Luke McCallin: The Man from Berlin

SARAJEVO, EARLY MAY 1943

MONDAY

Reinhardt shuddered awake, again, clawing himself up from that dream, that nightmare of a winter field, the indolent drift of smoke and mist along the hummocked ground, the staccato line of the condemned and the children’s screams. He rolled his feet to the floor, sitting slumped on the side of the bed with his head in his hands, and listened to the calls to prayer sounding in ones and twos from the minarets as the sun rose across the Miljacka valley. Eyes glazed with fatigue, an ache in his head and an acid churn in his belly, he watched without seeing the crawl of light across his room, his mind still floundering to escape the clutches of his dream. He jerked as he smelled smoke, an acrid sting of memory, and blinked it back. Only a memory, but another sign of the inside leaking out more and more into his waking world. He wondered if he was going mad.

With trembling hands he lit a cigarette. His head swivelled to the side as he drew deeply, then tilted back as he exhaled through puffed cheeks, his eyes closed, the hangover beginning to bite. The smoke swelled up above him, rising, dissipating. Reinhardt watched it for a moment then let his head sag over his fingers, curled like a cage around the cigarette. Gingerly, he ran a fingertip across his temple, feeling the dull bruise beneath the skin where, more and more, the weight of his pistol was the last thing he felt at night.

Someone knocked at the door, and he froze, startled out of the fog of his thoughts. The knocking came again, and his name, muffled through the door. He put a hand on the bedside table and pushed himself quietly to his feet, but his arm felt numb and heavy from where he had slept on it, and it slipped, slid, and bumped the pistol, which clattered and clinked against the bottles and glasses.

Reinhardt stared guiltily across the room in the sudden silence. The knocking came again, louder. He put out his cigarette, gritting the stub into a whisper of ash; put a hand out to the wall to steady himself as his left knee gave its usual twitch; and began to shuffle down the side of the bed. He rested both hands on either side of the door frame, breathed deeply, and rolled his head on his neck, feeling the ache skitter around inside his skull like a steel ball in a bowl, and ran a finger across the bruise at his temple. Another deep breath, and he threw the latch back on the door and flung it open.

A soldier stood in the hallway outside, a fist raised to hammer the door again. Steely eyes regarded him from under the rim of a field cap, a sergeant’s insignia on his broad shoulders. For a moment there was silence, and Reinhardt realised he must make quite a sight, his hair tangled, shirt twisted out of his trousers, and his feet in socks.

‘Captain Reinhardt?’

Reinhardt looked at him through the spreading ache behind his eyes, half recognising him. ‘I think you bloody well know who I am.’

The man put his heels together and saluted. ‘Sergeant Claussen, sir. I have orders for you to report to Major Freilinger immediately.’ The man was built like a boulder, short and squat with his uniform stretched taut over his chest and belly.

Reinhardt stared at the sergeant. ‘To Major Freilinger?’ he croaked. He coughed, swallowed, and tried again. ‘Freilinger? What does he want?’

‘There has been a murder, sir,’ said Claussen.

‘Murder?’ Reinhardt put his hand behind his neck and rubbed it, turning his head from side to side. He thought he saw Claussen’s eyes stray to the mark he was sure was on his temple, and he straightened up. ‘What’s that got to do with us? This city still has a police force, doesn’t it?’

‘Major Freilinger instructed me to tell you that one of the victims is a fellow military intelligence Abwehr officer. Lieutenant Hendel.’

‘Stefan Hendel? Freilinger said he was Abwehr?’ Claussen nodded. ‘Very well. Give me ten minutes.’

‘Yes, sir. Ten minutes.’ Claussen was an experienced NCO. The four green stripes of a master sergeant on his arm were proof of that, and a good NCO knew how to frame a statement to an officer so it sounded like an order. Reinhardt flushed again at the picture he must make, picked up his towel and toiletry bag, and stalked out of his room down the corridor to the bathroom.

He bent over one of the sinks as he felt the churning in his stomach come heaving up. He retched, his head beginning to pound as he doubled over but, as so often, nothing came up, only a sickly rasp of bile, like the viscous residue of his life and work. His stomach calmed, eventually, and he shivered as he stayed bent over the sink, the hammering in his head turning into a dull ache that squatted in the top of his skull.

He rested his head in his hands, eyes pressed into the heels of his palms. Another night and he had hardly slept, and what sleep he managed gave him no rest. Another night spent in the cells under the prison, facing prisoners of war across bare rooms under caustic lights. Another night spent piecing together the puzzles these men represented, pulling together information and intelligence from a dozen other interrogations from the nights and days before them, here and elsewhere. Norwegians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Australians, Arabs… now Yugoslavs. Partisans. They had all come and gone in front of him since this war started.

The pipes shuddered and coughed a spray of water into the cracked porcelain of the basin. He swallowed a couple of aspirin, drank as much water as he could, then carefully shaved, looking through his reflection. He rinsed off and only then allowed himself to look in the mirror. Not quite as bad as he felt, he saw. Dark blue eyes like pits, cheeks gaunt above the tight line of his mouth, the close-cut cap of his brown hair greying at his temples. An average face. One that would go unnoticed in a group of three men, as his old police instructor used to joke.

He wet his tousled hair, combed it, splashed cologne on his face and water in his armpits, and he was done. He looked in the mirror a last time, wiping away the steam to stare at himself.

‘As good as it gets,’ he muttered, pulling out the light and walking back to his room. Reinhardt shut the door in Claussen’s face, let his trousers puddle around his feet, then peeled off his shirt and let his underpants and socks join the heap on the floor. Outside, the call of the muezzins faded away across the valley that held the town of Sarajevo cradled in its slopes. As if needing to fill the silence, the bells of St. Anthony’s, up behind the barracks, began to toll.

Outside came the squeal of the trams at Vijecnica as they went around the corner at the city hall. He twisted his shoulders into his braces, sat to pull on his boots, pausing a moment to stare at the picture of his dead wife in its silver frame on the bedside table, tracing a fall of hair with a fingernail along the glass.

Reinhardt placed the picture gently into a drawer and wound his watch. It was just a cheap Phenix, but winding it always made him think of the watch he had left behind in Berlin with Meissner, for safekeeping. A pocket watch, heavy, old fashioned, a British-made Williamson hunter with an inscription on its silver casing, and the memory of his finding it as vivid as ever.

He shrugged into his jacket, medals and metal clinking dully, closing each button with a firm movement as he stared at the window, thinking of nothing except the day to come and how to get through it. A step at a time, he knew. One after the other. Head down, back bent, eyes no more than two steps ahead, step after step until the day was done. He cinched a wide leather belt around his waist and took his cap from a hook on the wall and his pistol from the tabletop, sliding the gun into the holster with a dull rasp of metal on leather. Looking in the small mirror behind the door he adjusted the fit of his cap, then stuffed a pack of Atikahs and some matches into the pocket of his jacket and opened the front door.