Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  3. In this warm climate you soon won’t be able to stand under the balcony where Mantau’s unfortunate babushkas are hanging. If, as he says, one or more of them were Soviet agents, before even gaining access to the prisoner’s cell they would have had to know he would only eat candy bars and also have managed to plant a poisoned piece among the others – coincidentally, the very one he happened to bite into the following day. If there’s any official Russian responsibility for the incident (here I disagree with Colonel Bentivegni) they will claim it soon, as they always admit to the punishment of traitors and diversionists. In that case, the task given me by the colonel will find an automatic solution, and Mantau will face the blame of losing a prize defector during his watch (and thank God the babushkas ended up going to him and not to me). This would imply: a. Soviet decision-makers knew Khan was in German hands and had been forcibly transferred into an RSHA facility, and b. a team of their workers/agents was quickly infiltrated and diverted to the place where the execution could be carried out. We’ll see.

  4. Thanks to the set of keys I kept for my own use, I returned to our former detention centre and went through it in detail, to ensure that neither of our prize inmates had left anything others could discover and use. It’s been my experience that detainees (and even special guests on occasion) often idle away the time scribbling numbers or names. They’re seldom of use, but I wanted to make sure. All I could find – and it avails me nothing – were the Platonov women’s initials on the edge of the general’s table, traced by him with the pencil I left him the evening before his death. Khan, who at least three times during our brief conversation looked on the verge of telling me something (maybe only that he acknowledged our distant tie), left nothing behind. But then, why should he? He had every reason to expect he’d be soon transferred with all honours to Berlin.

  Regarding my lie to Mantau about the T-34’s location, still no news from Badger Face, although before nightfall I did receive a visit from a Leibstandarte captain who didn’t bother to introduce himself by name. He threatened me (nothing specific: he must know Schallenberg is my quasi-father-in-law), just the usual “You watch yourself”, “Mind your step”, “We know you” and the like, the array of innuendos I’ve collected in the past two years. “For what?” I replied. “It’s true that I had the tank taken to the Tractor Factory.” He limps and has a birthmark on his cheek, so I’ll be able to track him down, and as God is my witness, I will gather some dirt on him for future reference.

  Note: last Friday Metropolitan Aleksei of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church was murdered, apparently at the orders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), for having withdrawn his support from a treaty with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, its rival in the region. Can we ever hope to make sense of all this?

  Major Boeselager sent me a Cossack captain, who came complete with red stripes on his breeches and shashka sabre, and potentially brings a squadron (sotnia) with him. He’s (according to Boeselager) the touchstone against which the prowess of Russian-born elements is to be measured. His spoken German is so flawless that at first one is enchanted, and then grows suspicious. Why does he know our language so well? I wasn’t at my best, so my feelers were only working part-time. I’ll have to do some thorough background checking on him. Not because I don’t trust Boeselager’s judgement (he’s an outstanding officer), but because under Old White Head I learnt to be wary.

  When the day was done, I fell asleep doing paperwork (thanks also to Bruno’s aquavit). A chair being worse than a camp bed, I had nightmares all night. This morning, the headache’s gone; no more fever as far as I can tell. I feel shaky like a sick cat, but it’ll pass.

  The sound of a car engine interrupted him. Bora rose to his feet, released the safety catch on his pistol and finished writing in haste.

  Must close it here: I can see a staff car approaching the schoolyard.

  He slipped a sheet of blotting paper into the diary before closing it, and threw it into his trunk.

  Wine-red piping identified the newcomer as a member of the judiciary even before he said, “Heeresrichter Kaspar Bernoulli, of the Armed Forces War Crimes Bureau. I think I know your stepfather.”

  Bora saluted, and shook the hand the judge stretched out to him. Surprised as he was, he thought, Ah, yes. The world is divided between those who know my stepfather and those who knew my natural father. He bowed his head in acknowledgement, as he always did in these cases, because a son necessarily stands for the absent.

  “He’d have made Field Marshal, had he not retired.”

  The observation made Bora uncomfortable. General Sickingen’s political unorthodoxy was a sore point, although less now than in the past. Ever since the war had started, the old man had learnt to watch his outspokenness in order not to harm his son and stepson’s careers. Still, it was highly unlikely that he would have agreed to become a Field Marshal in the National Socialist army. “My stepfather belongs to his day,” he limited himself to saying. And then he added, so as not to appear discourteous, “Welcome to Merefa, Dr Bernoulli. May I ask on what occasion you happened to meet him?”

  The military judge glanced towards the graves at the end of the schoolyard, a quick, acute glance. “Oh, centuries ago. Well, not centuries – twenty years ago, at least. Your stepfather was just back from his anti-Bolshevik post-war duties in Finland and Poland… I’d served in East Prussia, myself.”

  Bora made another curt bow of the head. It all kept revolving around those early years somehow: Uncle Terry’s beginnings, the dead at Krasny Yar; Platonov too, who’d reaped his first military successes at that time. A pinch of seconds sufficed for him to conjure up the balalaikas, Cossack ammunition belts and other tasteless souvenirs from Sickingen’s Freikorps adventure, stuff his mother graciously agreed to keep – but in the smoking room, where actually no one went, given the general’s aversion to tobacco. For a moment he was standing simultaneously here and in the tall-ceilinged hall, where hunting trophies from Grandfather Wilhelm Heinrich (who’d made it to Field Marshal, and how!) also decked the walls. It was possible to imagine a military judge in the Freikorps, but barely. That venture had managed to prolong the Great War bloodshed by four years at least.

  “What brings me here,” Bernoulli went on, “I believe you know, as it was your report that called our attention to the Merefa schoolyard matter.”

  Almost too good to be true. “Consider me at your complete disposal,” Bora said. “I can show you the site at once if you wish – it’s right here. Or, if you prefer, I can first share the additional photographs and notes I’ve taken since the bodies were discovered early in April.”

  The schoolyard matter, of course, meant the shallow mass grave where executed German prisoners had been buried, some of them apparently still alive; Bora’s men had found them in the process of cleaning up rubble to set up the outpost. From under those bodies, two packed layers of civilian victims had been unearthed, still unidentified save the highly decorated remains of the Alexandrovka schoolmaster, whom a local peasant had recognized thanks to – Georgji, Vladimir and Anna – his Great War medals.

  Bernoulli, who had come alone with nothing but a briefcase, driving a small car, displayed a rare lack of officialdom. He courteously said, “Show me the evidence first, please,” adding, “The Bureau takes all reports very seriously,” perhaps to explain his errand in Russia at this stage of the war, when millions had already perished. “This instance in particular – two distinct cases of mass execution – could not be ignored. I was sent directly from Berlin: Dr Goldsche’s office. You seem surprised, Major Bora: why?”

  Leading the way to the burials, Bora explained. “I hardly dared hope the Bureau Chief himself would send an enquirer.”

  “Yes? Did you not repeatedly notify us of violations committed by the Soviet Army and the NKVD? Your name figures on reports you have written ever since your headquarters days in Cracow. The Soviets’ massacre of Polish officers at Tomaszow, the Skalny Pagorek incident a
t the hands of our own Security Service – you see I have a good memory. It struck me when in one case you mentioned the principle of actio libera in causa. It’s not often that a young company commander recognizes a soldier’s responsibility for his acts even when the man’s under the influence of alcohol.”

  “If he chose to become intoxicated, he’s doubly responsible as far as I’m concerned.”

  An enigmatic expression appeared on the judge’s face. “The voice of one who cries in the wilderness, eh?”

  If those deliberate words weren’t underlined by discouragement, then it was pity, or else impotence: Bora didn’t dare wish for doggedness. Having reached the row of graves, he stated the obvious. “I could not wait to have our men’s bodies re-buried. We had an early thaw, and it had to be done.”

  “I understand. Dr Goldsche sent me as soon as he heard, but I was delayed on the way. I should have been here two weeks ago.”

  Bernoulli had a severe, narrow-chinned face, somewhat sad. Shaven-headed, dark-eyed, he seemed to Bora for some reason the kind of controlled man who is not ashamed of shedding tears in private over what moves him. If he thought about how he’d learnt in the past two years to show less and less, even though he felt more and more… We all have our ways of coping, he told himself. He watched the judge put down the briefcase and take out his spectacles as he stood by him near the graves, in the shade of the trees at this hour of the morning.

  “Well, Major Bora, I think it was Goethe who said, ‘The highest thing man can achieve is wonderment.’ Wonderment as an astonished state, beyond which one is not to reach. The Romantics’ Sublime, maybe, to be found in extreme beauty as well as in horror. My legally trained mind rejects extremes, plays literally by the rules, but it’s whatever informs the rules – the Principle – that brings me here.”

  “I imagined as much, especially as the Soviets did not sign the 1929 Geneva Convention.”

  “You knew that as far back as Poland.”

  “I knew that as far back as Spain, Dr Bernoulli, which is when I first faced the Reds as enemies. In Poland – well, the truce with them was mutually agreed upon.”

  Fourteen markers delineated spaces like beds in a dormitory; the narrow interval between one and the next was just enough to rest one’s boots in. Dirt had been packed onto the mounds with the backs of shovels; pebbles lined their perimeter. On each neatly cut pinewood cross a shingle was nailed, reading “German Soldier” on it, but not the dead man’s helmet; helmets were more useful these days to preserve those who were still living. Bernoulli leant over to pick up a storm-tossed leaf from the ground.

  “I was working in a dismal wooded place near Smolensk from early April until last week. Let us say that Poland’s case is best left alone for now.”

  Smolensk? Bora had heard rumours of a massacre when he’d gone through that area in 1941, from Russian switchmen interrogated after taking over the railroads during the invasion. He’d passed the report along without comment, as had his colleagues, noting merely that the prisoners had mentioned the Polish uniforms worn by those supposedly led to their deaths. So it had taken two years to find the spot, or maybe even to look for it. It made sense, given all that had happened in the interim. On a scale of one to ten, what the judge was telling him registered about a six, which these days was rather high for a response from Bora, but still far from wonder, or astonishment. Bernoulli avoided looking at him, playing with the leaf; he studiously tore it to ribbons, following the fibres lengthwise. “The question is whether it’s more egregious to abstain from the Convention or to violate it systematically.”

  “A sin of omission versus a sin of commission?”

  “For us Catholics, at least, Major.”

  With something between annoyance and fascination Bora watched Bernoulli accurately tearing the leaf into equal strips, truly a lawman’s overcritical attempt to coerce nature, an imperfect and ultimately futile endeavour. Beyond the single mounds of earth beneath which he’d buried the soldiers, to the left of the mass grave, the unpaved road breathed dust, impalpable and the colour of face powder, at every waft of wind. His wife, his mother used such pale colour on their skin; he had an urge to feel it under his fingertips, close as he was (with different kinds of affection) to both of them. “The trench just beyond is where we found our men,” he said. “We left the civilian corpses there because they were in a state that precluded handling, other than a minimal search and approximate count. We unloaded a truckful of quicklime on them, and shovelled clean earth from the rise by the road, over there. If it isn’t enough, by the summer we might have to dig everything up again, or else pour cement over it.”

  By the summer the entire region could be securely back in German hands all the way to the Don, or else be lost as far back as the Dnieper. Bora mentioned summer as if they could predict that they would all be here four weeks or forty months from now. “Badges and identification discs were removed from our soldiers before death,” he went on, “so it is laborious work trying to reconstruct what units they might have belonged to, or how long they’d been in Soviet hands. I believe I wrote that in my report.”

  “Indeed. Some of our soldiers captured early in February were kept in a Kharkov temporary camp, you said.”

  “In the Yasna Polyana district, as far as we know. Our forces rushed there even as the city was being recaptured. It’s useless to add that they got there too late.” Bora turned and gestured without pointing directly to the school building. “Our soldiers were shot with 7.62 calibre Soviet rifles there against the wall, which I purposely have neither painted nor stuccoed over.” When the judge turned slowly to look, he added, “When I arrived on 10 April, my impression was that the wall had been used before for the same purpose, and for a larger group of people – possibly the three dozen civilians whose bodies already half-filled the trench. Our soldiers were covered with snow and debris, mixed with a veil of dirt from the recently dug mass grave. Excess soil from the trench had been scattered in the expanse between the fence and the canal over there, but was unreachable at the time because of the snow cover. Our divisional medical chief was unable to establish the amount of time elapsed between executions as it had been unseasonably cold prior to the most recent use of the grave.”

  “I read he had suggested five to six weeks. How could anyone dig a trench during the hard freeze?”

  “The trench had been dug much earlier for defensive purposes. The field beyond was mined.” Bora watched the judge drop what remained of the leaf, and take off and wipe his spectacles with small circular motions. “According to official sources, the Russian units holding this sector belonged to the 179th Armoured Brigade. Shafarenko’s 25th Rifle Guards certainly held out against our forces south of here on the Mosh River. I don’t know why coups de grâce were not administered after the execution. In any case, torture seems to have been applied at the Yasna Polyana prison camp.”

  “I saw the photographs you took there.”

  Bora knew his next sentence would sound dismissive, but did not modify his tone. “I only arrived when Das Reich vacated it after using it for a week.” Disregarding the judge’s curious stare, he stepped past the individual burial mounds to the edge of the mass grave. “Regarding the civilians, there’s a detail I didn’t include in my written report, because it’s based on hearsay and I couldn’t find eyewitnesses. The schoolmaster, Janzen by name, was of Mennonite descent, and there’s a strong likelihood the others were ethnic Germans as well. From what I can gather, their community in nearby Alexandrovka – already decimated by Makhno’s Black Army during the civil war – disappeared at the end of January.”

  An imperceptible sign of uneasiness, a narrowing of eyes, was all that came from the judge. “Out of the ordinary, a peace-loving Mennonite wearing war medals.”

  “The Tsar rescinded their exemption from military service over seventy years ago. Those German Protestants who didn’t leave the country had to adapt. Like other German minorities, Janzen and his men might have been sche
duled by Reich authorities for transfer to the Warthegau/Warthe District and executed by the Soviets during that first week in February when they retook Kharkov.”

  A stubby cross reading Cornelius Janzen and others known only to God was the sole identifier on the long mound of beaten earth. Bernoulli did not encourage further comments. “Have you retrieved evidence from the civilian bodies?”

  “What I could: shreds of paper items, cartridge parts. Here: I carry a couple of spent shells in my map case.”

  Hefting the metal casings in his hand, for a moment the judge resembled a buyer dissatisfied with the change he was given. “These aren’t…Soviet rifle shells have bottleneck cases, Major.”

  “Yes, sir. 7.62 calibre, 76.6 mm long.”

  “And aren’t these Mauser 7.63 mm, only 25 mm in length?”

  Bora remained expressionless. “As you know, the 7.63 can fit most Soviet Tokarev handguns.”

  “Surely you don’t mean to tell me the holes on that wall were produced by single pistol shots?… Major Bora? I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, Dr Bernoulli. Then it could have been our own M712 Schnellfeuer. It shoots in rapid-fire bursts of ten to twenty.”

  Bernoulli pocketed the metal bits, retrieved the briefcase and turned around to leave the graveside. “Let’s go inside.”

  In the classroom, with the sun having been up for two hours, it was already warm. Through the open window, a ghostly sliver of moon showed as it arced down to set. On the bank of the canal, well out of earshot, Kostya was tending the droshky’s draught horses.

  “Tell me, Major Bora, which German units were operative in this particular location during the retaking of Kharkov?”

  Bora chose from a selection and partly unfolded a large map marked M-37-X-West, smoothing it out on the teacher’s desk. “Well, SS General Hausser raised a battle group from a Das Reich regiment, a Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler regiment, plus one motorcycle battalion from either division. Kharkov was in our hands until 2 February, when the Soviets took it and held it until 16 March. We began our counterattack the third week of February, and by 10 March Hausser, who’d been energetically pushing north this way, was already back in Merefa. Our soldiers had apparently been shot one to two days previously, but in the thick of battle their burial went undetected. By mid-March, all of Kharkov was reconquered.”