Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

Leaving Rogatica, the road wound through a gorge between high cliffs of blunt rock. It was cold, the sun shut out by the height of the rock walls. A wind blew down the steep cut in the mountains, bringing with it a dark, damp chill that seemed to push them on their way until, at length, the mountains pulled apart and the vista suddenly opened out. The light changed, as if a gauze had been snatched away, and they drove along the lathered shores of a river, the Praca rushing east out of the mountains, a froth of water that foamed and streamed away to the east towards Visegrad. The sun shone brightly on the brilliant green of the water, and on the other side thickly forested hills rose straight from the river. A military bridge spanned the Praca, the river backing and curling around its pillars, and that was their road south.

An Italian convoy was stopped in front of the bridge, heavy trucks with their engines off and their drivers idling around the vehicles. ‘Road down to Gorazde’s too narrow, sir,’ said a Feldgendarme, saluting Reinhardt as he asked what was going on. ‘Medical convoy’s coming up from Gorazde, so they’ve got priority. Won’t be long now, I would think.’

‘Time for a break,’ said Reinhardt, walking back to Claussen. He stretched as Claussen began checking the car. Huddled around the spire of a mosque was a hamlet tucked up against the sides of the cliff that faced out over the water. A small herd of goats picked at the grass on the steep shoulders of the road. An old lady had a small fire going, pots hanging over and in the flames. Reinhardt sorted through the supplies on the backseat.

‘Do we have any coffee?’

‘Pack on the floor,’ replied Claussen, checking the kubelwagen ’s tyres, a Mokri clamped in the corner of his mouth.

‘You want one?’

‘Not for me, sir, thank you.’

Reinhardt found coffee and sugar and walked up to the lady. She backed away from him, staring up at him from the stoop in her back. He offered the tins to her. ‘Coffee? Can you make me some coffee?’

By dint of gesture and a few words, he seemed to make her understand, and she fetched a small metal pot and began to make the coffee in the traditional way he had come to appreciate. She handed it to him in a chipped mug, and he lit a cigarette as he stood by her fire, staring around him. This was a truly beautiful spot, with the river, the plunge of the mountains. A man could be happy here, raising a family.

Something caught his eye on the far shore, and he stared at it a moment, his eyes squinting around a curl of smoke from his cigarette, before realizing it was a burned-out house. Where there was one, there were usually more, and his eyes found them eventually, in their ones and twos, scattered across the face of the mountain. Someone had gone to quite some trouble to burn those people out, the houses standing blackened and empty, like skulls.

Skulls got him thinking of Stolic, and of Verhein. He knew he had no real plan, no real idea of how to approach these two, or where to find them. He had movement orders as far as Foca, and he had Thallberg’s letter, which he knew he had to be careful about using. He also had to assume Becker would soon realise he was gone from Sarajevo, if not already, and the word would be going out to the Feldgendarmerie. Any checkpoint at any time might stop and detain him. Which of them was the priority? Stolic was SS. Strictly speaking, as an army officer Reinhardt had no authority to question him at all. He was, however, Verhein’s liaison, so maybe the best thing would be to start with Verhein, and then request permission to question Stolic. Thinking about Stolic had him thinking about that knife. The knife was one of the keys, he knew, but he still could not quite factor it into how the murders had played out that Saturday night.

Movement on the other side of the bridge became a convoy of trucks with red crosses on their sides. Over the bridge they came, passing in front of him on their way to Rogatica. There was movement all along the stopped vehicles, the creak of metal and stamp of doors, and engines coughed into life with gusts of black exhaust.

Reinhardt drank the last of his coffee and picked up his tins. Pausing, he looked among the old lady’s possessions and saw two empty little pots. He emptied half his coffee and half his sugar into each of them. The lady looked at the pots, then at him, and her face opened up, as if something within wished to get out. Her eyes stared up at him from deep within their sockets, but then there was a blast of noise, the Feldgendarmerie blowing their whistles, engines revving, and whatever it was, was gone. Her face closed up and in, the wrinkles on her face drawing tight, like the threads of a net, and the light in her eyes fell back and down, closing around whatever words might have bridged that sudden small space between them. Claussen had the engine running as Reinhardt climbed back into the car, and as it pulled away he looked up at her, lonely by her fire, a little pot in each hand.

The convoy of trucks rumbled over the bridge, the kubelwagen at its tail, and after about an hour of driving they came down into Gorazde through small villages where most of the houses were burned. The city was spread out along both banks of the Drina, connected by a pair of bridges, and long rectangular fields ran up from the banks of the river and into the bluffs of the hills, minarets poking up above the town’s red roofs.

Although the streets reminded him of the old Ottoman city in Sarajevo with their cobbles and whitewashed houses, the town was choked with refugees. They were mostly farmers, it seemed, Muslims by their dress, and they stank of fear and the rich, heavy earth they farmed. Men and women bred to a tough life, but with desperation and fatigue etched into the leathered grime of their faces. In their slope-shouldered stance, gnarled hands listless by their sides, he saw a resigned incomprehension to the vagaries their lives had become, and he was reminded of that porter in Sarajevo bent double under his load. He wondered again what such people thought – could think – of events such as these that cut straight across the steady furrows of their lives, uprooting them from the mute certainties and traditions of their fathers, and their fathers before them.

They drifted slowly past the dull gaze of the refugees, past the Italian garrison, following the tactical signs to the German headquarters in a hotel just next to the first of the town’s bridges.

‘That doesn’t look too good,’ Claussen said, as he parked and leaned forward, putting his weight on the steering wheel.

Parked in front of the hotel were an Italian staff car and a car with Ustase plates. An Italian stood at parade rest next to his car, with an Ustasa slouching against the front bumper of his. As he stepped out of the kubelwagen , Reinhardt could feel the tension between them. The Italian straightened and saluted him; the Ustasa barely moved.

‘Bit of a risk, isn’t it, sir?’ Claussen asked.

Reinhardt nodded, his hands feeling clammy. ‘Don’t see how we can avoid it. We need to know what’s ahead.’

Exchanging salutes with a sentry, he paused in the entrance, listening to the buzz of conversations, the ringing of phones. Inside was a hum of activity, and Reinhardt could feel the edge in the air that proximity to action sometimes brought on. He knocked on a door marked Operations. Inside, several soldiers sat at desks working on telephones and a harassed-looking lieutenant stood as he came in.

‘Sir?’

‘I’m on my way down to Foca, Lieutenant, and I wanted to know the conditions of the roads between here and there.’

The lieutenant pointed to a tactical map and was about to speak when a burst of shouting from somewhere in the hotel stopped him. A couple of the soldiers on the phones looked up, and one exchanged a knowing glance with the lieutenant. No one explained, however, and Reinhardt did not ask for details. ‘The road down to Foca is still considered safe for single-vehicle traffic. We have not had any confirmed Partisan activity on it for several weeks now, but don’t use it after dark. It’s just past midday, so you should be in Foca in about an hour if you leave now.’