Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘ Sarn’t Major, two cups of that tea you made earlier, if you please, ’ Sanburne called out in English. He turned back to Reinhardt. ‘Been a bit of trouble getting the tea made. In the desert, we’d just pour petrol over a can of sand, and voila, practically smokeless fire.’

‘You were in North Africa?’

‘Long-range desert group. Odds are we might almost have crossed paths a few times, eh?’ Reinhardt took a tin mug of tea from a sergeant with the heavy features of a boxer. ‘Cigarette?’ asked the major, proffering a silver case. ‘Turkish, here, or English…’

Reinhardt took a Woodbine, which Sanburne lit for him. ‘What are you doing here, Major?’ he asked, drawing the tobacco deep. He coughed, not used to such strong blends anymore.

‘Liaison group. One of several.’ Sanburne’s eyes were steady on him as he lit his own cigarette. ‘The Cetniks are a dead loss. Not to mention practically German auxiliaries as well. We’re putting our weight behind the Partisans. Official policy now.’

Reinhardt breathed out, nodded. ‘We thought so.’

‘You with that general?’ Sanburne asked suddenly, mug held in two hands.

‘What?’

‘Begovic told me you were after a general. One got himself killed yesterday. Chap by the name of Verhein. There was a devil of a fight, but his death threw your chaps off quite a bit and allowed a couple of Partisan brigades to break through. You had anything to do with that?’

‘With the general?’ Reinhardt nodded, thinking of Begovic’s bargain with him. I help you, I help my people. ‘In a way, yes.’

‘I’d like to hear about that a bit later. In the meantime…’ He brushed a lock of hair off his forehead, and Reinhardt was struck by how, behind that tan, and the deep lines around his eyes, and his rank, the major was a young man. ‘You’ve a decision to make.’

‘Oh?’ Reinhardt drew deeply on his cigarette.

‘I’ll be blunt, Captain. I’d like you to work for us.’

Reinhardt exhaled, narrowing his eyes around the smoke. ‘What makes you think I’d do that?’

‘Wild guess. A hunch. Something the good doctor might have let slip.’

‘Such as?’

‘Not being overly happy with your life.’

‘It’s a long way from not being happy with one’s life to becoming a traitor.’

‘Well, put it this way. It’s us, or them,’ he said, motioning to the Partisans. ‘I can afford to be slowed down even less than them. I’ve a job to do that doesn’t require me babysitting someone like you. So a yes gets you out to Alexandria, and a chance to make a difference in this war – I’m guessing a difference you’ve been wanting for quite some time – but a no sees you given back to them.’

Reinhardt was taken aback. ‘That sounds less than gentlemanly, Major.’

Sanburne grinned, his eyes suddenly very hard. ‘ “Gentlemanly”,’ he repeated. He stubbed his cigarette out on the ground. ‘I have always wondered why the English and that epithet seem to go hand in hand. Put it this way, Captain, and forgive the bombast. We didn’t build the biggest empire known to man by being gentlemen.’

‘I see,’ swallowed Reinhardt.

‘And before you throw “blackmail” at me, it’s not. If we weren’t here, you’d be theirs anyway.’

Reinhardt was silent a long while, sipping from his tea. It was milky and sweet, the way the British seemed to like it. It felt good going down. ‘There may be another way.’ Sanburne raised his eyebrows. ‘May I have a little time alone, Major? To think?’

Sanburne nodded. ‘Not much, though. We’ll be moving on come morning.’ He took something else from his pocket. ‘I think this is yours,’ he said, handing over the little leather package Meissner had given him and holding up the Williamson. ‘Must be a good story with this one. Perhaps you’ll tell it to me, one day.’ Reinhardt took it, a little too quickly, perhaps. Sanburne’s eyes widened, but he said shy;nothing.

‘Thank you,’ said Reinhardt.

‘Until later, then.’

Reinhardt finished his cigarette and lay back, feeling light-headed. He thought about Claussen, about his steady presence from the very first minute of the case. There had been a sense of kinship there, towards the end. It did not seem right for Reinhardt to have reached something like an ending, only to have Claussen lost behind him.

He closed his eyes and must have slept, for he opened them with the light deeper. He managed to get himself to one knee, then to his feet. He wobbled as his knee throbbed in pain, putting out a hand to hold himself against a tree. A Partisan with a rifle stepped forward, snapped something. Reinhardt mimed walking with his fingers, gestured at the forest. Mollified, the Partisan quieted. Reinhardt took a tentative step, then another, his knee hurting but not unbearably so. He looked around, spotted where it seemed a little lighter, and pointed. The guard nodded.

He limped through the trees to where they thinned, the guard following quietly. A file of Partisans marched past, one of them still a boy with an oversized cap tilted back on his ears walking with a man who had to be his father. The boy talked quietly, excitedly; the father looked at Reinhardt as he went past, face broad and dark and his hands massive where they held the strap of his rifle.

Limping to just inside the tree line, Reinhardt saw that they were camped high on the side of a mountain, its flanks dropping away before him into a steep-sided bowl of a valley. It was late in the day, and far away to the west a milky sun was setting where the mountains lay knuckled across the bottom of the sky. The valley below was sunk in shadow, and he could see no sign of the Drina. He took off his jacket and sat down gingerly, flexing his fingers, back against a tree, and looked towards the setting sun, thinking, letting his mind drift where it would.

He remembered what he and Brauer had talked about all those months ago in Berlin. Had they burned away enough of themselves to survive this war that was not theirs? He knew now, as then, that he had not and that he never would. But he also knew now it was his war. It was just that he had been fighting it the wrong way. Head down, in the shadows, back bent, and every day a little more of himself sliding away to wherever the parts of yourself went when you lost them.

He remembered as well what he had told Begovic at the safe house in Sarajevo – that the track of his life was a scar that hid what was and what might have been. Scars healed well if they healed quickly, he thought. Was this such a chance? To change the track of that scar, alter it, make it something different? Heal it? Cauterise it? What image was he looking for? The past was what it was, and what might have been, could have been – should have been – lay hidden, lost, obscured by its weight. The past could not be changed, but the future was different, and it was here, now. It always had been.

He thought of the people in his life whose opinion he might have sought. Meissner, Brauer, maybe even Freilinger, certainly Claussen. Dr Begovic. His son, if he was alive. And Carolin, most especially. He unfolded her picture and held it in his hand, his thumb stroking that fall of her hair. Then he thought that all his life, he had waited on the good opinions of others and nearly always done what was expected of him, hoping it was the right thing. Often it was. Sometimes, it had not been. This time… this time, it felt right that there was no one to ask.

He shifted the tunic on his lap, his eyes switching back and forth between the eagle and swastika stitched onto the right breast, the Iron Cross on the left. Almost unconsciously, his fingers began to pick at the loose stitching along the eagle’s wing again, working and worrying it. Something had happened to him these past few days. He had found himself again, and found a new side to men he thought he had known well. He had found respect in the ranks of his enemy, and danger from his own side. He had become aware of another way of fighting this war, the presence of a fork in the track of his life, and in that hut in the forest he had taken the first steps down that different path.