The Katyn Order (10 page)

The apartment building was a magnificent structure with meticulously carved stone pillars framing the entryways of the now vacant ground floor merchant shops. The first-floor windows were set deep in elaborate stone alcoves, and above the windows, wrought-iron railings projected gracefully from second-floor balconies. With the city falling down around her, Natalia thought it was a miracle the building was still intact.

She felt a bit guilty for not returning last night. But Ula and Zeeka were watching over Berta, and for the first time in three weeks she had actually slept soundly for several hours without nightmares. Who would've guessed that on a night when everything was falling apart—her best friend wounded, Falcon in a brutal drunken haze—that she'd actually be able to fall asleep . . . in a church?

She touched the side of her face. It was still tender, but her headache was gone, and she managed a smile when she remembered how she'd laughed when Wolf said he'd have to kill her if he told her any more. It was the first time in months she'd laughed at anything—and he was probably
serious.
And yet, he had acted as nervous as a schoolboy, tripping over his words as he was about to leave that morning. He was indeed a special case, she thought, reclusive and clearly dangerous. But there was something else, something under that hard exterior that intrigued her. In those few hours she thought there had been a connection between them . . . perhaps just a bit.

She entered the building through the arched doorway next to the vacant tailor shop and climbed the wooden stairs to the first floor. As soon as she stepped through the door of the apartment Natalia knew something had happened. The cots had been removed from the parlor and the bare, wooden-floored room echoed with emptiness. She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out her pistol and stepped slowly across the parlor, peeking into the kitchen. Glasses and plates filled the sink, and crumbs littered the table. She backed away and moved over to the stairway leading to the second-floor bedroom. At the base of the staircase she leaned against the wall, and pointed the pistol up the stairs. “Ula? Zeeka?”

Zeeka shouted back, “Up here, come quickly!”

Natalia took the stairs two at a time and rushed into the bedroom. Zeeka and Ula knelt on the floor next to Berta, who lay on a stretcher. “Good God, what's—”

Zeeka stood up and wiped a film of perspiration from her forehead with her shirtsleeve. She was normally calm and unflappable, a longtime AK operative who had conducted sabotage against the enemy all over Poland. But this morning there was a decided edge in her voice: “Berta's fine. But the Germans have breached the barricade on the north side of Pilsudski Square. We've got to get out of here and make our way to Old Town.”

Natalia looked around the tiny bedroom. The plaster walls were painted a light yellow, and frilly pink curtains framed the single window, reminding her of curtains she'd had in her own bedroom as a child. She remembered the first time she'd entered this room, almost a month ago. She'd wondered then if the tailor and his wife had shared it with a young daughter.

“The medic was here just a few minutes ago,” Zeeka said. “Rabbit and Bobcat brought him over. He'd found some morphine, which should keep her quiet while we move her.”

Natalia glanced at Rabbit, who leaned against the wall. Another boy stood next to him. He was about the same age as Rabbit but taller, with unruly black hair and a pockmarked face. She recognized him as Rabbit's friend, the one they called Bobcat.

“Move her where?” Natalia asked.

“The medic said there's a vacant schoolhouse on Podwale that's being used as a hospital,” Zeeka said. Then she cocked her head. “What the hell happened to you?”

Natalia touched her face. “Ah . . . just a bump. They were a little wild at the pub last night.” She flinched as the building shook from a nearby mortar blast. Podwale wasn't far—a little more than half the distance she'd just walked from St. Jacek's Church—but it was daylight now and the snipers were out.

“Can we get there?” she asked Rabbit.

The boy nodded. “No problem.”

• • •

Slowed down by the stretcher, Natalia knew they'd have to stay off the streets or they'd be easy targets for the snipers and dive-bombing Stukas. The civilians still living in the area had taken to their cellars, many of which were interconnected with passageways hacked through the walls. Rabbit, who instinctively seemed to know how to get around the city with stealth, directed the stretcher-bearing group down three flights of stairs to the earthen-floor cellar of their building. Then, guiding the way with a flashlight, he led the way through a twenty-meter-long, two-meter-high passageway of slimy cobblestone that Bobcat said was an abandoned sewer main. The passageway led them into a foul, dimly lit labyrinth of cellars beneath the residential apartment buildings of the City Center.

It was slow going. The cellars were crowded with grim-faced, terrified people. The sick and wounded lay on cots, mattresses or the bare dirt floors. Ragged women hunched against rough, stone walls, clutching dirty, silent children on their laps. Others breast-fed whimpering babies or stirred pots of soup, while elderly men distracted the older children with stories and card games.

The AK commandos took turns carrying the stretcher as dirt and plaster rained down on their heads following each random burst of artillery. Berta moaned and occasionally thrashed, then drifted into unconsciousness again. With the stench of human sweat, excrement and urine mingled with must and kerosene from the lanterns, Natalia found it difficult to breathe. Her headache returned.

A half hour later, they climbed a flight of rickety wooden stairs and emerged from the last cellar. Natalia squinted against the sunlight and took a welcome breath of fresh air as she peeked around the corner at the open expanse of the cobblestone square in front of the Royal Castle.

They huddled for a moment. Rabbit gave each of them precise instructions: “Zeeka, you and Bobcat man the stretcher. Natalia and Ula, one on each side, with a hand on Berta. I'll lead the way.”

“We're gonna have to run like hell across the square,” Bobcat said.

“Yeah, I know.” Rabbit looked around at the others. “I'll be the lookout. You all stay right behind me. Keep your heads down and don't trip.”

With that, the group sprinted across the Castle Square, past Zygmunt's Column and turned onto Podwale, with Rabbit watching the sky and glancing at rooftops every step of the way.

The former schoolhouse was a four-story red-brick building located at Number 46 Podwale, the semi-circular street fronting the old city walls. At one time a neighborhood of wealthy merchants and aristocracy, it was now mostly deserted, a grim collection of broken windows and shattered roofs. The windows of the school building were boarded up, and a large red cross was painted on the door. “I hope they also painted one on the roof,” Natalia mumbled as they trudged up the steps and pushed open the door.

The scene inside was overwhelming. Natalia's head pounded as she glanced around: Kerosene lanterns cast a gloomy, yellow glow. Cots lined every inch of the floor with barely enough room for the nurses to squeeze through to groaning patients. The stifling air reeked of disinfectant, blood and urine.

A priest looked up from beside one of the cots. He held a blood-soaked bandage against a small boy's head with his right hand. With his left, he pointed toward the back of the room.

Natalia led the way as they carefully navigated the stretcher between the rows of cots to the farthest alcove where a stout, elderly nun wiped blood off her hands with a sliver of cloth obviously torn from her habit. The nun tossed the soiled rag into a bucket of red water and plodded over to the stretcher. She shot a cursory glance at Berta's bandaged leg, placed a pudgy hand on her forehead and shrugged. “Not much of a fever yet, so that's a good sign.” She motioned wearily toward a staircase that led to the cellar. “Take her downstairs. There are a few empty cots at the back. I'll keep an eye on her.”

“What about antibiotics?” Natalia asked. “There's seepage from the wound. We've got to prevent infection.”

The nun glared at her as if she'd asked for gold bars. “Young lady, we barely have clean bandages and water.” Her brow furled. “Do you have any medical training? If you do we could use some help here.”

Zeeka glanced at her watch and shook her head. “We have to meet Colonel Stag, and we're already late.”

“Maybe later,” Natalia said to the nun. “Later I could—”

The nun waved her hand dismissively and turned her attention to a sobbing young girl, no more than ten years old, with ragged shrapnel wounds in her neck and chest. “We'll keep an eye on her and check the wound,” she snapped. “A doctor should be around a bit later. Take her down and find a spot for her. I'll check on her later.”

Zeeka put a hand on Natalia's shoulder. “It's the best we can do for her. Now we've got to go.”

Natalia came back early the next morning, grimacing at the stench as soon as she stepped through the door. She hadn't thought it possible to jam any more patients into the tiny, stifling hot schoolhouse, but apparently they had. She scraped her knee trying to wedge between two cots in the narrow aisle, now almost impassable since they'd added another row. Halfway through the room, she stopped and gripped the out-stretched hand of an elderly man. His eyes were bandaged, his withered face pockmarked with shell fragments. When she kissed his grizzled cheek, he wheezed a barely audible “thank you.”

At the top of the stairway she encountered the elderly nun carrying an armload of soiled sheets. Without breaking stride, the nun motioned with her head toward the stairs. “There's a young boy down there who came in an hour ago with a head wound. Find a clean bandage and change the dressing. He's over in the corner near your friend. You can check on some of the others while you're down there.”

Natalia nodded and descended the stairs to the cellar. She made her way carefully through the jam-packed room, smiling at patients who were awake, touching a few hands, patting a few shoulders. In the middle of the room, another nun, younger and harried-looking, knelt next to a man and cut away his blood-soaked trouser leg. The man gripped the sides of his cot, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

Natalia bent down and took a closer look, then whispered to the young nun, “It's a bad break, but the bone isn't exposed. We can probably splint it to make him more comfortable. I'll be back to help you in a few minutes.”

Natalia found the boy with the head wound, curled up in the fetal position, sucking his thumb. He appeared to be about seven or eight years old, stick-thin and pale as a ghost. She knelt next to the boy's cot and put her hand on his forehead. “Are you awake?” she asked quietly.

He nodded, but didn't lift his head.

“I'm here to help you. May I look at your wound?”

He nodded again, then whimpered, “It hurts.”

“I'll be very gentle,” she said. She slid her right hand under his skinny shoulder and gently rolled him onto his back. The boy groaned. His eyes were shut tight.

Carefully, Natalia unraveled the bloody bandage and examined the wound. It was a jagged laceration that extended from just above his left eyebrow, across his forehead, ending just above the hairline. It wasn't deep, and the blood had coagulated, but the wound was filled with dust and grit.

After gathering a bowl of water, a few clean rags and tweezers, Natalia painstakingly extracted the bits of dirt and gravel, and cleaned the boy's wound. Tears trickled down his cheeks and he gritted his teeth the whole time, but he didn't cry. She wrapped his forehead with the last clean scrap of cloth she could find, wishing again for antibiotics. She stayed with him for a while, telling a few stories, until he seemed to fall asleep.

She checked on Berta, but her friend was also asleep. Her face was flushed, her brow furled with pain. Natalia decided to let her rest, and spent the next three hours doing what she could to help the priest and two nuns in what was clearly a futile effort.

Dozens of people—many of them no older than Rabbit—lay semiconscious on blood-soaked cots, with mangled hands or feet, chest wounds, burns or shrapnel wounds. They groaned and twitched. Sweat dripped from their ravaged, soiled bodies. Natalia knew most of them wouldn't survive more than a few days without real medical attention.

Finally, Natalia wiped blood from her hands and sweat from her forehead, and went back to see Berta. She edged her way through the line of cots, carrying a tin cup half full of precious, scarce water.

Berta's eyes were open now, and she managed a smile when Natalia knelt down and took her hand. “How do you feel?”

“Awful,” Berta croaked. “It's so damn hot . . . I can barely . . . breathe.” Her face glistened with perspiration, and Natalia put a hand on her forehead. The cellar was sweltering. Natalia was so hot herself it was impossible to tell if Berta's fever had worsened. And even if it had, there was nothing they could do about it.

Natalia held the cup of water to Berta's lips. She took a sip and laid her head back on the stained, wafer-thin pillow. “When can I get out of here?” she asked. Her voice was little more than a croaky whisper, her eyes glazed and distant.

Natalia smiled at her. “As soon as you can put some weight on that leg, I'll get you out of here. Maybe a day or two.”

“Yeah, sure. Nice try.” She pointed at Natalia's face. “What happened to you?”

Natalia had to think for a second, then remembered how she must look. “Oh, it's nothing. I bumped into a post.”

“Looks like someone . . . took a poke . . .” Berta's eyes closed. “It's . . . so hot in here . . .”

Natalia glanced around. The elderly nun was on the other side of the room changing the dressings of a severely burned young girl, who was mercifully unconscious. Natalia cursed under her breath. She had to get back to her unit. But she didn't want to leave Berta. One patient with an infection wasn't going to get any special treatment in this makeshift hospital with virtually no staff and no medications. Berta couldn't walk, and even if she could, where could she take her? Now that they'd abandoned the apartment on Trebacka Street, Natalia and the rest of the commandos in her unit hunkered down wherever they happened to be, like the rest of the AK now trapped in Old Town. As crappy as this place was, at least Berta was off the streets.