‘You’ve been backing the wrong horse, Colonel,’ said Reinhardt. He took a deep breath. He had to end this. He had to break this link between the two of them. The general had not moved, and maybe, thought Reinhardt, he had miscalculated by mentioning that French village. Maybe Verhein now saw him as someone to be got rid of as well. ‘This man you admire and loathe equally, this man you have protected despite himself – despite yourself – is not who you think he is.’ He paused, as Verhein’s eyes had come up, his head as well, his whole bearlike frame straightening.
‘That file is the proof, all the proof that could be found…’ He paused. There was a pleading in Verhein’s eyes, a dumb supplication like that of an animal caught in an agony it could not conceive of ending and was thus eternal. Reinhardt could not imagine what it was like for a man like him. A warrior, the son of one people forced to partake in the butchery of another. A man who gloried, it seemed, in the martial arts, and who ended up flailing against the forces that made him what he was, trying to find a way out, enacting what small acts of rebellion he could. He took a deep breath. ‘All the proof that could be found that General Paul Verhein is a member of the German resistance. Committed to the overthrow of the Führer and the Reich.’ The words felt like acid as they twisted across his tongue. Lies, but leavened with just enough of the truth to hide it. Just words, but enough to galvanise someone into action, to break the back of this confrontation and end it.
‘The what?’ exclaimed Ascher. On the floor, Mamagedov had gone very still, rising slowly up on one elbow.
‘The resistance,’ repeated Reinhardt, staring straight at Verhein. He saw the light in the general’s eyes change, the animal patience fading away, replaced with something more calculating.
‘General. General!’ Verhein’s head swung slowly to Ascher. ‘Is this true? It can’t be true?’
‘It’s true,’ said Reinhardt. The atmosphere in the room was charged, as it sometimes was in a police cell during an interrogation, just before the suspect broke. Unconsciously, he straightened, ignoring the pain in his knee and back. He focused on Ascher, his tone turning resonant, commanding. ‘What better way to disguise his activities than as a brilliant commander? What better way to worm his way into higher confidences than bringing his tactical prowess to the strategic level?’ He put a lash in his voice, taking a small step towards Ascher. The man was once a chaplain. A man of the book. Old Testament, surely. ‘It so nearly worked. And you would have helped him. In covering for him, you would have allowed such a snake as him into the bosom of our people. Such a sin that would have been, Colonel.’
‘No…’ whispered Ascher.
‘They will think you knew. Both of you,’ Reinhardt said, bringing Mamagedov into it too. The Kalmyk glared up at him from the floor.
‘No,’ Ascher whispered again, shaking his head.
‘You think the Gestapo will believe that when they start pulling your fingernails out?’ sneered Reinhardt. ‘Kick in the doors of your family? Put Mamagedov up against a wall? Or hand him back to the Reds?’
‘NO!’ roared Mamagedov. He exploded suddenly into action. He twisted and spun on his backside, his feet slicing into Claussen’s ankles. The sergeant fell backwards, and Mamagedov flung himself off the floor at him. The two men crashed together, feet thumping and scrabbling for purchase. Mamagedov clawed his hands across Claussen’s face, fingers hooked. With the MP 40 caught between them, Claussen tossed his head from side to side, keeping his eyes away from Mamagedov’s fingers. His own fists bunched knuckle-white around Mamagedov’s ears, thumbs digging for his eyes. Mamagedov bellowed like a bull, butting his head forward into Claussen’s face, twisting, ramming, dropping his hands and pounding his fists into the sergeant’s ribs.
The pistol wavered in Ascher’s hand, then turned towards the two struggling men. Reinhardt lunged through the pain of his knee and grabbed Ascher’s gun hand, punching him on the jaw as hard as he could. The colonel careened backwards, stumbling and slipping into a heap in the corner. Turning, Reinhardt scooped up the baton, and whipped it at Mamagedov. The ball at the end of the baton took him in the back of the head. There was a sound like an egg cracking, and the Kalmyk sagged over Claussen.
A bullet splintered the wall by Reinhardt’s head as Mamagedov slithered heavily to the floor. Ascher’s second shot took Claussen high in the arm, knocking him sideways. He hissed in pain, his hand closing over the wound, blood welling between his fingers.
Urgent voices came from outside, and the wood rattled as someone knocked at the door. ‘General? General?!’
Ascher motioned at Verhein to say something. ‘It’s fine,’ Verhein called out, eyes on the colonel. ‘Everything’s under control. I’ll be out in a minute.’
Ascher pushed himself up and took an unsteady step out of the corner. He looked at Verhein, drawing in a deep breath as if deciding something. ‘He’s right, you know. I want a way out of this. I deserve better after all the… the mess I’ve cleaned up. Always us volunteering. Always me organising. Never knowing if it’ll be the last time. Well, I’ve had it. The crap you leave behind you. The drinking. The whoring. The fighting. The way you trample the rules. “Do what I tell you, not what I do”? And then coming to me. To sleep it off. To make things right. To ask for my help. To confess it? “Father Superior”,’ he sneered. ‘You don’t know the fucking half of it.’
Verhein shook his head, his gaze on the floor. ‘Clemens…’
‘You’re just like her. You think the world revolves around you. You sent me back to her. To her. And I find her alive, when you said she was dead, and you know that all she had for me was scorn, and she was screaming at me that you were finished, that I was finished, and I had that knife, and I was going to make sure Stolić took the blame if anyone had to, so I stabbed her, and she fought me and I stabbed her again. And again.’
‘Clemens…’
‘I did what you should have done. I made sure of it.’
‘Clemens, I.…’
‘NO!’ The pistol was now very much aimed at Verhein, and Ascher’s eyes slavered like a zealot’s. ‘You think harsh words at night fade with the morning. One of your stock phrases, right? Right? And she was the same. All smiles one minute, and scorn the next. Well, that doesn’t work. Not with me. Maybe with those sheep outside you call men, but not with me. I remember it all. All those offhand remarks. The backhanded compliments. The insults. All of it.’
Verhein looked bewildered, a bear brought to bay. He shook his head, the light passing over his white hair, and he still could not seem to meet Ascher’s eyes. ‘Clemens, what are you saying?’
‘Either you take him away,’ Reinhardt guessed, ‘or he makes his own way out. That was the plan.’ Ascher’s eyes bored into his. ‘But now I’ve ruined it. The hold he would have had over you is gone. You didn’t kill her, General. He did.’
‘Bastard,’ whispered Ascher. He was looking at Reinhardt as he said it, but it was meant as much for Verhein.
The general stirred himself for the first time in what seemed a long while. He took a step towards Ascher. ‘Clemens, we are who we are. I don’t –’
‘NO! I can’t take it anymore,’ Ascher screamed. ‘I can’t take it.’ His face seemed to collapse inward on itself as the tears began to flow, and the pistol wobbled in his hand.
‘Fine,’ cooed Verhein. He took the final step, reaching out and putting his hand gently on the pistol. Ascher tried to pull back, but it was too late. Ascher’s face creased in pain as his fist was twisted back. Verhein’s other arm went around his neck, and he pulled him in close. The colonel bucked and shook, but his efforts availed him nothing against Verhein’s strength. ‘Shhh,’ murmured Verhein, lowering his lips to the top of Ascher’s head. Ascher gargled, went rigid in his panic. ‘It’s all over. It’s finished.’ His arm curled up under Ascher’s chin and wrenched it back and around. Ascher’s hoarse scream was cut off as his neck s
napped and he collapsed bonelessly to the floor. Verhein stepped back with his arms raised out to the side, like a stage magician with his act. He stared at the body, and then his eyes searched the room, fastening on Reinhardt. They were like ice, and Reinhardt saw his death in them.
‘I never could abide a man who weeps.’ Verhein blinked once, twice, and the ice was gone.
43
Claussen let out a long sigh and slumped down the wall. His face was tight and pale as he gripped his arm. Verhein moved across the room to kneel next to him. ‘Let me see that, soldier.’ He peeled Claussen’s fingers away from his wound, glancing at Reinhardt as he did. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
Verhein unfolded the blade of a small pocketknife and began to hack away at Claussen’s sleeve. ‘For not revealing everything.’ He pulled the sleeve down and over the wound, a puckered and bruised little hole that welled sluggishly with blood. He lifted Claussen’s arm, peering underneath, and twisted his mouth. ‘No exit wound, Sergeant. You’re just going to have to grin and bear it.’ There was more clatter from outside, firing, and the whump whump of mortars opening up. Verhein leaned over and pulled a field dressing from its pouch on Mamagedov’s belt and began strapping it around Claussen’s arm.
‘I never would have,’ said Reinhardt, as he applied pressure to the wound while Verhein strapped it up. ‘A man’s faith is his own.’
‘And some men cannot escape the faith they are born into,’ replied Verhein, eyes on the dressing. He tied it off and sat back. ‘There! A four-star dressing if ever there was one.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ managed Claussen.
‘Sit tight, Sergeant. You too, Captain.’ He stepped outside into the increasing din. Reinhardt lit Atikahs for himself and Claussen, then shuffled across the room, suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted, all the aches and pains of the day clamouring for his attention. His knee, his fingers, his face. He ignored them as best he could, took a drink of water from a canteen on the table, and took the Williamson out. He held it gently between the fingers of both his hands, the inscription fading in and out as he turned it against the light. He put it away, noting again the state of his uniform. His fingers picked at the eagle’s stitching, pulling away a few loose threads that he twitched to the floor, then turned and leaned back against the table.
‘Well,’ said Claussen, looking up at him from the floor, face shifting slightly behind a cloud of exhaled smoke. ‘Looks like you did it.’
Reinhardt nodded. ‘Wouldn’t have been able to without you, Sergeant,’ he said, toasting him with the canteen. He limped back across the room and handed it to Claussen, then went back to the window. He peered out, squinting around the smoke that spiralled up into his eyes. Smoke was rising to the west and Germans were falling back into the clearing. If the mortars were firing, it meant the Partisans had to be fairly close.
‘What now, Captain?’
Reinhardt shook his head, still looking out the window, but before he could answer Verhein came back in, a sheaf of papers in one hand. Reinhardt shot a look at Claussen, seeing the sergeant staring fixedly back at him.
‘I don’t have much time, Captain,’ Verhein said, coming over to him. He laid the papers on the table, looking out the window at a group of soldiers running over to the woods. ‘How do we end this?’
‘You didn’t kill her, sir.’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t order her death?’
‘No.’
‘Then my investigation is over, sir.’
Verhein looked steadily at him. ‘And the rest of it… ?’
‘I have no control over that file, sir. I found a copy of a case against you during my investigation. I won’t be able to make it go away.’
‘No,’ whispered the general.
‘Sir, if I may ask? What actually happened, that night? What did she say to you to make you react so?’
‘She taunted me into admitting… into admitting the truth of my origins.’
‘Can’t you say it, sir? “Jew”?’
Verhein gave a tight, tired smile. ‘When you have hid part of what you are so long, Captain… It was only when she brought my sister into it that I snapped. You see, my parents were Jewish. They were Volga Germans, and they had both known persecution, in Russia. They moved to Neustadt, in West Prussia, and then when those lands were lost after Versailles, to Bremen. My mother died when I was very young. I was raised by my father, and he only told us on his deathbed. My father… he said he did all he could to spare us what they had known. He gave us Christian names. Had us baptised. Never took us near a rabbi or a synagogue. Never circumcised me. And when he told us, well, it was too late. The Nazis were in power, and we were trapped.
‘All I ever wanted,’ he sighed, ‘was to be a soldier. To defend my country and my people. Who I thought were my people…’ He trailed off. ‘God help me, but I love my life. I love soldiering. I have fought two wars for my country, Captain. Bled for it. Been humiliated for it. Been as angry as anyone at the betrayals of 1918. Only now I find I am not one of them. Of us. Of you. Why is that?’
Reinhardt shook his head. ‘I don’t have an answer, sir.’
‘Of course not. My father, though, he knew it would always come down to what others thought I was, not who I thought I was, or what I had done. When the Nazis came, I knew he was right. I found Künzer, paid him a fortune, and he altered our records back in Neustadt. God knows how he managed. But I knew, those times in Russia, in France, when I acted the way I did, I was attracting attention to myself. But I could not help it. Can you understand?’ he asked, looking at Reinhardt. ‘I was raised to be “normal”. To be Jewish was to be weak. To risk persecution. But when I saw what was happening, when I saw what the army – my army – was willing to overlook, and then to do…’
His eyes were far away. ‘I could not look away. So I did what I could, when I could. I comforted myself that I was resisting, in my own way. But I was scared. And so angry at the way they just seemed to let themselves go. Never lifting a finger to defend themselves. I’ve seen columns of Jews walking to their deaths, and only a rifleman to escort them. What kind of people can do that? And what kind of person am I to turn away from it?’ The agony in his voice was raw. ‘Did the file say how they discovered my orig – that I am a Jew?’
‘Künzer.’ Verhein nodded his head, slowly. ‘He was arrested and under interrogation mentioned you and so came to the attention of Varnhorst. He did his job well, though. Whatever Künzer did, they couldn’t disprove it.’
‘I thought that might be it. My sister wrote she had been questioned about the parish records…’ He cocked his head at a new burst of firing, then looked at Reinhardt. ‘My sister is all I have. I will do anything to protect her. The resistance knows that. I told them if they could guarantee her safety I would work with them.’ He paused, then began to buckle on his equipment. ‘But they couldn’t. So I didn’t. And now… they’ll just use this. Put strings on me, make me dance like a puppet. Like Ascher would have. I don’t see a way out, do you?’
‘Sir?’ replied Reinhardt.
‘How do I make it through all this alive and unharmed? The truth will out. Those boys in Berlin won’t give up, and if they get me, they get my sister. The resistance won’t leave me alone. So what options do I have?’
Reinhardt shook his head, slowly. ‘Not many, sir.’
‘Not many,’ repeated Verhein. ‘I have one, though. I go out on my own terms, in my own way. I go out as a soldier,’ he said, the old Verhein beginning suddenly to seep into his words, his posture. ‘And I make such a big bloody show of it they’ll never see past it. They won’t ever dare go after her. What do you think, eh?’
‘I think it could work, sir.’
‘Course it bloody well could. Because as well, I’m sick and bloody tired of hiding. I’m sick of living in the shadows and living a lie. Never kno
wing who might be watching and waiting. I’m sick at what my army has become, and I’m sick at the thought of this world we’re creating. So I’m going to end it. My way.’
The sound of battle ratcheted up, and there was a different timbre to the gunfire now, a higher-pitched rattle of different ammunition. Verhein picked up his PPSh, checked the action, and – just for a moment – Reinhardt saw in the sideways glance he threw at them, and the way his hands shifted on the submachine gun, the temptation to do away with him and Claussen. What were they but problems to him? What easier way to solve two problems… ? He froze, went cold, even stiffened as if expecting a bullet, but the moment passed and Verhein hung the PPSh from his shoulder. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m in a bit of trouble, sir. I don’t know if I can go back.’
‘Always room for one more where I’m going, Captain.’
‘Thank you, sir, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to take your way.’
‘Please yourself. In any case,’ he said, indicating the sound of fighting outside, ‘if that keeps up, you may not have to worry about making a choice.’ He stood up straight, every inch the general, a boy’s own hero, the Knight’s Cross at his throat and the Blue Max proud on his chest. He looked at both of them. ‘I suppose I ought to thank you, Captain. For bringing me to the point where I can’t hide anymore.’ Reinhardt’s mouth worked, but nothing came out. Verhein held up his hand. ‘No words. None needed. It’s just the way things are.’ He paused at the door. ‘And you, Captain. Did you find what you were looking for?’
The question took Reinhardt by surprise. The day had swept him along, and he had not realised the full weight of what had happened to him. ‘I don’t know, to be honest, sir.’ He glanced at Claussen, looking up at him. He thought of the two boys. ‘I think I found a part of myself I thought I’d lost a long time ago.’
The Man from Berlin Page 41
