The Perfect Corpse

by Giles Milton

  Tom shifted uncomfortably. It was the first time Jack had seen him on the defensive.

  ‘I’m afraid to say that in this case no news is bad news.

  Silence. All eyes snapped towards him.

  ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  The smiles vanished.

  ‘What - ?’

  He explained it all: the storm, the warm-up, the CCTV footage, the killing of Kingston. When he was finally finished the room remained in shocked silence. Sam Taylor cleared his throat as if it was full of mud.

  ‘So what you’re saying is this. We have a killer out there and it’s not even Ferris Clark.’

  Tom nodded. It was the first time he’d admitted it wasn’t Ferris Clark. But before he could say anything more, Hunter pushed everyone’s thoughts into a U-turn.

  ‘Wait a minute. Aren’t we running ahead of ourselves?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Let’s not give up on Ferris Clark quite so quick. Let’s just have a little think. Ferris Clark went missing in eastern Greenland in the summer of nineteen-forty-four. Fact. We take delivery of a body from eastern Greenland. Fact. The body matches the date. Fact.’

  Todd, Sam, Jim Bartholomew, all were anxious to hear what he had to say.

  ‘It’s only our friend from London -’ he speared a finger towards Jack - ‘who’s saying we’ve resurrected a Nazi.’

  Jack watch all the heads swivel towards him. It was his turn to speak.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, scratching at his unshaven chin. ‘And it’s only guesswork.’

  ‘Guesswork?’ Jim Bartholomew snorted into the room. ‘We’ve got a killer on the loose and all you’re giving us is guesswork.’ He looked at Jack more sharply. ‘Who are you?’

  He was interrupted by Carla, who appeared at the door with a tray of coffee. She handed the cups round, putting the only mug in front of Tom.

  ‘Keeping this within these walls is our absolute priority,’ said Perez in a low voice. ‘We’re in a hard place right now. In fact we’re in deep shit. And Hunter’s got a point. Whatever happens, and I mean whatever, we need to keep running with the story of Ferris Clark.’

  Tom drummed his fingers on the table, like it might yet work out okay.

  ‘Ferris Clark. Ferris Clark,’ he said. ‘Keep his name in your head. The living corpse that’s hiding out in Hanford is to remain Ferris Clark until we decide otherwise.’

  Jim Bartholomew reluctantly agreed. So did Jordan and the others.

  ‘Gives us cover,’ said Todd Roland. ‘Room to manoeuvre. But Christ, Tom, what were you thinking?’

  NINETEEN

  The Bundesarchiv in Lichterfelde was all glass and concrete, a four-storey building that looked like it dated from the seventies. It could have been the extension block of a secondary school.

  Karin followed the paved path around the outside, pausing for a moment at the front and turning her face to the sun. She felt its warmth on her skin and took off her sunglasses for a moment. Another beautiful day.

  She’d been intending to spend the morning at her favourite café on Blumenstrasse, the boutique one with the garden that spilled onto the pavement. Croissant, cappuccino and cigarette in that order, with the latest German Vogue. But Jack’s phone-call changed everything.

  Jack. She could sense the old demons rising to the surface. One drink would lead to two, and then the bottle. She’d seen it all before. That’s why he’d emailed her in the first place.

  The porter at the Bundesarchiv information desk directed her to the second floor, where she was told to speak to Nikolaus, one of the archivists. She found him seated in front of a pile of documents that he was indexing. He had the earnest, anxious-to-help look of a student on work experience.

  The way she was standing there, skinny jeans, almond eyes, hands on hips, she knew she’d provoke a reaction. Nikolaus flushed slightly. Spent too much time with white-haired history professors.

  ‘Problem is,’ she said, scraping her long hair back into a pile, ‘I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for.’

  He fiddled with his collar for a moment then offered a librarian’s smile.

  ‘You’re not the first,’ he said. ‘It’s SS Totenkopf, you say?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We’ve got quite a lot on them. Let me see -’

  He went over to one of the computers.

  ‘Yes, it has its own section. Totenkopf, of course, is quite well known. Here we go. ‘Totenkopf was the smallest of the Death’s Head Divisions. It saw service on both the Western Front and Eastern Front before being directed into special operations.’’

  He paused for a moment. ‘One, two, three - looks like we’ve got six individual files. But they’re not complete. Never are.’

  He looked up at Karin, his fringe of dark hair falling across his face. ‘D’you want me to get everything?’ And then his eyes switched back to the screen. ‘Anyway, it all seems to be in the one box.’

  ‘Please. Everything.’

  ‘It’ll take half an hour or so. I should warn you, they might be written in the old Gothic script. The Nazis brought it back. Revived it. Even I find it hard to read and I used it for my thesis.’

  She nodded and asked if there were any other files that were relevant to the Totenkopf. ‘D’you have lists of personnel? Men who served in that division? Anything.’

  He frowned. ‘Yes and no. And more no than yes. A lot were taken by the Americans after the war. Others were destroyed, some deliberately, some not. What we’ve got here are the files about individual units. What they did. Where they were sent. That sort of thing.’

  ‘No problem. I’m sure I’ll find something.’

  ‘What exactly are you researching?’

  ‘Trying to track someone. But like I said, I’m not exactly sure who.’

  He gave a weak smile, as if to suggest that he knew what she was trying to say. ‘A grandfather? Great uncle? We get people all the time looking for family information. They’re often embarrassed. And not always happy with what they find.’

  The phone on his desk rang. He left it unanswered.

  ‘I’ll go and get those files. I’ll bring them to you.’

  Karin crossed the reception area and entered the reading room. There were twenty or so desks, some computer terminals and three researchers, heads bowed. The scene took her straight back to university except that there, she’d spent her time checking out the boys. Now, she was checking out a killer.

  She chose desk 22 and read the notice on the desk. No biros. No felt pens. No chewing gum. She gave a guilty glance at her bag. She had all three.

  She pulled out Vogue and turned to the section on German fashion week. But before she could start reading, one of the security guys came over and told her that magazines weren’t allowed in the reading room. She pulled out her mobile phone instead and skimmed through her messages.

  The files arrived in less than twenty minutes. They were housed in a large grey carton with the words ‘acid free’ embossed on the cardboard. There was a single label on the spine: SS Totenkopf.

  Karin opened the box with care, unpicking the thick black ribbon that held the lid in place. It had been tied with a double knot and took her some time to work it free. Inside were six flimsy envelopes. Each bore a name and date inscribed in pencil. ‘Nord-Frankreich, 1940’ was written on the envelope at the top of the box.

  She unlooped the string fastener and lifted the front flap. There were a dozen or so sheets of yellowing paper, closely typed in German wartime script, along with several maps of Northern France. They were marked with red battle-lines and crosses. There were also two black-and-white photographs. One showed a brick farmhouse with dark window frames and shutters. The other was of a barn. She turned them over. Blagny-sur-Ternoise was written on the back of each.

  She put the photos to one side and turned back to the printed papers. One set of sheets was stapled together and looked like an official report. It was stamped with an SS seal. When she turned to the
last page she saw it bore the signature of someone named Balthasar Kraas. As soon as she started reading she realised it was an eyewitness account of a massacre.

  I was able to look into the field from the lane at the back of the farm. The corpses were in British military uniform and were lying in the long grass, close to the barn. They lay in such a position that I could only assume they were killed by a prolonged burst from machine guns. The dead men were not wearing helmets and nor did they have any military equipment with them. I took photographs of the corpses. At Reiter’s request, these photographs have been forwarded to Berlin. Reiter himself told me that he had come to the conclusion that a summary execution had taken place. It had been carried out by the SS Totenkopf.

  Karin read through the report until she understood more or less what had happened. A hundred soldiers of the West Yorkshire Regiment had got trapped at a village called Blagny-sur-Ternoise, unable to make it to Dunkirk. They’d surrendered under the flag of truce, expecting to become prisoners of war.

  Unbeknown to them, they had given themselves up to Oskar Weitzel, one of the most feared SS commanders. He had only recently replaced Adolf Eichmann as head of the Totenkopf. He had no time for conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. He ordered his team to machine-gun the British soldiers.

  There were other names mentioned in the text. Rochus Günsche had operated one of the guns. The second had been fired by Hans Dietrich. Joachim Schrieber and Heinz Piess had marched the men into the field. Hermann Eicke had bayoneted the fallen men to ensure they were dead.

  According to one of the papers, two English soldiers had miraculously escaped death and fled from the scene. Their eyewitness testimony of the atrocity ensured the eventual trial and execution of Oskar Weitzel.

  Karin chewed on her pencil, pleased to have eliminated one member of the SS Totenkopf. The ice man was not Oskar Weitzel.

  She pulled a sheet of notepaper from her bag and made a list of the names mentioned in the account. Rochus Gunsche, Hans Dietrich, Joachim Schrieber, Heinz Priess, Hermann Eicke.

  Jack had said that the ice man was probably a late recruit to the SS Totenkopf, since most of the early ones had been killed on the Eastern Front. But she decided to make a list of all the names mentioned in the various reports and then start the process of eliminating them one by one.

  The second envelope was marked Dyatkova und Vyazma. This was even more shocking than the first. It contained a report of two massacres of civilians undertaken by the SS Totenkopf in the Soviet villages of Dyatkova and Vyazma.

  A map was glued to the last page. From what she could tell, it showed villages in land already occupied by the German army. The report was stamped Streng Geheim (top secret). As with the previous one, it was embossed with the official seal of the SS Totenkopf.

  The author of the report was Reinhard Kamptz, one of the men involved in the killings.

  9.42am, 24 January, 1942: two miles south-east of Dyatkova village. Temperature minus twenty-seven.

  At shortly before 9am, it being still dark, we entered the village of Dyatkova. This is a squalid place of twenty-three homesteads, built of wood, typical of this part of West European Russia. The villagers were known to have been hiding partisans who had inflicted two serious ambush attacks on the 88th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht. More attacks were anticipated and were believed to be being planned and orchestrated from the ‘safe houses’ of Dyatkova.

  We therefore ordered all the inhabitants from their beds at gunpoint. The majority obeyed, though reluctantly. Three remonstrated and refused to leave their homes. They were shot pour encourager les autres. After this, everyone came outside and, upon instruction, formed two orderly lines.

  The operation thus far consisted of seven of us: myself (Reinhard Kamptz), Joachim Schrieber, Heinz Priess, Hermann Eicke, Hans Dietrich, Rochus Gunsche and Paul Loeper.

  The mercury was hovering at twenty-seven below. The wind, easterly, was sharp. It felt more like the minus forty we had experienced in Minsk.

  At this juncture we were joined by Wilhelm Wunsche and Georg Augsberger, to help in the next stage of the operation. The villagers were led towards the thick woodland to the north of the village. Most were dressed in their nightclothes. They were shaking with cold. A few jogged up and down in an attempt to get warm. Captain Schrieber ordered them to form themselves into a square. They were then addressed by Georg Augsberger, who speaks good Russian. He informed them that they had been sheltering resistance fighters. He then ordered them to strip.

  There was general confusion at this point. No one obeyed. Augsberger ordered them again to remove their clothes. When still no one acted, Hans Dietrich and Hermann Eicke seized one of the older men and forcibly tore off his garments. Hans Dietrich then shot him in the forehead. When the villagers saw this they removed their clothes.

  Hans Dietrich ordered them to lie in the snow. There was once again reluctance (the wind, blowing from the east, was biting cold) but the sight of Captain Wunsche walking across to the machine gun helped them obey.

  As you are aware, Herr-Professor Theodor Keppler of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem had requested information on the efficacy of acute hypothermia as a means to exterminate large numbers of people in the shortest possible time. We were using the villagers of Dyatkova as guinea pigs.

  Hans Dietrich informed the men, women and children (the latter numbered twelve) they would be free to return to their homes after fifteen minutes exposure to the cold. I, Reinhard Kamptz, vouch for the fact that this vow was made in earnest.

  Hans Dietrich walked between the bodies as they lay in the snow, watching their reaction to the extreme cold. He has written a full report for Professor Keppler. It has been sent directly to Berlin-Dahlem. He timed the process on his stopwatch. Captain Schrieber also filmed the event for Professor Keppler: the film will also be sent directly to Berlin. The results of this experiment were remarkable. Within twelve minutes every single villager was dead. Acute hypothermia proved itself a highly effective method of disposing of large numbers of people with little or no expenditure.

  This being a true account of what occurred in Dyatkova village on 24 January, 1942, I, Reinhard Kamptz, commend the following to be awarded the Ritterkreuz: Hermann Eicke, Hans Dietrich, Otto Streckenbach, Joachim Schrieber.

  Karin felt sick. The report was so meticulous in its details and its tone so matter-of-fact, that it made even more disturbing reading than the Blagny-sur-Ternoise account. The Dyatkova massacre had been undertaken as a chilling experiment into hypothermia: clinical, ruthless, efficient.

  She looked through the rest of the papers. There was another report on the Dyatkova massacre and a much longer one on ‘hypothermic killing’. After photographing each document in turn she made a note of all the names mentioned in the text.

  She then turned back to the box-file. The next envelope was marked ‘Demjansk Pocket’. As with the previous folders, it contained military reports and diary entries that gave a summary of the various SS Totenkopf operations. The envelope also contained a letter written by one of the men to his mother.

  ‘Our work is not without hardship but also with rewards. You will be proud to learn that I have been cited for the Ritterkreuz with oak leaves and swords.’ It was signed ‘your ever affectionate Otto’ and gave a poetic description of the landscape, villages and people of Western Russia. It omitted any direct mention of the massacres.

  The fighting in the Demjansk Pocket had been ferocious and deadly. One assault on Soviet positions had left three Totenkopf men dead and a further two injured. Karin was able to rule out Hermann Eicke, Wilhelm Wunsche and Heinz Priess as candidates for the ice man.

  A counter-attack by the Russians had killed a further two: Rochus Gunsche and Reinhard Kamptz. Karin put a pencil line through their names as well. But she still had a list of five possible candidates and had not yet come to the ones recruited after the spring of 1942.

  ‘Everything okay
?’ said Nikolaus, the archivist. His persistent helpfulness was starting to annoy her.

  He picked up the envelope marked Demjansk Pocket and tapped it with his finger. ‘One of the great untold stories of the war,’ he said. ‘Everyone wants to know about Stalingrad and the siege of Leningrad. But this -’

  He opened it and leafed through the contents. ‘Haven’t seen this file before,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got many documents on the Demjansk Pocket. And they fought in mid-winter, too. You’ve heard of Otto Ohlendorf?’

  Karin shook her head.

  ‘At his trial he was asked if he had anything to say. He told the judge his greatest concern was for his men, because they had to kill such large numbers of civilians each day without any break.’

  He put the file back on the desk. ‘Just ask if you need help.’

  Karin thanked him and then took out the fourth envelope. It bore the title ‘Restructuring’ and contained many more sheets of paper, most of them handwritten.

  Jack had already told her that the SS Totenkopf had undergone a complete restructuring in the aftermath of its break out from Demjansk. The break out itself had left eight men dead (she noted their names), leaving only four of the original band still alive: Otto Streckenbach, Emil Lorenz, Hans Dietrich and Gunther Rauter.

  These survivors were now joined by two highly decorated recruits named Ludolf Gebhardt and Kurt Becker. These were the ones that Jack considered to be the most likely candidates for the ice man. But Karin now knew that any of the six men serving in 1942 was a possible contender.

  Otto Streckenbach.

  Emil Lorenz.

  Hans Dietrich.

  Gunther Rauter.

  Ludolf Gebhardt.

  Kurt Becker.

  She was hoping that the fifth envelope, Grönland, 1944, would reveal everything. But on opening it she found there was just one sheet of paper. ‘The records of the SS Totenkopf’s 1944 mission to Greenland and all sequential papers are currently held in Schloss Hohenstein, Bayern, 85447.’ The paper was signed Bruno Wachter, Archivist, 28 March, 1963.