Douglas Jacobson - The Katyn Order

COLONEL STAG RAPPED HIS KNUCKLES on a table, and the chatter in the room subsided. It was warm, the air heavy with cigarette smoke and body odor as more than fifty AK officers and commandos jammed into the cellar of the Polonia Bank building. Natalia sat next to Falcon on the right side of the room, occasionally glancing up at the ceiling at the sound of German artillery fire, now less than a kilometer to the west.

It had been three days since her encounter with the Panther tanks, and she and Rabbit had been involved in several other firefights since then, but none nearly as bad as the bloodbath at the hospital. She’d been lucky so far: just some scratches and bruises, and her hip still ached from the fall on the first day. But she was tired. She hadn’t slept well, seeing images of the women dragged under the tank every time she closed her eyes.

Falcon put his arm around the back of her chair as Colonel Stag started the briefing. His hand brushed against her shoulder. She didn’t respond. Sometimes she did but not always. It was a casual thing, their affair. Nice enough at times, but generally… tedious.

The building shook again, harder this time, and several of the AK commandos near Natalia glanced around nervously. The Germans were firing massive anti-siege howitzers from railcars that launched projectiles weighing more than two tons, the infamous “screaming cows” that could flatten entire buildings with a single strike.

“We’ve lost the Wola District,” Colonel Stag said gravely, his hands folded tightly on the table in front of him. A murmur of curses swept through the room. The colonel stood up and stepped over to a map of Warsaw hanging on the back wall. With a red marker he drew a line along the western edge of the City Center. “General Bor has ordered all remaining AK units in Wola to pull back behind this line. The barricades are being reinforced tonight. The last of the weapons have been removed from the warehouse on Stawki Street and relocated to Old Town.” He took another marker and made five X’s along the red line. “We’ll set up machine guns and mortars at these points. Riflemen will be positioned in the windows of the buildings behind them. We expect they’ll hit us hard tomorrow. At all costs, we hold this line.”

“What about communications with our units in the Jolibord District?” someone asked from the center of the room.

“We’re running telephone lines through the sewer mains,” Stag replied. “The work has already started. We’ve pulled Rabbit and some of the other boys off ‘cocktail duty’ to help out, especially to crawl through some of the smaller tunnels.”

A few good-natured cheers and bursts of laughter broke out as someone shouted, “Rabbit better not carry those cocktails with him. The fumes will set them off!”

Natalia turned to see who made the joke. It was a heavyset, barrel-chested man with a full beard, clenching a cigar between his teeth. Then she noticed someone else, another man, who stood nearby, yet slightly apart from the crowd. He looked like—

Her attention was diverted back to the front of the room as the colonel rapped the table again. “We’ve received reports from the British that we can expect an RAF airdrop tomorrow night. This time the target area is Place Krasinskich.”

Another murmur rippled through the crowd. A man behind Natalia muttered, “Good Christ, flying right through the city with smoke as black as hell and anti-aircraft guns firin’ those fuckin’ 88s.”

“What about the Russians?” another commando asked. “When are they coming in?”

Colonel Stag’s face tightened. “We’ve had no direct contact with them, but our intelligence reports say they will be arriving soon.”

Natalia shook her head. She knew it was all lies. Colonel Stag probably did too. She had been raised in a small village in eastern Poland. Her brother had been a cavalry officer, captured by the Russians after their sneak attack in September of ’39. Then, two weeks later, when the Red Army entered their village and burned it to the ground, her parents and her uncle and aunt had disappeared along with hundreds of others. None of them had ever been heard from again.

As Colonel Stag was about to adjourn the briefing, an AK officer wearing the uniform of a Polish Army captain stood up and cleared his throat. Natalia recognized him. His code name was Pierre, the commander of AK forces in Wola. He was a friend of Falcon’s and about the same age, but tonight he looked much older. His face was drawn, and there were dark pouches under his eyes. His voice cracked as he spoke. “More than thirty thousand civilians in the Wola District were murdered just last week, Colonel. Women, children, even priests and nuns, their bodies tossed into heaps and burned like garbage.”

The room fell silent.

Pierre took a long breath before continuing. “It’s that monster Heisenberg and his SS Twenty-Ninth Brigade. More than half of those vicious bastards are criminals the Germans released from concentration camps. The rest are conscripted Russians and Ukrainians. They’re just wanton killers, slaughtering innocent people! We’ve been ordered to pull out of Wola, but we’ve got to do something about that son of a bitch!”

Colonel Stag was silent for a moment, his expression darkening. “SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Heisenberg is under surveillance,” he said finally.

Pierre persisted. “Do we have a plan—?”

“Wolf will take care of it.”

Heads in the group turned to the left. Natalia followed their gaze to the man she had noticed earlier, the one who stood apart from the group. He was slightly built, but in a wiry, rugged sort of way, with thinning hair. He wore glasses—

“Natalia?”

“What?”

Falcon leaned close. “I said we should go.”

She nodded.

The man called Wolf looked directly at her; their eyes met for an instant, then he turned away and headed for the door.

The meeting was breaking up, but Natalia remained in her chair, staring at the doorway.

Falcon put a hand on Natalia’s shoulder and squeezed. “Wolf?” he whispered. “You know him?”

Natalia shook her head. “No… I don’t.” She managed a thin smile. “It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

Adam sat on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette in his tiny third-floor room overlooking the square in Warsaw’s Old Town. The briefing had ended an hour ago, and he was mulling over some details of tomorrow’s mission when his thoughts drifted to the young woman wearing a railway conductor’s uniform who’d been sitting across the room next to Falcon. The uniform must be a cover, allowing her to travel safely from Krakow to Warsaw. He’d heard that someone was making that run—an AK operative in Krakow, an undercover courier who’d been smuggling Nazi documents for years.

Adam realized he had seen her once before, a few days earlier, in the midst of the battle at the hospital when she had run into the street to rescue one of the women who’d been dragged under the tank. She was petite and rather plain, not remarkable in any way. Yet, there was something…

He shook his head to clear away the distraction. What did it matter? Nothing mattered except the mission. That’s the way it had been for years, just the mission, no distractions, no connections, nothing—just the killing. And that was fine with him. The killing was what mattered. It pushed everything else into a dark corner of his mind and kept things simple. Just the way he wanted it, one single emotion to keep him focused: revenge… simple, uncomplicated revenge.

Adam stared at the glowing end of the cigarette for several long moments. Then he stubbed it out and reached under the bed. He pulled out a leather briefcase, unlocked it and removed the surveillance report on SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Heisenberg.