Konigsberg is, was, important to me. My mother was born in Konigsberg. When I was a child we used to go on holiday to a seaside town near there called Cranz. Best holiday we ever had. My first wife and I went there on our honeymoon, in 1919. It was the capital of East Prussia – a land of dark forests, crystal lakes, sand dunes, white skies, and Teutonic knights who built a fine old medieval city with a castle and a cathedral and seven good bridges across the River Pregel. There was even a university founded in 1544, where the city's most famous son, Immanuel Kant, would one day teach.
I arrived there in June 1944. As part of Army Group North. I was attached to the 132nd Infantry Division. My job was to gather intelligence on the advancing Red Army. What type of men? What condition? How well armed? Supply lines – all the usual stuff. And from the German civilians who fled their homes ahead of the Russian advance, the intelligence I had was of well-equipped, ill-disciplined, drunken Neanderthals who were bent on rape, murder and mutilation. Frankly, a lot of this seemed like hysterical nonsense. Indeed, there was a lot of Nazi propaganda to this effect that was designed to dissuade everyone from surrender. And so I resolved to discover the true situation for myself.
This was made more difficult when at the end of August the Royal Air Force bombed the city to rubble. And I do mean rubble. All of the bridges were destroyed. All of the public buildings lay in ruins. So it was a while before I was able to verify the reports of atrocities. And I was left in no doubt as to the truth of these when our troops retook the German village of Nemmersdorf, about a hundred kilometres east of Konigsberg.
I'd seen some terrible things in the Ukraine of course. And this was as bad as anything we'd done to them. Women raped and mutilated. Children clubbed to death. The whole village murdered. All seven hundred of them. You've got to see it to believe it, and now I believed it and I could have wished I didn't. I made my report. The next thing, the Ministry of Propaganda had it and were even broadcasting parts of it on the radio. Well, that was the last time they were honest about our situation. The only part of my report they didn't use was the conclusion: that we should evacuate the city by sea as soon as possible. We could have done it, too. But Hitler was against it. Our wonder weapons were going to turn the tide and win the war. We had nothing to worry about. Plenty of people believed that, too.
That was October 1944. But by January the following year it was painfully clear to everyone that there were no wonder weapons. At least none that could help us. The city was encircled, just like at Stalingrad. The only difference was that as well as fifty thousand German soldiers there were three hundred thousand civilians. We started to get people out. But in the process, thousands died. Nine thousand died in just fifty minutes when a Russian submarine sank the Wilhelm Gustoff outside the port of Gotenhafen. And we kept on fighting, not because we obeyed Hitler, but because for every day that we fought, a few more civilians managed to escape. Did I say that was the coldest winter in living memory? Well, that hardly helped the situation.
For a short while the artillery and the bombing stopped as the Ivans prepared their final assault. When it came, in the third week of March, we were thirty-five thousand men and fifty tanks against perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand troops, five hundred tanks and more than two thousand aircraft. Me, I was in the trenches during the Great War and I thought I knew what it was to be under a bombardment. I didn't. Hour after hour the shells fell. Sometimes there were as many as two hundred and fifty bombers in the sky at any one time.
Finally, General Lasch contacted the Russian High Command and offered our surrender in return for a guarantee that we would be well treated. They agreed and the next day we laid down our arms. That was fine if you were a soldier, but the Russians were of the opinion that the guarantee had never applied to Konigsberg's civilian population, and the Red Army proceeded to exact a terrible revenge on it. Every woman was raped. Old men were murdered out of hand. The sick and wounded were thrown out of hospital windows to make room for Russians. In short, the whole Red Army got drunk and went crazy and did what it liked to civilians of all ages before finally they set on fire what remained of the city and their victims. Those they didn't kill they let fend for themselves in the countryside, where most of them starved to death. There was nothing any of us in the army could do about this. Those who did protest were shot on the spot. Some of us said this was justice – that we deserved it for what had been done to them – and this was true, only it's hard to think of justice when you see a naked woman crucified on a barn door. Maybe we all deserved crucifixion, like those mutinous gladiators in ancient Rome. I don't know. But every man who saw that wondered what lay in store for us. I know I did.
For several days we were marched east of Konigsberg, and as we walked we were robbed of wedding rings, wristwatches, even false teeth. Any man refusing to hand over an object of value in a Russian's eyes was shot. At the railway station we waited patiently in a field for transport to wherever we were going. There was no food and no water and all the time more and more German soldiers joined our host.
Some of us boarded a train that took us to Brno in Czechoslovakia, where at last we were given some bread and water; and then we boarded another train, headed south-east. As the train left Brno we caught sight of the city's famous St Peter and Paul Cathedral, and for many men this was almost as good as seeing a priest. Even those who didn't believe took the opportunity to pray. The next time we stopped we got out of the cattle cars, and finally we were given some hot soup. It was the thirtieth of April 1945, twenty days after our surrender. I know this because the Russians made a point of telling us the news that Hitler was dead. I don't know who was more pleased to hear this, them or us. Some of us cheered. A few of us wept. It was the end of one Hell no doubt. But for Germany and us in particular, it was the beginning of another – Hell, as it really is, perhaps, being a timeless place of punishment and suffering and run by devils who enjoy inflicting cruelty. Certainly we were judged by the book that was open; that book was Mein Kampf, and for what was written in that book we were all going to suffer. Some more than others.
From that transit camp in Romania – someone claimed it was a place called Secureni, from where Bessarabian Jews had been sent to Auschwitz – there was another train travelling north-east, right through the Ukraine, a country I had hoped never to see again, to a stop in the middle of nowhere where MVD guards drove us from the cattle cars with whips and curses. Standing there, faint from lack of food and water, blinking in the spring sunshine like unwanted dogs, we awaited our orders. Finally, after almost an hour, we were marched along a dirt road between two infinite horizons.
'Bistra!' shouted the guards. 'Hurry up!'
But to where? To what? Would any of us ever see home again? Out there, so far away from any sign of human habitation, it seemed unlikely; even more so when those who had only just survived the journey found they could walk no further and were shot where they fell at the side of the road by mounted MVD. Four or five men were shot in this way like horses that had outlived their usefulness. No man was allowed to carry another, and in this way only the strongest of us were permitted to survive, as if Prince Kropotkin had been in charge of our exhausted company.
At last we arrived at the camp, which was a selection of dilapidated grey wooden buildings surrounded by two barbed- wire fences and remarkable only because next to the main gate was the surviving steeple of a non-existent church – one of those sharp, metallic-roofed Russian church edifices that looked like some old Junker's Pickelhaube helmet. There was nothing else for miles around – not even a few huts that might once have been served by the church to which the steeple had once belonged.
We trooped through the gate under the silent, hollow eyes of several hundred men who were the remains of the Hungarian Third Army; these men were on the other side of a fence and it seemed we were to be kept separate from them, at least until we had been checked for parasites and diseases. Then we were fed, and having been pronounced fit for labour I was sent to the sawmill. I might have been an officer but no one was excused work, that is no one who wanted to eat, and for several weeks I spent every day loading and unloading wood. This seemed like a hard job until I spent a whole day shovelling lime. Returning next day to the sawmill, half-blinded by the stuff blowing in my face, and with blood streaming from my nose, I told myself I was lucky that a few splinters in my hands and a sore back were the worst I had to suffer. In the sawmill I befriended a young lieutenant called Metelmann. Really he was not much more than a boy, or so it seemed to me; physically he was strong enough but it was mental strength that was needed more, and Metelmann's morale was at a very low ebb. I'd seen his type in the trenches – the kind who awakes every morning expecting to be killed, when the only way of dealing with our predicament was to give the matter no thought at all, as if we were dead already. But since caring for another human being is often a very good means of ensuring one's own survival, I resolved to look after Metelmann as best I could.
A month passed. And then another. Long months of work and food and sleep and no memories, for it was best not to think about the past, and of course the future was something that had no meaning in the camp. The present and the life of a voinapleni was all there was. And the life of the voinapleni was bistra and davai and nichevo; it was kasha and klopkis and the kate. Beyond the wire was the death zone and beyond that there was another wire, and beyond that just the steppe, and more of the steppe. No one thought of escape. There was nowhere to go, that was the real communist pravda of life in Voronezh. It was as if we were in limbo waiting to die so that we could be sent to Hell.
But instead we – the German officers at Camp Eleven – were sent to another camp. No one knew why. No one gave us a reason. Reasons were for human beings. It happened without warning early one August evening, just as we finished work for the day. Instead of marching back to camp we found ourselves on the long march somewhere else. It was only after several hours on the road that we saw the train and we realised we were off on another journey and, very likely, we would never see Camp Eleven again. Since none of us had any belongings, this hardly seemed to matter.
'Do you think we could be going home?' asked Metelmann as we boarded the train and then set off.
I glanced at the setting sun. 'We're headed south-east,' I said, which was all the answer that was needed.
'Christ,' he said. 'We're never going to find our way home.'
He had an excellent point. Staring out of a gap in the planks on the side of our cattle truck at the endless Russian steppes, it was the sheer size of the country that defeated you. Sometimes it was so big and unchanging it seemed the train wasn't moving at all, and the only way to make sure that we weren't standing still was to watch the moving track through the hole in the floor that served as our latrine.
'How did that bastard Hitler ever think we could conquer a country as big as this?' said someone. 'You might as well try to invade the ocean.'
Once, in the distance, we saw another train travelling west in the opposite direction, and there was not one of who didn't wish we were on it. Anywhere west seemed better than anywhere east.
Another man said: 'Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the sacred heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their ways, many places he endured, heartsick on the open sea, struggling to save his life and bring his comrades home.'
He paused for a moment and then, for the benefit of those who'd never done the classics, said, 'Homer's Odyssey.'
To which someone else said, 'I only hope that Penelope is behaving herself.'
The journey took two whole days and nights before, finally, we disembarked beside a wide, steel-grey river, at which point the classics scholar, whose name was Sajer, began to cross himself religiously.
'What is it?' asked Metelmann. 'What's wrong?'
'I recognise this place,' said Sajer. 'I remember thanking God I'd never see it again.'
'God likes his little jokes,' I said.
'So what is this place?' demanded Metelmann.
'This is the Volga,' said Sajer. 'And if I'm right, we're not far south of Stalingrad.'
'Stalingrad.' We all repeated the name with quiet horror.
'I was one of the last to get out before the Sixth Army was encircled,' explained Sajer. 'And now I'm back. What a fucking nightmare.'
From the train we marched to a larger camp that was mostly SS, although not all of them German: there were French, Belgian and Dutch SS. But the senior German officer was a Wehrmacht colonel named Mrugowski, who welcomed us to a barrack with proper bunk beds and real mattresses, and told us that we were in Krasno-Armeesk, between Astrakhan and Stalingrad.
'Where have you come from?' he asked.
'A camp called Usman, near Voronezh,' I said.
'Ah yes,' he said. 'The one with the church steeple.'
I nodded.
'This place is better,' he said. 'The work is hard but the Ivans are relatively fair. Relative to Usman, that is. Where were you captured?'
We exchanged news and, like all the other Germans at KA, the colonel was anxious to hear something about his brother, who was a doctor with the Waffen SS, but no one could tell him anything.
It was the height of the summer on the steppe and, with little or no shade, the work – excavating a canal between the Don and the Volga rivers – was hard and hot. But, for a while at least, my situation was almost tolerable. Here there were Russians working, too – saklutshonnis convicted of a political crime which, more often than not, was hardly a crime at all, or at least none that any German – not even the Gestapo – would have recognised. And from these prisoners I began to perfect my knowledge of the Russian language.
The site itself was an enormous trench covered with duckboards and walkways and rickety wooden bridges; and from dawn until dusk it was filled with hundreds of men wielding picks and shovels, or pushing crudely made wheelbarrows – a regular Potsdamer Platz of pleni traffic – and policed by stone- faced 'Blues', which was what we called the MVD guards with their gimnasterka tunics, portupeya belts, and blue shoulder- boards. The work was not without hazard. Now and then the sides of the canal would collapse in upon someone and we would all dig frantically to save his life. This happened almost every week and, to our surprise and shame – for these were not the inferior people that the Nazis had told us of – it was usually the Russian convicts who were quickest to help. One such man was Ivan Yefremovich Pospelov, who became the nearest thing I had to a friend at KA, and who thought he was well off, although his forehead, which was dented like a felt hat, told a different story from the one he told me:
'What matters most, Herr Bernhard, is that we are alive, and in that we are indeed fortunate. For, right now, at this very moment, somewhere in Russia, someone is meeting his undeserved end at the hands of the MVD. Even as we speak a poor Russian is being led to the edge of a pit and thinking his last thoughts about home and family before the pistol fires and a bullet is the last thing to travel through his mind. So who cares if the work is hard and the food is poor? We have the sun and the air in our lungs and this moment of companionship that can't be taken away from us, my friend. And one day, when we're free again, think how much more it will mean to you and me just to be able to go and buy a newspaper and some cigarettes. And other men will envy us that we live with such fortitude in the face of what only appear to be the travails of life.
'You know what makes me laugh most of all? To think that ever I complained in a restaurant. Can you imagine it? To send something back to a kitchen because it was not properly cooked. Or to reprimand a barman for serving warm beer. I tell you I'd be glad to have that warm beer now. That's happiness right there, in the acceptance of that warm beer and remembering how it's enough in life to have that and not the taste of brackish water on cracked lips. This is the meaning of life, my friend. To know when you are well off and to hate or envy no man.'
But there was one man at KA who it was hard not to hate, or envy. Among the Blues were several political officers, politruks, who had the job of turning German fascists into good antifascists. From time to time these politruks would order us into the mess to hear a speech about Western imperialism, the evils of capitalism, and what a great job Comrade Stalin was doing to save the world from another war. Of course, the politruks didn't speak German and not all of us spoke Russian, and the translation was usually handled by the most unpopular German in the camp, Wolfgang Gebhardt.
Gebhardt was one of two anti-fascist agents at KA He was a former SS corporal, from Paderborn, a professional footballer who once had played for SV 07 Neuhaus. After being captured at Stalingrad, in February 1943, Gebhardt claimed to have been converted to the cause of communism, and as a result he received special treatment: his own quarters, better clothing and footwear, better food, cigarettes and vodka. There was another anti-fa agent called Kittel, but Gebhardt was by far the more unpopular of the two, which probably explains why some time during the autumn of 1945, he was murdered. Early one morning he was found dead in his hut, stabbed to death. The Ivans were very exercised about it, as converts to Bolshevism were, despite the material benefits of becoming a Red, rather thin on the ground. An MVD major from the Stalingrad Oblast came down to KA to inspect the body, after which he met with the Senior German Officer and, by all accounts, a shouting match ensued. Following this I was surprised to find myself summoned to see Colonel Mrugowski. We sat on his bed behind a curtain that was one of the few small privileges allowed to him as SGO.
'Thanks for coming, Gunther,' he said. 'You know about Gebhardt, I suppose.'
'Yes. I heard the cathedral bells ringing.'
'I'm afraid it's not the good news that everyone might imagine.'
'He didn't leave any cigarettes?'
'I've just had some MVD major in here shouting his head off. Making me into a snail about it.'
'Show me a Blue who doesn't like to shout and I'll show you a pink unicorn.'
'He wants me to do something about it. About Gebhardt, I mean.'
'We could always bury him, I suppose.' I sighed. 'Look, sir, I think I ought to tell you. I didn't kill him. And I don't know who did. But they should give whoever did it the Iron Cross.'
'Major Savostin sees things differently. He's given me seventy- two hours to produce the murderer, or twenty-five German soldiers will be selected at random to stand trial at an MVD court in Stalingrad.'
'Where an acquittal seems unlikely.'
'Exactly.'
I shrugged. 'So, you appeal to the men and ask the guilty man to step up for it.'
'And if that doesn't work?' He shook his head. 'Not all of the plenis here are German. Just the majority. And I did remind the major of this fact. However, he's of the opinion that a German had the best motive to kill Gebhardt.'
'True.'
'Major Savostin has a low opinion of German moral values but a high opinion of our capacity for reasoning and logic. Since a German had the best motive for the murder, then he thinks it seems reasonable that we should have the most to lose if the killer is not identified. Which he believes is now the best incentive for us to do his job for him.'
'So what are you telling me, sir?'
'Come on, Gunther. Everyone in Krasno-Armeesk knows you used to be a detective at Berlin's Alexanderplatz Praesidium. As the SGO, I'm asking you to take charge of a murder investigation.'
'Is that what this is?'
'Maybe none of this will be necessary. But you should at least take a look at the body while I parade the men and ask the guilty man to step forward.'
I walked across the camp in the stiffening wind. Winter was coming. You could feel it in the air. You could hear it, too, as it rattled the windows of Gebhardt's private hut. A depressing sound it was, almost as loud as the noise of my own rumbling belly, and I was already reproaching myself for not exacting a price for my forensic services. A extra piece of chleb. A second bowl of kasha. No one at KA volunteered for anything unless there was something in it for him, and that something was nearly always food.
A starshina, a Blue sergeant named Degermenkoy, standing in front of Gebhardt's hut, saw me and walked slowly in my direction.
'Why aren't you at work?' he yelled and hit me hard across the shoulders with his walking stick.
Between blows I explained my mission, and finally he stopped and let me get up off the ground.
I thanked him and went into the little hut, closing the door behind me in case there was anything in there I could steal. The first thing I saw was a bar of soap and a piece of bread. Not the shorni that we plenis received but belii, the white bread, and before I even looked at Gebhardt's body I stuffed my mouth full of what should have been his last meal. This would have been reward enough for the job I was doing, except that I saw some cigarettes and matches and as soon as I had swallowed the bread I lit one and smoked it in a state of near-ecstasy. I hadn't smoked a cigarette in six months. Still ignoring the body on the bed, I looked around the hut for something to drink. My eyes fell on a small bottle of vodka, and finally, smoking my cigarette and taking little bites off Gebhardt's bottle, I started to behave like a real detective.
The hut was about ten feet square, with a small window that was covered with an iron grille meant to keep the occupant safe from the rest of us plenis. It hadn't worked. There was a lock on the wooden door but the key was nowhere to be seen. There was a table, a stove and a chair, and feeling a little faint – probably from the cigarette and the vodka – I sat down. On the wall were two propaganda portraits: cheap, frameless posters of Lenin and Stalin and, collecting some phlegm at the back of my throat, I let the great leader have it.
Then I drew the chair up to the bed and took a closer look at the body That he was dead was obvious, since there were stab wounds all over his body, but mainly around the head, neck and chest. Less obvious was the choice of murder weapon – a piece of elk horn that was sticking out of the dead man's right eye socket. The ferocity of the attack was remarkable, as was the brutal instrumentality of the elkhorn. I'd seen violent crime scenes before in my time as a detective but rarely as frenzied as this. It gave me a new respect for elks. I counted sixteen separate stab wounds, including two or three protective wounds on the forearms, and from the blood spatter on the walls it seemed clear that Gebhardt had been murdered on the bed. I tried to raise one of the dead man's hands and discovered rigor was already well set in. The body was quite cold and I formed the conclusion that Gebhardt had met his well-deserved death between the hours of midnight and four o'clock in the morning. I also discovered some blood underneath his fingernails and I might even have taken a sample of this if I'd had an envelope to put it in, not to mention a laboratory with a microscope that might have analysed it.
I did however take the dead man's wedding ring, which was so tight and the finger so badly swollen that I had to use the soap to get it off. Any other man's ring would have fallen off his finger, but Gebhardt drew better rations than any of us and was a normal weight. I weighed the ring in the palm of my hand. It was gold and would certainly come in useful if I ever needed to bribe a Blue. I looked closely at the inscription on the inside but it was too small for my weakened eyes. I didn't put it in my pocket, however; for one thing, the trousers of my uniform were full of holes, and for another, there was the starshina outside the door who might have taken it upon himself to search me. So I swallowed it, in the certainty that with my bowels as loose as vegetable soup I could easily retrieve the ring later.
By now I could hear the SGO addressing all the German plenis outside. There was a cheer as he confirmed what most of them knew: that Gebhardt was dead. This was followed by a loud groan as he told them how the MVD were planning to handle the matter. I got up and went to the window in the hope that I might see one brave soul identify himself as the culprit, but no one moved. Fearing the worst, I took another bite off the vodka bottle and laid my hand on the stove. It was cold but I opened it all the same, just in case the killer had thought to burn his signed confession; but there was nothing – just a few pages from an old copy of Pravda and some bits of wood, ready for when the weather turned colder.
A shallow closet, no deeper than a shoe box, was fixed against the corner of the hut, and in it I found the Waffen SS uniform that Gebhardt had ceased wearing when he'd switched sides. It would hardly have done for an anti-fascist officer to have carried on wearing an SS uniform. His new Russian gimnasterka was hanging on the back of the chair. Quickly I searched the pockets and found a few kopecks, which I pocketed, and some more cigarettes, which I also pocketed.
With time growing short now I took off my own threadbare uniform jacket and tried on Gebhardt's. Ordinarily it wouldn't have fitted, but I'd lost so much weight that this was hardly a problem, so I kept it on. It was a great pity his boots were too small but I took his socks – those were an excellent fit and, as with the jacket, in much better condition that my own. I lit another cigarette and, on my hands and knees, went hunting around the floor for something other than the dust and the splinters I found down there. I was still searching for clues when the hut door opened and Colonel Mrugowski came in.
'Did anyone come forward?'
'No. As a result, I can't believe it was a German who did this. Our men aren't so lacking in honour. A German would have given himself up. For the good of the others.'
'Hitler didn't,' I observed.
'That was different.'
I pushed Gebhardt's cigarettes across the table. 'Here,' I said, 'have one of the dead man's cigarettes.'
'Thanks. I will.' He lit one and glanced uncomfortably at the dead body. 'Don't you think we should cover him up?'
'No. Looking at it helps to give me ideas as to how it happened.'
'And have you any? Ideas about who killed him?'
'So far I'm considering the possibility that it was an elk with a grudge.' I showed him the murder weapon. 'See how sharp it is?'
Gingerly Mrugowski touched the bloodied end with his forefinger. 'Makes a Hell of a shiv, doesn't it?'
I shook my head. 'Actually I think it was probably meant to be decorative. In here. There's a couple of nails and a mark on the wall facing the window that's consistent with this having been part of a small trophy set of horns. But I can't say for sure as I've never been in here before.'
'So where's the rest of it?'
'Maybe he realised how effective a weapon it was and took the rest of it with him. I rather imagine there was an argument. The killer grabbed the trophy, broke it over Gebhardt's skull and found himself holding just a piece of it. A conveniently sharp piece. There are some smaller punctures on Gebhardt's head that are consistent with that possibility. Gebhardt collapsed onto the bed. The killer then went at him with the point. Finished him off. Then he went outside and caught the U-Bahn home. As to who and why, your guess is as good as mine. If this was Berlin I'd be telling the uniforms to look for a man with bloodstains on his jacket, but of course here, that's not so unusual. There are fellows out there who are still wearing uniforms stained with the blood of comrades at Konigsberg. And I expect the killer knows that, too.'
'Is that all you've got?'
'Look, if this was Berlin I could pick up the rugs and beat them, you know? Interview some witnesses, some suspects. Speak to a few informers. There's nothing like an informer in my business. They're the flies who know their shit and that's the detective work that nearly always pays a dividend.'
'So why not speak to Emil Kittel? The other anti-fa agent? It's in his interest to cooperate with your inquiry, wouldn't you say? He might wind up being the killer's next victim, after all;
'That might work. Of course speaking to Kittel means I have to speak to Kittel, and if that happens I don't want anyone in this camp thinking it's because I'm turning Ivan like him.'
'I'll make sure that people know the score.'
'But that's only one objection. You see Kittel's already one of my suspects. He's left-handed. And one of the few things I can tell you about the murderer is that he's probably left- handed.'
'How do you figure that?'
'The stab wounds on Gebhardt's body. They're mostly on his right side. Less than ten per cent of the population is left- handed. So, out of more than a thousand men in this camp, I've got about a hundred suspects. And one of them is Kittel.'
'I see.'
'Somehow I've got to clear ninety-nine of them in less than seventy-two hours with nothing more to go on than the fact they disliked the victim only a little less than the man who actually killed him. All of this would be more than enough to do if there wasn't already a wheelbarrow with my name on it and several tonnes of sand ready for shifting around this canal. That's not a tall order, it's a tall order standing on a box.'
'I'll speak to Major Savostin. See if I can't get you off the work detail until this thing is sorted.'
'You do that, sir. Appeal to his sense of fair play. He probably keeps it in a matchbox alongside his sense of humour. And now I think about it, that's another objection I have to this so-called investigation. I don't like the Ivans knowing anything more about me than they already do. Especially the MVD.'
The SGO smiled.
'Did I say something funny, sir?'
'Before the war I was a doctor,' said the SGO.
'Like your brother.'
He nodded. 'In a mental asylum. We treated a lot of people for something called paranoia.'
'I know what paranoia is, sir.'
'Why are you so paranoid, Gunther?'
'Me, I suppose it's because I have a problem trusting people. I should warn you, Colonel, I'm not the persistent type. Over the years I've learned it's better to be a quitter. I find that knowing when to quit is the best way of staying alive. So don't expect me to be a hero. Not here. Since I put on a German uniform I find that the hero business has been put back thirty years.'
The SGO gave me a disapproving look. 'Perhaps,' he said stiffly, 'if we'd had more heroes we might just have won the war.'
'No, Colonel. If we'd had more heroes the war might never have got started.'
I went back to work, filling my wheelbarrow with sand, pushing it up a gangplank, emptying it, and then pushing it back down again. Endless and unavailing, it was the kind of work that gets your picture on the side of a Greek amphora, or as an illustration in a story that shows the dangers of betraying the secrets of the gods. It wasn't as dangerous as the kind of work the SGO wanted me to do, and but for the vodka inside me and the nicotine in my lungs I might have been feeling a little less than inspired about the prospect of saving twenty-five of my comrades from a little show trial in Stalingrad. I've never been the type to mistake intoxication for heroism. Besides, it's not heroes you need to win a war, it's people who stay alive.
I was still feeling a little intoxicated when the SGO and the MVD major came to fetch me from my Sisyphean labour. And this can be the only explanation for the way I spoke to the Ivan. In Russian. That was a mistake all on its own. The Russians liked it a lot when you spoke Russian. In that respect they're like anyone else. The only difference is that Russians think it means you like them.
The MVD major, Savostin, dismissed the SGO with a wave of his hand as soon as Mrugowski had pointed me out. The Russian beckoned me towards him, impatiently.
'Bistra! Davail'
He was about fifty with reddish hair and a mouth as wide as the Volga which looked as if it had been exaggerated for the purpose of a vindictive caricature. The pale blue eyes in his pale white head had been inherited from the grey she-wolf who'd littered him.
I dropped my shovel and ran eagerly toward him. The Blues liked you to do everything at the double.
'Mrugowski tells me that you were a fascist policeman before the war.'
'No, sir. I was just a policeman. Generally, I left the fascism to the fascists. I had enough to do just being a policeman.'
'Did you ever arrest any communists?'
'I might have done. If they broke the law. But I never arrested anyone for being a communist. I investigated murders.'
'You must have been very busy.'
'Yes, sir, I was.'
'What is your rank?'
'Captain, sir.'
'Then why are you wearing a corporal's jacket?'
'The corporal it belonged to wasn't using it.'
'What function did you have, during the war?'
'I was an intelligence officer, sir.'
'Did you ever fight any partisans?'
'No, sir. Only the Red Army.'
'That is why you lost.'
'Yes, sir, that is certainly why we lost.'
The pale blue wolf eyes stayed on me, unblinking, obliging me to snatch my cap off while I stared back at him.
'You speak excellent Russian,' he said. 'Where did you learn it?'
'From Russians. I told you, Major, I was an intelligence officer. That generally means you have to be something more than just intelligent. With me it was the fact that I'd learned Russian. But it wasn't the same standard of Russian you've described until I came here, your honour. I have the great Stalin to thank for that.'
'You were a spy, Captain. Isn't that right?'
'No, sir. I was always in uniform. Which means if I had been a spy I'd have been a rather stupid one. And as I told you already, sir, I was in intelligence. It was my job to monitor Russian radio broadcasts, read Russian newspapers, speak to Russian prisoners…'
'Did you ever torture a Russian prisoner?'
'No, sir.'
'A Russian would never give information to fascists unless he was tortured.'
'I expect that's why I never got any information from Russian prisoners, sir. Not once. Not ever.'
'So what makes the SGO think that you can get it from German plenis?'
'That's a good question, sir. You would have to ask him that.'
'His brother is a war criminal. Did you know that?'
'No, sir.'
'He was a doctor at Buchenwald concentration camp,' said Major Savostin. 'He carried out experiments on Russian POWs. The colonel claims not to be related to this person, but it's my impression that Mrugowski is not a common name in Germany.'
I shrugged. 'We can't choose the people to whom we are related, sir.'
'Perhaps you are also a war criminal, Captain Gunther.'
'No, sir.'
'Come now. You were in the SD. Everyone in the SD was a war criminal.'
'Look, sir, the SGO asked me to look into the murder of Wolfgang Gebhardt. He gave me the strange idea that you wanted to find out who did it. That if you didn't find out, then twenty-five of my comrades were going to be picked out at random and shot for it.'
'You were misinformed, Captain. There is no death penalty in the Soviet Union. Comrade Stalin has abolished it. But they will stand trial for it, yes. Perhaps you yourself will be one of these men picked at random.'
'So, it's like that, is it?'
'Do you know who did it?'
'Not yet. But it sounds like you just handed me an extra incentive to find out.'
'Good. We understand each other perfectly. You're excused work for the next three days in order that you may solve the crime. I will inform the guards. How will you start?'
'Now that I've seen the body, by thinking. That's what I normally do in these situations. It's not very spectacular but it gets results. Then I'd like permission to interview some of the prisoners, and perhaps some of the guards.'
'The prisoners, yes, the guards, no. It wouldn't be right to have a good communist being cross-questioned by a fascist.'
'Very well. I'd also like to interview the surviving anti-fa agent, Kittel.'
'This I will have to think about. Now then, it would not be appropriate for you to interview the other prisoners while they're working. So you can use the canteen for that. And for thinking, yes, it might be best if you were to use Gebhardt's hut. I'll have the body removed immediately if you're finished with it.'
I nodded.
'Very well then. Please follow me.'
We walked to Gebhardt's hut. Halfway there Savostin saw some guards and barked some orders in a language that wasn't Russian. Noticing my curiosity, he told me that it was Tatar.
'Most of these pigs who guard the camp are Tatars,' he explained. 'They speak Russian, of course, but to make yourself clear you really have to speak Tatar. Perhaps you should try to learn.'
I didn't answer that. He wasn't expecting me to. He was too busy looking around at the huge building site.
'Just think,' he said. 'All of this will be a canal by 1950. Extraordinary.'
I had my doubts about that, which Savostin seemed to sense. 'Comrade Stalin has ordered it; he said, as if this was the only affirmation needed.
And in that place, and in that time, he was probably right.
When we reached Gebhardt's hut he supervised the removal of the body.
'If you need anything,' he said, 'come to the guardhouse.' He looked around. 'Which is where exactly? I'm not at all familiar with this camp.'
I pointed to the west, beyond the canteen. I felt like Virgil pointing out the sights in Hell to Dante. I watched him walk away and went back into the hut.
The first thing I did was to turn over the mattress, not because I was looking for something but because I intended to have a sleep and I hardly wanted to lie on top of Gebhardt's bloodstains. No one ever had enough sleep at KA, but thinking's no good if you're tired. I took off his jacket, lay down and closed my eyes. It wasn't just lack of sleep that made me tired, but the vodka, too. The deflated football that was my stomach wasn't used to the stuff any more than my liver was. I closed my eyes and went to sleep wondering what the Soviet authorities were likely to do to me and twenty-four others if the death penalty had indeed been abolished. Was it possible there was a worse camp than the ones I had already seen?
A while later – I've no idea how long I slept, but it was still light outside – I sat up. The cigarettes were still in my jacket pocket so I lit another, but it wasn't like a proper cigarette; there was a paper holder and only about three or four centimetres of tobacco – what the Ivans called a papirossi cigarette. These were Belomorkanal, which seemed only appropriate since that was a Russian brand introduced to commemorate the construction of another canal, this one connecting the White Sea to the Baltic. The Abwehr's opinion of the Belomorkanal was that it had been a disaster: too shallow, making it useless to most seagoing vessels, not to mention the tens of thousands of prisoners sacrificed on its construction. I wondered if this particular canal would fare any better.
I finished the cigarette and aimed the butt at Stalin, and something about the way it struck the great leader's nose made me get up and take a closer look at the paper portrait. When I tugged it off the wall I was surprised to see that the picture had neatly concealed a small shelved alcove, about the size of a book. On the shelf were a notebook and a roll of banknotes. It wasn't a wall safe, but in that place it was maybe the next-best thing.
The roll of banknotes was almost four hundred five 'gold' rouble notes – about three or four months' wages for a Blue. This wasn't a fortune, unless you were a pleni. Two thousand roubles plus a gold wedding band might just be enough to bribe some better treatment inside an MVD jail in Stalingrad. I looked at the roubles again, just to make sure, and to my relief they all had that greasy, authentically Russian feel about them. I even held the bills up to the light coming through the window to check the watermark before folding them into the back pocket of my uniform breeches, which was the only one with a button and without a large hole.
The notebook had a red cover and was about the size of an identity card. It was full of cheap Russian paper that looked more like something flattened by a heavy object and which contained a surprise all of its own, for on one page there was a name beneath which were written some dates and some payment details, and these seemed to indicate that the pleni named was in the pay of Gebhardt. Not that this made the pleni a murderer, exactly, but it did help to explain how it was that the Blues were able to police the POWs so effectively.
But the date of one particular payment caught my eye: Wednesday August 15th. This was the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, and for some Catholic Germans, especially those from
Saarland or Bavaria, it was also an important public holiday. But nearly everyone in camp remembered this as the day when Georg Oberheuser – a sergeant from Stuttgart – had been arrested by the MVD. Angry that this date was to be treated as a normal working day, Oberheuser had loudly denounced Stalin to everyone in our hut as a 'wicked, godless bastard'. There were other no less slanderous epithets he used as well, and all of them well deserved, no doubt, but we were all a little bit shaken when Oberheuser was taken away and never seen again, and by the knowledge that with no Ivans in our hut, Oberheuser had to have been betrayed to the Blues by another German.
The name in Gebhardt's notebook was Konrad Metelmann, the young lieutenant I had naively resolved to look out for. It appeared that he'd been doing a better job of looking out for himself.
I did a bit of thinking after that and remembered how the Blues were always ordering our hut to appear in the canteen for an identity check. They would ask each man his name, rank and serial number in the hope – we had supposed – of catching one of us out, for it was certainly the case that believing themselves to be wanted for war crimes there were several SS officers pretending to be someone else, someone who had been killed in the war. We were always questioned alone, with Gebhardt translating, and any one of us could have used such an opportunity to give the MVD information. The only reason none of us had connected this with Oberheuser was that there had been no identity check on the day of his arrest, which meant that Metelmann and Gebhardt must also have been using some kind of dead-letter drop.
The Russians had a saying: The best way to keep your friends in the Soviet Union is never to betray them. I'd never much liked Georg Oberheuser, but he didn't deserve to be betrayed by one of his own comrades. According to Mrugowski, Oberheuser was tried by a People's Court and sentenced to twenty years of labour and correction. Or at least that was what the camp commander had told him. But I saw no reason to believe what Major Savostin had told me: that the great Stalin had abolished the death penalty. I'd seen far too many of my fellow countrymen shot at the side of the road on the long march out of Konigsberg to accept the idea that summary execution was no longer routine in the Soviet Union. Maybe Oberheuser was dead and maybe he wasn't. Either way it was up to me to make things up to him. That's the debt we owe the dead. To give them justice if we can. And a kind of justice if we can't.
The rest of the plenis were coming back from work, and I went straight over to the canteen to beat the rush. Seeing Metelmann, I fell in behind him and waited for some kind of indication that he was anxious. But Sajer spoke first:
'Are you really going to finger someone for the Ivans, Gunther?'
'That all depends,' I said, shuffling forward in the line.
'On what?'
'On me finding out who did it. Right now I haven't got a clue. And by the way, I've been told that I'm one of the twenty- five the Ivans are going to pick if they don't get a name. Just so you know that I'm taking this seriously.'
'Do you think they mean it?' asked Metelmann.
'Course they mean it,' said Sajer. 'When do the Ivans ever issue an idle threat? You can always depend on them in that way at least. The bastards.'
'What are going to do, Bernie?' asked Metelmann.
'How should I know?' I glared at Mrugowski. 'This is all his fault. But for him, I'd have the same chance as everyone else.'
'Maybe you'll find out something,' said Metelmann. 'You were a good detective. That's what people say.'
'What do they know? Believe me, I'd have to be Sherlock Holmes to solve this case. My only chance is to bribe that MVD major and get myself off the list. Here, Metelmann, have you got any money you can lend me?'
'I can let you have five roubles,' he said.
'It'll take a lot more than five roubles to bribe that major,' said Sajer.
'I've got to start somewhere,' I said, as Metelmann gave me a five from his pocket. 'Thanks, Konrad. How about you, Sajer?'
'Suppose I need to bribe someone myself?' He grinned unpleasantly at Metelmann. 'If it's you they pick you might regret giving him that five, you silly bastard.'
'Fuck you, Sajer,' said Metelmann.
'Where does someone like you get five roubles anyway?' asked Sajer.
Metelmann sneered and reached for his chunk of chleb. With his left hand.
I also noted the livid-looking scar on his forearm. He might have got the injury on site. But all things considered, I thought it more likely that he'd got it while murdering Gebhardt.
I spent the next three days alone in Gebhardt's hut catching up on my sleep. I knew what I was going to do, but I saw little point in doing it before the MVD's allotted time had elapsed. I was determined to enjoy every minute of my holiday at KA while it was there to be had. After months of hard labour on starvation rations, I was exhausted and a little feverish. Once a day the SGO came over and asked how my inquiry was progressing and I told him that despite any evidence to the contrary I had made good progress. I could see he didn't believe me, but I didn't care. It wasn't like I was going to lose my Army pension because of his opinion. Besides, the SGO and I were two different heads on the same imperial eagle – me looking left and him looking to the right. Even in a Soviet POW camp he could seldom leave a room without clicking his heels. Oh yes, our Colonel Mrugowski was a regular Fred Astaire.
On the third day I rolled the stone away from the front door and went to the site to find Metelmann. I handed him back his five roubles. 'Here,' I said, 'you might as well keep this. I shan't be needing it where I'm going.'
Quickly pocketing the note in case one of the guards should see it, Metelmann tried not to look relieved at my obvious disappointment. 'No luck, huh?'
'My luck ran out on me a long time ago,' I said. 'It was going so fast it must have been wearing running shoes.'
'You know, maybe that MVD major was bluffing,' he said.
'I doubt it. The thing I've noticed about people with power is that they always use it even when they say they don't want to.' I started to walk away.
'Good luck,' said Metelmann.
Major Savostin was playing chess when I found him in the guardhouse. With himself. Colonel Mrugowski was there, too. They were waiting for my report.
'There's no one here that plays,' said the major. 'Perhaps we should have a game, you and I, Captain.'
'I'm sure you're much better than me, sir. After all, it's virtually your national game.'
'Why is that, do you suppose? One would think as logical a game as chess would suit the German character rather well.'
'Because it's black and white?' I suggested. 'Everything is black and white in the Soviet Union. And perhaps because the game involves making sacrifices of smaller, less important pieces. Besides, sir, with you I should worry how to win without losing.' I snatched off my cap. 'As a matter of fact, sir, I've been worried about that for the last three days. I mean, how to solve this case without pissing you off. And I'm still not satisfied I know the answer to that question.'
'But you do know who killed Gebhardt, don't you?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then I fail to understand your difficulty.'
I wondered if I had misjudged him: if he wasn't quite as intelligent as I'd thought. Then again there is a whole earthwork of understanding between someone who is hungry and someone who is not. I could see no way of identifying Metelmann as the culprit without putting my own head in the lion's mouth,
'I mean, you're not suggesting it was a Russian, I trust,' he said, fiddling with his queen.
'Oh no, sir. A Russian would never have murdered a German and not owned up to it. Besides, why kill a pleni in secret when you could just as easily kill him in the open? Even if he was an anti-fascist agent. No, you were right sir. It was a German who killed Gebhardt.'
I cast my eye over the board in the hope that I might see some evidence of intelligence there, but all I could tell was that the right pieces were on the right squares and that the major needed a manicure like I needed a hot bath. They probably didn't care about manicures in the Soviet workers' paradise. They certainly didn't care about hot baths. It was a little hard to be sure, but I had the idea that the major smelt almost as bad as I did.
'The murder was not premeditated,' I said. 'It happened on the spur of the moment. Frenzied stabbings often happen like that where there's no sexual aspect involved. Of course it's hard to say much with certainty at a crime scene that I've had to work without a thermometer to take the body's temperature. And there were certainly fingerprints that could have been recovered from the murder weapon and the brass door handle. What can be said with confidence, however, is that the murderer was left-handed. Because of the pattern of wounds on the dead man's body. Now, at the canteen I observed all of the men in this camp and drew up a list of all the left-handed plenis. This was my initial pool of suspects. Since when I have identified the murderer. I will not speak his name. As a German officer it would be wrong for me to do so. But there is no need, since his name appears in Gebhardt's notebook.'
I handed the red notebook to the major.
'Metelmann,' he said, quietly.
'As you will see, this page contains details of payments that were made to this particular officer in return for information. In other words, the culprit was acting as the murdered man's paid informer. I believe the two men argued about money, sir. Among other things. Possibly Gebhardt refused to pay the murderer five roubles – his usual rate – for information received. After the murder, the culprit took the money anyway.'
I handed Savostin a hundred of the five-rouble notes I had found behind the poster of Stalin. Savostin handed the notebook to the