The Katyn Order (50 page)

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.”

P
OTSDAM,
G
ERMANY

2
AUGUST
1945

C
OLONEL
S
TANLEY
W
HITEHALL
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.

A
AND
N
OFF TO THE HILLS

P
IRATE HAS THE PRIZE

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.”

Eight months ago I descended into hell. I have seen the abyss, the dark chasm of depravity into which man can sink. And I am terrified. I am terrified the world does not know what is happening here. I fear most will not live to tell their story, so I will tell mine and pray that it will emerge from the darkness—that the world may know.

In November of 1939 I was arrested in Krakow, along with two hundred other professors, lawyers and doctors who had been invited to a seminar at the university. German soldiers, storm troopers of the SS, marched into the assembly and forced us out at gunpoint. We were loaded into trucks, then into foul-smelling railcars. For five days we had no food, almost no water. We had no room to lie down. I was sure this was hell. And then we arrived in Oranienburg, Germany, and entered Sachsenhausen—a large camp, enclosed with brick walls and barbed wire fences.

Then I knew what hell truly was.

Perhaps someday I will have the courage to write about life in that dark abyss. Thousands of us labored at back-breaking jobs with little food or water in a camp so filthy and infested with rats and lice that most died of typhus within six months. Perhaps someday, when the memory is not so fresh and raw, I will be able to write about it . . . but not today.

Today is the tenth of August, 1940, and I will begin to record the incredible events that have transpired since my unexpected and abrupt release from Sachsenhausen one month ago. The story begins on the morning of my last day in that living hell.

During the morning roll-call I was pulled from the ranks and marched to the commandant's office. I was confused and frightened. No one had ever been pulled from the roll-call and taken to the commandant before. If anyone committed an offense they were just shot on the spot and dragged away, their body thrown onto a cart with the other dead.

The commandant's deputy, Ludwig Rehm, and our block leader, Hans Fricker, were waiting for me in the office. Rehm glared at me for a long time, his coal black eyes and red, twitching face a mask of hate. Abruptly he spit in my face. Then he turned away and nodded at Fricker, who told me I was being released into the custody of the Governor General of Poland and would be transported back to Krakow.

I was so astonished, I was certain I hadn't heard him correctly. Fricker pointed to a suit of clothing hanging on a hook. When I took the clothing, he gave me a shove. He took me to the guard's quarters and ordered me to shower and change clothes. He handed me a small vial of kerosene to kill the lice in my hair. Though in a state of shock from the incredible news, I lingered as long as I dared, reveling in the luxury of soap and water. It was the first shower I'd had in eight months.

I arrived back in Krakow after two days traveling. This time I had a seat in a normal railcar, guarded by a pair of drunken Wehrmacht soldiers. Apparently I was no longer of interest to the SS.

I was taken by auto to Wawel Castle and locked in a small, but clean, room in the lower level. I had no idea why this was happening or what fate awaited me but, strangely, I was not afraid. Perhaps it was because I could not conceive of anything worse than the hell of Sachsenhausen where I would certainly have died. My heart grieves for my friends, those whom I have left behind. There is little chance any of them will survive.

I had a dark sense of foreboding at what I would find here in Krakow. But I was also intrigued at the prospect of seeing the Governor General of Poland. I had learned he was the German legal scholar Hans Frank, with whom I became acquainted while attending European legal conferences in the '30s. My memory of Frank was of a highly intelligent, if somewhat conflicted, man caught up in an impossible situation during the rise of Nazism.

We had last met in 1935, in Germany, at a conference of the Academy of German Law, which Frank founded, and we corresponded on a regular basis for several years afterward. Frank was, at that time, a zealous proponent of human rights and an independent judiciary. But over the years, as fascism tightened its grip on German society, the tone of his letters changed, and I sensed he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Our correspondence had ceased, of course, with the German invasion of Poland. I had already been arrested and deported to Sachsenhausen by the time Frank came to Krakow as Governor General.

On this day I met the Governor General of Poland. Since arriving in the city on 12 July, I had been confined to my room. I had seen no one except the guards who brought me two meals and tea each day. I had been allowed to bathe and given clean clothing. I put on weight and regained much of my strength. But all the time I couldn't help thinking about my new captor, Hans Frank. Why was I here? What did he want from me?

Following the morning meal, I was led up to the third floor of the castle, shown into a large, well appointed office and left alone. A moment later the door opened, and a German officer stepped in. Though I hadn't seen him in five years, I instantly recognized Hans Frank.

He bowed slightly, clicked his heels and addressed me by name. He offered me a chair and a cup of coffee, and we talked for more than an hour. It was perhaps the most bizarre hour of my life. Here was a man I had known as an intelligent, widely respected legal scholar, one of the best in Germany if not all of Europe—a man with whom I had discussed ideas, debated legal positions and corresponded with for years. And on this day, cast on opposite sides of a brutal war, we sat in a room adorned with the swastika flag and the Nazi eagle, in the royal castle of Poland, and chatted about old times. I could barely sit still, so great was my anguish over the atrocities I had witnessed at Sachsenhausen: the beatings and murders, the inhuman brutality—atrocities that Frank certainly knows about, has perhaps even ordered.

The meeting ended abruptly when an aide knocked on the door, explaining that Frank had a telephone call.

That afternoon I was transferred to a larger room at the other end of the castle. The room had a desk and chair and a box of German language books. As I sat at the desk, I could not imagine what was in store for me. But that was insignificant next to the question burning a hole in my heart. Was it possible that I would be reunited with my dear wife, Beata? Could God be that generous?

After days of waiting I was finally led from my room to an automobile outside the castle. A moment later, Hans Frank joined me in the backseat. As we drove through the streets of Krakow, my beloved city that I hadn't seen in almost a year, it was all I could do to control my emotions. Red-and-black swastika banners flew from every flagpole. Placards with the German word ACHTUNG in bold, black letters across the top, followed by lists of rules and regulations, were posted on buildings. People stood in long queues at bakeries, their faces gray and drawn, their heads bowed. The streets were practically deserted, the only other vehicles being German military trucks and the long, black autos of the Gestapo.