THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel Read online

  “You've got a point. And the kid was right; it's unlikely he or his girl want her parents to know where they were.”

  “I wonder what they are doing here. They didn't come with the Red Army.”

  “My guess—they live in this area, settlers from the period when the Russians occupied Poland. If their parents are living here, you're right. They're not likely to tell anybody.

  Kaz and Jan would stay.

  It was the wrong decision.

  The next morning, shortly before dawn, as Kaz was beginning to stir, he heard a motorcycle drive into the yard between the stable and house. Peering out, he could see its headlight and a smaller light on the sidecar. A man—perhaps the girl's father?—was coming out of the house, pointing toward the stable; the two Russian soldiers leaped off the motorcycle and headed towards the stable, their rifles at the ready.

  Kaz shook Jan, and was appalled by how hot he felt; he must be running a fever. He shook harder. “Jan. Jan. We've got to get out. Right now. The Russians are coming.”

  Suddenly, Jan was wide awake. The two Polish officers slid down into the stable, looking for a back door. They couldn't find one. Kaz helped Jan out a window, and followed headfirst.

  A rifle shot whined, ricocheting off the stable siding just above Jan's head. One of the soldiers was about 25 meters away, approaching rapidly, pointing his rifle in their direction. They raised their hands; they were prisoners of the Red Army.

  They were in a boxcar, together with thirty Polish officers captured while resisting the Russian advance. Kaz and Jan were the only two regular army officers; the rest were reservists recently called to active duty. In spite of their dirty, unkempt appearance, they were an impressive lot—some of the leaders of Polish society: businessmen, sons of aristocratic families, middle-to-senior level civil servants, teachers and professors, and, fortunately, a few doctors.

  Jan was diagnosed with the flu. The doctors insisted that he be put off to one end of the boxcar so that others wouldn't catch his disease. They also insisted that only Kaz and one of the doctors attend to him; they had already been exposed.

  Kaz had two main concerns—to keep Jan from getting a severe chill, and to provide him enough water. Kaz gave Jan his sweater; he would do with just his jacket. One of the hardier officers offered his great coat; he wouldn't need it in the relative warmth of the boxcar. The prisoners also provided some water from their already depleted canteens. Fortunately, the looming water crisis was eased when they reached the Soviet border. Because the Russian rails were further apart than those of Poland, the prisoners had to transfer to a Soviet train; in the process, they were allowed to fill their canteens.

  Their new home was Prisoner Camp #043, near Smolensk. It was already crowded—over 6,000 prisoners, mostly reserve officers—when Kaz and his group arrived.

  Although it was only October, a scattered frosting of snow already formed white splotches on the ground. The task for the next five or six months was clear—simply to stay alive through the severe Russian winter. For Jan, the test would come early; he still had a high fever. Again, the doctors insisted that he be put off separately at one end of the barracks to reduce the risk to other prisoners. The end of the barracks was already getting very cold at nights. There was only one small stove for the entire building, and the other prisoners had crowded their bunks around it. Even for them, the nights were frigid. The Russians provided no fuel, although they did allow the prisoners to bring pieces of wood back from the forest when they were out on work details. Kaz vaguely recalled that, according to the Geneva Convention, officers could not be required to do physical labor. But it would be idiotic to make a fuss; the Russians had the guns.

  Each prisoner was provided with one thin blanket; they therefore slept with their clothes on. Kaz thought of giving Jan his blanket, but decided not to; if he were going to look after his friend, he would have to remain healthy himself. Both men—and most of the other prisoners—learned to sleep in a curled position, folding the blanket in two while still remaining covered. Kaz found three large stones outside, near the corner of the barracks, and realized they could help to keep Jan warm. Kaz rotated them from a perch on top of the stove to Jan's bunk. His reward was the weak smile that came over Jan's face as he felt the warmth of the stone on his feet or back. Fortunately, Jan was his old self within ten days.

  As the weeks stretched into months, Kaz began to feel like a dog. It wasn't just the harsh treatment by the guards. With the prisoners buttoned up for the winter, he discovered that he could recognize his fellow inmates from their smell. There was one slight compensation. Because each prisoner involuntarily announced his approach, there were fewer nighttime thefts of the inmates' meager possessions.

  In the lonely, crowded camp, Kaz's thoughts drifted back to Anna. He worried; what had happened to her? She had some sort of classified job—he wasn't sure he believed the bit about weather forecasting. But he feared it was important enough to qualify her for a class-A interrogation by the Gestapo. He suppressed the thought. Particularly what the Gestapo might do to a young woman.

  He found himself daydreaming of his time with her, from that very first evening when he saw her softly slumbering on the sofa. Of his urge to take her in his arms. He tried to order his thoughts, to relive their time together. He dreamt of the wedding, and of their two days and three nights at the lodge in the forest. He once again imagined the fresh fragrance of balsam trees drifting on the soft breeze through their window.

  He began to embellish his dreams, imagining what might have been if only Europe had remained at peace. The joy of coming home to Anna after a hard day's work. Legs crossed, bouncing his son on his ankle, thrilling to the tot's joyful squeals. He wondered: is it healthy, to live in dreams? Yes. In a mad world, daydreams are a blessed island of sanity.

  Occasionally, he dreamt of Anna at night. He could control his waking dreams, but, sadly, not those in his sleep; his recurring nighttime dream was scarcely the fulfillment of his wishes. He and Anna were on an ice floe. A jagged crack began to split the floe; he tried and tried and struggled to jump to her side, but his legs refused his urgent command. Their fingers parted; the two islands of ice drifted apart. He would wake up shivering.

  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

  The 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.”