A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther Mystery 9) Page 6

  ‘If they could get this far,’ said someone else.

  ‘They weren’t supposed to get as far as Berlin’ said another, ‘but somehow, against all predictions, they did.’

  We landed a few miles west of the Wolf’s Lair, and I went to look for an early lunch or a late breakfast but, finding neither, I sat in a hut that was almost as cold as the plane and ate some meagre cheese sandwiches I had brought with me just in case. I didn’t see Von Dohnanyi again until we were back on the plane.

  The air between Rastenburg and Minsk was rougher, and from time to time the Junkers would drop like a stone before hitting the bottom of the pocket like a water bucket in a well. It wasn’t long before Von Dohnanyi was starting to look very green.

  ‘Perhaps you should drink some of those spirits,’ I said, which was a crude way of telling him that I wouldn’t have minded a drop of it myself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your friend’s Cointreau. You should drink some to settle your stomach.’

  He looked baffled for a minute and then shook his head, weakly.

  One of the other passengers, an SS lieutenant who had boarded the plane at Rastenburg, produced a hip flask of peach schnapps and handed it around. I took a bite off it just as we hit another big air pocket, and this one seemed to jolt all the life out of Von Dohnanyi, who fell onto the fuselage floor in a dead faint. Overcoming my natural instinct, which was always to leave the people in the first class to look after themselves, I knelt down beside him, loosened the collar on his tunic and poured some of the lieutenant’s schnapps between his lips. That was when I saw the address on Von Dohnanyi’s parcel, which was still under his seat.

  Colonel Helmuth Stieff, Wehrmacht Coordination Dept., Anger Castle, Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, Prussia.

  Von Dohnanyi opened his eyes, sighed and then sat up.

  ‘You just fainted, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Might be best if you lay on the floor for a while.’

  So he did, and actually managed to sleep for a couple of hours while from time to time I wondered if Von Dohnanyi had simply forgotten to deliver his bottle of Cointreau to his friend Colonel Stieff at the Wolf’s Lair, or if perhaps he had changed his mind about handing over such a generous present. If the booze was anything like the coffee it was certain to be high-quality stuff, much too good to give away. He could hardly have forgotten about the parcel, since I was certain he had taken it with him when we got off the plane in Rastenburg. So why hadn’t he given it to one of the many orderlies for delivery to Colonel Stieff, or even, if he didn’t trust them, to one of the other staff officers who were going straight to the Wolf’s Lair? Of course one of them might equally have told von Dohnanyi that Stieff was no longer at the Wolf’s Lair – that would have explained everything. But like an itch that kept on coming back, no amount of scratching I did seemed to take away from the fact that Von Dohnanyi’s failure to deliver his precious bottle just seemed strange.

  There’s not an awful lot to do on a four-hour flight between Rastenburg and Minsk.

  *

  It was still light by the time we reached Smolensk several hours later, but only just. For almost an hour before that we’d been flying over an endless, thick green carpet of trees. It seemed there were more trees in Russia than anywhere else on earth. There were so many trees that at times the Junkers seemed almost immobile in the air and I felt as if we were drifting over a primordial landscape. I suppose Russia is as near as you can get to what the earth must have been like thousands of years ago – in more ways than one; probably it was an excellent place to be a squirrel, although perhaps not such an excellent place to be a man. If you were intent on hiding the bodies of thousands of Jews or Polish officers, this looked like a good place to do it. You could have hidden all manner of crimes in a landscape like the one below our aircraft, and the sight of it filled me with me dread not just for what I might find down there but also for what I might find myself faced with again. It was only a dark possibility, but I knew instinctively that in the winter of 1943 this was no place to be an SD officer with a guilty conscience.

  Von Dohnanyi had made a full recovery by the time a clearing in the forest finally appeared to the north of the city like a long green swimming pool, and we landed. Steps were wheeled quickly into place on the tarmac and we stepped out into a wind that quickly cut a jagged hole in my greatcoat, then my torso, leaving me feeling as cold as a frozen herring and, in the centre of that enormous tract of forest, just as out of place. I pulled my crusher about my frozen ears and looked around for a sign of someone from the signals regiment who was supposed to meet me. Meanwhile my erstwhile travelling companion paid me no attention as he came down the steps of the aircraft and was immediately met by two senior officers – one of them a general with more fur on his collar than an Eskimo – and seemed quite indifferent to my own lack of transport as, laughing loudly, he and his pals shook hands while an orderly loaded his luggage into their large staff car.

  A Tatra with a little black and yellow flag bearing the number 537 on the hood drew up next to the staff car and two officers climbed out. Seeing the general, the two officers saluted, were cursorily acknowledged, and then walked toward me. The Tatra had its top up but there were no windows and it seemed another cold journey lay ahead of me.

  ‘Captain Gunther?’ said the taller man.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘I’m Lieutenant-Colonel Ahrens, of the 537th Signals,’ he said. ‘This is Lieutenant Rex, my adjutant. Welcome to Smolensk. Rex was going to meet you by himself, but at the last minute I thought I’d join him and put you fully in the picture on the way back to the castle.’

  ‘I’m very glad you did, sir.’

  A moment later the staff car drove away.

  ‘Who were the flamingos?’ I asked.

  ‘General von Tresckow,’ said Ahrens. ‘With Colonel von Gersdorff. I can’t say I recognized the third officer.’ Ahrens had a lugubrious sort of face – he was not unhandsome – and an even more lugubrious voice.

  ‘Ah, that explains it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The third officer – the one you didn’t recognize, the one who got off the plane – he was also an aristocrat,’ I explained.

  ‘It figures,’ said Ahrens. ‘Field Marshal von Kluge runs Army Group HQ like it’s a branch of the German Club. I get my orders from General Oberhauser. He’s a professional soldier, like me. He’s not an aristocrat; and not so bad, as staff officers go. My predecessor Colonel Bedenck used to say that you never really know exactly how many staff officers there are until you try and get into an air-raid shelter.’

  ‘I like the sound of your old colonel,’ I said, walking toward the Tatra. ‘He and I sound as if we’re cut from the same cloth.’

  ‘Your cloth is a little darker than his, perhaps,’ said Ahrens pointedly. ‘Especially the cloth of your other uniform – the dress one. After what he saw in Minsk, Bedenck could hardly bear to be in the same room as an officer of the SS or SD. Since you’re to be billeted with us for security reasons, I might as well confess I feel much the same way. I was a little surprised when Major-General Oster from the Abwehr telephoned and told me that the Bureau was sending an SD man down here. There’s little love lost between the SD and the Wehrmacht in my corner.’

  I grinned. ‘I appreciate a man who comes right out and says what’s on his mind. There’s not a lot of that around since Stalingrad. Especially in uniform. So as one professional to another let me tell you this. My other uniform is a cheap suit and a felt hat. I’m not the Gestapo, I’m just a policeman from Kripo who used to work homicide, and I’m not here to spy on anyone. I intend going home to Berlin just as soon as I’ve finished looking at all the evidence you’ve gathered, but I tell you frankly sir, mostly I’m just looking out for myself, and I don’t give a damn what your secrets are.’

  I put my hand on a long shovel that was attached to the Tatra’s bonnet. The little cars were no good in mud or on snow and frequently you had to dig t
hem out or shovel gravel under the wheels: there was probably a sack of it behind the back seat.

  ‘But if I am lying to you, colonel, you have my permission to bang me on the head with this and have your men bury me in the woods. On the other hand, you might think I’ve already said enough to bury me yourself.’

  ‘Fair enough, captain.’ Colonel Ahrens smiled and then took out a little cigarette case. He offered one to me and to his lieutenant. ‘I appreciate your candour.’

  We puffed them into life until it was almost impossible to distinguish smoke from our hot breath in freezing cold air.

  ‘Now then,’ I said. ‘You mentioned something about being billeted with you? If I didn’t need it to go back to Berlin, I could cheerfully hope that I never again saw a Junkers 52.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ahrens. ‘You must be exhausted.’

  We climbed into the Tatra. A corporal named Rose was at the wheel, and we were soon bowling along quite a decent road.

  *

  ‘You’ll be staying with us in the castle,’ said Ahrens. ‘That’s Dnieper Castle, which is along the main road to Vitebsk. Nearly all of Army Group Centre, the Air Force Corps, the Gestapo and my lot are located west of Smolensk, in and around a place called Krasny Bor. The General Staff is headquartered in a nearby health resort which is as good as it gets around here, but we’re not badly off at the castle in signals. Are we, Rex?’

  ‘No sir. We’re well set, I think.’

  ‘There’s a cinema and a sauna – there’s even a rifle range. Grub’s pretty good, you’ll be glad to hear. Most of us – at least the officers anyway – we don’t actually go into Smolensk itself very much at all.’ Ahrens waved at some onion-dome spires on the horizon to our left. ‘But it’s not a bad place, to be honest. Rather historic, really. There are more churches hereabouts than you could polish the floor with. Rex is your man for that sort of thing, aren’t you lieutenant?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Rex. ‘There’s a fine cathedral, captain. The Assumption. I do recommend you see that while you’re here. That is, if you’re not too busy. By rights it shouldn’t be there at all: during the siege of Smolensk at the start of the seventeenth century, the defenders of the city locked themselves in the crypt where there was an ammunition depot and blew it and themselves up to prevent it from falling into Polish hands. History repeats itself, of course. The local NKVD used to keep some of its own personnel and domestic case files in the crypt of the Assumption Cathedral – to protect them against the Luftwaffe – and when it became clear that the city was about to be captured by us they tried to blow them up, like they did in Kiev, at the city’s Duma building. Only the explosives didn’t go off.’

  ‘I knew there was a reason it wasn’t on my itinerary.’

  ‘Oh, the cathedral is quite safe,’ said Rex. ‘Most of the explosive has been removed, but our engineers think there are still lots of hidden bombs in the crypt. One of our men had his face blown off when he opened a filing cabinet down there. So it’s just the crypt that remains out of bounds to visitors. Most of the material is of limited military intelligence value, and probably out of date by now, so the more time that passes the less important it seems to risk looking at it.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s really a very impressive building. Napoleon certainly thought so.’

  ‘I had no idea he got this far,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Rex. ‘He really was the Hitler of—’ he stopped, mid-sentence.

  ‘The Hitler of his day,’ I said, smiling at the nervous lieutenant. ‘Yes, I can see how that comparison works very well for us all.’

  ‘We’re not used to visitors, as you can see,’ said Ahrens. ‘On the whole we keep ourselves to ourselves. For no other reason other than secrecy. Well, you’d expect tight security with a signals regiment. We have a map room that indicates the disposition of all our troops from which our future military intentions are plain; and of course all of the group’s communications come through us. It goes without saying that this room and the actual telephone room are barred to ordinary access, but we do have lots of Ivans working at the castle – four Hiwis who are permanently on site and some female personnel who come in every day from Smolensk to cook and skivvy for us. But every German unit has Ivans working for them in Smolensk.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘Three officers including myself and about twenty non-commissioned officers and men,’ said Ahrens.

  ‘And how long have you been here?’

  ‘Me personally? Since the end of November 1941. If I remember rightly, on thirtieth November.’

  ‘What about partisans? Get any trouble from them?’

  ‘None to speak of. At least not close to Smolensk. But we have had air attacks.’

  ‘Really? The pilot on the plane said this was too far east for the Ivan air force.’

  ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he? The Luftwaffe is under strict orders to maintain that bullshit argument. But it’s just not true. No, we’ve had air attacks all right. One of the troop houses in our compound was badly damaged early last year. Since then we’ve had a big problem with German troops cutting down the wood around the castle for fuel. That’s the Katyn Wood. The trees provide us with excellent anti-aircraft cover, so I’ve had to forbid entry to the Katyn Wood to all German soldiers. It’s caused problems because this obliges our troops to forage further afield, which they’re reluctant to do, of course, because that exposes them to the risk of partisan attack.’

  This was the first time I’d heard the name Katyn Wood.

  ‘So tell me about this body. The one the wolf discovered.’ I laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Only that we’ve got a wolf and some woodcutters, and a castle. I can’t help thinking there should be a couple of lost children in this story, not to mention a wicked wizard.’

  ‘Maybe you’re it, captain.’

  ‘Maybe I am. I do make a wicked fire-tongs punch. At least I used to when you could get any brown rum and oranges.’

  ‘Fire-tongs punch.’ Ahrens repeated the words dreamily and shook his head. ‘Yes, I’d almost forgotten that.’

  ‘Me too until I mentioned it.’ I shivered.

  ‘I could certainly use a cup now,’ said Lieutenant Rex.

  ‘Just another enjoyable thing that sneaked out of Germany’s back door and left no forwarding address,’ I said.

  ‘You know, you’re a strange fellow for an SD officer,’ said Ahrens.

  ‘That’s what General Heydrich told me once.’ I shrugged. ‘Words to that effect anyway – I’m not exactly sure. He had me chained to a wall and was torturing my girlfriend at the time.’

  I laughed at their obvious discomfort, which in truth was probably less than mine. I was hardly as used to the cold as they were, and the rush of freezing air through the windowless Tatra took my breath away.

  ‘You were about to say, about the body,’ I said.

  ‘Back in November 1941, shortly after I arrived in Smolensk, one of my men pointed out that there was a sort of mound in our little wood and that upon this mound was a birch cross. The Hiwis mentioned some shootings had taken place in the Katyn Wood the year before. Shortly after that I said something about it in passing to Colonel von Gersdorff, who’s our local chief of intelligence, and he said he too had heard something about this, but that I shouldn’t be surprised because this kind of Bolshevik brutality was exactly what we were fighting against.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what he would say, I suppose.’

  ‘Then in January I saw a wolf in our wood, which was unusual because they don’t come so near the city.’

  ‘Like the partisans,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. Mostly they stay further west. Von Kluge hunts them with his own Putzer, who’s a Russian.’

  ‘So he’s not particularly worried about partisans?’

  ‘Hardly. He used to go after wild boar, but in winter he prefers to hunt wolves from a plane – a Storch he keeps down here. Doesn’t even bother t
o land and collect the fur, most of the time. I think he just likes killing things.’

  ‘Around these parts that’s infectious,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you were saying about the wolf.’

  ‘It had been on the mound in the Katyn Wood, next to the cross, and had dug up some human bones, which must have taken a while as the ground is still like iron. I suppose it was hungry. I had a doctor take a look at the remains and he declared that they were human. I decided it must be a soldier’s grave and informed the officer in charge of war graves around here. I also reported the discovery to Lieutenant Voss of the field police. And I put it in my report to group, who must have passed it on to the Abwehr, because they telephoned and said you were coming. They also told me not to talk about it with anyone else.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Until now, no.’

  ‘Good. Let’s keep it that way.’

  It was dark by the time we reached the castle, which wasn’t really a castle at all, but a two-storey white stucco villa of about fourteen to fifteen rooms, one of which was assigned temporarily to me. After an excellent dinner with real meat and potatoes I went with Ahrens on a short tour, and it quickly became obvious that he was rather proud of his ‘castle’ and even prouder of his men. The villa was warm and hospitable, with a large roaring log fire in the main entrance hall, and, as Ahrens had promised, there was even a small cinema where once a week a German film was screened. But Ahrens was especially proud of his home-made honey because, with the help of a local Russian couple, he kept an apiary in the castle grounds. Clearly his men loved him. There were worse places to see out a war than Dnieper Castle, and besides, it’s hard to dislike a man who is so enthusiastic about bees and honey. The honey was delicious, there was plenty of hot water for a bath, and my bed was warm and comfortable.

  Fuelled up on honey and schnapps, I slept like a worker bee in a temperature-controlled hive and dreamed about a crooked house with a witch in it and being lost in the woods with a wolf prowling around. The house even had a sauna and a small cinema and venison for supper. It wasn’t a nightmare because the witch turned out to like sitting in the sauna, which was how we got to know each other a lot better. You can get to know anyone well in a sauna, even a witch.