The search took most of the rest of the day, and the enduring memories for Reinhardt were of dust, and the overwhelming scent of paper in various forms of conservation, and of a humbling sense of the sheer scale of the war. He, who had fought in part of it, who had had an idea of the mass of it, found in the archives an expression of its breadth that seemed to brook no argument, a monument that hulked high and wide, inscribed with the records of men. Millions of them. Records of the living, the dead, and the missing. Records of prisoners, German as well as Allied. Records of the army, air force, and navy. Records of the Nazis’ various military and paramilitary organizations.
His own were in here somewhere too.
So were Friedrich’s.
But it was not really the scale of what he saw in front of him and the scale of what it represented in lives. It was what each of those lives had done in turn. The millions of files in here had belonged to millions of men who had taken the war to other lands, other nations, and he had been one of them. Millions more lives had been affected. Lost. Destroyed. Erased. And he had taken some of them. Each of the lives represented in here had rippled outward, the ripples of what they had done rippling farther still. It terrified him more and more as the day went on. It began to wear him down, until he was moving listlessly, his mind stunned to a virtual standstill, as much by the stultifying weight and odor of paper as by what the paper represented.
De Massigny signed them into the air force section, a cave-like complex of long storage rooms, and left them to it. Relatively quickly, Semrau found the logbooks, along with the rest of the Group’s administrative records, including its pay list, which was a real treasure trove. The pay list allowed them to view the Group’s personnel. Pilots, gunners, fitters, armorers, mechanics, medics. Reinhardt felt a tingle of anticipation at each name found. Together, he and Semrau began matching the names they had with the lists, and found three of them—Noell, Stucker, and Zuleger—but not Haber. Haber seemed not to have served with III./NJG64, so was something of an anomaly, like Carlsen.
The pay lists also gave Reinhardt the squadron the pilots had served in together. This was the Group’s second squadron. That finding narrowed the search a little more, and Semrau and Reinhardt found more names of pilots, several dozen, who had also served during the war in that same squadron. His heart lifted a little more with each name, until Semrau doused it with water when he asked whether Reinhardt was sure he was only looking for pilots. There were dozens more names—ground crew, technical specialists, mechanics and engineers, staff officers . . . Reinhardt’s mind spluttered, fragmenting a little under the weight of all the paper and the thought of having to dig, dig, dig through it. He paused, then shook his head.
“Pilots,” he said, more firmly than he felt.
“Pilots it is,” nodded Semrau.
“You were air force?” Reinhardt guessed.
Semrau paused, his eyes widening slightly. He nodded, after a moment. “Air Ministry staff,” he said. “I was never more than an administrator,” he finished, a defensive twist in his pedantic voice. “Don’t worry, the French know.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Reinhardt replied. “I just noted how fast you brought us to where we need to be.”
The archivist left to hunt down the personnel files of the individuals they had identified, leaving Reinhardt with the Group’s logs. He found a table and chair, and sat down to begin going through them, tracking quickly through the unit’s deployments, from its initial establishment in the late 1930s at Ritterfeld air base, to France, the Netherlands, the Battle of Britain, to North Africa, to Italy, and finally back to Germany in the last two years of the war. He read over it more slowly, trying to find some pattern, but knowing full well he did not really know what he was looking for, his eyes running over terse accounts of battles, postings, victories, and losses. The only pattern he could see, as he read, was ever fewer victories as the years went by, and far more losses.
The transfer of IV./JG56 to night-fighter duties came in mid-1943, he saw, confirming what Bochmann had said. In May 1943, the unit was pulled out of North Africa, evacuated along with what was left of the Afrika Korps and retrained on night-fighter tactics, finishing the war based in western Germany, in Bremen.
Semrau returned with armfuls of personnel files. Each one contained a variety of information, from fitness reports to disciplinary hearings to authorizations for compassionate leave. Most of them contained a soldbuch, each book noting in detail the individual’s military experience, but a couple contained a Wehrpass, meaning the soldbuch had never been returned for one reason or another. Reinhardt picked up Noell’s soldbuch, for the first time getting a look at the man’s service history.
“Very well,” he sighed. “Let’s start with what we know. Noell, Stucker, and Zuleger. Let’s match their service history first, and then see what we can find out about the others.”
What linked them was North Africa, they realized after combing through the soldbuchs. Noell and Zuleger had been in the air force from before the war. Stucker joined IV./JG56 in 1941, and his first operational posting was to North Africa. Stucker and Zuleger had stayed on when IV./JG56 became III./NJG64, but Noell had left. There was something strange in Noell’s soldbuch, though, and Reinhardt pointed it out to Semrau.
“Here,” Reinhardt said, “Noell joins IV./JG56 in September 1938 as a lieutenant. When the war starts, he’s a first lieutenant. In April 1943, he leaves the Group, and he’s promoted to captain. Nine months later, in January 1944, he joins another unit. He joins what . . . ? A search unit . . . ?”
“Long-range reconnaissance,” said Semrau. “In Bergen, in Norway.”
“He’s a fighter pilot, and he ends up in a reconnaissance unit in Norway? What did he do, piss someone off?”
“It’s a fair assumption.” But Semrau’s pedantic manner had been ruffled.
“Between April 1943 and January 1944, where was he? The entry in his soldbuch has been redacted,” said Reinhardt, pointing at a thick black line that hid whatever had been noted beneath it. “Where was he for nine months between leaving IV./JG56 and turning up in Bergen? Wounded?”
“No. That would not show up as a break in service,” replied Semrau. His manner had definitely changed. “The soldbuch would record it as convalescence. There’s a code, there. By the redacted entry . . .”
Reinhardt gave him a moment before asking. “You know what it means?”
“Of course,” said Semrau quickly, as if offended. He seemed to catch himself, continued more slowly. “It is the code for a file section on . . . secret or unorthodox units or training methods.”
Reinhardt looked at him, then hunted through the files for Haber’s, flicking it open. Haber’s photograph showed a bookish-looking man of indeterminate age, a chemist by training, recruited into the air force from university before the war. He had spent the first few years of the war working in air force research centers, on what, it was not clear, but Semrau identified the locations and knew that at least one of them was working on specialized food supplies for aircrews. But in mid-1943, Haber had been transferred, and his soldbuch had also been redacted. Reinhardt pointed it out to Semrau. The archivist’s mouth worked dryly.
An hour later, using the soldbuchs and the personnel lists, they had compiled a rough list of nine pilots—Albrecht, Fenski, Gareis, Hauck, Jurgen, Meurer, Osterkamp, Prellberg, and Thurner—whose service history paralleled that of Noell, Stucker, and Zuleger. All of them had served in North Africa at the same time. All of them had served in the Group’s second squadron. All of them, with the exception of Noell, Prellberg, and Gareis, had gone on to serve in the Night Hawks, and Prellberg had the same redacted notation in his soldbuch as in Noell’s and Haber’s, and Gareis had one in his Wehrpass, there being no soldbuch for him because he was noted as being killed in action over the Eastern Front in early 1945. Twelve names overall, to which he added Bochmann as the Group’s executive officer. Thirteen names. Other names he had come across that he recognized—like Dorner, the one-eyed pilot from von Vollmer’s factory—he put to one side if they had not served in North Africa. Then he removed Albrecht, Gareis, and Meurer, because they had all later been killed in action.
That left him with nine names—Noell, Stucker, and Zuleger, plus Hauck, Jürgen, Osterkamp, Prellberg, Thurner, and Bochmann—of which he knew, three had been murdered. While he kept making notes on them, Semrau went looking for information on the gaps in Noell’s, Prellberg’s, and Gareis’s service records, and returned some time later looking blank.
“There was only a notation in the records that the files were transferred to the Berlin Document Center.” Semrau paused, his narrow eyes narrowing further. “Meaning, whatever it was, it was something related to the Nazi regime itself. The only thing left was this record in the file that the materials had been transferred.” Semrau handed him a sheet of paper with rows of typed and handwritten notations. “You can look at it, but I’ll have to take it back.”
It was as Semrau had said: an official notification that the records of said file had been transferred to the Berlin Document Center in February 1946, while the WASt had still been under US control. Below that, a signed list of names of people who had requested the file. There were only three.
One of them was the name of someone he had never heard of, called Boalt, in July last year.
The second was Skokov, at the end of last year.
The third was Carlsen. Just two weeks ago.
Semrau said he remembered Carlsen as an Englishman, and vaguely remembered Boalt. “Nothing special. But he was one of us.”
“A German?”
“Yes. But working for the Allies. He would not say on what. But I’m not the only archivist. And sometimes, visitors don’t need or want help. We’ll have to add our names to this form,” Semrau said, with the worried look of a grocer who wanted to close up shop. His body language spoke his distress louder than his soft, pedantic voice could. In a way, Reinhardt could understand him. Secret files and missing documents. If Semrau had worked in the archives as long as he said he had, he must have seen it all come and go, must have dealt with the schizophrenic paranoia of the Nazis that their mania for secrecy and meticulous bureaucracy had engendered.
“What about the Russian? Skokov. Remember him?”
Semrau said he did not, so Reinhardt sent him looking for records of Noell’s Norwegian posting. He himself went back to IV./JG56’s logbook, poring over the North Africa entries more closely, worrying that it was only instinct and sketchy evidence that had him focusing on this period, failing to find anything that stood out, except for one thing: the squadron leader. Prellberg had been removed from command. In Prellberg’s personnel file, Reinhardt found the demotion, a reprimand for failure to obey orders, citing a mission that should have been flown in one place, but was not. Whatever Prellberg had done, or not done, had happened in late October 1942. And two weeks later, Prellberg and Gareis, the squadron’s second-in-command, had been hospitalized for injuries sustained in a fight. A soldier called Leyser had been involved, but although it caught Reinhardt’s interest, there were no details beyond cursory ones. Not in the squadron’s log, nor in any files he found. He kept thinking about it as he read further, remembering the evidence of the crippled veteran at Zuleger’s apartment. That he had met a man who used army slang on the stairs the night Zuleger had been murdered.
Something was bothering him, but he did not know what it was. He stretched his leg, walking to a high window and looking up at the ashen light that pushed its way through the clouded panes of glass, and all of a sudden he found himself remembering North Africa, the heat, the blinding shimmer of the desert, the sea like hammered metal. The joy at capturing tinned British food. The dust that got into everything. The flies, most of all.
The building oppressed him. The weight of all these records, it was pushing in on him, as if he were something malleable being molded and shaped to a template he could not imagine. He stared up at the light, stared through it, and it was the vast bowl of the sky over the desert that he saw, the scrawled line of the Bosnian mountains as they ran along the horizon, the swirled contours of forests and hills, and he felt a prickling on his neck, as if he were being watched. He swallowed, steadfastly refused to look around, but the feeling grew until he turned, and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of the records chamber sunk in pallid gloom. He stared across rows of cabinets, shelves of binders and papers, and the records seemed to ripple, once, shivering like the surface of water, as if, somewhere deep within them, something had beaten, or been struck, as if the records had a heart, and it had thumped, just once.
He blinked furiously to clear his eyes, his breathing coming high and fast. What was he imagining, he thought, a flair of desperation to the whirl of his mind? When the door to the room cracked open, he felt his heart had stilled, but it was De Massigny with a thermos of coffee and a tray of sandwiches. If the Frenchman noticed anything in Reinhardt’s behavior, he said nothing, inquiring gaily into how they were getting on. Reinhardt was grateful for the break, but he could not shake off the feeling of being watched, could not shake off a rising fear that the heart of the records would beat, again.
De Massigny offered to help, so Reinhardt had him begin copying out particulars from the soldbuchs, especially addresses of wives or next of kin and dates of service. But something kept nagging at him, and he knew it was something he had read that day. Semrau returned with the logbook of Noell’s Norwegian unit, but there was nothing in it. It had been a long-range reconnaissance outfit, flying surveillance out over the North Sea and Arctic Ocean, hunting for the British convoys to the USSR. Reinhardt went back to Noell’s personnel file, searching through the records for the times that would have coincided with his stint in Norway, and found a report by the Group’s medical officer. Noell, the report said, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Another report, from his commanding officer, noted his flying as exemplary, but also noted burnout. Noell volunteered all the time, as if he had a death wish. No one wanted to fly with him.
The light in the room sank, a rising crepuscular gray. De Massigny turned on the lights, the electric glare carving the room into lines and blocks of shadows, and somehow lifting the oppression Reinhardt felt in this place. When Semrau came back with a file on several Kauschs, but none of which resembled the man Reinhardt had found in Wedding, he knew he had come to the end of what he could usefully do in here. It was indeed a trove he had found. He looked over the sheaves of notes he had made, the lists De Massigny had drawn up for him, and it was enough, he thought. He did not know if he would be able to come back, and that thought was the only note of dissatisfaction he had, a feeling of something undone or overlooked.
De Massigny escorted them back out of the air force section, and as he was signing the registry, on impulse he began searching back through it. The guard made to stop him, but De Massigny calmed him. Reinhardt checked the dates that the missing file had been consulted, flicking back through the air force registry, back to the same periods, and found them.
Boalt and Carlsen. But no Skokov.
Whoever Boalt was, Reinhardt saw he had been into this section of the WASt several times. The name was strange, like nothing else he had seen or heard of, but the man must have been working for the Allies to have the access he had. Reinhardt noted the dates, seeing there were two entries: the first was in July 1946, not long after the WASt had relocated to Berlin from Fürstenhagen in the US zone, and reopened, the second time about five months ago.
“Were you here at that time?” Reinhardt asked De Massigny.
The Frenchman shook his head “Non. I do not think anyone working now from the French administration was here at the time. Semrau, maybe?”
But Semrau shook his head. “Like I said to the inspector, I recall him, but only vaguely.”
“What of Carlsen?”
“A quiet man. An Englishman, so with full access. He knew what he was looking for and asked for no help.”
“Can we do anything else for you, Inspector?”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. If you could, please look up the records for this soldier. Leyser. He was serving in Africa in 1942. That’s all I have.”
And a Reinhardt, Friedrich. The name was right there on the tip of Reinhardt’s tongue, but he swallowed it back.
“Just a name?” Semrau asked. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“Of what interest is this name, Inspector?” De Massigny asked.
“The commander of the squadron was demoted for something to do with a failed mission. A short while later, he and two other pilots were involved in a fight with that soldier. One of those pilots was Noell. Could be nothing. Could be something. It’s just a lead.”
“We shall do our best, n’est-ce pas, Semrau?” De Massigny said jovially.
Reinhardt shook hands with Semrau, thanking the archivist for his help, and stood on the steps of the WASt with De Massigny. He offered him a Lucky and lit them both up. The day was almost gone, he saw to his surprise. He felt disoriented, and he breathed deeply, feeling lightened and light-headed. De Massigny glanced at him, his cigarette held elegantly at the height of his chest.
“It is quite something, is it not?” he asked, seeming to understand a little of what Reinhardt had felt and was feeling.
Reinhardt nodded. “Somewhere in there are my records. And those of my friends.” My son. “Just . . . pieces . . . in a structure.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the redbrick walls, down the long length of the street. “It is humbling. And I don’t fully understand what it all means.”
“For me, it is the perspective.” De Massigny blew smoke at the sky, straightening his glasses. “And the permanence. The mark we leave behind. Or the mark we choose to leave behind. It is not always the same thing. Searching for order in that, searching between the official for the unofficial. Searching for the small truths, or finding them by accident. For me, it is a great pleasure,” De Massigny said, an undertone of satisfaction to his words.
“I wish you luck with it,” Reinhardt smiled, extending his hand. “Should I need to get in touch with you again . . . ?”
“Of course! N’hésitez pas!” De Massigny exclaimed. “Tenez. My card.”
“And mine,” said Reinhardt. “You may reach me on that extension, or leave a message.”
A final handshake, and Reinhardt left him on the steps of the archive, feeling the bulk of it looming above him much larger than the building. He felt that if he turned around, he would see . . . something . . . rearing up and out. Something harrowed and clenched, rigid with the sorrow it bore. Reinhardt felt his back go clammy with sweat, and there was a hitched rhythm to his breath, like a child scared of the dark, or of the water. He clutched his papers to his chest and scurried down the street, ignoring the pain of his leg, walking until distance and the lowering light of the evening had put enough between him and the building that he could afford to slow, to look back, and see nothing.
At Gesundbrunnen he fairly flung himself through the U-bahn station’s turnstiles onto the platform, anything to get away from the oppressive weight of the archive. He began to calm down, waiting with dozens of others, eyes fixed on the gunmetal gleam of the tracks until, on a wash of dirty air and squeal of brakes, a train clashed into the station.