Von Dohnanyi had made a full recovery by the time a clearing in the forest finally appeared to the north of the city like a long green swimming pool, and we landed. Steps were wheeled quickly into place on the tarmac and we stepped out into a wind that quickly cut a jagged hole in my greatcoat, then my torso, leaving me feeling as cold as a frozen herring and, in the centre of that enormous tract of forest, just as out of place. I pulled my crusher about my frozen ears and looked around for a sign of someone from the signals regiment who was supposed to meet me. Meanwhile my erstwhile travelling companion paid me no attention as he came down the steps of the aircraft and was immediately met by two senior officers – one of them a general with more fur on his collar than an Eskimo – and seemed quite indifferent to my own lack of transport as, laughing loudly, he and his pals shook hands while an orderly loaded his luggage into their large staff car.
A Tatra with a little black and yellow flag bearing the number 537 on the hood drew up next to the staff car and two officers climbed out. Seeing the general, the two officers saluted, were cursorily acknowledged, and then walked toward me. The Tatra had its top up but there were no windows and it seemed another cold journey lay ahead of me.
‘Captain Gunther?’ said the taller man.
‘Yes sir.’
‘I’m Lieutenant-Colonel Ahrens, of the 537th Signals,’ he said. ‘This is Lieutenant Rex, my adjutant. Welcome to Smolensk. Rex was going to meet you by himself, but at the last minute I thought I’d join him and put you fully in the picture on the way back to the castle.’
‘I’m very glad you did, sir.’
A moment later the staff car drove away.
‘Who were the flamingos?’ I asked.
‘General von Tresckow,’ said Ahrens. ‘With Colonel von Gersdorff. I can’t say I recognized the third officer.’ Ahrens had a lugubrious sort of face – he was not unhandsome – and an even more lugubrious voice.
‘Ah, that explains it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The third officer – the one you didn’t recognize, the one who got off the plane – he was also an aristocrat,’ I explained.
‘It figures,’ said Ahrens. ‘Field Marshal von Kluge runs Army Group HQ like it’s a branch of the German Club. I get my orders from General Oberhauser. He’s a professional soldier, like me. He’s not an aristocrat; and not so bad, as staff officers go. My predecessor Colonel Bedenck used to say that you never really know exactly how many staff officers there are until you try and get into an air-raid shelter.’
‘I like the sound of your old colonel,’ I said, walking toward the Tatra. ‘He and I sound as if we’re cut from the same cloth.’
‘Your cloth is a little darker than his, perhaps,’ said Ahrens pointedly. ‘Especially the cloth of your other uniform – the dress one. After what he saw in Minsk, Bedenck could hardly bear to be in the same room as an officer of the SS or SD. Since you’re to be billeted with us for security reasons, I might as well confess I feel much the same way. I was a little surprised when Major-General Oster from the Abwehr telephoned and told me that the Bureau was sending an SD man down here. There’s little love lost between the SD and the Wehrmacht in my corner.’
I grinned. ‘I appreciate a man who comes right out and says what’s on his mind. There’s not a lot of that around since Stalingrad. Especially in uniform. So as one professional to another let me tell you this. My other uniform is a cheap suit and a felt hat. I’m not the Gestapo, I’m just a policeman from Kripo who used to work homicide, and I’m not here to spy on anyone. I intend going home to Berlin just as soon as I’ve finished looking at all the evidence you’ve gathered, but I tell you frankly sir, mostly I’m just looking out for myself, and I don’t give a damn what your secrets are.’
I put my hand on a long shovel that was attached to the Tatra’s bonnet. The little cars were no good in mud or on snow and frequently you had to dig them out or shovel gravel under the wheels: there was probably a sack of it behind the back seat.
‘But if I am lying to you, colonel, you have my permission to bang me on the head with this and have your men bury me in the woods. On the other hand, you might think I’ve already said enough to bury me yourself.’
‘Fair enough, captain.’ Colonel Ahrens smiled and then took out a little cigarette case. He offered one to me and to his lieutenant. ‘I appreciate your candour.’
We puffed them into life until it was almost impossible to distinguish smoke from our hot breath in freezing cold air.
‘Now then,’ I said. ‘You mentioned something about being billeted with you? If I didn’t need it to go back to Berlin, I could cheerfully hope that I never again saw a Junkers 52.’
‘Of course,’ said Ahrens. ‘You must be exhausted.’
We climbed into the Tatra. A corporal named Rose was at the wheel, and we were soon bowling along quite a decent road.
‘You’ll be staying with us in the castle,’ said Ahrens. ‘That’s Dnieper Castle, which is along the main road to Vitebsk. Nearly all of Army Group Centre, the Air Force Corps, the Gestapo and my lot are located west of Smolensk, in and around a place called Krasny Bor. The General Staff is headquartered in a nearby health resort which is as good as it gets around here, but we’re not badly off at the castle in signals. Are we, Rex?’
‘No sir. We’re well set, I think.’
‘There’s a cinema and a sauna – there’s even a rifle range. Grub’s pretty good, you’ll be glad to hear. Most of us – at least the officers anyway – we don’t actually go into Smolensk itself very much at all.’ Ahrens waved at some onion-dome spires on the horizon to our left. ‘But it’s not a bad place, to be honest. Rather historic, really. There are more churches hereabouts than you could polish the floor with. Rex is your man for that sort of thing, aren’t you lieutenant?’
‘Yes sir,’ said Rex. ‘There’s a fine cathedral, captain. The Assumption. I do recommend you see that while you’re here. That is, if you’re not too busy. By rights it shouldn’t be there at alclass="underline" during the siege of Smolensk at the start of the seventeenth century, the defenders of the city locked themselves in the crypt where there was an ammunition depot and blew it and themselves up to prevent it from falling into Polish hands. History repeats itself, of course. The local NKVD used to keep some of its own personnel and domestic case files in the crypt of the Assumption Cathedral – to protect them against the Luftwaffe – and when it became clear that the city was about to be captured by us they tried to blow them up, like they did in Kiev, at the city’s Duma building. Only the explosives didn’t go off.’
‘I knew there was a reason it wasn’t on my itinerary.’
‘Oh, the cathedral is quite safe,’ said Rex. ‘Most of the explosive has been removed, but our engineers think there are still lots of hidden bombs in the crypt. One of our men had his face blown off when he opened a filing cabinet down there. So it’s just the crypt that remains out of bounds to visitors. Most of the material is of limited military intelligence value, and probably out of date by now, so the more time that passes the less important it seems to risk looking at it.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s really a very impressive building. Napoleon certainly thought so.’
‘I had no idea he got this far,’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ said Rex. ‘He really was the Hitler of—’ he stopped, mid-sentence.