“Don’t!”
She stopped.
“Don’t go in there,” whispered a voice from behind her.
The hairs on the back of her neck bristled, and she stood still for a moment, waiting until she could take a breath, then turned slowly toward the voice. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Natalia saw a figure standing in a narrow doorway at the end of the hall opposite the sanctuary. “Falcon?”
“Yes. Come quickly.”
She took a step closer, and the tall, muscular man motioned with his hand. “Follow me. They may come back.”
Natalia followed him through the doorway and down an ancient stone staircase. A lighted kerosene lantern hung from the wall, and Falcon grabbed it and continued on through another doorway. They hurried along a damp corridor with rough stone walls and a beamed ceiling for fifty meters, then entered a small windowless room.
Falcon closed the door behind them and set the lantern on a wooden table. In stark contrast to the madness outside, it was eerily quiet, the air musty, as though they had entered a tomb. “I thought you might not make it,” Falcon said. He turned and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve seen what they’re doing out there?”
Natalia stared at Falcon in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp, then shrugged off his hand. “It’s barbaric, even for the Nazis. There are bodies everywhere: women, children, piled up in the streets like cordwood. They’re setting fire to them!” She ran a hand through her short-cropped brown hair and rubbed her irritated eyes. “Who on earth chose this location for the rendezvous?”
“Stag, of course. But we held this area until twenty-four hours ago.”
Natalia cursed under her breath. “We got as far as the West Station,” she said. “Then the SS ordered everyone off the train. Everything was on fire, and the area was crawling with storm troopers. I just barely got out of there.”
Falcon hand-rolled a cigarette and lit it. He was a whole head taller than Natalia, with thick black hair and steely dark eyes. The bars of an AK captain were prominent on the collar of his makeshift uniform.
“The church?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They’re all dead. The SS herded the whole group into the sanctuary—priests, nuns, a dozen or so children. Gunned them all down. Happened just before you got here. Damned good thing you didn’t walk into the middle of it.”
Natalia took the cigarette from him and inhaled deeply.
“What did you see on the way into Warsaw?” he asked. “We’ve heard they’re bringing in reinforcements.”
“That’s why it took so long to get here. We were diverted onto sidings three times for German transport trains—tanks, armored cars, artillery, dozens of troop carriers.” She glanced around the small, austere room, suddenly feeling claustrophobic, and took another drag on the cigarette. “The word is that Hitler’s furious and he’s gone berserk. Imagine a motley bunch of Poles wanting to take back their capital city.”
Falcon managed a grim smile that faded quickly. “They’ll step up the artillery barrage again right after dark, so we’d better get the hell out of here.” He pointed at the black bag hanging from her belt. “Anything from Krakow? From the Provider?”
Natalia removed the folded conductor’s cap from her bag, thumbed through the railway schedules, ticket vouchers and a variety of other official odds and ends, then carefully lifted up the false bottom. She removed an envelope and handed it to Falcon.
Suddenly, a thundering blast shook the building, and a beam cracked in the ceiling above their heads. Natalia instinctively dropped to her knees as the beam sagged, and a giant chunk of plaster broke loose and shattered on the floor.
Falcon shoved the envelope into the breast pocket of his jacket and grabbed the lantern. Natalia scrambled to her feet, and they bolted from the room as a second blast brought down the rest of the ceiling.
They raced through the corridor and up the stairs, retracing their steps back to the main hallway, which was miraculously still intact. They burst out the side door, into a narrow cobblestone street and onto Avenue Wolska amidst shrieking artillery shells, shattering glass and a thousand bricks cascading onto the street in heaps of rubble.
Natalia’s heart pounded as she followed Falcon past the remains of once-stately buildings that lined the east-west thoroughfare, through a blurred pandemonium of terrified people, faces streaked with dust and ashes, bleeding, crying and cursing. A man staggered from an alley and almost knocked her down, a bloody stump dangling from his shoulder.
Then a monstrous explosion hammered Natalia’s eardrums. The ground fell away, and she landed hard on shattered cobblestones. Ignoring the piercing bolt of pain in her hip, she got to her feet and lurched to the right as a second eruption of bricks and glass obliterated the street. Falcon shouted something, then disappeared into a storefront. She followed him through a maze of toppled shelves and broken crates, out a back door and into another street. Choking on dust and smoke, they continued on, dodging flying debris, climbing over rubble, heading east.
Eventually the shelling was behind them as they made their way, breathless and covered with dirt and soot, from the Wola District into the City Center. Slowing to a walk they rounded a corner where barricades loomed ahead, fashioned from paving blocks, railroad ties and sheets of corrugated metal. Tattered red-and-white flags fluttered from makeshift poles alongside banners emblazoned with Poland’s white eagle. Sweat ran down her face, and her legs felt like rubber as Natalia walked in silence beside Falcon, toward a group of men and women wearing the armbands of the AK.
It was close to midnight when the shelling finally ceased, but fires raged on in the Wola District and most of Warsaw’s other western suburbs, sending clouds of thick, black smoke and a stench of death billowing into the night sky. But an uneasy quiet hung over the area of the city occupied by the insurgents of the AK. In a small three-room apartment near Pilsudski Square that served as an AK district headquarters, Natalia sat on a faded brown sofa, smoking a cigarette.
She didn’t really enjoy smoking but it was something to do, something to keep her hands busy and her mind off the bloody faces and burning corpses she’d seen on the street that day. She blinked away the images and exhaled slowly, glancing around the dingy parlor. A red-and-black banner displaying the letter “P” fashioned from an anchor along with the words Polska Walczy—Poland Fights—hung on the wall between the windows.
Across the room, Falcon sat at a table opposite Colonel Stag, an AK officer Natalia had met once before. Falcon handed over the envelope Natalia had carried from Krakow. Colonel Stag slit it open, extracted the documents and looked them over carefully, one-by-one, shaking his head, occasionally grunting.
When he was finished Stag dropped the last page on the table and pushed back his chair. “Jesus Christ, the depravity of these Nazi bastards is beyond belief. New efficiencies in gas-fired ovens? You’d think they were talking about baking bread.” He stood up, walked over to the window and stared out at the street where a group of AK commandos sang songs around a bonfire. Stag was a short, stocky man, built a bit like a large bulldog. He sighed, his broad shoulders sagged. “My brother and his family were sent to Treblinka, you know.”
Still staring out the window, Colonel Stag took another drag on his cigarette, then stepped back to the table and ground it out in an ashtray. He grabbed his chair, carried it across the room and sat down facing Natalia. “You’ve done excellent work. And so has the Provider, whoever he or she is. I’ve passed along every document you’ve given to Falcon.”
Natalia thought about the Provider, and the others in Krakow, the risks they’d taken over the years, the lives that had been lost. “Not that it did much good,” she said.
“It’s evidence,” Stag replied, “and it’s in the hands of our Allies. Someday these monsters will be made to pay.” Then he leaned forward, his ice-blue eyes intense. “But now, you’re with us, here in Warsaw where we’ll make our stand. This could all be over quickly.”
Natalia tensed. “The Russians?”
Stag nodded. “The Red Army has reached the east bank of the Vistula: twelve divisions, a tank corps and heavy artillery just south of Praga, less than ten kilometers away.”
“Ha!” Falcon sprang to his feet and paced around the room. “It’s true? They’re coming in to help us crush these Nazi bastards?”
Colonel Stag was silent, and Natalia watched him closely. He appeared thoughtful, a flicker of doubt in his eyes.
Three
12 AUGUST
NATALIA RACED UP THE STAIRS and followed the boy into a vacant room. She knelt at an open window and watched the horrific engagement unfolding before her eyes. From the second floor of the deserted office building she had a clear view of the hospital across the square. A German Panther tank had blown several holes in the outer walls of the building, and a fire raged inside. Patients in hospital gowns spilled out of the doors and ground floor windows, coughing and gagging, some reaching back to help with stretchers.
The boy crouched next to Natalia. He was thin and wiry and not much taller than she. He was young, about twelve or thirteen she guessed, but his face was fixed in determination, as though he’d done this many times.
“Ready?” she asked.
The boy nodded and calmly unbuckled the canvas knapsack he’d been carrying.
Natalia turned back to the window. Twenty or thirty men converged on the hospital wielding clubs and crowbars, a few with handguns. They were Ukrainian conscripts, tough violent brutes recruited by the Nazis. A German Waffen-SS officer flanked by three storm troopers stood near the Panther tank, arms folded across his chest as the gang of Ukrainians broke into a run, charging forward in a mad frenzy, shouting and cursing, bashing heads, kicking and beating the sick and wounded patients.
Then a sudden burst of gunfire erupted from a building on the other side of the square. The Waffen-SS officer and two of the storm troopers went down instantly. A Ukrainian was shot. Then another.
Gunshots erupted from a second building and caught the Ukrainians in the crossfire, picking them off one after another. The third storm trooper dove for cover behind the tank.
It lasted only a few minutes. The few surviving Ukrainians scattered, and the shooting died down. Then it was quiet, except for wounded hospital patients moaning and crying for help.
Natalia dug her fingernails into the rotten wood of the windowsill. After five years of war she was used to Nazi barbarism—at least she thought she was—and when Colonel Stag had sent out the appeal for help in Warsaw, she had quickly volunteered for what everyone in the AK knew would be Poland’s last chance for freedom. And now, after seeing the slaughter in the Wola District, and watching the wanton brutality taking place beneath her in the hospital square, she knew they were in a struggle to the death. For years she had followed orders and done her duty, smuggling documents, dodging the SS and Gestapo. But now the stakes had been raised.
Natalia jerked her head to the left at the sudden clamor of clanking steel treads and a growling diesel engine. She slipped her right hand into her jacket pocket, feeling the cold steel of her pistol, then stood up and moved out of sight at the edge of the window.
The Panther tank crept forward along the street directly below. The monstrous machine’s turret swiveled, and the gun barrel arced upward, pointing at the building across the square where the first shots had come from. The tank commander stood in the open hatch, shouting directions, his black leather beret cocked to one side.
Natalia withdrew the pistol and glanced at the boy, who held a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a lit match in the other. She counted to three then stepped in front of the window, gripped the pistol with two hands and leaned out. The tank was almost directly below her. She sighted on the center of the black beret, held her breath and pulled the trigger.
The beret disappeared in a splatter of red and black as the tank commander toppled over the side. Natalia quickly backed away from the window and in a blur of motion the boy stepped in front of her. Without hesitation, he held the match to the Molotov cocktail’s cloth wick, leaned out the window and tossed the flaming bottle of petrol into the open tank hatch. Then he whirled around, and the two of them dove to the floor as a fireball erupted with a jarring whump!
A blast of heat washed over their heads.
Natalia jumped to her feet and scrambled for the door, the boy right behind her, clutching the knapsack as they fled from the room and hustled down the stairs to the ground floor. She stopped in the hallway near the back door of the building to catch her breath.
“Hah, we fried those sons-a-bitches, didn’t we?” the boy chirped, slapping his hand on his knee as he leaned against the wall. He smirked as if he’d just scored a goal in a football match. This was their first assignment together, but Natalia had heard about him before. He was a skinny lad with tousled blond hair and a grimy face. She wondered how many others he had fried since being recruited into the AK.
She slowly pulled the door open, checking the street to make sure it was clear. They stepped out and sprinted through the alley and down the street to another building.
Natalia glanced back at the boy, who followed close behind her as they inched along the side of the building. “Stay alert,” she said, though it was rapidly becoming apparent that he needed few instructions from her in the tactics of guerilla warfare. She turned back and continued on until they had a view of the hospital square.
Thick, greasy smoke from the burning tank drifted across the open area where dozens of hospital patients lay bleeding on the grass among dead Ukrainians. The patients that could walk huddled together in a tight group and stumbled across the lawn toward the street, several of them carrying others on stretchers. Two AK commandos wearing red-and-white armbands ran across the lawn and took up a stretcher. A few local citizens emerged tentatively from the cellars of adjoining buildings and stood watching. A man and woman ran toward the patients. Two others followed, then three more, taking up the stretchers, helping the patients cross the street.
Then another tank appeared.
Natalia’s mouth dropped open, stunned at the inconceivable sight.
Three women stumbled along in front of the Panther tank, acting as human shields. A rope was tied around each of their waists and secured to the tank. Waffen-SS troopers trotted alongside, right behind the women who, to Natalia’s astonishment, shouted at the AK commandos, imploring them to fire at the tanks.
An instant later the ground beneath Natalia’s feet heaved, and she fell to her knees as a thunderous blast erupted from the tank’s gun barrel. A cloud of dust billowed into the sky. The side of the building she and the boy had just vacated slid into the street.
As the tank plowed forward into the rubble, one of the women tripped over a pile of fallen bricks and was dragged beneath the clanking treads. The other two, now shrieking and flailing their arms, stumbled over the clutter of shattered bricks and wood, trying desperately to stay on their feet. But the massive growling machine, with scraps of the first woman’s blue-and-red skirt caught in its treads, barged into them. Staggering, falling, one after the other, the women finally disappeared beneath the tank.
Natalia went rigid. As the tank rumbled on, she spotted something in the rubble. An arm emerged then a shoulder as the last woman dragged under the tank struggled to lift her head.
Natalia bolted into the street. But she stopped abruptly as one of the Waffen-SS troopers following the tank looked down at the struggling woman, then pointed his rifle at her and shot her in the head.
For an instant everything seemed frozen in time. The SS trooper turned away as though he’d just shot a varmint in a farmyard. Natalia’s hand clutched the pistol in her pocket and, before she realized what she was doing, her right arm was extended and the pistol was pointed squarely at the SS trooper’s back.
She blinked.
And pulled the trigger.
Then everything seemed to happen at once.
She heard the boy shout
. An instant later he was next to her, tugging at her sleeve and dragging her to the ground.
They rolled over on the cobblestones as a gunshot cracked, and the air whistled above their heads.
When Natalia looked up, a second SS trooper stood over the body of the one she’d just shot. He chambered another round and aimed directly at her.
Another gunshot echoed off the buildings, this one from behind her. The SS trooper slumped to the ground, his rifle clattering on the street.
Natalia got to her knees and looked back in the direction of the second shot.
An AK commando sprinted forward, waving his hand for them to stay down. He dropped to one knee, raised his rifle and fired twice over their heads, dropping two other SS troopers with deadly precision. Then he lowered the rifle and ran up to them. He was a thin, serious-looking man with wire-rimmed eyeglasses. “Get back against that wall,” he said quietly but firmly.
The boy grabbed Natalia’s elbow, and they backed up against the building as three other AK commandos sprinted into the center of the square, carrying a PIAT anti-tank gun. She crouched low with her hands over her ears as the PIAT’s barrel flashed. The Panther tank shuddered with a deafening bang!
The tank’s turret rotated toward the square.
The PIAT flashed again, and the tank rocked with a second bang!
The turret stopped.
The hatch popped open, and black smoke billowed out. A tank crewman frantically clawed his way out the open hatch, face blackened with soot, his shirt on fire. He was halfway out when he collapsed and slid back into the burning tank.
Natalia stood ramrod stiff. Her ears rang so badly she couldn’t hear, but she caught a sudden flash of movement from the corner of her eye.
On the other side of the square, a German Army truck barreled onto the lawn and skidded to a halt. Waffen-SS troopers leaped from the back of the truck and charged across the lawn toward the PIAT crew. An instant later a horde of screaming AK commandos poured out of the buildings surrounding the square.
The Katyn Order Page 2
