‘So you think I should leave?’
‘Now. Otherwise I am not sure what Becker might do. I don’t think you can do much against him and the police together.’
Reinhardt sat on his bed. He looked around the room. ‘I’ve not had the time to arrange anything.’
‘No need. Claussen is downstairs with your vehicle and supplies.’
‘Claussen?’
‘I asked him if he would go with you. He said yes.’ Reinhardt gave a little laugh, feeling like flotsam, that the current of events was leaving him no choice, even if… even if this was what had been planned. ‘Reinhardt, you need to decide now. You were told to stop this investigation, and you didn’t. You are accused by the Sarajevo police of aiding and abetting the Partisans. Becker will come for you if you stay, and you have, if I may put it bluntly, no friends strong enough to cover for you. You are going to be in real trouble here, and I can’t deny you’re likely to get yourself in trouble if you leave. But if you get going, I can cover your tracks for a while, and you may be able to outrun any word he sends and’ – he paused – ‘who knows how things might end up turning out.’
It was more the way Freilinger spoke – that hoarse rasp – as he outlined the odds stacked against Reinhardt than the odds themselves that decided him. Reinhardt nodded and rose to his feet. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you downstairs. And, sir?’ Freilinger paused at the door. ‘Thank you.’
Reinhardt took a moment to wash his face, make his ablutions, and thought back to the way this had all started, just like this, just three days ago. A knock at the door in the early morning. News that turned your life on its head. He was not the same man now. He felt calmer, more centreed, more at peace with himself than he had felt in a long while. For all he seemed to have dug himself a hole, he felt he could now see further than he could for a long time, and for all that the days had seemed to draw themselves out interminably, he felt events now accelerating past the point where he could control them, even if he had wanted to.
He packed a few things in a rucksack – a change of clothes, his toiletry bag, then the file. He slipped Carolin’s picture from its frame and folded it into his tunic pocket, noting the wear and tear on his uniform, the whisper of threads at the end of the embroidered eagle. Looking around the room, he saw nothing else to take, and, if he was honest, his chances of coming back were slim.
Downstairs, Freilinger was waiting next to a kubelwagen that had been kitted out for a mission. A spare tyre with a rope coiled around it was fixed to the front deck, shovels and cans of water were strapped to the sides, and a pair of MP 40s were racked behind the front seats. Claussen stood arranging supplies on the rear bench. Reinhardt walked up to him, then offered his hand. Claussen took it.
‘Sergeant,’ Reinhardt said. ‘I am… happy that you are coming.’ Claussen just nodded, handed over a helmet with a set of goggles attached, and put his rucksack into the car.
Freilinger handed over a sheaf of fuel coupons. ‘Which way will you go?’
‘The eastern road, through Rogatica. It’s a bit less travelled than the southern route. It’ll be quicker.’
Freilinger nodded. ‘I’ll try to put it about subtly that you took the road south through Trnovo, then.’ He seemed to hesitate, then extended his hand. ‘Good luck, Reinhardt.’ He thought a moment, his lips tight. ‘I am sorry we didn’t trust you sooner with what we knew and suspected.’
Reinhardt took his hand, remembering the conversation with Meissner. ‘Sir. When did it begin for you?’
‘Resistance?’ Reinhardt nodded. Freilinger held his eyes. ‘Kragujevac,’ he said, simply, and nothing more was needed. Freilinger gripped Reinhardt’s hand hard, and then he was gone.
As they drove out of the barracks, the sky was still dark and dotted with stars, but the tops of the hills on either side of the valley were silky with the coming dawn. Turning right at Vijecnica, they drove up past the old stone span of the Goat Bridge – for centuries the point that marked the beginning of the long, long road to Constantinople – climbing up and around the rocky flanks of the mountains that channelled the river into the city, into the rising sun, until up ahead they saw a sandbagged checkpoint at the crossing where the road forked. Straight on and up, to Bare and Stambulcic, or left, deeper into the mountains, towards Rogatica in its valley, towards Gorazde and Foca on the banks of the Drina, towards the far-flung slopes of Mount Sutjeska, where Operation Schwarz was now under way.
Various signs were posted at the checkpoint, including the by now standard one for Berlin (1,030 kilometres, apparently) and one for vehicles to stop and check in. A Feldgendarme corporal put down his cup of coffee next to the barrel of the heavy machine gun covering the road and saluted Reinhardt, casting a bleary eye over the vehicle.
‘Corporal. How are things ahead?’ asked Reinhardt, lifting the goggles.
The Feldgendarme indicated a status board leaning against the sandbags. ‘Latest is the road’s clear as far as Rogatica. You’ll have to check in there for conditions farther on. Your destination?’
‘Foca.’ He proffered his movement orders at the Feldgendarme, who glanced at them before handing them back.
‘Safe trip, sir.’
Reinhardt nodded and took a deep breath, lowering the goggles back down. He shared a quick glance with Claussen, then squared his shoulders and looked ahead. Claussen hauled the wheel left and started down the road. The Feldgendarme watched them go until, flickering through the trees, the car vanished over a rise and the sound of its engine faded away into the still air of the mountains.
Part Three
THURSDAY
As they left the checkpoint behind, the road switchbacked up Mount Romanja, which lay athwart their route east, snaking through lands that had once been well inhabited, and past houses, alone or in hamlets, built of wood and dressed stone. Most were empty, and many were destroyed, walls collapsed in rubble and skewed timbers blackened and burned, gardens and fields overgrown and abandoned. These lands had been farmed and worked mainly by Serbs until the Ustase came, and most of the people had been slaughtered, rounded up in camps, or driven off into the arms of either the Partisans or the Cetniks. Signs of life were few. A spiral of smoke from a chimney, a handful of goats that twitched their heads nervously as the car went by, washing hanging from a line.
They rose higher up the rounded flanks of the mountain, the countryside flattening into view to their left. As always, when he saw it from the heights, Reinhardt found something about the Bosnian forest that registered on a level below that of rational conception. It spread out beneath and around them, a canopy of varied greens and shifting forms, rising and falling with the land hidden beneath it, and the earth was lobed by the frayed sweep and curve of hills, shy;fissured sometimes by flanks of exposed rock like the bleached karstic bones of the land.
The road swung across the rounded summit, through a forest sunk in gloom, the trees flowing against the blue sky that streamed overhead through a tracery of branches. They drove past mountain meadows across which marched the matchsticks of broken fences made to keep in livestock long gone. Big houses, like chalets or ranches, stood abandoned and gutted. When they emerged from the forest, at a point where the road swung down the other side of Romanja, they stopped for a break and to have something to eat.
Claussen had brought a flask of coffee and some bread and sausage, and Reinhardt walked to the edge of the road, sipping from a mug, and looked down across the country below them. The road wound away across flatlands to where a range of mountains broached the haze around their foothills, summits seeming to hang in the air like the brushstrokes of a painter. Standing there, he felt happy or, at least, resigned to a course of action. Perhaps they were the same thing, he mused, as he took the Williamson from his pocket, rolling it over in his hand and watching the play of light across the inscription. In any case, happiness did not mean conversation. Neither he nor Claussen had exchanged more than a couple of words since they left, but there was a comfort in that silence that he was loath to break for the sake of mere speech.