There were noticeably fewer troops in the city. The endless convoys were gone, off down to the east and south, and a large part of the city’s garrison had followed them. Of the soldiers who were left, most were from the Croatian Army, many of them Bosnian Muslim conscripts, incongruous in their German Army pattern uniforms with black fez on their heads. The hats were supposedly a cultural exception. Reinhardt thought they looked like extras in some children’s matinee production.
His feet felt like blocks of lead as he climbed the stairs to his office. The day was barely begun and he wanted it over in a way he had not felt for a long time, but there was a note on his desk requesting him to report to Freilinger soonest. He flipped his cap onto a chair and sat on the edge of the desk. As always, in these moments when his mind seemed to drift, he looked without really seeing at the big map of Sarajevo on his wall. East to west, all the way from Hrasnica, on the long, winding road down through Jablanica to Mostar and on to the sea, to Lapisnica and its old Ottoman footbridge where the mountains pinched off the city. North and south of the city were hills and mountains, where he had rarely been. Green rolling country to the north, hills folded and rucked like a bed that had been slept in, but to the south they bulked high, swelling into the great stone bulwarks of the south and east.
It was down there, hidden in fastnesses of stone and wood, moving freely as they wished, that the Partisans had their bases. And it was down there, clustering along the few roads and around the few towns and villages, that the Germans and their allies had mustered their forces. Almost, Reinhardt wished he were with them. This war had, for him, been one of paper and shadows. The war he had known, the first war, had been one of sludge and clay, a blasted horizon slashed and barbed by wire, and the sky at times so full of iron and steel it seemed there could be room for nothing else. But he had sometimes found an honesty in warfare he had found nowhere else. A comfort in the company of men exposed to the same dangers, running the same risks. It was better, sometimes, to face open danger than skulk through the shadows like this.
He sighed and stirred himself. Feeling sorry for his lot would get him precisely nowhere. And nowhere was where he was. No suspect. No investigation. No support. He took the stairs up to Freilinger’s office slowly and found the major much as he had found him the night before, standing by his window, looking west. Freilinger turned as he came in, and Reinhardt was struck by how tired he looked, the lines on his face long and deep. The two of them stared at each other a moment, and then the major gestured to the chair in front of his desk. ‘So,’ he said, pointing to his telephone. ‘I’ve just spoken to Putkovic. I understand things have come to a pass?’
‘They think their suspect was murdered by one of their own doctors, whom they’re now searching for as a Partisan agent.’
‘So I hear.’
‘Even if he didn’t kill Vukic, Topalovic must’ve been important to them,’ said Reinhardt, staring out the window. He turned back to Freilinger. ‘I mean, Topalovic must have been pretty important if an agent as apparently well placed as Begovic was blown just to shut him up.’
‘Hmm,’ said Freilinger, rolling one of his ubiquitous mints in his fingers. He fixed Reinhardt with those blue eyes. ‘Putkovic seems to have it in his head you had something to do with it.’
Reinhardt was too tired to muster up a protest. ‘I met the doctor last night when I went to police HQ. I -’
‘What were you doing there?’ interrupted Freilinger.
‘I was angry, sir,’ replied Reinhardt. ‘What you told me seemed so wrong. I went to try and talk to Padelin, to…’ He paused, ran a hand over his face, swallowed. ‘It’s not important why I went, I suppose. I couldn’t find Padelin. The doctor escorted me out of the building and walked me as far as the Latin Bridge. That was it.’
‘So it was some sort of mercy killing?’ Reinhardt nodded. ‘Well, so might this be, I suppose.’ Reinhardt straightened in the chair. ‘It’s over. The investigation. I’ve been told to bring it to an end.’
‘By whom, sir?’
‘Staff, up at Banja Luka. It would seem the telephone lines have been buzzing. Some colonel on the commander’s staff seems to have a dim view of us wasting resources, getting in the way of senior officers, distracting attention, sowing confusion within our own forces, upsetting our allies…’ He rolled the mint around the front of his mouth. ‘Seems you’ve stirred up quite the hornet’s nest, Reinhardt.’
Reinhardt nodded once, slowly, closing his eyes as he did so. ‘So it would seem, sir,’ he said quietly.
Freilinger frowned at him, his lips pursing and moving as he swallowed his mint. He drummed his fingers quietly on the table, one after the other, a rolling little beat that came to an abrupt stop. He leaned forward on his elbows, looking hard at him. ‘My God. This has really got to you, hasn’t it?’
Reinhardt opened his mouth to reply and found nothing. Freilinger seemed willing to wait, so he tried again. ‘It has got to me, sir. You’re right. I think… I think it’s because you held the door open to a past that meant something to me. And, for whatever reason, I could not seem to join that past up with this present.’ He looked away, down at the floor, then back. ‘Naive of me, I know.’ He found he had nothing more to say and gave a twitch of a smile in place of the words that would not come.
‘Reinhardt,’ Freilinger said, after a moment. ‘I’ve no written orders for you yet, but I know you are supposed to stand ready to transfer down to Foca. That’s where they’re setting up the holding area for prisoners, and they’ll want you for interrogations.’ He leaned back. ‘I’m being reassigned. My replacement’s on his way from Belgrade, and I’m off to Italy.’
Reinhardt knew there were consequences here. Implications. For both of them, but he could not think them through, could only feel them, waiting like steps in a road he would have to take. He wondered whether this was what Becker’s parting shot had been about. ‘It was the Feldgendarmerie making the calls,’ Freilinger continued. ‘The colonel at army HQ referred specifically to the commandant of the Feldgendarmerie.’
‘The commandant? He only knows what Becker tells him.’ Reinhardt shifted. ‘Is your transfer because of… this?’
‘It’s been on the cards a while. This has probably sped things up, is all.’ He looked down at something on his desk. ‘Last night, I promised you some information.’ He held up a sheet of paper. ‘Recent transfers of general staff officers to Bosnia in the last six months.’ Freilinger considered it a moment, then held it out to Reinhardt. ‘Not much use to you now, I suppose, but I marked the three officers who served in the USSR.’ Glancing at the paper, Reinhardt saw that it listed about a half dozen names and folded it into his pocket. Freilinger watched him, twisted his lips, and sat back in his chair.
‘Sir, you talk as if it’s over for me. I know that’s what Banja Luka told you, but you seemed to be hinting that I ought to continue until orders come telling me otherwise. Was I wrong about that?’
‘When I referred to written orders, Reinhardt, I indeed only referred to myself. I have none for you. You may very well consider that licence to pursue your inquiries. Or you may not. Perhaps it would be safer not to.’
‘Yes, sir. I ask because I met with someone last night. A Captain Thallberg. Ostensibly an infantry captain, he is GFP. He told me Hendel was as well, as was Krause. They were working for him.’
Freilinger looked back at him. ‘What?’ he said.
If Reinhardt had been in that kind of mood, he might have taken pleasure in the look on Freilinger’s face. One of complete surprise, written blankly across his drawn features. ‘They were GFP. Hendel was on some kind of surveillance mission. He was tasked to it by someone senior, not in country. This Thallberg doesn’t know who, but he’s trying to find out.’
Freilinger seemed to deflate in his chair. His mouth moved. ‘GF…’ He paused, swallowed, passed a hand across his face, then began to rub his hands together under his chin. That slow movement, back and forth and around and around.