Douglas Jacobson - The Katyn Order

And the conversation after last night’s dinner had also gnawed at him all night. Could there actually be a document, a written order, authorizing the secret murder of thousands of Polish officers? And could Tarnov have managed to obtain a copy of that order and given it to Hans Frank? If that were all true, then Dmitri Tarnov was far more desperate—and far more dangerous—than Adam had imagined.

Whitehall was waiting for him in the drawing room, dressed casually in gray flannel slacks and a black cardigan sweater. But the butler still wore a tuxedo as he efficiently served coffee and produced a tray of biscuits and jam. When he left the room, Whitehall said, “We’ve received a message from your contact in Krakow.”

The cup and saucer rattled in Adam’s hand, and he quickly set it on a table before spilling the coffee. Whitehall was still speaking. “I’m sorry,” Adam said. “What did you say?”

“The message was quite short,” Whitehall repeated. “Rather cryptic. It said, ‘Find Adam Nowak. We are not pathetic pawns on the perilous chessboard.’”

Adam stood for a long moment, staring blankly at Whitehall as the message slowly sank in.

Natalia was alive.

He hadn’t dared to believe it, even after he’d given her name to Whitehall. It had been ten months since—

“Adam? Did you hear what I said?” Whitehall asked sharply. “Do you know what it means?”

“I’m sorry… do I know what…?”

“The message, do you know what it means?”

Adam silently repeated the message to himself, Find Adam Nowak. We are not pathetic pawns on the perilous chessboard. “My God, where did she get…? I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I,” Whitehall said. “Of course, I remembered the phrase from the research files on Hans Frank. I was hoping you would know why she would use it?”

“What else was in the message?”

“A code that she needs help.”

“Help? What’s wrong? What kind of help?”

“The code she used suggests that she’s found something important and needs someone to rendezvous with her.”

“When do I leave?”

“It’ll take a bit of doing,” Whitehall said. “We’ll prepare some papers identifying you as an American industrialist doing business with the Russian Army. We’ll get you a letter of authorization from General Kovalenko—”

Adam wasn’t listening. He was consumed by the memory of Natalia sprinting along Dluga Street that last night in Warsaw while he watched from the window.

“Must be some big deal goin’ on,” Whitehall’s driver said as they pulled away from the mansion. “A couple of Russians here last night, now you come back this morning.”

Adam met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “What Russians?”

The driver laughed. “That’s a good one. You keep associating with the likes of Whitehall, and you won’t remember your own name.”

Adam actually enjoyed the man’s impertinence. With everything on his mind, a few moments of light banter felt good. “You know the old saying, if I told you—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’d have to kill me.” The driver glanced at him in the mirror again. “But you don’t look like the type.”

The driver brought Adam all the way back to his lodgings in Schoenberg. Meinerz was sitting in a wrought-iron chair on the front porch when Adam stepped out of the backseat of the Mercedes. The American colonel looked up from the file he was studying as Adam walked up the steps. “Well, well, riding around in a chauffeured Mercedes. Pretty classy,” he said with a smirk.

Adam slumped down in the chair next to him. “It’s not going to last. I’ll be leaving for Krakow soon.”

Meinerz set the file on a round, wood-topped table between the chairs and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Adam and lit both of them. “Has SOE located your uncle?”

“I don’t know. They received a message that our contact in Krakow discovered something important.”

Meinerz cocked his head. “Do you have any idea what you’re getting into here, Adam? A few days ago you almost got arrested by the NKVD and now you’re going off to Poland? We can’t help you if anything happens over there, you know.”

Adam nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Meinerz leaned forward, looking him in the eye. “There are a lot of desperate people out there trying like hell to cover up all the atrocities they committed. One more life isn’t going to matter to any of them. That NKVD prick accused you of harboring a fugitive. That’s all the excuse he needs.”

Adam smiled to hide his irritation. Meinerz had no idea what he’d seen and done the last four years, and that was the way it had to stay. “I appreciate your concern, and I’ll be careful. But I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. I sure as hell don’t want my uncle’s name associated with mass murderers like Hans Frank, regardless of what the damn Russians think. Besides, I may dig up some evidence that will be useful in the war crimes trials.”

Meinerz shook his head. “Listen to me, Adam. We’re making up these damn laws as we go because we won the war—along with our Russian allies. We can’t trust those bastards further than we can throw one of their tanks. None of this ‘war crimes’ crap is ever going to stick. The American people don’t care. We’ll eventually just get tired of the whole tedious process. Then, very quietly, we’ll let them all go.”

“So, you think we’re all just wasting our time here? We’re discovering evidence of mass genocide, for Christ’s sake! You think everyone will just forget about it?”

“What I’m saying is, we can do all the investigating we want because we’re the victors. But there is no legal precedent to conduct war crimes trials against individuals.”

“What about the Moscow Declaration? The London Charter?”

Meinerz shook his head again. “Written by Churchill with support from Roosevelt and Stalin during war time. It won’t stand up under the scrutiny of international law.”

“Then what about the Hague Convention, which protects the rights of civilians in occupied countries?”

“The Hague Convention holds governments responsible for war crimes, not individuals. Look, Adam, I agree with you. All of these Nazi bastards should hang for their crimes—”

“And a lot of Russians.”

“My point, exactly. It’s certainly not fair treatment under the law, is it? No one knows better than you the extent of the crimes committed by the Russians against the Poles. But since they’re our allies—”

Adam held his hands in the air. “I know, I know!” Meinerz’s words cut right through to his heart. Was this all just an exercise, a grandstand show by the victors? Could the Americans and British really put Germans on trial for war crimes and ignore what the Russians did in all those hundreds of Polish villages? Could they ignore what the Russians did at Katyn?

Meinerz stubbed out his cigarette and held out his hand. “Look, I’m cynical by nature. Don’t pay any attention to it. We’ll do our best to hang these bastards. You just watch your back… and stay safe.”

Adam gripped his friend’s hand and nodded.

Adam left the next day and spent most of the trip from Berlin to Krakow sitting alone in the train’s first-class dining car, smoking cigarettes and staring out the window. Morning became afternoon, rain turned to sunshine, but he didn’t notice. All he could think about was Natalia.

When he’d given her name to Whitehall, it was with only the slightest hope that SOE would find her. He wasn’t even sure she’d made it out of Warsaw, much less avoided capture by the NKVD for the last ten months.