Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘The ground is softening.’

‘So we can start digging. Tomorrow perhaps.’

‘I never was much for waiting on tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Not when I can make a start today.’

I took off my coat and my jacket and handed them to him. ‘D’you mind?’

‘My dear fellow, not at all.’ Von Gersdorff folded them over his arm and lit a cigarette. ‘I love to watch another man work.’

I rolled up my sleeves, collected the shovel off the ground, and started to dig.

‘So why is Von Kluge suspicious of Germans?’ I asked him.

‘He’s scared, I suppose.’

‘Of what?’

‘Do you remember a Military Court Official called Von Dohnanyi?’

‘Yes, I met him in Berlin. He’s Abwehr, too, isn’t he?’

Von Gersdorff nodded. ‘He’s the deputy head of the Abwehr’s central section under Major-General Oster. A few weeks ago – just before the leader visited Von Kluge at group headquarters – Von Dohnanyi came down here to meet with Von Kluge and General von Tresckow.’

‘I was on the same plane as him,’ I said, stabbing at the ground with the spade.

‘I didn’t know that. Von Dohnanyi is back in Berlin now, but he was here in Smolensk to add his voice to my own and the general’s and to those of some other officers who would like to see Hitler dead.’

‘Let me guess: Von Schlabrendorff and Von Boeselager.’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

I shook my head and carried on digging. ‘A lucky guess, that’s all. Go on with your story.’

‘We asked the field marshal to join us in a plan to assassinate Hitler and Himmler when they came down here on the thirteenth. The idea was that we would all of us draw our pistols and shoot them both dead in the officers’ mess at Krasny Bor. Something like that is a lot easier here than it would be at Rastenburg. At the Wolf’s Lair, he’s more or less untouchable. Officers have to give up their pistols before they can be in a room with Hitler. Which is why he remains there so much, of course. Hitler’s not stupid. He knows there are plenty of people in Germany who would like to see him dead. Anyway, Von Kluge agreed to join the conspiracy, but when Himmler didn’t show up with Hitler, he changed his mind.’

‘I really can’t fault the field marshal’s logic,’ I said. ‘You know, if someone does kill the leader they’d better make sure to shoot Himmler and the rest of the gang. When you decapitate a snake the body keeps on writhing and the head remains deadly for quite a while afterward.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘I have to hand it to you people. Three attempts to kill Hitler in as many weeks and all of them botched. You would think that a group of senior army officers would know how to kill one man. It’s what you’re supposed to be good at, damn it. None of you seemed to have any trouble slaughtering millions during the Great War. But it seems beyond any of you to kill Hitler. Next thing you’ll be telling me you were planning to use silver bullets to shoot the bastard.’

For a moment Von Gersdorff looked embarrassed.

‘And let me guess – now Von Kluge is scared that someone will talk,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes. There’s a rumour going around Berlin that Hans von Dohnanyi is going to be arrested. If he is, then of course the Gestapo may find out a lot more than even they were expecting.’

‘What kind of a rumour?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Generally speaking, the Gestapo likes to keep who they’re planning to arrest under their black hats – at least until the small hours of the morning when they call. You know – it stops people from escaping and that kind of thing. If there is a rumour it could mean they started it because they want him to run and maybe flush out another rabbit they’re interested in pursuing. That kind of rumour: a rumour with foundation. Yes, they’re not above doing that from time to time. Or it could just be the kind of rumour that’s spread by a man’s enemies to make him feel insecure and undermine him at work. It’s what the English call “a Roman holiday”, when a gladiator was butchered for the pleasure of others. You’d be surprised at the damage a rumour like that can do to a man. It takes nerves of steel to withstand the Berlin gossip-mongers.’

‘As a matter of fact, Captain Gunther, it was you who started this rumour.’

‘Me?’ I stopped digging for a moment. ‘What the hell are you talking about, colonel? I never started any rumour.’

‘Apparently, when you met Von Dohnanyi in Judge Goldsche’s office in Berlin three weeks ago, you mentioned that the Gestapo had been to see you – I believe it was while you were in hospital – to ask you questions about some Jew you knew called Meyer; who his friends were, that kind of thing.’

I frowned, remembering the air raid by the RAF on the night of the first of March that had almost killed me.

‘That’s right. Franz Meyer was going to be witness in a war-crimes investigation. Until the RAF dropped a bomb on his apartment and took half of his head off. The Gestapo seemed to think Meyer might have been mixed up in some sort of currency-smuggling racket in order to help persuade the Swiss to offer asylum to a group of Jews. But I don’t see-’

‘Did the Gestapo mention someone called Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was Pastor Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi who were smuggling foreign currency to bribe the Swiss to take refugee Jews from Germany.’

‘I see.’

‘And it was that meeting between Von Dohnanyi and Judge Goldsche at the War Crimes Bureau that prompted him to help lend his weight to persuading Von Kluge that a group of like-minded army officers-’

‘By which you mean Prussian aristocrats, of course.’

Von Gersdorff was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Is that why you think we bungled it? Because we’re aristocrats?’

I shrugged. ‘It crossed my mind.’

I spat on my hands and started digging again. It was hard work but the ground came away on the flat of my spade in heavy, half-frozen lumps that I hoped would turn out to be layers of peaty history. Von Gersdorff kicked carelessly at one near the toe of his boot and watched it roll slowly down the slope like a very muddy football. For all either of us knew it might have been a mud-encrusted skull.

‘If you think it was snobbery that kept the plot within a small circle of aristocrats, you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘It was simply the overriding need for total secrecy.’

‘Yes, I can see how that was an advantage. And you felt more comfortable placing your trust in a man with a von in his name, is that it?’

‘Something like that.’

‘That doesn’t sound a little like snobbery?’

‘Perhaps it does at that,’ admitted Von Gersdorff. ‘Look, trust is something that’s very hard to find these days. You find it where you can.’

‘Talking of snobbery,’ I said, ‘I spent the morning trying to persuade the field marshal to sign some papers that would allow a local Russian doctor to go and live in Berlin. He works at the Smolensk State Medical Academy and he claims to have documentary evidence of who’s buried here. Ledgers, photographs – he’s even got an Ivan hidden in a private room who was part of the NKVD murder squad that carried out this atrocity. Bit of a soft pear alas, after some significant roof damage – but the doctor is straight out of the prayer book: every wish comes true if he gives us what we want. But he won’t do it if he has to stay on in Smolensk. I can’t think of a more deserving case for a homeland pass, but Clever Hans seems to have his blue eyes dead set against it. I just don’t understand. I thought if anyone would be on side about this it would be a man with a Russian servant. But the field marshal seems to think Dyakov is an exception and that Slavs are not much better than farmyard animals.’