THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel (17 page)

He struggled back to reality. He and Jan began what every prisoner of war is supposed to do: plan an escape. Winter was not the time to try; it might be even harder to survive outside the camp than inside. But escape at any time would be difficult; it was none too soon to start planning for the coming spring.

Trying to get out through—or over, or under—the two barbed wire fences seemed hopeless, even if the rumor was wrong, that mines dotted the strip between the rows of barbed wire. When the prisoners were sent out on work detail, cutting lumber in the nearby forest—that would be the best chance. True, the work details were guarded by soldiers and dogs, but the guards were obviously bored. An opportunity might arise; they might find a hiding place while they were working. But the chances were not good; the guards always counted the prisoners as they returned to the camp.

They therefore began planning a larger escape, with some prisoners creating a diversion while others got away. It might be bloody, requiring some prisoners—the ones creating the diversion—to sacrifice themselves. Undoubtedly the Russians would retaliate. Perhaps, if they got a group of twenty or so to join, they might draw straws. The lucky ones would try to escape; the unlucky few would create the diversion.

Their plans were disrupted when the Russians began to rotate prisoners randomly among the barracks; their obvious goal was to make it much more difficult to plan and execute an escape. In February, three prisoners in the next barracks disappeared completely; the rumor quickly spread that they had tried to escape. Several inmates—the optimists—thought that they had succeeded. Others reached a darker conclusion.

Kaz and Jan were aiming for an escape in April; the warmer weather would give them a sporting chance of surviving on the outside. Working backward, they decided to bring others into their plan about two weeks before the escape; this way, there might be some hope of keeping a group together long enough to actually carry out the plan.

At the beginning of April, however, their plans were derailed. As the first mild breezes of spring sifted through the trees, baring patches of dark, muddy earth, the work details into the forest came to an end. Apparently, logging went on only during winter months, when the snow, ice, and frozen ground made it possible for horses to slide heavy logs out of the woods.

The most alarming development came several days later. One evening as the sun was setting, eight trucks rumbled in through the gates. The inhabitants of three of the barracks—two hundred men—were prodded in. They were not even permitted to take their meager personal belongings. Two soldiers jumped into the back of each truck, and another guard was posted in each cab with the driver. The tailgates slammed; the trucks quickly left the compound.

The next night, the trucks returned. Rumors began to spread among those who remained. The Russians were sending them off to mines in Siberia. They were sending them north, as forced labor on the canal system between Moscow and Leningrad. They were being taken off to “indoctrination centers,” to see which of them might be persuaded—and trusted?—to join the Soviet army. They were being sent to a new camp, further to the east. Nobody knew.

Early the third evening, Jan drew Kaz aside.

“I've got an awful feeling about this.”

“Me too. The rumors... they don't make sense. Why shouldn't the camp commandant let us know—unless he's sending us to one of the forced labor camps? I hear that people don't come out of them alive.”

“Maybe worse than that. I overheard a couple of guards. One said that they should keep us all as calm as possible, to avoid a riot. The other guy asked, why should we riot, when they had all the guns? The first one suggested that his companion really didn't want to know.”

Jan let his information sink in. After a pause, he added:

“
I think they're killing us
.
Nobody's going to survive.
Stalin wants to control Poland. The people here are nothing but trouble. They're leaders. If they're allowed to live, they'll challenge Stalin's stooges when the war's over.”

“But if they're killing us, why not all at once? Why only two hundred a night?”

“Think of the mechanics. How do you kill six thousand people, without some escaping, and without everyone in the area knowing about it? My guess—they're trying to do it as inconspicuously as possible; that's why prisoners are taken away at night. All I can say is, if we're asked to dig ditches, everybody should use their shovels to attack the Russian soldiers. At least somebody might escape.”

Kaz stood scratching his beard, thinking, for what must have been three or four minutes. Then he responded. “I think you're right. They're killing us. If they were just moving us, why not let us take our paltry possessions?

“That means,” he continued, “we've got to make plans right away. Something quick and dirty; we don't know when our turn will come. If we have time, we can work out the fancy stuff later.”

The inmates had jammed straw into the corners of the building to cut down on drafts. The two men pulled some out of the chinks, and stuffed as much into their jackets and pants as they could without being conspicuous. Kaz already had half a dozen matches. A month earlier, one of the Russian soldiers dropped a handful when he was relighting the stove. Kaz happened to be shuffling by at the time. As casually as he could, he nudged some of the matches under a bunk, and came back later to recover them. The two had also managed to accumulate bits of newspaper.

The two conspirators cautiously approached a dozen other prisoners in their barracks to join in their plan, but most simply couldn't believe Kaz and Jan's fears. Only two joined their pathetic plan—Piotr and Wincenty.

Their barracks’ number came up four nights later. As the prisoners were herded into the trucks, Kaz, Jan, Piotr and Wincenty managed to maneuver their way to the end of the line, and all got into the last of the eight trucks. Piotr took his spot at the back of the truck, near the guards. The other three went to the front, Kaz sitting in the very corner, with Jan and Wincenty to either side to hide their comrade. As the truck bounced along the washboard road, the three made a small pile under Kaz's seat—crumpled paper and damp straw. Kaz gripped his half dozen matches, hoping that they would be enough.

There was a rip in the canvas cover, and Kaz could faintly see the road ahead in the moonlight. As they rounded a curve, he could make out a sign. The first three letters were K-A-T; he was unsure of the last two—perhaps AN or YN, in Cyrillic letters, of course. The winding road was beginning to narrow, and Kaz thought he could see a hill ahead. Good. The truck would be slowing down.

He nodded to Piotr. That didn't work. It was too dark for Piotr to see him. Kaz coughed loudly.

Thereupon Piotr broke into a fit of coughing. He collapsed to the floor. One of the guards kicked his ribs. A prisoner near the back of the truck shouted angrily; he was about to jump up, but was restrained by the two men at his sides. The second guard cocked his rifle and pointed it straight between his eyes. Piotr continued to cough, but managed to get to his knees. The first guard was now shouting at him, jabbing him in the ribs with the muzzle of his rifle.

Smoke began to fill the front of the truck. The other prisoners began coughing and surging towards the back. One of the guards fired a warning shot, but the smoke was now too thick for the men to stop.

Prisoners began to tumble out the back of the truck, along with the two guards. A prisoner began to struggle with one of the guards, trying to get his rifle. The other guard smashed his rifle butt into the side of the prisoner's head; he collapsed, blood trickling from his ears.

By now, Kaz and Jan were over the edge of the road, alternatively slipping and tumbling down the hill toward a narrow river; behind were Piotr and Wincenty. The truck had stopped, and the guard sprang out of the cab, shouting. Piotr and Wincenty fell to the ground, hiding behind some low bushes; Kaz and Jan were further down, and dove over an embankment to the edge of the river. They ran along the gravel beside the river for about fifty yards, keeping their heads down. They could hear shots and shouting from above.

Kaz stopped to peek over the embankment. One of the guards had gone a quarter of the way down the hill and was approaching the place where Piotr and Wincenty were hiding. Suddenly, the two prisoners stood up, their hands in the air. The guard fired two quick shots; Piotr and Wincenty fell to the ground. Apparently satisfied that he had gotten all the escapees, the guard clambered back up the hill. Kaz and Jan did not wait to see the prisoners herded back into the truck.

In the pale moonlight, Kaz could see the pain on Jan's face.

Kaz and Jan each felt a surge of guilt. They needn't have. As they would soon learn, their suspicions were right. Katyn Forest was a killing ground. Every night for a month, executioners of the NKVD—the Soviet Secret Police—shot over 200 Polish officers in the back of the head with German Walther 2 revolvers. Soviet guns were not considered sufficiently reliable for such continuous, demanding use.

On Stalin's orders, similar executions were taking place at two other camps, near Kalinin and Starobelsk. The Soviets shot a total of 15,000 officers—the core of what might have become a noncommunist Polish government after the war.

12
Bletchley Park

... a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery
David Hume

T
he morning after arriving in London, Anna went around to the British Admiralty, Intelligence Branch. At the hunting lodge in Pyry Forest just three months earlier, Alastair Denniston had mentioned that the British codebreakers grew out of the naval intelligence office of World War I. Anna told the receptionist that she wanted to contact Mr. Denniston of British Intelligence. Why, the receptionist wanted to know. Because she had some important information for him. What information? She couldn't say; she needed to talk to Mr. Denniston personally. Anna was asked to wait in a small library to one side of the reception hall. She began to peruse the shelves. She found a moldy volume on codebreaking since Roman times and started to leaf through it.

After half an hour, a young sub-lieutenant appeared.

“You wanted to see Mr. Denniston?”

“Yes, please.”

“Might I ask why?”

“I have important information for him.”

“And what would that be?”

“I'm sorry, but I can't say.”

“Why not?”

“It's important. And secret. That means, I can't tell just anybody.”

That didn't come out at all the way Anna intended. Not surprisingly, the young officer was insulted; he was not used to being referred to as “just anybody.”

“Right. Let's go at this another way. Who are you?”

“Anna Jankowska. I've just arrived from Poland.”

“You had a job with the government there?”

“Yes.”

“With...?”

“With the Special Meteorology Project of the Polish Air Force.”

“What was your rank?”

“I didn't have a rank. I was a civilian employee.”

“Right. But there's a difficulty. Mr. Denniston doesn't work on meteorology.”

Now, thought Anna, we're getting somewhere. He actually knows something about Denniston.

“I know. But I don't work on meteorology, either.”

“But I thought you just said that you were with....”

“I know. But I still didn't work on meteorology.”

“Right. Then what did you do?”

“Surely you've heard of a cover story. My cover story is, I worked on weather forecasting.”

“But you really didn't?”

Now it was Anna's turn. “Right.”

“But you really work on...?”

“As I said, I can't say. If I could say, it wouldn't be much of a cover story, would it?”

Both of them were now struggling, with only limited success, to conceal their irritation.

“But you were sufficiently senior, that you have important information you can only give to Denniston?” The sub-lieutenant was obviously skeptical; Anna looked much too young to have a senior position.

“That's correct. Please contact him. He'll know who I am.”

“I'm sorry. That was Anna...?”

“JANKOWSKA,” said Anna, spelling her name slowly as the sub-lieutenant wrote it down.

“One last question. You said you just arrived from Poland. How did you get out? In an Air Force plane?”

“No. In an old Fokker triplane.”

The sub-lieutenant half expected her to add, “with the Red Baron.”

“Would you please wait,” he said, and disappeared.

Anna waited. And waited. For well over two hours. She was famished. Finally, the sub-lieut. reappeared.

“I'm sorry, but Denniston says he doesn't know who you are.”

“Oh damn,” said Anna. “I forgot. I've just gotten married. He would know me by my previous name, Anna Raczynska.”

“
You forgot that you've just been married?
I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave.”

“No. I insist on seeing your superior.”

The sub-lieutenant left, stopping at the desk to ask the receptionist to call security and have them send up a non-uniformed guard. He should stay just outside the library, in case the visitor became violent. This was, by rough count, the seventh mental case to come walking in off the street in the past month.

The young officer then went upstairs and knocked on his boss's door. The lieutenant called for him to enter.

“We've got a real live one down there. Says she wants to see Denniston. Says she worked for a Special Meteorology Project of the Polish Air Force, but didn't do weather. 'I can't say,' is her response to most questions. Says she forgot that she was recently married. Says she arrived on a magic carp..., I mean, in a Fokker triplane. She insists on seeing you. She's apparently sane enough to figure out that I'm not going to be helpful.”

“Oh, good grief. Should we have security throw her out, or is it serious enough to call the mental hospital?”

“Hard to say. There's just one thing. I just thought you might actually like to see this one.”