
“There must be,” Jansky had replied, a sudden clarity to his words. “If you think about it, this might be happening everywhere. This, or something like it. We’ve a lot of friends to get out of harm’s way. Or, you could think of this as a trial run. For something bigger and better.” He had grinned at the thought. “Think of that, eh? What does that do to your policeman’s soul?”
When Reinhardt had left, Scheller was involved in helping the judge find his backbone and confront Herzog, but the colonel had been doubtful anything would come of that. Outwardly, Herzog would suffer no consequences, Reinhardt knew. There was no proof linking him to the deaths, only Jansky’s word against his, but Reinhardt consoled himself with the thought that the powerful suffered their own sanctions. There would always be rumors about Herzog, because Scheller would be sure to start spreading them. People would talk, there would be a loss of confidence, perhaps a transfer, and with any luck, someone—perhaps someone higher in the conspiracy than Herzog—would suggest to him a quiet way out, and perhaps that person would leave behind a pistol with one round in the chamber. For personal use.
Jansky would not talk, and in any case, Jansky was gone now, Reinhardt knew. Lainer would not let him live, and if he was honest with himself, Reinhardt did not care either way. The dead would ride no more, and although Lenore ended with a hint of redemption for its damned heroine, there would be none for Jansky. The trail stopped with him. Whatever Jansky said, the proof would not suffice to reel anyone else in. Herzog would be the judge’s problem, and maybe Scheller’s. Erdmann was dead. Whoever was in Vienna would remain nameless. The others, too, because there were bound to be others.
And that was all right, too, he realized.
The penal battalion would be broken up, the men dispersed. Most of them would go back to their original units, while the incorrigible cases would be sentenced elsewhere. The hiwis were—there was no other way to put it—in trouble.
It was an escape line Reinhardt had stumbled across, he knew now. Some way of rescuing something from the wrack and ruin of the war, a way of preserving something for someone’s twisted vision of the future. Again, that image came to him of a ship that was foundering, sinking slowly and rolling belly-up in dark waters, its hull a squirming mass, rats abandoning ship searching for a chance—any chance—at escape. Some would drown. Some would strike away alone across the waters; others would find some way to survive, entrust themselves to a desperate lunge at safety.
Rats abandoning a ship. Someone throwing a lifeline.
A ratline.
There had just been the last question, the one Reinhardt had been loath to ask.
“What was it with you and Dreyer?”
Jansky had tilted his head back, the better to needle the slits of his eyes at Reinhardt. “Give me another cigarette, and I’ll tell you. Dreyer came after me in Poland,” Jansky had said, blowing smoke across the table. “A real terrier. He had witnesses to what we were up to, trafficking artwork back to the Reich, weapons to the Polish underground. We made the witnesses go away. Those we couldn’t kill, we bribed quiet. You should’ve seen how hard he tried to get to us. Almost made you feel sorry for him.”
He had drawn long and hard on his cigarette, eyes drifting to Brandt, where the lieutenant sat slumped with his head across his arms. “He found someone, eventually, a last witness. Probably wouldn’t have done
much, but we took no chances, made him an offer. And he refused. Then we made him another. And it’s true what they say, that every man has his price. He didn’t look very proud of himself, but he took what we offered. I told him not to take it so badly, that if he could not beat us, he might as well join us. He took a bribe.” Jansky grinned, a cocky twist of his lacerated lips. “And that’s when I told him, ‘All are not huntsmen . . .’”
“‘ . . . who can blow the hunter’s horn,’” Reinhardt finished.
“The army broke us apart, and he went one way and I went another. Never gave him another thought until he showed up in Greece, working for the War Crimes Bureau. He had heard something of what I had done with the Greeks, stealing all that gold, and he tried to blackmail me in return for a share. Poor bugger. He didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into. Before he knew it, they had him out of the Bureau and back into the army judicial service. He wasn’t the same man, though,” Jansky said, considering. “Russia had really screwed him up.”
“What did you bribe him with? That time in Poland.”
“You know that Art Deco rubbish? All that modern crap? He was mad for it, and we were up to our eyeballs in the stuff. The Poles had a real taste for it, particularly the aristocrats, and the Jews. All those artists and intellectuals. I laid a whole load out for him. Glasses. Vases. Ashtrays. Jewelry. Paintings. What did it for him was this flask by some Jewish artist. It mesmerized him.”
—
Reinhardt looked at the flask where it lay against his leg, then up at the road as it wound on, almost empty, only the occasional truck or car hurrying north. Sometimes a village flashed past hard by the road, clustered around the spike of a minaret, or a hamlet lifted its roofs from the forest, but there was no one and nothing in them. The countryside was empty, the people vanished, knowing the war was about to roll over them, and Reinhardt watched the trees, wondering how it would look if, by some magic, he could cause them to vanish. What would he see, he wondered, imagining a host of people that would suddenly appear as if brought forth by his own will.
They reached the front lines at around noon, although line would not have been the description Reinhardt would have given the cluster of tanks and mobile guns he found at the crossroads near the town of Kakanj. The officer in charge had been warned of their coming, and they passed through without comment, feeling the eyes of the rear guard until the winding road hid them from sight. They stopped when they were out of sight of the Germans long enough for Reinhardt to tie red streamers to the truck’s wing mirrors, and then they were moving again, slower now, deeper every minute into Partisan territory.
They found them just north of Visoko. A car was parked by the side of the road with a red flag flying from a makeshift pole that had been wedged into its rear window. A man straightened from where he had been smoking as the truck appeared, and climbed into the car, his arm emerging to wave the truck to follow him. They pulled in behind him until they arrived in a ruined hamlet with a truck drawn up across the road, a red flag draped over its bonnet. Partisans emerged from cover behind the hamlet’s gapped walls. They were big men, some with closely shorn beards, and they carried weapons that looked well cared for. They were dressed in uniforms of green and brown, leather boots on their feet, and if their faces were dark with the grime of long journeys, they carried themselves like soldiers of the victorious army they were.
Benfeld turned the truck and reversed it so it was facing back north, and let the engine clatter into silence. Reinhardt climbed down and walked slowly toward the Partisans, his arms open at his sides until he reached a point midway between his truck and the Partisans, and there he waited. He stayed there, still, under the curious eyes of a dozen Partisan soldiers until he saw movement behind their truck, and two people passed onto the road. One was tall, walked with a limp, and leaned heavily on a cane. The other was a woman, dressed like a man in a dark blouse and trousers tucked into low boots, a pistol belted at her waist, looking curiously like a Russian. He watched her, drinking in the sight of her, at the wisps of gray-gold hair that escaped the knot she had bound at the nape of her neck.
The three of them stood together in the middle of the road, a peculiar tension molding the spaces between them. It was the change in the balance of power, Reinhardt knew. He had always been the interloper, but they had not always been able to stand tall before him like they did now.
“You kept your word,” said Simo, finally.
Reinhardt pulled his eyes from and nodded, wondering if he looked as distant to her as she did to him.
“This way,” he said, walking back to the truck. Simo and followed, and a handful of Partisan soldiers followed them. Reinhardt nodded to Benfeld, and he unfastened the chain that secured the back doors, then pulled them open, light pouring into the dark box of the truck’s load bed.
blinked against the glare, lifted bound hands to shield his eyes. Next to him, the five others did the same, lowering them slowly, squinting in confusion. Then, one after the other, the realization of where they were was swept away, replaced by fear that rose and bloomed across their faces.
The Partisans stared up at them with what Reinhardt could only describe as a ravenous hunger that could neither declare nor sate itself. As if, confronted by their enemies, now, at the moment of their victory, all their hopes and options had suddenly collapsed down to one point. To a single road, one they were loath to take, as if to do so would break a moment so long hoped for. Until Simo broke it, pointing at them, then down at the road.
“Izlazite.”
climbed down and stood on weak legs, leaning back against the truck. Two others managed to get out themselves, but Sutko broke and cowered in the back until two big Partisans went in after him and cast him in a blubbering heap on the road. Simo stood before them, measuring them with the weight of his eyes.
“Franjo Sutko,” he grated, looking at the one who had collapsed to the ground. “Bozidar . Tomislav Dubreta. Zvonimir Saulan. Nikola Marin.” They flinched away from him though he did not move. “And Ante .” Simo nodded to his men, and each of the Ustaše were bracketed by Partisans and marched away. Only delayed, digging his weight into the ground, his eyes on Reinhardt.
“You know what they will do to us. You know.”
“I know,” Reinhardt replied.
“You will let them?”
“I will.”
“This is on your head.”
“I know,” said Reinhardt.
“On your head,” shouted over his shoulder as they dragged him away. “Your head.”
“A last time I must thank you, Captain,” said Simo, exchanging his cane to his left hand to offer his right. “To your future, Reinhardt. May it . . . may it be the one you deserve,” the big Partisan finished. He glanced between Reinhardt and , settled his cane back into his right hand, and limped away.
“Let us walk a little,” said softly. His heart in his throat, Reinhardt matched her steps over to the side of the road, where she turned to look up at him.
“Are you all right, Suzana?” he asked. She nodded, ducked her head a moment, then smiled up at him, but it was tight, strained, and they both knew her healing would be a time in coming. “You look different,” Reinhardt said. “But it looks right.”
“Different times, now, Gregor,” she said, simply. Neither of them moved, until Reinhardt’s hand came up, brushing up her arm to her shoulder. Her hand came up and covered his. “Your hand. How is it?”
“Fine.”
She ran her fingers over the swelling and bruising that mottled his wrist. “I . . . I told about you.”
“I know.”
“I thought you could help us.”
“I did. You were right.”
“Was it real, Gregor? That moment we had. I am afraid it . . . it was not.”
“I never used you, Suzana,” he said, feeling it come out in a rush. “Neven, and
the Partisans. I knew. But it was you I wanted.”
“It was real,” she said, an affirmation that seemed to lift her free of something.
He took her hand, raised it to his lips. “If we had that freedom, you and I . . .”
“It could have worked,” she whispered, her fingers light against his cheek. “You could . . . you could come back with me.”
“You have a city and a country to rebuild. You could not do it with me. It would color you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You would come to care.”
“Maybe when this is all over . . .”
Reinhardt gave a wan smile. “If we deserve it.” She smiled as well, remembering their conversation that night. Only memories abide, and the first cut was the one that went deepest. But a clean cut was the best kind, and he kissed her eyes, feeling the salt of her tears. “May you find the happiness you deserve,” he whispered against the curve of her brow.
He turned and walked away, feeling as if his heart were stretching out behind him.
EPILOGUE
THE SAVA RIVER, NORTHERN BOSNIA, MID-APRIL 1945
Dawn came with the Sava River shrouded in thick fog, and the world was pale and faint. Men appeared through it like apparitions, looming silent and insubstantial like beings only partially imagined. Along the surface of the river, the fog was so thick Reinhardt almost imagined that, were his heart light enough, he could step out and walk on it, and let it carry him somewhere else.
By the bridge, where they had pulled over, the Feldjaeger had started a fire. Reinhardt stood close to the blaze, watching the orange light slide over the scrollwork on Dreyer’s flask as he tilted it to the fire. He looked up to see a company of Cossacks in German uniforms loom out of the fog as though called that instant from some other realm, a column of horsemen stepping slowly over the fields and onto the metaled road that led up to the bridge. One of them, a young man with broad cheekbones and eyes of flinty blue, leaned out of the saddle and spat as he saw Reinhardt. Riding close behind him, a Cossack sergeant—a starshiy with a magnificent curled mustache—cuffed the trooper hard on the back of the neck, let loose a stream of expletives in Russian, and nodded an apology at Reinhardt as he rode past, the horses clattering onto the bridge, many laden with women and children. Reinhardt watched them go, a people in exile, the ground shifting daily under their hopes and aspirations. There could be no future for them that was not grim, that would not end in blood and tears and betrayal.
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