Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘What does he keep saying?’ I asked Batov.

‘He says “Everything is all right, thank you”,’ said Batov. ‘Of course he’s not all right. Never will be again. But he thinks he is. Which is a small mercy, I suppose. At first when officers from the NKVD came to visit him they would ask if he was all right and he would make this answer. But it was soon evident that he didn’t tend to say much else.’ Batov shrugged. ‘It was a very Soviet answer, of course. Always when someone in Russia asks you how things are, you make this answer, because you never know who’s listening. Any other answer would be unpatriotic, of course. But even the blockheads of the NKVD realized that there was something seriously wrong with this fellow. That’s probably the only reason they left him here and alive, because they didn’t think he was likely to pose any kind of threat to them. I suspect if he’d been the gabby type they’d have taken him away and shot him.

‘ U me-nya vsyo v po-ryadke, spasiba. ’

I pulled a face. ‘I can see why they weren’t worried. With all due respect, Doctor Batov, I can’t see this fellow making much of a witness. Not one that would satisfy the ministry of propaganda, anyway.’

‘As I said, there are times when he’s quite lucid,’ said Batov. ‘It’s like a window in his mind opens and a whole load of fresh air and light flood in. During this time he is capable of conducting a conversation. Which is when he told me all about the murders in Katyn Wood. Curiously it’s the numbers he seems to remember. For example he told me that among the dead were a Polish admiral, two generals, twenty-four colonels, seventy-nine lieutenant colonels, two hundred and fifty-eight majors, six hundred and fifty-four captains, seventeen naval captains, three thousand five hundred sergeants and seven army chaplains – in all some four thousand one hundred and eighty-three men. Did I say five thousand? No, it’s just over four. These lucid periods never last long however, but because of what he says I thought it best to keep him here, in a locked room. For his protection. Not to mention my own. And most of the other people in this hospital. There are one or two nurses who share this secret. But only the ones I trust.’

We were in a private room on the uppermost floor of the hospital. There was a bed and an armchair and a radio – everything a man who was no longer in possession of his senses might have needed. On the wall was a picture of Stalin, which was enough to persuade me that I was probably the first German who’d been in there since the battle for Smolensk. Any self-respecting German would probably have smashed the glass, which might be why I chose to ignore it.

‘ U me-nya vsyo v po-ryadke, spasiba. ’

Batov regarded his patient kindly and leaning over him for a moment, stroked his cheek with the back of his hand.

‘ Kak ska zhesh ,’ Batov said gently to Rudakov. ‘ Kak ska zhesh. Ti khoro shii drug. ’

‘So much for wanting to kill him,’ I said.

‘You mean me?’ Batov shrugged. ‘What good would that do? Look at him. It would be like killing a child.’

‘If you’d been to school in Berlin, doctor, you’d know why that’s not always a bad idea.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘Some of the damn children I knew.’ The match caught the loon’s eyes like a hypnotist’s gold watch. Experimentally I moved it one way, the other way, and then flicked it onto his forehead, just to see if he was putting on a dumb show. If it was an act, his middle name must have been Stanislavski.

‘ Blagodariu ,’ muttered the loon.

‘ Nyezachto. ’ I put the cigarette into his mouth and he smoked it automatically. ‘These lucid periods. Can they be predicted?’

‘Unfortunately not. It’s possible I might be able to bring him out of it temporarily with therapeutic chemical shock – perhaps methylamphetamine, or thiopental if I could get some. But there’s no telling what permanent effect that might have on what’s left of his mind.’

‘Let’s not tell that to the ministry,’ I said. ‘I doubt they’d be much interested in an NKVD lieutenant’s future welfare.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘I suppose we could film him being questioned, when he is being lucid,’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘But it’s hardly ideal for what’s required here.’ I shook my head. ‘And besides, the people I work for – they’re judges. Generally speaking they like a witness to look like he knows what day it is. I doubt this fellow knows his arse from his earhole.’

Batov did not look perturbed by my scepticism.

‘I’m not saying that we can’t use this fellow,’ I added. ‘It’s just that it might be said by our critics that being feeble-minded he just repeats what we want him to say. Like a puppet.’

‘I said I had proof,’ said Batov. ‘I didn’t say he was it. Rudakov’s only the cherry on the cake. The real proof is something else.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘ Ya-veh paryatkeh, spasiba. ’

‘When Rudakov turned up here he had some bags,’ said Batov. ‘In the bags were some ledgers and an FED – a camera – and in the camera was a roll of exposed film. The ledgers contained a list of names: yes, it was about four thousand names.’ He let that revelation hang in the air for a moment.

‘I see.’

‘After Rudakov had been here for a while I had the film developed. The NKVD – they took pictures. Like they were on some sort of hunting trip or safari. Trophy pictures of them actually shooting Poles. Like they were actually proud of what they’d done. Men with their wrists bound together with wire and kneeling on the edge of a trench while Rudakov and his friends shot them in the back of the head.’ Batov looked apologetic. ‘It’s hard to believe that anyone would want to commemorate such acts, but they did.’

‘The SS does this sort of thing, too,’ I said. ‘It’s hardly peculiar to the NKVD.’

‘I still have the ledgers and I still have the enlargements I made. Together they are all the evidence anyone could need of exactly what happened in Katyn Wood. Even for the exactingly high standards of your German judges.’

‘Sounds like the blue-hats had themselves quite a holiday. Could I see these pictures? And the ledgers?’

Batov looked evasive. ‘I can only show you one picture just now,’ he said. ‘I keep it here, with Arkady, and from time to time I show it to him in order to try to stimulate what’s left of his memory about who he was.’

Dr Batov lifted the picture of Stalin and unpeeled a 210x297 mm black and white photograph.

‘I keep this hidden for obvious reasons,’ he added, handing me the picture.

In the photograph were three NKVD officers who appeared to be relaxing for the camera. They were wearing their traditional gymnasterka tunics with crossbelts and riding breeches with high boots; one man was seated in a wicker basket chair, with another on the arm; Rudakov was standing beside them; each man was holding a Nagant revolver in his right hand and making the same curious hand sign – I suppose you’d call it the cuckold’s horns – with his left. Behind them was a building that I recognized immediately as Dnieper Castle, where the 537th signals was now based.

‘The man in the centre is Blokhin,’ said Batov. ‘The major I was telling you about – the one who was dead drunk. The man sitting on the arm of the chair is the blue-hat NCO who drove them both here.’

‘The hand sign,’ I remarked. ‘What does it mean?’

‘I think it’s a freemason sign,’ said Batov. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve heard that a lot of NKVD are freemasons – lots of people are in Russia, even today. But I’m not sure.’