There was an investigation, the possibility of a court martial, but Verhein was exonerated; there were no witnesses among his men, and in any case no one really cared as Stalingrad was pulling in all available troops. Verhein’s command was all but destroyed in the fighting in the city, but he survived. Wounded. Another medal. A transfer away from the front and an assignment to create a new unit – the 121st Jager.
It might have stopped there, but for chance. For one of those things that could make or break an investigation. The tenth and eleventh elements in the file were explosive. The tenth report was a sworn affidavit from one Lasse Kunzer, made shortly before his execution for forgery in April 1942. Under interrogation, Kunzer admitted to forging a variety of records over decades. He gave places, dates, what he did, and for whom. Several of the names caught the attention of the case officer, who forwarded them on to another department, who forwarded them on again until they came to the attention of Sturmbann shy;fuhrer Varnhorst, who began to put two and two together. Two of those names were of Paul and Nora Verhein. Kunzer swore Verhein had paid him to alter his, and his sister’s, birth records in November 1933.
Reinhardt sighed as he read this. If the rumours one heard back then were true, it had been a common enough practice in the days after the Nazis came to power, though never easy. He remembered that more than one of his colleagues in Kripo had had it done in the frenzy and uncertainty that followed the Nazis’ coming-to-power in 1933, paying good money to have their birth records altered, removing Jewish or, in one case, Gypsy blood from the family tree. He even knew of at least one case in some convoluted power struggle within the SS where the reverse had been done, and an officer’s records altered to show a Jewish grandparent where there was none. The officer had ended up in Dachau. Becker had told him the story, laughing uproariously as he did.
The eleventh report was a request, and response, from Varnhorst to Section VII of the Reich Main Security Office ordering a racial search made of Verhein’s parentage. The response was positive. Four German grandparents. Purer blood than that would be harder to find in Nazi Germany. If Kunzer was telling the truth, his work lived on long after he was guillotined at Plotzensee prison.
The last page was Hendel’s orders from Varnhorst. Hendel was actually an SD operative working under GFP cover. His orders dated from June 1942 and directed him to conduct surveillance on Verhein with an objective of gathering evidence of treasonable conduct. There was nothing in the file to show what, if anything, Hendel had found in the year he had been investigating Verhein, during which he had followed him from Russia to Poland, back to Germany where the 121st was being trained up, and then to Yugoslavia. But, Reinhardt mused, flicking back over the file, for sure probably the only things stopping this investigation becoming more overt were Verhein’s impeccable combat record, his abilities as a leader of men, and, he speculated further, his friends. A man like Verhein made friends as well as enemies. Almost certainly, someone was looking out for him. He could not fail to be aware he was being watched.
Reinhardt took out his map of the investigation. He looked at the circle he had drawn for the suspect, then took his pen and wrote Verhein in it. The link was there, but what Vukic had on him to make him kill her, Reinhardt had no idea. Yes, she was a witness to the incident at the farm, but an inquiry had exonerated him. So what, then? He sipped some water and picked a corner off the burek. Vukic was a journalist. She found something out, he thought, as he chewed slowly. She dug. She connected with Hendel, and through him to Varnhorst.
Paging through the reports, he added dates under Verhein’s name. July 1940, the first incident in France, in the Ardennes. August 1941, the first two incidents in Ukraine, near Zhytomyr. September 1941, near Kiev, the third. Nearly a year before the fourth, in September 1942 at Yagodnyy, but by which time Varnhorst already had Kunzer’s statement, dated April 1942. He matched the dates to the notes he took when they had interviewed Jelic. They more or less matched. Verhein’s unit was undoubtedly the one they had travelled with, and shy;Verhein was almost certainly the man with whom Vukic had been having an affair.
His was also the name on Freilinger’s list that did not match with Thallberg’s. Reinhardt took the file, piling the reports neatly back inside it. He stared at it where it sat on the table, then looked at his map. Happenstance. Chance. Kunzer’s evidence. It was a funny thing. What were the odds he was telling the truth, and that it would come to the attention of an SD officer? And, he thought, as he toyed with his pen, running it around and around one of the names on the map, what were the odds Kunzer’s evidence would end up on the desk of that particular SD officer, Sturmbannfuhrer Varnhorst who, one day in July 1940, was humiliated by Verhein, in France, over how he chose to treat a handful of French Jewish officers… ?
It did not mean much. It meant everything, perhaps. But what it really meant, Reinhardt realised now, slumping to one side, was that General Paul Verhein, currently commanding the 121st Jager Division, decorated officer, was almost certainly a Jew.
24
Claussen swung the kubelwagen into the broad, white gravel driveway of the Hotel Austria and parked the car in front of a low flight of steps. Getting out of the car, straightening his tunic, Reinhardt realised he should have come here already, here where all those generals and colonels had met for that planning conference. In Berlin, in any normal investigation, he would have, but here the simple things, the straightforward things, such as estab shy;lishing a timeline, establishing the presence of a suspect, were anything but.
The hotel was not particularly large, and it was not particularly grand, but with its twin, the Hungary, facing it across a broad round swath of perfectly manicured lawn, it stood out, as it was meant to. This was the heart of the Austrian spa, itself built upon and around a much older town that dated back to Roman times. If Reinhardt remembered correctly, the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife had stayed here on their fateful visit to the city in June 1914. Reinhardt had been sixteen that month. They say the end of innocence comes for everyone, sooner or later. It came for him that summer. Military academy that year, the Eastern Front two years later.
The hotel was fronted by a wide, arched portico supporting a terrace running the length of the building. Reinhardt walked into its shade and into the main entrance of the hotel. Across an expanse of creamy carpet an elderly gentleman in a suit stood behind a reception desk of heavy, deeply carved wood. A pair of staircases rose up to either side of the desk. To the left was a bar with wicker chairs and tables and a grand piano with its top down. To the right was a dining area, a checkerboard of tables with white cloths, plush armchairs drawn rigidly against them. Waiters chinked and chimed among the tables, setting out cutlery and glassware.