‘What kind of a rumour?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Generally speaking, the Gestapo likes to keep who they’re planning to arrest under their black hats – at least until the small hours of the morning when they call. You know – it stops people from escaping and that kind of thing. If there is a rumour it could mean they started it because they want him to run and maybe flush out another rabbit they’re interested in pursuing. That kind of rumour: a rumour with foundation. Yes, they’re not above doing that from time to time. Or it could just be the kind of rumour that’s spread by a man’s enemies to make him feel insecure and undermine him at work. It’s what the English call “a Roman holiday”, when a gladiator was butchered for the pleasure of others. You’d be surprised at the damage a rumour like that can do to a man. It takes nerves of steel to withstand the Berlin gossip-mongers.’
‘As a matter of fact, Captain Gunther, it was you who started this rumour.’
‘Me?’ I stopped digging for a moment. ‘What the hell are you talking about, colonel? I never started any rumour.’
‘Apparently, when you met Von Dohnanyi in Judge Goldsche’s office in Berlin three weeks ago, you mentioned that the Gestapo had been to see you – I believe it was while you were in hospital – to ask you questions about some Jew you knew called Meyer; who his friends were, that kind of thing.’
I frowned, remembering the air raid by the RAF on the night of the first of March that had almost killed me.
‘That’s right. Franz Meyer was going to be witness in a war-crimes investigation. Until the RAF dropped a bomb on his apartment and took half of his head off. The Gestapo seemed to think Meyer might have been mixed up in some sort of currency-smuggling racket in order to help persuade the Swiss to offer asylum to a group of Jews. But I don’t see—’
‘Did the Gestapo mention someone called Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was Pastor Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi who were smuggling foreign currency to bribe the Swiss to take refugee Jews from Germany.’
‘I see.’
‘And it was that meeting between Von Dohnanyi and Judge Goldsche at the War Crimes Bureau that prompted him to help lend his weight to persuading Von Kluge that a group of like-minded army officers—’
‘By which you mean Prussian aristocrats, of course.’
Von Gersdorff was silent for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Is that why you think we bungled it? Because we’re aristocrats?’
I shrugged. ‘It crossed my mind.’
I spat on my hands and started digging again. It was hard work but the ground came away on the flat of my spade in heavy, half-frozen lumps that I hoped would turn out to be layers of peaty history. Von Gersdorff kicked carelessly at one near the toe of his boot and watched it roll slowly down the slope like a very muddy football. For all either of us knew it might have been a mud-encrusted skull.
‘If you think it was snobbery that kept the plot within a small circle of aristocrats, you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘It was simply the overriding need for total secrecy.’
‘Yes, I can see how that was an advantage. And you felt more comfortable placing your trust in a man with a von in his name, is that it?’
‘Something like that.’
‘That doesn’t sound a little like snobbery?’
‘Perhaps it does at that,’ admitted Von Gersdorff. ‘Look, trust is something that’s very hard to find these days. You find it where you can.’
‘Talking of snobbery,’ I said, ‘I spent the morning trying to persuade the field marshal to sign some papers that would allow a local Russian doctor to go and live in Berlin. He works at the Smolensk State Medical Academy and he claims to have documentary evidence of who’s buried here. Ledgers, photographs – he’s even got an Ivan hidden in a private room who was part of the NKVD murder squad that carried out this atrocity. Bit of a soft pear alas, after some significant roof damage – but the doctor is straight out of the prayer book: every wish comes true if he gives us what we want. But he won’t do it if he has to stay on in Smolensk. I can’t think of a more deserving case for a homeland pass, but Clever Hans seems to have his blue eyes dead set against it. I just don’t understand. I thought if anyone would be on side about this it would be a man with a Russian servant. But the field marshal seems to think Dyakov is an exception and that Slavs are not much better than farmyard animals.’
‘It’s the Poles he really hates.’
‘Yes. He told me. But Poles aren’t Russians. That’s rather the point of who and what’s buried here, I imagine.’
‘In Von Kluge’s eyes, Polacks, Ivans, Popovs, they’re all the same.’
‘Which seems to be the exact opposite of the way the Russians think – about the Polacks I mean. As far as they’re concerned, Polacks and Germans are virtually the same thing.’
‘I know. But that’s just how this story is. It doesn’t make your job any easier, but I doubt Von Kluge is going to grant a homeland pass to anyone, with the possible exception of Dyakov.’
‘So what’s the story with Dyakov?’
Von Gersdorff shrugged. ‘The field marshal has only the one hunting dog. I suppose he felt there was no reason why he couldn’t have another.’
‘I never did like dogs much, myself. Never even owned one. Still, from what I gather it’s relatively easy to know all about a dog. You just buy them when they’re puppies and throw them a bone now and then. But with a man – even a Russian – I imagine it’s maybe a little more complicated than that.’
‘Lieutenant Voss of the field police is the man to speak to about Dyakov, if you’re interested in him. Are you interested in him?’
‘It’s only that the field marshal recommended I speak to Von Schlabrendorff and Dyakov about drafting in some Hiwi labour to dig up this whole damn wood. I like to know who I’m working with.’
‘Von Schlabrendorff is a good man. Did you know that he’s—’
‘Yes, I know. His mother’s the great-great-granddaughter of Wilhelm the first, the Elector of Hesse, which means that he’s related to the present king of Great Britain. That kind of pedigree should come in very useful when it comes to exhuming several thousand bodies.’
‘Actually I was about to tell you that he’s my cousin.’ Von Gersdorff smiled with good grace. ‘But I certainly think you can trust Dyakov to find a few Ivans to do the digging.’
I stopped digging for a moment and leaned forward to take a closer look before scraping at what looked to be a human skull and the back of a man’s coat.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked Von Gersdorff. He turned and waved one of the sentries over.
The man arrived at the double, came to attention and saluted.
‘Fetch some water,’ Von Gersdorff ordered. ‘And a brush.’
‘What sort of brush, sir?’
‘A hand brush,’ I said. ‘From a dustpan, if you can find one.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The soldier went away at the double in the direction of the castle.
Meanwhile I kept on scraping at the half-covered cadaver with the point of my spade, finally revealing two twisted hands bound tight together with a length of wire. I’d never seen anyone who’d been run over and flattened by a tank, but if I had I supposed that this is what it would have looked like. In the Great War I’d stumbled across the bodies of men buried in the mud of Flanders, but somehow this felt very different. Perhaps it was the certainty that there were so many other bodies buried there; or perhaps it was the wire wound around the almost skeletal wrists of the corpse that left me lost for words. There are no good deaths, but perhaps some are better than others. There are even deaths – execution by firing squad, for example – that seem to give the victim a little bit of dignity. The man lying face-down in the dirt of Katyn Wood had certainly died a death that was a long way from that. A more wretched sight would have been hard to imagine.