by Philip Kerr
CHAPTER 6
Thursday, March 11th 1943
I awoke early the next morning feeling a little tired from the flight but keen to get on with my inquiry, because of course I was even keener to return home. After breakfast, Ahrens got the key to the cold storeroom where the remains were kept and we went down to the basement to examine these. I found a large tarpaulin laid out on the stone floor. Ahrens drew back the top part to reveal what looked like a tibia, a fibula, a femur and half a pelvis. I lit a cigarette – it was better than the stale, meaty smell coming off the bones – and dropped down on my haunches to take a closer look.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, handling the tarpaulin.
‘From an Opel Blitz,’ said Ahrens.
I nodded and let the smoke drift up my nostrils. There wasn’t much to say about the bones except that these were human and that an animal – presumably the wolf – had been chewing them.
‘What happened to the wolf?’ I asked.
‘We chased it off,’ said Ahrens.
‘Seen any wolves since?’
‘I haven’t but some of the men might have. We can ask if you like.’
‘Yes. And I’d like to see the spot where these remains were found.’
‘Of course.’
We fetched our greatcoats and were joined outside by Lieutenant Hodt and Oberfeldwebel Krimminski from the 537th, who had been guarding against German soldiers looking to take wood for their fires. At my request, the Oberfeldwebel had brought an entrenching tool. We walked north along the snow-covered castle road towards the Vitebsk highway. The forest was mostly birch trees, some of them recently felled, which seemed to bear out the colonel’s story regarding troop foraging.
‘There’s a fence about a kilometre away that marks the perimeter of the castle land,’ said Ahrens. ‘But there must have been some sort of a fight around here, as you can still see some trenches and foxholes.’
A little further on we turned west off the road and began the more difficult task of walking in the snow. A couple of hundred metres away we came upon a mound and a cross made from two pieces of birch.
‘It’s about here that we came across the wolf and the remains,’ explained Ahrens. ‘Krimminski? The captain was wondering if any of us had seen the animal since.’
‘No,’ said Krimminski. ‘But we’ve heard wolves at night.’
‘Any tracks?’
‘If there were any the snow covered them up. It snows most nights around here.’
‘So we wouldn’t know if the wolf had come back for seconds?’ I said.
‘It’s possible, sir,’ said Krimminski. ‘But I haven’t seen any signs of that having happened.’
‘This birch cross,’ I said. ‘Who put it there?’
‘Nobody seems to know,’ said Ahrens. ‘Although Lieutenant Hodt has a theory. Don’t you, Hodt?’
‘Yes sir. I think this is not the first time human remains have been found around here. My theory is that when it happened before, the locals reburied them and erected the cross.’
‘Good theory,’ I said. ‘Did you ask them about it?’
‘No one tells us very much about anything,’ said Hodt. ‘They’re still afraid of the NKVD.’
‘I shall want to speak to some of these locals of yours,’ I said.
‘We get on pretty well with our Hiwis,’ said Ahrens. ‘It didn’t seem worth upsetting the saucer of milk by accusing anyone of lying.’
‘All the same,’ I said. ‘I shall still want to speak to them.’
‘Then you’d better speak to the Susanins,’ said Ahrens. ‘They’re the couple who we have most to do with. They look after the hives and tell the Russian staff what to do in the castle.’
‘Who else is there?’
‘Let’s see: there’s Tsanava and Abakumov – they look after our chickens; Moskalenko who chops wood for us; the laundry is done by Olga and Irina. Our cooks are Tanya and Rudolfovich. Marusya, the kitchen maid. But look here, I don’t want you bullying them, Captain Gunther. There’s a status quo here I wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’
‘Colonel Ahrens,’ I said. ‘If this does turn out to be a grave full of dead Polish officers, then it’s probably already too late for that.’
Ahrens swore under his breath.
‘That is unless you yourselves shot some Polish officers,’ I said. ‘Or perhaps the SS. I can more or less guarantee that no one back in Berlin is interested in uncovering any evidence of that.’
‘We haven’t shot any Poles,’ sighed Ahrens. ‘Here, or anywhere else.’
‘What about Ivans? You must have captured a lot of Red Army after the battle of Smolensk. Did you shoot any of them, perhaps?’
‘We captured about seventy thousand men, many of whom are now held in Camp 126, about twenty-five kilometres to the west of Smolensk. And there’s another camp in Vitebsk. You are welcome to go and take a look at them for yourself, Captain Gunther.’ He bit his lip for a moment before continuing: ‘I’m told that conditions there have improved, but in the beginning there were so many Russian POWs that conditions in the Ivan camps were extremely harsh.’
‘So what you’re saying is that there was probably no need to shoot them when they could just as easily be starved to death.’
‘This is a signals regiment, damn it,’ said Ahrens. ‘The welfare of Russian POWs is not my department.’
‘No, of course not. I wasn’t suggesting that it was. I’m merely trying to establish the facts here. In wartime people have a habit of forgetting where they’ve left them. Don’t you agree, colonel?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said stiffly.
‘Your predecessor, Colonel Bedenck. What about him? Did he shoot anyone in this wood, perhaps?’
‘No,’ insisted Ahrens.
‘How can you be sure of that? You weren’t here.’
‘I was here, sir,’ said Lieutenant Hodt. ‘When Colonel Bedenck was in command of the five hundred and thirty-seventh. And you have my word that no one has been shot in this wood by us. No Russians and no Poles.’
‘Good enough,’ I said. ‘All right then, what about the SS? Special Action Group B was stationed in Smolensk for a while. Is it possible the SS left a few thousand calling cards down there?’
‘We’ve been at this castle since the beginning,’ said Hodt. ‘The SS were active elsewhere. And before you ask, I’m certain of that because this is a signals regiment. I myself set up their SS command post with telephone and teletype. And the local Gestapo. All of their communications with Group HQ would have come through us. Telephone and teletype. And all their other traffic with Berlin. If any Poles had been shot by the SS, I’m certain I would have known about it.’
‘Then you might also know if any Jews had been shot around here.’
Hodt looked awkward for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would.’
‘And were there?’
Hodt hesitated.
‘Come now, lieutenant,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to be coy about this. We both know the SS have been murdering Jews in Russia since the first day of Operation Barbarossa. I’ve heard tell that as many as half a million people were butchered in the first six months alone.’ I shrugged. ‘Look, all I’m trying to do is establish a perimeter of safe inquiry. A pale beyond which it’s not wise for me to go walking in my size forty-six policeman’s boots. Because the last thing any of us wants to do is to lift the lid of their hive.’ I glanced at Ahrens. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Bees? They don’t like it when you open their hive, right?’
‘Um, no, you’re right,’ he said. ‘They don’t particularly like it.’ He nodded. ‘And let me answer that question. About the SS. And what they’ve been up to around here.’
He led me a short distance away from the others. We walked carefully as the ground was icy and uneven under the snow. To me the Katyn Wood felt like a dismal place in a country that was full of equally dismal places. Cold air hung damp around us like a fine curtain, while elsewhere pockets of mist rolled into holl
ows in the ground like the smoke from invisible artillery. Crows growled their contempt for my inquiries in the tops of the trees, and overhead a barrage balloon was moored to prevent overflights by enemy aircraft. Ahrens lit another cigarette and yawned a steamy plume.
‘It’s hard to believe, but we prefer it here in winter,’ he said. ‘In just a few weeks from now this whole wood will be full of mosquitoes. They drive you mad. Just one of many things that drive you mad out here.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, Captain Gunther, none of us in this regiment is very political. Most of us just want to win this war quickly and go home – if such a thing is still possible after Stalingrad. When that happened, we all listened to the radio, to hear what Goebbels would say about it. Did you hear the speech? From the Sportspalast?’
‘I heard it.’ I shrugged. ‘I live in Berlin. It was so loud I could hear every word Joey said without even having to turn on the fucking radio.’
‘Then you recall how he asked the German people if they wanted a war more radical than anything ever imagined. Total war, he called it.’
‘He has quite a turn of phrase, does our Mahatma Propagandi.’
‘Yes. Only it seems to me – to all of us at the castle – that total war is what we’ve had on this front since day one, and I don’t recall anyone asking any of us if this is what we wanted.’ Ahrens nodded at a line of new trees. ‘Over there is the road to Vitebsk. Vitebsk is less than a hundred kilometres west of here. Before the war there were fifty thousand Jews living there. As soon as the Wehrmacht took over the city, the Jews living there started to suffer. In July of 1941 a ghetto was established on the right bank of the Zapadnaya Dvina River and most of the Jews who hadn’t run away and joined the partisans or just emigrated east were rounded up and forced to live in it: about sixteen thousand people. A wooden stockade was built around the ghetto, and inside this conditions were very hard: forced labour, starvation rations. Probably as many as ten thousand died of hunger and disease. Meanwhile, at least two thousand of them were murdered on some pretext or another at a place called Mazurino. Then the orders came for the liquidation of the ghetto. I myself saw those orders on the teletype – orders from the Reichsführer SS in Berlin. The pretext was that there was typhoid in the ghetto. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t. I myself delivered a copy of those orders for Field Marshal von Kluge informing him of what was happening in his area. Later on I learned that about five thousand of the Jews who remained alive in the ghetto were driven out into the remote countryside, where they were all shot. That’s the trouble with being part of a signals regiment, captain. It’s very hard not to know what’s going on, but God knows I really wish I didn’t. So, to answer your question specifically – about that beehive you were referring to: halfway to Vitebsk is a town called Rudnya, and if I were you I should confine my inquiries to anywhere east of there. Understand?’
‘Yes sir. Thank you. Colonel, since you mentioned the Mahatma, I have another question. Actually it was something my boss mentioned to me back in Berlin. About the Mahatma and his men.’
Ahrens nodded. ‘Ask it.’
‘Has anyone from the propaganda ministry ever been here?’
‘Here in Smolensk?’
‘No, here at the castle.’
‘At the castle? Why on earth would they come here?’
I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d been here to film all those Soviet POWs you told me about, that’s all. To help prove to the folks back home that we were winning this war.’
Of course, this wasn’t the reason I’d asked about the propaganda ministry, but I couldn’t see how I could explain my suspicions without calling the colonel a liar.
‘Do you think we’re winning this war?’ he asked.
‘Winning or losing,’ I said. ‘Neither one looks good for Germany. Not the Germany I know and love.’
Ahrens nodded. ‘There have been days,’ he said, ‘many days, when I find it hard to like what I am or what we’re doing, captain. I, too, love my country but not what’s being done in its name, and there are times when I can’t look my own reflection in the eye. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. And I recognize myself when I hear you talking treason.’
‘Then you’re in the right place,’ he said. ‘You hear as much as we do in the five hundred and thirty-seventh, then you’ll know that there’s plenty of treason talked in Smolensk. This might be one reason why the Leader is coming here on a morale-building visit.’
‘Hitler’s coming here to Smolensk?’
‘On Saturday. For a meeting with Von Kluge. That’s supposed to be a secret by the way. So don’t mention it, will you? Although everyone and his dog seems to know about it.’
*
Alone, with an entrenching tool in my hand, I took a walk around the Katyn Wood. I went slowly down a slope into a dip in the ground that seemed to be a natural amphitheatre and even slower up the other side, with my army boots sounding like an old horse eating oats as they crunched down in the snow. I don’t know what I was looking for. The frozen ground underneath the snow was as hard as granite and my futile attempts at excavation merely amused the crows. A hammer and chisel might have yielded better results. In spite of the birch cross, it was hard to imagine much had ever taken place in that wood. I wondered if really anything of significance had happened there since Napoleon. Already it felt like I was on a wild goose chase. Besides, I cared little for the Poles. I’d never liked them any more than the English who, apparently able to ignore the role that perfidious Poland had played during the Czech crisis of 1938 – it wasn’t just the Nazis who had marched in there, it was the Poles, too, in pursuit of their own territorial claims – had stupidly come to the aid of Poland in 1939. The few bones I had seen back in the castle were evidence of nothing very much. A Russian soldier who had died in his foxhole perhaps and later been found by a hungry wolf? It was probably the best thing that could have happened to the Ivan given the awful situation Ahrens had described at Camp 126. Starving to death was easy to do in a world policed and patrolled by my own tender-hearted countrymen.
For half an hour I blundered around, getting colder. Even wearing gloves my hands felt frozen and my ears ached as if someone had hit them with the entrenching tool. What on earth were we doing in this desolate permafrosted country, so very far from home? The living space Hitler craved so much was fit only for the wolves and crows. It made no sense at all, but then very little of what the Nazis did made much sense to me. But I doubt that I was the only one who was beginning to suspect that Stalingrad might have the same significance as the retreat of Napoleon’s Grand Army from Moscow: surely everyone except Hitler and the generals knew we were finished in Russia.
In the distance close to the road to Vitebsk a couple of sentries pretended to look the other way, but I could hear their laughter quite clearly: there was something about the Katyn Wood that had a curious effect on sound, holding it within the line of trees like water in a bowl. But their opinion just made me more determined to find something. Being bloody-minded and proving other people wrong is what being a detective is all about. It’s one of the things that made me so popular with my many friends and colleagues.
Scraping at the snow and occasionally reaching to pick something up, I found an empty packet of German cigarettes, a buckle off a German carbine sling, and a piece of twisted wire. Quite a haul for half an hour’s work. I was just about to call it a day when I turned too quickly on my heel, slipped and fell down the slope, twisting my knee in a way that left it feeling stiff and painful for days afterwards. I swore loudly, and still sitting in the snow picked up my crusher and hauled it back on my head. A glance at the sentries near the road revealed that they had their backs turned squarely to me, which probably meant that they didn’t want to be seen laughing at the SD officer who’d fallen on his arse.
I put down my hand to push myself up, which was when I found an object that was only part frozen to the ground. I pulled hard and the object
came away in my hand. It was a boot – a riding boot of the kind worn by an officer. I put the boot to one side and, still sitting, set to work scraping at the frozen ground on either side of me with the entrenching tool. A few minutes later I had a small metallic object in my hand. It was a button. I pocketed the button and recovering the boot, I stood up and limped back to the castle, where I washed my little find very carefully in warm water.
On the face of the button was an eagle.
*
In the afternoon I interviewed the Susanins, the Russian couple who helped to look after the 537th at Dnieper Castle. They were in their sixties and as wary and unsmiling as an old sepia photograph. Oleg Susanin wore a black peasant’s blouse with a belt, dark trousers, a grey felt hat and a longish beard; his wife looked not dissimilar. Since their German was better than my Russian but with a vocabulary that was restricted to food, fuel, laundry and bees, Ahrens had arranged for me to have the services of a translator from group headquarters – a Russian called Peshkov. He was a shifty-looking fellow with round pince-nez glasses and a Hitler moustache. He wore a German army greatcoat, a pair of German officer’s boots, and a red bow-tie with white polka-dots. Later on, Ahrens told me he’d grown the moustache in order to look more pro-German.
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ I said. Peshkov spoke excellent German.
‘It’s an honour to be working for you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m entirely at your service while you’re in Smolensk. Day or night. You have only to ask. You can usually leave a message for me with the adjutant, sir. At Krasny Bor. I make myself available there every morning at nine o’clock precisely.’
But while Peshkov was quite fluent in German, he never smiled or laughed and was completely different from the Russian who had accompanied him to Dnieper Castle from group HQ at Krasny Bor, a man called Dyakov, who seemed to be a sort of local hunting guide and general servant for Von Kluge – his Putzer.