A Man Without Breath

‘There’s plenty of fresh air in my car,’ I said. ‘Of course, not having any windows helps with that.’ I looked at the motorcycle more closely: it was an R75, also known as the ‘Type Russia’, and could cope with a wide variety of terrain. ‘But can you really carry all your stuff on this?’

‘Of course,’ said Buhtz, and threw open one of the leather panniers to remove a full anatomist’s dissection set and spread it out on the BMW’s saddle. ‘I never travel without my magician’s box of tricks. It would be like a plumber arriving without any tools.’

One particular knife caught my eye. It was glitteringly sharp and as long as my forearm. It wasn’t a bayonet but it looked just the thing to cut a man’s throat back to the bone. ‘That’s one hell of a blade,’ I said.

‘That’s my amputation knife,’ he said. ‘Pathology in the field is largely just tourism. You turn up, you see the sights, you take a few photographs and then you go home. But I like to have a decent catlin about my person just in case I want a little souvenir.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘Some of these surgical knives, including that one, were my father’s.’

He rewrapped his tools and I handed him back his coat and led the way up to the birch cross where the others were waiting for us. The snow was almost all melted and the ground felt softer. I swatted a fly away and reflected that winter really was behind us now, but with the Russians certain to mount a new offensive before very long there were few Germans in Smolensk who could have looked upon the spring and summer of 1943 with any great optimism.

‘I understand you think there may be as many as four thousand men buried in this wood,’ Buhtz said as we climbed the slope toward the waiting men.

‘At least.’

‘And are we planning to exhume all of them?’

‘I think we should exhume as many as we can in the time that’s available to us before the Russians begin a new campaign,’ I said. ‘Who knows when that will start and what the outcome will be?’

‘Then I shall have my work cut out,’ he said. ‘I shall need some assistants, of course. Doctors Lang, Miller and Schmidt from Berlin; and Dr Walter Specht, who’s a chemist. Also, there’s a former student of mine from Breslau I should like to send for: Dr Kramsta.’

‘I believe the Reich Health Leader in Berlin, Dr Conti, has already put these matters in hand,’ I said.

‘I sincerely hope so. But look, Leonard Conti is not always reliable. In fact I should say that as the RSHA physician he’s been nothing short of incompetent. A disaster. My advice to you, Captain Gunther, would be that you should keep the ministry on his tail to make sure everything that is supposed to happen does happen.’

‘Certainly, professor. I’ll do that. Now let’s meet the others and get started.’

I walked him over to where Judge Conrad, Colonel Ahrens, Lieutenant Voss, Peshkov and Alok Dyakov were waiting for us.

Buhtz was in his mid-forties, stout and powerful-looking, with a bow-legged way of walking – although that might just have been the fact that he had just climbed off a large motorcycle. He already knew the other men, who returned his brisk ‘Heil Hitler’ with a notable lack of enthusiasm. He shook his head in exasperation and then dropped down on his haunches to inspect the most recently discovered cadaver.

As Voss lit a cigarette Buhtz looked at him irritably. ‘Please put that cigarette out, lieutenant.’ And then to Judge Conrad: ‘That’s really got to stop,’ he said. ‘Immediately.’

‘Oh, surely,’ said Conrad.

‘Do you hear?’ Buhtz said to Voss. ‘There’s to be no smoking anywhere on this site from now on. I don’t want this damned crime scene spoiled by so much as a soldier’s spit or a boot print. Colonel Ahrens, any man caught smoking in this wood is to be put on a charge, is that clear?’

‘Yes, professor,’ said Friedrich Ahrens. ‘I’ll pass that on right away.’

‘Please do so.’

Buhtz stood up and looked down the slope towards the road. ‘We’re going to need some sort of hut or house here for the post-mortem work,’ he said. ‘With trestle tables, the stronger the better. At least six, so work on several bodies can be carried out at once. Results will seem more significant if they are made simultaneously. Oh yes, and buckets, stretchers, aprons, rubber gloves, some sort of water supply so medical personnel can wash human material and themselves, and electric lighting, of course. Some police photographers, too. They’ll need a good source of light of course. Microscopes, Petrie dishes, slides, scalpels, and about fifty litres of formaldehyde.’

Voss was making copious notes.