A Man Without Breath

He himself thought there had been a deliberately loosened floorboard near the door in the safe area on the near side of the warning sign; the space immediately underneath the wooden board had already been checked for a pressure switch and was perfectly safe, but each time someone stood on one end of the board an exposed nail on the opposite end had been lifted several millimetres near another nail on the wall; we – and others besides us – must have walked across that part of the floor many times before finally it made contact and completed the circuit which exploded several kilos of gelignite that were hidden behind a piece of dummy plaster-work in the wall. The blast knocked both the colonel and myself off our feet. If we had been standing in the room beside the sergeant we too would probably have been killed, but it wasn’t the explosion itself that killed the sergeant but the bicycle ball-bearings that were pressed into the plastic explosive like several handfuls of sweets. The combined effect of those was like a sawn-off shotgun and took the man’s head off as cleanly as a cavalryman’s sabre.

‘I hope you think it was worth it,’ said Major Ondra. ‘Eighteen months we’ve left that crypt alone, and for a damned good reason. It’s a fucking death trap. And all for what? Some fucking file that’s probably out of date by now anyway. It’s a bloody shame, that’s what it is, gentlemen. It’s a bloody shame.’

We went to the sergeant’s funeral that same evening. His comrades buried him in the soldiers’ cemetery at Okopnaja church, on Gertnereistrasse near the panzergrenadiers’ billet in Nowosselki, just west of Smolensk. Afterwards the colonel and I walked up to the banks of the Dnieper and looked back across the city at the cathedral where Schlachter had met his death just a few hours before. The cathedral seemed to hover above the hill on which it was built as if, like Christ’s assumption, it was physically being taken up into heaven, which was, I suppose the desired effect. But neither of us felt there was much consolation in that particular story. Or truth. Even Von Gersdorff, who was a Roman Catholic, confessed that these days he crossed himself largely out of habit.

When we drove back to Krasny Bor I noticed that Von Gersdorff’s glovebox now contained all of the Nobel 808 explosive that Sergeant Schlachter had made safe in the crypt – at least a couple of kilos of the stuff.

‘I’m sure I can find a proper use for it,’ he said quietly.

CHAPTER 12

Saturday, May 1st 1943

The international commission headed by Professor Naville was returning to Berlin to draft the report for Doctor Conti, the head of the Reich Health Department, leaving the Polish Red Cross – from the beginning the Poles had worked separately from the international commission – still in Katyn. Gregor Sloventzik and I escorted the members of the commission to the airport in the coach, and understandably they were glad to be leaving – the Red Army was getting closer every day, and no one wanted to be around when finally they arrived in Smolensk.

I was glad to see the back of them, and yet it was a journey that left me feeling pretty hollow as – her work with Professor Buhtz now concluded – Ines Kramsta had chosen to fly back to Berlin with the commission. She comprehensively ignored me all the way to the airport, choosing to stare out of the window as if I didn’t exist. I helped to carry her luggage to the waiting Focke-Wulf – Goebbels sent his own plane, of course – and hoped to say something by way of atonement for having suspected her of Dr Berruguete’s murder; but saying sorry didn’t seem equal to the task, and when she turned on her elegant patent heel and disappeared through the door of the plane without uttering a single word, I almost cried out with pain.

I could have told her the truth – that maybe she was looking for too much from a man. Instead I left it alone. For the few weeks while she’d been in Smolensk, my life had seemed like it mattered to someone more than it did to me; and now that she was going, I was back to not caring about it very much one way or the other. Sometimes that’s just how it is between a man and a woman: something gets in the way of it, like real life and human nature and a whole lot of other stuff that isn’t good for two people who think they’re attracted to each other. Of course, you can save yourself a lot of pain and trouble by thinking twice before you get into anything, but a lot of life can pass you by like that. Especially in a war. I didn’t regret what had happened – how could I? – only that she was going to live the rest of her life in complete and total ignorance of the rest of my life.