The Katyn Order Read Free Page A

shattered cobblestones. Ignoring the piercing bolt of pain in her hip, she got to her feet and lurched to the right as a second eruption of bricks and glass obliterated the street. Falcon shouted something, then disappeared into a storefront. She followed him through a maze of toppled shelves and broken crates, out a back door and into another street. Choking on dust and smoke, they continued on, dodging flying debris, climbing over rubble, heading east.
    Eventually the shelling was behind them as they made their way, breathless and covered with dirt and soot, from the Wola District into the City Center. Slowing to a walk they rounded a corner where barricades loomed ahead, fashioned from paving blocks, railroad ties and sheets of corrugated metal. Tattered red-and-white flags fluttered from makeshift poles alongside banners emblazoned with Poland’s white eagle. Sweat ran down her face, and her legs felt like rubber as Natalia walked in silence beside Falcon, toward a group of men and women wearing the armbands of the AK.
    It was close to midnight when the shelling finally ceased, but fires raged on in the Wola District and most of Warsaw’s other western suburbs, sending clouds of thick, black smoke and a stench of death billowing into the night sky. But an uneasy quiet hung over the area of the city occupied by the insurgents of the AK. In a small three-room apartment near Pilsudski Square that served as an AK district headquarters, Natalia sat on a faded brown sofa, smoking a cigarette.
    She didn’t really enjoy smoking but it was something to do, something to keep her hands busy and her mind off the bloody faces and burning corpses she’d seen on the street that day. She blinked away the images and exhaled slowly, glancing around the dingy parlor. A red-and-black banner displaying the letter “P” fashioned from an anchor along with the words
Polska Walczy
—Poland Fights—hung on the wall between the windows.
    Across the room, Falcon sat at a table opposite Colonel Stag, an AK officer Natalia had met once before. Falcon handed over the envelope Natalia had carried from Krakow. Colonel Stag slit it open, extracted the documents and looked them over carefully, one-by-one, shaking his head, occasionally grunting.
    When he was finished Stag dropped the last page on the table and pushed back his chair. “Jesus Christ, the depravity of these Nazi bastards is beyond belief.
New efficiencies in gas-fired ovens?
You’d think they were talking about baking bread.” He stood up, walked over to the window and stared out at the street where a group of AK commandos sang songs around a bonfire. Stag was a short, stocky man, built a bit like a large bulldog. He sighed, his broad shoulders sagged. “My brother and his family were sent to Treblinka, you know.”
    Still staring out the window, Colonel Stag took another drag on his cigarette, then stepped back to the table and ground it out in an ashtray. He grabbed his chair, carried it across the room and sat down facing Natalia. “You’ve done excellent work. And so has the Provider, whoever he or she is. I’ve passed along every document you’ve given to Falcon.”
    Natalia thought about the Provider, and the others in Krakow, the risks they’d taken over the years, the lives that had been lost. “Not that it did much good,” she said.
    â€œIt’s evidence,” Stag replied, “and it’s in the hands of our Allies. Someday these monsters will be made to pay.” Then he leaned forward, his ice-blue eyes intense. “But now, you’re with us, here in Warsaw where we’ll make our stand. This could all be over quickly.”
    Natalia tensed. “The Russians?”
    Stag nodded. “The Red Army has reached the east bank of the Vistula: twelve divisions, a tank corps and heavy artillery just south of Praga, less than ten kilometers away.”
    â€œHa!” Falcon sprang to