A Man Without Breath

While I was waiting, a young bespectacled Wehrmacht lieutenant came into the hall and asked the assembled company which of us was Colonel Brandt. An officer wearing a gold equestrian’s badge on his army tunic stepped forward and identified himself, whereupon the lieutenant clicked his heels and announced he was Lieutenant von Schlabrendorff and that he had brought a parcel from General von Tresckow for Colonel Stieff. My interest in this little exchange was only piqued when the lieutenant handed over the very same package containing two bottles of Cointreau that Councillor von Dohnanyi – to whom Von Schlabrendorff bore a strong resemblance – had brought with him on the plane from Berlin the previous Wednesday. This made me wonder – again – why Von Dohnanyi had not delivered the parcel to someone when we’d touched down in Rastenburg. Perhaps if I’d been a proper security service officer I might have made some mention of this fact – which struck me as suspicious – but I had enough on my plate already without interfering with the job of the Gestapo or the leader’s uniformed RSD bodyguards. Besides, my interest in the matter faded as a burly flight sergeant entered the hall and announced that our own flight to Berlin had been delayed until lunchtime the following day.

‘What?’ exclaimed another officer – a major with an impressive scar on his face. ‘Why?’

‘Technical problems, sir.’

‘Better we find out on the ground than when we’re in the air,’ I told the major, and went to look for a telephone.

CHAPTER 9

Sunday, March 14th 1943

I spent another night at Dnieper Castle, and this time my sleep was interrupted not by cold, nor by thoughts of the three ragged children I’d met – and certainly not by any spiritual feeling about what might have happened in Katyn Wood – but by Lieutenant Hodt arriving in my room.

‘Captain Gunther,’ he said.

‘Yes, what is it, lieutenant?’

‘Colonel Ahrens apologizes for disturbing you and requests that you join him as soon as possible. His car is outside in front of the castle.’

‘Outside? Why? What’s happened?’

‘It would be best if the colonel explained things to you, sir,’ said Hodt.

‘Yes. Yes, of course. What time is it?’

‘Two a.m., sir.’

‘Shit.’

I got dressed and went outside. An army Kubelwagen was waiting in the snow with the engine running. I climbed in alongside Colonel Ahrens and behind another officer I hadn’t seen before. Around the second officer’s neck was a metal gorget that identified him as a member of the uniformed field police, which was the easily recognized equivalent of the Kripo beer token I’d once carried in my coat pocket when I’d been a plainclothes detective. It was already obvious to me that we weren’t going to the local library. As soon as I was seated, the NCO driving the bucket punched it loudly into gear and we set off swiftly down the drive.

‘Captain Gunther, this is Lieutenant Voss of the field police.’

‘If it wasn’t so late I might be pleased to meet you, lieutenant.’

‘Captain Gunther works for the War Crimes Bureau in Berlin,’ explained Ahrens. ‘But before that he was a Kripo police commissar at the Alex.’

‘What’s this all about, colonel?’ I asked Ahrens.

‘Two of my men have been murdered, captain.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Was it partisans?’

‘That’s what we’re hoping you can help us to find out.’

‘I guess there’s no harm in hoping,’ I said sourly.

We drove east along the road to Smolensk. A sign on the road said: PARTISAN DANGER AHEAD. SINGLE VEHICLES STOP! HOLD WEAPONS READY.

‘It looks like you’ve already made up your minds,’ I observed.

‘You’re the expert,’ said Voss. ‘Perhaps, when you’ve taken a look at the scene, you’ll tell us what you think.’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘As long as everyone remembers that I’m boarding a plane back to Berlin in ten hours.’

‘Just take a look,’ said Ahrens. ‘Please. Then, if you wish, you can take your flight home.’

The ‘if you wish’ part I didn’t like at all, but I kept my mouth shut. Lately I’d got a lot better at doing that. Besides, I could see the colonel was upset, and telling him I really didn’t give a damn about who had killed his men wasn’t exactly going to smooth my already delayed departure from Smolensk. I wanted to stay on in that city like I wanted to take an ice-cold bath.

A few blocks west of the railway station the road split and we took the southern route down Schlachthofstrasse before turning right onto Dnieperstrasse, where the driver skidded to a halt. We got out and walked past an Opel Blitz that was full of field policemen and down a snow-covered slope to the edge of the Dnieper River, where another bucket wagon was parked with its spotlight trained on two bodies lying side by side at the water’s half-frozen edge. Two of the lieutenant’s men were standing beside the bodies and stamping their feet against the cold and the damp. The river looked as black as the Styx and almost as still in the moonlit silence.