Douglas Jacobson - The Katyn Order

Nothing.

She swallowed hard and switched to the other side of his neck and checked again. Nothing.

She slapped his cheek, harder this time. “Please, stay with me, Rabbit! Open your eyes!”

The boy lay still. His chest stopped moving.

Goddamn it, no!

Tears clouded her eyes as Natalia stared at the boy’s still face. She ran her hand through his matted, blond hair. He looked peaceful, almost serene. She remembered the first time she had met him, at the massacre in the hospital square in Warsaw, a battle-hardened veteran at the tender age of thirteen. She remembered his cool, quick action with the NKVD agents at the village near the Bolimowski Forest. But most of all, she remembered how he’d laid his head on her lap after his friend Bobcat had been killed in the sewer. He’d asked her why God would let these things happen. She hadn’t been able to give him a good answer then. And she certainly couldn’t now. She studied his face for another moment, then leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Oh Rabbit, I’m so sorry.”

Adam put his hand on her shoulder.

She slumped against him, shaking her head, letting the tears flow.

They rode in silence as the auto sped through Podgorze and the southern suburbs of Krakow. A quarter of an hour later, Andreyev pulled over to the side of the road and stopped near a flat, open field surrounded by deserted factory buildings. Parked in front of them was an old farm truck, faded and rusty, a load of hay in the back. There was no driver.

Andreyev got out of the car, opened the rear door and motioned for them to get out. Then he turned away and walked a few paces into the field.

With Rabbit’s body lying in the backseat of the car, the three of them stood in silence for a long tense moment. “You can’t go back,” Andreyev said. “None of us can. The NKVD will be tearing Krakow apart within the hour.” He motioned with his head toward the farm truck. “The key is in the ignition. It doesn’t look like much, but I’m told it runs well. You can be in Nowy Targ by this afternoon, and from there you can make your way to Prochowa. Your Górale friends should be able to get you safely over the mountains into Slovakia.”

Natalia turned to Adam. Her eyes were red from crying. She clenched her jaw firmly in that look of defiance he remembered from Warsaw.

“We can’t stay in Poland,” he said quietly to her.

“And I certainly can’t take you back to Berlin with me,” Andreyev said. “Tarnov’s murder will put every Russian officer in Europe on alert, looking for you.”

Natalia reached in her vest pocket and withdrew the copy of Stalin’s order. “What about this?”

Andreyev held out his hand. “I’ll make sure it gets to Colonel Whitehall.”

She stared at the Russian for a moment, clutching the precious document with both hands. Then she turned to Adam and handed it to him. “Here, it’s your decision.” She turned away and walked a few steps farther into the field.

Adam followed her. Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “Captain Andreyev is right. It’s the only way.”

She turned around and looked into his eyes. “Can we trust him? After all this… Rabbit… your uncle… can we trust him?”

Adam was quiet, his eyes searching hers. Finally he nodded. “Andreyev is taking an enormous risk. We just murdered three NKVD, and he’s arranging for our escape. If he wasn’t sincere he could just as easily have turned us over to them.” He gazed up at the blue sky. A flock of swallows flew overhead. “We’ll go up into the mountains and into Slovakia. Just like you said you wanted to do. From there we can go anywhere.”

“What about Rabbit?”

“We’ll take him with us,” Adam said, swallowing hard, his eyes clouding up. “We’ll bury him in Prochowa next to my uncle… and some of the other patriots who sacrificed their lives for this.”

Natalia reached up and touched his face. “Is it finished?”

“Yes. For now… it’s finished.”

COLONEL STANLEY WHITEHALL sat in the back row of delegates who had gathered in the courtyard of the Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam on the last day of the conference. The leaders of the “Big Three” sat side-by-side in wicker chairs on the veranda, while lower-level ministers circulated among the delegates, passing out thick packets of the declarations, decrees and proclamations that would govern postwar Europe.

Whitehall got up to leave. He already knew the outcome. Poland was lost. The Soviet-controlled communists from Lublin were recognized as the legitimate government, the free elections touted at Yalta submerged and forgotten. His shoulders sagged a bit more than usual as he lumbered across the immaculately manicured lawn.

Then, as he reached the walkway at the edge of the courtyard, Whitehall turned back and took one last look at Joseph Stalin, dressed in his white uniform tunic, smiling broadly at a horde of photographers. Would it have made any difference if Roosevelt hadn’t died, or if Churchill hadn’t been ousted in the British elections?

Perhaps.

But he knew what it really came down to. The Russian dictator wouldn’t be sitting quite so smugly if the copy of the Katyn Order had ever surfaced.

Later that afternoon, in the drawing room of the mansion in Grunewald, Whitehall poured a drink at the sideboard and handed it to Tom Donavan. He motioned for him to take a seat. “So, what have you learned?” Whitehall asked, as he settled into the other chair.

Donavan set his glass on the coffee table and plucked an envelope out of his briefcase. “We finally received a dispatch from the AK chaps up in Nowy Targ.”

Whitehall opened the envelope and read the message.

He had never met Natalia, but Whitehall breathed a heavy sigh of relief, surprising himself over how worried he’d been about Adam. Then he downed his glass of whiskey in a single gulp and leaned forward, frowning. “So, what the hell happened to Captain Andreyev?”

Donavan took a quick sip of his drink. “I first checked with the Soviet delegation at the Kommandatura. They went through their files but didn’t come up with anything. Then I visited the Soviet Military Administration Headquarters.”

Whitehall grunted. “Wouldn’t guess those chaps were very cooperative.”

“Not at first,” Donavan said. “But I showed them Kovalenko’s letter, and that got some attention. Apparently, even after his death, the general still has some influence. Had to sign my life away, of course, but then a Red Army major took me in tow and I spent an hour sitting across the table while he rifled through personnel files.”

Whitehall got up and poured another drink. He looked out the leaded-glass windows at the sunlit terrace. “And what did he find?”

“They have no record of a Red Army captain named Andreyev.”

Whitehall spun around. His drink splashed onto his fingers. “No record? That’s preposterous! The man was General Kovalenko’s chief aide. I met him myself—several times, for God’s sake, in this very room!”

“I said the same thing to the Red Army major, a bit more diplomatically, of course.”

“Well?”

“According to their records, General Kovalenko didn’t have an aide. Never liked the concept, or some such thing.”

Whitehall shook his head in disgust and tossed back what remained of his drink. He glared at Donavan. “So, that’s it? There’s no Captain Andreyev?”

“He never existed.”

My name is Ludwik Banach