Another Man's Freedom Fighter

by Joseph Carter

  Pułaski pursed his lips and looked at the monitor on the wall. It mirrored the image on the large screen array outside in the situation room.

  “Dobra, we have analyzed the past. That will help us understand our enemy and their tactics. Let’s look at the present state of the war. The Russians have air superiority and control Warsaw, Gdynia, and Gdańsk. They are making a move on Szczecin by sea. The Multinational Corps is there, but we can’t get through to them.”

  “The whole north-west is a blind spot to us. We would know next to nothing if our submarines weren’t shadowing their fleet moving west.” The military intelligence general was not happy at all with not getting all the information he needed.

  “So far, we were able to hold our positions at the northern front. The front is roughly 200 kilometers long and extends from Braniewo to Gołdap. It’s about 25 kilometers north of here. The 16th Mechanized Division and its subunits have deployed very rapidly and are well equipped to counter the troops stationed in Kaliningrad Oblast. The troops that we know of, that is. We must anticipate them to bring reinforcements from their Western Military District by sea. And then Belarus is the big question mark.” Again, Bilinski had to admit to himself to know too little.

  They had tried to gauge the presence of Russian troops in this client state for months, but that has proven very hard. The border between Belarus and Russia is completely permeable, and Russian troops exercise near-constantly with their comrades in the brother nation.

  Pułaski looked at the map and the icons on it like at a chess board. Trouble was, his chess board was half hidden in the west, where he had to expect a landing operation and had an open flank at the east where Belarus and Ukraine were. NATO would need some time to jump through the political hoops. How long until the Russians put more pieces on the board through Belarus? How long can the Ukrainians defend their part of the board? How long until NATO reinforcements arrive? The helplessness behind these thoughts put even a hardened general in a glum mood.

  “It all comes down to this damned ‘how long’,” Pułaski said, staring pensively at the map on his screen.

  ✽✽✽

  The Sanders family left the house after freshening up a little. It was just after six p.m. and they strolled leisurely past the Kulturbrauerei, a hundred-seventy-year-old brewery converted into galleries, clubs, restaurants, and shops. The loud roar of the four-lane Danziger Straße disturbed the otherwise picturesque neighborhood. The bells of a tram shrilled loudly. The driver of a car had taken too long to decide which one of the confusingly designated lanes to follow and blocked the tracks as a consequence.

  Once they had crossed Danziger, the peace and quiet returned. With the sun exactly in their backs, they could expect another half hour of direct sunlight once they sat down at the table. After that, they could enjoy their dinner in the cool shade of the fin-de-siècle buildings of Lychener Straße.

  As they came to Trattoria Felice, Domenico, the owner, just came out of the entrance. In his hands were two large plates with steaming pizzas on them. He threw a quick ciao and a smile in their direction and delivered the pizzas. With a friendly buon appetito he wished a young couple to enjoy their meal.

  “Ofelia, mamma mia, you look younger every day,” Domenico exclaimed with a semi-fake Italian accent. He was Italian, his passport said so. Both his parents had come to Germany during the early nineteen-seventies and then moved back to Sicily after retirement. He was born and raised in Düsseldorf, West Germany, and most of his friends had been Germans ever since Kindergarten. He could speak German better than his parents’ native tongue. But the forty-year-old, fun-loving man enjoyed playing the role for his guests. Especially the American tourists liked getting a little Italian feeling in the middle of Prenzlauer Berg.

  Ofelia rewarded the compliment with a gracious smile. Domenico pulled out a chair for her.

  “You’re right, Domenico, my friend. I’m a very lucky guy,” Mark added.

  “It shows you are a smart man, to know how lucky you are. I bring you a carafe of water, some ice, and bread. Then I can tell you about the daily specials.” This remark concluded the ritual Domenico usually followed with his regular guests, and off he whizzed into the building.

  Mark parked the stroller so that Xandi was facing his mother and away from the sun. Then he also sat down at the table with the red-checked tablecloths.

  Ofelia looked at her husband and smiled, they had so many lovely memories connected to this restaurant and the neighborhood around Helmholtzplatz.

  Before Xandi was born and Mark still had his old job, they frequented Trattoria Felice at least twice a week. Now, money was a bit tight, and they had to cut down to once or twice a month.

  They always sat at the table left of the entrance, Ofelia would glance southward in her twenty-second rhythm and Mark northward and into the T-intersection of Lettestraße to his right. If it became necessary, they would move right into the restaurant and out the back.

  Seventeen

  “We’ll have the Tagliatelle della Casa and a Pizza Bresaola,” Ofelia relayed their decisions to Domenico.

  Mark was still looking through the wines and then decided for something simple. “And a carafe of the Syrah,” he said.

  “Perfetto, we just got the new vintage, it’s from near my village,” Domenico stated proudly.

  “Really? I didn’t know they were growing Syrah in the Rhineland,” Mark joked.

  Domenico lightly slapped his shoulder. “Smart and funny, eh?”

  Just a few moments after the sun had vanished behind the corner building, Domenico rushed out the door with two plates. One was deep with a wide rim, it held the tagliatelle from the daily menu. The pasta steamed and looked delicious being nicely curled up, resting on a light sauce. Ofelia made good use of the small bowl of fresh-ground parmesan and the pepper mill.

  Mark looked over his pizza which slightly overlapped the rim of the large flat plate. It was just like he liked it with a thin crust, slightly dark at the edges, tomato sauce, and buffalo mozzarella all over. The Bresaola was a thin-cut, air-dried fillet of beef topped cold on the warm pie in a slight curl. Spread all over the pizza was a generous topping of rocket salad and parmesan cheese.

  The Syrah was perfect company to the food, especially the cheesy parts. The wine was dry, full-bodied, and Domenico had slightly cooled it to a perfect drinking temperature of 64 degrees Fahrenheit. The guy knew his wines and treated them well. One would not see a gallery of bottles standing upright behind the bar like in other Italian restaurants. Instead he stored them in a basement room and kept the open wines in a climate controlled cabinet behind the counter.

  ✽✽✽

  A trio of street musicians set up their instruments while Ofelia and Mark enjoyed their food in silence. The two knew the combo. They were a Helmholtzplatz fixture, circling the square every evening and playing Jazz classics for tips and beers. The bassman was a tall, blond German-looking guy with sunglasses.

  Next to him, on a chair pulled from an empty table, sat a guy who looked like the spitting image of Frank Zappa. He unpacked all sorts of things from an old briefcase and screwed them together. The contraption he played was a washboard with some percussion instruments like a cup chime, a cowbell, and a mechanical alarm clock. He also had a yellow rubber duck to make squeaking sounds.

  The leader of the three was a twenty-something, skinny, black guy with a beard and untamable hair. He played the trumpet like he had been born with it and had a voice like the young Louis Armstrong.

  They started playing. The trumpet guy would take turns playing his instrument and singing with his wonderfully rough voice.

  “A warm evening, a glass of wine, a beautiful woman. I am a lucky guy,” Mark said to Ofelia and took her hand.

  She gave him a warm, wonderful smile. She felt exactly the same.

  ✽✽✽

  The two had met when they were already real grown-ups. Both were well in their thirties and had made their experiences with relatio
nships, mostly disappointing. They both were surprised at and grateful for their chance encounter. Surprised to find a funny, reliable, and attractive partner who shared the full set of values. Both were Catholic, rare in mostly atheistic Berlin. Grateful, that they had been able to forget all the disappointments and had allowed themselves to fall in love without holding back.

  Only a few months into their relationship, life had suddenly thrown a ton of problems at the lovebirds. They literally had to fight for their survival, and just when the lethal danger had been averted, Mark lost his share in the company he had co-founded. His compensation had been pennies to the dollar, and he had been put under enormous psychological pressure by his former business partners. It nearly broke the normally hyper-optimistic Rhineland-Boston half-breed’s will to live.

  But Ofelia picked him up, she turned out to be a trustworthy partner who could pull her own weight and then some. When she announced being pregnant, her husband broke out in happy tears that would not stop for a full evening. Life was good again, and both prayed it would stay that way, at least for a little while.

  ✽✽✽

  “I love you,” Mark said. His eyes were slightly dewy.

  “I love you, too,” Ofelia whispered.

  The band had finished their short recess and started a second set.

  Mark recognized the first chords of ‘La vie en rose’ and got up from his chair. He went over to Ofelia and kissed her hand, “Let’s dance, kochanie.”

  His wife was positively surprised. Normally, Mark was not a big fan of moving to music in front of other people.

  Mark turned the stroller around so Xandi could see them. The little fellow had registered the music, the movements on the sidewalk, and the unusual smells with curiosity.

  They went closer to the band and danced slowly. Mark held her tight, she put her head on his shoulder. Xandi clapped his hands which almost nobody noticed.

  The other patrons watched the two dancers, the musicians smiled and nodded at each other. They were always genuinely happy, when people appreciated their music not only with tips but also with words and dancing, or even singing along.

  Was this how people felt in Paris or London in 1939? Mark allowed this sad thought to enter his mind. He contemplated that while they were here, enjoying each other, food, music, life itself, others were less fortunate. The past might catch up with him and his family, too. What would he do then? Shake off these worries, enjoy today, and let tomorrow take care of itself, he thought.

  They kissed and danced on with their foreheads touching, looking into each other’s eyes. They were here, and they were safe. The war was worlds away for them that night.

  ✽✽✽

  The war was very real for the people of Warsaw just 350 miles east of Berlin. Electricity was on and off in unpredictable patterns. Communications were still unavailable except for battery powered Citizen’s Band radios that some Poles still had in their cars and trucks. Most hospitals and government installations with battery backups had lost energy after twelve hours.

  Civilians were pulling into gas stations in droves and filling up what they could get. Non-perishable food was hard to come by in large supermarkets, the small mom-and-pop corner stores were virtually sold out of everything. Some people packed bags in a hurry and got into their cars to ‘visit’ family in the countryside.

  Public life was crashing.

  Via CB-radio and neighbors running from door to door came the news of the defeat of the A Squadron of GROM and the Territorial Defense Force’s 6th Masovian Brigade. Morale was shattered instantly in a society where the last people to remember war, occupation, hunger, and displacement were well over eighty.

  The occupiers of the city were mostly Spetsnaz, highly disciplined soldiers. While having fought GROM and the TDF with the full furor and skill of a professional soldier, they left the civilians mostly unmolested. As per orders, they avoided collateral damage.

  Only a few incidents were recorded. A handful of women complained about having been assaulted sexually. Partygoers leaving a gay night-club were unlucky enough to run into the arms of a squad securing a street crossing with a Tigr. They were beaten up badly and had to take a taxi to a hospital. A few alcohol shops were cleaned out by Russian enlisted men. Five civilians who had tried to force their way through a checkpoint in a car died. The Tigr’s machine gunner put a whole fifty-round belt into the car. All recorded incidents would be brought before a court-martial in due time. For the time of the occupation, though, every hand was needed, and the perpetrators would probably leave the brig on day two.

  The 1st Varsovian Armored Brigade was late to the Battle of Warsaw, they could not intervene. The tankers were spread out over smaller cities east of the Vistula river to protect the capital from a threat moving east to west. The threat that had taken the city, though, had spread from within like cancer. All that was left for them to do was take position south-and-east of the city, keep the Russians contained, and await orders for the counter strike.

  The Russians undisputedly controlled the city center and all districts west of the Vistula. This is where the government installations and the well-to-do neighborhoods are, also the banks and corporate headquarters. The eastern part of town, especially the Praga district, had just started to gentrify with hip restaurants, bars, and clubs opening in newly refurbished factory buildings on the riverbank. Interesting for tourists but not for military strategists. The occupiers made sure to have checkpoints throughout the city, limit movement of the people in their sector, secure bridgeheads on the eastern bank and keep the bridges intact. They would need them and an open corridor to Belarus for future reinforcements and supplies.

  ✽✽✽

  Vitus Amberger had set himself up in the press pool room of NATO headquarters in Evere outside Brussels, Belgium. He would camp here until the heads of state in the large conference room would come out for a statement. He expected them to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and then the dreaded thought of a war between NATO and Russia would become real.

  He pulled up the original text of the treaty which is surprisingly short and simple-phrased. The preamble begins with ‘The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law’.

  He scrolled to Article 5. He summed it up for himself, “If a NATO member becomes the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the alliance will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the member under attack”.

  He looked up a few facts as background for his audience. The article had been invoked only once, after 9/11. America was given unanimous support by the other members. In that specific case, it meant mostly symbolic support during the first weeks but later also significant contributions to the Afghanistan campaign against the Taliban.

  ✽✽✽

  The sun set at 8:44 p.m. without President Sebastian Berka noticing it. He sat in the windowless wine cellar of the Belweder. The two surviving GROM soldiers had posted themselves outside in a corridor and built a machine gun nest from concrete flower pots that were part of the ‘Polski Design’ exhibition and the handful of sandbags they could retrieve from the entrance without being shot.

  One agent from the president’s five-man protection detail was still alive. He kept the president and his night-time secretary company inside the damp and dark room below ground level. They had been in there since the previous night.

  A lone candle stood on top of a wine barrel and flickered away. Around them sat hundreds of thousands of złotys worth of alcohol in crates and lying in shelves made of old wood and metal. There were red wines, white wines, fine vodkas from Poland, and rare specialties from around the world. The presidency had received the latter as gifts from foreign dignitaries ov
er the decades.

  Berka had thought of opening a bottle. Or ten. He felt completely helpless. The fact that most of his protectors were dead had upset him very much. Some of the people on his detail had been with him for two or more years. He knew their names and the names of their spouses and children. Of the GROM outside he only knew that they were Poland’s finest soldiers. And yet, the bigger part of their squad was dead, too.

  One of the soldiers upstairs gave a pre-arranged signal to open the door. The agent got up and walked up the stairs with his Walther P99 pulled out. He exchanged the code phrases with the soldier outside and opened the heavy oak door. Then he turned around. “Quick, Panie Prezydencie, come upstairs.”

  As Berka climbed up the irregular, dusty stairs, he started to hear a female voice amplified by a bullhorn. He climbed faster, it was his daughter screaming. The only thing he could make out was the word tato, daddy.

  She screamed it very often. She was crying.

  He wanted to run outside, but the soldiers stopped him. They instead suggested that one of them should go out with a white flag and negotiate a possibility to speak with the president’s daughter.

  Sebastian Berka was no fool. He instantly realized what had happened. The invaders had taken control, they had isolated him, deprived him of information, light, food, drink, and now they were preparing the ultimate blow and threaten him with the life of his only child.

  Agnieszka Berka was a positive-thinking and smart young woman. A law student at the University of Warsaw, she actively promoted causes in the field of education and public health. Politically, the two generations of Berka’s were sometimes at odds. Agnieszka was decidedly less conservative than her father. Yet, this did not the least weaken their family bond.