A Man Without Breath

Von Gersdorff searched in the sergeant’s haversack and took out a chunk of clay.

‘If you wouldn’t mind just handing that to me inside the drawer, sir.’

The colonel pushed his hand into the drawer alongside Schlachter’s and then withdrew it gently.

‘I’ll put some clay around the metal contacts, to prevent a circuit from being made,’ said the sergeant. ‘And then we can pull out the detonator.’

A long minute later, Schlachter was showing us the plastic explosive and the detonator it had contained. About the size of a tennis ball, the explosive was green and looked just like the same Plastilin modelling clay Schlachter had used to isolate the metal contact strips. He tore the wires off the detonator and then tested the 1?-volt AFA battery with a couple of wires of his own that were attached to a small bicycle lamp. The bulb lit up brightly.

‘German battery.’ He grinned. ‘That’s why it still works, I suppose.’

‘I’m glad that amuses you,’ remarked Von Gersdorff. ‘I don’t think I like the idea of being blown up by our own equipment.’

‘Happens all the time. Ivan bombers are nothing if not resourceful.’ Schlachter sniffed the explosive. ‘Almonds,’ he added. ‘This stuff is ours too. Nobel 808. Bit too much, in my opinion. Half as much would achieve the same result. Still, waste not want not.’ His grin widened. ‘I’ll probably use this when it’s my turn to set some traps for the Ivans.’

‘Well, that’s certainly a comfort,’ I said.

‘They fuck with us,’ said Schlachter. ‘We fuck with them.’

The afternoon passed safely, with three more hidden bombs discovered and neutralized, before we found what we were looking for: the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs personnel files that started with the Cyrillic letter K.

‘I’ve found them,’ I said. ‘The K files.’

Von Gersdorff and the sergeant appeared behind me. Minutes later he had identified the file we were looking for.

‘Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘Looks like your idea paid off, Gunther.’

The drawer appeared to be clear, but the sergeant reminded me not to pull out the file until we were quite sure it was safe to do so, and he checked this himself, again with the crucifix in his mouth.

‘Does that work?’ asked Von Gersdorff.

‘I’m still here, aren’t I? Not only that but I know for sure that this is solid gold. Anything else would be sucked to nothing by now.’ He handed Von Gersdorff Major Krivyenko’s file, which was at least five centimetres thick. ‘Best take it outside,’ he added, ‘while I close up in here.’

‘Delighted to,’ said Von Gersdorff. ‘My heart feels like it’s about to burst through my tunic.’

‘Mine, too,’ I admitted, and followed the Abwehr colonel out of the door of the crypt. ‘I haven’t been such a bag of nerves since the last time the RAF came to Berlin.’

At the door the colonel opened the file excitedly and looked at the photograph of the man on the first page who, unlike Dyakov, was clean-shaven. Von Gersdorff covered the lower half of the man’s face with his hand and glanced at me.

‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘It’s not the best photograph.’

‘Yes, it could be him,’ I said. ‘The eyebrows look much the same.’

‘But either we draw a beard on the picture and ruin it or we’ll have to persuade Dyakov to see the barber.’

‘Perhaps we can get a copy made,’ I suggested. ‘Either way, the picture in this file is nothing like the one on the photograph you have of Major Krivyenko’s identity card. It’s a different man. The real Dyakov, I expect.’

‘Yes, it looks like you were right about that.’

‘If my nerves weren’t shredded already from being in here, I’d suggest looking for Dyakov’s case file. I bet there’s something about him on those shelves, eh, sergeant?’

‘I’ll be with you in a minute, gentlemen,’ said Sergeant Schlachter. ‘I’m just going to make a quick note on the record of where all of the devices today were found.’

Von Gersdorff nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Page one; personnel record of Major Mikhail Spiridonovich Krivyenko in the NKVD Police Department of the Smolensk Oblast; hand-signed by the then deputy chief of the NKVD, one Lavrenty Beria, no less, in Minsk; Dneprostroy Badge – that means he was an NKVD officer who once supervised forced labour in a prison camp; Merited NKVD Worker medal – I suppose that’s what you would expect of a major; Voroshilov Marksman badge for shooting, on the left breast of his tunic – well, that certainly fits with what we already know about the man, all right. That he can shoot. But shooting what? I wonder. Wild boar? Wolves? Enemies of the state? Fascinating. But look, there’s more work to do on this file before we can put it in front of the field marshal. I can see I’m not going to get much sleep tonight while I translate what’s in here.’

‘All right,’ said the sergeant, ‘I’m coming.’ But we never saw him again. Not alive anyway.

Afterwards we could only tell Major Ondra, his furious commanding officer – Sergeant Schlachter had been his most experienced man in Smolensk – that we hadn’t a clue what had happened.