A Man Without Breath

‘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.’