The Katyn Order (18 page)

The Ukrainian grabbed her by the lapels of her uniform jacket and hoisted her to her feet. The pain in her ankle almost caused her to pass out. His partner now appeared in her field of vision. This one also looked young, though taller, with broad shoulders and a dark, stubbly beard. Both of them were grinning like children with a new toy. The round-faced one reached under her jacket and fondled her breast, then rolled his eyes and spat on the ground. The bearded one jostled him out of the way and reached for her belt.

Natalia twisted her body, trying to back away, but Round Face slapped her, sending a searing bolt of pain through her forehead where the bullet had grazed her. He grabbed her by the hair again and jerked her head back.

Someone shouted from the other end of the walkway. At first Natalia couldn't make out the words. Then she heard them again.
“Halt! Stoppen Sie!”

Round Face's grip loosened, and his hand fell away.

Two soldiers marched toward them from the street.

Natalia's stomach tightened as she realized they were Germans.

The one on the right, an officer, glared at the two Ukrainians.
“Raus!”
he commanded and jerked his thumb toward the street.
“Raus! Schnell! Mach schnell!”
He reached for the pistol strapped to his waist and shouted again, louder.
“Raus! Schweinhunds!”

The Ukrainians made a wide circle around the two Germans, then bolted for the street.

Natalia slumped to the ground.

The officer put a hand on her shoulder. “Can you stand?” he asked in German-accented Polish.

Natalia flinched.

“Yes, I know,” the officer said. “I get that all the time, a German officer who speaks Polish.” He looked to be in his fifties with a narrow face, and a pencil-thin, gray mustache. His uniform was Wehrmacht. Though Natalia could barely breathe, she was thankful that at least he wasn't SS.

“I was a military attaché to Poland in the thirties,” the officer said casually. “I lived here in Warsaw for six years. So, can you stand, or do you need help?”

Natalia swallowed and shook her head. “I can't . . . it's my ankle.”

The officer barked a few terse commands to his subordinate, who turned and jogged back toward the street. Then he knelt down and touched her ankle gently. When Natalia flinched again, he took his hand away.

The younger soldier reappeared carrying a canvas pack and a crutch. “Unteroffizier Brunkhorst is our company medic,” the officer said. “He'll take care of that ankle.” Then he brushed back her hair, examining the bullet graze on her forehead.

Natalia's skin crawled, and she had to fight the urge to slap away his hand.

But he withdrew it, as though sensing her anxiety. “I'd say you were pretty lucky, young lady. Brunkhorst will clean that up as well.”

The medic gently removed Natalia's boot and began to tape her ankle. He appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties, with a fair complexion and short, stubby fingers. His uniform was soiled with dirt and blood, but his young face was clean and so smooth it appeared he hadn't yet started to shave. He glanced up at her once, then blushed and looked back down at his work.

The officer lit a cigarette and studied the bodies of the civilians lying in the walkway, shaking his head. “My SS colleagues get a bit carried away at times, but this insurgency is a bad business.” He exhaled a perfect smoke ring, holding the cigarette delicately with his little finger extended. “It's a shame. I loved my time here; it was a magnificent city. Are you from Warsaw?”

She shook her head. “Lwow.”

The officer raised his eyebrows. “Lwow? That's too bad. The Russians are such brutes.”

Natalia stared at him, feeling like a prop in some bizarre stage play.
Who is this character, and what the hell is going on?
Suddenly she was aware of something very strange. There was no shelling, no grinding tank treads, no gunfire.

The officer smiled again. “You're wondering why it's so quiet?”

Natalia nodded.

“They've called a ceasefire.”

It took a moment for her to process the thought. “A ceasefire . . . I don't understand . . . when?”

“Your General Bor and our high command agreed to a ceasefire beginning at 0700.” He glanced at his watch and nodded. “Ah, right on time.”

Natalia was stunned.
Just like that . . . it's over?
Then she remembered the Ukrainians and shuddered: she might have had her throat slit by those filthy brutes on the very day the nightmare finally ended. “What happens now?”

The officer shrugged. “As soon as Unteroffizier Brunkhorst has you fixed up, you can use that crutch and walk out of here. But, of course, Brunkhorst and I will leave first.” He pointed to the soiled red-and-white armband on her right sleeve. “After all, it wouldn't do for me to be seen assisting an enemy combatant, would it?”

Natalia sat quietly as Brunkhorst finished wrapping her ankle. Then he carefully cleaned the graze and bandaged her forehead. His touch was so gentle that she had to smile, which made the boy blush again. She thought about Rabbit. Perhaps in some other world, he and this young German boy might have become friends. When the medic was finished, he held out the crutch and, with a firm grip on her elbow, helped her to her feet. Natalia sighed with relief and hobbled around a bit to get her balance. “It feels much better. Thank you.”

The boy smiled briefly, then knelt down to close up his pack.

“Well, we shall be on our way now,” the officer said. He looked at her for a moment, then saluted smartly. He turned on his heel, and the two Germans marched away.

Cautiously negotiating the uneven cobblestones on her crutch, it took Natalia several minutes to make it to the end of the walkway. When she reached the street, she stopped, dumbfounded.

AK commandos milled about openly, laughing and joking, passing around bottles of vodka and hand-rolled cigarettes under the watchful eyes of German soldiers, who stood near their tanks yet kept their distance. Natalia scanned the faces of the Wehrmacht soldiers but didn't see either the officer or the young medic. She looked down at her wrapped ankle and felt the bandage on her head, reassuring herself that she hadn't just imagined the whole thing.

She hobbled around for a while, smiling at some of the commandos she recognized, accepting a swig of vodka from an outstretched hand. An exuberant teenager slapped her so hard on the back she almost fell. A young woman hugged her. Finally she stopped near a couple of commandos she recognized from the escape through the sewers.

“The AK's been disbanded, and we're all civilians now,” one of them said. He was a stocky, bearded man whose name she couldn't recall. His tattered army uniform was streaked with dirt and blood, his right arm in a sling.

“Yeah, and I'm Jesus Christ!” his friend retorted. “You just watch. The fuckin' SS will show up any minute, and we're all dead meat.”

“Bullshit! I heard from—”

He was interrupted by a weary-looking AK officer banging a steel bar against the side of a dented oil drum. The drum held a blazing bonfire.

“I have an announcement from General Bor,” the AK officer croaked, his voice breaking with emotion. “This announcement is being read by officers in every sector of Warsaw still held by the AK.” The crowd fell silent as he unfolded a single sheet of paper and began to read. “All military operations of the AK in Warsaw shall cease immediately. All AK personnel will be afforded combatant status and will be under the control of the German Wehrmacht as prisoners of war under the terms of the Geneva Convention.”

The crowd instantly erupted into a cacophony of voices, some cheering and waving red-and-white AK flags, others shouting loudly that they'd been sold out.

The officer banged the iron rod against the drum again. When the crowd quieted down to a ripple of murmurs, he continued. “As military combatants—and not insurgents—you are ordered to march out of the city beginning at 0700 tomorrow, weapons shouldered, wearing AK armbands and carrying banners. At the city limits you will surrender your weapons to the German Wehrmacht and will be interned as prisoners of war according to the convention.”

The crowd broke into dozens of animated conversations, though less boisterous this time. Questions and opinions flew back and forth from group to group. Natalia recalled that the mysterious German officer had referred to her as a combatant and not an insurgent. She wondered if that helped explain his actions. Or, was he just someone doing a good deed?

“Natalia!” a familiar voice shouted.

She turned around and saw Zeeka pushing through the crowd with Hammer and Rabbit right behind her. Natalia hobbled toward her comrade-in-arms, whom she hadn't seen in over a month. “My God, you're still alive!”

“I've been in the Mokotow District,” Zeeka said breathlessly. “Colonel Stag sent me down there with Ula and Iza on a demolition mission. We were almost finished when we got surrounded . . .” Zeeka's voice tailed off, but the look in her eyes told Natalia what had happened to the others. “I heard about Berta,” Zeeka added quickly.

Natalia nodded. The remorse was still there, though it now seemed as if it had happened a long time ago.

“These two have been looking all over for you,” Zeeka said. “By some miracle, I ran into them just a few minutes ago.”

Natalia dropped her crutch and reached out to Rabbit. The boy wrapped his arms around her while Hammer hung back, nodding and running a thick hand over his bald head. But she noticed that the big man's eyes were moist.

Hammer picked the crutch off the ground and looked it over before handing it back to Natalia. “Nice crutch,” he grunted. “Did you steal it from the Germans?”

Natalia felt her face flush and absently touched the bandage on her forehead, thinking that someday she might tell the story . . . but not now. “I didn't steal it, but the medic who taped my ankle probably did.”

Zeeka drew the four of them together, maneuvering away from the crowd. “I have something important to tell you,” she said lowering her voice. “Colonel Stag took me aside a few hours ago. He told me about the ceasefire and the terms of surrender.”

Natalia listened silently to her former Minerki unit leader, sensing that something important was coming next.

“I was desperately hoping that I could find all of you,” Zeeka said. “Colonel Stag has ordered me to gather a small group who are willing to try to escape.”

Natalia glanced at Hammer and Rabbit. Neither of them said a word, but they edged in closer.

Zeeka continued. “We're not the only ones. Stag said there will be other groups, but we're not to know who, and we are not to act together. Our instructions are to dispose of our weapons, armbands, badges—anything that would connect us with the AK—then blend in with the civilians as they're evacuated from the city.”

Natalia instantly understood. “The AK is being disbanded,” she said.

Zeeka nodded.
“Officially,
that's true. General Bor has saved our lives by negotiating combatant status for the AK. As insurgents we would be immediately executed. But the AK as an official fighting force is being disbanded. Those who surrender to the Wehrmacht can expect to be detained in POW camps until the war is over.”

“And then wind up in the hands of the Russians,” Hammer growled. “So, fuck ‘em, why surrender? We may as well continue to fight and die right here.”

Zeeka shook her head. “It's the only way to save the civilian population. If the AK refuses to disband and surrender, the Germans will burn the city to the ground and everyone in it—women, children, old people, everyone. There is no other choice. The AK has to surrender and march out of the city.”

“But not all of us,” Natalia said.

Zeeka looked each one of them in the eye. “No, not all of us. My orders from Colonel Stag are to select a small group I can trust and who are willing to take the risk. If we're successful in escaping, our orders are to lay low for several months, blend in with the local population and then make contact with designated AK cells and carry on the fight.” She paused. “You have to understand that if we're caught by either the Germans or the Russians, we'll be executed on the spot.”

Natalia glanced again at Rabbit and Hammer. They all looked at Zeeka and nodded.

17 J
ANUARY
1945

G
ENERAL
A
NDREI
K
OVALENKO
ordered his driver to halt at the midway point of the pontoon bridge over the frozen Vistula River. In the freezing cold he stepped out of the GAZ-11, braced against the wind and stared at the snowbound ruins of Warsaw. By now he was beyond the frustration that had gripped him for more than four months while his army was ordered to sit by idly. He was beyond trying to rationalize any tactical reason for the Red Army's inaction when his vastly superior forces could have swept in at any time and crushed the Nazi bastards.

From his command post on the east bank of the Vistula last August, he had watched the destruction of the City Center and Old Town. He knew about the escape through the sewers of several thousand AK commandos. The poor bastards had continued their futile struggle through September, before the inevitable capitulation. And then the forced expulsion of the remaining citizens of Warsaw: more than four hundred thousand souls, who plodded out of their city under gunpoint to transit camps many kilometers away.

Then, for another three months, Kovalenko had watched the Nazis systematically destroy every remaining structure in Warsaw. While other Red Army units to the north and south overwhelmed the German Wehrmacht, pushing them westward across the plains of Poland, he continued to follow his orders, standing by while German tanks and flamethrowers laid waste to the city.

Kovalenko shivered in the cold, but he stood on the windswept bridge for another moment, gazing at the frozen rubble beyond the river. Then he got back in the car and ordered the driver to proceed into what was left of Warsaw.