Field Grey

by Philip Kerr

  I did however take the dead man's wedding ring, which was so tight and the finger so badly swollen that I had to use the soap to get it off. Any other man's ring would have fallen off his finger, but Gebhardt drew better rations than any of us and was a normal weight. I weighed the ring in the palm of my hand. It was gold and would certainly come in useful if I ever needed to bribe a Blue. I looked closely at the inscription on the inside but it was too small for my weakened eyes. I didn't put it in my pocket, however; for one thing, the trousers of my uniform were full of holes, and for another, there was the starshina outside the door who might have taken it upon himself to search me. So I swallowed it, in the certainty that with my bowels as loose as vegetable soup I could easily retrieve the ring later.

  By now I could hear the SGO addressing all the German plenis outside. There was a cheer as he confirmed what most of them knew: that Gebhardt was dead. This was followed by a loud groan as he told them how the MVD were planning to handle the matter. I got up and went to the window in the hope that I might see one brave soul identify himself as the culprit, but no one moved. Fearing the worst, I took another bite off the vodka bottle and laid my hand on the stove. It was cold but I opened it all the same, just in case the killer had thought to burn his signed confession; but there was nothing - just a few pages from an old copy of Pravda and some bits of wood, ready for when the weather turned colder.

  A shallow closet, no deeper than a shoe box, was fixed against the corner of the hut, and in it I found the Waffen SS uniform that Gebhardt had ceased wearing when he'd switched sides. It would hardly have done for an anti-fascist officer to have carried on wearing an SS uniform. His new Russian gimnasterka was hanging on the back of the chair. Quickly I searched the pockets and found a few kopecks, which I pocketed, and some more cigarettes, which I also pocketed.

  With time growing short now I took off my own threadbare uniform jacket and tried on Gebhardt's. Ordinarily it wouldn't have fitted, but I'd lost so much weight that this was hardly a problem, so I kept it on. It was a great pity his boots were too small but I took his socks - those were an excellent fit and, as with the jacket, in much better condition that my own. I lit another cigarette and, on my hands and knees, went hunting around the floor for something other than the dust and the splinters I found down there. I was still searching for clues when the hut door opened and Colonel Mrugowski came in.

  'Did anyone come forward?'

  'No. As a result, I can't believe it was a German who did this. Our men aren't so lacking in honour. A German would have given himself up. For the good of the others.'

  'Hitler didn't,' I observed.

  'That was different.'

  I pushed Gebhardt's cigarettes across the table. 'Here,' I said, 'have one of the dead man's cigarettes.'

  'Thanks. I will.' He lit one and glanced uncomfortably at the dead body. 'Don't you think we should cover him up?'

  'No. Looking at it helps to give me ideas as to how it happened.'

  'And have you any? Ideas about who killed him?'

  'So far I'm considering the possibility that it was an elk with a grudge.' I showed him the murder weapon. 'See how sharp it is?'

  Gingerly Mrugowski touched the bloodied end with his forefinger. 'Makes a Hell of a shiv, doesn't it?'

  I shook my head. 'Actually I think it was probably meant to be decorative. In here. There's a couple of nails and a mark on the wall facing the window that's consistent with this having been part of a small trophy set of horns. But I can't say for sure as I've never been in here before.'

  'So where's the rest of it?'

  'Maybe he realised how effective a weapon it was and took the rest of it with him. I rather imagine there was an argument. The killer grabbed the trophy, broke it over Gebhardt's skull and found himself holding just a piece of it. A conveniently sharp piece. There are some smaller punctures on Gebhardt's head that are consistent with that possibility. Gebhardt collapsed onto the bed. The killer then went at him with the point. Finished him off. Then he went outside and caught the U-Bahn home. As to who and why, your guess is as good as mine. If this was Berlin I'd be telling the uniforms to look for a man with bloodstains on his jacket, but of course here, that's not so unusual. There are fellows out there who are still wearing uniforms stained with the blood of comrades at Konigsberg. And I expect the killer knows that, too.'

  'Is that all you've got?'

  'Look, if this was Berlin I could pick up the rugs and beat them, you know? Interview some witnesses, some suspects. Speak to a few informers. There's nothing like an informer in my business. They're the flies who know their shit and that's the detective work that nearly always pays a dividend.'

  'So why not speak to Emil Kittel? The other anti-fa agent? It's in his interest to cooperate with your inquiry, wouldn't you say? He might wind up being the killer's next victim, after all;

  'That might work. Of course speaking to Kittel means I have to speak to Kittel, and if that happens I don't want anyone in this camp thinking it's because I'm turning Ivan like him.'

  'I'll make sure that people know the score.'

  'But that's only one objection. You see Kittel's already one of my suspects. He's left-handed. And one of the few things I can tell you about the murderer is that he's probably left- handed.'

  'How do you figure that?'

  'The stab wounds on Gebhardt's body. They're mostly on his right side. Less than ten per cent of the population is left- handed. So, out of more than a thousand men in this camp, I've got about a hundred suspects. And one of them is Kittel.'

  'I see.'

  'Somehow I've got to clear ninety-nine of them in less than seventy-two hours with nothing more to go on than the fact they disliked the victim only a little less than the man who actually killed him. All of this would be more than enough to do if there wasn't already a wheelbarrow with my name on it and several tonnes of sand ready for shifting around this canal. That's not a tall order, it's a tall order standing on a box.'

  'I'll speak to Major Savostin. See if I can't get you off the work detail until this thing is sorted.'

  'You do that, sir. Appeal to his sense of fair play. He probably keeps it in a matchbox alongside his sense of humour. And now I think about it, that's another objection I have to this so-called investigation. I don't like the Ivans knowing anything more about me than they already do. Especially the MVD.'

  The SGO smiled.

  'Did I say something funny, sir?'

  'Before the war I was a doctor,' said the SGO.

  'Like your brother.'

  He nodded. 'In a mental asylum. We treated a lot of people for something called paranoia.'

  'I know what paranoia is, sir.'

  'Why are you so paranoid, Gunther?'

  'Me, I suppose it's because I have a problem trusting people. I should warn you, Colonel, I'm not the persistent type. Over the years I've learned it's better to be a quitter. I find that knowing when to quit is the best way of staying alive. So don't expect me to be a hero. Not here. Since I put on a German uniform I find that the hero business has been put back thirty years.'

  The SGO gave me a disapproving look. 'Perhaps,' he said stiffly, 'if we'd had more heroes we might just have won the war.'

  'No, Colonel. If we'd had more heroes the war might never have got started.'

  I went back to work, filling my wheelbarrow with sand, pushing it up a gangplank, emptying it, and then pushing it back down again. Endless and unavailing, it was the kind of work that gets your picture on the side of a Greek amphora, or as an illustration in a story that shows the dangers of betraying the secrets of the gods. It wasn't as dangerous as the kind of work the SGO wanted me to do, and but for the vodka inside me and the nicotine in my lungs I might have been feeling a little less than inspired about the prospect of saving twenty-five of my comrades from a little show trial in Stalingrad. I've never been the type to mistake intoxication for heroism. Besides, it's not heroes you need to win a war, it's people who stay alive.
>
  I was still feeling a little intoxicated when the SGO and the MVD major came to fetch me from my Sisyphean labour. And this can be the only explanation for the way I spoke to the Ivan. In Russian. That was a mistake all on its own. The Russians liked it a lot when you spoke Russian. In that respect they're like anyone else. The only difference is that Russians think it means you like them.

  The MVD major, Savostin, dismissed the SGO with a wave of his hand as soon as Mrugowski had pointed me out. The Russian beckoned me towards him, impatiently.

  'Bistra! Davail'

  He was about fifty with reddish hair and a mouth as wide as the Volga which looked as if it had been exaggerated for the purpose of a vindictive caricature. The pale blue eyes in his pale white head had been inherited from the grey she-wolf who'd littered him.

  I dropped my shovel and ran eagerly toward him. The Blues liked you to do everything at the double.

  'Mrugowski tells me that you were a fascist policeman before the war.'

  'No, sir. I was just a policeman. Generally, I left the fascism to the fascists. I had enough to do just being a policeman.'

  'Did you ever arrest any communists?'

  'I might have done. If they broke the law. But I never arrested anyone for being a communist. I investigated murders.'

  'You must have been very busy.'

  'Yes, sir, I was.'

  'What is your rank?'

  'Captain, sir.'

  'Then why are you wearing a corporal's jacket?'

  'The corporal it belonged to wasn't using it.'

  'What function did you have, during the war?'

  'I was an intelligence officer, sir.'

  'Did you ever fight any partisans?'

  'No, sir. Only the Red Army.'

  'That is why you lost.'

  'Yes, sir, that is certainly why we lost.'

  The pale blue wolf eyes stayed on me, unblinking, obliging me to snatch my cap off while I stared back at him.

  'You speak excellent Russian,' he said. 'Where did you learn it?'

  'From Russians. I told you, Major, I was an intelligence officer. That generally means you have to be something more than just intelligent. With me it was the fact that I'd learned Russian. But it wasn't the same standard of Russian you've described until I came here, your honour. I have the great Stalin to thank for that.'

  'You were a spy, Captain. Isn't that right?'

  'No, sir. I was always in uniform. Which means if I had been a spy I'd have been a rather stupid one. And as I told you already, sir, I was in intelligence. It was my job to monitor Russian radio broadcasts, read Russian newspapers, speak to Russian prisoners…'

  'Did you ever torture a Russian prisoner?'

  'No, sir.'

  'A Russian would never give information to fascists unless he was tortured.'

  'I expect that's why I never got any information from Russian prisoners, sir. Not once. Not ever.'

  'So what makes the SGO think that you can get it from German plenis?'

  'That's a good question, sir. You would have to ask him that.'

  'His brother is a war criminal. Did you know that?'

  'No, sir.'

  'He was a doctor at Buchenwald concentration camp,' said Major Savostin. 'He carried out experiments on Russian POWs. The colonel claims not to be related to this person, but it's my impression that Mrugowski is not a common name in Germany.'

  I shrugged. 'We can't choose the people to whom we are related, sir.'

  'Perhaps you are also a war criminal, Captain Gunther.'

  'No, sir.'

  'Come now. You were in the SD. Everyone in the SD was a war criminal.'

  'Look, sir, the SGO asked me to look into the murder of Wolfgang Gebhardt. He gave me the strange idea that you wanted to find out who did it. That if you didn't find out, then twenty-five of my comrades were going to be picked out at random and shot for it.'

  'You were misinformed, Captain. There is no death penalty in the Soviet Union. Comrade Stalin has abolished it. But they will stand trial for it, yes. Perhaps you yourself will be one of these men picked at random.'

  'So, it's like that, is it?'

  'Do you know who did it?'

  'Not yet. But it sounds like you just handed me an extra incentive to find out.'

  'Good. We understand each other perfectly. You're excused work for the next three days in order that you may solve the crime. I will inform the guards. How will you start?'

  'Now that I've seen the body, by thinking. That's what I normally do in these situations. It's not very spectacular but it gets results. Then I'd like permission to interview some of the prisoners, and perhaps some of the guards.'

  'The prisoners, yes, the guards, no. It wouldn't be right to have a good communist being cross-questioned by a fascist.'

  'Very well. I'd also like to interview the surviving anti-fa agent, Kittel.'

  'This I will have to think about. Now then, it would not be appropriate for you to interview the other prisoners while they're working. So you can use the canteen for that. And for thinking, yes, it might be best if you were to use Gebhardt's hut. I'll have the body removed immediately if you're finished with it.'

  I nodded.

  'Very well then. Please follow me.'

  We walked to Gebhardt's hut. Halfway there Savostin saw some guards and barked some orders in a language that wasn't Russian. Noticing my curiosity, he told me that it was Tatar.

  'Most of these pigs who guard the camp are Tatars,' he explained. 'They speak Russian, of course, but to make yourself clear you really have to speak Tatar. Perhaps you should try to learn.'

  I didn't answer that. He wasn't expecting me to. He was too busy looking around at the huge building site.

  'Just think,' he said. 'All of this will be a canal by 1950. Extraordinary.'

  I had my doubts about that, which Savostin seemed to sense. 'Comrade Stalin has ordered it; he said, as if this was the only affirmation needed.

  And in that place, and in that time, he was probably right.

  When we reached Gebhardt's hut he supervised the removal of the body.

  'If you need anything,' he said, 'come to the guardhouse.' He looked around. 'Which is where exactly? I'm not at all familiar with this camp.'

  I pointed to the west, beyond the canteen. I felt like Virgil pointing out the sights in Hell to Dante. I watched him walk away and went back into the hut.

  The first thing I did was to turn over the mattress, not because I was looking for something but because I intended to have a sleep and I hardly wanted to lie on top of Gebhardt's bloodstains. No one ever had enough sleep at KA, but thinking's no good if you're tired. I took off his jacket, lay down and closed my eyes. It wasn't just lack of sleep that made me tired, but the vodka, too. The deflated football that was my stomach wasn't used to the stuff any more than my liver was. I closed my eyes and went to sleep wondering what the Soviet authorities were likely to do to me and twenty-four others if the death penalty had indeed been abolished. Was it possible there was a worse camp than the ones I had already seen?

  A while later - I've no idea how long I slept, but it was still light outside - I sat up. The cigarettes were still in my jacket pocket so I lit another, but it wasn't like a proper cigarette; there was a paper holder and only about three or four centimetres of tobacco - what the Ivans called a papirossi cigarette. These were Belomorkanal, which seemed only appropriate since that was a Russian brand introduced to commemorate the construction of another canal, this one connecting the White Sea to the Baltic. The Abwehr's opinion of the Belomorkanal was that it had been a disaster: too shallow, making it useless to most seagoing vessels, not to mention the tens of thousands of prisoners sacrificed on its construction. I wondered if this particular canal would fare any better.

  I finished the cigarette and aimed the butt at Stalin, and something about the way it struck the great leader's nose made me get up and take a closer look at the paper portrait. When I tugged it off the wall I was surpris
ed to see that the picture had neatly concealed a small shelved alcove, about the size of a book. On the shelf were a notebook and a roll of banknotes. It wasn't a wall safe, but in that place it was maybe the next-best thing.

  The roll of banknotes was almost four hundred five 'gold' rouble notes - about three or four months' wages for a Blue. This wasn't a fortune, unless you were a pleni. Two thousand roubles plus a gold wedding band might just be enough to bribe some better treatment inside an MVD jail in Stalingrad. I looked at the roubles again, just to make sure, and to my relief they all had that greasy, authentically Russian feel about them. I even held the bills up to the light coming through the window to check the watermark before folding them into the back pocket of my uniform breeches, which was the only one with a button and without a large hole.

  The notebook had a red cover and was about the size of an identity card. It was full of cheap Russian paper that looked more like something flattened by a heavy object and which contained a surprise all of its own, for on one page there was a name beneath which were written some dates and some payment details, and these seemed to indicate that the pleni named was in the pay of Gebhardt. Not that this made the pleni a murderer, exactly, but it did help to explain how it was that the Blues were able to police the POWs so effectively.

  But the date of one particular payment caught my eye: Wednesday August 15th. This was the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, and for some Catholic Germans, especially those from

  Saarland or Bavaria, it was also an important public holiday. But nearly everyone in camp remembered this as the day when Georg Oberheuser - a sergeant from Stuttgart - had been arrested by the MVD. Angry that this date was to be treated as a normal working day, Oberheuser had loudly denounced Stalin to everyone in our hut as a 'wicked, godless bastard'. There were other no less slanderous epithets he used as well, and all of them well deserved, no doubt, but we were all a little bit shaken when Oberheuser was taken away and never seen again, and by the knowledge that with no Ivans in our hut, Oberheuser had to have been betrayed to the Blues by another German.