The Katyn Order

by Douglas W. Jacobson

  He looked at Natalia. There was an expression on her face that said she understood.

  “It’s ironic,” he said. “My uncle was like you. He always feared the Russians more than the Germans. He was an internationally known legal scholar who traveled all over Europe, especially to Germany. And right up until the day the Wehrmacht marched into Krakow, he was convinced that Hitler was bluffing. ‘It’s the Russians we have to fear,’ he always said.”

  “I think he got it right,” Natalia said sharply, “despite what happened to him.” She got to her feet and stepped up to him. “The Russians could stop this, Adam. They could have stopped it a month ago. But they’re not going to. They’re going to sit on the other side of the river like vultures and let the Nazis destroy us. Then they’ll destroy the Nazis. The Russians will sweep through Poland, seal off the borders and hunt down every last one of us in the AK. Then they’ll turn everyone that’s left into good little communists.”

  Natalia kicked a stone across the room. Adam watched her, fascinated by her passion. She cocked her head and looked at him. “So, how was it that you got away from the Germans when your uncle and aunt were arrested? You were related to them, after all.”

  Adam shrugged. “The SS kept me in jail for a few days, threatened me, beat me up a bit . . . but even though I was born in Poland, I was an American, a civilian with a valid U.S. passport, and we weren’t at war yet. So, I was deported.”

  “Back to America?”

  “That was their intention. I was put on a train with a dozen other Americans who were all being deported back to the states, some of the last ones left in Krakow at the time. But the Germans turned us over to the Belgians when we got to the border. We got off the train in Antwerp, and the rest of them boarded a bus for the port to catch a ship back to America.”

  “But you stayed behind.”

  “The day before my uncle was arrested he gave me a name and a telephone number—in case anything happened. The name was Stanley Whitehall and the telephone number was the SOE in London.”

  “Your uncle was connected with SOE? Sounds like he was more than just a college professor.”

  Adam nodded. “I suspected it back in ’39 when the war broke out. But after he was arrested . . . I don’t know. I didn’t think about it . . . I just wanted . . . revenge.”

  The shelling was closer now. The walls shook, and pieces of brick fell from the crumbling ceiling. At least the dampness was gone, driven away by the heat of fires that were raging in the streets above them. As they huddled together in a corner of the cellar, Natalia wondered if they’d ever get out of there. And if we do, then what? It had been so long since she’d had any kind of normal life she couldn’t even imagine it.

  Suddenly a very loud, very close artillery blast shook the walls of the cave-like cellar. Natalia flinched as the vibration through the earthen floor ran up her spine. The lantern swung back and forth precariously on the post, and Adam slid his arm around her, pulling her closer. “Tell me about your village,” he said.

  “My village?”

  “Yes, where you grew up. Tell me about it.”

  She pulled away. “Why?”

  “Because I’d like to know. Besides, like you said the last time we were here, it’s better than just listening to the shelling.” There was a softer expression on his face, something she hadn’t seen before. He seemed . . . more relaxed.

  She leaned back against the wall and sighed. It was so long ago. “I grew up ten kilometers east of Lwow, a rural area, mostly peasant farmers who’d been there for generations. My father was a doctor, and there was a small hospital. I worked there when I wasn’t at university in Lwow.”

  “What did you study?”

  “Medicine, of course. When your father’s a doctor, what else would you study? The medical school reserved ten chairs for women, the same number they reserved for Jews and Ukrainians. Very civilized, don’t you think?”

  He nodded. And when he smiled at her she felt something pass between them, a magnetism that seemed to draw them closer. For the first time since they’d met, she felt that he really cared about what she was saying.

  “I was in Lwow when the first German soldiers arrived. The fall term hadn’t started yet, but all the students were there anyway. We’d seen the airplanes almost every day since the beginning of September and we knew what was about to happen. There was only a small Polish Army garrison to defend the city at the time, so we all signed up and did what we could—set up barricades, dug anti-tank ditches, raced back and forth with messages, food and water.” She paused and shook her head. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  He reached over and took her hand. “Yes, too familiar.”

  “Then the Luftwaffe flew in, dropping incendiary bombs. It was hell . . . fires everywhere. Just like hell. Our soldiers hung on, and we did everything we could to help. But then . . .”

  “The Russians?”

  Natalia clenched her jaw. “Yes, the Russians. Everyone was stunned. We had no idea what was happening. At first they sent in an envoy. He said they were here to help us. Of course, it was a lie; the only criminal worse than Hitler is that treacherous son of a bitch Stalin.”

  She dropped his hand, and propped her elbows on her knees, rubbing her forehead. Lwow had been so beautiful: the opera and ballet, the churches and palaces, the magnificent Baroque and Renaissance architecture . . . “The next day the Germans pulled out, the Russians moved in and the NKVD started arresting people.”

  Adam placed a hand on her shoulder. When she continued her voice was just above a whisper. “I managed to get out of the city and walked back to our village, taking all the back roads and paths through the forests to avoid the Russian soldiers. But when I got there . . .”

  She swallowed hard and brushed away a tear. Don’t cry, damn it! “When I got there the village was . . . there was nothing left. The fires were still smoldering, our house was destroyed and they were . . . my parents, my relatives, everyone . . . they were just . . . gone.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks, and she wiped them away, cursing under her breath. “I left . . . got lost, actually . . . in the forests. Then, several days later, I met some people. They were partisans, forming a resistance movement. We eventually became part of the AK.”

  “When did you go to Krakow?” Adam asked.

  “About a year later, in the autumn of ’40. The commander of our AK unit arranged for me to get a job on the railway.”

  Adam smiled again. “Hence the name, ‘Conductor.’”

  Natalia shrugged. “Not very original as code names go.”

  “So, I assume you did more than just punch tickets on the train.”

  “Eventually, but not right away. I worked strictly as a conductor for almost two years. I hardly heard from the AK. I’d actually started to think they’d forgotten about me.”

  “And then . . .?”

  “In the spring of ’42 I heard from a priest, of all things. He gave me a new assignment. Then someone I never met, called ‘the Provider’—”

  A thundering explosion rocked the building, and the center support post sagged. An instant later a section of the ceiling collapsed, and the lantern shattered on the floor in a blaze of sparks, buried instantly under the rubble and plunging the cellar into blackness.

  Natalia groped in the darkness and found Adam’s hand. They scrambled to their feet, choking on dust and stumbling over piles of plaster and wood, until they found the tunnel exit.

  They ran through the tunnel and up the staircase, following the reddish-yellow glow from outside.

  The scene beyond the doorway was every bit as hellish as Lwow had been—blazing fires and thick, black smoke, blinding flashes in the sky, and the constant thud of bursting shells. Every building in sight had been reduced to a shattered ruin.

  Adam squeezed her hand. “We’ve got to run for it.”

  She nodded.

  But he didn’t move.

  He stared at her for another moment, his eyes
reflecting the softness, the growing feeling of togetherness she’d felt in the cellar. Then he leaned over and kissed her.

  She slipped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him close as they kissed again. Longer this time, his hand sliding around her waist.

  Then he abruptly broke it off.

  He took a step back. “We have to go.”

  She reached over and brushed his cheek. “Yes, I know.”

  He smiled at her, but the look in his eyes that had been there a moment ago was gone.

  Eighteen

  1 SEPTEMBER

  ADAM GLANCED BACK at Natalia. She motioned for him to keep going as they made their way through the rubble on Piekarska Street, then climbed over a half-demolished stone wall. Twelve other AK commandos were waiting for them on the other side, including Rabbit, who stood at the front of the line, his face flushed and his trousers soaked with muck.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here before they blow our fuckin’ heads off!” the boy yelled as soon as he spotted Adam and Natalia. Even from two meters away, Adam could smell the stink of sewage on him.

  Through a swirling vortex of shrieking artillery shells, deafening concussions and raging fires, Rabbit led the group into the ancient maze of winding streets bordering Old Town’s main square. Only a few skeletal brick façades remained standing, their dark, blown-out windows looming eerily like the eyes of a death’s-head. The commandos kept their heads down, circling around the ruins of St. John’s Cathedral, its magnificent spires, archways and statuary now pulverized into dust. A few minutes later they rendezvoused with a second group, hunkered down in front of St. Jacek’s Church—incredibly still intact—at the head of Dluga Street.

  Rabbit glanced at his watch, then turned to the combined group of commandos, shouting to be heard over the thundering detonations. “Bobcat is at the sewer at the south end of the street, at Place Krasinskich. That’s where the manhole is. In exactly ten minutes he’ll signal with a flashlight, twice. I’ll return the signal by flashing three times. Then you all run like hell! Single file. Just follow me!”

  Adam put a hand on Natalia’s shoulder. “You stay right behind Rabbit.”

  She grabbed his coat and pulled him toward her. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be along later. I have another assignment.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t. We have orders. You have to go now and I’ll—”

  She jerked harder on his coat. “I’m not leaving without you!”

  He bent down and kissed her. Then he gripped her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You’re going now. I’ll find you.”

  Defiance flashed through her eyes, and she turned away.

  Rabbit shouted again at the group. “No matter what happens, keep running, and don’t stop until you’re in the sewer! When we’re down there, follow me; I know the way. Bobcat will bring up the rear.”

  The fires and bursting artillery shells lit up the midnight sky, giving Adam amazingly clear glimpses of Dluga Street—from the stout façades of St. Jacek’s at the north end to Place Krasinskich at the south end. From his vantage point on the top floor of Raczynski Palace, he spotted Natalia in her blue coat kneeling next to Rabbit in front of the church.

  Adam did not want it to end this way. But he knew it would. There was a part of him that wanted to run back into the street and take her in his arms. But that part was just barely alive, buried under years of murder, rage and the quest for revenge that had driven him since Whitehall sent him back into Poland.

  He leaned against the edge of the window, watching her in the flashes of light. He had to make her go. He knew that. The AK were out of options. They were trapped in Old Town, and the route through the sewers held the only way out. Surrendering to the Germans would be a death sentence. And when the Russians finally decided to enter Warsaw, Adam knew the terror squads of the NKVD would be right behind the Red Army. Any AK commandos still alive would spend the rest of their days in a Siberian gulag.

  But Adam wasn’t headed back to the sewers. Raczynski Palace served as a field hospital for hundreds of wounded AK commandos who couldn’t escape. If the building survived the bombardment, he knew that SS storm troopers would move in and finish off the wounded men. Colonel Stag knew it too. But there was nothing he could do about it. And Adam knew there was nothing he could do about it either. He couldn’t stop it. But, when the time came, he could take out some of the storm troopers with him. Perhaps, at long last, all of the killing might actually mean something.

  A light flashed twice from the south. Then three flashes from the north, and a moment later Rabbit’s group was on the move, running single file down the street, dodging around the rubble.

  A burst of artillery shook the palace building and lit up the street like a searchlight. Adam stood ramrod stiff and clenched his fists, watching the slender figure in a blue uniform running right behind Rabbit. Silently, he urged her along. Run! Run!

  Then a massive concussion knocked him to the ground. Adam groped around to retrieve his glasses and scrambled to his feet. He fumbled to slip them back on, then looked in horror through a cracked lens at the street below where a massive cloud of dust billowed up from a crater three meters across. The runners in the second half of the single-file line had disappeared.

  Frozen with fear, Adam watched helplessly as the runners in the front half of the line stopped and looked back. There was instant commotion. Natalia waved her arms, frantically pointing back up the street at the smoking crater. Rabbit tugged at her arm. Some of the others pushed her forward.

  Natalia hesitated and continued to point at the crater.

  Adam pounded on the window frame and shouted out loud, “Run! Goddamn it, Run!” Only the hospital patients in the next room heard him.

  But that’s exactly what she did.

  And then she was gone.

  Nineteen

  1 SEPTEMBER

  THE SMELL WAS OVERPOWERING. Sharp sulfurous gas and the stagnant stench of mold and human excrement swept over Natalia. She fought off a wave of nausea as she stepped off the climbing iron into the foul, knee-deep wastewater with muck up to her ankles. Torrents of water swirled around her, and she stumbled forward, almost falling. Hammer, the husky commando in front of her, grabbed her around the waist as she struggled to lift her right foot from the muck.

  “The rope! Grab the damn rope!” Rabbit shouted from the head of the line, the faint glow from his lantern swinging back and forth, briefly illuminating the slime-covered walls.

  Natalia put one hand on Hammer’s shoulder and felt around in the filthy, rapidly flowing water until she found the rope. It was slippery, and she had to hold tight with both hands to keep from falling. She heard Rabbit shout something, and the rope suddenly went taut, jerking her forward as the group set off into the dark, forbidding labyrinth. Natalia hung on, swallowing hard to keep from vomiting. She concentrated on lifting one foot at a time, praying she wouldn’t lose a boot.

  They plodded forward, the rope jerking back and forth as people slipped and stumbled, splashing in the squalid wastewater. Suddenly, the rope went slack and someone in front of Hammer cried out, “Jesus Christ, it’s a body!”

  “Keep moving!” Rabbit yelled back.

  The rope went taut again and a moment later Natalia stumbled over a squishy hump underfoot. She clung fast with both hands and kept her eyes forward, focusing on Hammer’s broad silhouette to force the grisly image out of her mind as she stepped over the submerged corpse.

  They continued on, torrents of putrid water rushing past, carrying not just human waste, but rotting plants, sticks, gravel and broken boards that slammed into the back of Natalia’s legs. Her trousers were shredded by the jagged splinters. Wastewater oozed through the brick roof, dripping on her head until her hair was sticky and matted, and her eyes burned.

  “Step up!” Rabbit yelled as the group made a left turn into a smaller tunnel with the main flow of water rushing off
in a different direction. It was drier and the footing better, though the tunnel’s low ceiling forced them into a crouched position. Natalia banged her head a few times and, in front of her, Hammer crawled on all fours.

  Overhead she heard crunching noises and the unmistakable clatter of steel tank treads as Rabbit called out, “Passing under Holy Cross Church!”

  Then a thunderous bang echoed off the brick walls.

  The rope went slack. Voices shouted and shrieked.

  “Grenade!” shouted Bobcat from his position at the rear of the line.

  Another bang, and the tunnel filled with smoke.

  “Get moving!” Rabbit shouted. “The fuckin’ Krauts are throwin’ grenades down here! Get moving!”

  The line jerked forward, and Natalia stumbled, scraping her knee on the concrete floor. Hammer reached back and grabbed her elbow until she regained her footing. Choking on the acrid smoke, she clung desperately to the rope as the line surged forward.

  The group staggered on through the narrow, tube-like tunnel for what seemed like an eternity. Hunched over, her back aching, her knees bruised and bleeding, Natalia thought about Adam, about Berta, about her job on the railway—anything to push away the paralyzing dread that the roof would collapse, that this is where it would end, here in the sealed tomb of a sewer tunnel.

  Finally, they turned right and climbed down into a larger tunnel, the shadows from Rabbit’s lantern flickering on greasy, oval-shaped walls. Up and down the rope line, the commandos fell quiet now as fatigue settled in. This tunnel had higher ceilings—even Hammer could straighten up—but they were back to flowing wastewater and dozens of corpses lying in the sticky, ankle-deep muck. Natalia had lost any concept of time but was certain that hours had passed. Rabbit’s voice became hoarse and weary as he called out their locations.

  Progress slowed as they passed under Warsaw University. The area above their heads crawled with SS troopers and Panzer brigades. Overhead, the crunching sounds of tank treads, clattering machine guns and exploding artillery shells hammered Natalia’s eardrums until she thought her head would split open.