The Katyn Order

by Douglas W. Jacobson

  Adam turned to Whitehall. “What happens next?”

  Donavan gathered his papers and left the room.

  When they were alone, Whitehall said, “You’ll be going to Berlin, to join the investigation team and to find out what you can about Ludwik Banach. Of course, we’ll provide you with an entire list of names the Poles are supposedly interested in—to make it seem more logical, you understand.”

  “The Russians control Berlin. How are you going to get me in?”

  Whitehall leaned back in his chair, which creaked in protest. “A conference is being arranged between Stalin, Churchill and the new American president to implement the Yalta agreements. It will take place at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin that is still mostly intact. British and American officers are being allowed in to make arrangements.” Whitehall swung around and hoisted himself off the chair, once again indicating the meeting was over. “It’s a frightfully tedious process, but we should be able to get you in. It’ll take a few days to work up the papers. I’ll give you a ring.”

  Three days later Adam met Whitehall for dinner in a small, private dining room at the Lion’s Head Pub just down the street from SOE headquarters. It was a smoke-filled, dimly lit place with cracked leather booths and creaky floors. “Is everything set up?” Adam asked when they sat down.

  Whitehall was silent as a waiter appeared, delivered two pints of ale and departed. The portly colonel took a sip of ale. “Everything’s in order. I’ve managed to get your U.S. passport renewed and cleared the mission with your State Department. God, they’re a bloody tiresome lot, wanting to know what you’ve been up to the last five years and all that rubbish.” He slid the blue passport across the table.

  Adam slipped the passport into his pocket and picked up his glass, though he hated the warm, flat British beer. He’d give anything to plunge his hand into a bucket of icy cold water and pull out a frosty bottle of Budweiser. “So, what did you tell them, Colonel? What’s my cover story?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m getting to that. It’s all been worked out. Quite simple actually. Almost everything is exactly the way it really happened. You’re a naturalized American citizen and a former American soldier who was born in Poland. You returned to Poland in ’36, lived with your aunt and uncle in Krakow, and went to law school. When the Germans invaded in ’39, you were deported and came to London—and this is the new part—where you’ve been ever since, working as a liaison between the British Government and the Polish Government-in-Exile.”

  Adam took a swallow of beer, grimaced and set the glass down. “So, I’ve been a diplomat for the last five years instead of an assassin.”

  Whitehall shrugged. “Bit of a stretch, perhaps, but your State Department bought the story. We threw a lot of paper at them, and they filed it all away.”

  “I doubt the Russians will be as easy to fool, Colonel.”

  “No, I’m sure they won’t be. And of course that’s the sticky part.

  The Russians are very suspicious about the Americans and the British, and vice versa. Tensions are high. Everyone is treading lightly to make sure this conference comes off.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “The Russians, as you know, will not communicate directly with the Poles. That’s why I chose you. But they’ll investigate. Even though you’re an American, and a civilian, the Russians will try to find out everything they can about you. And I don’t have to tell you what their attitude is toward the AK.”

  Adam snorted. “Their attitude is to wipe out the AK. But it’s a little late to worry about that now, isn’t it?”

  “It’s never too late to change plans. What I want to know is, are you sure the Russians don’t know who you are? Are you sure they don’t know the name Adam Nowak?”

  Adam set his glass down. “I haven’t used that name in six years.” The mention of his name to Natalia in the ammunition cellar flitted through Adam’s mind, but he ignored it. “I haven’t used it since the day I arrived in Antwerp in November of ’39 and telephoned you. I was nobody then, a former student who’d been doing research for his uncle, and I was being deported from the country. And Poland has been in chaos ever since.” He paused, glancing around the small dining room, making sure they were alone. “If the Russians knew who I was, Colonel, I wouldn’t be here. I’m exactly what your people trained me to be: dark and silent.”

  Whitehall beamed. “Well then, Adam Nowak is back.”

  The food arrived: baked fish and cold vegetables. They both picked at it with little enthusiasm. After a while, Whitehall wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin on top of his plate, obviously eager to get on with the business at hand. “The Russians will go through the motions at the Potsdam conference, but we doubt they have any intention of allowing free elections in Poland,” he said. “According to our intelligence, they’re organizing a group of Polish communists in Lublin as the new government.”

  “I know about those bastards,” Adam said. “They’re puppets, dancing on strings for Stalin.” He folded his hands on the table, clenching his fingers so tightly his knuckles turned white, thinking about the Russian general, Kovalenko, who lied to him, then watched Warsaw burn. He thought about Natalia and her family in the small village near Lwow, and her brother, the cavalry officer captured and murdered by the Russians.

  “I know what the Russians are capable of,” Adam hissed. “They’re worse than the Germans. They proved that back in 1940 when they murdered thousands of Polish officers in cold blood in the Katyn Forest.”

  Whitehall grunted and flicked his hand in the air as if dismissing an old myth.

  Adam swallowed a gulp of the warm, flat ale and set the glass hard on the table, glaring at Whitehall. “I know the Russians claim the Germans committed the massacre at Katyn, Colonel. And the British and Americans are buying the story. After all, the Russians are our allies. I understand the risk. Now, when do I leave?”

  Twenty-Six

  16 MAY

  THE U.S. ARMY TRANSPORT PLANE banked to the left as it began its final approach into Berlin’s Templehof aerodrome. Adam looked out the window to catch a glimpse of the city, but the view was obscured by a thin veil of fog.

  The American Air Corps officer sitting next to him leaned over and tapped the window. “That’s dust,” he said.

  “Dust?”

  The officer nodded. “I’ll bet you thought it was fog. I thought so, too, when I flew in here last week. It’s dust from all the collapsed buildings. The heat from the fires carries the dust into the air. The whole city’s covered with it—what’s left of it, anyway.”

  As they dropped in altitude, snatches of the ground became visible, and Adam turned back to the window. Images emerged through the dust, spreading out in all directions in a brownish-gray monochrome, images that reminded him of pictures he’d seen of the ruins of ancient Rome . . . images that reminded him of Warsaw.

  Adam leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes, a jumble of emotions racing through him. For the first time in many years he was back in the company of American soldiers. But these soldiers were different from those he served with in the thirties, during the ambivalence of a peacetime army. In those days he’d worked at his sharpshooting and sniper training with relish because he enjoyed it, but there was always the undercurrent that it really didn’t matter because America was at peace and unconcerned about political tensions half a world away. But the soldiers sitting around him now were different. They had a strong, confident edge, and the battle-hardened swagger of soldiers who had just won a war. He’d fought the same war, though he fought it differently and perhaps for different reasons. All the same, he was pleased to be in their company.

  For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, Adam thought back to his arrival in America when he was eleven years old. That first year had been difficult. He hated to leave Krakow, had cried off and on for days, missing his uncle and aunt terribly. When they finally arrived in Chicago, he had felt lost and alone. He had to learn a new language, new cu
stoms. Though there were many Poles in their new neighborhood, it was still very strange, very different from Krakow—bigger and noisier, tall buildings, motorcars and elevated street cars.

  But gradually, as the months went by, he’d come to feel at home. He had made friends, learned to play baseball and did well in school. Then, seven years later, he had graduated from high school and become an American citizen all in the same day. It was the proudest day of his life. He remembered every detail with complete clarity: writing the test answers, signing the documents, then standing with his father and facing the red-and-white striped flag with the glittering blue field of stars, his right hand over his heart, reciting the pledge of allegiance to his new home. That was the day he decided he would become an American soldier.

  Adam looked out the window again, thinking of that simple, carefree time when it seemed as though everything were possible, as though every dream would come true and he could be whatever he wanted to be.

  He glanced around at the American soldiers in the transport plane. He felt a kinship with them, but at the same time he was an outsider. They were the first of his countrymen he’d actually been around since the war began.

  In all the years Adam had been fighting his own covert war of sabotage and murder behind enemy lines, he’d encountered numerous German soldiers. Most of them had been officers he’d eventually assassinated. And then there were the hundreds of Polish soldiers he’d fought with. They had set aside the sting of defeat and joined the covert warfare of the AK. They had sabotaged German trains and destroyed fuel depots, smuggled information and forged documents. The Americans had fought, and they had suffered hardships and lost friends. But they could never know what it meant to face the enemy on their own home soil, to witness the destruction of their homes and the deaths of their family members—and then to lose that fight. Adam was an American, and he would always be an American. But he was also a Pole, and he knew a part of his heart would forever belong to the country of his birth and the courageous people who faced tragedy again and again without surrendering.

  The big four-engine plane bumped hard onto the uneven runway, roaring past wrecked tanks and burned-out trucks. The plane swung to the right, and the terminal building came into view. Adam turned to the air corps officer. “I’m surprised the terminal is intact.”

  “We didn’t want to bomb it because we thought we’d need it,” the officer said. “And when the Russians moved in they were in such a rush to get to the Reichstag, they just bypassed it. Hell, Lufthansa was still operating commercial flights out of here until the end of April.”

  Adam pointed to the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag flying from the top of the building, just below the enormous stone sculpture of the Nazi eagle.

  The officer shrugged. “Yeah, I know. Supposedly, the aerodrome is in our sector, but the Russians are finding every way possible to delay the handover. So far, between us and the Brits, we’ve only been able to get a little over two hundred men into Berlin. More are trickling in every day, but the Russians have twenty divisions here, so they’re calling the shots.”

  The plane came to a halt, and a detachment of Russian soldiers marched out of the terminal, forming a corridor between the plane and the building. Their khaki uniforms were accented with grayish-green hats adorned with red bands and a solitary gold star.

  The air corps officer nudged Adam’s shoulder. “NKVD,” he said. “A little intimidation as our welcome to Berlin. They’re the Russian equivalent of the German SS.”

  No, they’re actually quite a bit worse than the SS. But Adam nodded and peered out the tiny window at the familiar soldiers, the very bastards he’d been evading for months. And now he was going to walk right up to them in broad daylight?

  He stood up, put on his new, gray overcoat and fedora, and straightened his tie. His credentials and documents were supposedly solid, identifying him as a Civilian Liaison Officer attached to the U.S. Judge Advocate General—War Crimes Investigation Team. Adam exhaled slowly. He was having a difficult time just remembering the title.

  He retrieved his suitcase from the luggage cart and followed the air corps officer into the terminal. They queued up behind a table where two NKVD soldiers, wearing the distinctive blue hats of officers, checked documents. The officers were flanked by a half-dozen NKVD riflemen. Beyond the checkpoint, milling about in a cloud of cigarette smoke punctuated with bursts of laughter and profanity, a group of American and British soldiers awaited the new arrivals.

  When Adam reached the table, he handed his credentials to one of the officers who gave him a long hard look, then muttered something in Russian. The second officer laughed at the apparent joke and looked up at Adam, shaking his head.

  Adam remained silent and kept his eyes on the officer holding his credentials, wishing he had a pistol under his coat. It was the first time in many years he’d been without a weapon, and he felt naked. The officer was a major with the NKVD 105th Frontier Guards Division. He looked to Adam exactly like every cartoon he’d ever seen of Russian officers—a squat, thick-necked Ivan.

  The major studied Adam’s credentials for a long time, then looked up and snarled a question in Russian.

  Adam responded in English, “I don’t understand.”

  The major scowled and called over his shoulder to one of the riflemen.

  The rifleman stepped forward, bent down and listened to whispered instructions. Then he straightened up and stepped toward Adam.

  “Hold on!” someone shouted from behind the table.

  The din of chatter and laughter in the terminal abruptly ceased as an American army officer pushed through the crowd, followed by two American Eighty-Second Airborne troopers toting submachine guns.

  The American officer, who was about average in height, but solidly built with curly black hair, looked down at the NKVD major and pointed at Adam. “This man is with us. May I have his papers?”

  The Russian glared at the American, and Adam knew that this Ivan wanted nothing more than to be able to stand up toe-to-toe, but the American officer had moved in too close. A momentary stare-down ensued. Finally, the Russian major turned back to Adam and held out the papers, gesturing with a jerk of his head for him to move on.

  Adam snatched his papers and squeezed past the Russian rifleman, who had not backed off. The two Eighty-Second Airborne troopers fell in behind Adam and the American officer as the crowd of American and British soldiers opened a pathway for them to the terminal exit. Adam heard a British voice shout, “Way to go, Yank. Give the bloody bastard hell!”

  Outside, the American officer led the way to the first of two Jeeps flying U.S. flags and motioned for Adam to climb in the backseat. A very young-looking American corporal sat behind the wheel. A moment later, a Russian Army truck rumbled alongside with two NKVD officers in the cab and four scruffy, unshaven Red Army soldiers sitting on benches in the open rear compartment. The driver nodded at the Americans, gunned the engine and swerved in front, spraying the Jeep with dust and bits of gravel. The young American corporal spit the dust from his mouth and mumbled an obscenity as he shoved the Jeep into gear.

  As they followed the Russian truck out of the aerodrome, the American officer leaned over to Adam and extended his hand. “Colonel Tim Meinerz, with the Judge Advocate General’s office. I’m head of the investigation team.”

  Adam shook his hand. “Adam Nowak. I’m your ‘Civilian Liaison Officer,’ whatever that means.” He jerked his thumb back toward the terminal. “Thanks for your help.”

  Colonel Meinerz nodded. “I’m sure they piled it on a little extra for a civilian diplomat. So far they’ve been assholes about everything.”

  “Well, you did the right thing. The only way to deal with them is to stick your nose in their face.” Or a knife in their ribs.

  Meinerz laughed. “Of course, a couple of Eighty-Second Airborne troopers carrying submachine guns always helps.”

  They exited the grounds of the aerodrome, and Adam looked around, squinting, his eye
s watering from the dust. He cleaned his glasses and took another look. As far as he could see, not one building was intact. All had been reduced to nothing more than heaps of rubble with an occasional chimney, or the jagged edge of a wall poking through the debris. A smell hung in the air, a musty, masonry smell, like wet concrete mixed with smoke. It did, indeed, look very much like his last memory of Warsaw—and it gave him a morbid sense of satisfaction.

  “Technically this area is in our sector,” Colonel Meinerz said loudly over the roar of the Jeep. “But both sides are still arm wrestling about the timing of the handover. For now, the Russians are our ‘escorts,’ and we’re under instructions to follow them. They’ll take a roundabout route to make sure you see the sights. They seem proud of their handiwork.”

  Had Adam not been in Warsaw during the last days of the Rising, he wouldn’t have believed it possible to lay waste to a city to this extent. Amidst a never-ending expanse of destruction, the only human activity Adam noticed were small isolated groups of women, ragged shawls over their heads, listlessly clearing away piles of bricks from the fronts of shattered buildings. The closer they got to the center of the city, the more appalling the destruction. The piles of debris became mountains, many still smoldering, the rising heat carrying a nauseating odor of rotting flesh. Burned-out tanks and wrecked trucks stood half-submerged in the muck of bomb craters filled with water from broken mains.

  By the time they reached the Landwehrkanal, even the rubble-women had disappeared. Sewer pipes dangled from beneath sections of smashed bridges, disgorging thick, brown liquid into the scum-covered waterway. Adam put his hand over his face to fend off the stench and turned away, glancing up ahead at the Russian truck. The Red Army soldiers lounged in the back, smoking cigarettes.

  They followed the roadway along the stinking canal for several minutes, then headed south, away from the city center. Gradually the destruction became less complete, and they passed through neighborhoods where perhaps a third of the buildings were still intact. Little glass remained in any of the windows, and the streets were littered with debris, but the rubble-women had reappeared, shoveling bricks into carts. Now and then a few ragged children scampered over the piles, and two old men, struggling with a cart filled with boards and corrugated metal, stared at them with blank, sullen eyes as the Jeep rumbled past.