A Man Without Breath

After this poignant little scene, Sloventzik and I got back into the coach and rode it back to the wood, where we found a scene of great excitement: the Russian POWs, working under the supervision of the field police and Alok Dyakov, had found another grave. This one – number eight – was more than a hundred metres to the south-west of all the others and much nearer the Dnieper, but I paid little attention to this news until Count Casimir Skarzynski, the secretary general of the Polish Red Cross, informed me during lunch that none of the bodies in grave eight were dressed for winter. Moreover their pockets contained letters, identification cards and newspaper clippings that seemed to indicate they had met their deaths a whole month after the other Poles we had found. A discussion ensued between Skarzynski, Professor Buhtz and Lieutenant Sloventzik about the Russian internment camp from which the men had been removed, but I kept out of it and as soon as I was able I went back to my hut and tried to contain my impatience while Colonel von Gersdorff stayed in his own hut translating the file we had recovered from the crypt at the Assumption Cathedral.

It was a very long afternoon, so I did a little smoking and a little drinking and read a little Tolstoy, which is like a lot of something else and almost a contradiction in terms.

To avoid the field marshal, I ate an early dinner and then went for a walk. When I got back to my hut, an anonymous note under the door read as follows:

I UNDERSTAND YOU ARE LOOKING FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ALOK DYAKOV – THE REAL ALOK DYAKOV THAT IS AND NOT THE ILLITERATE PEASANT WHO PRETENDS TO BE THIS MAN. I WILL SELL YOU HIS GESTAPO/NKVD CASE FILE FOR 50 MARKS. COME ALONE TO THE SVIRSKAYA CHURCH IN SMOLENSK BETWEEN TEN AND ELEVEN O’CLOCK TONIGHT AND I WILL GIVE YOU ALL YOU NEED TO DESTROY HIM FOR EVER.

The paper and the envelope were good-quality: I held the paper up to the light to see the watermark. Nathan Brothers on Unter den Linden had been one of Berlin’s most expensive stationers until the Jewish boycott had forced its closure. Which begged the question why someone who once had been able to afford expensive stationery was asking fifty marks for a file.

I read the note again and considered the wording carefully. Fifty marks was nearly all the cash I had, and not to be given away lightly, but worth every penny if indeed the file proved to be the real thing. Of course, as a detective in Berlin I’d used many informers, and the request for fifty marks presented me with a more reliable motive for betrayal: if you’re going to give a man away you might as well get paid for it. I could understand that. But why had the author used the words ‘Gestapo/NKVD case file’? Was it possible that the Gestapo knew much more about Alok Dyakov than I had considered? Was it possible that they already had a file on Dyakov? Even so, ten o’clock at night was not the sort of time I like to be in a remote part of a city in enemy country. And you can call it superstitious of me, but I decided to take two guns along with me, just for luck: the Walther PPK I always carried, and – with its neat shoulder-stock and handy carrying-strap – the broom-handle Mauser that I had yet to return to Von Gersdorff. Since the war started, I’ve always believed that two guns are better than one. I loaded both automatic pistols and went out to the car.

The road east into Smolensk just north of the Peter and Paul bridge across the Dnieper was blocked as usual with a field police patrol and – as usual – I talked with them for a little while before driving on. The only way to the Svirskaya church – without incurring a thirty-mile diversion to the west – was across this bridge in the centre of Smolensk, and I thought that talking to the fellows at the roadblock might give me some clue as to the identity of my new informer. You can learn a lot from field policemen if you treat them with respect.

‘Tell me, boys,’ I said – they knew me of course, but like everyone else I had to show them my papers, anyway – ‘what other traffic has been along here in the last hour?’

‘A troop transport,’ said one of the cops, a sergeant. ‘Some lads from the 56th Panzer Corps who’ve been stationed in Vitebsk and are now ordered north. They were heading to the railway station. They say they’re on their way to a place called Kursk and that there’s a big battle brewing up there. Then there were some fellows from the 537th Signallers who were going to the Glinka for a bit of a night out.’

He made a ‘night out’ at the Glinka sound like something as innocent as a trip to the cinema.

‘Naturally you took their names,’ I said.

‘Yes sir, of course.’

‘I’d like to see those names if I could.’

The sergeant went to fetch a clipboard, and although it was another brightly moonlit night, he showed me a list under the flashlight attached to his coat. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked.