Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘There’s a signals regiment, the 537th, commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Ahrens, stationed in a place called Gnezdovo near Smolensk – I understand from Judge Goldsche that you’ve been to Smolensk, Captain Gunther?’

‘Yes sir. I was there in the summer of 1941.’

He nodded. ‘That’s good. Then you’ll know the sort of country I’m talking about.’

‘It’s a dump,’ I said. ‘I can’t see why we thought it worth capturing at all.’

‘Er, yes.’ Von Dohnanyi smiled patiently. ‘Apparently Gnezdovo is an area of thick forest to the west of the city, with wolves and other wild animals, and right now, as you might expect, the whole area is under a thick blanket of snow. The 537th is stationed in a castle or villa in the forest that was formerly used by the Russian secret police – the NKVD. They employ a number of Hiwis – Russian POWS like those glaziers in the corridor – and several weeks ago some of those Hiwis reported that a wolf had dug up some human remains in the forest. Having investigated the site for himself, Ahrens reported finding not one but several human bones. The report was passed on to us in the Abwehr and we then set about evaluating this intelligence. A number of possibilities have presented themselves.

‘One: that the bones are from a mass grave of political prisoners murdered by the NKVD during the so-called Great Purge of 1937 to 1938 following the first and second Moscow trials. We estimate as many as a million Soviet citizens were killed and that they are buried in mass graves all over an area west of Moscow hundreds of square kilometres in size.

‘Two: that the bones are from a mass grave of missing Polish officers. The Soviet government has assured the Polish prime minister in exile, General Sikorski, that all Polish prisoners of war were freed in 1940, after having been transported to Manchuria, and that the Soviets have simply lost track of many of these men because of the war, but it seems clear to our sources in London that the Poles do not believe them. A key factor in the Abwehr’s suspicion that these bones might be those of a Polish officer is the fact that this explanation would fit with previous intelligence reports about Polish officers who were seen at the local railway station in Gnezdovo in May 1940. Remarks made by Foreign Minister Molotov to Von Ribbentrop at the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 have always led us to suppose that Stalin has a deep hatred for the Poles that dates from the Soviet defeat in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20. Also, his son was killed by Polish partisans in 1939.

‘Three: the mass grave is the site of a battle between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. This is perhaps the most unlikely scenario, as the battle of Smolensk took place largely to the south of Smolensk and not the west. Moreover the Wehrmacht took over three hundred thousand Red Army soldiers prisoner, and most of these men remain alive, incarcerated in a camp to the north-east of Smolensk.’

‘Or working in the corridor outside,’ I said helpfully.

‘Please Gunther,’ said Goldsche. ‘Let him finish.’

‘Four: this is perhaps the most politically sensitive of all the possibilities and is also why I have asked you to forbear from taking notes, Captain Gunther.’

It wasn’t difficult to guess why Von Dohnanyi hesitated to describe the fourth possibility. It was hard to talk about this subject – hard for him and even harder for me, who had first-hand experience of some of these dreadful things that were so ‘politically sensitive’.

‘Four is the possibility that this is one of many mass graves in the region full of Jews murdered by the SS,’ I said.

Von Dohnanyi nodded. ‘The SS is very secretive about these matters,’ he said. ‘But we have information that a special battalion of SS attached to Gottlob Berger’s Group B and commanded by an Obersturmfuhrer by the name of Oskar Dirlewanger was active in the area immediately west of Smolensk during the spring of last year. There are no accurate figures available, but one estimate we have holds Dirlewanger’s single battalion responsible for the murders of at least fourteen thousand people.’

‘The last thing we want to do is step on the toes of the SS,’ said Goldsche. ‘Which means this is a matter requiring great confidentiality. Frankly there will be hell to pay if we go around uncovering mass graves of their making.’

‘That’s a delicate way of putting it, Judge,’ I said. ‘Since I assume it’s me you want to send down to Smolensk and investigate this, then I’m supposed to make sure that this is the correct mass grave we’re uncovering, is that what you mean?’

‘In a nutshell, yes,’ said Goldsche. ‘Right now the ground is frozen hard, so there’s no possibility of digging for more bodies. Not for several weeks. Until then we need to find out all we can. So, if you could spend a couple of days down there. Speak to some of the locals, visit the site, evaluate the situation, and then come back to Berlin and report directly to me. If it is our jurisdiction, then we can organize a full war-crimes inquiry with a proper judge almost immediately.’ He shrugged. ‘But to send a judge at this stage would be too much.’

‘Agreed,’ said Von Dohnanyi. ‘It would send the wrong signals. Best to keep things low-key at this stage.’

‘Let me check my mental shorthand, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘About just what you want me to do. So as I know, for sure. If this mass grave is full of Jews, then I’m to forget about it. But if it’s full of Polish officers, then it’s the Bureau’s meat. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘That’s not a very subtle way of putting it,’ said Von Dohnanyi, ‘but yes. That’s exactly what’s required of you, Captain Gunther.’

For a moment he glanced up at the landscape above Goldsche’s fireplace as if wishing he could have been there instead of a smoky office in Berlin, and I felt a sneer start to gather at the edge of my mouth. The picture was one of those Italian campagnas painted at the end of a summer’s day, when the light is interesting to a painter, and some tiny old men with long beards and wearing togas are standing around a ruined classical landscape and asking themselves who’s going to carry out the necessary building repairs because all the young men are away at the wars. They didn’t have Russian POWs to fix their windows in those Arcadian days.

My sneer expanded to full contempt for his delicate sensibility.

‘Oh, but it won’t be subtle, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘I can promise you that much. Certainly nowhere near as subtle as in that nice picture. Smolensk is no bucolic demi-paradise. It’s a ruin all right, but it’s a ruin because that’s how our tanks and artillery have left it. It’s a ruin that’s full of ugly frightened people who were only just managing to eke out a living when the Wehrmacht turned up demanding to be fed and watered for not much money. Zeus won’t be seducing Io, it’ll be a Fritz trying to rape some poor peasant girl; and in Smolensk the pretty landscape isn’t covered in an amber glow of warm Italian sunlight but a hard permafrost. No, it won’t be subtle. And believe me, there’s nothing subtle about a body that’s been in the ground. It’s surprising how indelicate something like that turns out to be, and how quickly it becomes something very unpleasant indeed. There’s the smell for example. Bodies have a habit of decomposing when they’ve been in the earth for a while.’

I lit another cigarette and enjoyed their joint discomfort. There was a silence for a long moment. Von Dohnanyi looked nervous about something – more nervous than what he had just told me suggested, perhaps. Or maybe he just wanted to hit me. I get a lot of that.

‘But I take your point,’ I added, more helpfully this time, ‘about the SS, I mean. We wouldn’t want to upset them, now would we? And believe me I know what I’m talking about, I’ve done it before, so I’m equally anxious not to do it again.’