‘The way I look at it is this, and I hope you’ll forgive my foolhardy honesty here, but it seems to me that you need this inquiry to be completed urgently, within the next three months – before the Soviets overrun our positions.’
‘Don’t you believe in our final victory, captain?’
‘Everyone on the Russian front knows that the whole thing is going to come down to Stalin’s maths. When we recaptured Kharkov it cost the Reds seventy thousand men and us almost five thousand. The difference is that while the Ivans can afford to lose seventy thousand men we can ill afford to lose five thousand. After Stalingrad, there’s a good chance of a Russian counterattack this summer – on Kharkov and on Smolensk.’ I shrugged. ‘So, this inquiry has to be handled quickly. Before the end of the summer. Perhaps earlier.’
Goebbels nodded. ‘Let’s suppose for a moment that I agree with you,’ he said. ‘And I don’t say that I do. The leader certainly doesn’t. He believes that once the colossus that is the Soviet Union starts to totter, it will suffer an historic collapse, after which we’ll have nothing to fear from an Anglo-American invasion.’
I nodded. ‘I’m sure the leader knows the situation better than me, Herr Reich minister.’
‘But go ahead anyway. What else would you recommend?’
The coffee arrived. It gave me time to fetch another cigarette from the elegant box on the table and to wonder if I should mention another idea. Good coffee has that effect on me.
‘As I see it, we’ve got two weeks before we can do anything – and I think it’s going to take two weeks to make this happen. I mean, it won’t be easy.’
‘Go on.’
‘This is going to sound crazy,’ I said.
Goebbels shrugged. ‘Speak freely, please.’
I pulled a face, and then drank some coffee while I mulled it over for another second.
‘You know, I talk to my mother a lot,’ confessed Goebbels. ‘Mostly in the evening when I return from work. I always think she knows the voice of the people much better than me. Better than a lot of the so-called experts who judge things from the ivory tower of scientific inquiry. What I always learn from her is this: the man who succeeds is the man who is able to reduce problems to their simplest terms and who has the courage of his convictions – despite the objections of intellectuals. The courage to speak, perhaps, even when he believes that what he is suggesting sounds like madness. So, please captain, let me be the judge of what’s crazy and what isn’t.’
I shrugged. It seemed ridiculous for me to be worrying about the image of Germany abroad. Would one less crime laid at our door really make any difference? But I had to believe there was a possibility it might.
‘Coffee’s good,’ I said. ‘And so are the cigarettes. You know a lot of doctors say smoking is not good for you. Mostly I ignore doctors. After the trenches I tend to believe in things like fate and a bullet with my name on it. But right now a lot of doctors is what I think we need. Yes sir, as many corpse handlers as we can muster. In other words a lot of forensic pathologists, and from all over Europe, too. Enough to make this look like an independent inquiry, if such a thing is possible in the middle of a war. An international commission, perhaps.’
‘You mean assembled in Smolensk?’
‘Yes. We dig the bodies up under the eyes of the whole world so that no one can say that Germany was responsible.’
‘You know, that’s quite an audacious idea.’
‘And we should try to make sure that anyone from the government or the National Socialist Party, but especially the SS and the SD, has as little to do with the investigation as possible.’
‘This is interesting. How do you mean?’
‘We could put the whole investigation under the control of the International Red Cross. Better still, under the control of the Polish Red Cross, if they’ll wear it. We could even arrange for a few journalists to accompany the commission to Smolensk. From the neutral countries – Sweden and Switzerland. And perhaps some senior Allied prisoners of war – a few British and American generals, if we have any. To use as witnesses. We could put them under parole and let them have free access to the site.’ I shrugged. ‘When I was a cop handling a murder inquiry, you had to let the press in on things. When you didn’t they’d think you were trying to hide something. And that’s especially true here.’
Goebbels was nodding. ‘I like this idea,’ he said. ‘I like it very much. We can take pictures and shoot newsreel like it’s a proper news story. And we could also let the neutral country journalists go where they want, speak to whoever they want. Everything in the open. Yes, that’s excellent.’
‘The Gestapo will hate that, of course. But that’s good, too. The press and the experts will see it and draw their own conclusions: that there are no secrets in Smolensk. At least there are no German secrets.’
‘You leave the Gestapo to me,’ said Goebbels. ‘I can handle those bastards.’
‘There is one argument against it, however,’ I said. ‘And it’s a pretty damned important one.’