Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II (37 page)

In a fl ash, the other Feldgendarme and one of the policemen pulled out their nightsticks and pounded Ryan on the back of the head and shoulders.

Ryan grunted and collapsed, blood oozing from the back of his head.

The Feldgendarme pulled out a pair of handcuffs while the policeman shoved his knee into the small of Ryan’s back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Anna screamed. “You can’t—” The slap almost knocked her down. A searing pain shot through her jaw.

“Shut up, bitch!” the other policeman yelled and stuck a revolver into Anna’s ribs, shoving her against the side of the railcar.

Anna’s head banged into the car and her knees buckled. She sagged to the ground. The policemen grabbed her under the shoulders and jerked her to her feet. He pulled her wrists behind her and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. His face was just a few centimeters from her own. His breath smelled of wine and garlic. “Not another word, bitch. Understand?”

Anna’s head throbbed and her jaw hurt so badly she thought it was broken.

She turned as the two Feldgendarmes pulled Ryan to his feet. The aviator’s head hung down and he could barely stand as they dragged him toward the south end of the platform.

The policeman in front of Anna grabbed her shoulder and shoved her toward the north end of the platform. “Get moving,” he snarled and shoved her again, almost knocking her off her feet.

When Anna awoke her fi rst sensation was the pain in her jaw. She opened her mouth and moved it back and forth slowly. The pain brought tears to her eyes but just being able to move it was a good sign, she thought. She probed around with her hand, feeling along each side of her jaw. It was very sore but she doubted it was broken.

She winced when her fi ngers brushed across a deep scrape on her cheek.

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She touched it tenderly, then pulled her hand away and looked at the traces of blood. The bastard who slapped her was probably wearing a ring. When she sat up her forehead throbbed. She swung her feet to the fl oor and lowered her head into her hands, closing her eyes.

After a few minutes the pain subsided a bit. Anna sat up and looked around.

She was sitting on a cot at one end of a small concrete block room. In the corner of the room opposite the cot was a small hole in the concrete fl oor. The door looked stout, made of heavy wood with a small barred window. Sunlight shown into the room from behind her, and she turned to look up at another barred window. The effort made her head hurt again, and she turned away.

Anna stood up and stepped over to the door, trying to peer out of the barred window. It was high enough that she had to stand on her tiptoes, and she couldn’t see much except another concrete wall. She looked down at her wrist to check the time and realized her watch was gone.

She sighed, stepped back to the cot and sat down again, rubbing her temples. Damn it all, she thought, how could this have happened? Part of her wanted to curse the brash young aviator for being stupid and another part of her felt remorse for having failed to get him to safety. She had no illusions about Ryan’s ability to fake his false identity. Not under the kind of treatment he was sure to receive from the Feldgendarmes—or, even worse, the SS.

The sound of a key turning in the lock startled her, and Anna got to her feet as the door swung open. Standing in the doorway was a French policeman. He appeared to be no more than nineteen or twenty years old.

“Come with me,” he said.

Anna stepped out of the cell into a concrete block hallway lined with ten or twelve identical wooden doors. The young policeman motioned for her to proceed ahead of him, and she walked down the hallway, stopping in front of another wooden door at the end. The policeman rapped on the door with his nightstick. A few seconds later a key turned in the lock and it swung open.

A much older policeman, fat and rumpled looking with a sweaty brow, motioned for her to step inside. The windowless room was about six meters square with concrete walls painted light blue. There was a metal table in the middle of the room and four metal chairs.

The young policeman pulled out a chair, motioned for her to sit and departed through a door at the other end of the room. Anna sat down at the table Night of Flames

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as the fat, older policeman closed the door she had come through, locked it again and retired to a grimy metal desk in the corner. There was a mug of what Anna guessed was coffee on the desk and a half-eaten sandwich on top of a haphazard pile of magazines and newspapers.

Perhaps twenty minutes later the door opened again and an SS offi cer stepped into the room. Anna squeezed the arms of the metal chair to keep her composure.

The fat policeman scrambled to his feet, knocking a pile of papers and the mug of coffee on the fl oor. The ceramic cup shattered, splattering coffee in all directions.

The SS offi cer glared at the slovenly man and jerked his head toward the door. The policeman squeezed past the crisply uniformed offi cer and exited the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

The offi cer laid a thin fi le folder on the table, then removed his black leather gloves. He removed his hat and laid it on the table with the gloves. He had neatly trimmed blond hair and icy blue eyes. He appeared to be about forty years old and looked like a man who took very good care of himself.

The offi cer pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. He smiled at Anna and spoke in German-accented French. “
Bonjour, madame.
I am Hauptsturmfuhrer Koenig. I apologize for the treatment you received at the railway station. It was unfortunate.”

He looked at her as though expecting some type of response, but Anna couldn’t think of anything to say.

Koenig shrugged and continued. “Well, what’s done is done. Perhaps if your friend hadn’t been so impulsive it wouldn’t have happened.”

Anna decided to take a chance. “Can you tell me where he is?” she asked.

Koenig smiled again but didn’t respond. He opened the folder, revealing their passports and tickets. He picked up one of the passports and studied it for a few seconds. “Your friend would be this person . . . Henri Eyskens?” he asked.

“
Oui,
Henri. Can you tell me where he is?”

Koenig set the passport down and folded his hands on top of the fi le. “
Oui,
I can tell you where he is. But fi rst, perhaps you should tell me
who
he is.”

Anna struggled to control her emotions. She knew she had to stay calm if 252

Douglas W. Jacobson

she had any chance of surviving this. “What do you mean? His name is Henri Eyskens. He’s an engineer with our company, and I would like to know where he is.”

Koenig’s smile disappeared. He opened the fi le and removed the other passport. “Please, don’t waste my time, Madame ‘Laurent,’ or whatever your real name is. Your friend is a very poor liar, and he doesn’t know enough Flemish to buy a loaf of bread. We know that he’s British and most likely an aviator. As such, he is responsible for the murder of thousands of German citizens. He will be dealt with accordingly.”

Anna’s throat was so tight she felt like she wouldn’t be able to take another breath.

Koenig sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “But as for you,
madame,
that’s quite another story, isn’t it.”

“
Je ne comprends pas,
what do you mean?” Anna replied. It was weak but it was all she could manage.

Koenig stood up and paced around the room with his hands clasped behind his back. He stared at her as he talked in a quiet monotone. “We know that you and the British murderer got on the train in Brussels. You were trying to pass him off as Flemish, but he was dumb enough to speak to you in English, which, unfortunately for you, was overheard by a patriot, a friend of the Reich.

So, we ask ourselves, why is an attractive Belgian woman carrying a fake passport and traveling with a British soldier?”

Koenig had circled around behind her and stopped moving.

Anna stared down at the table, willing herself to stay calm.

He leaned close and whispered in her ear. “How long have you been an agent of the Comet Line, madame?”

Anna closed her eyes, squeezing the arm of the chair. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She counted to three then pushed the chair back.

Koenig straightened up as Anna stood and turned to face him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “And I resent the implication that my friend and colleague isn’t who I’ve said he is. The whole idea is absurd.”

Koenig stared at her then stepped back to the other side of the table. “
Très
bien, madame, très bien.
Very good, indeed. I admire spirit in a woman. And
especially
a woman as attractive as you.”

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253

“
Monsieur,
I meant exactly—” Anna began but stopped as Koenig held up his hand.

He leaned forward with both hands on the table. “I have some information that may interest you,
madame
. So, please sit down and pay attention.”

He picked up the folder and removed a single sheet of paper. “During the last forty-eight hours, some arrests were made in Belgium. Perhaps you know these people.” He looked at the list and said, “Gaston Rompaey.”

Anna didn’t recognize the name and didn’t react.

“Richard Berghmans.”

Again, Anna did not know the name. Perhaps he was off on the wrong track, she thought.

“Leon Marchal.”

It was like a rifl e shot to her heart. Anna shuddered. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with a feeling of dread about Justyn.

“Rik Trooz,” Koenig hissed.

She gripped the chair so hard she thought her fi ngers would break. Goddamn him!

“Rene Leffard.”

The name fell like a sword slicing through her soul. Anna whimpered and squirmed in her chair—then lost control.

She jumped to her feet, and the metal chair clattered to the fl oor. She ripped the folder out of the stunned offi cer’s hand and swatted him in the face with it. “You goddamn sick bastard,” Anna screamed. “Go to hell! Go to hell and be damned!” She fl ung the folder across the room and sank to her knees, sobbing.

Hauptsturmfuhrer Koenig stared at her for a minute, not saying a word.

Then he picked up the folder, retrieved his hat and gloves and left the room.

Chapter 49

The harsh Polish winter gave way to spring. The weather warmed and wildfl owers bloomed in the soft, rolling terrain east of Krakow. The farmers were back in their fi elds, strapped to horse-drawn plows, beginning another season scratching out a living from the earth.

Jan and the AK operatives dismantling the V-2 rocket were busy. Working on the highly technical and sophisticated device under constant fear of discovery was nerve-wracking, and everyone was exhausted. But a plan had begun to unfold. They were informed by the MI-6 contact in London that Allied forces were rooting the Germans out of southern Italy. Very soon it would be possible for a plane to take off from Italy and reach the southwestern part of Poland to retrieve the rocket components and take them to London.

So, the dismantled components were transported, piece-by-piece, hidden in wagons loaded with sacks of fl our, bushels of potatoes and hollowed-out bales of hay. Through circuitous routes, transferred from one partisan to another, the rocket parts made their way two hundred kilometers southwest, from the Bug River to another remote farm, a half kilometer from an abandoned airstrip near the confl uence of the rivers Dunajec and Vistula.

By the end of the fi rst week of June, the precious cache had been painstakingly concealed in cellars and sheds on the secluded farm. The AK operatives brought in a long-range wireless and established a communication link through London to coordinate the fl ight.

It was late on a Sunday afternoon, and Jan busied himself in a small room on the second fl oor of the farmhouse packing his few belongings. His work done, he was determined to leave for Krakow to begin his search for Anna.

He had no fi rm plan, but he knew he had to act now. News had just reached Night of Flames

255

them that the long-awaited Allied invasion had begun at Normandy, and Jan was certain that this was the turning point in the war. The Russians had launched an offensive in the east, and the noose around Germany’s neck was tightening. A desperate enemy in retreat would be certain to liquidate concentration camps. If Anna was in one of those camps . . .

He heard footsteps and turned to see Slomak standing in the doorway, holding a bottle of vodka and two small glasses. “Let’s go have a drink,” the AK operative said.

Jan followed the slender balding man out of the house and across the farmyard to a low, stone wall overlooking a freshly planted wheat fi eld. The sun was low in the western sky, and a warm, gentle breeze drifted across the rolling plain.

Slomak fi lled the glasses, and they sat drinking in silence for several minutes.

“Tadeusz tells me that you’re not planning to return to London with the rocket parts,” Slomak said, peering at him through his thick glasses.

“No, Chmielewski will go,” Jan replied.

“He doesn’t speak English.”

“They’ll have interpreters.”

“Where are you going?” Slomak asked after a pause.

“Krakow, at fi rst. After that I’m not sure.” Jan fi nished off the vodka and refi lled his glass.

Slomak picked up the bottle and refi lled his own glass. “A couple of months ago you asked me if I knew anything about the SS
special action
in Krakow back in ’39. What is it you wanted to know?”

It took Jan a moment to comprehend the surprise question. Why now, after all this time? He hesitated; it had been a long time since he had talked about any of this. “My wife was an associate professor at Jagiellonian University. Her father was also a professor there, a law professor. I believe they both were arrested by the SS.”

Slomak didn’t respond.

Jan continued. “The day you and I met in Krakow, later that same day, I went to our home looking for my wife. The SS had been there. Our apartment was a wreck and she was gone. Then I went to my father-in-law’s home. It was occupied by a German couple. I thought . . .” Jan poured another drink. This was harder than he imagined. “I thought you might know something—where 256