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Authors: Philip Kerr
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hit another big air pocket, and this one seemed to jolt all the life out of Von Dohnanyi, who fell onto the fuselage floor in a dead faint. Overcoming my natural instinct, which was always to leave the people in the first class to look after themselves, I knelt down beside him, loosened the collar on his tunic and poured some of the lieutenant’s schnapps between his lips. That was when I saw the address on Von Dohnanyi’s parcel, which was still under his seat.
Colonel Helmuth Stieff, Wehrmacht Coordination Dept., Anger Castle, Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, Prussia.
Von Dohnanyi opened his eyes, sighed and then sat up.
‘You just fainted, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Might be best if you lay on the floor for a while.’
So he did, and actually managed to sleep for a couple of hours while from time to time I wondered if Von Dohnanyi had simply forgotten to deliver his bottle of Cointreau to his friend Colonel Stieff at the Wolf’s Lair, or if perhaps he had changed his mind about handing over such a generous present. If the booze was anything like the coffee it was certain to be high-quality stuff, much too good to give away. He could hardly have forgotten about the parcel, since I was certain he had taken it with him when we got off the plane in Rastenburg. So why hadn’t he given it to one of the many orderlies for delivery to Colonel Stieff, or even, if he didn’t trust them, to one of the other staff officers who were going straight to the Wolf’s Lair? Of course one of them might equally have told von Dohnanyi that Stieff was no longer at the Wolf’s Lair – that would have explained everything. But like an itch that kept on coming back, no amount of scratching I did seemedto take away from the fact that Von Dohnanyi’s failure to deliver his precious bottle just seemed strange.
There’s not an awful lot to do on a four-hour flight between Rastenburg and Minsk.
*
It was still light by the time we reached Smolensk several hours later, but only just. For almost an hour before that we’d been flying over an endless, thick green carpet of trees. It seemed there were more trees in Russia than anywhere else on earth. There were so many trees that at times the Junkers seemed almost immobile in the air and I felt as if we were drifting over a primordial landscape. I suppose Russia is as near as you can get to what the earth must have been like thousands of years ago – in more ways than one; probably it was an excellent place to be a squirrel, although perhaps not such an excellent place to be a man. If you were intent on hiding the bodies of thousands of Jews or Polish officers, this looked like a good place to do it. You could have hidden all manner of crimes in a landscape like the one below our aircraft, and the sight of it filled me with me dread not just for what I might find down there but also for what I might find myself faced with again. It was only a dark possibility, but I knew instinctively that in the winter of 1943 this was no place to be an SD officer with a guilty conscience.
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 asout 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
Colonel Helmuth Stieff, Wehrmacht Coordination Dept., Anger Castle, Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, Prussia.
Von Dohnanyi opened his eyes, sighed and then sat up.
‘You just fainted, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Might be best if you lay on the floor for a while.’
So he did, and actually managed to sleep for a couple of hours while from time to time I wondered if Von Dohnanyi had simply forgotten to deliver his bottle of Cointreau to his friend Colonel Stieff at the Wolf’s Lair, or if perhaps he had changed his mind about handing over such a generous present. If the booze was anything like the coffee it was certain to be high-quality stuff, much too good to give away. He could hardly have forgotten about the parcel, since I was certain he had taken it with him when we got off the plane in Rastenburg. So why hadn’t he given it to one of the many orderlies for delivery to Colonel Stieff, or even, if he didn’t trust them, to one of the other staff officers who were going straight to the Wolf’s Lair? Of course one of them might equally have told von Dohnanyi that Stieff was no longer at the Wolf’s Lair – that would have explained everything. But like an itch that kept on coming back, no amount of scratching I did seemedto take away from the fact that Von Dohnanyi’s failure to deliver his precious bottle just seemed strange.
There’s not an awful lot to do on a four-hour flight between Rastenburg and Minsk.
*
It was still light by the time we reached Smolensk several hours later, but only just. For almost an hour before that we’d been flying over an endless, thick green carpet of trees. It seemed there were more trees in Russia than anywhere else on earth. There were so many trees that at times the Junkers seemed almost immobile in the air and I felt as if we were drifting over a primordial landscape. I suppose Russia is as near as you can get to what the earth must have been like thousands of years ago – in more ways than one; probably it was an excellent place to be a squirrel, although perhaps not such an excellent place to be a man. If you were intent on hiding the bodies of thousands of Jews or Polish officers, this looked like a good place to do it. You could have hidden all manner of crimes in a landscape like the one below our aircraft, and the sight of it filled me with me dread not just for what I might find down there but also for what I might find myself faced with again. It was only a dark possibility, but I knew instinctively that in the winter of 1943 this was no place to be an SD officer with a guilty conscience.
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 asout 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
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