A Man Without Breath (8 page)

‘I knew there was a reason it wasn’t on my itinerary.’

‘Oh, the cathedral is quite safe,’ said Rex. ‘Most of the explosive has been removed, but our engineers think there are still lots of hidden bombs in the crypt. One of our men had his face blown off when he opened a filing cabinet down there. So it’s just the crypt that remains out of bounds to visitors. Most of the material is of limited military intelligence value, and probably out of date by now, so the more time that passes the less important it seems to risk looking at it.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s really a very impressive building. Napoleon certainly thought so.’

‘I had no idea he got this far,’ I said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Rex. ‘He really was the Hitler of—’ he stopped, mid-sentence.

‘The Hitler of his day,’ I said, smiling at the nervous lieutenant. ‘Yes, I can see how that comparison works very well for us all.’

‘We’re not used to visitors, as you can see,’ said Ahrens. ‘On the whole we keep ourselves to ourselves. For no other reason other than secrecy. Well, you’d expect tight security with a signals regiment. We have a map room that indicates the disposition of all our troops from which our future military intentions are plain; and of course all of the group’s communications come through us. It goes without saying that this room and the actual telephone room are barred to ordinary access, but we do have lots of Ivans working at the castle – four Hiwis who are permanently on site and some female personnel who come in every day from Smolensk to cook and skivvy for us. But every German unit has Ivans working for them in Smolensk.’

‘How many of you are there?’

‘Three officers including myself and about twenty non-commissioned officers and men,’ said Ahrens.

‘And how long have you been here?’

‘Me personally? Since the end of November 1941. If I remember rightly, on thirtieth November.’

‘What about partisans? Get any trouble from them?’

‘None to speak of. At least not close to Smolensk. But we have had air attacks.’

‘Really? The pilot on the plane said this was too far east for the Ivan air force.’

‘Well he would, wouldn’t he? The Luftwaffe is under strict orders to maintain that bullshit argument. But it’s just not true. No, we’ve had air attacks all right. One of the troop
houses in our compound was badly damaged early last year. Since then we’ve had a big problem with German troops cutting down the wood around the castle for fuel. That’s the Katyn Wood. The trees provide us with excellent anti-aircraft cover, so I’ve had to forbid entry to the Katyn Wood to all German soldiers. It’s caused problems because this obliges our troops to forage further afield, which they’re reluctant to do, of course, because that exposes them to the risk of partisan attack.’

This was the first time I’d heard the name Katyn Wood.

‘So tell me about this body. The one the wolf discovered.’ I laughed.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Only that we’ve got a wolf and some woodcutters, and a castle. I can’t help thinking there should be a couple of lost children in this story, not to mention a wicked wizard.’

‘Maybe you’re it, captain.’

‘Maybe I am. I do make a wicked fire-tongs punch. At least I used to when you could get any brown rum and oranges.’

‘Fire-tongs punch.’ Ahrens repeated the words dreamily and shook his head. ‘Yes, I’d almost forgotten that.’

‘Me too until I mentioned it.’ I shivered.

‘I could certainly use a cup now,’ said Lieutenant Rex.

‘Just another enjoyable thing that sneaked out of Germany’s back door and left no forwarding address,’ I said.

‘You know, you’re a strange fellow for an SD officer,’ said Ahrens.

‘That’s what General Heydrich told me once.’ I shrugged. ‘Words to that effect anyway – I’m not exactly sure. He had me chained to a wall and was torturing my girlfriend at the time.’

I laughed at their obvious discomfort, which in truth was
probably less than mine. I was hardly as used to the cold as they were, and the rush of freezing air through the windowless Tatra took my breath away.

‘You were about to say, about the body,’ I said.

‘Back in November 1941, shortly after I arrived in Smolensk, one of my men pointed out that there was a sort of mound in our little wood and that upon this mound was a birch cross. The Hiwis mentioned some shootings had taken place in the Katyn Wood the year before. Shortly after that I said something about it in passing to Colonel von Gersdorff, who’s our local chief of intelligence, and he said he too had heard something about this, but that I shouldn’t be surprised because this kind of Bolshevik brutality was exactly what we were fighting against.’

‘Yes. That’s what he would say, I suppose.’

‘Then in January I saw a wolf in our wood, which was unusual because they don’t come so near the city.’

‘Like the partisans,’ I said.

‘Exactly. Mostly they stay further west. Von Kluge hunts them with his own
Putzer
, who’s a Russian.’

‘So he’s not particularly worried about partisans?’

‘Hardly. He used to go after wild boar, but in winter he prefers to hunt wolves from a plane – a Storch he keeps down here. Doesn’t even bother to land and collect the fur, most of the time. I think he just likes killing things.’

‘Around these parts that’s infectious,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you were saying about the wolf.’

‘It had been on the mound in the Katyn Wood, next to the cross, and had dug up some human bones, which must have taken a while as the ground is still like iron. I suppose it was hungry. I had a doctor take a look at the remains and he declared that they were human. I decided it must be a soldier’s
grave and informed the officer in charge of war graves around here. I also reported the discovery to Lieutenant Voss of the field police. And I put it in my report to group, who must have passed it on to the Abwehr, because they telephoned and said you were coming. They also told me not to talk about it with anyone else.’

‘And have you?’

‘Until now, no.’

‘Good. Let’s keep it that way.’

It was dark by the time we reached the castle, which wasn’t really a castle at all, but a two-storey white stucco villa of about fourteen to fifteen rooms, one of which was assigned temporarily to me. After an excellent dinner with real meat and potatoes I went with Ahrens on a short tour, and it quickly became obvious that he was rather proud of his ‘castle’ and even prouder of his men. The villa was warm and hospitable, with a large roaring log fire in the main entrance hall, and, as Ahrens had promised, there was even a small cinema where once a week a German film was screened. But Ahrens was especially proud of his home-made honey because, with the help of a local Russian couple, he kept an apiary in the castle grounds. Clearly his men loved him. There were worse places to see out a war than Dnieper Castle, and besides, it’s hard to dislike a man who is so enthusiastic about bees and honey. The honey was delicious, there was plenty of hot water for a bath, and my bed was warm and comfortable.

Fuelled up on honey and schnapps, I slept like a worker bee in a temperature-controlled hive and dreamed about a crooked house with a witch in it and being lost in the woods with a wolf prowling around. The house even had a sauna and a small cinema and venison for supper. It wasn’t
a nightmare because the witch turned out to like sitting in the sauna, which was how we got to know each other a lot better. You can get to know anyone well in a sauna, even a witch.

Thursday, March 11th 1943

I awoke early the next morning feeling a little tired from the flight but keen to get on with my inquiry, because of course I was even keener to return home. After breakfast, Ahrens got the key to the cold storeroom where the remains were kept and we went down to the basement to examine these. I found a large tarpaulin laid out on the stone floor. Ahrens drew back the top part to reveal what looked like a tibia, a fibula, a femur and half a pelvis. I lit a cigarette – it was better than the stale, meaty smell coming off the bones – and dropped down on my haunches to take a closer look.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, handling the tarpaulin.

‘From an Opel Blitz,’ said Ahrens.

I nodded and let the smoke drift up my nostrils. There wasn’t much to say about the bones except that these were human and that an animal – presumably the wolf – had been chewing them.

‘What happened to the wolf?’ I asked.

‘We chased it off,’ said Ahrens.

‘Seen any wolves since?’

‘I haven’t but some of the men might have. We can ask if you like.’

‘Yes. And I’d like to see the spot where these remains were found.’

‘Of course.’

We fetched our greatcoats and were joined outside by Lieutenant Hodt and Oberfeldwebel Krimminski from the 537th, who had been guarding against German soldiers looking to take wood for their fires. At my request, the Oberfeldwebel had brought an entrenching tool. We walked north along the snow-covered castle road towards the Vitebsk highway. The forest was mostly birch trees, some of them recently felled, which seemed to bear out the colonel’s story regarding troop foraging.

‘There’s a fence about a kilometre away that marks the perimeter of the castle land,’ said Ahrens. ‘But there must have been some sort of a fight around here, as you can still see some trenches and foxholes.’

A little further on we turned west off the road and began the more difficult task of walking in the snow. A couple of hundred metres away we came upon a mound and a cross made from two pieces of birch.

‘It’s about here that we came across the wolf and the remains,’ explained Ahrens. ‘Krimminski? The captain was wondering if any of us had seen the animal since.’

‘No,’ said Krimminski. ‘But we’ve heard wolves at night.’

‘Any tracks?’

‘If there were any the snow covered them up. It snows most nights around here.’

‘So we wouldn’t know if the wolf had come back for seconds?’ I said.

‘It’s possible, sir,’ said Krimminski. ‘But I haven’t seen any signs of that having happened.’

‘This birch cross,’ I said. ‘Who put it there?’

‘Nobody seems to know,’ said Ahrens. ‘Although Lieutenant Hodt has a theory. Don’t you, Hodt?’

‘Yes sir. I think this is not the first time human remains have been found around here. My theory is that when it happened before, the locals reburied them and erected the cross.’

‘Good theory,’ I said. ‘Did you ask them about it?’

‘No one tells us very much about anything,’ said Hodt. ‘They’re still afraid of the NKVD.’

‘I shall want to speak to some of these locals of yours,’ I said.

‘We get on pretty well with our Hiwis,’ said Ahrens. ‘It didn’t seem worth upsetting the saucer of milk by accusing anyone of lying.’

‘All the same,’ I said. ‘I shall still want to speak to them.’

‘Then you’d better speak to the Susanins,’ said Ahrens. ‘They’re the couple who we have most to do with. They look after the hives and tell the Russian staff what to do in the castle.’

‘Who else is there?’

‘Let’s see: there’s Tsanava and Abakumov – they look after our chickens; Moskalenko who chops wood for us; the laundry is done by Olga and Irina. Our cooks are Tanya and Rudolfovich. Marusya, the kitchen maid. But look here, I don’t want you bullying them, Captain Gunther. There’s a status quo here I wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’

‘Colonel Ahrens,’ I said. ‘If this does turn out to be a grave full of dead Polish officers, then it’s probably already too late for that.’

Ahrens swore under his breath.

‘That is unless you yourselves shot some Polish officers,’ I said. ‘Or perhaps the SS. I can more or less guarantee that no one back in Berlin is interested in uncovering any evidence of that.’

‘We haven’t shot any Poles,’ sighed Ahrens. ‘Here, or anywhere else.’

‘What about Ivans? You must have captured a lot of Red Army after the battle of Smolensk. Did you shoot any of them, perhaps?’

‘We captured about seventy thousand men, many of whom are now held in Camp 126, about twenty-five kilometres to the west of Smolensk. And there’s another camp in Vitebsk. You are welcome to go and take a look at them for yourself, Captain Gunther.’ He bit his lip for a moment before continuing: ‘I’m told that conditions there have improved, but in the beginning there were so many Russian POWs that conditions in the Ivan camps were extremely harsh.’

‘So what you’re saying is that there was probably no need to shoot them when they could just as easily be starved to death.’

‘This is a signals regiment, damn it,’ said Ahrens. ‘The welfare of Russian POWs is not my department.’

‘No, of course not. I wasn’t suggesting that it was. I’m merely trying to establish the facts here. In wartime people have a habit of forgetting where they’ve left them. Don’t you agree, colonel?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said stiffly.

‘Your predecessor, Colonel Bedenck. What about him? Did he shoot anyone in this wood, perhaps?’

‘No,’ insisted Ahrens.

‘How can you be sure of that? You weren’t here.’

‘I was here, sir,’ said Lieutenant Hodt. ‘When Colonel Bedenck was in command of the five hundred and thirty-seventh. And you have my word that no one has been shot in this wood by us. No Russians and no Poles.’

‘Good enough,’ I said. ‘All right then, what about the SS? Special Action Group B was stationed in Smolensk for a while. Is it possible the SS left a few thousand calling cards down there?’

‘We’ve been at this castle since the beginning,’ said Hodt. ‘The SS were active elsewhere. And before you ask, I’m certain of that because this is a signals regiment. I myself set up their SS command post with telephone and teletype. And the local Gestapo. All of their communications with Group HQ would have come through us. Telephone and teletype. And all their other traffic with Berlin. If any Poles had been shot by the SS, I’m certain I would have known about it.’

‘Then you might also know if any Jews had been shot around here.’

Hodt looked awkward for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would.’

‘And were there?’

Hodt hesitated.

‘Come now, lieutenant,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to be coy about this. We both know the SS have been murdering Jews in Russia since the first day of Operation Barbarossa. I’ve heard tell that as many as half a million people were butchered in the first six months alone.’ I shrugged. ‘Look, all I’m trying to do is establish a perimeter of safe inquiry. A pale beyond which it’s not wise for me to go walking in my size forty-six policeman’s boots. Because the last thing any of us wants to do is to lift the lid of their hive.’ I glanced at Ahrens. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Bees? They don’t like it when you open their hive, right?’