by Philip Kerr
‘Can’t leave it there, sir,’ said one. ‘Security. Best leave it around the corner on Kreuzstrasse, next to the local cinema. Always plenty of room there.’
Three very ragged children – two boys and a girl, I think – watched me park the Tatra in front of some German propaganda posters that were almost as scruffy as they were. I’d seen some poor children in my time, but none as poor as these three urchins. Despite the cold all of them were barefoot and carrying foraging bags and mess tins. They looked as if they had to fend for themselves and were not having much success, although they appeared to be healthy enough. All of this looked a long way from the smiling faces and the soup bowls and the large loaves of bread depicted on the posters. Were their parents alive? Did they even have a roof over their heads? Was it any of my business? I felt a strong pang of regret as momentarily I considered the carefree life they might have been enjoying before my countrymen arrived during the summer of 1941. I wasn’t the type who ever carried chocolate, so I gave each of them a cigarette, assuming they were more likely to trade than smoke it. There are times when I wonder where charity would be without us smokers.
‘Thank you,’ said the oldest child, speaking German – a boy maybe ten or eleven. His coat had more patches than the map in my pocket and on his head was a side cap, or what the more graphically-minded German soldier sometimes called a cunt cover. He tucked the cigarette behind his ear for later, like a real working man. ‘German cigarettes are good. Better than Russian cigarettes. You’re very kind, sir.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I said. ‘None of us are. Just remember that and you won’t ever be disappointed.’
Inside the Kommandatura I asked the desk clerk where I could find an officer, and was directed to the first floor. There I spoke to a slimy fat Wehrmacht lieutenant who could have given a whole week’s rations to the children outside and not even noticed. His army belt was on its last notch and looked as if it might have appreciated some time to relax a little.
‘Those people in the street outside, doesn’t it bother you they look so desperate?’
‘They’re Slavs,’ he said, as if that was all the excuse needed. ‘Things were pretty backward in Smolensk before we got here. And believe me, the local Ivans are a lot better off now than they ever were under the Bolsheviks.’
‘So is the Tsar and his family, but I don’t figure they think that’s a good thing.’.
The lieutenant frowned. ‘Was there something specific I could help you with, sir? Or did you just come in here to give your conscience a little air?’
I nodded. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. That’s exactly what I was doing. Forgive me. As a matter of fact I’m looking for some sort of scientific laboratory.’
‘In Smolensk?’
I nodded. ‘Somewhere that might own a stereo microscope. I need to carry out some tests.’
The lieutenant picked up the telephone and turned the call-handle. ‘Give me the department store,’ he said to the operator. Catching my eye, he explained: ‘Most of the officers stationed here in Smolensk are using the local department store as a barracks.’
‘That must be handy if you need a new pair of underpants.’
The lieutenant laughed. ‘Conrad? It’s Herbert. I have an officer of SD who’s trying to find a scientific laboratory here in Smolensk. Any ideas?’
He listened for a moment, uttered a few words of thanks and then replaced the receiver.
‘You could try the Smolensk State Medical Academy,’ he said. ‘It’s under German control, so you should be able to find what you’re looking for there.’
We went to the window and he pointed to the south.
‘About half a kilometre down Rote-Kreuzer Strasse and on your right. Can hardly miss it. Big canary-yellow building. Looks like the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin.’
‘It sounds impressive,’ I said and walked to the door. ‘I guess the Ivans in Smolensk can’t have been as backward as all that.’
*
It was a short drive to the Smolensk State Medical Academy and, as promised, it wasn’t easy to miss. The academy was enormous but, like a lot of buildings in Smolensk, the place showed signs of the ferocity of the battle waged by the retreating Red Army, with many of the windows on the five stories boarded up, and the yellow stucco façade pitted with hundreds of bullet holes. The triple arches of the entrance were protected with sandbags and on the roof was a Nazi flag and what looked like an anti-aircraft gun. While I was there an ambulance pulled up out front and disgorged several heavily-bandaged men on stretchers.
When the German medical personnel and Soviet nurses on the front desk were done admitting the new arrivals I explained my mission to one of the orderlies. The man listened patiently and then led the way up and through the enormous hospital, which was full of German soldiers who had been wounded during the battle of Smolensk and were still awaiting repatriation to the fatherland. We reached a corridor on the fifth floor where there was not one but several laboratories, and he presented me courteously to a small man wearing a white coat that was a couple of sizes too big for him, as well as mittens and a Soviet tank crewman’s helmet which he snatched off when he saw me standing there. The bow was unctuous, but understandable when dealing with SD officers.
‘Captain Gunther, this is Doctor Batov,’ said the orderly. ‘He’s in charge of the scientific laboratories here at the academy. He speaks German and I’m sure he will be able to assist you.’
When the orderly left us alone, Batov looked sheepishly at the tanker’s helmet. ‘This ridiculous hat, it keeps the head warm,’ he explained. ‘It’s cold in this hospital.’
‘I noticed that, sir.’
‘The boilers are coal-fired,’ he said, ‘and there’s not so much coal about for things like heating a hospital. There’s not much coal around for anything.’
I offered him a cigarette and he took one and tucked it behind his ear. I lit one myself and looked around. The lab was reasonably well equipped for the purposes of instructing Russian medical students; there were a couple of work benches with gas taps, burners, chemical hoods, balances, flasks, and several stereo microscopes.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.
‘I was hoping I might be able to use one of your stereo microscopes for a while,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ushering me towards the instrument. ‘Are you a scientist, captain?’
‘No, sir. I’m a policeman. From Berlin. Before the war we’d just started using stereo microscopes in ballistics work. To identify and match bullets from the bodies of murder victims.’
Batov paused by the stereo microscope and switched on a light beside it. ‘And do you have a bullet you wish to examine now, captain?’
‘No. It’s some typewritten papers I wanted to take a look at. The paper got damp and some of the words are hard to read.’ I paused, wondering how much I could tell him. ‘Actually, it’s more complicated than that. These papers have been exposed to cadaveric fluid. From a decaying body. They were inside a boot in which the human leg wearing it had disintegrated down to the bone.’
Batov nodded. ‘May I see?’
I showed him the papers.
‘Even with a stereo microscope this will be difficult,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Best of all would be to use infrared rays, but unfortunately we’re not equipped with that kind of advanced technology here at the Academy. Perhaps it would be better to have them treated in Berlin after all.’
‘I have good reasons for preferring to see what can be achieved here right now in Smolensk.’
‘Then you’ll probably need to wash these documents with chloroform or xylol,’ he said. ‘I could do this for you, if you liked.’
‘Yes. I’d be grateful if you could. Thanks.’
‘But may I ask, exactly what are you hoping to achieve?’
‘If nothing else, I’d like to be able to find out what language the papers are written in.’
‘Well, we can treat one sheet of paper, perhap
s, and see how that works.’
Batov went to look for some chemicals and then started to wash one of the pages; while he worked I sat and smoked a cigarette and dreamed that I was back in Berlin, having dinner with Renata at the Adlon Hotel. Not that we ever did have dinner at the Adlon, but it wouldn’t have been much of a daydream if any of it had been remotely possible.
When Batov had finished cleaning the page he dried it carefully, flattened the paper with a sheet of glass and then arranged the page underneath the prism of the microscope.
I drew an electric light a little closer and looked through the eyepieces while I adjusted the zoom control. A blurred word moved into focus. The alphabet wasn’t Cyrillic and the words weren’t written in German.
‘What’s the Russian word for soldier?’ I asked Batov.
‘Soldat.’
‘I thought so. Zolnierz. That’s the Polish word for soldier. Here’s another. Wywiadu. No idea what that means.’
‘It means intelligence,’ said Batov.
‘Does it?’
‘Yes. My wife was Ukrainian–Polish, sir, from the Subcarpathian province. She studied medicine here before the war.’
‘Was?’
‘She’s dead now.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, doctor.’
‘Polish.’ Batov paused and then added. ‘The language on the document. That’s a relief.’
I looked up from the eyepieces. ‘Why is that?’
‘If it’s in Polish it means I can offer to help you,’ explained Batov. ‘If it was in Russian – well, I could hardly betray my own country to the enemy, now could I?’
I smiled. ‘No, I suppose not.’
He pointed at the stereo microscope. ‘May I have a look?’
‘Be my guest.’
Batov looked through the eyepieces for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yes, this is written in Polish. Which makes me think that a better division of labour would be if I read out the words – in German, of course – and you wrote them down. That way – in time – you would know the entire contents of the document.’
Batov sat up straight and looked at me. He was dark and rather earnest, with a thick moustache and gentle eyes.
‘You mean one word at a time?’ I pulled a face.
‘It’s a laborious method, I do agree, but it has the merit of also being certain, don’t you think? A couple of hours and perhaps all of your questions about this document might be answered and perhaps, if you agreed, I might earn a little bit of money for my family. Or perhaps you might give me something I can trade on Bazarnaya Square.’
He shrugged. ‘Alternatively, you are welcome to borrow the stereo microscope and work on your own, perhaps.’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. To be perfectly honest I’m not used to German officers asking me for permission to do anything in this academy.’
I nodded. ‘All right. It’s a deal.’ I took out my wallet and handed over some of the occupation Reichsmarks the bureau office in Berlin had issued me with. Then I handed him the rest of the bills as well. ‘Here. Take it all. With any luck I’m flying home tomorrow.’
‘Then we had better get started,’ said Batov.
*
It was late when I got back to Dnieper Castle. Most of the men were having dinner. I joined the officers’ table in the mess where chicken was on the menu. I tried not to think about the three ragged children I’d seen in Smolensk that afternoon while I was eating, but it wasn’t easy.
‘We were beginning to worry,’ said Colonel Ahrens. ‘Can’t be too careful around here.’
‘What did you think of our cathedral?’ asked Lieutenant Rex.
‘Very impressive,’ I said.
‘Glinka, the composer, came from Smolensk,’ added Rex. ‘I’m rather fond of Glinka. He’s the father of Russian classical music.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘To know who your father is. It’s not everyone who can say that these days.’
After dinner the colonel and I went to his office for a smoke and a quiet word – or at least as quiet as could be achieved given that it was next to the castle’s cinema theatre. Through the wall I could hear Süss Oppenheimer pleading for his life in front of the implacable burgers of the Stuttgart town council. It made an uncomfortable soundtrack to what promised to be an equally uncomfortable conversation.
He sat behind his desk facing a good deal of paperwork. ‘You don’t mind if I work while we talk? I have to compile these duty logs for tomorrow. Who’s manning the telephone exchange, that kind of thing. I have to post this on the noticeboard before nine o’clock so everyone knows where they’re supposed to be tomorrow. Von Kluge will have my guts if there’s a problem with our telecommunications when Hitler’s here.’
‘He’s flying from Rastenburg?’
‘No, from his forward HQ, at Vinnitsa, in the Ukraine. His staff call it the Werewolf HQ, but don’t ask me why. I believe he’s going on to Rastenburg tomorrow night.’
‘He gets around, does our leader.’
‘Your flight back to Berlin is fixed for early tomorrow afternoon,’ said Ahrens. ‘I don’t mind saying that I wish I was coming with you. The news from the front is not good. I’d hate to be in Von Kluge’s boots when the leader drops in for a chat tomorrow and demands a new offensive this spring. Frankly our troops aren’t nearly up to that task.’
‘Tell me, colonel, how soon is the ground around here likely to thaw?’
‘End of March, beginning of April. Why?’
I shrugged and looked generally apologetic.
‘You’re coming back?’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Someone else.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘We won’t know for sure until we find a complete body of course, but I’ve a pretty shrewd idea that there are Polish soldiers buried in your wood.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I’m afraid it’s true. Just as soon as the ground thaws, my boss, Judge Goldsche, will probably send a senior army judge and a forensic pathologist down here to take charge of the investigation.’
‘But you heard the Susanins,’ said Ahrens. ‘The only Poles they saw around here remained on the train at Gnezdovo.’
I thought it best to avoid telling him that either the Susanins or perhaps Peshkov were clearly lying. I’d caused enough trouble for Ahrens already. Instead I handed him the button.
‘I found this,’ I said. ‘And the remains of a man’s foot in an officer’s riding boot.’
‘I don’t see that a fucking button and a boot tell us very much.’
‘I won’t know for sure until I consult an expert, but that looks to me like a Polish eagle on the button.’
‘Balls,’ he said angrily. ‘If you ask me that button could just as easily be from the coat of a White Russian Army soldier. There were Whites under General Denikin fighting the Reds in this area until at least 1922. No, you must be mistaken. I don’t see how something like that could have been covered up. I ask you, does this place feel like somewhere that’s built in the middle of a mass grave?’
‘When I was at the Alex, colonel, the only time we ever paid much attention to our feelings was when it was lunchtime. It’s evidence that counts. Evidence like this little button, the human bones, those two hundred Polish officers in the railway siding. You see, I think they did get off that train. I think they maybe came here and were shot by the NKVD in your wood. I’ve some experience of these murder squads, you know.’
I hardly wanted to tell the colonel about the document in Polish I had discovered and that Doctor Batov had painstakingly translated for me with his stereo microscope. I figured that the fewer people who knew about that the better. But I had little doubt that the bones found in Katyn Wood had belonged to a Polish soldier, and the bureau seemed certain to have a major war-crimes investigation in Smolensk just as soon as I could get home to Berlin and make my report to Judge Goldsche.
‘But look here, if there are two hundred Poles buried out there, what diff
erence will it make to those poor buggers now? Answer me that. Couldn’t you pretend that there’s nothing of interest here? And then we can get on with our lives and the normal business of trying to get through this war alive.’
‘Look, colonel, I’m just a policeman. It’s not up to me what happens here. I’ll make my report to the bureau and after that then it’s up to the bosses and to the legal department of the High Command. But if that button does turn out to be Polish—’
I left my sentence unfinished. It was hard to know exactly what the result of such a discovery might look like, but I sensed that the colonel’s cosy little world at Dnieper Castle was about to come to an end.
And so I think did he, because he swore loudly, several times.
CHAPTER 8
Saturday, March 13th 1943
It snowed again during the night, and the room was so cold I had to wear my greatcoat in bed. The window frosted on the inside and there were tiny icicles on the iron bedstead as if a frozen fairy had tiptoed along the metalwork while I had been trying to sleep. It wasn’t just the cold that kept me awake; every so often I thought of those three barefoot children and wished I’d given them something more than a few cigarettes.
After breakfast I tried to stay out of the way. I hardly wanted to remind Colonel Ahrens by my presence that I was soon to be replaced by a judge from the War Crimes Bureau. And unlike many of the men in the 537th I had no great desire to be up at dawn to stand on the main road to Vitebsk and wave to the leader as he drove from the airport to an early lunch with Field Marshal von Kluge at his headquarters. So I borrowed a typewriter from the signals office and spent the time before the flight back to Berlin writing up my report for Judge Goldsche.
It was dull work and a lot of the time I was looking out the window, which was how I came to see Peshkov, the translator with the toothbrush moustache, having a furious argument with Oleg Susanin at the end of which Susanin pushed the other man onto the ground. There was nothing very interesting about this except that it’s always interesting to see a man who looks a bit like Adolf Hitler being shoved around. And so seldom seen.