The Katyn Order (7 page)

His attention was diverted by the sound of an approaching automobile, and he abruptly turned away from the riverbank. A black four-door GAZ-11, streaked with dust, pulled up and stopped behind a long line of idle T-34 tanks. A Red Army captain named Andreyev emerged from the backseat and walked briskly across the gravel road to meet the burly, broad-shouldered general. The captain saluted smartly and held out an envelope. He was taller than the general but very thin, almost gaunt. The left side of his face was scarred from shrapnel wounds, and he wore a black patch over his left eye. “Orders from Marshal Rokossovsky's headquarters, sir.”

General Kovalenko snatched the envelope from the captain's hand and ripped it open. He removed a sheet of paper, read it quickly, then crumpled it in his thick fist and tossed it on the ground. “Fucking idiots,” he muttered and headed back to the river.

Captain Andreyev retrieved the crumpled wad of paper and caught up to the general.
“Shto sluchílas',
what's wrong?” he asked. “Are we not attacking?”

Kovalenko glared at the young captain, his most trusted subordinate. He removed his cap and ran a thick hand through close-cropped gray hair.
“Nyet,
we're not attacking. Our orders are to sit here on our dead asses and watch, while the Germans destroy one of Europe's great cities.” He waved his hand at the line of tanks and armored cars, his voice rising in frustration. “We've had these Nazi bastards on the run for months! We've got five hundred tanks and twelve divisions of infantry with heavy artillery, ready to finish this! Now is the time, Goddamn it!”

“Then why aren't we attacking?”

Kovalenko was silent. Across the river smoke billowed into the summer sky. He knew there wasn't a chance in hell that the insurgents of the AK could succeed in their Rising against the Germans without help from the Russian Army. But he also knew why they weren't attacking. He knew about the plans that Stalin and his thugs in the NKVD had for Poland. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Andreyev stood next to him and looked across the river, seeming to sense his thoughts. “Don't they know when they're defeated, when to give up?”

“Would
you
know, Captain Andreyev?” Kovalenko demanded. “Would any of us? When the German Wehrmacht threatened to overrun us at Stalingrad, were any of us prepared to admit defeat and give up? Weren't we ready to throw every last man, woman and child into the breach to turn back these fascist Nazi pigs?” He paused and took a breath, remembering the horror of Stalingrad where he'd certainly have lost his life if it hadn't been for the heroics of Captain Andreyev, who had been disfigured in the process. When he continued, the general softened his tone. “I'm certain the insurgents of the AK feel exactly the same way, Captain. Our own armies, as well as Germany's, have been trampling over Poland for the last three hundred years. Perhaps they've finally had enough.”

“And they've had just twenty years of freedom,” Andreyev said.

Kovalenko grunted. “That's enough to know what it tastes like, enough to not want to lose it again, no matter the cost.” He turned and faced the younger captain. “So, after five years of Nazi occupation, at the precise moment when the German Army is on the run, and the Poles have one chance to take back their capital before
we
move in, is it any surprise that they choose to fight?”

“The only surprise is that they've lasted this long,” Andreyev said.

“Yes, indeed it is, Captain. It shows you how desperate they are to avoid getting out from under German occupation only to live under Soviet occupation.”

“But the AK can't possibly succeed. Hitler will never allow it. He's demanded that they be crushed and Warsaw burnt to the ground.” Andreyev contemplated the crumpled message in his hand. “And we're not going to help them, are we?”

Kovalenko spat on the ground.
“Nyet,
Captain Andreyev, we're not going to help them.”

20 A
UGUST

I
T WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT
as the moon slipped silently from behind the clouds, casting a silvery glow and spidery, ghostlike shadows onto the cityscape. Natalia crouched behind the wreckage of a burned-out Panther tank and studied the imposing structure on the other side of Zielna Street. The Warsaw Telephone Exchange—known as PAST—was housed in the concrete-reinforced building that stretched for an entire city block. It consisted of two four-story sections on either side of an eight-story central tower. The building had been the target of intense fighting since the first day of the Rising.

As the German Army's main communications link between Berlin and the eastern front, PAST was vital to their operations and was held by a 150-man garrison protected by tanks and armored cars. But the AK's resolve to take the building had been unrelenting. Day after day for the last three weeks, AK commando units had assaulted the enemy stronghold with Sten guns, homemade Filipinka grenades and crossbow-launched Molotov cocktails. But the German machine gunners situated at the top of the tower had an unencumbered field of fire, and AK casualties had mounted steadily. Steadfastly refusing to quit, however, Colonel Stag had stepped up the attacks until finally today, just before dusk, the AK had surrounded PAST. The moment for striking the final blow had come.

Natalia turned around at the sound of someone shuffling across the cobblestones. She smiled at Berta as her friend knelt down next to her.

“This waiting is driving me crazy,” Berta whispered. “Let's just get going and get this over with.”

Natalia glanced around at the other AK commandos huddled nearby. They were all women, a specialized unit known as Minerki that Natalia and Berta had volunteered to join. The unit leader was Zeeka, a former engineer and an expert in explosives. Iza, Ula, Alida and Berta, along with Natalia made up the balance of the Minerki team, a unit organized hastily and in secret by Colonel Stag to throw German spies off the track. She looked back at Berta. “A bit impatient, are you?”

Berta shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You just don't like not being in charge,” Natalia whispered back.

“No, I'm fine with someone else being in charge of
this
operation. I don't like messing around with explosives.”

“Zeeka knows what she's doing.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. We get in, we get out. No problem.”

At precisely midnight, Zeeka motioned for the others to gather around and whispered the instructions one last time. She was taller than the rest of the women, with dark, intense eyes and jet-black hair that she always wore in a ponytail under a green felt cap. Natalia had often wondered if she might be a gypsy. “The Kalinski Battalion has succeeded in blowing open a breach in the concrete wall just below the south end of the tower,” Zeeka said. “In exactly fifteen minutes the battalion will launch another grenade barrage at the Panzer units at both ends of Zielna Street. At the same time, the Sten gunners will spray the top of the tower. That's when we run across the street and slip through the breach into the basement.”

“How many Germans are inside the building?” Ula asked, adjusting the chinstrap of the World War One vintage steel helmet she'd taken off the body of a dead AK commando earlier in the day.

“We don't know for sure, at least a hundred.” Zeeka held her wristwatch up to the moonlight. “Twelve minutes to go. Gather up your packs.”

Natalia picked up her heavy canvas pack and slung it on her back, pulling the cinch-strap tight across her chest. Like three of the others, her pack contained twenty kilos of a homemade incendiary explosive mixed with paraffin and fashioned into bricks. Iza, a round, solidly built woman and the second-in-command, carried the flamethrower with a petrol canister strapped to her back.

The mission had been planned as well as could be expected on short notice, and the six-woman Minerki team had practiced the assault under tight security twenty-four hours earlier in the cellar of a bombed-out church in Old Town. They would have exactly four minutes after entering the basement under the PAST tower to place incendiary bricks along the outside walls in a specific pattern that Zeeka had designed for maximum impact. Then they would exit where they had come in, and Iza would ignite the charges with the flamethrower.

Natalia squinted at her own watch, but the moon had slipped behind the clouds again and she couldn't make out the time. She swallowed hard and waited. It was true they had practiced the mission, but they hadn't actually
done
it.

Berta stood next to her, impatiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Natalia turned and smiled, though she could just barely make out her friend's face in the darkness.

At exactly 0015, the night sky erupted into a blaze of flashing lights and jarring
whumps
as the Kalinski Battalion launched the grenade barrage. A few seconds later the clatter of Sten guns echoed off the buildings, Zeeka shouted the order and the Minerki team sprinted across the wide street. Natalia was fourth in line behind Ula and ahead of Berta.

Suddenly a searchlight from the top of the tower illuminated the street, and a burst of machine-gun fire ripped along the cobblestones. But the Sten gunners took out the searchlight, and the street was dark again.

Zeeka was the first to arrive at the base of the enormous building and disappeared through the breach, lighting the way for the others with a flashlight.

When Natalia crawled through the breach and jumped into the damp, cavernous basement, the two women ahead of her had already opened their packs and were placing incendiary bricks under Zeeka's direction. Berta was right behind her, and the four women set the explosives precisely in a predetermined chain that could be ignited from outside the building with the flamethrower. In three and a half minutes they were back on the sidewalk.

The Sten gunners started in again, spraying the tower with covering fire as Iza moved into position with the flamethrower, and Zeeka yelled for the others to get back across the street.

But the enemy machine gunners at the top of the tower refused to quit, spraying the entire length of the street with random, hammering bursts, shattering the last of the windows and filling the air with flying chunks of concrete and stone.

Natalia lowered her head and dashed into the street right behind Ula and Alida. She'd taken only a few steps when she heard a grunt from behind, and Berta stumbled forward, almost knocking her down.

Natalia reached back to grab Berta's hand, but her friend fell to the ground and rolled over on the cobblestone street, clutching her left leg. Natalia dropped to her knees and crawled back to Berta, who lay curled in a ball, trembling and moaning, her shredded trouser leg already soaked in blood.

Natalia screamed for Ula, then grabbed Berta under the arms and tried to drag her forward. A second later Ula was alongside, cursing loudly as a bullet struck her steel helmet and knocked it off her head.

Holding Berta under the arms, the two of them dragged her across the street and behind the tank as bullets ricocheted off the steel frame. Natalia dug into her pack, pulled out a knife and quickly sliced away what was left of Berta's blood-soaked trouser leg.

“Jesus Christ,” Ula muttered when she saw the wound.

“Grab her arm and roll her onto her stomach,” Natalia said sharply. “Alida, get over here!”

Berta groaned deeply as the two women commandos rolled her over, and Natalia examined the wound. It was a ragged laceration several centimeters wide running up the back of her leg from the knee to just below the buttocks. Blood seemed to be everywhere. It pooled on the ground, and Berta moaned louder as Natalia felt around with her fingers on either side of the ugly gash.

“I don't think there are any broken bones,” Natalia said as she straightened up and ripped off her blue uniform coat followed by her cotton shirt. She quickly folded the shirt into a rectangular pad, then placed it over the back of Berta's leg and pressed down hard. “Take off your belts and cinch them around her leg,” she shouted at Ula and Alida. “Right over this pad, quickly, we've got to get the bleeding under control.”

From across the street Natalia heard a
whoosh
from the flamethrower, then a momentary pause, followed an instant later by a rising crescendo of concussions that felt like hammer blows in her eardrums. The incendiary charges ignited in rapid succession, thrusting a monstrous fireball upward from the bowels of the PAST building.

Their faces blackened with soot and dripping with sweat, Zeeka and Iza dashed across the street, scrambled behind the tank and dropped to their knees. Zeeka crawled over next to Natalia. “I saw her go down. How bad is it?”

“Nothing's broken as far as I can tell, but the back of her leg is badly lacerated and she's losing a lot of blood.” Natalia shot a quick glance at Alida. “Tighten that belt!” Blood was already soaking through the makeshift bandage, and Natalia motioned to Zeeka. “Help me roll her onto her back again, gently, and we'll get that leg elevated. We've got to get her to a medic fast or she'll—”

Her voice was drowned out by a thunderous roar from across the street as the wall of flames engulfed the lower two floors of the eight-story PAST tower, climbing rapidly, blowing out windows in a relentless upward thrust. Dozens of shrieking German soldiers, their clothes ablaze, stumbled out through the main entrance or tumbled out first floor windows. The flames rocketed upward, engulfing floor after floor until they reached the top where dozens of men were trapped in the tower.

Natalia watched, dumbstruck with horror, as German soldiers leaped to their deaths, dark silhouettes flailing against the fire-lit sky.

21 A
UGUST

N
ATALIA DIPPED A CLOTH
in a pan of cool water, wrung it out and laid it gently across Berta's forehead. She placed the back of her hand against her friend's cheek. It was warm, but not hot, and that was good. Though it had been more than twelve hours, she knew Berta was still in danger. The few remaining doctors in Warsaw were all working round-the-clock in makeshift hospitals. But Zeeka had somehow managed to dig up a stretcher and then find a medic, as the others carried Berta from what was left of the PAST building to the women commando's quarters on Trebacka Street. It had taken almost two hours and fifty stitches to close Berta's leg wound, but there were no antibiotics and Natalia knew that the greatest danger over the next few days would be infection.