A Man Without Breath (51 page)

‘The usual NKVD cloth-bound identity booklets. And in the driver’s case his licence, his Komsomol Party ID book, some transit coupons, and a certificate for carrying a gun.’

‘I hope you kept those documents,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid the originals were destroyed in a fire with a lot of other documents,’ said Voss. ‘I think one of the officers was called Krivyenko.’

‘Destroyed?’

‘Yes,’ said Voss. ‘Not long after we moved into our billet at Grushtshenki there was a mortar attack by partisans.’

‘I see. That was very convenient, too. For Dyakov.’

‘I expect I have photographs of those at the Abwehr offices in Smolensk,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘It’s standard practice for the Abwehr to keep a photographic record of all captured NKVD documentation.’

‘Does Dyakov know that?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘No time like the present,’ I said. ‘Shall we take a look?’

On the drive to the army Kommandatura I had some more questions about Dyakov.

‘How did he come to meet the field marshal, for God’s sake?’ I asked.

Von Gersdorff cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘I’m afraid that’s my fault,’ he said. ‘You see I handled the interrogation. I questioned him to see what he could tell us about the NKVD. The trouble with that Commissar Order was that we never got any good intelligence, and to have one of their own prisoners was about the next best thing. He was actually very helpful. Or so it seemed at the time. During the course of this interview Dyakov and I got talking about what kind of game there is to hunt around here.’

‘Of course,’ I said lightly.

‘I was hoping for some deer, but Dyakov told me that all of the deer had been killed by local hunters for food the previous winter but that there were still plenty of wild boar about and if I was interested he could show me where all the best spots were and even organize a drive for us. I happened to mention this to Von Kluge, who as you know is a very keen hunter, and he got very excited at the prospect of shooting
wild boar in Russia – at his estate in Prussia there are several drives like that a year. I hadn’t seen him quite so happy since we captured Smolensk. A boar hunt was duly organized, for several guns – the field marshal, the general, myself, Von Boeselager, Von Schlabrendorff and other senior officers – and I have to say it was very successful. I think we got three or four. The field marshal was delighted, and almost immediately he ordered another drive, which was equally successful. After that, he decided to make Dyakov his
Putzer
, since when there have been more shoots, although lately the wild boar seem to have disappeared – I think we shot them all, quite frankly – which is why the field marshal now goes after wolves, not to mention hare and rabbit and pheasant. Dyakov seems to know where all the good spots are. Voss is right; I think it’s much more likely the fellow was a local poacher.’

‘Not to mention a murderer,’ I said.

Von Gersdorff looked sheepish. ‘I could hardly have known something like that would happen. In many ways Dyakov is a very affable sort of chap. It’s just that since the field marshal took him under his wing he’s become a law unto himself and insufferably arrogant, as you witnessed for yourself the other night.’

‘Not to mention a murderer,’ I repeated.

‘Yes, yes, you’ve made your point.’

‘To you,’ I said. ‘But if it’s going to stick I’m going to need more than a damned stripper clip. So let’s hope we find something in the Abwehr files.’

The Abwehr office in the Smolensk Kommandatura overlooked a small garden that was planted with vegetables and faced onto the windows of the local German foreign ministry. Beyond that you could see the jagged crenellations on top of the eastern Kremlin. On the wall of the office was a map of
the Smolensk Oblast and a larger one of Russia, with the front clearly marked in red and uncomfortably nearer than I had previously supposed. Kursk – which was where German armour was now grouped before the Red Army – was only five hundred kilometres to the south-west of us. If Russian tanks broke through our lines, they could reach Smolensk in just ten days.

A young duty officer with an accent so astonishingly upper-class that I almost laughed – where did they get these people? I wondered – was on the telephone and quickly concluded his conversation when we appeared in the door. He stood up and saluted smartly. Von Gersdorff, whose manners were normally impeccable, went straight to the filing cabinets without bothering to introduce us and started to hunt through the drawers.

‘What was that you were saying about the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, Lieutenant Nass?’ he murmured.

‘The reports from Brigadier Stroop indicate that all resistance has ended, sir.’

‘We’ve heard that before,’ he said. ‘I’m amazed the resistance has lasted so long. Women and small boys fighting the furious might of the SS. Mark my words, gentlemen, this won’t be the last we hear of it. In a month’s time the yids will still be coming up from their crypts and their cellars.’

Finally he found the file he was looking for and laid it on a map table by the window.

He showed me the photographs of the documents found on the dead NKVD men and on Alok Dyakov.

‘The
propiska
found on Dyakov tells us nothing,’ I said. ‘There’s no photograph and it could belong to anyone. At least anyone called Alok Dyakov.’

I spent the next few minutes staring closely at the pictures
of the two NKVD identity cards – one in the name of Major Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko and the other in the name of Sergeant Nikolai Nikolayevich Yushko, an NKVD driver.

‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Von Gersdorff.

‘This one,’ I said, showing the two men the picture of Krivyenko’s identity card. ‘I’m not sure about this one.’

‘Why?’ asked Voss.

‘The right-hand page is clear enough,’ I remarked. ‘It’s not so easy to be sure without the original document in my hands, but the stamp on the picture page on the left looks suspiciously faint on the bottom right-hand corner photograph. Almost as if it’s been taken off something else and stuck on. Plus the circumference of the stamp seem slightly out of line.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Voss. ‘I hadn’t noticed that before.’

‘It would have been better if you had noticed it at the time,’ I said, pointedly.

‘So what are you saying, Gunther?’ asked Von Gersdorff.

‘That maybe Dyakov is really Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko?’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But just think about it for a minute. You’re a major in an NKVD car with a prisoner when you realize that the Germans are probably just a few miles down the road – that you’re going to be captured at any moment, which means an automatic death sentence for NKVD officers. Don’t forget that Commissar Order. So what do you do? Perhaps you shoot your own driver and then force your prisoner – the real Alok Dyakov – to undress and put on your NKVD uniform. Then you put on his clothes and murder him, too. You take the picture from Dyakov’s internal passport and use it to replace the one on your own NKVD identity card. They were found near a farm, so maybe he could have used some egg white to stick the picture down. Or maybe some grease off the axle, I don’t know. Then you destroy your own
picture and the real Dyakov’s internal passport – you can maybe get away with one fake document but not two. Next you drive the GAZ off the road and make things look like an accident. Your last action is to handcuff yourself to the handrail and wait for rescue as Alok Dyakov. What German could argue with a man who had been such an obvious prisoner of the NKVD? Especially a man who speaks good German. Almost automatically you would be less suspicious of him.’

‘That’s right,’ said Voss, who was still smarting from my earlier comment. ‘We didn’t suspect him at all. Well, you don’t, do you, when you find a man who’s a prisoner of the Reds? You just assume – besides my men were tired. We’d been on the go for days.’

‘That’s all right, lieutenant,’ I told him. ‘Better men than you have fallen for Russian tricks like that. Our government has been treating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as if it was gospel ever since the nineteen-twenties.’

‘The way you tell that story, Gunther,’ said Von Gersdorff, ‘it sounds obvious; but it would take a hell of a lot of nerve to pull it off.’

I turned to Voss. ‘About how many so-called commissars did your unit execute, lieutenant?’

Voss shrugged. ‘Lost count. Forty or fifty at least. Eventually it was like shooting rabbits, quite frankly.’

‘Then Dyakov – let’s call him that for now shall we? – he had nothing to lose, I’d have thought. Shot summarily, or shot after a game attempt at remaining alive.’

‘Yes, but having deceived us,’ asked Von Gersdorff, ‘why not just slip away back to your own lines, one night?’

‘And give up a nice little berth here in Smolensk? The field marshal’s confidence? Three meals a day? As much booze and cigarettes as you can handle? Not to mention an excellent
opportunity to spy on us – perhaps even carry out some small acts of sabotage and murder? No, I should say he’s well set here. Besides, his own lines are hundreds of kilometres away. At any time on that road he could be arrested and then shot by the field police. And if ever he did get back to his own lines, then what? It’s generally held that Stalin doesn’t trust men who’ve been in German custody. Chances are he’d end up with a bullet in the back of the head and a shallow grave, just like those fucking Polacks.’

‘You’re very persuasive,’ admitted Lieutenant Voss. ‘If this was any Ivan but Dyakov you could have him in jail by now. But all this is just a theory, isn’t it? None of it proves anything.’

‘He’s right,’ agreed Von Gersdorff. ‘Without those original identity papers you’ve still got nothing.’

I thought for a moment. ‘What you were saying just a moment ago, about the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. Coming up from their crypts and their cellars.’

‘One has to admire courage like that. And to deplore the kind of treatment that brings about a situation where the German military behaves like an army of
condottieri
from the Middle Ages. I know I do, and many others besides me.’

Von Gersdorff bit his lip for a moment and shook his head bitterly. I tried to interrupt with an idea I’d just had, but seeing the colonel had hardly finished I kicked the door shut in case anyone heard our raised voices – even after Stalingrad there were plenty of men serving with the Wehrmacht in Smolensk who still worshipped Adolf Hitler.

‘This whole exercise in Katyn Wood – aren’t the Reds awful? this is the kind of Bolshevik barbarism that Germany is fighting against – it’s all bullshit while we’re busy blowing up synagogues and firing tank rounds at schoolboys with Molotov
cocktails. What, do we think the world hasn’t noticed what we’re doing in Warsaw? Do we honestly believe that public opinion is going to ignore heroism like that? Are we really expecting that the Americans are ever going to come over to our side after we’ve murdered thousands of lightly armed Jews in Poland on the strength of what we’re uncovering here in Smolensk?’ He made a fist and held it front of his face for a moment as if wishing he could hit someone with it – me probably. ‘This Warsaw ghetto uprising has been going on since January 18th, long before anyone found a human bone in Katyn Wood, and it’s the scandal of Europe. What kind of a propaganda minister is it who thinks that the corpses of thirteen thousand Jewish insurgents can be hidden away or ignored while we bring the world’s reporters here to show them the bodies of four thousand dead Polacks? That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘When you put it like that,’ I said, ‘it does sound ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous?’ Von Gersdorff laughed. ‘It’s the most stupendously fatuous piece of public relations nonsense I’ve ever heard. And thanks to you, Gunther, my name will forever be associated with it as the man who found the first body in Katyn Wood.’

‘Then tell him that,’ I suggested. ‘Joey the Crip. Tell him that next time you see him.’

‘I can hardly be the only person who thinks the same way. My God I expect there are lots of Nazis who recognize the obvious truth of what I’m saying, so perhaps I will.’

‘And what good would that do? Seriously. Look, colonel, I’m too old to lie to myself, but I’m not so stupid that I can’t lie to others. I’ve had a rotten feeling in my stomach every morning for the last ten years. There’s hardly been one day
when I haven’t asked myself if I could live under a regime I neither understood nor desired. But what am I supposed to do? For the present, I just want to pinch a man for the murders of three – possibly five – people. That’s not much, I’ll agree. And even if I do succeed in pinching him I won’t get much satisfaction from it. For now, being a policeman seems like the only right thing I can do. I’m not sure that makes sense to a man with a keen sense of honour like you. But it’s all I’ve got. So. What you were saying just a moment ago, about the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto coming up from their crypts and their cellars. That’s given me an idea for what to do about Dyakov.’

*

The entrance to Smolensk Cathedral was up a series of wide steps under a great white vault that was as big as a circus tent. The outer corridors with their low roofs and frescoes of rather fey-looking angels were more like fairy grottoes. Inside, the gold iconostasis resembled a couple of stalls in a street full of jewellers’ shops and framed a Fabergé egg of a central shrine and a copy of a Madonna – the original having been destroyed during the battle for Smolensk – who looked out from the window of her gleaming home with a mixture of pique and embarrassment. Light from the hundreds of flickering candles that burned in several tall brass chandeliers added an ancient, pagan touch to the cathedral interior, and instead of the Christian Madonna I would not have been surprised to see a vestal virgin maintaining the sacred fire of the many candles or weaving a straw figure to throw into the Tiber. All religion seems like something hermetic to me.

Preceded by a sergeant of panzer engineers, who was an expert in hidden bomb removal – by Von Gersdorff’s account, Sergeant Schlächter had removed more than twenty mines
left by the Reds on the two remaining bridges across the Dnieper and, as a result, was a twice-decorated pioneer – the colonel and I stepped carefully down a long and narrow winding stone staircase that led into the cathedral crypt. There was a small elevator, but that had stopped working and no one cared to try to fix it, just in case that was booby-trapped too.