A Man Without Breath (9 page)

‘Um, no, you’re right,’ he said. ‘They don’t particularly like it.’ He nodded. ‘And let me answer that question. About the SS. And what they’ve been up to around here.’

He led me a short distance away from the others. We walked carefully as the ground was icy and uneven under the snow. To me the Katyn Wood felt like a dismal place in a country that was full of equally dismal places. Cold air hung damp around us like a fine curtain, while elsewhere pockets of mist rolled into hollows in the ground like the smoke from invisible artillery. Crows growled their contempt for my inquiries in the tops of the trees, and overhead a barrage balloon was moored to prevent overflights by enemy aircraft. Ahrens lit another cigarette and yawned a steamy plume.

‘It’s hard to believe, but we prefer it here in winter,’ he said. ‘In just a few weeks from now this whole wood will be full of mosquitoes. They drive you mad. Just one of many things that drive you mad out here.’ He shook his head. ‘Look, Captain Gunther, none of us in this regiment is very political. Most of us just want to win this war quickly and go home – if such a thing is still possible after Stalingrad. When that happened, we all listened to the radio, to hear what Goebbels would say about it. Did you hear the speech? From the Sportspalast?’

‘I heard it.’ I shrugged. ‘I live in Berlin. It was so loud I could hear every word Joey said without even having to turn on the fucking radio.’

‘Then you recall how he asked the German people if they wanted a war more radical than anything ever imagined. Total war, he called it.’

‘He has quite a turn of phrase, does our Mahatma Propagandi.’

‘Yes. Only it seems to me – to all of us at the castle – that
total war is what we’ve had on this front since day one, and I don’t recall anyone asking any of us if this is what we wanted.’ Ahrens nodded at a line of new trees. ‘Over there is the road to Vitebsk. Vitebsk is less than a hundred kilometres west of here. Before the war there were fifty thousand Jews living there. As soon as the Wehrmacht took over the city, the Jews living there started to suffer. In July of 1941 a ghetto was established on the right bank of the Zapadnaya Dvina River and most of the Jews who hadn’t run away and joined the partisans or just emigrated east were rounded up and forced to live in it: about sixteen thousand people. A wooden stockade was built around the ghetto, and inside this conditions were very hard: forced labour, starvation rations. Probably as many as ten thousand died of hunger and disease. Meanwhile, at least two thousand of them were murdered on some pretext or another at a place called Mazurino. Then the orders came for the liquidation of the ghetto. I myself saw those orders on the teletype – orders from the Reichsführer SS in Berlin. The pretext was that there was typhoid in the ghetto. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t. I myself delivered a copy of those orders for Field Marshal von Kluge informing him of what was happening in his area. Later on I learned that about five thousand of the Jews who remained alive in the ghetto were driven out into the remote countryside, where they were all shot. That’s the trouble with being part of a signals regiment, captain. It’s very hard not to know what’s going on, but God knows I really wish I didn’t. So, to answer your question specifically – about that beehive you were referring to: halfway to Vitebsk is a town called Rudnya, and if I were you I should confine my inquiries to anywhere east of there. Understand?’

‘Yes sir. Thank you. Colonel, since you mentioned the
Mahatma, I have another question. Actually it was something my boss mentioned to me back in Berlin. About the Mahatma and his men.’

Ahrens nodded. ‘Ask it.’

‘Has anyone from the propaganda ministry ever been here?’

‘Here in Smolensk?’

‘No, here at the castle.’

‘At the castle? Why on earth would they come here?’

I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d been here to film all those Soviet POWs you told me about, that’s all. To help prove to the folks back home that we were winning this war.’

Of course, this wasn’t the reason I’d asked about the propaganda ministry, but I couldn’t see how I could explain my suspicions without calling the colonel a liar.

‘Do you think we’re winning this war?’ he asked.

‘Winning or losing,’ I said. ‘Neither one looks good for Germany. Not the Germany I know and love.’

Ahrens nodded. ‘There have been days,’ he said, ‘many days, when I find it hard to like what I am or what we’re doing, captain. I, too, love my country but not what’s being done in its name, and there are times when I can’t look my own reflection in the eye. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. And I recognize myself when I hear you talking treason.’

‘Then you’re in the right place,’ he said. ‘You hear as much as we do in the five hundred and thirty-seventh, then you’ll know that there’s plenty of treason talked in Smolensk. This might be one reason why the Leader is coming here on a morale-building visit.’

‘Hitler’s coming here to Smolensk?’

‘On Saturday. For a meeting with Von Kluge. That’s supposed
to be a secret by the way. So don’t mention it, will you? Although everyone and his dog seems to know about it.’

*

Alone, with an entrenching tool in my hand, I took a walk around the Katyn Wood. I went slowly down a slope into a dip in the ground that seemed to be a natural amphitheatre and even slower up the other side, with my army boots sounding like an old horse eating oats as they crunched down in the snow. I don’t know what I was looking for. The frozen ground underneath the snow was as hard as granite and my futile attempts at excavation merely amused the crows. A hammer and chisel might have yielded better results. In spite of the birch cross, it was hard to imagine much had ever taken place in that wood. I wondered if really anything of significance had happened there since Napoleon. Already it felt like I was on a wild goose chase. Besides, I cared little for the Poles. I’d never liked them any more than the English who, apparently able to ignore the role that perfidious Poland had played during the Czech crisis of 1938 – it wasn’t just the Nazis who had marched in there, it was the Poles, too, in pursuit of their own territorial claims – had stupidly come to the aid of Poland in 1939. The few bones I had seen back in the castle were evidence of nothing very much. A Russian soldier who had died in his foxhole perhaps and later been found by a hungry wolf? It was probably the best thing that could have happened to the Ivan given the awful situation Ahrens had described at Camp 126. Starving to death was easy to do in a world policed and patrolled by my own tender-hearted countrymen.

For half an hour I blundered around, getting colder. Even wearing gloves my hands felt frozen and my ears ached as if someone had hit them with the entrenching tool. What on
earth were we doing in this desolate permafrosted country, so very far from home? The living space Hitler craved so much was fit only for the wolves and crows. It made no sense at all, but then very little of what the Nazis did made much sense to me. But I doubt that I was the only one who was beginning to suspect that Stalingrad might have the same significance as the retreat of Napoleon’s Grand Army from Moscow: surely everyone except Hitler and the generals knew we were finished in Russia.

In the distance close to the road to Vitebsk a couple of sentries pretended to look the other way, but I could hear their laughter quite clearly: there was something about the Katyn Wood that had a curious effect on sound, holding it within the line of trees like water in a bowl. But their opinion just made me more determined to find something. Being bloody-minded and proving other people wrong is what being a detective is all about. It’s one of the things that made me so popular with my many friends and colleagues.

Scraping at the snow and occasionally reaching to pick something up, I found an empty packet of German cigarettes, a buckle off a German carbine sling, and a piece of twisted wire. Quite a haul for half an hour’s work. I was just about to call it a day when I turned too quickly on my heel, slipped and fell down the slope, twisting my knee in a way that left it feeling stiff and painful for days afterwards. I swore loudly, and still sitting in the snow picked up my crusher and hauled it back on my head. A glance at the sentries near the road revealed that they had their backs turned squarely to me, which probably meant that they didn’t want to be seen laughing at the SD officer who’d fallen on his arse.

I put down my hand to push myself up, which was when I found an object that was only part frozen to the ground. I
pulled hard and the object came away in my hand. It was a boot – a riding boot of the kind worn by an officer. I put the boot to one side and, still sitting, set to work scraping at the frozen ground on either side of me with the entrenching tool. A few minutes later I had a small metallic object in my hand. It was a button. I pocketed the button and recovering the boot, I stood up and limped back to the castle, where I washed my little find very carefully in warm water.

On the face of the button was an eagle.

*

In the afternoon I interviewed the Susanins, the Russian couple who helped to look after the 537th at Dnieper Castle. They were in their sixties and as wary and unsmiling as an old sepia photograph. Oleg Susanin wore a black peasant’s blouse with a belt, dark trousers, a grey felt hat and a longish beard; his wife looked not dissimilar. Since their German was better than my Russian but with a vocabulary that was restricted to food, fuel, laundry and bees, Ahrens had arranged for me to have the services of a translator from group headquarters – a Russian called Peshkov. He was a shifty-looking fellow with round pince-nez glasses and a Hitler moustache. He wore a German army greatcoat, a pair of German officer’s boots, and a red bow-tie with white polka-dots. Later on, Ahrens told me he’d grown the moustache in order to look more pro-German.

‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ I said. Peshkov spoke excellent German.

‘It’s an honour to be working for you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m entirely at your service while you’re in Smolensk. Day or night. You have only to ask. You can usually leave a message for me with the adjutant, sir. At Krasny Bor. I make myself available there every morning at nine o’clock precisely.’

But while Peshkov was quite fluent in German, he never smiled or laughed and was completely different from the Russian who had accompanied him to Dnieper Castle from group HQ at Krasny Bor, a man called Dyakov, who seemed to be a sort of local hunting guide and general servant for Von Kluge – his
Putzer
.

Ahrens explained that German soldiers had rescued Dyakov from an NKVD murder squad. ‘He’s quite a fellow,’ said Ahrens, as he continued to introduce me to the two Russians. ‘Aren’t you, Dyakov? A complete rogue, probably, but Field Marshal von Kluge seems to trust him implicitly, so I’ve no choice but to trust him, too.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Dyakov.

‘He seems to have a soft spot for Marusya, one of our kitchen maids, so when he’s not with Von Kluge he’s usually here, aren’t you, Dyakov?’

Dyakov shrugged. ‘This is very special girl, sir. I should like to marry her but Marusya says no and, until she does, I must keep trying. If there was any work for her somewhere else I guess I’d be there instead.’

‘Peshkov on the other hand hasn’t a soft spot for anyone other than Peshkov,’ added Ahrens. ‘Isn’t that right, Peshkov?’

Peshkov shrugged. ‘A man has to make a living, sir.’

‘We think he might be a secret Jew,’ continued Ahrens, ‘but no one can be bothered to find out for sure. Besides, his German is so good it would be a shame if we had to get rid of him.’

Both Peshkov and Dyakov were Zeps – Zeppelin volunteers, which is what we called all the Russians who worked for us who were not POWs; those were Hiwis. Dyakov wore a heavy coat with a lambswool collar, a fur hat and a pair of black leather German pilot’s gloves that he said were a gift from
the field marshal, just like the Mauser Safari rifle he carried on a sheepskin strap over his shoulder. Dyakov was a tall, dark, curly-haired fellow with a thick beard, hands the size of a balalaika, and unlike Peshkov his face always wore a broad and engaging smile.

‘You take the field marshal wolf-hunting,’ I said to Dyakov. ‘Is that right?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘See many wolves around here?’

‘Me? No. But it’s been a very cold winter. Hunger brings them nearer to the city in search of scraps. A wolf can get a good meal out of an old piece of leather, you know.’

We all went to sit in the castle kitchen, which was the warmest place in the house, and drank black Russian tea from a battered samovar, sweetening it with some of the honey the couple made. The delicious smell of the sweetened tea wasn’t quite strong enough to mask the dark smell of the Russians.

Peshkov liked the tea but he didn’t much like the Susanins. He spoke roughly to them – rougher than I would have liked under the circumstances.

‘Ask them if they remember any Poles in this area,’ I told him.

Peshkov put the question and then translated what Susanin had said. ‘He says that in the spring of 1940 he saw more than two hundred Poles in uniform in railway trucks at Gnezdovo station. The train waited for an hour or so and then started again, going south-east toward Voronezh.’

‘How did they know they were Poles?’

Peshkov repeated the question in Russian and then answered: ‘One of the men in the railway wagons asked Susanin where they were. The man said he was Polish then.’

‘What was that word they used?’ I asked ‘
Stolypinkas
?’

Peshkov shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard it before.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Dyakov. ‘
Stolypinkas
were the prison wagons named after the Russian prime minister who introduced them under the tsars. To deport Russians to Siberia.’

‘How far is the station from here?’ I asked.

‘About five kilometres west,’ said Peshkov.

‘Did any of these Poles get out of the wagons?’

‘Get out? Why should they get out, sir?’ asked Peshkov.

‘To stretch their legs, perhaps. Or be taken somewhere else?’

Peshkov translated, listened to Susanin’s answer, and then shook his head. ‘No, none of them. He’s sure of that. The doors remained chained, sir.’