Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘That’s a good question. What you say is certainly a possibility. But against that are the numerous intelligence reports the Abwehr had received of Polish officers seen on a train parked in a local railway siding. These would seem to confirm at least that at some stage in 1940 there were certainly Poles in the vicinity of Smolensk.’

‘Many or all of whom may have been murdered by the NKVD,’ said Goebbels.

‘But we won’t really know for sure that there’s more than one body until the ground thaws and we’re able to carry out a proper exhumation.’

‘When is that thaw likely to happen?’

‘A couple of weeks at least,’ I said.

Goebbels grimaced with impatience. ‘There’s no way of speeding this up? Building fires on the ground, for example. Surely there must be something we can do.’

‘Not without the risk of destroying important evidence,’ said Goldsche.

‘I’m afraid that for the moment we’re at the mercy of the Russian winter,’ I said.

Goebbels took his long chin in his hands and frowned. ‘Yes, yes of course.’

He was wearing a grey three-piece suit with wide lapels, a white shirt and a striped tie. The tie was without any sort of knot, just a Party badge for a tie-pin – like a nurse’s collar – which added a fussy and curiously feminine touch to his appearance.

‘Gentlemen, I hear what you say. However, at the risk of stating the obvious let me make quite clear to you both the enormous propaganda value to us that this investigation presents. After the disaster of Stalingrad and the likelihood of another disaster in Tunisia, we need a coup like this. Jews all over the world are doing their best to make Bolshevism look innocent and to represent it as a lesser danger to world peace than National Socialism. They maintain the lie that the dastardly deeds typical of the Russian beast simply never happened. Indeed, in Jewish circles in London and Washington the present slogan is that the Soviet Union is destined to lead Europe. We cannot allow this to pass unchallenged. It is our job to stop it. It’s only Germany that stands between these monsters and the rest of Europe and it’s time that Roosevelt and Churchill woke up to this fact.’

He must suddenly have realized that he wasn’t giving a speech in the Sports Palace because he came to an abrupt stop.

A few seconds passed before Judge Goldsche spoke. ‘Yes sir. Of course, you’re right.’

‘The very second the ground down there thaws, I want a dig to commence,’ said Goebbels. ‘We can’t afford any delay in this matter.’

‘Yes sir,’ agreed the judge.

‘But since we have a little time before then,’ continued Goebbels, ‘two weeks you say, Captain Gunther?’

I nodded.

‘Might I ask a question, Herr Reich minister?’ said the judge. ‘You say “we”. Are you referring to Germany as a whole or to this particular ministry?’

‘Why do you ask, Judge Goldsche?’

‘Because the standard protocol is that the Bureau of War Crimes prepares investigative reports and the Foreign Office publishes them as white books. Reich minister Von Ribbentrop doesn’t like it when the normal protocol is ignored.’

‘Von Ribbentrop.’ Goebbels snorted with disgust. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Judge Goldsche, the current foreign policy of this country is to wage total war on its enemies. There is no other foreign policy. We use Von Ribbentrop to speak to the Italians and the Japanese and not much else.’ Goebbels grinned at his own joke. ‘No, you can leave the Foreign Office to me, gentlemen. Let them publish their silly white book, if that makes them happy. But this investigation is a propaganda matter now. Your first port of call in this matter is me. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Herr Reich minister,’ said the judge, who looked sorry he’d ever mentioned a white book.

‘More importantly, perhaps we can turn this delay to advantage. Let us suppose for a moment that it is indeed a mass grave containing some unfortunate Polish officers. I should like to hear your thoughts on the proper way to go about handling things when eventually we’re able.’

The judge looked puzzled. ‘In the usual way, Herr doctor. We should act carefully and with patience. We must allow the evidence to lead us, as it always does. The business of judicial forensic inquiry is never something that can be rushed, sir. It requires painstaking attention to detail.’

Goebbels did not look satisfied with this answer. ‘No, with respect, that won’t do at all. We’re talking about the crime of the century here, not a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.’

He flicked open a cigarette box on the desk and invited us to help ourselves. Goldsche declined in order to continue his line of argument, but I took one: the box was made of white enamel with a handsome gold eagle on the lid and the cigarettes were Trummers, which I hadn’t seen – or more importantly smoked – since before the war. I was tempted to take two and put one behind my ear for later.

‘If the evidence is to sustain the investigation, we must proceed with caution, sir,’ said the judge. ‘I’ve never seen an investigation that was improved by haste. It contributes to error of interpretation. When we rush things we leave ourselves vulnerable to criticism by enemy propaganda: that we faked something, perhaps.’

But Goebbels was hardly listening. ‘This goes beyond all normal protocols,’ he said, trying to stifle a yawn. ‘I thought I made that clear already. Look, the leader himself has taken an interest in this case. Our intelligence sources in London inform us that relations between the Soviets and the Polish government in exile are already under considerable strain. It’s my estimation that this would certainly break those relations altogether. No, my dear judge, we cannot allow the evidence to lead us, as you say. That is much too passive a response to an opportunity like this. If you’ll forgive me for saying so, your approach, while being very proper as you say, lacks imagination.’

For once I couldn’t help but agree with the minister, but I kept my own counsel. Goldsche was my boss after all, and I had no wish to embarrass the man by disagreeing with him in front of Dr Goebbels. But perhaps Goebbels sensed something like this, and when our meeting was apparently over and the judge and I were being ushered to the door, the minister asked me to wait behind.

‘There’s something else I wish to discuss with you, captain,’ he said. ‘If you’ll forgive us, Johannes, it’s a private matter.’

‘Yes, of course, Herr Reich minister,’ said Goldsche, and looking a little nonplussed was led out of the building by one of the minister’s younger lackeys.

Goebbels closed the door and politely ushered me over to a sitting area – a yellow sofa and some armchairs – under a window as tall as a hop-picker’s wooden legs in what passed for a cosy corner of his office. Outside was the Wilhelmplatz and the underground railway station, which is where I could have wished to be – anywhere but the place in which I was now sitting down for a quiet tete-a-tete with a man I thought I despised. But the greater discomfort I was feeling came from the realization that – in person at least – Goebbels was courteous and intelligent, even charming. It was hard to connect the man I was talking to with the malignant demagogue I’d heard on the radio ranting at the Sports Palace for ‘total war’.

‘Is there really a private matter you want to discuss with me?’ I asked. ‘Or was that just a way of getting rid of the judge?’

But the Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda was not a man to be hurried by a nobody like me.

‘When my ministry first moved into this beautiful house, back in 1933, I had some builders from the SA come in during the night to knock off all the stucco and wainscoting. Well, what else were those thugs good for except to smash things? Believe me, this place was like something in aspic jelly, and badly in need of some modernization. After the Great War, the building had been occupied by some of those old Prussian farts from the Foreign Office, and when they turned up the next day to take away their papers – you can’t imagine how much dust there was on those – they were absolutely horror-struck at what had been done to their precious building. It was actually quite amusing. They walked around with their mouths open, gasping like fish in a trawlerman’s net, and protesting loudly to me in their posh High German accents about what had happened in here. One of them even said: “Herr Reich minister, do you know that you might be put in prison for this?” Can you imagine it? Some of these old Prussians belong in a damned museum.