Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

Two men sat at a table across the room looking at papers. Official- shy;looking documents, with photographs and stamps and seals all half spilled out of a leather satchel. Passports. IDs. One of the men was Becker, thin red hair and little steel spectacles. The second was a bulky man, elderly, a fringe of grey hair seemingly painted onto his brick of a skull. Two more men, big and heavy, sat off to one side, counting piles of money. All of them went still as Reinhardt and Brauer stepped quietly inside.

The two big men began to get to their feet until Brauer pulled a Bergmann submachine gun out from under his coat. ‘Let’s all just sit still, shall we?’ he said, quietly. Its stubby little barrel pointed at the two men, who sat down slowly. ‘Hands where I can see them, gents.’

Reinhardt said nothing, only locked eyes with Becker. ‘Do I know you?’ Becker asked, after a moment.

‘You were a useless detective in the Kripo post in Wilhelms shy;haven,’ Reinhardt said, watching Becker flush, then go pale. ‘You transferred into Gestapo in 1934. Apparently, you were too useless even for them, and they dumped you back in Kripo here. You’re keeping company with Hannes Lemke, Gestapo border control in Bremerhaven,’ he said, looking at the man sitting with him, ‘and two crooks from the Hamburg mob. Missing are Walter Fischer from the Foreign Ministry, and Gerhard Cordt, from the Gestapo property seizure division. Stop me if I’m wrong, or going too fast.’

The silence was thick, tense. Becker’s eyes flashed back and forth between him and Brauer, back to him, to the other men. Becker swallowed, a little smile flickering across his face. ‘Go on.’

‘You’re ripping off people trying to get out of Germany. Jews, mostly. But not exclusively. Fischer provides papers. Lemke facilitates exits, Cordt disposes of properties. You invest the proceeds with the Hamburg mob, who also provide a little muscle when needed. With me so far?’

‘You have evidence, of course?’ asked Becker.

‘Other than what’s in front of me?’

‘This?’ Lemke said. ‘This is… material… seized…’ He trailed off, looked desperately at Becker.

Reinhardt ignored him, looking at Becker. ‘I’m not sure where you fit in… ?’

Becker’s mouth moved, and then he smiled again, as if he knew a particular secret was out. ‘Me? I suppose I’m a talent scout. You might say my forte’s organisation. And persuasion.’

‘Yes, I’ve proof,’ said Reinhardt to Becker. ‘But more to the point, it’s who you know more than what you know, these days. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Becker nodded. He took off his glasses, tilting his head down and to the right, keeping Reinhardt in sight, considering the implications that Reinhardt’s contacts would outweigh his.

‘Everyone’s got to make a living, I suppose,’ he said, eventually.

‘The truth is I need your scam.’ Becker smiled, and the others seemed to relax, tension draining out of the lines of their shoulders. This was what they had been expecting. ‘Make it a good one, Becker. Nice and honest.’

‘Four hundred marks.’ Becker grinned.

‘So you pay.’ Reinhardt put a piece of paper on the table, ignoring the protestations from Lemke, watching Becker. ‘You can keep your scam going. For as long as you can manage it. You charge the price you just mentioned. I’ll be checking. But whoever I send you, you take out for free. Consider it as reinvesting back into the business.’

‘You’re fucking crazy,’ hissed Lemke.

‘If you renege, I’ll expose you,’ said Reinhardt, ignoring him. ‘If you roll this scam up within six months, I’ll expose you. If you harm a hair on the heads of anyone, especially those I send, I’ll kill you.’

Becker wormed his glasses back on, picked up the paper. ‘Isidor and Hilda Rosen,’ he read.

Reinhardt nodded. ‘They’re next. And that’s it. I’ll be in touch. And I’ll be watching. A pleasant evening, gentlemen.’

‘I’ll find you,’ snarled Lemke. Becker only looked at him, eyes steady behind his glasses.

Reinhardt walked out, Brauer stepping backwards, keeping the Bergmann trained on them. They walked quickly back downstairs and out, over to another street to the car where another of his men was waiting. He slumped in the back, lighting a cigarette with a hand that suddenly trembled.

‘Christ,’ breathed Brauer, removing the Bergmann’s magazine as the car sped away. He craned his head back around from the front. ‘How long do you give ’em?’

‘Before they find us? Not long. I’m not worried about that. It’s what we know, against what they can do…’ He closed his eyes. He felt light-headed, giddy, like he used to feel after action in the old days, like he used to feel back in the trenches. Truth was, he had no idea how long he could ride that particular tiger. But it felt like the first decent thing he had done in a long time.

Reinhardt took a long draw on the cigarette, then nodded. ‘We were both in Kripo. I was a chief inspector, and he worked Gestapo liaison, among other things. He was a bad officer.’ Very bad. Corruption. Brutality. Incompetence. Becker was so bad, even the Nazis did not know what to do with him, but he was connected. And clever, although cunning was more the word. Always managing to get away with it, until the day when he messed up one case too many – including one that involved the death of the daughter of a Party official who had Goering’s ear, and Becker was gone. Reinhardt had happily forgotten him, until the day he arrived in Sarajevo and found him here, second in command of the city’s Feldgendarmerie detachment.

‘What now?’

Reinhardt screwed his eyes shut, rubbed his forehead, and exhaled long and loud. ‘Christ, I don’t know.’

‘Maybe he does.’

‘What?’ Claussen was staring across the parking area towards where Kessler was coming out of Feldgendarmerie headquarters. The captain looked at them across the yard a moment as he put his cap on his head, then turned away down the side of the building, over to a row of parked vehicles. Reinhardt exchanged a quick look with Claussen, then straightened up, dropping his cigarette and screwing it into the ground with his boot, and went walking after Kessler.

The Feldgendarme was checking out a vehicle as Reinhardt came up. He looked expressionlessly at him, signed off the form, and returned it to a waiting NCO. ‘I am sorry it has to be so formal between us,’ he said.

‘Likewise.’

‘Look,’ said Kessler, after a moment. ‘I cannot give you the files, but I have seen them. There really is not much in them that I think can be of interest to you.’

‘That is kind of you, Captain,’ Reinhardt replied. ‘I would need to come to that conclusion myself, though.’

The two of them were silent a moment. Reinhardt waited, hoping Kessler would feel the silence as an urge to say something more. ‘Becker is a stickler for the rules, it’s true,’ Kessler said, finally. ‘What he’s really afraid of is that the records will show the killer went right through our controls, and the Feldgendarmerie are culpable in some way. And he may be right. We certainly had our hands full over the weekend.’

‘Why’s that?’ Reinhardt asked, rubbing at his right eye, and then clenching his fist as his finger stole treacherously towards his temple and the imagined mark of his pistol’s muzzle.

Kessler cleared his throat, a slight frown creasing his forehead. ‘Because of the planning conference. At the spa, in Ilidza.’