A Man Without Breath

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 NAIVELY 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?’