Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

There was nothing else in the little room, and the surge of excitement he felt at finding it faded fast as he pawed through the junk on the shelves and peered into the shed’s corners. Someone had obviously beaten him to it, but he seemed to have found the place where Vukic’s cameraman waited. He could see no sign of any film, no photos, nothing hidden away. The floor of the shed was bare earth with no sign it had been disturbed. It was all detail. Useful detail, but nothing he could see brought him any closer to what he was looking for.

Back outside, he walked slowly down the side of the house, his feet crunching the gravel of the path. An army car drove slowly up the alley, towards Vrelo Bosne. The soldier driving peered at him as he drove past. Reinhardt followed the car with his eyes, and then his gaze fell on a stretch of path where the gravel had been scuffed and pushed, exposing the dark earth beneath. He paused, frowned. He turned to the policeman, standing by the now-closed front door. He pointed at the spot of disturbed earth.

‘There was a motorbike, here,’ he managed. ‘A motorbike. shy; Brroom, brrroom ,’ he said, miming revving the handles of a mo shy;torbike.

The policeman nodded. ‘Motocicl, da, da. Mi ga je dao natrag. Errrr…’ He trailed off, then pointed away, through the trees, over towards the hotels, his hand fluttering. ‘Tamo, je…’ He looked flustered, then pointed at his throat, his finger moving back and forth, tracing a shape.

Reinhardt frowned, then understood. A crescent. ‘You gave it to the Feldgendarmerie?’

The policeman smiled. ‘Feldgendarmerie,’ he repeated, his finger making the sign of a gorget again.

Reinhardt took some Atikahs from his pack and offered them to the policeman. He lit one for him, thanked him, then walked quickly to the gate. ‘Claussen, I need you to take me to the Feldgendarmerie checkpoint by the bridge.’

‘Sir,’ answered Claussen as he started the kubelwagen . Reinhardt did not know what he might find, but he remembered one of his first lessons from his old police mentor. It’s the simple things in life, kid , he had said. The simple things are usually the right things in any case. Nothing complicated. Why were Hendel’s files missing? Probably shy;because he had brought them with him, to confront whomever it was he was after. It was Vukic who had staged it all, but Hendel would be the one to bring it to an end, and for that he would need evidence, and if Reinhardt’s hunch was right, the evidence was waiting in plain sight, where it had waited nearly a week.

Claussen pulled the kubelwagen over in front of a low grey shy;building that stood across from the bridge over the Zeljeznica. Remembering another of that old copper’s lessons – bullshit baffles brains, kid – shy;Reinhardt walked inside and up to a Feldgendarme on duty behind a battered wooden desk. He flashed his papers as the guard rose to his feet and saluted.

‘Corporal, my name is Captain Reinhardt, with the Abwehr. I am on a mission of internal army security.’

‘Sir,’ exclaimed the soldier. ‘I am afraid my lieutenant is not here at this time.’

‘Of no importance,’ replied Reinhardt with a flick of his wrist. ‘Tell me, do you have a parking lot, here? Yes? Then take me to it, immediately.’

The corporal took Reinhardt into the back of the building, down a short corridor, and through a kitchen area where a squad of Feld shy;gendarmes were eating at a table. There was a scrape and clatter of chairs as they rose to their feet and stood at attention. Reinhardt waved them back to their meal as he followed the corporal outside to where a handful of cars were parked. Reinhardt strode past them, stopping as he came to the end of the row.

‘This vehicle,’ he snapped, pointing at a motorcycle and sidecar. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘Sir, I do not know.’

‘When was it left here?’

‘A day ago, I believe,’ stammered the Feldgendarme.

‘You believe ?’ sneered Reinhardt, putting as much into it as he could. ‘For Christ’s sake, Corporal, get back in there and find me someone who can answer my simple questions.’

Reinhardt waited a moment after the corporal had scurried back inside, then bent over the sidecar. The seat would not move. He ran his fingers down the side, finding nothing. He checked underneath the tyre fixed to the front of the sidecar. Nothing. He leaned forward, peering into the sidecar’s well. Nothing there either. On the off chance, he reached his hand in, running it all around the interior, and felt his fingers brush up against something bolted to the underside of the top of the sidecar. A shelf, or pocket of some kind. His fingers scrabbled around as he heard voices and footsteps, and his hand closed around the soft edge of a file.

His heart hammering, he pulled it out, put it behind his back, and rose to his feet just as the corporal came out with a sergeant, who cracked off a salute. ‘Sir, may I be of assistance to you?’

‘I most certainly hope so, Sergeant. What can you tell me of this vehicle?’

‘Sir, the police left it here two days ago.’

‘Police?’

‘The city police, sir.’

‘Ahh,’ said Reinhardt, with wide eyes and raised brows. ‘And did they show authorisation? Did they show identification? Did they give a reason?’ The sergeant’s mouth moved, searching for a response to Reinhardt’s questions. ‘No? Nothing? Fools! ’ he shouted. ‘ Incompetent fools! You allowed unknown individuals to park a vehicle of unknown origin within the premises of an army installation? What kind of idiots are you? What if there had been a bomb inside it? Well, what of it?’ He gave them a moment, just long enough for the sergeant to open his mouth. ‘ NO! ’ he raged, stamping forward. ‘No excuses. It is simply unacceptable behaviour. The kind that leads straight to a penal battalion on the Eastern Front. What do you have to say for yourselves? Well, then?’

The corporal looked as if he were about to be sick. Again, he waited just long enough for the sergeant to start to say something, then cut him off. He had to be careful not to overdo it. ‘My task is to evaluate the state of alertness across the city. Our enemies, and they are many, may strike at any time, in any way. Remember that. Dismissed.’ He gave them both a withering look and stalked past and back through the kitchen, the other Feldgendarmes leaping rigidly to attention as he came through. He regally ignored them, muttering under his breath with his hands clasped behind his back and striding out to the kubelwagen , where a somewhat bemused Claussen was waiting for him. A car had just arrived, and a pair of soldiers, little and large in ill-fitting uniforms, jumped aside as Reinhardt stomped out.

Reinhardt stared straight ahead as Claussen drove away and across the bridge, and then, little by little, allowed himself to relax. After a couple of kilometres, he recognised the spot where Padelin had directed them off the road the other day. He found he was terribly thirsty and hungry, and he needed to see what was in the file. He directed Claussen off the road, the kubelwagen bumping over the track until he parked it in front of the little restaurant. The same three-legged dog came hobbling up, and a few elderly men sitting around cups of coffee and a game of chess stopped talking to look at him a moment. Claussen said he was not hungry, so Reinhardt took a seat alone and ordered water and burek from the waiter, then sat back and looked at the file.

It was just a plain, yellow, soft cardboard file. He took a long, slow breath, and opened it. There was no cover sheet, no index of contents. He flicked through the pages quickly, about a dozen reports containing typed and handwritten information, and some photographs, which slipped down and onto the table. Reinhardt pushed them back inside the file, feeling guilty, furtive, like a child spying on his parents, looking up as slowly as he dared to check if anyone was looking. Only Claussen, sitting in the kubelwagen , looking back at him.