At the AOK, I requested a meeting with von Gilsa and put Bierkamp’s question to him. “It’s true,” he replied, “they’re talking about it. But the details aren’t clear yet for me.”—“And what will happen to the Reichskommissariat, then?”—“The establishment of the Reichskommissariat will be delayed for a while.”—“And why haven’t the representatives of the SP and the SD been informed?”—“I couldn’t say. I’m still waiting for more information. But you know, this question concerns the OKHG. Oberführer Bierkamp should apply directly to them.” I left von Gilsa’s office with the impression that he knew more than he was saying. I wrote a brief report and addressed it to Leetsch and Bierkamp. In general, that was what my work consisted of now: the Abwehr sent me a copy of the reports they wanted, generally having to do with the evolution of the partisan problem; I threw in some information gleaned here and there, most of the time at meals, and sent the whole thing on to Voroshilovsk; in exchange, I received other reports that I communicated to von Gilsa or one of his colleagues. Thus, the activity reports of Ek 12, whose offices were half a mile away from the AOK, had to be sent first to Voroshilovsk, then, collated with those of Sk 10b (the other Kommandos were operating in the theater of operations or the rear areas of the Seventeenth Army), some of them came down to me, and I passed them on to the Ic; and the whole time, of course, the Einsatzkommando maintained its own direct relations with the AOK. I didn’t have much work to do. I took advantage of this: Pyatigorsk was a pleasant town, there were lots of things to see. Accompanied by Voss, always curious, I went to visit the local museum, located a little below the Hotel Bristol, across from the post office and Tsvetnik Park. There were some fine collections there, accumulated in the course of decades by the Kavkazskoe Gornoe Obshchestvo, an association of amateur but enthusiastic naturalists: they had brought back from their expeditions heaps of stuffed animals, minerals, skulls, plants, dried flowers; old gravestones and pagan idols; moving photographs in black-and-white, representing mostly elegant gentlemen in cravats, celluloid collars, and straw boaters perched on the steep slope of a peak; and (I remembered my father’s office with delight) a whole wall of large cases of butterflies containing hundreds of specimens, each one labeled with the date and place of its capture, the name of the collector, and the sex and scientific name of the butterfly. They came from Kislovodsk, from Adyghea, from Chechnya, as far as Daghestan and Adjaria; the dates were 1923, 1915, 1909. At night, we sometimes went to the Teatr Operetty, another eccentric building, decorated with red ceramic tiles embossed with books, musical instruments, and garlands, and recently reopened by the Wehrmacht; then we would dine at the mess or in a café or at the Kasino, which was none other than the old hotel-restaurant Restoratsiya where Pechorin met Mary and where, as a plaque in Russian that Voss translated for me indicated, Lev Tolstoy celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday. The Soviets had turned it into a Central Government Institute of Balneology; the Wehrmacht had left this impressive title on the pediment, in gold letters above the massive columns, but had returned the building to its original use, and you could drink dry wine from Kakhetia there and eat shashlik and sometimes even venison; there, too, I introduced Voss to Hohenegg and they spent the evening discussing the origins of the names of diseases, in five languages.

Around the middle of the month, a dispatch from the Group shed some light on the situation. The Führer had in fact approved the setting up, for the Kuban-Caucasus, of a military administration under OKHG A, headed by the General der Kavallerie Ernst Köstring. The Ostministerium was detaching a high functionary to serve with this administration, but the creation of the Reichskommissariat was delayed indefinitely. Even more surprising, the OKH had ordered the OKHG to form autonomous territorial entities for the Cossacks and the different mountain peoples; the kolkhozes would be dissolved and forced labor prohibited: the systematic opposite of our policy in the Ukraine. That seemed to me too intelligent to be true. I had to return urgently to Voroshilovsk to attend a meeting: the HSSPF wanted to discuss the new decrees. All the leaders of the Kommandos were present, with most of their adjuncts. Korsemann seemed worried. “The disturbing thing is that the Führer made this decision at the beginning of August; but I myself was only informed of it yesterday. It’s incomprehensible.”—“The OKH must be worried about SS interference,” Bierkamp said.—“But why?” Korsemann plaintively asked. “Our collaboration is excellent.”—“The SS spent a lot of time cultivating good relations with the Reichskommissar-designate. For the time being, all that work has gone up in smoke.”—“In Maikop,” interrupted Schultz, Braune’s replacement who’d been nicknamed Eisbein-Paule because of his girth, “they say the Wehrmacht will keep control of the oil installations.”—“I will also point out to you, Brigadeführer,” Bierkamp added, addressing Korsemann, “that if these ‘local self-governments’ are established, they will control police functions in their district themselves. From our point of view, that is unacceptable.” The discussion went on in this vein for a while; the consensus seemed to be that the SS had been well and truly taken in. Finally we were dismissed and instructed to gather as much information as possible.

In Pyatigorsk, I had begun to develop tolerable relations with some officers in the Kommando. Hohenegg had left, and aside from the officers of the Abwehr, I saw almost no one except Voss. At night, I sometimes met SS officers in the Kasino. Turek of course never spoke to me; as for Dr. Müller, ever since I’d heard him publicly explain why he didn’t like the gas truck, but found execution by firing squad much more gemütlich, I had decided that we wouldn’t have much to say to each other. But among the subordinate officers there were some decent men, even if they were often boring. One night, as I was having a brandy with Voss, Obersturmführer Dr. Kern came over and I invited him to join us. I introduced him to Voss: “Oh, so you’re the linguist from the AOK,” said Kern.—“Apparently so,” Voss replied with amusement.—“That’s good,” said Kern, “I wanted to submit a case to you. They tell me you know the peoples of the Caucasus well.”—“A little,” Voss admitted.—“Professor Kern teaches in Munich,” I interrupted. “He is a specialist in Muslim history.”—“That’s an extremely interesting subject,” Voss approved.—“Yes, I spent seven years in Turkey and I know a little about it,” Kern said.—“How did you end up here, then?”—“Like everyone else, I was mobilized. I was already a member of the SS and a correspondent of the SD, and I ended up in the Einsatz.”—“I see. And your case?”—“A young woman they brought me. A redhead, very beautiful, charming. Her neighbors denounced her as Jewish. She showed me an internal Soviet passport, delivered in Derbent, where her nationality is inscribed as Tatka. I checked in our files: according to our experts, the Tats are assimilated with the Bergjuden, the Mountain Jews. But the girl told me I was mistaken and that the Tats were a Turkic people. I had her speak: she has a curious dialect, a little hard to understand, but it was indeed a Turkic language. So I let her go.”—“Do you remember the terms or expressions she used?” An entire conversation in Turkish ensued: “That can’t be it exactly,” Voss said, “are you sure?” and they started up again. Finally Voss declared: “According to what you’re describing, it does in fact more or less resemble the vernacular Turkic spoken in the Caucasus before the Bolsheviks imposed Russian. I read they still used it in Daghestan, especially in Derbent. But all the peoples there speak it. Did you take down her name?” Kern pulled a notebook out of his pocket and leafed through it: “Here it is. Tsokota, Nina Shaulovna.”—“Tsokota?” said Voss, knitting his brows. “That’s strange.”—“It’s her husband’s name,” Kern explained.—“Oh, I see. And tell me, if she is Jewish, what will you do with her?” Kern looked surprised: “Well, we…we…” He was visibly hesitating. I came to his aid: “She’ll be transported elsewhere.”—“I see,” said Voss. He thought a moment and then said to Kern: “To my knowledge, the Tats have their own language, which is an Iranian dialect and has nothing to do with Caucasian languages or with Turkish. There are Muslim Tats; in Derbent, I don’t know, but I’ll look into it.”—“Thank you,” said Kern. “You think I should have kept her?”—“Not at all. I’m sure you did the right thing.” Kern looked reassured; he had obviously not grasped the irony in Voss’s last words. We chatted a little longer and he took his leave. Voss watched him leave with a puzzled look. “Your colleagues are a little strange,” he said finally.—“How do you mean?”—“They sometimes ask disconcerting questions.” I shrugged my shoulders: “They’re doing their work.” Voss shook his head: “Your methods seem a little arbitrary to me. But it’s not my business.” He seemed displeased. “When will we go to the Lermontov Museum?” I asked to change the subject.—“Whenever you like. Sunday?”—“If the weather is nice, you can take me to see the place of the duel.”