A Man Without Breath (39 page)

‘I can see your point,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sure I can sort this out, gentlemen. I’ll speak to Berlin and have this matter clarified today. In the meantime I can assure you that regarding the security of all the members of the Polish Red Cross there is absolutely no cause for concern. And you have my apologies for whatever alarm you’ve encountered here today. I might add that Lieutenant Sloventzik has been working extremely hard ahead of the arrival of the international commission to
make sure that everything runs smoothly. You’ll appreciate that his only concern has been to make sure that this bestial crime is properly investigated. Frankly, gentlemen, I think he’s been working too hard. I know I have.’

‘Yes that is possible,’ admitted the count. ‘He is most diligent in many respects. There is however another matter, and that is the issue of the
Volksdeutsche
. Poles born in Poland for whom German and not Polish is their first language. Poles who before the Great War were East Prussians.
Ethnic Germans
.’

‘Yes, I know what they are,’ I said, patiently. ‘But what have ethnic Germans to do with any of this?’

‘Many of the bodies that have been found so far were Polish officers of German origin,’ explained the count.

‘Look, I’m sorry gentlemen,’ I said, ‘but these officers are dead, and I don’t see that it matters very much now where they came from if they were butchered by the Russians.’

‘It matters,’ explained the archdeacon stiffly, ‘because Sloventzik has ordered a separation between those Polish officers who are discovered to be
Volksdeutsche
in origin and those who are not. The lieutenant proposes that the Silesian ethnic Germans receive separate burial. It’s almost as if the rest of the Poles are to be treated as second-class citizens because they are ethnic Slavs.’

‘The Slavs who have been exhumed are not to be given coffins,’ said the count.

‘Well, he’s only a lieutenant. As his superior officer it’s a very simple matter for me to countermand that order. I tell him to do something and he salutes and says “Yes sir”.’

‘You might reasonably think so,’ said the count. ‘Especially in a German army that prides itself on obeying orders. However it’s our belief that Sloventzik’s been put up to this by Field Marshal von Kluge, who as I’m sure you know is a Silesian
German himself. From Posen. And has no love for ethnic Poles like us.’

This was more complicated; it wasn’t just Von Kluge who, like the late Paul von Hindenburg, was a Silesian German, it was Colonel von Gersdorff and, to my knowledge, several other senior officers at Army Group Centre, many of them proud Prussian aristocrats who had narrowly escaped becoming Poles because of the treaty of Versailles.

‘I see what you mean.’ I offered them each a cigarette which, Polish cigarettes being what they were, the two Poles accepted gratefully. ‘And you’re absolutely right. This does sound as if the field marshal is behind it. I don’t think his sense of honour and pride has ever recovered from the Seven Years War. However I can promise you gentlemen that this matter is being followed at the highest levels in Berlin. It was Doctor Goebbels himself who insisted that you be given control of the investigation here in Katyn. He’s told me nothing is to be done that interferes in any way with your pre-eminent role in this matter. My own orders make it quite clear that the German military authorities in Smolensk are to give the Polish Red Cross every assistance.’

I smiled to myself and put my hand to my mouth as if I might belch after swallowing such egregious lies whole – not just the lies Goebbels told, but the lies I’d told myself.

‘It may be however that these orders need to be heard again, in certain quarters. I can even write it down in the lieutenant’s ring-file if you like. Just to make sure that he remembers.’

‘Thank you,’ said Archdeacon Jasinski. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’

I figured he was the person in the Polish Red Cross probably most in fear of the Nazis. According to what Freiherr von Gersdorff had told me, when Jasinski had been the bishop of
Lodz, he had been subjected to close home arrest. The governor of the Kalisz-Lodz District, one Friedrich Übelhör, had forced him to sweep the square in front of the cathedral, while his auxiliary bishop, Monsignor Tomczak, had been sent to a concentration camp after suffering a brutal beating. That kind of thing can test a man’s faith not just in his fellow men but in God, too. I’d seen the archdeacon crossing himself on the edge of grave number one. He did it with such alacrity that I wondered if he was reminding himself of what he believed, although the evidence of his own eyes ought to have told him that God was not to be found in Katyn Wood and probably nowhere else either. Even the cathedral felt more like a museum.

I smiled. ‘Don’t thank me yet, archdeacon. Give me time here. History teaches that my superiors can always be depended on to entertain me with one disappointment heaped on top of another.’

‘One more thing,’ said the count.

‘Two,’ said the archdeacon. ‘The Szkola Podchorąžych.’

‘Please.’ I glanced at my wristwatch. ‘I think I’m nearing the limit of my usefulness.’

‘The lieutenant’s ring-file contains other mistakes that we’ve tried to bring to his attention,’ said the count. ‘He says the trees on the grave are four years old, but this would mean they were planted in 1939, a year before—’

‘I think we can all remember what happened in 1939,’ I said.

‘And he says the epaulettes on some of the victims have the initials “J.P.” when they are actually “S.P.”, which is the Polish Cadet Officers’ School.’

‘If you’ll forgive me, count, I have to go to the airport and help look after the distinguished medical representatives of
twelve countries, not to mention journalists and other Red Cross officials.’

‘Of course,’ said the count.

‘But rest assured, gentlemen, I promise to speak to Berlin today about those two other matters we discussed. It will give me something to do.’

*

Buhtz, Ines, Sloventzik and I went in a coach to fetch the experts and their assistants from the airport. I had a peculiar feeling about that coach. Supplied by the SS, it had new windows and the floor under the carpet was made of thick steel; beneath the hood was a Saurer engine, but it was fitted with a curious gas generator that ran on wood chips – you could smell the huge amounts of carbon monoxide it created long after the thing had gone – because, according to the driver, gasoline was short and all our spare supplies were now being directed north to supply the Ninth Army. That much was true, I knew, but still, I had a peculiar feeling about that coach.

Ines told me she was very excited because the international commission included all of the most distinguished names in the field of forensic medicine outside of Great Britain and the United States, and that she hoped to learn much from these men during their three days in Smolensk. She was as eager as if she’d been a little girl who was going to meet her favourite movie stars. Professor Naville of Geneva and Professor Cortes of Madrid were the two she declared to be specially eminent in her field; the rest were from as far afield as Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Holland, Bohemia and Moravia, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and France. Not officially part of the international commission, Buhtz and Ines were going to present the experts
with evidence they had collected from the nine hundred and eight bodies that had so far been exhumed; but the commission’s all-important report was to be compiled without any German participation. Being the ringmaster suited Buhtz just fine. He was tired. Since the beginning of April he’d carried out more post-mortems than an Etruscan soothsayer and identified almost seven hundred men. Ines had performed several dozen post-mortems herself, and when it was all over and done with I wondered what she’d make of my own entrails.

In truth, none of the great experts were exciting to look at; they were mostly a collection of elderly-looking, pipe-smoking gentlemen wearing gabardine coats with battered briefcases and equally battered felt hats. None of them looked remotely like what this was: a lot of money and a great deal of trouble. And it was perhaps no more a genuine international commission of inquiry than a pathologists’ jamboree. What it was – if anyone had stopped and listened to the operetta of silence that had been written by the Nazis – was the most expensive piece of propaganda ever dreamed up by the doctor; with a little help from me, of course. I had my own reasons for that, and if things worked out, then maybe I’d have achieved something important.

When the plane landed and the experts were counted off on Sloventzik’s clipboard we learned that at the last minute Professor Cortes from Spain had decided not to come and Dr Agapito Girauta Berruguete, who was a professor of Pathological Anatomy at Madrid University, had taken his place.

This seemed to be disturbing news to Ines, who was silent all the way from the airport back to Krasny Bor. I asked her about it but she smiled a sad little smile and said it was nothing in the kind of way that made you think that there
was more in it than she was prepared to tell – the way women sometimes do. It’s what makes them mysterious to men and, on occasion, infuriating too. But they will have their secrets, and there’s no good worrying at it like a dog with its teeth clenched on a piece of rag; the best thing you can do when that happens is just to let it go.

*

After leaving the experts to get themselves settled in at Krasny Bor, I drove the short distance back to the castle to send a telegram to the ministry asking them to countermand any local orders about a separate burial for
Volksdeutsche
Polish officers and to correct the numbers of dead in the official broadcasts. Lutz was the signaller on duty. While I was waiting for a reply from the Wilhelmstrasse, I offered him a cigarette and asked what he knew about the call-girl ring that Ribe and Quidde had been running.

‘I knew they were working some kind of racket, but I didn’t know it was girls,’ he said. ‘I thought it was army surplus, that kind of thing. Cigarettes, saccharin, a little bit of petrol.’

‘Captain Hammerschmidt from the Gestapo appears to have been a regular client,’ I said. ‘Which would explain why he was so reluctant to follow up on your initial report.’

‘I see.’

‘That might also be what got them killed,’ I added. ‘Maybe someone thought he wasn’t getting his proper cut.’ I shook my head. ‘Any ideas?’

‘None,’ admitted Lutz.

‘It didn’t bother you, for example, that you were being kept out of the action.’

‘Not enough to kill them,’ he said, calmly. ‘If that’s what you mean.’

‘It is.’

Lutz shrugged and might have said something more but for the fact that the telegraph sprang into action.

‘This looks like your reply from Berlin,’ he said, as he began to decipher the message.

When he’d finished, he turned to the typewriter.

‘No need to type it out,’ I said. ‘I can read your capital letters.’

The message was from Goebbels himself; it read:

TOP SECRET. KATYN INCIDENT HAS TAKEN SENSATIONAL TURN. SOVIETS HAVE BROKEN OFF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH POLES BECAUSE OF ‘ATTITUDE OF POLISH GOVERNMENT IN EXILE’. REUTERS ISSUED EARLIER REPORT TO THIS EFFECT. AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION NOW DIVIDED. AM WITHHOLDING NEWS HERE IN GERMANY FOR PRESENT, HOWEVER. POLES ARE BEING BLAMED BY BRITISH GOVT FOR NAÏVELY PLAYING INTO OUR HANDS. I AWAIT MORE DEVELOPMENTS TO SEE WHAT I CAN DO WITH THIS NEWS. REPRESENTS A 100 PER CENT VICTORY FOR GERMAN PROPAGANDA. SELDOM IN THIS WAR HAS GERMAN PROPAGANDA REGISTERED SUCH A SUCCESS. WELL DONE TO YOU AND ALL CONCERNED AT KATYN WOOD. HAVE ASKED KEITEL IN CAPACITY AS CHIEF OF OKW TO ORDER VON KLUGE TO COMPLY WITH POLISH RED CROSS REQUEST REGARDING VOLKSDEUTSCHE. GOEBBELS.

‘All right,’ I told Lutz. ‘Now you can type this out neatly. There are others who need to see this, including the Polish Red Cross.’

When Lutz had finished typing out the message I folded it up and placed it carefully in an envelope. As I was leaving the castle I bumped into Alok Dyakov. As usual he was carrying the Mauser Safari rifle that had been a gift from the field marshal. Seeing me, he snatched off his cap respectfully and grinned, almost as if he knew that I knew he was there to
see Marusya, one of the castle kitchen maids with whom he had a romantic attachment.

‘Captain Gunther, sir,’ he said. ‘How are you, sir? Good to see you again.’

‘Dyakov,’ I said. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something. When we first met, Colonel Ahrens told me you were rescued from an NKVD murder squad that was going to shoot you. Is that right?’

‘Not a squad, sir. It was an individual NKVD officer called Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko and his blue-hat driver. German soldiers found me handcuffed to his car after I killed him, sir. He was taking me to prison in Smolensk, sir. Or possibly to execute. I hit him and then couldn’t find the key to the manacles. Lieutenant Voss found me sitting at the side of the road beside his body.’

‘And the NKVD arrested you because you were a German teacher. Is that right?’

‘Yes sir.’ He shrugged. ‘You are right. Today, if you are not working for NKVD and you speak German is virtually the same as to be a member of fifth-column community. How Peshkov stayed out of their hands I don’t know. Anyway, after 1941, when Germany attacked Russia, this made me suspicious to the authorities. It is the same as if I had been a Polish–Russian.’

‘Yes, I know.’ I gave him a cigarette. ‘Tell me, did you know any other NKVD officers in Smolensk?’

‘You mean other than Krivyenko? No, sir.’ He shook his head. ‘Mostly I tried just to keep out of their way. They’re easy to recognize, sir. NKVD wear a very distinctive uniform. Names I hear, sometimes. But like I say, I keep away from these men. Is only sensible thing to do.’

‘What names did you hear?’

Dyakov was thoughtful for a moment and then looked pained. ‘Yezhov, sir. Yagoda. These were famous names in NKVD. Everyone heard their names. And Beria. Him of course.’

‘I meant lower-ranking than those names.’

Dyakov shook his head. ‘It’s been a while, sir.’

‘Rudakov,’ I said. ‘Ever hear about him?’