A Man Without Breath

‘He’s not mistaken,’ I said. ‘Not in the least.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. I haven’t heard it myself, but he says there’s a tape recording of Hitler’s conversation here in Smolensk with Von Kluge. At Krasny Bor.’

‘My God, where?’

‘It’s quite safe.’ I took the tape out of my coat pocket and handed it to him.

Von Gersdorff looked at it blankly for a moment and shook his head. Finally he said: ‘Well, if it’s true, that would explain a lot. Why Gunther changed his mind about us all shooting Hitler, at the very last minute. All of his prevarications are now explained. All his nit-picking objections. It’s true, Henning still hasn’t forgiven him for that. But this: this is something else. Something quite despicable.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

‘The fucking bastard. And to think that Henning vetoed a bomb at Krasny Bor so as to spare Gunther’s life. We could have nailed Hitler there, without a shadow of a doubt. You see the problem is always the same: getting Hitler away from his headquarters, where he’s well protected. I can’t imagine we’ll ever get him on his own like that again. Damn it all.’

‘Yes, that is a pity.’

‘This corporal,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘Can he be trusted?’

‘He can now,’ I said.

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because he’s dead. I shot him. The idiot was threatening to expose this tape to all sorts of people. Well, you can imagine how that might have ended. At least I assume you can. If you can’t then maybe you’re not as conspiracy-minded as I think you need to be. Nor as ruthless.’

‘You murdered him?’

‘If you prefer that word. Yes, I murdered him. I had no choice but to kill him.’

‘In cold blood.’

‘And this from the man who was going to blow Hitler up on a Sunday.’

‘Yes, but Hitler is a monster. This fellow you killed was just a corporal.’

‘As I recall, Hitler used to be a corporal, too. And what about your Cointreau bomb? It’s not just Hitler that would have killed, but his pilot and his photographer and maybe his fucking dog, for all I know.’

I grinned, almost enjoying his squeamish discomfort, and then I laid out a possible chain of causation that included a compromised Field Marshal von Kluge being interviewed by the Gestapo and out of sheer panic informing them of everything he knew about all of the army plots to kill the leader that had been hatched in Smolensk. As a teleological account it might not have satisfied Plato or Kant, but it was enough to forestall any further cavilling on the part of my very particular friend.

‘Yes, I can see how that might have played out,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘But look, suppose someone looks into this man’s death? What then?’

‘Suppose you let me worry about that.’

We walked back to his car and then returned to Krasny Bor. The road took us past Katyn Wood, now floodlit and heavily guarded to prevent looting, although the guards didn’t seem to have deterred local citizens and off-duty German soldiers: during the day, the wood was visited by a host of sightseers who came to watch the exhumations from behind a protective cordon, as Von Kluge had refused to forbid them access to the site.

‘How’s the dig going?’ he asked.

‘Not so good,’ I said. ‘Many of the men we’ve dug up so far turn out to be German-speaking Poles. Volksdeutsche officers from the western side of the river Oder, which is your neck of the woods, isn’t it?’

‘Silesian Poles, you say?’

‘That’s right. Same as you might have been if your family had been rich a little further east. I’m a little concerned that this might not play well with the Polish delegation when they arrive here the day after tomorrow. It might look as though we only give a damn about them because they’re Volksdeutsche. As if we might not give a damn at all if they were a hundred per cent Polack.’

‘Yes, I can see how that might be awkward.’

‘And it certainly hasn’t helped things that someone in Berlin let out that these men were the same men who had been kept by the Soviets in two camps: Starobelsk and Kozelsk. Twelve thousand of them. Now I’m pretty certain that give or take a few hundred, there are only four thousand men buried in Katyn Wood. There’s not a single man we’ve found who was at Starobelsk.’

Von Gersdorff shook his head. ‘Yes, I heard about that from Professor Buhtz.’

‘That man’s full of good news. He’s yet to find a single Polish officer who was shot with a Russian weapon.’

‘There’s more bad news, I’m afraid. I got a teletype from the Tirpitzufer, in Berlin. The Abwehr has warned me that we can expect a visitor at Katyn Wood tomorrow, although I must say he’s hardly a distinguished one. Anything but.’

‘Oh? Who’s that?’

‘You won’t like this one bit.’

‘You know something, colonel? I’m getting used to that.’

CHAPTER 7

Thursday, April 8th 1943