“What?” was all he asked Scott now.
Tafler took out two folders, one slightly fatter than the other. He handed over the larger one first.
“Debrief section, last page, and the third paragraph down.”
Max turned to the page in question and looked up at Scott when he finished reading.
“Does Major Bedonavich know about this?”
“If he does he hasn’t said… and I did not see that any purpose could be served in broaching the subject to him.” He then handed over the second folder, which bore the FBIs logo and the subject’s name. “Findings section, second page.”
Max started to read and raised his eyebrows soon after, before double checking the name on the front of the folder and reading it again.
Forests cover almost twenty-eight percent of Poland, much of it untouched by forestry management, and although it did not make for classic tank country it did provide good natural cover for a defender. Four miles from the Oder River in the 1940’s, the German Wermacht had built a bunker complex within the primeval forest, and the Soviet Red Army had improved and expanded it in the 1960’s. Today it appeared to be as abandoned and neglected as it had been since the Soviets had quit. The chain link fence surrounding it was rusted and hanging away from supporting posts in quite a few places, and the minefield had been cleared years before. Birds and animals from the forest had taken up residence in the reinforced concrete guard posts and there was nothing to suggest that it was the nerve centre for the defence of Poland against her old Russian occupier and allies.
Joseph Ludowej accompanied his minister on the seven-mile journey along the tunnel of a worked out coalmine before reaching a much newer, vertical shaft. A lift had taken them up to the command centre, sixty feet below the surface where his president, cabinet and High Command of all the polish armed forces was gathered with their staffs and the NATO liaison team. The minister was as tired and fraught as his personal secretary was, so he had not noticed how withdrawn the man had been over the last few days. Joseph’s work had not been lacking; there was nothing there to indicate that he was under any greater stress than was to be expected, given the current circumstances. The polish army and air force were planning to drive across the border into Belorussia and into the flank of the Red Army Group that had finished reconstituting after the kick in the teeth it had received earlier. Joseph knew that much, but not the details.
The minister left him in an anteroom with various other functionaries before passing through to the war room and Joseph looked about him, nodding to acquaintances as he counted heads. He had deliberately mislaid the ministers briefcase before they had left on the journey to reach this place, delaying them for almost thirty minutes to ensure they would be last to arrive. Everyone else was here, the heads of all the armed forces and the cabinet, so Joseph began his play acting, swearing softly under his breath as he hurriedly opened his own briefcase and reached inside it. There was little room for documents inside the case, but he opened it in such a way as to conceal the true contents and depressed a switch before removing a folder and closing the case once more. He held the folder high and rushed toward the war rooms’ door as if he had an important document he had forgotten to give to the minister. The armed sentry on the door knew Joseph by sight and name, the Defence Ministers personal secretary always had a smile and a cheery greeting for everyone, unlike some of them who were too full of their own self-importance to so much as say good morning. Joseph was relieved that the sentry did not argue or hinder him but held the door wide, permitting him to enter. No one inside the war room noticed his entrance except an air force colonel when Joseph jostled him. The colonel was about to ask him his business but noticed Joseph was muttering to himself, it sounded like
“Forgive me Karena,” repeated over and over. Exactly four minutes after the switch had been depressed, a bomb containing four pounds of Semtex H in Joseph’s briefcase exploded.
It had been the government and strong leadership of the armed forces, that had been the principle reason for the failure of the coup days before, and both of those elements had now been removed, permanently.
Alontov was not in the best of tempers when he appeared at the brigade headquarters. NATOs fighter bombers and their artillery’s counter-battery missions had prevented him from doing more than re-securing the perimeter and forcing the enemy back a couple of hundred yards. The effort had cost him four of his precious light tanks and five APCs, along with almost a hundred and sixty casualties.
The enemy was fighting furiously and resisted his counter attack like men possessed. The prisoners they had taken were convinced they were going to be tortured and killed. Three in fact had been shot, when they killed one of the soldiers guarding them and tried to make a break for it. The Geneva Convention forbids prisoners from killing or injuring their captors, but as these men obviously believed his men wouldn’t play by the rules then why should they? The matter of the wounded was also a concern to him, two full field hospitals were supposed to have been delivered towards the end of the airlift in, but they hadn’t arrived. All he had were combat medics and two surgeons per battalion, and the equipment they carried was minimal. He could, and was using the hospitals in the city, but NATO had yet to unleash its full force, when that happened he would have civilians too, swamping those facilities. He caught the eye of the major commanding the signal's detachment.
“Get me the NATO commander on the radio; I want to discuss a cease fire whilst prisoners are exchanged.”
The major hesitated.
“Sir is that wise?”
Alontov looked at the man questioningly.
“Sir, our own signals intelligence… outside of this division, will be certain to intercept it… what I mean to say sir, is that your motives might be misconstrued by the High Command?”
Alontov gave him a cynical smile.
“The seat polishers will have to come here if they want to arrest me, I do not think I have very much to worry about on that score, so… do as I ask.” The signals major nodded and began to turn away. “But thank you for your concern anyway Major,” Alontov added.
Elena Ludwej had knelt with her arms around her three sobbing daughters as the van that they had been bundled out of now disappeared around a bend on the forest track. She had no idea where they were, a woman wearing a ski mask had merely pointed down the track and stated.
“Go that way.” It was in the opposite direction to which the van had left in, and so she soothed her girls as best she could before picking up little Lulu and they had set off.
It was a warm spring afternoon and she had told stories to the children as they walked, it helped her put aside, temporarily, their ordeal at the hands of the masked men and women who had appeared in their home with guns and knives.
She never knew what it was that they wanted of them; they had been taken by the same van on a long journey, although how long not something she could tell as her watch was broken. She had been allowed to say just a few words to her husband by telephone on two occasions, the rest of the time they had been kept in a locked room without windows. Their captors had spoken rarely, but when they had their accents sounded like they came from the north of Poland. Her thoughts on being set free were to contact her husband and the police, who must surely have been searching for them and their kidnappers.
After two hours’ of walking, the children were tired and hungry. The track they were walking on was now running along the side of a hill and the trees thinned out on the downslope side. The bottom of the hill was only about a hundred yards away where there was a tarmac road. In the field on the far side of the road Karena saw a tank and the polish soldiers, who were the crew, sat on the vehicle’s turret, so she waved and called out. Apart from glancing in her direction the soldiers ignored her and Karena stopped her antics. This was very odd, she thought the soldiers looked rather dejected and there was something odd about the tank, which she could not quite place. If nothing else they could give her directions to the nearest village or town, or perhaps even use their radio to call the police, so she started down the hill. Her arms were aching from carrying Lulu; the two-year-old was growing so fast these days. At the bottom of the hill she heard the sound of heavy engines, their reverberating noise began to fill the air and she called the other two girls to her. Looking along the road in the direction of the sound of approaching vehicles, she saw it disappeared into a dark woodland tunnel where ancient trees spread their branches wide. Early leaves were bright green and they conspired to block out the sunlight that fell upon the road, and Karena felt a shiver of dread run up her spine. Three armoured, eight-wheeled reconnaissance vehicles shot out of the darkness and into the sunlight. Travelling at about fifty miles an hour they tore past, their passage ruffled the hair and clothing of the woman and her three children before disappearing around a curve. She looked across the road at the soldiers, who had watched the vehicles with disgusted expressions. The rattle of tank tracks emerged from the sound of heavy engines, drawing all eyes back toward the tunnel-like spot. Like the reconnaissance vehicles, the tanks when they emerged were travelling at speed and Karena pulled her daughters with her as she stepped back a few paces.