‘That must be handy if you need a new pair of underpants.’
The lieutenant laughed. ‘Conrad? It’s Herbert. I have an officer of SD who’s trying to find a scientific laboratory here in Smolensk. Any ideas?’
He listened for a moment, uttered a few words of thanks and then replaced the receiver.
‘You could try the Smolensk State Medical Academy,’ he said. ‘It’s under German control, so you should be able to find what you’re looking for there.’
We went to the window and he pointed to the south.
‘About half a kilometre down Rote-Kreuzer Strasse and on your right. Can hardly miss it. Big canary-yellow building. Looks like the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin.’
‘It sounds impressive,’ I said and walked to the door. ‘I guess the Ivans in Smolensk can’t have been as backward as all that.’
It was a short drive to the Smolensk State Medical Academy and, as promised, it wasn’t easy to miss. The academy was enormous but, like a lot of buildings in Smolensk, the place showed signs of the ferocity of the battle waged by the retreating Red Army, with many of the windows on the five stories boarded up, and the yellow stucco façade pitted with hundreds of bullet holes. The triple arches of the entrance were protected with sandbags and on the roof was a Nazi flag and what looked like an anti-aircraft gun. While I was there an ambulance pulled up out front and disgorged several heavily-bandaged men on stretchers.
When the German medical personnel and Soviet nurses on the front desk were done admitting the new arrivals I explained my mission to one of the orderlies. The man listened patiently and then led the way up and through the enormous hospital, which was full of German soldiers who had been wounded during the battle of Smolensk and were still awaiting repatriation to the fatherland. We reached a corridor on the fifth floor where there was not one but several laboratories, and he presented me courteously to a small man wearing a white coat that was a couple of sizes too big for him, as well as mittens and a Soviet tank crewman’s helmet which he snatched off when he saw me standing there. The bow was unctuous, but understandable when dealing with SD officers.
‘Captain Gunther, this is Doctor Batov,’ said the orderly. ‘He’s in charge of the scientific laboratories here at the academy. He speaks German and I’m sure he will be able to assist you.’
When the orderly left us alone, Batov looked sheepishly at the tanker’s helmet. ‘This ridiculous hat, it keeps the head warm,’ he explained. ‘It’s cold in this hospital.’
‘I noticed that, sir.’
‘The boilers are coal-fired,’ he said, ‘and there’s not so much coal about for things like heating a hospital. There’s not much coal around for anything.’
I offered him a cigarette and he took one and tucked it behind his ear. I lit one myself and looked around. The lab was reasonably well equipped for the purposes of instructing Russian medical students; there were a couple of work benches with gas taps, burners, chemical hoods, balances, flasks, and several stereo microscopes.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.
‘I was hoping I might be able to use one of your stereo microscopes for a while,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ushering me towards the instrument. ‘Are you a scientist, captain?’
‘No, sir. I’m a policeman. From Berlin. Before the war we’d just started using stereo microscopes in ballistics work. To identify and match bullets from the bodies of murder victims.’
Batov paused by the stereo microscope and switched on a light beside it. ‘And do you have a bullet you wish to examine now, captain?’
‘No. It’s some typewritten papers I wanted to take a look at. The paper got damp and some of the words are hard to read.’ I paused, wondering how much I could tell him. ‘Actually, it’s more complicated than that. These papers have been exposed to cadaveric fluid. From a decaying body. They were inside a boot in which the human leg wearing it had disintegrated down to the bone.’
Batov nodded. ‘May I see?’
I showed him the papers.
‘Even with a stereo microscope this will be difficult,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Best of all would be to use infrared rays, but unfortunately we’re not equipped with that kind of advanced technology here at the Academy. Perhaps it would be better to have them treated in Berlin after all.’
‘I have good reasons for preferring to see what can be achieved here right now in Smolensk.’
‘Then you’ll probably need to wash these documents with chloroform or xylol,’ he said. ‘I could do this for you, if you liked.’
‘Yes. I’d be grateful if you could. Thanks.’
‘But may I ask, exactly what are you hoping to achieve?’
‘If nothing else, I’d like to be able to find out what language the papers are written in.’
‘Well, we can treat one sheet of paper, perhaps, and see how that works.’
Batov went to look for some chemicals and then started to wash one of the pages; while he worked I sat and smoked a cigarette and dreamed that I was back in Berlin, having dinner with Renata at the Adlon Hotel. Not that we ever did have dinner at the Adlon, but it wouldn’t have been much of a daydream if any of it had been remotely possible.
When Batov had finished cleaning the page he dried it carefully, flattened the paper with a sheet of glass and then arranged the page underneath the prism of the microscope.
I drew an electric light a little closer and looked through the eyepieces while I adjusted the zoom control. A blurred word moved into focus. The alphabet wasn’t Cyrillic and the words weren’t written in German.
‘What’s the Russian word for soldier?’ I asked Batov.
‘Soldat.’
‘I thought so. Zolnierz. That’s the Polish word for soldier. Here’s another. Wywiadu. No idea what that means.’
‘It means intelligence,’ said Batov.
‘Does it?’
‘Yes. My wife was Ukrainian–Polish, sir, from the Subcarpathian province. She studied medicine here before the war.’
‘Was?’
‘She’s dead now.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, doctor.’
‘Polish.’ Batov paused and then added. ‘The language on the document. That’s a relief.’
I looked up from the eyepieces. ‘Why is that?’
‘If it’s in Polish it means I can offer to help you,’ explained Batov. ‘If it was in Russian – well, I could hardly betray my own country to the enemy, now could I?’
I smiled. ‘No, I suppose not.’
He pointed at the stereo microscope. ‘May I have a look?’
‘Be my guest.’
Batov looked through the eyepieces for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yes, this is written in Polish. Which makes me think that a better division of labour would be if I read out the words – in German, of course – and you wrote them down. That way – in time – you would know the entire contents of the document.’
Batov sat up straight and looked at me. He was dark and rather earnest, with a thick moustache and gentle eyes.
‘You mean one word at a time?’ I pulled a face.
‘It’s a laborious method, I do agree, but it has the merit of also being certain, don’t you think? A couple of hours and perhaps all of your questions about this document might be answered and perhaps, if you agreed, I might earn a little bit of money for my family. Or perhaps you might give me something I can trade on Bazarnaya Square.’
He shrugged. ‘Alternatively, you are welcome to borrow the stereo microscope and work on your own, perhaps.’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. To be perfectly honest I’m not used to German officers asking me for permission to do anything in this academy.’