The Katyn Order (20 page)

The bed was firm—a real bed with real sheets and pillows—though he still woke abruptly in the middle of the night, as he'd done almost every night since Warsaw. He would stare into the darkness, hands trembling, his back clammy with sweat. The dream varied little from one restless night to the next, though the faces would change—dead faces, their eyes wide open, staring back at him.

The proprietor of the hotel, a proper sort in a tweed jacket, pipe clenched in his teeth, had delivered the
London Times
to his room. The paper was still overflowing with news and pictures of V-E Day celebrations. Adam read it all, from front to back, scarcely able to believe the war had officially ended. It certainly hadn't for the Russians, hunting down the AK in Poland.

Finally, at four o'clock in the afternoon, there was a knock on the door. It was the chauffer, the same one who'd driven him to the hotel without speaking. This afternoon he said, “You have an appointment.” That was all.

As the sleek, black Bentley dodged between black taxis and double-decker buses in the congested streets of London, Adam observed the condition of the city. He had left London in 1940, before the worst of the Blitz, but he had heard the reports about nonstop bombing raids. He noticed that part of the British Museum had been destroyed, several tube stations reduced to craters and the Commons Chamber of Parliament badly damaged. A number of windows were boarded up at Buckingham Palace, but Big Ben and Westminster Abbey still stood. Compared to Warsaw, London seemed virtually untouched.

The Bentley pulled into a garage underneath a familiar office building on Baker Street. The chauffer opened the rear door and handed Adam off to a pretty young woman, who introduced herself as Margie, Colonel Whitehall's assistant.

They took the elevator to the fifth floor and walked down the same drab hallway he remembered from his previous visits. At the end of the hall, he was ushered into the same cluttered office he recalled, with two large windows overlooking an interior courtyard. A heavyset man with a pink, fleshy face and a shock of unruly white hair hoisted himself from his chair and stepped around the desk, hand outstretched.

“Adam, jolly good to see you again. What's it been, three years, four? Have a seat.”

“Almost five,” Adam said as he shook Whitehall's thick hand and sat down on the straight-backed chair in front of the large wooden desk covered with an array of file folders. Whitehall shuffled back around the desk and plopped heavily into the chair. He seemed much older.

“Had a nice rest?” Whitehall asked, rummaging through the folders. “It was fine.” Adam watched the colonel curiously, wondering what the old man had in store for him this time. As one of the founders of SOE—the Special Operations Executive—Whitehall was a shrewd old war horse appointed by Churchill himself with orders to “set Europe ablaze.”

They'd certainly accomplished
that,
Adam thought grimly. He'd left behind more than enough corpses to attest to it.

Whitehall found the file he was looking for, flipped through a few papers, then leaned forward, peering over the top of his reading glasses. “Can you guess why you're here?”

It was the type of mind game Whitehall loved, but Adam had little patience for it. Not now. Not after Warsaw. SOE had financed and directed hundreds of sabotage and covert resistance operations throughout the war but, like everyone else, they had looked the other way when Warsaw was leveled. Now the Germans were gone, and the Russians had moved into Poland—different enemy, equally dangerous. “No, Colonel, I really have no idea,” he said.

Whitehall grunted, removed a sheet of paper from the file and passed it across the desk. Adam picked it up and read the single paragraph.

Sachsenhausen prison camp at Oranienburg, Germany, liberated 22 April, 1945, by Soviet Red Army. Less than 3,000 survivors including, 1,400 women. Most starving and too weak for transport to medical facilities.

“If I remember correctly, that's where Ludwik Banach was sent after he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939,” Whitehall said.

Ludwik Banach.
Hearing his uncle's name so abruptly after all these years took Adam's breath away. After a moment he looked at Whitehall, nodding slowly.

Whitehall opened another folder. “A war crimes investigation team is being sent to Berlin to negotiate with the Russians. They want to get into Sachsenhausen as soon as possible. The Americans are taking the lead, along with some of our boys, but the Polish Government-in-Exile here in London wants a representative on the team. I've recommended you.”

Adam had been struggling to follow what Whitehall was saying, suddenly consumed with thoughts of his uncle. “I'm sorry . . . I don't understand. You want me to join a war crimes investigation team . . . representing the Polish Government?”

Whitehall lifted his bulky body out of the chair, lumbered across the room and closed the door. When he sat down again, he took back the sheet of paper and closed the file. “Your uncle, Ludwik Banach, was one of the original founders of the AK. He was known under a code name—the Provider—and he set up an information channel several months before the war broke out to smuggle secret German documents to Warsaw, which were, in turn, passed on to us here in London.”

Adam shifted in his chair. He wondered about the code name “Provider,” trying to recall if he'd heard it before. He thought that he had, but where, when? A dozen images flitted through his mind like random puzzle pieces, but nothing clicked.

“I didn't discuss any of this with you when you arrived here in '39,” Whitehall said, “because your uncle's involvement in the AK was known to only a select few within the Polish Government. At the time, you didn't need to know. Now you do.”

“But what's all this got to do with a war crimes investigation—?”

Whitehall held up a hand, stopping him. “Here's something else we know.” He paused for a moment, glancing briefly at another piece of paper. “Last month the government of the Soviet Union invited sixteen of the surviving commanders of the AK to a peace conference in Moscow—then arrested them.”

Adam sat silently. He had heard about the arrests.

“Do you know what became of them?” Whitehall asked.

“I heard they're locked up in Lubyanka Prison. The whole thing was a sham, a trick to destroy the remaining leadership of the AK.”

Whitehall looked at Adam for a long silent moment, then leaned across the desk. “You're quite right. The leaders of the AK are now in Russian hands, all of them, the last roadblock in the takeover of Poland by the Russians. All of them, that is, except Ludwik Banach.”

“Banach? My uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen six years ago, Colonel. He's probably . . .” Adam's voice trailed off as he remembered the last time he'd seen his uncle. He was dressed in his best suit and heading off to a “seminar” at the university. He never returned. But that night, before he left, he'd given Whitehall's name and telephone number to Adam.

“I know how much he meant to you, Adam. And it's quite possible he didn't survive. But, then again, perhaps he did. You saw the report, there
were
survivors.”

Whitehall pushed back from his desk and stood up, a clear signal the meeting was over, the issue decided. “The Polish Government-in-Exile wants a representative on that investigation team,” he said matter-of-factly. “Ludwik Banach is important to them. He's an icon, symbol of Polish independence and all that, especially now, since the arrest of the other AK leaders. They want to know what happened to him.”

Whitehall stepped around the desk and laid a big hand on Adam's shoulder. “Sleep on it. We'll meet tomorrow with one of my staffers, chap named Donavan. He'll give you the run-down on Sachsenhausen.” Then he cocked his head and looked closely at the thin scar on the side of Adam's face and his mangled ear. “Nasty wound. That happen in Warsaw?”

Adam nodded.

“Well, could've been worse. But we should get those glasses of yours fixed while you're here.”

11 M
AY

A
DAM DIDN'T GET MUCH SLEEP
. He had dinner in his room, drank half a bottle of wine and smoked cigarettes—real ones from a package, instead of the limp and soggy, hand-rolled ones he'd put up with for years, filled with as much sawdust as tobacco. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for most of the night, thinking about Ludwik Banach, the man who had been like a father to him during the first eleven years of his life, the man who had taken him in a second time, years later, and become his teacher and mentor. The man who had given him a family.

And then, in September of 1939, it was all abruptly and brutally torn away. His uncle's arrest had been part of a
sonderaktion,
the beginning of the Nazi plan to strip Poland of its professors and teachers, its lawyers and political leaders. At least that's what Adam had always thought.

But the conversation with Whitehall brought back forgotten details, memories of his uncle that didn't quite fit the picture Adam had constructed of him. They were just fragments, a few bits and pieces, things that Banach seemed to know when no one else did.

He recalled a conversation in August of '39 when Banach speculated about the secret treaty between Germany and Russia—a week before it happened. Then, just two days into the war, Banach knew before anyone else that Krakow would not be defended. And, two weeks later, he wasn't surprised when the Russians attacked.

An “information channel,” Whitehall had called it. And Ludwik Banach, one of the original leaders of the AK, had set it up.
That's
why he was arrested. Adam thought again about his uncle's code name, “the Provider,” almost certain he'd heard it before . . . but then again . . .

He lit another cigarette, watching the smoke curl its way toward the ceiling, remembering the moment when he learned of his uncle's arrest and the cold, ice-blue eyes of the SS officer who delivered the news. Though seething with rage, Adam hadn't had the opportunity to kill that particular officer at that moment. But in all the years since then he'd sought his vengeance through sabotage and assassinations, forcing every emotion from his heart except pure hatred for his uncle's murderers. It drove him, it kept him going, and he'd shut out his past.

Until Warsaw.

Until Natalia . . . a ray of light in a dark world.

But at the one moment when it might have mattered, he had been incapable of doing anything. It was as though his feet were buried in the same cement that had hardened his heart. At the moment when he stood watching from the window of the hospital in Raczynski Palace, he had desperately wanted to run to her and embrace her. But he was immobilized by his fear, his smoldering anger . . . his guilt.

And then she was gone.

Adam woke at dawn, after finally drifting off for a few restless hours. His back ached and his mind was a murky haze. Coffee helped. The English breakfast—with real eggs and real bacon—helped even more. By nine o'clock, when the taciturn chauffer arrived, he was ready to face the day, though he was still uncertain what good would come from a tour of a German concentration camp.

Whitehall's staffer, Tom Donavan, was a tall, lanky man in shirtsleeves, sporting a colorful bow tie. He slid into a chair in Whitehall's office with a file folder on his lap and sat quietly, waiting for instructions.

“Very well, then,” Whitehall said, “shall we get started?” He glanced at Adam. “I realize that some of this may be a bit difficult for you, old chap, but God knows, you've undoubtedly seen worse.”

Whitehall motioned to Donavan, who opened the folder and removed a sheet of paper. He studied it for a moment before he began. “The Sachsenhausen camp was constructed in 1938 at Oranienburg, just north of Berlin. Before the war most of the inmates were German communists and other political dissidents. After the invasion of Poland the camp was expanded, and the number of inmates grew significantly—Jews, trade union leaders, political prisoners from Germany, Czechoslovakia and, of course, Poland.” He looked up from the paper. “We estimate the total number of prisoners sent to Sachsenhausen at more than a quarter million.”

“The survivors?” Adam asked.

Donavan laid the sheet of paper on the edge of Whitehall's desk. “We understand there were approximately three thousand survivors when the Russians liberated the camp. We don't have any names, of course, but the Russians will have the records.”

“What happened to them?”

Donavan shook his head. “I'm afraid we don't know. The SS guards apparently ran off before the Russians got there, and some of the survivors simply walked away. Those that were left were mostly the ones too sick or weak to leave.”

Adam turned to Whitehall. “What happens next?”

Donavan gathered his papers and left the room.

When they were alone, Whitehall said, “You'll be going to Berlin, to join the investigation team and to find out what you can about Ludwik Banach. Of course, we'll provide you with an entire list of names the Poles are supposedly interested in—to make it seem more logical, you understand.”

“The
Russians
control Berlin. How are you going to get me in?”

Whitehall leaned back in his chair, which creaked in protest. “A conference is being arranged between Stalin, Churchill and the new American president to implement the Yalta agreements. It will take place at Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin that is still mostly intact. British and American officers are being allowed in to make arrangements.” Whitehall swung around and hoisted himself off the chair, once again indicating the meeting was over. “It's a frightfully tedious process, but we should be able to get you in. It'll take a few days to work up the papers. I'll give you a ring.”

Three days later Adam met Whitehall for dinner in a small, private dining room at the Lion's Head Pub just down the street from SOE headquarters. It was a smoke-filled, dimly lit place with cracked leather booths and creaky floors. “Is everything set up?” Adam asked when they sat down.