A Man Without Breath (29 page)

‘Buhtz is a fanatical Nazi,’ Conrad told me on our way to a clearing in Katyn Wood where a meeting had been arranged with Buhtz, Ludwig Voss and Alok Dyakov. ‘If any of that bastard’s history gets out when the international commission is here it will fuck everything up.’

‘What sort of history?’ I asked.

‘While he was in Jena Buhtz was in charge of carrying out autopsies on prisoners who were shot while trying to escape from Buchenwald KZ. You can imagine what that meant, and what Buhtz’s death certificates were worth in terms of honesty. And then there was some scandal involving the Buchenwald camp doctor. Fellow named Werner Kircher, who’s now the chief physician with the RSHA in Berlin.’

‘Isn’t he the deputy director of the forensic pathology unit?’

‘That’s right. He is.’

‘I thought I knew the name. So what was the scandal?’

‘Apparently Buhtz persuaded Kircher to let him remove the head of a young SS corporal who had been murdered by some prisoners.’

‘He actually cut the head off?’

‘Yes, so that he could study it in the lab. Turns out he had quite a collection. God only knows what they did to the prisoners. Anyway, Himmler found out about it, and went crazy that an SS man should be treated with such disrespect. Buhtz got kicked out of the SS, which is why he went first to Breslau and then to Army Group Centre. The man is a barbarian. If the commission or any of these reporters picks up
on the fact that Buhtz was at Buchenwald, it will make us all look bad. I mean, what price the German search for truth and justice in Katyn when our leading pathologist is little better than a mad scientist?’

‘It would be just like Von Kluge to hope that something like that would put a stick in our spokes.’

For a moment I thought of the two dead signallers near the Hotel Glinka and how their heads had been almost completely severed by someone – a German – who clearly knew what he was doing. And I wondered about Buhtz again as he arrived on a BMW motorcycle.

I went down to greet him and watched him climb off the machine and remove his leather helmet and goggles. Then I introduced myself; I even held his leather coat while he found his glasses and his Wehrmacht officer’s cap.

‘My compliments, it’s a brave man who rides a motorcycle on these roads,’ I said.

‘Not really,’ said Buhtz. ‘Not if you know what you’re doing. And I like my independence. There is so much time wasted in this theatre just waiting for a driver from the car pool.’

‘You have a point.’

‘Besides, at this time of year the air is so fresh that one feels alive on a motorcycle in a way one never could in the back of a car.’

‘There’s plenty of fresh air in my car,’ I said. ‘Of course, not having any windows helps with that.’ I looked at the motorcycle more closely: it was an R75, also known as the ‘Type Russia’, and could cope with a wide variety of terrain. ‘But can you really carry all your stuff on this?’

‘Of course,’ said Buhtz, and threw open one of the leather panniers to remove a full anatomist’s dissection set and spread it out on the BMW’s saddle. ‘I never travel without my
magician’s box of tricks. It would be like a plumber arriving without any tools.’

One particular knife caught my eye. It was glitteringly sharp and as long as my forearm. It wasn’t a bayonet but it looked just the thing to cut a man’s throat back to the bone. ‘That’s one hell of a blade,’ I said.

‘That’s my amputation knife,’ he said. ‘Pathology in the field is largely just tourism. You turn up, you see the sights, you take a few photographs and then you go home. But I like to have a decent catlin about my person just in case I want a little souvenir.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘Some of these surgical knives, including that one, were my father’s.’

He rewrapped his tools and I handed him back his coat and led the way up to the birch cross where the others were waiting for us. The snow was almost all melted and the ground felt softer. I swatted a fly away and reflected that winter really was behind us now, but with the Russians certain to mount a new offensive before very long there were few Germans in Smolensk who could have looked upon the spring and summer of 1943 with any great optimism.

‘I understand you think there may be as many as four thousand men buried in this wood,’ Buhtz said as we climbed the slope toward the waiting men.

‘At least.’

‘And are we planning to exhume all of them?’

‘I think we should exhume as many as we can in the time that’s available to us before the Russians begin a new campaign,’ I said. ‘Who knows when that will start and what the outcome will be?’

‘Then I shall have my work cut out,’ he said. ‘I shall need some assistants, of course. Doctors Lang, Miller and Schmidt from Berlin; and Dr Walter Specht, who’s a chemist. Also,
there’s a former student of mine from Breslau I should like to send for: Dr Kramsta.’

‘I believe the Reich Health Leader in Berlin, Dr Conti, has already put these matters in hand,’ I said.

‘I sincerely hope so. But look, Leonard Conti is not always reliable. In fact I should say that as the RSHA physician he’s been nothing short of incompetent. A disaster. My advice to you, Captain Gunther, would be that you should keep the ministry on his tail to make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen.’

‘Certainly, professor. I’ll do that. Now let’s meet the others and get started.’

I walked him over to where Judge Conrad, Colonel Ahrens, Lieutenant Voss, Peshkov and Alok Dyakov were waiting for us.

Buhtz was in his mid-forties, stout and powerful-looking, with a bow-legged way of walking – although that might just have been the fact that he had just climbed off a large motorcycle. He already knew the other men, who returned his brisk ‘Heil Hitler’ with a notable lack of enthusiasm. He shook his head in exasperation and then dropped down on his haunches to inspect the most recently discovered cadaver.

As Voss lit a cigarette Buhtz looked at him irritably. ‘Please put that cigarette out, lieutenant.’ And then to Judge Conrad: ‘That’s really got to stop,’ he said. ‘Immediately.’

‘Oh, surely,’ said Conrad.

‘Do you hear?’ Buhtz said to Voss. ‘There’s to be no smoking anywhere on this site from now on. I don’t want this damned crime scene spoiled by so much as a soldier’s spit or a boot print. Colonel Ahrens, any man caught smoking in this wood is to be put on a charge, is that clear?’

‘Yes, professor,’ said Friedrich Ahrens. ‘I’ll pass that on right away.’

‘Please do so.’

Buhtz stood up and looked down the slope towards the road. ‘We’re going to need some sort of hut or house here for the post-mortem work,’ he said. ‘With trestle tables, the stronger the better. At least six, so work on several bodies can be carried out at once. Results will seem more significant if they are made simultaneously. Oh yes, and buckets, stretchers, aprons, rubber gloves, some sort of water supply so medical personnel can wash human material and themselves, and electric lighting, of course. Some police photographers, too. They’ll need a good source of light of course. Microscopes, Petrie dishes, slides, scalpels, and about fifty litres of formaldehyde.’

Voss was making copious notes.

‘Then I think we shall need a second hut for a field laboratory. Also, I shall be providing you with details of procedures for identifying and marking the bodies, as well as for preserving the personal effects we find on them. From what I’ve seen so far, the bodies appear to have been covered in sand, the weight of which will have pressed them into one large sandwich. Not a very nice one either. The chances are there’s quite a foul soup down there. This whole site is going to smell worse than a dead dog’s arse when we start the actual exhumations.’

Colonel Ahrens groaned. ‘This used to be such a great place to have a billet. And now it’s little better than a charnel house.’ He glanced angrily at me, almost as if he held me personally responsible for what had happened in Katyn Wood.

‘Sorry about that, colonel,’ said Conrad. ‘But it’s now the most important crime scene in Europe. Isn’t that right, Gunther?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Which reminds me,’ said Buhtz. ‘Lieutenant Voss?’

‘Sir.’

‘Your field police will need to organize a team of men to comb this whole area for more graves. I want to know where there are Polish graves, where there are Russian graves, and where there are … something else. If there’s a fucking cat buried within a thousand metres of this spot I want to know about it. This task requires accuracy and intelligence and of course scrupulous honesty, so it should be carried out by Germans, not Russians. As for the digging on the site itself, I understand Russian Hiwis are to be used. Which is fine as long as they can understand orders and work to direction.’

‘Alok Dyakov is organizing a special team of men,’ I said.

‘Yes sir.’ Dyakov snatched off his fur hat and bowed obsequiously to Professor Buhtz. ‘Every day Herr Peshkov and myself will be here in Katyn Wood to act as your foremen, sir. I have a team of forty men I’ve used before. You tell me what you want them to do and we will make sure they do it. Isn’t that right, Peshkov?’

Peshkov nodded. ‘Certainly,’ he said quietly.

‘No problem,’ continued Dyakov. ‘I choose only good men. Good workers. Honest, too. I don’t think you want men who help themselves to what they find in the dirt.’

‘Good point,’ agreed Buhtz. ‘Voss? You’d better organize a round-the-clock team of nightwatchmen. To protect this site from looters. It should be clear that anyone looting this site will suffer the severest penalty. And that includes German soldiers. Them most of all. A higher standard is expected of a German, I think.’

‘I’ll organize some signage to that effect, sir,’ said Voss.

‘Please do that. But more importantly, please organize the team of nightwatchmen.’

‘Sir,’ said Dyakov. ‘If I might make a small request? Perhaps the men digging here could receive some rewards. A small incentive, yes? Some extra rations. More food. Some vodka and cigarettes. On account of the fact that this will be very smelly, very unpleasant work. Not to mention all the mosquitoes there are in this wood in summer. Better that workers are happy than resentful, yes? In Soviet Union no workers are rewarded properly. They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. But Germans are not like this. Workers are paid well in Germany, yes?’

I glanced at Conrad, who nodded. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘After all, we are not communists. Yes, I agree.’

Buhtz nodded. ‘I shall also require the services of a local undertaker. Catafalques for the bodies that we exhume and dissect and eventually rebury. Good ones. Airtight if possible. I feel obliged to remind you once again that the smell here in the wood is going to become very bad. And you make a good point about mosquitoes, Herr Dyakov. The insects are already quite irritating enough in this part of the world, but as the weather improves these will become a severe hazard. Not to mention all the flies and maggots we will find on the cadavers. You will need to make provision for some sort of pesticide. DDT is the most recently synthesized and the best. But you can use Zyklon B if that’s not readily available. I happen to know for a fact that Zyklon B is in plentiful supply in parts of Poland and the Ukraine.’

‘Zyklon B,’ said Voss, continuing to write.

‘In most cases, gentlemen, we shall attempt to remove bodies intact,’ said Buhtz. ‘However, in the meantime …’

He approached the corpse I had uncovered with a spade just forty-eight hours earlier and drew back the piece of sacking I had used to cover it up again.

‘I propose to make an immediate start with this fellow.’

He probed the bullet hole in the back of the skull with his forefinger for a moment.

‘Judge Conrad,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you would be kind enough to make a contemporaneous note for me, while I make a preliminary examination of this cadaver’s skull.’

‘Certainly, professor,’ said Conrad, and taking out pencil and paper, he prepared to write.

Buhtz dug around the skull with his fingers to make enough room to lift it clear of the earth it was lying in. He peered closely at the top and the front of the skull and then said: ‘Victim A appears to have suffered a bullet wound to the occipital bone, close to the opening of the lower part of the skull, consistent with his being shot, execution-style, in the back of the head and at close range. There appears to be a point of exit in the forehead, which leads me to suppose that the bullet no longer remains within the skull cavity.’

He unwrapped his bundle of surgical instruments on the ground and selecting the large amputation knife I had seen earlier, he began to cut into the bones of the neck.

‘However, by measuring the size of these holes we may be able to arrive at an early determination of the calibre of the weapon that was used to execute this man.’

There was no hesitation in the way he used the knife and I wondered if he could have removed the head of a living man with such skill and alacrity. When the head was completely severed he lifted the skull, wrapped it carefully in the piece of sacking and laid it on the ground by Lieutenant Voss’s feet.

Meanwhile I glanced at Judge Conrad, who caught my eye and nodded silently, as if the professor’s actions here in Katyn
Wood confirmed the curious story he had told me about the removal of the SS corporal’s head in Buchenwald.

It was Dyakov’s keen eyes that spotted the shell casing. It was lying on the ground in the spot that had been recently occupied by the dead Polish officer’s skull. He dropped down on his haunches and rubbed in the dirt for a moment before coming up with the small object in his thick fingers.

‘What’s that you’ve found?’ asked Buhtz.

‘Sir, it looks like a shell casing,’ said Dyakov. ‘Perhaps the same shell that contained the very bullet that killed this poor Polish man.’

Buhtz took the shell casing from Dyakov and held it up to the light. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Well done, Dyakov. We’re off to a flying start, I think. Thank you gentlemen. If anyone needs me I will be in my laboratory at Krasny Bor. With any luck, this time tomorrow we’ll already be able to say what kind of weapon killed this fellow.’