Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘My father was a diplomat. As a child I lived in many interesting places: Madrid, Warsaw and Moscow.’

‘And which of them did you like the best?’

‘Madrid. But for the civil war, I’d probably be living there now.’

‘I’d have thought there were plenty of opportunities for a good doctor after a civil war.’

‘It will take more than a box of Traumaplast to fix that country, Herr Gunther. Besides, who ever said I was a good doctor? My bedside manner was always lacking, to say the least. I was never any good with patients. I haven’t got the patience for all their aches and pains and imaginary ills. I much prefer working with the dead. The dead never complain about your lack of compassion, or that you’re not giving them the right medicine.’

‘Then you should fit right in here in Smolensk. We estimate there are as many as four thousand bodies buried in Katyn Wood.’

‘Yes, I heard the announcement on Radio Berlin, on Tuesday night. Only they seemed to suggest it was more like twelve thousand.’

I smiled. ‘Well, you know how Radio Berlin is with facts and figures.’

At group HQ in Krasny Bor I took Dr Kramsta to her quarters, carried the luggage through the door, and handed her a crude little map of the compound.

‘That’s my hut over there, in case you need me for anything,’ I told her. ‘Right now I’m going over to the site. That’s where Professor Buhtz is nearly always to be found these days. But if you like I can wait fifteen minutes and then you can come with me. Otherwise I’ll see you at dinner.’

‘No, I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘I’m anxious to get started.’

When I returned she had changed into white trousers, a white turban, a white coat and black boots; she looked like the Sarotti chocolate Moor, but on her that was still becoming as hell: I always did have a soft spot for women in white coats. I drove back to the wood and parked the Tatra. Straightaway she took out her handkerchief, sprinkled some Carat perfume onto it and held it to her nose and mouth.

‘You really have been down here for a while, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘I was sorry to hear about Hindenburg.’

‘Gnezdovo,’ she said as we walked up the slope to the edge of grave number one. ‘That means Goat’s Hill, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, but you won’t see any goats around here. There are wolves in these woods. And before you say it, I don’t mean me. Real ones.’

‘You’re just saying that to scare me.’

‘Believe me, doctor, there are many scarier things around here than a few wolves.’

Near the top of the slope we came in sight of the recently constructed wooden shed. Several dozen corpses were laid out, and with the help of Lieutenant Sloventzik’s translating, Buhtz was talking to a group of lean, grim-faced civilians who were the members of the Polish Red Cross.

Voss came over as soon as he saw me. I introduced him to Dr Kramsta, who quickly excused herself and went to join Professor Buhtz.

‘Is she the new pathologist Buhtz has been expecting?’

‘Mm hmm.’

‘Then I think I just decided to leave my body to science.’

‘Well, don’t die yet. I need you here in Smolensk.’

‘Maybe you do at that,’ he said. ‘I think I have a lead in the death of those signalsmen.’

Containing my own alarm for a moment, I nodded. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘It’s rather awkward, sir.’

Behind my back I clenched a fist. It wasn’t that I was getting ready to hit Voss. I was trying to steel myself for what was coming.

But Voss had a very different explanation for what might have happened to Ribe and Greiss.

‘Last night my men busted an army driver on his way into Krasny Bor who had a Russian girl hidden in the back of the truck. Her name is Tanya. At first the driver said he’d just stopped to give the girl a lift, but the girl was quite a looker and dressed up to the peel – nice dress, shoes, silk stockings, and she spoke a bit of German, too. Which is unusual for a Popov peach. Also when we searched her we found a bottle of Mystikum in her handbag. That’s a pretty expensive perfume, sir, even back home.’

‘Yes, I begin to see. You’re saying she was a silk.’

‘A half-silk anyway. She had a day job. Anyway we questioned Tanya, and at first we got the Kremlin wall, but after we threatened to hand her over to the Gestapo, she started to talk; and when he found out what Tanya had told us, the driver gave us the rest of the set-up. His name is Reuth, Viktor Reuth. It seems as if some of the boys on the switchboard have been running a ring of call girls. For officers. Normally all you had to do was speak to Ribe or Quidde and they would call the Glinka Hotel, where the doorman – the fellow in the Cossack coat – would go around the corner to an apartment on Olgastrasse and arrange for one of the girls to go the department store on Kaufstrasse where they were smuggled in the back door. But on this occasion Tanya was told to wait outside the apartment for a driver from the Third Motorized Infantry to pick her up and bring her straight here.’

I nodded. The GUM department store on Kaufstrasse was where most of the German officers were billeted in Smolensk. Krasny Bor was only for the general staff.

‘The girls from Olgastrasse were a cut above the whores at the Glinka. They were chosen because they were amateurs and because they were always Aryan-looking with nice clothes and good manners. The clothes seem to have been supplied by the members of the ring, or by German officers. Tanya – the one we picked up last night – had a day job as a nurse at the Smolensk State Medical Academy. And here’s the thing that’s really interesting, sir. The doorman at the Glinka, it turns out his name is Rudakov. Just like the fellow you reported as missing from the hospital, the fellow who might be a suspect in the death of Dr Batov and his daughter. I did some checking and it seems that Oleg Rudakov has a brother who was in the NKVD. At least, according to some of the other girls we found living at the apartment in Olgastrasse.’

‘I see. And where is he now?’

‘That’s the thing, sir. He’s disappeared, too. When we went to his apartment on Glasbergstrasse the closet was empty and all his clothes were gone.’

‘I think that now would probably be a good time for you to tell me who the officer was that Tanya was meant for.’

‘It was Captain Hammerschmidt, from the Gestapo. Every Wednesday night he was the duty officer in the Gestapo office at Krasny Bor.’

‘The Gestapo? Well, that explains something.’

I was thinking of what Lutz had told me, about how Hammerschmidt had refused to investigate the signaller’s allegations of Ribe’s disloyalty; but this wasn’t what I told Voss.

‘It explains why he didn’t have Tanya brought to the Gestapo’s local headquarters at Gnezdovo,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s one thing doing something illicit under the eyes of the Wehrmacht; it’s something else to be doing it under the eyes of your own Gestapo colleagues.’

‘There’s really no way of asking a question like that, is there?’ said Voss. ‘Not of the local Gestapo chief.’

‘It would seem you’re learning how to be a cop in modern Germany. It’s best never to ask a question unless you think you already know the answer. Who else have you told about this? Among our own people, I mean.’

‘So far there’s just me, an assistant secretary in the field police, and you. And Viktor Reuth knows, of course.’

‘And the signalsman who called the Glinka to arrange for a girl last night. By the way, who was that?’

‘Both the girl and the driver claimed this was a long-standing arrangement between Hammerschmidt and Tanya. Every Wednesday night. There was no call from the 537th switchboard to the Glinka last night because there was no need for one.’