Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  At quarter to twelve good news reached the castle: Von Eschl had to attend a meeting in Krakow chaired by Dr. Hans Frank himself, and he wondered if lunch could be served at twelve-fifteen. In apology for imposing on Lubonski and then altering the time arbitrarily, he brought with him a bottle of good Traminer; the meal was congenial, two diplomats sparring to attain and defend advantages.

  They spoke alternately in German, English and French, with Von Eschl throwing in an occasional phrase in Polish as a courtesy to his host. When Lubonski praised the wine, he did so in French; when he asked about the conduct of the war, he used German; and Von Eschl graciously responded in whatever language was most appropriate.

  ‘Is it widely known …’ he began in German, twirling his wineglass and studying it, not Lubonski. ‘What I mean is, among the generality. Is it known what we’re doing in the polygon?’

  ‘I scarcely know myself.’

  ‘The firings. Those tremendous blasts.’

  ‘I assume it has to do with some kind of advanced ordnance.’

  ‘Surely you’ve heard about the objects flying through the air.’

  ‘I’ve heard rumors. But I’ve seen nothing myself.’

  ‘In your opinion, could the Polish underground—I mean, in real army strength—could it mount an attack upon the polygon?’

  ‘I would suppose our people would attempt anything. We’re at war, you know.’

  ‘Not really. The pattern for the future has been well established. It’s understood, I think. This is more a pacification.’

  Blandly Lubonski agreed: ‘Give my regards to Dr. Frank. He’s stayed with me twice, you know.’

  ‘I do indeed. He speaks of you with great warmth.’ Von Eschl twirled his glass again, and still without looking directly at Lubonski, said casually: ‘You know, of course, that when the Russians are defeated …’ He stopped, as if aware of how stupid this must sound when the Russians were advancing all along the battle line. There was a short silence, and then he changed direction completely: ‘There’s good reason to believe that what we’re perfecting in the polygon … it will destroy England’s capacity to wage war, and then we’ll turn it on Moscow and destroy her, too. Our victory is much closer than you think, Lubonski.’

  He said this crisply, defiantly, then went on: ‘Dr. Frank, who holds you in the very highest regard as a true Polish patriot … he has been wondering if, when we do crush the Russians, there might not be a place in our plans for Poland for a local man—someone of distinction, that is—for a local man to serve as our representative.’ He paused significantly, then said: ‘From this very castle, perhaps. It could be arranged, you know.’

  Lubonski feigned surprise and pleasure at having been considered for an assignment of such honor and responsibility. Desperately he wanted to comment on the preposterousness of a situation in which the Germans one day discussed shooting him as a potential spy—and he knew well that Von Eschl and Krumpf had discussed exactly that—and next day suggested him as a proconsul. But his task this day was not to puncture ridiculous balloons; he had packages to deliver to London and he must allow nothing to deter him. ‘If peace does come to these parts, it would be important that we get everything back to normal as fast as possible. Like the agricultural land your polygon preempts now.’

  The two diplomats were now speaking English, and each had a wide vocabulary of precisely used terms, so Von Eschl replied: ‘I believe it was the American President Harding who coined the word normalcy. Yes, we will want to restore normalcy as soon as possible. Not quite what it was before the war, of course.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘There have been permanent changes, you know.’

  ‘Indeed I do. Every time I visit Krakow, I see the changes, and many of them for the better.’

  ‘Yes … yes. This could become one of the grand parts of Europe. A veritable breadbasket. Recreation spots in your mountains to the south. There will be a place for a man of good sense, like you.’

  ‘Speak well of me to the governor general.’

  ‘I will,’ Von Eschl said, and he was about to broach another subject of equal importance, the importing of more Polish peasants from the north to work the fields, when Lubonski looked at his watch, and this prompted Von Eschl to do the same: ‘Look at that! How rapidly time flies with good food, good wine and good conversation.’

  He ran down the stone stairway to the ground floor, saluted Lubonski, who stood in the doorway, and jumped into his waiting Mercedes. It had scarcely cleared the castle grounds when a second car of the same make and style drove up, chauffeured by Jan Buk in German uniform. A footman in the same kind of dress stepped down, opened the car door, and Count Lubonski with his packages departed.

  Had the Vistula River been easily navigable, and had the Stork Commando owned a speedboat of any kind, the trip would have been an easy one, for the secret airfield used with some frequency by the underground lay about thirty miles up the river, on the right bank in an area of very small and scattered villages. It was frighteningly close to Krakow’s airfield on the opposite side of the river, but activity at that Nazi base helped mask the flights into and out of Zaborow. People in the area were used to seeing planes.

  To reach the camouflaged airfield by automobile was a much different matter, for obviously there would be no major roads and this required Buk to stop at numerous roadblocks, but he had the forged papers to pass and the iron nerve to look like a relaxed Polish driver for an important Nazi official. Also, Lubonski had the engaging trick of asking anxiously in his refined German: ‘Is the other Mercedes far ahead of us?’ and when the guards replied: ‘Not too far,’ he answered: ‘No worry. We’ll catch them before Krakow.’

  They skirted the city of Tarnow, keeping to the north toward Zabno, where they must cross the Dunajec, a rather large river, and they knew the bridge would be heavily guarded, but they brazened it and could now drive carefully down country roads, coming at last to a dead end, where waiting partisans took charge, driving the Mercedes away immediately and leading Lubonski to a hut in which he would wait with Jan Buk until the courier plane arrived.

  The operation, utilized perhaps twice in three months, was known as The Bridge, for it connected Polish air units stationed at the Italian city of Bari on the Adriatic with their homeland. Over The Bridge came daring Polish officers bringing instructions to the underground, and out went messengers to the various Allied commands, but no one either coming in or exiting carried information of such critical importance as what Lubonski held in his lap. The destiny of nations depended upon his successful journey.

  Night fell and the quarter-moon set and there was no plane from Bari. A military transport approached the Nazi base across the river, but nothing flew near Zaborow. Midnight came and Lubonski began to worry, but Jan Buk assured him that when such a plane was scheduled, it arrived, and at quarter past midnight the sleek black plane did signal. Discreet lights flashed on; the plane circled only once and landed with surprising speed, braking in jerks as it sped over the grassy surface. With some effort, the pilot wrestled it to a halt, whereupon dozens of men ran from areas Lubonski had not noticed, carrying tins of precious gasoline stolen from Nazi depots.

  From the plane emerged three men whom Lubonski did not know; they were colonels come to help with the uprising that was soon to erupt all over Poland. Grimly they sped away.

  Within twenty minutes Count Lubonski was strapped into his seat, saluting the brave young man who had brought him so far: ‘Goodbye, Buk. Good job.’

  They flew south over Czechoslovakia, across the middle of Hungary and right down the center of Yugoslavia, then above Dubrovnik and in to Bari, where a fast courier plane waited to whisk the count and his precious cargo on to London. This plane crossed Italy, Corsica and most of France, before arriving after dawn at a military airport near London. And all this was done, this crossing of seven countries, at a time when Field Marshal Goering was still claiming that his air force dominated the skies.

/>   Had Count Lubonski been able to peer down through the darkness as they passed north of Paris, he would have seen a train chugging along, bringing many boxcars to that city, among them the seven containing the Bukowski treasures, and he might have reflected on the strange twists and turns of a war which led one man from a palace on the Vistula to behave in so vastly different a way from another man who lived in a castle only a short distance away, the one bringing goods to his own selfish advantage, the other bringing documents crucial to the salvation of the free world.

  As soon as his plane landed in England, men from British intelligence whom Lubonski had known when he was in London in 1919 hurried forward to embrace him for his gallantry. Assistants took possession of his packages, rushing them directly to military and scientific laboratories, and he would see his rocket fragments no more. His friends asked: ‘You’ve had a rather grueling bit, would you be up to a strenuous day?’ and he replied in English: ‘That’s what I came for.’

  He was taken to the shabby offices in London in which the BBC constructed its nightly broadcasts both to the free world and to the countries still under Nazi domination, and there a gentleman in pipe and tweeds offered him morning tea, a sip of good whiskey and a startling proposal: ‘We want you to go on the air tonight at seven with a complete and honest report of everything you’ve done during the past twenty-four hours. Masked a bit, you know, but there it will be—all spread out.’

  When Lubonski asked why, the tweedy one called his assistants, and they were enthusiastic: ‘Names, routes, stratagems, fudged up a bit, but we can drive them crazy.’

  ‘Is this to be in Polish or German? I mean, whom do you want to confuse?’

  ‘Both languages, Polish first, then German immediately after. To let the Poles know how daring their people are. To scare the living hell out of the Germans.’

  As soon as they described this aspect of their plan, Lubonski became excited, for in both the Polish and German versions he was invited to identify by name specific Nazi monsters whom the Poles had marked for death: ‘We want to panic them during these days of maximum confusion. We want to goad them into making wrong decisions.’

  So during the afternoon Lubonski told what he knew of the terror, reminding them always that he had only partial knowledge: ‘I was not myself interrogated Under the Clock in Lublin, but I know two men of the greatest integrity who were. Their escape He fell silent. Anything he might have accomplished in his relatively easy exit was trivial and not worthy of mention when compared to the adventures of someone who had undergone the broomstick treatment Under the Clock and lived to speak of it.

  At five, exhausted not by his work but by his memories, he fell into a deep sleep, and at quarter to seven he was awakened to make the historic broadcast which would later be printed in nine languages and strewn from the clouds over occupied Europe by a hundred different bombers:

  ‘Good evening, citizens of Poland and members of the German occupying force, I am Walerian Lubonski, Count of Castle Gorka, which stands on the right bank of the Vistula River between Krakow and Sandomierz. My father was that Count Lubonski who served for many years as a high official of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and who, as you know, loved Germany.

  ‘Yesterday at quarter past noon I dined in my castle with Falk von Eschl, special commander of the secret area known as Polygon. I fed him venison and he served me a fine bottle of Traminer. I give these details so that if he is listening, as I am certain he will be, he will be satisfied that I am who I say I am and that I am telling the truth.

  ‘At half after one he left for Krakow in a Mercedes-Benz driven by the chauffeur Reiglen. What he does not know is that fifteen minutes later I left, also in a Mercedes-Benz, stolen from the high command in Krakow, driven by a member of the Stork Commando wearing a stolen Nazi uniform. With forged papers we drove south to Dukla and through the Carpathian passes into eastern Czechoslovakia to a secret airfield at which Allied planes land regularly. One flew me to a French air base eighteen miles from the English Channel, and from there I hopped to London.

  ‘Falk von Eschl will be interested to learn that I brought with me complete drawings and selected important parts of the machine which landed in the Vistula not many weeks ago. They are now in possession of Allied intelligence.

  ‘I give these details for two reasons. To encourage my Polish fellow citizens. Victory moves closer every day. When I flew over the Channel, I saw thousands of Allied vessels waiting for the crusade that will soon free Europe. In London, I have seen reports of great Russian victories which will soon free Warsaw. But I also seek to strike a mortal fear in the hearts of my German listeners. And I will be specific.

  ‘Dr. Hans Frank, ruler of General Gouvernement, I brought out with me a copy of all your commands to the Polish people. Your own words condemn you, and one day soon you will hang.

  ‘Falk von Eschl, guest in my castle, I brought with me details of your massacre of villagers at Nowa Polska. For that crime and others you will hang.

  ‘Konrad Krumpf, I have full details of your many crimes during the years you occupied the Bukowski palace. I know you have escaped to France, but for your crimes you will be hanged.

  ‘Walther Nocke, Gestapo commander of the cells Under the Clock, we have a complete dossier of your enormous crimes, and you will hang.

  ‘Hans Fiddler and Ulbricht Untermann, judges at the infamous court in Zamek Lublin, your own people have kept a record of your assassinations, and you will hang.

  ‘Arthur Liebehenschel, commandant at Majdanek, your infamous crimes have been reported by prisoners who escaped your charge, and you will be hanged.

  ‘Otto Grundtz, commander of Field Four, escapees who know you well have listed your hideous crimes, and you will be hanged.’

  On and on he went, giving specific names, specific crimes for which the accused would be hanged. Then he gave a promise:

  ‘I will spend the rest of my life, if necessary, moving from country to country, from court to court, to testify against you, and I will bring my friends with me to give evidence until you are each and all hanged.

  ‘There are among the occupying forces many fine Germans who have helped us Poles and I want to give them assurances. I shall not recite your names because to do so would hurt you with the monsters who give you orders, but you will be able to identify yourselves, and just as I promised the others I will not die until I have helped bring them to the gallows, I now promise you that I will travel to any court in the world to testify that you were men of integrity and honor and compassion. You will come to no harm.

  ‘We Poles do not seek revenge for the terrible wrongs that have been done us. We seek justice, and a warning to others that they can never act as Dr. Hans Frank and his General Gouvernement have acted. The day of retribution is close at hand and it will be as remorseless as you were cruel.

  ‘To my guest Falk von Eschl, I suppose you will destroy my castle. Well, in past it was destroyed by Tatars, by Cossacks, by Swedes and by Hungarians, and always my ancestors rebuilt. We will rebuild. Like the other conquerors, you have failed to kill Poland. It will live forever.’

  Lubonski’s first BBC broadcast evoked so many responses that he was invited to deliver a series on conditions inside Nazi-occupied areas, and this brought him into contact with representatives of many nations seeking to regain their freedom. On some days he felt that he was holding his father’s portfolio in Vienna in the 1890s when the situation had been similar.

  Customs change, he thought, but not the great basic problems, and nowhere was this truism more clearly demonstrated than in the recurring case of Poland-Lithuania-Ukraine over which his father, Andrzej Lubonski, had broken his heart. The strategic situation was precisely what it had been in 1920: the three isolated and defenseless units must unite as they had done in centuries past, or they must perish individually, but just as rampant nationalism had prevented any such union in 1920, it now forestalled any rational approaches.

  His father had conducte
d exploratory meetings in Brest-Litovsk with Lithuanians and Ukrainians, and now he held his meetings in London, with equally mournful results. Each national unit was afraid of the other two, each was convinced that this time it could walk the tightrope between Germany and Russia, and each conceded privately that such hopes were futile. ‘History doesn’t repeat itself,’ Lubonski lamented one night to a party of experts on eastern European affairs. ‘It is the same history, never broken, never halted.’

  Despite his despair over the future, he did find reassurance in the present, for he had never known better people than his illiterate cook, who had been so fearless in her partisan activities, or Jan Buk, who had handled the V-2 affair so professionally, and in gratitude for the smooth way in which Buk had led his men to capture the V-2 and then spirited it and Lubonski off to London, the count prevailed upon representatives of the Polish government-in-exile to award Buk a medal honoring his services; so on the next Bridge from Bari to the secret airfield near Krakow, a Polish colonel who was flying in to help direct the uprising in Warsaw asked to be taken to the Forest of Szczek, where he met privately with Buk and Chalubinski and presented the medal.

  ‘Keep it hidden till victory,’ the colonel advised. ‘The Nazis wouldn’t look kindly on a medal like this.’

  So Buk kept it buried, but one day Chalubinski said: ‘I’d like to see that medal,’ and Jan dug it up.

  ‘The last gasp of a Poland that’s dead,’ Chalubinski said, shoving it back.

  ‘It shows King Jagiello,’ Buk said. ‘He was our hero.’

  ‘The medal … Lubonski … that London gang … Buk, they’re all from the last century. There’s going to be a much different Poland, believe me. The ones who come to help us from the east, they’re the ones who’ll build the real Poland.’