The Blameless Dead

by Gary Haynes

  A few nuns in filthy habits were doing what they could, which was nothing at all as far as Richter could see. The occasional bicycle was ridden. Nothing more. Not one living animal was to be seen. Just the carcass of a donkey or nag, the flesh stripped from it, half the bones too.

  Further on, endless lines of male POWs, the teenagers and the old, shuffled along the edges of the piles of debris, grey and dejected, like endlessly wandering wraiths. Anyone in uniform had been taken. Even firemen, air raid wardens and ambulance drivers. He knew many would perish en route to the east, and many more in the prison camps. The capture of Berlin was Stalin’s reward, a tactic Richter felt was sound. Karl Marx had said almost one hundred years before: He who possesses Berlin, controls Europe.

  The vehicle reached the outskirts of the bombed city where a group of five Red Army women soldiers was gathered beside a blackened Soviet T-34 tank, its turret scalped. Their heavy woollen dresses were mud-splattered, their berets askew. They were screaming and kicking a grey-haired member of the Volkssturm to death, his skinny body hidden in a voluminous greatcoat.

  As the car approached them, one of the women bent down and started to strangle him. Seemingly bored, she finished him off with a bullet to the side of the neck. His head was tossed back and forth by the impact, like a fairground punch ball. The women clambered over the rubble and disappeared into a hollow building, with a crumbling rococo façade, as if they’d been finally rendered ashamed of their actions.

  Fucking banshees, Richter thought.

  67

  Now the road was narrower, the sides less littered with burned-out military vehicles, the air cleaner and all but silent, save for the odd transport and cargo aircraft. They had left Berlin behind. No one spoke to Richter in the car.

  Thinking of the past, he wondered momentarily if the choices he had made in his life had been terrible mistakes. Had the Reich been a hopeless dream from its inception?

  Suddenly, the car was full of concerned shouts from the driver and Beria’s nephew.

  The vehicle turned abruptly onto a grass verge and came to a jolting stop as the brakes were applied too heavily, the car’s metal grille impacting with the bank of earth that abutted the verge.

  Richter lurched forward, banging his injured nose on the front seat. It began to bleed again. Straightening up, his eyes streaming, he could just make out the two outriders sprawled on the road ahead, and the bizarre sight of their motorcycles rolling forward without them. The concerned shouts were replaced by awkward action, with arms flung randomly about. In the barely subdued panic, his guards struggled to free their TT-33 pistols from their leather holsters.

  Richter knew that the outriders had been dislodged from their motorcycles by a thick piece of taut wire, which, he guessed, had been positioned at neck level, or at least as near as could be estimated. But it had done the job spectacularly well. It lay on the road now, half curled up, like an outsized viper.

  He heard heavy footfalls behind him and looked around. There was a dozen or so men spanning the road, about three yards away. They wore long leather or tweed coats and civilian hats. More men appeared from over the bank, similarly attired. They all carried German MP40 submachine guns, Mauser rifles, or pistols. Two had stick grenades tucked into their belts.

  No shots were fired, but Richter vaguely heard voices speaking in German.

  The driver was pinned in by the bank, but Beria’s nephew managed to half scramble out. He was knocked unconscious by the butt of a carbine to the back of his head. The two guards either side of Richter were aiming their pistols at the men milling about with remarkable calm outside the closed windows. The car was surrounded, its occupants outnumbered and outgunned.

  The guard on the left exited the vehicle on all fours. He fired once before he was hit by a volley of at least ten rounds, the empty brass casings clattering on the asphalt like a set of bar chimes struck discordantly. He appeared to shiver with the impact and pitched forward, blood bubbling from his mouth as if, amused, he was spilling something he’d drunk.

  The guard to Richter’s right grabbed him around the neck and pulled him down, placing the pistol’s muzzle to his temple. Accepting his fate, Richter started to mumble a Tantric prayer to himself.

  The window nearest Richter shattered, the sound like a howitzer discharging, the shards of glass mere patters as they cascaded onto the grassy verge. The guard holding Richter down jerked back up, releasing him in the process. Richter looked sideways at him, still fearful for his life. But the man’s head was moving this way and that, and his teeth were chattering. In that moment, Richter knew he had never seen action and the thought eased his anxiety a little, although he knew the man could act erratically out of sheer despair.

  A hand clad in a leather glove was thrust through the jagged remains of the window, imbedding a serrated blade into the guard’s jugular. He squealed like a distressed sow. The blade was eased out and little geysers of blood squirted from the entry wound in one-second intervals, covering the seat in front, the roof, the windscreen. The man went rigid and shook before falling against the door.

  Wiping the thick blood from his own face, Richter knew the wound was fatal. He felt oddly detached from it all now. The guard was no longer a man, after all, but rather just blood-splattered wax, motionless and pale, the eyes unblinking. The door was pulled open and the man in a trilby hat and a woollen overcoat jerked on the guard’s arm and let him topple to the grass to bleed out.

  ‘Komm schnell,’ the man said.

  Hearing his native language spoken to him directly by a German helped propel Richter from the NKVD vehicle. Bursts of submachine-gun fire signalled the premature deaths of the driver and Beria’s nephew, and the rear leather seats were peppered in a flurry that flung padding and severed springs about amid the muzzle smoke. Richter looked over at the nephew. His feet were still inside the car and a trail of blood was leaching from his lower back. It was obvious that he’d regained consciousness after the bludgeoning. He was making a faint mewing sound now, like a puppy snatched from its mother’s dog basket. A fitting end, Richter thought.

  Three unmarked cars pulled up behind. But the threat of an execution had taken its toll and Richter had to be assisted, his upper arms held as two young men all but dragged him to the rear vehicle. He glanced back. The NKVD staff car looked as if a bloody mist had descended upon it.

  He was folded onto the back seat, the aroma of fresh leather wafting over him. He managed to straighten up as the car began to reverse at speed. The man in the front passenger seat turned around and offered Richter a stainless-steel canteen.

  ‘Drink?’ he said.

  It sounded more like a command than a question, but Richter took it just the same. He wiped blood from his lips and chin, but it was still oozing from his stinging nose. He’d expected water; this was schnapps, and it warmed the back of his throat. Nothing calmed him like opium, but this came a close second, given the circumstances. The man who had handed him the canteen was handsome, with a lean face and eyes the colour of violets.

  ‘Who are you?’ Richter said.

  ‘SS Hauptsturmführer Walter Basse.’

  ‘But the war is over,’ Richter said. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for everyone,’ Basse said.

  Basse began to unbutton his overcoat. He pulled it down over his right shoulder, revealing something that made Richter grin. Under the Waffen-SS camouflage jacket, on a field grey uniform, was a rune on a shoulder strap, one worn by the Second SS Panzer Division, Das Reich. It was the Wolfsangel, or wolf hook, said to be a powerful talisman that warded off danger.

  ‘Das Reich?’ Richter said.

  ‘Nein. Werwolf.’

  Richter knew that in the autumn of 1944, Himmler had set up Operation Werwolf as a potential SS guerrilla movement, and that in March 1945, Dr Goebbels had given the ‘Werwolf’ speech, urging every German to fight to the death.

  ‘It’s not the end?’ Richter said.

  ‘No,’ Basse said. �
��Berlin has fallen. But Army Group Centre fights on in Czechoslovakia. We hold out in Denmark and the north. Elsewhere, too.’

  ‘I had no idea. And Himmler?’

  ‘Has escaped Berlin.’

  Richter rubbed his forehead with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, disbelievingly.

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ he said.

  ‘We didn’t. We were after prisoners for intelligence purposes. A barter, if it came to it. When I saw the Russian grab you and his pistol went down, I ordered your rescue.’

  In that moment, Richter convinced himself that the Tantric prayer had played its part.

  68

  The NKVD general stood with Kazapov and Volsky in one of the bunker’s corridors, outside the room that had held the savaged and dismembered corpses of the Red Army soldiers. Hurricane lamps hung at intervals, the leaking pipes bound with grey tape, used to patch-up tanks.

  ‘So, this is where it happened,’ the general said. ‘The smell is unbearable. Like those foul camps. I knew I shouldn’t have come. But curiosity is a demanding mistress.’

  Kazapov thought about the general’s other mistress, Brigitte Bayer, and winced. Volsky went to put his hand on the general’s right tricep, but evidently thought better of it.

  ‘I think we should go, comrade general. The ceilings aren’t safe,’ he said.

  ‘The major is right, comrade general. The ceilings could collapse at any time, the sappers warned,’ Kazapov said.

  He guessed that the general was lying, and that Beria had told him to report personally on the matter, and that though he disliked such places as an affront to his senses, to disobey or to try to fool Beria was a mistake a man only made once.

  The general nodded. ‘Alright. I’ve seen enough. But do you smell that fragrance in the air?’

  He looked as if he was remembering something from his past, a memory that had been fanned into life by the aroma.

  ‘Fragrance, comrade general?’ Volsky said.

  ‘Yes. It never leaves you. Not after all these years. Not after all that has taken place.’

  The general looked down, searching with his dark eyes for something among the debris.

  ‘General, please. We must go,’ Volsky said.

  Ignoring him, the general said, ‘And do you know what it is?’

  ‘Incense. It’s incense,’ Kazapov said.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ the general said.

  An NKVD captain came up the dust-strewn corridor towards them. He saluted the general, breathing erratically. Kazapov noticed that his skin was unusually pallid, that he was stick thin and had watery eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, comrade general, but I have bad news.’

  ‘What is it?’ the general said.

  ‘The SS colonel, Lutz Richter, has escaped.’

  ‘Escaped?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, general. There are no survivors.’

  The general’s face creased. ‘Fucking shit! Beria will be apoplectic.’ He stared at the captain. ‘How?’

  ‘We don’t know, for sure, comrade general. A group of renegades, perhaps.’

  He sighed. ‘Beria will be apoplectic,’ he said, repeating himself. ‘His nephew was in that car.’

  ‘We have fifty men looking for him, general,’ the captain said.

  ‘Double the number. Do it now.’

  ‘Yes, comrade general.’

  ‘Triple it.’

  ‘Yes, comrade general.’

  The captain saluted and shuffled off. Kazapov couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. But it was so. He raked his brain to find a way to take advantage of the fact that Richter had escaped. If he could get to him, he would be able to get the names of the Kalmyks shown in the film he’d viewed. Those who had murdered his mother and sisters.

  The general took out a cigarette, which Volsky lit for him obsequiously. The general began to smoke with furious puffs.

  ‘We need to find this man, and quickly,’ he said.

  Kazapov nodded. ‘Please, comrade general. I would like to take a squad and hunt for him.’

  The general removed his cigarette. ‘Why would you?’

  ‘It’s my duty, general.’

  The general shook his head. ‘You are too eager, Kazapov. Your eagerness will get you killed. Nevertheless, take some Poles, if you must. If you find him I will promote you personally.’

  ‘Thank you, comrade general.’

  The general stubbed out his cigarette, as if he’d suddenly decided that smoking was a risky thing to do in the bunker. He took some snuff from a silver box, sniffed it from the back of his hand.

  ‘Let’s not fret too much. They will all hang. The only thing that will survive this is our beloved communism. The future.’

  But Kazapov knew the general wasn’t the fanatical Stalinist he liked people to think he was. Who was? Kazapov figured he was simply trying to keep himself alive like everyone else.

  ‘Still,’ the general said. ‘Beria will have someone’s balls for this. Just not mine.’

  As they walked away, Volsky whispered to Kazapov. ‘Don’t think his nephew’s death means you’re off the hook, little man.’

  69

  Oranienburg. north of Berlin, the same day.

  A light drizzle was falling, and the fading light was exacerbated by charcoal-black clouds that hung low in the sky.

  Joseph Kazapov’s head was pressed hard against the side of a bomb crater, with only the thin material of his cloth forage cap between them. He’d lost his helmet when a mine had exploded nearby a couple of minutes before. The Polish squad he’d ordered to help him find Richter was pinned down by a sniper. Every time they moved, a bullet hit the crater-ridden, sludge-filled road — or a recruit. Three young men already lay dead among the debris.

  He’d received a radio message from an NKVD signalman who’d stated that a group of plainclothes Germans had smashed their way through a roadblock and had shot at Red Army soldiers. He’d said an old man had been seen in the back of the car who’d fitted Lutz Richter’s description. They were in the ancient town of Oranienburg, about twenty miles north of Berlin. It seemed they’d been heading for the far north, which was still under German control. They had abandoned the vehicle due to the burst tyres. Kazapov had ordered that no further action should be taken until he arrived on the scene.

  When he had, he’d been shown the building where the few men that had survived the gun battle were holed up. But there was an active sniper there, too.

  Gas pipes had been shot through and fires started. The resultant explosions had taken out a Red Army squad. Dynamite had been rigged up in an old garage that had killed another five men. Flaming wooden beams had crashed to the ground, sending sparks and black ash flying and had badly injured two more comrades. Brave young men that had fought at the siege of Leningrad against the Germans, Italians, Finns and Spanish. The surviving men had looked to Kazapov to be both furious and not a little wary.

  He now knew that the sniper was on the fourth floor of the building, a Mercedes-Benz office complex, eighty yards ahead. Using his field binoculars, a split second after a shot had been fired, he saw the red brick walls peppered with bullet holes. All but a few windows were shattered, but it hadn’t been gutted. There was no sign of the German sniper, not even a muzzle blast or a single fleeting and muted reflection from the optical scope glass.

  He pushed three hand grenades inside his belt and put a fresh, circular magazine into the well of his Shpagin. The grenades were cylindrical and nine inches long, including the handle. He knew that once he’d released the firing lever that jutted out from the handle the time delay was four seconds.

  The five men with him, the remnants of the squad, were bunched in the shallow bomb crater. They were all privates in the First Infantry Division and wore tarpaulin jackets, drill pants and their old Red Army-issue helmets emblazoned with the Polish military eagle, the Piast Eagle. Apart from their rifles, two were armed with RPG-1anti-tank grenades. He knew they could take out th
e sniper, but that wouldn’t serve his purpose.

  He looked at them in turn. Ash-grey faces. Filthy uniforms. Young minds warped and twisted, he could tell. Young hands that had brought death into the world.

  The legacy of war, Kazapov thought. Of all wars. Of my war.

  One was a lad from Warsaw, with a hooked nose. The bare skin on his neck bore rope marks. He swore every other word. A metal joist had embedded itself in his shin. Now he cursed the indiscriminate nature of war, and said he’d had enough and was going home. He stood up and let his German M-09 ammo pouches fall. He limped forward, using his 7.62 Mosin rifle to bear his weight.

  As the others started to scream at him to get down, a high-calibre bullet hit him in the cheek, whirling him around on his makeshift crutch like a spinning top. Then he dropped. In the open. In the dead zone. His helmet was still on, but his body was splayed. He was as vulnerable as a beached starfish. The second bullet penetrated his neck. He coughed and whimpered. His hands grasped his throat, his fingers trembling as they tried in vain to stem the arterial spurts of blood. It took him less than a minute to die, the blood mingling with the earth.

  Kazapov thought briefly that the earth from Berlin to Moscow must be drenched in it.

  Some said prayers. Others cursed his stupidity. Kazapov looked on with fascination. The boy was a Jew from the Warsaw ghetto. His mother had been sent to Treblinka, he’d said. His father had fought with the partisans. Kazapov couldn’t imagine what had made him commit suicide. For suicide it had been.

  He knew too that in July 1944, the Polish First Army had been ordered by Stalin to halt at the Vistula River for no logical reason other than to allow the Germans to savagely put down an uprising by the Polish Home Army and civilian resistance in the capital, Warsaw. Kazapov had been told that Hitler had ordered the population to be expelled and the city destroyed. The Poles in the city had thought they would be aiding the Red Army. But Stalin had let the Germans do his work for him. He’d rule Poland unopposed now. Most of the east and the Balkans too. Kazapov guessed it had all become too much for the lad from Warsaw. And he himself had had enough, too.