Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘It certainly doesn’t sound like it. By your own account this doctor seems keener on saving his own skin than serving Germany. But I will take the matter under consideration, captain, and give you my answer later, after I’ve returned from hunting.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ As I got up to leave, the dog left off licking his balls and looked up at me expectantly as if hoping I might suggest another more interesting activity. Not that I could ever have suggested anything that made more sense; not in Smolensk. ‘Are you hunting wolves?’ I asked. ‘Or something else?’

For a moment I was tempted to ask if he was hunting Poles, but it was plain I’d aggravated the field marshal quite enough already.

‘Yes, wolves. Wonderful creatures. Dyakov seems to have an instinctive understanding of how they think. Do you hunt yourself, Captain Gunther?’

‘No.’

‘Waste of a life. A man should hunt. Especially in this part of the world. We used to hunt wolves in East Prussia when I was a boy. So did the Kaiser, you know. He’s a tricky customer to hunt – the wolf. Even trickier than wild boar, let me tell you. Very elusive and cunning. We hunted a lot of wild boar when first we were in this neck of the woods. But they’re all gone, I think.’

I went outside the field marshal’s bungalow and quickly pulled on my coat. The air wasn’t as dry as it had been the day before, and the moisture in it seemed to confirm what Von Kluge had told me; and not just moisture – the sound of a woodpecker’s beak against the trunk of a tree carried through the surrounding forest like distant machine-gun fire; it felt like the thaw was finally on the way.

A car was waiting in front of the veranda steps, and beside it stood Dyakov with two hunting rifles slung over his shoulders, smoking a pipe. He nodded to me and bared his big white teeth in what passed for a smile. There was indeed something wolflike about him, but he wasn’t the only one who was equipped with blue eyes and an instinctive understanding of how wolves think. I had a few cunning ideas myself, and I certainly wasn’t about to place Doctor Batov’s future exclusively in the delicate hands of Gunther von Kluge. Too much was now at stake to trust that the field marshal would grant the Russian’s wish. It was plain to me that I was going to have to send a teletype to the ministry of propaganda in Berlin as soon as possible – that if, because of some prejudice about Slavs, the field marshal wasn’t prepared to give Batov what he wanted in return for what we wanted, then I would have to go over Von Kluge’s head and persuade Dr Goebbels to do it instead.

I set off for the castle in the Tatra. Out of the gate, I turned left. I hadn’t driven very far when I saw Peshkov walking in the same direction. I considered just driving on, but it was hard to ignore a man who had gone out of his way to look like Adolf Hitler – perhaps that was the thinking behind the moustache and the longish, forward-combed hair; and besides it was obvious he was also headed for the castle.

‘Want a lift?’ I asked, drawing up beside him on the empty road.

‘You’re very kind, sir.’ He loosened the length of rope around his waist that held his coat together and climbed into the passenger seat. ‘It’s not everyone who would stop to pick up a Russian. Especially on a road as quiet as this one.’

‘Maybe it’s because you don’t look particularly Russian.’ I slammed the car in gear and drove on.

‘You mean my moustache, don’t you? And my hair.’

‘I most certainly do.’

‘I’ve had this moustache for many years,’ he explained. ‘Well before the Germans invaded Russia. It’s not such an unusual style in Russia. Genrikh Yagoda, who was chief of the secret police until 1936, had the very same moustache.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in 1936, arrested in 1937, and became one of the defendants at the last great show trial – the so-called Trial of the Twenty-One. He was found guilty, of course, and shot in 1938. For being a German spy.’

‘Maybe it was the moustache.’

‘Perhaps, sir.’ Peshkov shrugged. ‘Yes, that’s certainly possible.’

‘That was a joke,’ I said.

‘Yes sir. I know it was.’

‘Well, I expect his successor will meet a similar fate one day.’

‘He already has, sir. Nikolai Yezhov was also a German spy. He disappeared in 1940. It’s assumed he, too, was shot. Lavrentiy Beria is the new head of the NKVD. It’s Beria who masterminded the deaths of all these poor Polish officers. With Stalin’s approval of course.’

‘You seem to know a lot about this subject, Peshkov.’

‘I have given a statement concerning what I know about these deaths to your Judge Conrad, sir. I should certainly be willing to talk to you further about this matter. But it’s true, while my own subject is electrical engineering sir, I have always been rather more interested in politics and current affairs.’

‘Not a very healthy interest to have in Russia.’

‘No sir. Not every country is as lucky with its system of government as Germany.’

I left that one unanswered as we arrived at the castle. Peshkov thanked me profusely for the ride and then went to the adjutant’s hut, leaving me wondering how it was that an electrical engineer knew so much about the history of Russia’s most secret organization.

*

With the long-handled spade from the bonnet of the Tatra I scraped at a spot near the birch cross where the first human bones had been found. The ground shifted under the point of the metal and black Russian earth darkened the furrow I’d made in the melting snow. I threw down the spade and burrowed my fingers’ ends into the soil like a farmer eager to sow some seed.

‘I thought it was you,’ said a voice behind me.

I stood up and looked around. It was Colonel von Gersdorff.

‘I was surprised to hear that you were back in Smolensk,’ he said. ‘I seem to remember you telling me in Berlin that you never wanted to come back here.’

‘I never did. But Joey the Crip thought I was in need of a vacation, so he sent me down here to get away from it all.’

‘Yes. That’s what I heard. It certainly beats a holiday on Rugen Island.’

‘And you?’ I asked him. ‘What brings you out here to the castle? If I seem a little nervous about talking to you I’m just worried you might have another bomb in your coat pocket.’

Von Gersdorff grinned. ‘Oh, I’m here a lot. The Abwehr likes a report on what happens in Smolensk sent to the Tirpitzufer every day. Only I don’t like to do it up at Krasny Bor. Not any longer. You never know who’s listening. Place is crawling with Ivans.’

‘Yes, I know, I was just talking to Peshkov. And before that, to Dyakov.’

‘Shifty characters both, in my opinion. I keep raising the matter of the sheer number of Ivans who are working for us inside the perimeter of the safe zone we’ve established at Krasny Bor, but Von Kluge won’t hear of any changes to these arrangements. He’s a man who’s always had lots of servants, and since most of those who were German servants are now in the army that means having Russians on the staff. When we first came out here, he brought his butler from Poland, but the poor bastard was killed by a partisan sniper not long after he got here. So now he makes do with his Putzer , Dyakov. But as it happens it’s not the Russians Von Kluge is suspicious of, it’s other Germans. In particular the Gestapo. And although I hate to say it, that does make things extra difficult when it comes to maintaining tight security at Krasny Bor. Even the Gestapo has its uses.

‘We’ve tried to have the Gestapo run checks on the backgrounds of some of these Russians, but it’s more or less impossible. Most of the time we have to go on the local mayor’s word that such and such a person is trustworthy, which is hopeless of course. So I prefer to do my encoding and decoding down here at the castle. Colonel Ahrens is a decent fellow. He gives me the exclusive use of a room here so I can send my stuff in private. I’d just come out of the castle when I saw you trailing up here with the spade in your hand.’