The Katyn Order

by Douglas W. Jacobson

  He stepped back on the road and continued on, looking back over his shoulder every few paces. He knew from the map he’d studied that the road ran along the crest of a high bluff, which descended down sandy cliffs to the sea. There was no moon, and he found his way along the road by staying near the edge where the high grass rubbed against his leg. He kept his eye on the white foam of breaking waves on the beach below, which formed a half moon shape as it curved around a bay.

  Adam trudged on, alternately glancing over his shoulder and down to the beach, until he was at the midpoint of the bay. He paused and listened to the crashing surf for a moment, then stepped off the road and walked carefully through the high grass to the edge of the bluff.

  Am I early? He glanced at his watch but couldn’t make out the numbers in the darkness. It had been close to midnight when he’d snuck around the outskirts of the seaside town of Ustka, staying clear of the marauding Red Army soldiers. He had followed the back routes and footpaths until he reached the coast road, and he guessed at least an hour had passed before he was surprised by the truck. That had been at least a quarter of an hour ago. The rendezvous was set for 0200. Not much longer.

  Time passed. Adam knelt in the grass, staring into the blackness of the sea. Several times he thought he’d spotted a light and stood up, then nothing. The wind was stronger here, and the noise of the pounding surf enveloped him completely. With his spine tingling, he looked back toward the road every few minutes, making sure no one was sneaking up behind him.

  He’d been on the move for seven days ever since receiving the message from London at an AK safe house in the Tuchola Forest. Seven days of plodding along muddy, rural roads on foot; in the back of ox carts; in ancient trucks owned by sympathetic peasants, who shared what little food they had. Seven days of avoiding the Red Army and, above all, the NKVD. But Adam was used to that part, he’d been a hunted man for years—first the Germans, now the Russians.

  A flash, out at sea, slightly to his right.

  He peered into the blackness. Nothing.

  He waited.

  Another flash, then a second. He was certain of it.

  He glanced back toward the road, then slid down the sandy cliff on his butt, tumbling over at the bottom. He got to his knees and shook the sand from his woolen cap. He removed his glasses and wiped off the sand with his handkerchief, being careful with the cracked left lens. He put them back on and scanned the shoreline until he spotted several wooden pilings silhouetted against the foaming surf. That was the spot. He took one last glance at the top of the bluff then sprinted across the beach to the pilings.

  Adam braced himself against one of the rough, wooden posts—the remains of a pier long since vanished—and stared in the direction where he’d last seen the flash. The spray soaked him instantly, the chill of the piercing wind driving straight through to his bones. Within minutes he was freezing and felt dizzy. The occasional dizzy spells were another result of the bullet wound last September. He’d had his thirty-fourth birthday two weeks ago, but on nights like this he felt twice his age. He clung tight to the post, shivering and waiting for the dizziness to pass.

  He saw it again. Another flash.

  What did the message say? Three quick flashes? Answer with two flashes?

  Adam reached into his pocket for the flashlight he’d taken from the AK safe house. His hand trembled from the cold as he held it and fumbled for the switch. He flicked it on and off twice, wondering if it were strong enough.

  Then he glanced back at the bluff again. Goddamn it!

  Headlights bounced along the coast road.

  He turned back toward the sea and was startled when he saw the light almost on top of him. Then, out of the gloom, the shape of a boat appeared, its rounded bow rising and falling in the surf. He flicked the flashlight again, twice, as the boat swept ashore.

  Two figures emerged, one holding a line, the other racing toward him. He was a large, husky man, wearing a black rubber suit, his pistol drawn. He shouted in English, “We are looking for Oskar!” The voice was deep and strong, the accent British, the words expected.

  Adam shouted back, “Oskar has taken the train.”

  A gunshot from the bluff—

  The British marine fired back—

  Then he grabbed Adam’s arm. “Let’s get out of here, chum. You’re off to London.”

  Twenty-Four

  10 MAY

  THE HOTEL ROOM in London was small but clean, with fresh sheets and a private bath. There were clean clothes in the bureau, a new suit in the closet and room service. Adam thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

  The first day after his arrival, he had stumbled about in a fog. The entire journey seemed surreal, like something he might expect to see in the cinema—tough men in a rubber raft, a submarine, a small twin-engine plane. He’d been whisked to the hotel in a limousine with instructions to get some sleep and, in no uncertain terms, to stay put.

  By the afternoon of the second day, Adam was restless. He wore clean clothes for the first time in many months. The food was good, the best he’d had in years, and more than he could possibly eat. Apparently his hosts had special connections. He couldn’t imagine that even Londoners ate this good in wartime.

  The bed was firm—a real bed with real sheets and pillows—though he still woke abruptly in the middle of the night, as he’d done almost every night since Warsaw. He would stare into the darkness, hands trembling, his back clammy with sweat. The dream varied little from one restless night to the next, though the faces would change—dead faces, their eyes wide open, staring back at him.

  The proprietor of the hotel, a proper sort in a tweed jacket, pipe clenched in his teeth, had delivered the London Times to his room. The paper was still overflowing with news and pictures of V-E Day celebrations. Adam read it all, from front to back, scarcely able to believe the war had officially ended. It certainly hadn’t for the Russians, hunting down the AK in Poland.

  Finally, at four o’clock in the afternoon, there was a knock on the door. It was the chauffer, the same one who’d driven him to the hotel without speaking. This afternoon he said, “You have an appointment.” That was all.

  As the sleek, black Bentley dodged between black taxis and double-decker buses in the congested streets of London, Adam observed the condition of the city. He had left London in 1940, before the worst of the Blitz, but he had heard the reports about nonstop bombing raids. He noticed that part of the British Museum had been destroyed, several tube stations reduced to craters and the Commons Chamber of Parliament badly damaged. A number of windows were boarded up at Buckingham Palace, but Big Ben and Westminster Abbey still stood. Compared to Warsaw, London seemed virtually untouched.

  The Bentley pulled into a garage underneath a familiar office building on Baker Street. The chauffer opened the rear door and handed Adam off to a pretty young woman, who introduced herself as Margie, Colonel Whitehall’s assistant.

  They took the elevator to the fifth floor and walked down the same drab hallway he remembered from his previous visits. At the end of the hall, he was ushered into the same cluttered office he recalled, with two large windows overlooking an interior courtyard. A heavyset man with a pink, fleshy face and a shock of unruly white hair hoisted himself from his chair and stepped around the desk, hand outstretched.

  “Adam, jolly good to see you again. What’s it been, three years, four? Have a seat.”

  “Almost five,” Adam said as he shook Whitehall’s thick hand and sat down on the straight-backed chair in front of the large wooden desk covered with an array of file folders. Whitehall shuffled back around the desk and plopped heavily into the chair. He seemed much older.

  “Had a nice rest?” Whitehall asked, rummaging through the folders. “It was fine.” Adam watched the colonel curiously, wondering what the old man had in store for him this time. As one of the founders of SOE—the Special Operations Executive—Whitehall was a shrewd old war horse appointed by Churchill himself with orders to “se
t Europe ablaze.”

  They’d certainly accomplished that, Adam thought grimly. He’d left behind more than enough corpses to attest to it.

  Whitehall found the file he was looking for, flipped through a few papers, then leaned forward, peering over the top of his reading glasses. “Can you guess why you’re here?”

  It was the type of mind game Whitehall loved, but Adam had little patience for it. Not now. Not after Warsaw. SOE had financed and directed hundreds of sabotage and covert resistance operations throughout the war but, like everyone else, they had looked the other way when Warsaw was leveled. Now the Germans were gone, and the Russians had moved into Poland—different enemy, equally dangerous. “No, Colonel, I really have no idea,” he said.

  Whitehall grunted, removed a sheet of paper from the file and passed it across the desk. Adam picked it up and read the single paragraph.

  Sachsenhausen prison camp at Oranienburg, Germany, liberated 22 April, 1945, by Soviet Red Army. Less than 3,000 survivors including, 1,400 women. Most starving and too weak for transport to medical facilities.

  “If I remember correctly, that’s where Ludwik Banach was sent after he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939,” Whitehall said.

  Ludwik Banach. Hearing his uncle’s name so abruptly after all these years took Adam’s breath away. After a moment he looked at Whitehall, nodding slowly.

  Whitehall opened another folder. “A war crimes investigation team is being sent to Berlin to negotiate with the Russians. They want to get into Sachsenhausen as soon as possible. The Americans are taking the lead, along with some of our boys, but the Polish Government-in-Exile here in London wants a representative on the team. I’ve recommended you.”

  Adam had been struggling to follow what Whitehall was saying, suddenly consumed with thoughts of his uncle. “I’m sorry . . . I don’t understand. You want me to join a war crimes investigation team . . . representing the Polish Government?”

  Whitehall lifted his bulky body out of the chair, lumbered across the room and closed the door. When he sat down again, he took back the sheet of paper and closed the file. “Your uncle, Ludwik Banach, was one of the original founders of the AK. He was known under a code name—the Provider—and he set up an information channel several months before the war broke out to smuggle secret German documents to Warsaw, which were, in turn, passed on to us here in London.”

  Adam shifted in his chair. He wondered about the code name “Provider,” trying to recall if he’d heard it before. He thought that he had, but where, when? A dozen images flitted through his mind like random puzzle pieces, but nothing clicked.

  “I didn’t discuss any of this with you when you arrived here in ’39,” Whitehall said, “because your uncle’s involvement in the AK was known to only a select few within the Polish Government. At the time, you didn’t need to know. Now you do.”

  “But what’s all this got to do with a war crimes investigation—?”

  Whitehall held up a hand, stopping him. “Here’s something else we know.” He paused for a moment, glancing briefly at another piece of paper. “Last month the government of the Soviet Union invited sixteen of the surviving commanders of the AK to a peace conference in Moscow—then arrested them.”

  Adam sat silently. He had heard about the arrests.

  “Do you know what became of them?” Whitehall asked.

  “I heard they’re locked up in Lubyanka Prison. The whole thing was a sham, a trick to destroy the remaining leadership of the AK.”

  Whitehall looked at Adam for a long silent moment, then leaned across the desk. “You’re quite right. The leaders of the AK are now in Russian hands, all of them, the last roadblock in the takeover of Poland by the Russians. All of them, that is, except Ludwik Banach.”

  “Banach? My uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen six years ago, Colonel. He’s probably . . .” Adam’s voice trailed off as he remembered the last time he’d seen his uncle. He was dressed in his best suit and heading off to a “seminar” at the university. He never returned. But that night, before he left, he’d given Whitehall’s name and telephone number to Adam.

  “I know how much he meant to you, Adam. And it’s quite possible he didn’t survive. But, then again, perhaps he did. You saw the report, there were survivors.”

  Whitehall pushed back from his desk and stood up, a clear signal the meeting was over, the issue decided. “The Polish Government-in-Exile wants a representative on that investigation team,” he said matter-of-factly. “Ludwik Banach is important to them. He’s an icon, symbol of Polish independence and all that, especially now, since the arrest of the other AK leaders. They want to know what happened to him.”

  Whitehall stepped around the desk and laid a big hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Sleep on it. We’ll meet tomorrow with one of my staffers, chap named Donavan. He’ll give you the run-down on Sachsenhausen.” Then he cocked his head and looked closely at the thin scar on the side of Adam’s face and his mangled ear. “Nasty wound. That happen in Warsaw?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Well, could’ve been worse. But we should get those glasses of yours fixed while you’re here.”

  Twenty-Five

  11 MAY

  ADAM DIDN’T GET MUCH SLEEP. He had dinner in his room, drank half a bottle of wine and smoked cigarettes—real ones from a package, instead of the limp and soggy, hand-rolled ones he’d put up with for years, filled with as much sawdust as tobacco. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for most of the night, thinking about Ludwik Banach, the man who had been like a father to him during the first eleven years of his life, the man who had taken him in a second time, years later, and become his teacher and mentor. The man who had given him a family.

  And then, in September of 1939, it was all abruptly and brutally torn away. His uncle’s arrest had been part of a sonderaktion, the beginning of the Nazi plan to strip Poland of its professors and teachers, its lawyers and political leaders. At least that’s what Adam had always thought.

  But the conversation with Whitehall brought back forgotten details, memories of his uncle that didn’t quite fit the picture Adam had constructed of him. They were just fragments, a few bits and pieces, things that Banach seemed to know when no one else did.

  He recalled a conversation in August of ’39 when Banach speculated about the secret treaty between Germany and Russia—a week before it happened. Then, just two days into the war, Banach knew before anyone else that Krakow would not be defended. And, two weeks later, he wasn’t surprised when the Russians attacked.

  An “information channel,” Whitehall had called it. And Ludwik Banach, one of the original leaders of the AK, had set it up. That’s why he was arrested. Adam thought again about his uncle’s code name, “the Provider,” almost certain he’d heard it before . . . but then again . . .

  He lit another cigarette, watching the smoke curl its way toward the ceiling, remembering the moment when he learned of his uncle’s arrest and the cold, ice-blue eyes of the SS officer who delivered the news. Though seething with rage, Adam hadn’t had the opportunity to kill that particular officer at that moment. But in all the years since then he’d sought his vengeance through sabotage and assassinations, forcing every emotion from his heart except pure hatred for his uncle’s murderers. It drove him, it kept him going, and he’d shut out his past.

  Until Warsaw.

  Until Natalia . . . a ray of light in a dark world.

  But at the one moment when it might have mattered, he had been incapable of doing anything. It was as though his feet were buried in the same cement that had hardened his heart. At the moment when he stood watching from the window of the hospital in Raczynski Palace, he had desperately wanted to run to her and embrace her. But he was immobilized by his fear, his smoldering anger . . . his guilt.

  And then she was gone.

  Adam woke at dawn, after finally drifting off for a few restless hours. His back ached and his mind was a murky haze. Coffee helped. The English breakfast—with re
al eggs and real bacon—helped even more. By nine o’clock, when the taciturn chauffer arrived, he was ready to face the day, though he was still uncertain what good would come from a tour of a German concentration camp.

  Whitehall’s staffer, Tom Donavan, was a tall, lanky man in shirtsleeves, sporting a colorful bow tie. He slid into a chair in Whitehall’s office with a file folder on his lap and sat quietly, waiting for instructions.

  “Very well, then,” Whitehall said, “shall we get started?” He glanced at Adam. “I realize that some of this may be a bit difficult for you, old chap, but God knows, you’ve undoubtedly seen worse.”

  Whitehall motioned to Donavan, who opened the folder and removed a sheet of paper. He studied it for a moment before he began. “The Sachsenhausen camp was constructed in 1938 at Oranienburg, just north of Berlin. Before the war most of the inmates were German communists and other political dissidents. After the invasion of Poland the camp was expanded, and the number of inmates grew significantly—Jews, trade union leaders, political prisoners from Germany, Czechoslovakia and, of course, Poland.” He looked up from the paper. “We estimate the total number of prisoners sent to Sachsenhausen at more than a quarter million.”

  “The survivors?” Adam asked.

  Donavan laid the sheet of paper on the edge of Whitehall’s desk. “We understand there were approximately three thousand survivors when the Russians liberated the camp. We don’t have any names, of course, but the Russians will have the records.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Donavan shook his head. “I’m afraid we don’t know. The SS guards apparently ran off before the Russians got there, and some of the survivors simply walked away. Those that were left were mostly the ones too sick or weak to leave.”