Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘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 snapped 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.

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 Kunzer, 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?’

‘Kunzer.’ 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 Kunzer did, they couldn’t disprove it.’