Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘Buhtz is a fanatical Nazi,’ Conrad told me on our way to a clearing in Katyn Wood where a meeting had been arranged with Buhtz, Ludwig Voss and Alok Dyakov. ‘If any of that bastard’s history gets out when the international commission is here it will fuck everything up.’

‘What sort of history?’ I asked.

‘While he was in Jena Buhtz was in charge of carrying out autopsies on prisoners who were shot while trying to escape from Buchenwald KZ. You can imagine what that meant, and what Buhtz’s death certificates were worth in terms of honesty. And then there was some scandal involving the Buchenwald camp doctor. Fellow named Werner Kircher, who’s now the chief physician with the RSHA in Berlin.’

‘Isn’t he the deputy director of the forensic pathology unit?’

‘That’s right. He is.’

‘I thought I knew the name. So what was the scandal?’

‘Apparently Buhtz persuaded Kircher to let him remove the head of a young SS corporal who had been murdered by some prisoners.’

‘He actually cut the head off?’

‘Yes, so that he could study it in the lab. Turns out he had quite a collection. God only knows what they did to the prisoners. Anyway, Himmler found out about it, and went crazy that an SS man should be treated with such disrespect. Buhtz got kicked out of the SS, which is why he went first to Breslau and then to Army Group Centre. The man is a barbarian. If the commission or any of these reporters picks up on the fact that Buhtz was at Buchenwald, it will make us all look bad. I mean, what price the German search for truth and justice in Katyn when our leading pathologist is little better than a mad scientist?’

‘It would be just like Von Kluge to hope that something like that would put a stick in our spokes.’

For a moment I thought of the two dead signallers near the Hotel Glinka and how their heads had been almost completely severed by someone – a German – who clearly knew what he was doing. And I wondered about Buhtz again as he arrived on a BMW motorcycle.

I went down to greet him and watched him climb off the machine and remove his leather helmet and goggles. Then I introduced myself; I even held his leather coat while he found his glasses and his Wehrmacht officer’s cap.

‘My compliments, it’s a brave man who rides a motorcycle on these roads,’ I said.

‘Not really,’ said Buhtz. ‘Not if you know what you’re doing. And I like my independence. There is so much time wasted in this theatre just waiting for a driver from the car pool.’

‘You have a point.’

‘Besides, at this time of year the air is so fresh that one feels alive on a motorcycle in a way one never could in the back of a car.’

‘There’s plenty of fresh air in my car,’ I said. ‘Of course, not having any windows helps with that.’ I looked at the motorcycle more closely: it was an R75, also known as the ‘Type Russia’, and could cope with a wide variety of terrain. ‘But can you really carry all your stuff on this?’

‘Of course,’ said Buhtz, and threw open one of the leather panniers to remove a full anatomist’s dissection set and spread it out on the BMW’s saddle. ‘I never travel without my magician’s box of tricks. It would be like a plumber arriving without any tools.’

One particular knife caught my eye. It was glitteringly sharp and as long as my forearm. It wasn’t a bayonet but it looked just the thing to cut a man’s throat back to the bone. ‘That’s one hell of a blade,’ I said.

‘That’s my amputation knife,’ he said. ‘Pathology in the field is largely just tourism. You turn up, you see the sights, you take a few photographs and then you go home. But I like to have a decent catlin about my person just in case I want a little souvenir.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘Some of these surgical knives, including that one, were my father’s.’

He rewrapped his tools and I handed him back his coat and led the way up to the birch cross where the others were waiting for us. The snow was almost all melted and the ground felt softer. I swatted a fly away and reflected that winter really was behind us now, but with the Russians certain to mount a new offensive before very long there were few Germans in Smolensk who could have looked upon the spring and summer of 1943 with any great optimism.

‘I understand you think there may be as many as four thousand men buried in this wood,’ Buhtz said as we climbed the slope toward the waiting men.

‘At least.’

‘And are we planning to exhume all of them?’

‘I think we should exhume as many as we can in the time that’s available to us before the Russians begin a new campaign,’ I said. ‘Who knows when that will start and what the outcome will be?’

‘Then I shall have my work cut out,’ he said. ‘I shall need some assistants, of course. Doctors Lang, Miller and Schmidt from Berlin; and Dr Walter Specht, who’s a chemist. Also, there’s a former student of mine from Breslau I should like to send for: Dr Kramsta.’

‘I believe the Reich Health Leader in Berlin, Dr Conti, has already put these matters in hand,’ I said.

‘I sincerely hope so. But look, Leonard Conti is not always reliable. In fact I should say that as the RSHA physician he’s been nothing short of incompetent. A disaster. My advice to you, Captain Gunther, would be that you should keep the ministry on his tail to make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen.’

‘Certainly, professor. I’ll do that. Now let’s meet the others and get started.’

I walked him over to where Judge Conrad, Colonel Ahrens, Lieutenant Voss, Peshkov and Alok Dyakov were waiting for us.

Buhtz was in his mid-forties, stout and powerful-looking, with a bow-legged way of walking – although that might just have been the fact that he had just climbed off a large motorcycle. He already knew the other men, who returned his brisk ‘Heil Hitler’ with a notable lack of enthusiasm. He shook his head in exasperation and then dropped down on his haunches to inspect the most recently discovered cadaver.

As Voss lit a cigarette Buhtz looked at him irritably. ‘Please put that cigarette out, lieutenant.’ And then to Judge Conrad: ‘That’s really got to stop,’ he said. ‘Immediately.’

‘Oh, surely,’ said Conrad.

‘Do you hear?’ Buhtz said to Voss. ‘There’s to be no smoking anywhere on this site from now on. I don’t want this damned crime scene spoiled by so much as a soldier’s spit or a boot print. Colonel Ahrens, any man caught smoking in this wood is to be put on a charge, is that clear?’

‘Yes, professor,’ said Friedrich Ahrens. ‘I’ll pass that on right away.’

‘Please do so.’

Buhtz stood up and looked down the slope towards the road. ‘We’re going to need some sort of hut or house here for the post-mortem work,’ he said. ‘With trestle tables, the stronger the better. At least six, so work on several bodies can be carried out at once. Results will seem more significant if they are made simultaneously. Oh yes, and buckets, stretchers, aprons, rubber gloves, some sort of water supply so medical personnel can wash human material and themselves, and electric lighting, of course. Some police photographers, too. They’ll need a good source of light of course. Microscopes, Petrie dishes, slides, scalpels, and about fifty litres of formaldehyde.’

Voss was making copious notes.

‘Then I think we shall need a second hut for a field laboratory. Also, I shall be providing you with details of procedures for identifying and marking the bodies, as well as for preserving the personal effects we find on them. From what I’ve seen so far, the bodies appear to have been covered in sand, the weight of which will have pressed them into one large sandwich. Not a very nice one either. The chances are there’s quite a foul soup down there. This whole site is going to smell worse than a dead dog’s arse when we start the actual exhumations.’