Douglas Jacobson - The Katyn Order

“Stashed away with the motorcycle. It was almost a month before I could walk—I get these dizzy spells—and I was surprised that the motorcycle and the uniform were still there. But it got me out of the city.”

She put her hand on his cheek, leaned over and gently kissed his mangled ear. “Dizzy spells?”

“They come and go, but it’s getting better. I don’t hear so well out of that ear though.”

She furled her brow, gently rubbing his forehead. “The dizzy spells are probably the after-effect of a concussion from the gunshot.”

He smiled. “Ah yes, the medical student, whose father was a doctor. So, what about the hearing loss?”

“Hmm, let’s see, could be a ruptured eardrum, or possibly a dislocation of the tiny bones in the middle ear. A loud, sharp noise or a blow to the head could cause either one.” She slid her forefinger along the thin scar where the bullet had grazed his cheekbone before tearing his ear in half.

“I’m impressed. Apparently you paid attention in class.”

“Whichever it is, it appears as though you’re damaged goods. Guess I’ll have to toss you back.”

He slid his hand around her bare back and pulled her on top of him. “Right now?”

“Well, maybe not right now.”

Later, they sat on the bed, and Natalia listened intently as he described his meeting at the library. “At least Jastremski doesn’t know who you are,” Adam said. “He told me he never knew who received the documents he got from Banach. He just gave them to the priest.”

“When do you have to leave?”

“This evening, by bus to Nowy Targ.”

“Is your uncle still there?”

“I don’t know. Jastremski’s had no contact with him since January. He left him with the Górale at a small chapel somewhere beyond Nowy Targ. I’m to rendezvous with ‘Tytus’ and use my code name, ‘Wolf.’ After that, I’m not sure.”

Natalia was quiet for a long time, then slowly shook her head. “I can’t go with you, Adam. We can’t risk getting caught together. You’ll be safer on your own.”

Adam stared at her, suddenly remembering the other information Jastremski had given him. “Do you know anything about two NKVD agents who were killed near Zyrardow three weeks ago?” he asked.

“Now you know why we can’t risk being caught together.”

Adam wasn’t surprised. Natalia was perfectly capable of shooting two NKVD agents if she had to. And she was right about the risk of being caught together, though at this moment he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her again. “Is there anything else I should know?”

Natalia stood up and stepped across the tiny room, wearing only her white cotton shirt. Adam suddenly felt aroused again at the sight of her small firm buttocks.

She lifted Banach’s journal off the top of the bureau and turned around, clutching it to her chest. “Today is Friday. If you’re not back by the middle of next week, I’ll come up there and find you.” She handed him the journal. “Take this with you.” Then she picked the rest of her clothes off the chair and began getting dressed.

Adam sighed and set the journal on the bed. He reached for his glasses, then got up and pulled on his trousers. He removed his suit coat from the hook on the wall, withdrew a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket and handed it to Natalia. “It’s a copy of a letter of authorization,” he said, “from General Kovalenko of the Red Army. It requires all Russian Army officers to offer their assistance and cooperation. I have the original.”

“ You have a letter of authorization from a Russian general?”

“Whitehall arranged it.” Adam explained how Kovalenko was an old friend of Whitehall’s—and half Polish.

“And you trust Whitehall?” Natalia asked skeptically.

Adam remembered Whitehall’s “deceptions.”

“I don’t know who to trust.”

“Has it occurred to you that all of these people could be after the same thing, but for different reasons?”

Adam remained silent, waiting for her to continue.

Natalia paced around the room, running a hand through her short-cropped hair. “We have the journal, so we know a few things for sure. We know that Hans Frank had a visitor in 1942—most likely it was Tarnov—who gave him a copy of Stalin’s Katyn Order. We know that the order exists, and we know what it says. As for the rest of your little group of friends—Whitehall, Kovalenko and Andreyev—they don’t know for sure that Stalin’s order actually exists. But they suspect that Tarnov gave Frank something that implicates the NKVD in the Katyn murders.”

“And they want to find it and make it public to expose the NKVD,” Adam said in agreement.

“Or, make sure it never sees the light of day. There are powerful forces at work here, Adam. And the question remains: Who do we trust?”

Adam rubbed the numb side of his face. He felt as if he were riding a runaway train barreling through a long, dark tunnel with no idea what was at the other end. Both Whitehall and Kovalenko had lied to him on more than one occasion. But he had to make a decision. “You have a copy of Kovalenko’s letter of authorization. Tarnov is desperate. If I get into trouble and don’t return on time you’re going to need help. Use that letter to contact Kovalenko or send a message to Whitehall. We don’t have any other options.”

She turned away and stepped to the window, parting the curtain a bit. The copy of Kovalenko’s letter slipped from her hand and fluttered to the floor. “We could leave,” she said quietly. “We could forget all this and go up into the mountains, cross over into Slovakia. We escaped Warsaw; we could escape this.”

Adam took her shoulders in his hands and kissed the back of her neck. “Is that what you want?”

Natalia was silent for a moment then abruptly turned around, facing him. “Yes, it’s what I want. But first, we have to finish this. The Russians burned my village to the ground, and they deported my parents to God-knows-where in Kazakhstan or Siberia.” She swallowed hard, her eyes glistening. “And they murdered my brother in the Katyn Forest. They murdered him—shot him in the back of the head—and threw his body in a ditch.”

Adam felt her tremble for just an instant, then she stiffened and glared at him. “We have to find that order,” Natalia said, her eyes suddenly cold and hard. “We have to finish this.”

THE AGING BUS CREAKED and groaned, black smoke belching from its exhaust pipe as it toiled along the gravel roadway following the River Raba south from Krakow. The engine labored and the driver jammed the transmission into a lower gear as they climbed the foothills of the Tatra Mountains.

Adam glanced around at the handful of other passengers, then looked out the window and caught a glimpse of the peaks in the distance, remembering how he had hiked through these mountains during the summer of 1938. He had just completed his second term at the Jagiellonian University law school and had taken a break from the legal research he was doing for his uncle. It seemed an eternity ago.

The sun was setting in the western sky, casting long shadows over the grassy meadows nestled between rolling hills and pine forests. The tranquility of the bucolic scene was almost enough to make him forget the danger of the impending mission.

He was close to finding his uncle, but he felt as though he were running toward a door that was about to close. Tarnov and his NKVD thugs were out there somewhere—and they might not be his only problem. As his mind swirled with the uncertainty of who to trust, Adam glanced down at the journal he’d just finished reading. The story of his uncle’s incredible journey both haunted and inspired him. He recalled the opening words of his uncle’s first entry: