A Thousand Devils (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 2)

by Frank Goldammer

  Heller pulled the drawstring tight, slapped the flap shut, and grabbed the pack by the handle. The cold had crept into his bones, and his fingers were frozen stiff. Oldenbusch, on the other hand, was still sweating from his brief chase, and Heller couldn’t risk him getting chilled or sick.

  “Drive me to the Justice Ministry, Werner.”

  “Soviet headquarters, you mean?”

  “Yes. I want to see if the Soviet Military Administration will give me anything on the dead man. Meanwhile, find out if a corpse came in missing a head over the last few days. And give me your camera.”

  “Listen, you have to promise to take really good care of it; it’s the first Retina model from Kodak, made in ’34—”

  “Werner, I used to have one just like it.”

  “Used to” meant before February 13, 1945. That was the day they lost everything except what they had on them—that, and they still had their lives. But Heller hadn’t shed tears over it, not over the camera, nor his radio, nor their lovely display cabinet—not even the photos of his two sons. That night, simply staying alive was more than they could have hoped for.

  “All I meant,” said Oldenbusch, “was I was glad to get ahold of one.”

  Lieutenant General Medvedev, commandant of Dresden SMAD, looked up from his massive desk as his secretary led Heller into his office. It had been over a year since the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, or SMAD, had chosen the former Justice Ministry in Hospitalstrasse as its local HQ. Heller had a little trouble finding his way inside the building; he hadn’t been here since the Red Army started occupying Dresden, and his Russian-language skills hadn’t substantially improved either.

  The commandant stood, came around the desk, and held out a hand to Heller for a vigorous handshake.

  “Comrade Heller. Always so unconventional.” Medvedev laughed, returned to his chair, and gestured for Heller to sit. Medvedev had gained a little weight in the last year and a half, the collar of his uniform now tight around his stout neck. Heller glanced around, not knowing where to set down the backpack.

  “Just put it on the floor.” Medvedev shook his head in amusement. “You are unconventional and also stubborn, aren’t you?”

  Heller hadn’t expected such a friendly reception. He relished how warm the office was, cracking his overcoat open a little, and he wondered how much coal they used to heat such a large building.

  “In my profession, a person has to be stubborn if they want to get anything done.”

  “Well, it’s not your profession I’m concerned about. It’s your pigheadedness in political matters.” Medvedev was still smiling when one of the many telephones on his desk rang. The general picked up, said no, and hung up.

  So that explains his behavior, Heller realized. “I’ve been apolitical my whole life,” he said, trying to be diplomatic.

  “Which is why I was thinking of you for a completely different position. At police headquarters. Instead you’re still an Oberkommissar, a detective, and I have to endure people like this Niesbach fellow, who studied Marxism and Leninism in Moscow.”

  Heller had no clue what his point was.

  “Things are fine the way they are. I like my job.”

  Medvedev waved aside the notion—people always said that. “Heller, you don’t have to be political. All that’s required is one small signature, and the sky’s the limit. A proper career. How am I supposed to get you into management otherwise? The old-school Communists would storm the barricades if I tried. The only reason you’re back on duty is because of me.”

  Heller hadn’t come to have this discussion. The Soviets thought highly of him for not joining the Nazi Party. Yet they couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t join the SED—the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

  “And I appreciate it very much, Comrade Commandant. But I’m here for another reason.”

  Medvedev raised his hands in submission. “Major Vadim Berinov.”

  “The officer who was found dead?” Heller asked.

  Medvedev nodded.

  “Your soldiers wouldn’t even let me take a quick look at him.”

  “We wish to prevent rumors from spreading among the Germans that may suggest disputes exist within the Soviet Armed Forces.”

  “Truly?” Heller dared ask. All this supersecrecy only made people think the opposite. Medvedev didn’t seem to realize this.

  He ignored Heller. The phone rang again. The commandant picked up, listened, said nyet again, and ended the call. He turned back to Heller. “Now, this head—has the victim been identified?”

  “No.”

  “Could it also have something to do with a member of the Soviet Army?”

  “It’s impossible to know so soon.”

  “He look German or Russian?”

  “I’ll let you decide for yourself.” Heller pointed at the backpack.

  Medvedev stood, grabbed the backpack, set it on his desk, and opened it.

  “Please don’t touch the head,” Heller added.

  Medvedev nodded and took a good look.

  “Male, German, around fifty or even forty.” He returned to his chair, unruffled.

  Heller closed the backpack and set it back on the floor. It made him feel uneasy—the head had still not been registered with forensics but was instead proving vital for gaining access to the commandant.

  “Four days ago, the body of an officer was found near the weapons depot on Carola-Allee. Colonel Vasili Cherin. He had several stab wounds and died from internal bleeding.”

  Heller took out his notebook. “On February 2?”

  “They found him that morning.”

  “And the stab wounds? Knife-inflicted?”

  The general shrugged.

  “Is the body being kept somewhere? Has a coroner analyzed it? Is anyone looking into the matter?”

  Medvedev laughed again. “Comrade Heller, you have many questions about a matter that does not concern you.”

  Heller sat back, annoyed. He didn’t feel he was being taken seriously. Shouldn’t it be in the Russians’ best interest to at least try to resolve the matter?

  Medvedev leaned forward, as if in confidence. “You remember Vitaly Ovtcharov?”

  Ovtcharov. Heller thought a moment. “From the NKVD?”

  Medvedev nodded. “We do not call it the People’s Commissariat anymore but rather the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del. MVD. Ovtcharov, he looked into the death of Colonel Cherin. He came to the conclusion that it was an accident.”

  “An accident? So he thinks Cherin accidently and repeatedly ran into a sharp object?”

  Medvedev started. Then he burst out laughing. “Heller, you should see your face. It’s hilarious.”

  Heller stared back earnestly, without changing expression.

  The commandant fell silent. He soon turned just as serious as Heller, forcefully tapping his index finger on the desk. “I’m interested in what happened. Heller, I’m telling you, there’s plenty I’m being kept in the dark about. The MVD is not under my authority, so I can’t learn anything new. Is it a feud between officers? Is it an attack on the Soviet military? I need someone with a good nose.”

  Heller stared at the lieutenant general, expecting more, but he stopped there. It was up to Heller to interpret Medvedev’s words in the right way.

  “For that, I’d need to have the corpse examined forensically.”

  Medvedev stood. “That you will have. I will arrange it. One more thing, Heller: Have you had breakfast yet?”

  Heller shook his head.

  February 6, 1947: Late Morning

  Heller switched the backpack to his other shoulder, but the relief proved short-lived. He wasn’t feeling great. And now the young Soviet doctor who found Heller waiting at his office door was eyeing him. Medvedev had arranged for Heller to have a car and driver, who had taken him up Königsbrücker Strasse and down Carola-Allee to the former German military barracks that the Soviet First Guards Tank Army had been using as a garr
ison ever since the war. Both victims, Berinov and Cherin, had belonged to this unit. According to Medvedev, the two were supposed to be lying somewhere inside the military hospital here. In charge of them was a doctor whose name Heller hadn’t understood when he introduced himself.

  The man wore a white doctor’s coat over his uniform. He was about thirty years old and wore glasses with thin silver frames, which along with his slightly bored appearance made him look every bit the intellectual or aristocrat.

  “Are you feeling sick?” the doctor asked, sounding concerned and keeping his distance.

  Heller shook his head. He’d eaten too much breakfast in the Soviet officers’ mess, the stomachache brought on by not being used to eating regularly. They’d had everything a person could imagine: warm white bread, butter, jam, honey, sausage, cold cuts, boiled eggs, pickled fish, pickles, cocoa, coffee. Heller was reluctant at first but overcame his shyness and ate until his stomach turned. Such abundance, he thought, while the people outside were stealing rotten onions, fighting each other for diluted bread, heading to the country to beg, and cooking fodder turnips and even leather. Adults and children alike risked their lives jumping onto moving train cars to steal coal. Many even killed for food. Not even a week ago, a nighttime intruder beat the butcher Richter to death inside his shop. Two days ago, the police had found a coal dealer who’d lost his life over just a few hundredweights of coal. How could any of this ever work out? How could the Russians ever be seen as their friends? All they were achieving with their repetitive slogans, constant self-praise as liberators, and posters of their glowing superman Stalin covering every building was feeding the population’s anger.

  “Would you like to sit down?” the doctor asked.

  “No, thank you.” Heller suddenly felt guilty about Karin. Should he have asked if he could take something home to his wife? Or simply slipped some food into his overcoat pockets?

  “I’d like to see the body of Major Berinov,” Heller said.

  “I have it waiting for you. I received a call. If you’d please come with me . . .”

  The doctor went first, and Heller followed, shouldering the backpack. It was cool here in this block of the barracks. It smelled strongly of ether. The high walls, the gleaming white tiles, and the compressed-wood flooring were all legacies of the old Imperial German military, and now their echoing footsteps awoke in Heller memories of the time he had had to endure a degrading examination by his grenadier regiment’s doctors.

  “Here.” The doctor opened a door to a large, cool examination room. The two corpses, covered with white sheets, lay on normal treatment tables. The young doctor had that bored look again as he stepped up to one of the tables and pulled back the sheet.

  “Berinov.”

  Heller set the backpack off to the side and got closer. “Can I turn on the light?” he asked. The smell of ether was so overpowering, it almost made him nauseous.

  “Please do—right there next to you.”

  Heller turned on the ceiling light. It only gave off a dim glow. “Excuse me, but I didn’t quite get your name before.”

  The young man sighed. “Kasrashvili, Lado Kasrashvili. Captain, or Hauptmann, as you call it.”

  The name Kasrashvili seemed familiar to Heller, but he couldn’t place it. “Is that Georgian?”

  “I am Georgian, yes. Now, are you going to take a look?”

  Heller was certain he’d never known a Georgian. So he focused on the corpse.

  The dead man was still in uniform. The shoulders of his jacket were covered in blood, but the uniform was practically clean below that. His head, on the other hand, was completely encrusted with blood, his hair caked with it and stiff from the coagulating. His face had been washed, though, presumably for identification. His nostrils were still clogged with blood, and his eyes were stuck closed.

  “Had someone hung him by the feet?” Kasrashvili asked.

  Heller glanced at him in amazement. Apparently, no one had told the doctor what had happened.

  “They found him lying downward on a slope. Not far from here—about two hundred yards up from the Elbe.”

  Heller tried turning the dead man’s head to the side, but the body was too stiff. Dried blood passed between his fingers after crumbling off the dead man’s neck and ears. Heller grabbed the collar of the thick jacket and tugged to free it from the skin of the neck. Then Heller started stripping the upper body. He was already sweating, and Berinov’s arms, stiff from rigor mortis, only made the work harder. The doctor, watching Heller labor away, didn’t lift a finger or even offer him fabric shears. And Heller wasn’t about to ask for his help, because a person never knew if they were somehow wounding the Soviets’ pride by doing so.

  He was finally able to yank the dead man’s arms out from his two jackets and sweater and then pull the sweater over the head. He stripped the undershirt off. The dead man’s torso now lay bare, and Heller looked it over in detail. The officer looked well fed and didn’t display symptoms of any particular deficiency. A scar on the chest indicated an old wound. A tiny red mark on the upper left arm caught Heller’s attention.

  He pointed at the spot. “Looks like the prick of a hypodermic needle.”

  “Members of the Soviet Army are regularly vaccinated against typhus,” the doctor said.

  This reminded Heller of those horrid typhus vaccinations every German was ordered to get back in 1945. The needle looked like it was meant for a horse, but the pain of the shot hadn’t been the worst of it. It was the shrieks of the children getting vaccinated that caused downright panic among those waiting in line.

  “Could you check? Maybe they receive some kind of vaccination certificate?”

  Kasrashvili inhaled loudly through his nose and stared at Heller over the top of his glasses. It was clear he wouldn’t check a thing.

  “I’d really like to clean up the neck a bit—I’d need water and a cloth for that,” he said and stared at the Georgian. He knew he was already exhausting the man’s patience. There was no way around it, unfortunately.

  The doctor hesitated, as if first having to consider whether this was an appropriate task for him.

  “I could get it myself,” Heller added.

  “No, stay there.” Kasrashvili left the room. Heller thought the cabinets might contain a cloth and a bowl, but he didn’t dare look himself or touch anything. He didn’t want to anger the doctor.

  The doctor was soon back, and he had a metal bucket and washrag with him. Heller thanked him, rolled up his overcoat sleeves, and started washing off the dead man’s neck. Doing so revealed two wounds, one on the right, one on the left. Kasrashvili watched him work without reaction.

  “See here, a clean puncture.” Heller stepped closer to examine the wounds. These weren’t from a knife—they were more like small perforations in the shape of a four-pointed star. The left side of the neck showed the larger of the wounds, the right side the smaller ones, directly opposite. The weapon had likely severed the arteries on both sides and caused massive hemorrhaging. Berinov must have bled to death within seconds.

  Heller took a few steps back and held out a hand, inviting Kasrashvili to look closer.

  “It appears,” concluded the doctor, “that the weapon entered the common carotid artery on the left side and exited through the same artery on the right, just above the collarbone. See that injury behind the ear? It’s probable the perpetrator didn’t find the neck on the first try, and the tip of the weapon knocked against the cranial bone.”

  Heller inspected the entry wounds again. “I know this type of wound,” he said. He pointed at the other corpse. “That’s Cherin?”

  Kasrashvili nodded, went over to the other dead man, and pulled off the sheet. Vasili Cherin was completely naked and didn’t look as if he’d been dead for four days. Once Heller touched him, he realized the corpse was frozen through.

  He bent over and examined Cherin’s stab wounds. There were four, spread over the upper body.

  He let out an imp
atient sigh.

  “Would you please help me turn the body?”

  The doctor nodded but first went over to one of the cabinets, opened it, and pulled out two pairs of rubber gloves, then handed a pair to Heller. Heller’s quick glance inside the open cabinet told him how meticulously clean and orderly everything was. He gave an anxious glance at the treatment table holding Berinov—his attempt at cleaning off the dead man’s neck had left the table soiled, and a brownish puddle had formed on the floor. Heller looked up to find Kasrashvili staring at him.

  “This here is my clean little realm among all the filth. But don’t worry. I’ll make sure it all gets cleaned up.”

  The two of them turned the dead man onto his stomach. Heller counted ten stabs on the back, with the same star shape as on Berinov.

  “This was a bayonet,” Heller said as he thought it over. “The killer attacked him from behind. But it doesn’t look like the bayonet was fixed to a rifle. Otherwise the wounds would be somewhat lower, and the stab marks would run from bottom to top. The killer appears to have run the bayonet from top to bottom.”

  The Georgian looked as if he didn’t know he was being spoken to. Heller glanced at him for comment, but Kasrashvili only stared at the dead man in silence.

  “I used to see a lot more wounds like that,” Heller continued. “In the First World War. I’m assuming this bayonet belongs to a Mosin-Nagant rifle.”

  “You were in the war? On the Russian Front?” The doctor suddenly took interest.

  “No, in Belgium. I was wounded, and later in the hospital I saw some wounds and scars caused by bayonets like this.”

  Kasrashvili raised his head, as if to tell Heller something. He didn’t. Instead, he went over to Berinov’s corpse and yanked the sheet all the way back. Lying between the dead man’s legs was just such a bayonet.

  “He was holding it in his hand.”

  This only confused Heller. “Could be the murder weapon.”

  He carefully lifted the bayonet with his fingertips and checked the socket mount, which had been wrapped with hemp rope to provide a better grip. It looked like the weapon had been used in this manner for a long time. The cord was dark and greasy.