A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther Mystery 9)

by Philip Kerr

  ‘And the following clues may indicate the presence of a trap: anything valuable or curious that might make a good souvenir; apparently harmless but incongruous objects. On other occasions elsewhere I have found bombs in the most unlikely objects: a flashlight filled with ball bearings and explosive; a water bottle; a table-knife; a clothes peg; underneath the butt of an abandoned rifle; if it can be moved or picked up it can also explode, gentlemen.’

  He pointed at one of the icons leaning against the crypt wall. It had a valuable-looking silver frame. On the wall immediately beside the icon was a red chalk mark.

  ‘Take that icon, for instance,’ he said. ‘That’s just the sort of thing some light-fingered Fritz might steal. But underneath the frame is a piece of paper covering a hole in the floorboards and a release switch connected to five hundred grams of plastic explosive. Enough to take a man’s foot off. Maybe his whole leg. The chandeliers are wired, so don’t touch them either. And in case you were wondering about it, the remains of the filing cabinet that you see at the head of the room ought to be eloquent proof of the risk you’re running.’

  He pointed at a blackened wooden filing cabinet that had once contained three drawers and been the height of a small man: the top drawer was hanging at an angle off its rails and the contents looked like the remains of a bonfire; on the wooden floor immediately below was a dark brown stain that might have been blood.

  ‘Take a long hard look at it. That drawer was hiding just two hundred grams of plastic, but it was enough to take a man’s face off and blind him. From time to time take another look at it and ask yourself – do I want to be right in front of a hidden bomb like that when it goes off?

  ‘Other things to look out for are nails, electric leads or pieces of wire; loose floor boards, recent brickwork; any attempt at concealment; new paint or marks that don’t seem to fit in with the surroundings; but frankly there is no end to this kind of list, so it’s best to tell you of the three main methods of operating a hidden bomb that you will find in this room. These are the pull method, the pressure method, or the release method. Also be aware that an obvious trap may be used to disguise the presence of another; and always remember this: the more dummies we find the more your vigilance is likely to be reduced. So keep paying attention. Safe procedure is to do everything slowly. If you meet the least bit of resistance stop what you’re doing. Don’t let go but call me and I will take a closer look. With most of these devices there’s a safety pin hole; to neutralize the device I will use a nail or a pin or a piece of strong wire and put it in the safety pin hole, after which the device will be safe to handle.’

  The sergeant of engineers rubbed his stubbled face and thought for a moment. The stubble that covered his face wasn’t so very different from his eyebrows or the stubble that covered his head. His head looked like a rock covered with dry moss. His voice was no less rugged and laconic and the accent Low Saxon probably – as if he was about to tell a Little Ernie joke. Around his neck was a small crucifix on a chain, which we soon discovered was the most important part of his disposal kit.

  ‘What else? Oh yes.’ From a haversack that was slung over his shoulder he handed us each a dental mirror, a penknife, a piece of green chalk and a small flashlight. ‘Your protective equipment. These three things will help to keep you alive, gentlemen. Right then. Let’s get started.’

  Von Gersdorff consulted his notebook. ‘According to our records, we believe the case files to be on the shelves, while the NKVD’s own personnel files are probably in those cabinets marked with the people’s commissariat’s symbol, which is a hammer and sickle on top of a sword and a red banner featuring the Cyrillic symbols HKBД. None of the drawers appear to be alphabetically marked – although there is a little slot – so possibly the marker cards were removed. Fortunately Krivyenko starts with the Cyrillic letter K, which is an easy one to spot for someone like you who doesn’t read Russian. Unfortunately there are thirty-three letters in the Cyrillic alphabet. Here, I’ve written out an alphabet for you, so you’ll have a better idea of what you’re looking at. I’ll work down the cabinets on the left side of the room and you, Gunther – you take the right-hand side.’

  ‘And I’ll take a look at what’s on the shelves,’ said Sergeant Schlächter. ‘If the drawer is safe put a green cross on it. And don’t for Christ’s sake slam them shut when you’ve finished.’

  I went to the first filing cabinet and scrutinized it for a long minute before turning my attention to the bottom drawer.

  ‘Pay attention to the bottom of the drawer as well as to the top,’ said Schlächter. ‘Look out for a wire or a piece of cord. If the drawer opens safely and it happens to be the drawer you’re looking for, don’t pull a file out without observing the same precautions that apply to everything else here.’

  Kneeling down, I drew the heavy wooden drawer out only two or three centimetres and shone my flashlight carefully into the space I had made. Observing nothing suspicious I gently pulled the drawer out a bit more until I was sure there were no wires or hidden bombs and then looked inside; the files were all headed with the letter K. Briefly I paused and began to examine the outside of the drawer immediately above; I knew there was nothing on the underside, so once again I drew it out a couple of centimetres and scrutinized the narrow gap; this drawer was also harmless and contained files beginning with the letter K, so I stood up and began to look at the last drawer in the cabinet; and when at last I was satisfied that it too was safe – like the two others before, it contained K files – I put a cross on all three drawers with my chalk and let out a long breath as I stood back. I glanced at my wristwatch and clasped my hands together for a moment in order to stop them from shaking. Checking one filing cabinet and pronouncing it clear of hidden bombs had taken me ten minutes.

  I glanced around. Schlächter was between two high sets of metal shelves that were filled with papers and box files; Von Gersdorff was checking the underside of a drawer with his dental mirror.

  ‘At this rate it will take us all day,’ I said.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ said the sergeant. ‘Clearing a room like this might take as long as a week.’

  ‘There’s a thought,’ murmured Von Gersdorff. He placed a green cross on the drawer in front of him and moved on to the next cabinet a metre or so behind me.

  This went on – the three of us working at snail’s pace – for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and it was Von Gersdorff who found the first device.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, calmly. ‘I think I’ve found something, sergeant.’

  ‘Hold on. I’ll come and take a look. Herr Gunther? Stop working, sir, and go to the door. I’d rather you didn’t find another device while I’m assisting the colonel.’

  ‘Besides,’ added Von Gersdorff, ‘there’s no point in three of us getting it if the file is active, so to speak.’

  This was good advice and, as instructed, I went back to the door. I lit a cigarette and waited.

  Sergeant Schlächter came and stood by Von Gersdorff and took a long hard look at the drawer the colonel was still holding partly open, but not before he had kissed the little gold crucifix on the chain around his neck and placed it in his mouth.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said with the crucifix between his teeth. ‘There’s a paper clip hooked over the lip of the drawer. It’s attached to a length of wire. There’s slack on the wire so I think we can be sure it’s not a tension device but a bomb that’s designed to go off when a firing pin is pulled out. If you don’t mind, sir, perhaps you could gently pull the drawer back another few centimetres until I tell you to stop.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the colonel.

  ‘Stop,’ said the sergeant. ‘Now, keep it steady, sir.’

  Schlächter pushed his hands through the narrow space and into the drawer.

  ‘Plastic explosive,’ he said. ‘About half a kilo, I think. More than enough to kill us both. An electric dry-cell battery and two metal contacts. It’s a simple device, but no less deadly for
that. You keep pulling the drawer, you pull one plate toward the other, you make contact, the battery sends a signal to the detonator, and kaboom. Battery might well be dead after all this time, but there’s no point in risking it. If you could hand me a small chunk of modelling clay, sir.’

  Von Gersdorff searched in the sergeant’s haversack and took out a chunk of clay.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind just handing that to me inside the drawer, sir.’

  The colonel pushed his hand into the drawer alongside Schlächter’s and then withdrew it gently.

  ‘I’ll put some clay around the metal contacts, to prevent a circuit from being made,’ said the sergeant. ‘And then we can pull out the detonator.’

  A long minute later, Schlächter was showing us the plastic explosive and the detonator it had contained. About the size of a tennis ball, the explosive was green and looked just like the same Plastilin modelling clay Schlächter had used to isolate the metal contact strips. He tore the wires off the detonator and then tested the 1½-volt AFA battery with a couple of wires of his own that were attached to a small bicycle lamp. The bulb lit up brightly.

  ‘German battery.’ He grinned. ‘That’s why it still works, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m glad that amuses you,’ remarked Von Gersdorff. ‘I don’t think I like the idea of being blown up by our own equipment.’

  ‘Happens all the time. Ivan bombers are nothing if not resourceful.’ Schlächter sniffed the explosive. ‘Almonds,’ he added. ‘This stuff is ours too. Nobel 808. Bit too much, in my opinion. Half as much would achieve the same result. Still, waste not want not.’ His grin widened. ‘I’ll probably use this when it’s my turn to set some traps for the Ivans.’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly a comfort,’ I said.

  ‘They fuck with us,’ said Schlächter. ‘We fuck with them.’

  The afternoon passed safely, with three more hidden bombs discovered and neutralized, before we found what we were looking for: the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs personnel files that started with the Cyrillic letter K.

  ‘I’ve found them,’ I said. ‘The K files.’

  Von Gersdorff and the sergeant appeared behind me. Minutes later he had identified the file we were looking for.

  ‘Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘Looks like your idea paid off, Gunther.’

  The drawer appeared to be clear, but the sergeant reminded me not to pull out the file until we were quite sure it was safe to do so, and he checked this himself, again with the crucifix in his mouth.

  ‘Does that work?’ asked Von Gersdorff.

  ‘I’m still here, aren’t I? Not only that but I know for sure that this is solid gold. Anything else would be sucked to nothing by now.’ He handed Von Gersdorff Major Krivyenko’s file, which was at least five centimetres thick. ‘Best take it outside,’ he added, ‘while I close up in here.’

  ‘Delighted to,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘My heart feels like it’s about to burst through my tunic.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ I admitted, and followed the Abwehr colonel out of the door of the crypt. ‘I haven’t been such a bag of nerves since the last time the RAF came to Berlin.’

  At the door the colonel opened the file excitedly and looked at the photograph of the man on the first page who, unlike Dyakov, was clean-shaven. Von Gersdorff covered the lower half of the man’s face with his hand and glanced at me.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘It’s not the best photograph.’

  ‘Yes, it could be him,’ I said. ‘The eyebrows look much the same.’

  ‘But either we draw a beard on the picture and ruin it or we’ll have to persuade Dyakov to see the barber.’

  ‘Perhaps we can get a copy made,’ I suggested. ‘Either way, the picture in this file is nothing like the one on the photograph you have of Major Krivyenko’s identity card. It’s a different man. The real Dyakov, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, it looks like you were right about that.’

  ‘If my nerves weren’t shredded already from being in here, I’d suggest looking for Dyakov’s case file. I bet there’s something about him on those shelves, eh, sergeant?’

  ‘I’ll be with you in a minute, gentlemen,’ said Sergeant Schlächter. ‘I’m just going to make a quick note on the record of where all of the devices today were found.’

  Von Gersdorff nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Page one; personnel record of Major Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko in the NKVD Police Department of the Smolensk Oblast; hand-signed by the then deputy chief of the NKVD, one Lavrenty Beria, no less, in Minsk; Dneprostroy Badge – that means he was an NKVD officer who once supervised forced labour in a prison camp; Merited NKVD Worker medal – I suppose that’s what you would expect of a major; Voroshilov Marksman badge for shooting, on the left breast of his tunic – well, that certainly fits with what we already know about the man, all right. That he can shoot. But shooting what? I wonder. Wild boar? Wolves? Enemies of the state? Fascinating. But look, there’s more work to do on this file before we can put it in front of the field marshal. I can see I’m not going to get much sleep tonight while I translate what’s in here.’

  ‘All right,’ said the sergeant, ‘I’m coming.’ But we never saw him again. Not alive anyway.

  Afterwards we could only tell Major Ondra, his furious commanding officer – Sergeant Schlächter had been his most experienced man in Smolensk – that we hadn’t a clue what had happened.

  He himself thought there had been a deliberately loosened floorboard near the door in the safe area on the near side of the warning sign; the space immediately underneath the wooden board had already been checked for a pressure switch and was perfectly safe, but each time someone stood on one end of the board an exposed nail on the opposite end had been lifted several millimetres near another nail on the wall; we – and others besides us – must have walked across that part of the floor many times before finally it made contact and completed the circuit which exploded several kilos of gelignite that were hidden behind a piece of dummy plaster-work in the wall. The blast knocked both the colonel and myself off our feet. If we had been standing in the room beside the sergeant we too would probably have been killed, but it wasn’t the explosion itself that killed the sergeant but the bicycle ball-bearings that were pressed into the plastic explosive like several handfuls of sweets. The combined effect of those was like a sawn-off shotgun and took the man’s head off as cleanly as a cavalryman’s sabre.

  ‘I hope you think it was worth it,’ said Major Ondra. ‘Eighteen months we’ve left that crypt alone, and for a damned good reason. It’s a fucking death trap. And all for what? Some fucking file that’s probably out of date by now anyway. It’s a bloody shame, that’s what it is, gentlemen. It’s a bloody shame.’

  We went to the sergeant’s funeral that same evening. His comrades buried him in the soldiers’ cemetery at Okopnaja church, on Gertnereistrasse near the panzergrenadiers’ billet in Nowosselki, just west of Smolensk. Afterwards the colonel and I walked up to the banks of the Dnieper and looked back across the city at the cathedral where Schlächter had met his death just a few hours before. The cathedral seemed to hover above the hill on which it was built as if, like Christ’s assumption, it was physically being taken up into heaven, which was, I suppose the desired effect. But neither of us felt there was much consolation in that particular story. Or truth. Even Von Gersdorff, who was a Roman Catholic, confessed that these days he crossed himself largely out of habit.

  When we drove back to Krasny Bor I noticed that Von Gersdorff’s glovebox now contained all of the Nobel 808 explosive that Sergeant Schlächter had made safe in the crypt – at least a couple of kilos of the stuff.

  ‘I’m sure I can find a proper use for it,’ he said quietly.

  CHAPTER 12

  Saturday, May 1st 1943

  The international commission headed by Professor Naville was returning to Berlin to draft the report for Doctor Conti, the head of the Reich Health Department, leaving the Poli
sh Red Cross – from the beginning the Poles had worked separately from the international commission – still in Katyn. Gregor Sloventzik and I escorted the members of the commission to the airport in the coach, and understandably they were glad to be leaving – the Red Army was getting closer every day, and no one wanted to be around when finally they arrived in Smolensk.

  I was glad to see the back of them, and yet it was a journey that left me feeling pretty hollow as – her work with Professor Buhtz now concluded – Ines Kramsta had chosen to fly back to Berlin with the commission. She comprehensively ignored me all the way to the airport, choosing to stare out of the window as if I didn’t exist. I helped to carry her luggage to the waiting Focke-Wulf – Goebbels sent his own plane, of course – and hoped to say something by way of atonement for having suspected her of Dr Berruguete’s murder; but saying sorry didn’t seem equal to the task, and when she turned on her elegant patent heel and disappeared through the door of the plane without uttering a single word, I almost cried out with pain.

  I could have told her the truth – that maybe she was looking for too much from a man. Instead I left it alone. For the few weeks while she’d been in Smolensk, my life had seemed like it mattered to someone more than it did to me; and now that she was going, I was back to not caring about it very much one way or the other. Sometimes that’s just how it is between a man and a woman: something gets in the way of it, like real life and human nature and a whole lot of other stuff that isn’t good for two people who think they’re attracted to each other. Of course, you can save yourself a lot of pain and trouble by thinking twice before you get into anything, but a lot of life can pass you by like that. Especially in a war. I didn’t regret what had happened – how could I? – only that she was going to live the rest of her life in complete and total ignorance of the rest of my life.