Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

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.’