‘Seigler,’ sighed the captain as he removed his cap and ran a hand through thinning hair.
‘What was all that about?’
Seigler shook his head. ‘The Italians claim the Ustase have been… that they destroyed a village south of here and massacred everyone in it. The village was once Serbian, until they were all… killed. Then Muslims moved into it after they were displaced by Cetniks.’ He sighed again. ‘He’s probably right.’
‘He is right,’ said Reinhardt, looking out at the slow shuffle of refugees.
‘What?’
‘They are our allies.’
Seigler shrugged. ‘Yes. Well, we usually can control the… worst… of it with them, but with the operation, everything’s committed to that and they are pretty much free to…’ He trailed off. ‘Although now the colonel’s saying it’s the SS encouraging the Ustase.’
Reinhardt swallowed slowly, keeping his eyes as uninterested as possible. ‘SS? In this area?’
‘Liaison unit. Arrived about a day ago. I think they’re down near Foca. Maybe Kalinovik.’ The captain’s eyes drifted away.
‘Town’s full,’ said Reinhardt.
Seigler nodded. ‘They started coming in two days ago. There’s been fighting up along the approaches to Cajnice,’ he said, motioning behind and across the river where the hills swelled up into the distance. He frowned. ‘Is there something I can help you with?’
Reinhardt shook his head. ‘Just updated route information to Foca. Your operations people have already helped me.’
‘Good. Well, drive carefully.’
Reinhardt stood there a moment after Seigler left. The hotel was near the river, and there was a sandbank out in the flow, a smooth teardrop shape, white sand shining in the sun. Children were playing on it, seemingly oblivious to the choked tenor of the streets, and their laughter drifted faintly across the rush of the river as it purred along over its rocky bed. He felt very afraid, and very cold. An SS unit could mean anything, but it almost certainly meant Stolic, and if, as it seemed, he was in a killing mood, Reinhardt had no idea how he would approach him, nor what the presence of that Ustasa might mean. He told Claussen what he had learned. The sergeant swigged from a canteen, screwing his eyes shut as he lifted his face to the light and wiped the back of his mouth with a blocky fist.
‘Change of plan?’
Reinhardt shook his head. ‘Let’s get going. We should be able to make Foca in an hour, maybe less.’
The drive to Foca was uneventful but particularly beautiful. The Drina flowed in broad, languid sweeps and bends to the left, now bottle green, now turquoise, now a lather of foam where it ran shallow over its stony bed, rocks lying like mosaics. The land along the river was good, the rich alluvial soil ripe for crops, the banks dotted with small hamlets and settlements, but the signs of war were everywhere. Many of the villages were empty or destroyed, fields and crops unkempt and uncared for, and on the far bank, smoke ribboned up from burning houses. The fighting along the Drina had been bitter and internecine since the war first came here in 1941, with Cetniks massacring Muslims, Ustase massacring Serbs, and the land suffering under the succession of German, Italian, Croat, and Partisan armies.
The road was busier, mostly German traffic coming up from Foca, but they passed a bus trailing a plume of filthy exhaust, horse carts, and men, women, and children on foot. More refugees, haunted and hunched under what little they had, herded and pressed to the side of the road by soldiers in Croatian Army uniforms.
Despite the thickening traffic, they made good time to Foca, the road crossing over an iron bridge with sheet metal flooring that clanked and clattered under the car’s wheels. The town was much narrower and darker than Gorazde, and like Rogatica showed the signs of fighting: bullet holes in walls, the heaped remnants of destroyed houses like rotted teeth in the lines of streets. As for the townspeople, it seemed most of them were gone, and the place had an empty, haunted feel despite the troops who thronged through it – German and Croat mostly. They passed a group of Cetniks gathered on the steps of a dilapidated building that looked like it had once been something official, a shambles of shaggy ponies and rickety carts, and men with thick beards and long hair that splayed out from under rectangular caps and who watched them go by with sullen expressions, distrust writ large across their heavy features.
They followed the tactical signs to the local headquarters building. While Claussen went in search of fuel, Reinhardt searched through the scrum of activity inside, finally cornering a harassed operations lieutenant who pointed at a map to a location west of Foca. ‘121st were at Brod last night. They were supposed to advance on Predelj today,’ he continued, tapping the map farther south. ‘Last information is their reconnaissance battalion is stalled somewhere here,’ he said, pointing to the long, twisting route that led south from Brod towards Scepan Polje, on the Montenegrin border. If you’re looking for them, they’re around there.’
‘How’s the operation going?’
‘Well, I think. Early days. Some pretty stiff fighting over by Cajnice. Lots of confirmed kills. That’s all I can tell you for now,’ he finished, as he turned to answer a telephone.
Reinhardt stared at the map a moment, feeling a sudden wash of nerves as he contemplated how close he suddenly was. Reinhardt felt someone behind him and turned to see Claussen standing in the doorway, his face drawn tight.
35
‘I think we have trouble, sir,’ he said quietly. There was a window with a view onto the street. ‘There.’ Following his finger, Reinhardt saw a Feldgendarmerie unit parked, two motorcycles with sidecars. There was one man standing by the machines, his uniform dirty and lined with white dust. ‘They came down the Kalinovik road about five minutes ago,’ said Claussen. ‘Don’t know if they’re after us, but I got the strong sense they were in a hurry. They went into the Feldgendarmerie post right after they arrived,’ he continued. He paused, as if waiting for Reinhardt to say something, but nothing was forthcoming. ‘Where to, sir?’ he asked.
‘The 121st was in Brod,’ Reinhardt said after a moment. ‘West of here, bit less than half an hour’s drive if we’re lucky.’
‘I don’t think we should take any chances,’ said Claussen, panning his eyes across the street. ‘There’s a parking lot around the back. I can meet you there. I doubt they’re looking for me.’
Stepping out into the back of the building, Reinhardt passed through a crowded parking area, trucks and cars and troop carriers in serried rows. There was a wall and fence of dry-looking wood topped with a twist of barbed wire along the length of the parking area where it ran along a lane around the back of the headquarters. He made himself walk easily past the vehicles, skirting a platoon of soldiers as they boarded trucks under the hoarse instructions of a sergeant. He lit a cigarette as he came up to the sentry at the back gate, just as Claussen pulled up in the lane. Reinhardt saluted the sentry as he went past, ignoring him but feeling himself tense up as he waited for a challenge, but none came.
Claussen pulled away gently, bumping the car over the rutted lane past dishevelled houses that seemed to sag under the weight of unkempt roofs. The place reeked of despondency, the whole town seeming to be holding its breath, as if in expectation of more violence than it had already suffered. After a few minutes’ driving, they found the tarred road that ran through the centre of town, with the Drina a long stone’s throw to their right. ‘Left, now,’ said Reinhardt, unfolding a map, ‘then find somewhere to pull over.’
The houses petered out into a jumble of scrubland, and Claussen pulled over in front of a house with a gaping hole in its second floor. The two of them looked at Reinhardt’s map. ‘The 121st is somewhere along this road, leading south from Brod,’ Reinhardt said. ‘To get there we’ll need to get through the crossroads at Brod, and there’s bound to be controls there. If those Feldgendarmerie came down the road from Miljevina,’ he said, his finger tracing the road that headed south from Sarajevo and then swung east and ran through Trnovo to Foca, ‘and if they’re looking for us, then chances are the controls may have been reinforced.’ He paused, running his eyes over and over the map, looking for a way, any way, to get through Brod. If Thallberg had been with them, he might have known a way, or he would probably just have taken them through any control, trusting in the authority of the GFP.