Skulls got him thinking of Stolic, and of Verhein. He knew he had no real plan, no real idea of how to approach these two, or where to find them. He had movement orders as far as Foca, and he had Thallberg’s letter, which he knew he had to be careful about using. He also had to assume Becker would soon realise he was gone from Sarajevo, if not already, and the word would be going out to the Feldgendarmerie. Any checkpoint at any time might stop and detain him. Which of them was the priority? Stolic was SS. Strictly speaking, as an army officer Reinhardt had no authority to question him at all. He was, however, Verhein’s liaison, so maybe the best thing would be to start with Verhein, and then request permission to question Stolic. Thinking about Stolic had him thinking about that knife. The knife was one of the keys, he knew, but he still could not quite factor it into how the murders had played out that Saturday night.
Movement on the other side of the bridge became a convoy of trucks with red crosses on their sides. Over the bridge they came, passing in front of him on their way to Rogatica. There was movement all along the stopped vehicles, the creak of metal and stamp of doors, and engines coughed into life with gusts of black exhaust.
Reinhardt drank the last of his coffee and picked up his tins. Pausing, he looked among the old lady’s possessions and saw two empty little pots. He emptied half his coffee and half his sugar into each of them. The lady looked at the pots, then at him, and her face opened up, as if something within wished to get out. Her eyes stared up at him from deep within their sockets, but then there was a blast of noise, the Feldgendarmerie blowing their whistles, engines revving, and whatever it was, was gone. Her face closed up and in, the wrinkles on her face drawing tight, like the threads of a net, and the light in her eyes fell back and down, closing around whatever words might have bridged that sudden small space between them. Claussen had the engine running as Reinhardt climbed back into the car, and as it pulled away he looked up at her, lonely by her fire, a little pot in each hand.
34
The convoy of trucks rumbled over the bridge, the kubelwagen at its tail, and after about an hour of driving they came down into Gorazde through small villages where most of the houses were burned. The city was spread out along both banks of the Drina, connected by a pair of bridges, and long rectangular fields ran up from the banks of the river and into the bluffs of the hills, minarets poking up above the town’s red roofs.
Although the streets reminded him of the old Ottoman city in Sarajevo with their cobbles and whitewashed houses, the town was choked with refugees. They were mostly farmers, it seemed, Muslims by their dress, and they stank of fear and the rich, heavy earth they farmed. Men and women bred to a tough life, but with desperation and fatigue etched into the leathered grime of their faces. In their slope-shouldered stance, gnarled hands listless by their sides, he saw a resigned incomprehension to the vagaries their lives had become, and he was reminded of that porter in Sarajevo bent double under his load. He wondered again what such people thought – could think – of events such as these that cut straight across the steady furrows of their lives, uprooting them from the mute certainties and traditions of their fathers, and their fathers before them.
They drifted slowly past the dull gaze of the refugees, past the Italian garrison, following the tactical signs to the German headquarters in a hotel just next to the first of the town’s bridges.
‘That doesn’t look too good,’ Claussen said, as he parked and leaned forward, putting his weight on the steering wheel.
Parked in front of the hotel were an Italian staff car and a car with Ustase plates. An Italian stood at parade rest next to his car, with an Ustasa slouching against the front bumper of his. As he stepped out of the kubelwagen, Reinhardt could feel the tension between them. The Italian straightened and saluted him; the Ustasa barely moved.
‘Bit of a risk, isn’t it, sir?’ Claussen asked.
Reinhardt nodded, his hands feeling clammy. ‘Don’t see how we can avoid it. We need to know what’s ahead.’
Exchanging salutes with a sentry, he paused in the entrance, listening to the buzz of conversations, the ringing of phones. Inside was a hum of activity, and Reinhardt could feel the edge in the air that proximity to action sometimes brought on. He knocked on a door marked Operations. Inside, several soldiers sat at desks working on telephones and a harassed-looking lieutenant stood as he came in.
‘Sir?’
‘I’m on my way down to Foca, Lieutenant, and I wanted to know the conditions of the roads between here and there.’
The lieutenant pointed to a tactical map and was about to speak when a burst of shouting from somewhere in the hotel stopped him. A couple of the soldiers on the phones looked up, and one exchanged a knowing glance with the lieutenant. No one explained, however, and Reinhardt did not ask for details. ‘The road down to Foca is still considered safe for single-vehicle traffic. We have not had any confirmed Partisan activity on it for several weeks now, but don’t use it after dark. It’s just past midday, so you should be in Foca in about an hour if you leave now.’
There was more shouting and a thump of feet. Reinhardt looked up at the room’s ceiling, raising his eyebrows.
‘Just our Italian allies having a bit of a tantrum, sir.’
‘About?’
‘The Ustase, I would imagine, sir, it usually is.’
Closing the operations room door, he heard a clatter on the stairs and someone shouting again. Two Italians came down, one a colonel no less, followed by a German captain. The colonel was visibly furious, his knuckles stretched white against the hat clenched in his fist, which he slammed against his thigh to emphasise his words.
‘Barbarians!’ he seethed, his German thick with an Italian accent. ‘Absolute barbarians!’
The captain caught sight of Reinhardt and frowned but kept his attention on the Italian. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said, with an air of having repeated the same thing several times already. ‘There is little I can do about it. Please, I advise you to take your complaint to divisional headquarters.’
‘My complaint?’ roared the Italian. He looked up past the German at two Ustase coming down the stairs in their black uniforms. The colonel shook his fist up at them. ‘They are your allies,’ he bellowed. ‘Yours! Control them. Do something.’ One of the Ustase paused on the stairs, his mouth stretched in a sneer of a smile, and the vitriol in his reply was evident. The Italian went red, let loose a strangled expletive, erupted in a stream of Italian, and made to climb back up the stairs, but the captain got in his way, his arms up; the other Italian spoke urgently into the colonel’s ear, and he allowed himself to be pulled away, still roaring in fury.
The Ustase laughed and came downstairs, screwing on their caps. The German officer stood in the doorway until the Italians had left. The Ustase seemed not to care, sniggering among themselves. One of them turned and saw him, and Reinhardt recognised him as the one who had been at Stolic’s table back at the Ragusa. Ljubcic, Freilinger said his name was. Then the captain was gesturing them out, and Reinhardt did not know if the Ustasa had recognised him. They gave the captain a mocking salute and were gone, laughing and nudging each other.
‘You are… ?’ the captain asked as the Ustase drove away, people cowering to either side of the car as it cut through the crowded streets.
‘Reinhardt, Abwehr,’ he said, shaking hands with the officer.