The Katyn Order Read Free

on a wooden table. In stark contrast to the madness outside, it was eerily quiet, the air musty, as though they had entered a tomb. “I thought you might not make it,” Falcon said. He turned and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve seen what they’re doing out there?”
    Natalia stared at Falcon in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp, then shrugged off his hand. “It’s barbaric, even for the Nazis. There are bodies everywhere: women, children, piled up in the streets like cordwood. They’re setting
fire
to them!” She ran a hand through her short-cropped brown hair and rubbed her irritated eyes. “Who on earth chose
this
location for the rendezvous?”
    â€œStag, of course. But we held this area until twenty-four hours ago.”
    Natalia cursed under her breath. “We got as far as the West Station,” she said. “Then the SS ordered everyone off the train. Everything was on fire, and the area was crawling with storm troopers. I just barely got out of there.”
    Falcon hand-rolled a cigarette and lit it. He was a whole head taller than Natalia, with thick black hair and steely dark eyes. The bars of an AK captain were prominent on the collar of his makeshift uniform.
    â€œThe church?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “They’re all dead. The SS herded the whole group into the sanctuary—priests, nuns, a dozen or so children. Gunned them all down. Happened just before you got here. Damned good thing you didn’t walk into the middle of it.”
    Natalia took the cigarette from him and inhaled deeply.
    â€œWhat did you see on the way into Warsaw?” he asked. “We’ve heard they’re bringing in reinforcements.”
    â€œThat’s why it took so long to get here. We were diverted onto sidings three times for German transport trains—tanks, armored cars, artillery, dozens of troop carriers.” She glanced around the small, austere room, suddenly feeling claustrophobic, and took another drag on the cigarette. “The word is that Hitler’s furious and he’s gone berserk. Imagine a motley bunch of Poles wanting to take back their capital city.”
    Falcon managed a grim smile that faded quickly. “They’ll step up the artillery barrage again right after dark, so we’d better get the hell out of here.” He pointed at the black bag hanging from her belt. “Anything from Krakow? From the Provider?”
    Natalia removed the folded conductor’s cap from her bag, thumbed through the railway schedules, ticket vouchers and a variety of other official odds and ends, then carefully lifted up the false bottom. She removed an envelope and handed it to Falcon.
    Suddenly, a thundering blast shook the building, and a beam cracked in the ceiling above their heads. Natalia instinctively dropped to her knees as the beam sagged, and a giant chunk of plaster broke loose and shattered on the floor.
    Falcon shoved the envelope into the breast pocket of his jacket and grabbed the lantern. Natalia scrambled to her feet, and they bolted from the room as a second blast brought down the rest of the ceiling.
    They raced through the corridor and up the stairs, retracing their steps back to the main hallway, which was miraculously still intact. They burst out the side door, into a narrow cobblestone street and onto Avenue Wolska amidst shrieking artillery shells, shattering glass and a thousand bricks cascading onto the street in heaps of rubble.
    Natalia’s heart pounded as she followed Falcon past the remains of once-stately buildings that lined the east-west thoroughfare, through a blurred pandemonium of terrified people, faces streaked with dust and ashes, bleeding, crying and cursing. A man staggered from an alley and almost knocked her down, a bloody stump dangling from his shoulder.
    Then a monstrous explosion hammered Natalia’s eardrums. The ground fell away, and she landed hard on