On a cold and crisp morning a few days later, Mrs. Meissner asked Reinhardt to escort her to Schlesischer Station. She was excited about her art commissions, about meeting up with former colleagues coming in on the train to discuss the hunt for looted treasures, but nervous about going into the Soviet sector alone. There was a gleam in her eye, something pleasingly conspiratorial, and he smiled as he escorted her down the street, her hand nestled on his forearm. On the U-bahn, he chased a pair of children out of the seats reserved for the elderly and wounded, and she sat primly, her hands folded over her handbag as the train bounced her along.
At the station, there was already something of a crowd, mostly elderly men and women, and she waved gaily to people of her acquaintance, colleagues and friends from the art world. Inside the station, policemen formed a cordon at the head of the platforms, and there was a welcoming committee of more people she knew. Mrs. Meissner pushed a newspaper into Reinhardt’s hands, and he drifted over to a bench as she joined her friends. He scanned the headlines, noting the arrival of a commission from Belgrade, in the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that Tito’s Partisans had created from the wreckage of the war, come to inquire as to what it would take to hunt down and reclaim all the art and treasure the Nazis had looted from their country.
There was nothing, though, about an incident in a hostel for DPs, nor about the escape of a wanted criminal. That particular headline had been quashed. The case was done, though, and Reinhardt thought that so was he. Done with Berlin’s police, all but persona non grata after the fiasco of the trap laid for Markworth. Not quite a fiasco, he corrected himself, noting his habitual introspection and slide into morbid self-analysis. The trap had worked, it was not his fault, nor Ganz’s, that Weber’s involvement had given Markworth the confusion he needed to make his escape. Weber was gone, and Reinhardt did not know where. Unmasked as a K5 agent, and thus as an infiltrator into a police force already thoroughly infiltrated with Allied agents of varying colors, Weber’s usefulness was at an end. He had vanished upon his release from hospital, probably somewhere east. Schmidt was back at Gothaerstrasse, his head heavily bandaged, and Frohnau watched Reinhardt’s every move with deep suspicion.
Most of the police looked at him the same way, with suspicion, or askance, maybe a few with admiration. Reinhardt had been subjected to the cold fury of Margraff at a meeting in his offices in Linienstrasse, but Ganz and Bliemeister, and even Tanneberger, had spoken for him, and at least there had been a suspect, even if he had escaped. Something of Reinhardt’s old legend still clung to him, but he also knew none of them really trusted him, and he was sure there was little to no future for him in the force. Not in this city, not in these times.
“Give it some time,” Collingridge had urged him. He called Markworth a “serial killer,” and Collingridge’s star had risen with the capture of Kausch and his band. The Americans backed him—he had even had the visit of Collingridge’s superior, a veritable caricature of a cigar-chewing Texan—and Bliemeister had spoken to him about coming to work for him as an advisor, but it was hard knowing that your own people, your colleagues, the men who were supposed to go shoulder to shoulder with you, doubted your loyalties.
The British were furious, but more interested in covering up the involvement of one of their men in so many crimes, and in protecting BOALT from being mentioned too often and too openly. It was hard to know, though, whether Whelan and the British were more embarrassed by Markworth’s betrayal of them—sporting analogies were much in use, “just not cricket” heard once too often, “bad blood will out” almost as much—or more angered by his activities under cover of the British occupation authorities: murder and the encouragement of seditious activities in the formation of the Ritterfeld Association.
They were more afraid of being embarrassed, Reinhardt concluded, rattling the newspaper’s sheets into shape as a train pulled into the station, of looking like fools in front of their peers. The Soviets were quietly content where they were not openly satisfied at the situation in which the British found themselves, but it was the opinion of only one of them that mattered to Reinhardt, as he folded the newspaper into his lap and lifted his eyes to the station’s open roof, where the repairs had not yet reached.
Skokov had found the files, at Güstrow, where Noell had said they had been hidden. Reinhardt did not know what was in them, and could not have cared less. Although he had been unhappy with what had happened to Noell, the Soviet had been true to his word, releasing Friedrich from whatever bondage he had held him in.
“Be careful, Captain,” he had said, his eyes alight with sardonic amusement, “that the past does not come to haunt you.”
“It haunts all of us,” Reinhardt had replied.
“Your son has nothing more to fear from me. What he carries within him, and what his comrades believe he has done, will matter more now. But in that, I can no longer help him.”
Rumors, and more than rumors, of the war in the east . . . That war that had sucked millions down into its maelstrom. Reinhardt still looked at his son and wondered, and the policeman in him longed to know, but the father in him could wait. One day, his son would speak of it. Reinhardt feared that day, and yet could not wait for it to come. On the way here, Reinhardt and Meissner had passed Red Army women on duty at a crossroads, stocky and blunt in fur hats, brown tunics, skirts and knee-high boots, with submachine guns slung over their backs. They carried traffic-control batons like lollipop sticks, directing vehicles. They were efficient with their movements, coming to attention whenever an Allied vehicle passed, rigorously checking the few German ones. One of the soldiers eyed him up as he passed, tapping her baton against the leather of her boot. She was a heavy, swarthy-faced woman with dark, slanted eyes over slabbed cheekbones and all unbidden, the opening lines of Blok’s poem came tumbling up out of his mind.
Millions are you—and hosts, yea hosts, are we,
And we shall fight if war you want, take heed.
Yes, we are Scythians—leafs of the Asian tree,
Our slanted eyes are bright aglow with greed.
Some words, Reinhardt thought, were prophetic. He had thought it then, the first time he had heard the poem in 1919, still largely bedridden after the war with his injury, and he thought it now. They had thought they had the Russians bested at the end of the first war, thought they had the measure of a brave but fragile enemy, but Reinhardt remembered . . . He remembered the sense of vastness that loomed beyond the Russian front lines. He remembered nights of moonlit clarity, pushing his eyes as far as he could out and over snow-clad hills lined and rumpled across a far gray horizon. He remembered marching, marching over landscapes of devastating emptiness, through forests of pillared darkness that, despite the teeming multitudes that passed beneath and between their cathedral gloom, seemed never to have known the touch or sound of men. How could they have done it again, he wondered, thinking back to that expanse, that endless frontier that had almost swallowed his son, and swallowed so many other men. Swallowed nations and whole peoples. How could they have stirred that far horizon to anger?
How could they now regret what they had called down upon themselves?
People began filtering out from the platform where the train sat wreathed in steam. Men, women, children, farmers, the poor, the not-so-poor, more refugees from the east, Red Army men. The station filled with noise that was curiously empty, the cacophony of steps and sounds and words a crowd produced sucked up through the open roof, not reverberating back down and around. He rose to his feet to check on Mrs. Meissner, seeing her still with her friends, and he moved slightly to keep her in view, leaning back against the wall and lighting a cigarette.
“I like trains. Did I ever tell you that?”
The voice came from behind him. It froze him solid, his cigarette spiraling smoke up into his eye. He swallowed, lifting a hand to it.
“You did. Once. I presume I should not turn around.”
“That’s right,” Markworth said. “Best you don’t.”
“What are you doing?”
“Playing fool’s games, Reinhardt. What else?” There was a light note to his voice. “How’s your head?”
“Sore. You’re not going to hit me again, are you?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to cause trouble. But I couldn’t leave without knowing. What gave me away? I’m curious.” Markworth asked, as if there were no urgency.
“The tap,” Reinhardt said, as he drew deeply on his cigarette. “The first time we met, when we argued about whether Carlsen had been in Noell’s rooms. You asked me were his prints in the apartment. You asked, ‘Were his prints on the tap?’ The one tap. How would you know that if you had not seen it, been there yourself?”
“That’s it?” chuckled Markworth incredulously.
“The first thing. There were others. Your German kept giving you away. You asked what went wrong with ‘us’ once. You hid it, but I know you meant what went wrong with ‘us Germans.’”
“There’s more?”
“You knew idioms. Sayings. Expressions. I reasoned only an Allied agent could move across Germany leaving all those bodies. It all built up. And you didn’t react when I told you Noell had a twin brother, because you knew already. That was why you murdered Theodor Noell with water. You knew who he was.”
“What else?”
“The times the accusations of me murdering Stresemann, or having something to do with his murder, were the times I came close. You put Fischer up against me, hoping he would injure me enough to get me off the case. When that didn’t work, you used my baton on Stresemann’s body. When that didn’t work, you arranged for the baton to be found.”
“I did. I’m sorry. None of it would’ve stuck, you know. And if it had, I’d have done what I could to help.”
“I know.” And Reinhardt believed it.
“Anything else?”
“The Royal Marines. How, I wondered, did a former tanker and now a liaison officer in the occupation know where to find commandos?”
“When I was captured, the British did not hold me long. A Brandenburger’s skills made a good match for a commando’s.”
“You took a risk with them, Markworth. They might have talked.”
“You were a risk worth taking, Reinhardt.”
Reinhardt said nothing, holding himself still around those simple words.
“What a curious couple we made, Reinhardt. I wanted to congratulate you on the trap too. Releasing Noell, then making sure he went to where you were waiting so there was no need to tail him. You fooled me. Well done.”
“Was Carlsen really your friend?” Reinhardt asked suddenly.
“He really was.”
“Why did you kill him?”
There was a long silence, but Reinhardt knew he was still there.
“I did not mean to. I suspected he was on to me. He worked in the war crimes division, investigating men like Lütjens. He was angry when he died, and then when I killed another of Lütjens’s team, he suspected foul play. Something I said must have put him onto me. We talked a lot, a bit like you and I did. About the past. About justice. About revenge. But I had no idea he had begun following me, or at least keeping track of where I went. He surprised me that night at Noell’s apartment. I . . . I killed him without thinking. It felt . . . almost as if someone else did it.”
“Maybe someone else did. A man called Leyser.”
“What are you saying?”
“I make no excuses for you, Markworth. But I knew men in the first war. And afterward. Their experiences . . . divided them . . . from the men they were.”
“You mean shell shock? You mean all this time it’s a shrink I’ve needed, not revenge?” He was silent, and when he spoke again the levity had faded from his voice. “Maybe you’re right. Sometimes . . . sometimes I felt like two men. But I won’t take that for an excuse. I knew what I was doing.”
“And now? How does it feel now?”
“How did it feel when you handed over those Ustaše to the Partisans?”
“It felt right,” Reinhardt admitted. Markworth said nothing. “So you found Gieb and persuaded her to help in exchange for ridding her of Stresemann.”
“Carlsen already knew her. I simply convinced her to help, and then got her out of the city once she had done so. Her price was Stresemann.”
“Your one good deed. May I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.”
“Your limp. You limped as Markworth, not as Leyser.”
“Leyser was wounded when his camp was shot up, and wore a leg brace, my friend. Easier to move around that way. Leyser . . . I . . . removed it when . . .”
“. . . when Leyser became Markworth,” Reinhardt finished.
“God, maybe I am as much of a mess as you seem to think I am,” Markworth muttered. “How is your friend?” he asked, after a moment.
“Brauer is fine. Annoyed you got past him a second time. Annoyed you knocked him out again. There’s not many claim that distinction.”
“I’m honored then. Give him my best regards.”
This was becoming ridiculous, Reinhardt thought, and maybe Markworth thought the same. There was another silence, heavier, and Reinhardt felt the distance beginning to sink in. He knew, by rights, he should turn. Turn and confront him. Call for help. It would be the right thing, but the wrong thing. It would be a gesture, nothing more. But then, were not gestures all that were sometimes needed? A man who stood up for a friend. A woman who brought a neighbor help in times of need. Someone who offered a seat on a crowded train to an elderly Jew. Someone who would not follow a law that made no sense. There had been a time and a place for all those gestures, and Reinhardt knew he had not made them as often as he should have, when the opportunity had presented itself. Was this, then, such a time, and if so, which way to fall . . . ?
“Lift a drink for me one day, Reinhardt. Yes? Maybe in that bar. A molle, and maybe a toast. To times and men that might have been.”
He was gone, then. Reinhardt could feel it. He waited a moment, then turned, but saw no one and he knew Markworth could be anyone. He could have been that Red Army soldier tickling a little girl under her chin as he offered her an apple. Or he could have been that man who hunched his shoulders around as if lighting a cigarette. Or perhaps the blind veteran with a stick, sounding his way across the station’s concourse.
Any of them, and none of them. He had faded away. As he was trained to.
Up at the barrier, Mrs. Meissner was waving to him. A group of newcomers had gathered around her, people from the train, the commission from Belgrade in black coats and with bags lumped around their feet. Someone was reading a speech, and a little girl held up a bouquet of flowers to one of the visitors. Mrs. Meissner was talking to a woman, and the woman looked across the concourse, searching, until she found Reinhardt. She walked toward him and took off her hat to reveal a spill of white-blonde hair, and Reinhardt’s heart, which had broken on a sunny hillside in Bosnia, seemed to suddenly knit itself back together and began to beat again, to beat and fill all those places within him that he thought had withered and died.