Two of the other young detectives followed Weber in. Schmidt and Frohnau, Weber’s two shadows. Schmidt had Ganz, and he had a pistol on him. Weber had a pistol as well and he pointed it at Reinhardt, holding out his other hand for Reinhardt’s .45.
“Weber. What do you think you’re doing?” Reinhardt managed.
“I’m not that sure,” Weber answered. His cheeks were flushed high with excitement, but his skin was pale beneath. “I overheard a rather lovely heart-to-heart. Something about justice and revenge. About Germans and British.” He looked at Markworth. “Is this the one you’ve been chasing? Quite the catch for the one who brings him in. Which will not be you, I’m afraid.” Weber’s smile, his self-satisfied smile, his mischievous smile, slipped, then faded under the withering pressure of Markworth’s eyes. He swallowed, turned his eyes half on Reinhardt. “Because aren’t you supposed to be in a cell in Linienstrasse?” The three young detectives grinned at one another, Schmidt poking Ganz with his pistol. “You’re easy to follow, old man. And Reinhardt, you’re under arrest, or at least under suspicion. Something about Stresemann’s murder?”
“He had nothing to do with that.”
“It speaks!” Weber quipped, looking at Markworth. “And how would you—whatever your name is—know that?”
Markworth looked at Reinhardt, and shook his head, a smile on the corner of his lips. “He knows. He’s the only one with a brain among the lot of you.”
“Weber. What are you doing?”
“Be quiet, Reinhardt. This is mine now.”
“Weber, you’ve no idea . . .”
Weber turned and cracked Reinhardt across the face with his open palm. The blow was hard enough, but it was meant to shock, not stun. The kind of blow made to make a point, put someone in his place.
“Weber . . .” he tried again and made no attempt to avoid the second slap. He felt his blood begin to boil at the humiliation, felt the animal desire to rip Weber’s throat out, but he held himself still.
“Inspector Weber,” Ganz shouted, before Schmidt shoved his pistol into the back of the elderly detective’s neck for emphasis.
“Quiet, I said.” Weber’s color was higher, his breathing quick. In the corner of his eye, Reinhardt saw Markworth tense, as if he sought to join his weight to this confrontation. “And I told you, Ganz, it’s not ‘inspector.’ It’s chief inspector. Kommisariat 5.” Weber’s eyes gleamed as his secret came out, and suddenly things made sense to Reinhardt. Weber’s youth, his apparent self-assurance, where he might have come from: He was protected. That, or he was part of something that would cover him, and he knew that Collingridge’s information of rumors of a new Soviet-backed secret police force were true, and he knew who it was who had spoken to Skokov of Reinhardt’s activities.
“K5?” It was Markworth who spoke. His eyes pushed hard at Weber, flicked up and down him, steadied on Weber’s face, and although Reinhardt could not see it, he knew Weber was flushing with embarrassment because Markworth had found him wanting.
“K5,” Weber blurted, as if too full of self-pride to keep the word in. “A new police for a new era. A police force to stop any drift back to the ways of the past.”
“Same shit, different shovel,” Markworth said, and Weber jerked as if struck. “Let me guess. You’re one of those who came back from Moscow following the Red Army. Better yet, given your evident callowness, you were born there. Born in exile. I can hear it in your voice.”
“We shall love talking to you, Mr. Markworth,” Weber hissed. “We shall love putting you on display too. A Fascist officer and war criminal in disguise. A Fascist officer at the service of the West. Of the British. Hiding within their ranks. Or allowed to prosper. And I don’t exclude you from all this, Reinhardt,” Weber said derisively, and Reinhardt knew he was remembering his humiliation at Reinhardt’s hands outside von Vollmer’s factory. “You have a lot of explaining to do. Another Fascist officer, another little placeman showing his true sympathies.”
“Weber, you . . .” Reinhardt began.
“I suppose you had better bring me in then, young man,” Markworth interrupted, and the challenge was evident in his words. He held out his wrists to be shackled, but Weber shifted, and his companions shifted with him. “What, no manacles? No cuffs? Not even a bit of rope?” he mocked them. “Such foresight. You’ll go far, young man.”
“Be quiet, pig, or I’ll shoot you where you kneel.”
“And where’s the glory and advancement in that, eh? And what about these pesky witnesses? One body you could explain. Three would be a bit harder, especially with the Americans about. For they are nearby, aren’t they, Reinhardt?” Reinhardt could only nod, latching on to the hook Markworth was offering. “That’s Reinhardt’s deal with them. He caught me, fair and square, and they’re standing back for now, but they won’t forever. So if you want me,” he said, raising one knee, and pushing himself slowly to his feet, his hands outstretched at his side, “you’d better save the speeches for later and take me while things are quiet.”
How quickly the authority and initiative in the room had shifted, Reinhardt realized, wondering if Weber could feel it too. He glanced at Ganz and saw he had felt it as well.
“Hands up!” Weber snapped.
“They’re already up, young man,” Markworth mocked him, his arms up and fingers linked behind his back. Weber nodded to Frohnau, and while he kept his pistol aimed at Markworth, the other detective patted him down, pulling, as Reinhardt had guessed, a bag from one of the pockets of Markworth’s coat. He emptied it on the bed, a quick rush of sand and a length of rubber pipe. Reinhardt looked at Markworth, and he saw the twitch that went across Markworth’s face, almost a snarl, as if of frustration at vengeance so nearly complete but frustrated. And he reminded himself—because he realized he had forgotten it—that before him stood a cold-blooded murderer. But Markworth was also a man he had come to like, even admire, and he was a man who was subtly engineering the present circumstances to some kind of advantage for both himself and Reinhardt. He was doing that, Reinhardt knew, but he was doing something else. He had done something else. Markworth had done something, right in front of them, but Reinhardt could not work out what it might have been.
“He’s clean,” Frohnau said.
“Good. We’re going downstairs. Me first, and our friend,” Weber said, looking at Markworth. “Then you, Schmidt. Frohnau, you keep Reinhardt company.”
“What about him,” Frohnau asked, pointing at Noell.
“Cut him loose and leave him. We’ve got bigger fish,” Weber grinned.
Weber put his pistol to Markworth’s back and pushed him out of the room, swearing at him to move faster as Markworth’s limp had reappeared, much exaggerated. Schmidt followed with Ganz. Frohnau fumbled Noell’s bindings loose, then pointed Reinhardt out.
“You can’t just leave him here. He’s not safe. And he’s a witness.”
“Shut up and move,” was all Frohnau had to say. They caught up with the others as they clattered down the stairs after the first four, and found them on one of the building’s lower landings as Markworth hobbled down slowly and with a group of men coming up the stairs. The newcomers had the hangdog look of exhausted men, covered in the dust and filth of whatever labor they had been able to find. They stood to one side as Weber waved them away, their eyes flat and lidded.
“What’s going on then?” one of them asked, a man with white hair and white stubble that creased the contours of his weathered and lined face.
“Never you fucking mind. Just stay out the way,” Weber ordered.
“Big city manners, is it? And there I was, thinking people were more polite here.” By his accent he was from the east, and Reinhardt marked him as a displaced person forced out of his home by the war’s end.
“Shut it, old man.”
“They’re taking me back,” Markworth blurted. “They’re taking me back to Königsberg, and I’ve done nothing.” His accent was suddenly pure Pomeranian. “I can’t go back, I can’t, I can’t!” He had changed again, subtly. His posture, his voice, everything spoke desperation and terror, such that Reinhardt would hardly have recognized him.
“What you doin’ with him?” one of the DPs demanded.
“I said shut it,” Weber snarled, shoving the man back with his free hand. The man allowed himself to be pushed, but his belligerence was plain.
“Sod that,” the man retorted. “I put up with that enough back home from the fucking Poles and the fucking Ivans. I’m not fucking putting up with it here.”
“What?” Weber lashed, pushing his face into the other’s. “You think this place is some paradise for you lot to just waltz in, is it?”
“Do you have any idea what you’re sending him back to?” the older man asked. “And anyway, just who are you?”
“They’re secret police,” Markworth wailed, his accent flawless to Reinhardt’s ears. Weber tightened his grip on him, pushing the pistol harder against the back of his neck, but his face betrayed its fear and its indecision. “Secret police, like the old days. They’re sending me back. They’ll send you back, too. I’ve done nothing wrooong,” he keened.
“Is it true, then?” the old man asked.
There was no answer, because Markworth was moving to his own rhythm in the distraction he had just made. He slid one leg back between Weber’s and spun himself around so that Weber’s pistol was suddenly pointing past his head, not at the back of it. Before Weber could do more than gape, Markworth had steadied him by his lapels and head-butted him. From farther up the stairs, Reinhardt heard the crack of bone. There was an explosion of blood, and Weber collapsed to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut.
Schmidt gurgled with fear as Markworth dipped his right hand into his left sleeve and pulled out a long, slim blade from what must have been a hidden sheath. Reinhardt recognized it as a British Commando knife, its steel a lustrous gleam as he cut it at Schmidt’s face, and part of Reinhardt recognized it for the blade that must have killed Stresemann. Schmidt squalled and reeled backward as the knife opened the skin across his forehead, and his face was flooded with blood. His pistol clattered to the floor as he flailed against the side of the stairwell, Ganz dropping his weight away to one side. Markworth flowed past them, his limp hardly bothering him, and there was death in his eyes for Frohnau beneath the Red Indian splash of Weber’s blood across his forehead.
He was too far away, though, and Frohnau’s pistol was coming up as he shoved Reinhardt to one side. Reinhardt grabbed it and pushed it hard into the wall, grinding his weight onto it, onto Frohnau’s knuckles until his fingers spasmed open. He turned into the policeman and punched up and into his groin. Frohnau’s eyes gaped wide like a fish’s as the breath whooshed out of him. Reinhardt felt Markworth behind him, and fumbled Frohnau’s pistol into his own hand, turning, ducking, but Markworth was too close.
The Englishman battered aside Reinhardt’s arm, and there was a moment when their eyes met, just a moment, long enough for Reinhardt to know what was coming, and then Markworth’s fist slammed into the side of his knee. Reinhardt screamed with the pain as it erupted up and through him, and maybe he screamed more with the betrayal of it, and the pistol fell away. Almost mute with the pain, his movements the flailing panic of a drowning man, Reinhardt scrabbled with his arms at Markworth’s legs, thinking only to pull him down, but he was left empty-handed on the stairs as Markworth stamped upward, the DPs’ shouts and Schmidt’s screams following.
“Markworth! Markworth!” Reinhardt bellowed over his pain. Someone lifted him to his feet, pushed the pistol into his hands.
“Go,” Ganz wheezed, pushing him on.
The first steps up were agony, the remainder little better, as Reinhardt forced himself almost on all fours past the pain of his knee, the palms of his hands scraping across the gritted filth of the stairs, and he knew he would not be in time. He reached the top floor with his breathing like a bellows, limping with his weight against the wall, pushing past people as they emerged from their rooms, and heard the cry from the room they had left
“Markworth! Markworth, don’t!”
He lurched into the doorway, saw Noell on the bed with his head twisted awry and sand scattered about his mouth, and the window hauled up and open. He fell into the window frame, one hand on the scarred wood for balance, looking out into the night. A hand gripped the collar of his coat and hauled him half outside, his feet scrabbling wildly inside the room. A blow to his elbow, and the pistol fell away into the night.
There was a small ledge outside, wide enough to walk on, coated thickly with dirt and grime. Markworth stood there, his knife against Reinhardt’s throat. Reinhardt went as still as his breathing would allow.
“You cannot follow me, Reinhardt. I don’t want to hurt you, but you can’t follow me, and you can’t stop me.”
“Markworth, this must end.”
“It has. I’m finished, now. Noell was the last.”
Reinhardt felt him move and closed his eyes, cringing from the blow that would come. Markworth hit him behind the ear with the pommel of the knife. Reinhardt’s world went black, and he hardly felt it as Markworth shoved him back into the room. The blackness faded, starred agony replacing it. He heaved himself onto hands and knees, his cheek dragging wetly up the wall as he pulled himself up to rest his head upon the sill. His tongue lolled, and he felt like a dog that puts its head into the wind, mouth agape.
It was darkness down in the alley. He could not tell what was down there, or who, or how much time had passed.
“Br . . .” he croaked. “Brra . . .” But his voice failed him.
Down in the alley something flashed, a stutter of light. Sound billowed up, the ripping crash of a gun and some distant part of him—the same part, perhaps, that had recognized Markworth’s knife—recognized the noise of Brauer’s Bergmann.
“Brauer,” Reinhardt whispered, then slid back down the wall into unconsciousness.