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.
“It’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.”
“Ha!” Falcon sprang to his feet and paced around the room. “It’s true? They’re coming in to help us crush these Nazi bastards?”
Colonel Stag was silent, and Natalia watched him closely. He appeared thoughtful, a flicker of doubt in his eyes.
Three
NATALIA RACED UP THE STAIRS and followed the boy into a vacant room. She knelt at an open window and watched the horrific engagement unfolding before her eyes. From the second floor of the deserted office building she had a clear view of the hospital across the square. A German Panther tank had blown several holes in the outer walls of the building, and a fire raged inside. Patients in hospital gowns spilled out of the doors and ground floor windows, coughing and gagging, some reaching back to help with stretchers.
The boy crouched next to Natalia. He was thin and wiry and not much taller than she. He was young, about twelve or thirteen she guessed, but his face was fixed in determination, as though he’d done this many times.
“Ready?” she asked.
The boy nodded and calmly unbuckled the canvas knapsack he’d been carrying.
Natalia turned back to the window. Twenty or thirty men converged on the hospital wielding clubs and crowbars, a few with handguns. They were Ukrainian conscripts, tough violent brutes recruited by the Nazis. A German Waffen-SS officer flanked by three storm troopers stood near the Panther tank, arms folded across his chest as the gang of Ukrainians broke into a run, charging forward in a mad frenzy, shouting and cursing, bashing heads, kicking and beating the sick and wounded patients.
Then a sudden burst of gunfire erupted from a building on the other side of the square. The Waffen-SS officer and two of the storm troopers went down instantly. A Ukrainian was shot. Then another.
Gunshots erupted from a second building and caught the Ukrainians in the crossfire, picking them off one after another. The third storm trooper dove for cover behind the tank.
It lasted only a few minutes. The few surviving Ukrainians scattered, and the shooting died down. Then it was quiet, except for wounded hospital patients moaning and crying for help.
Natalia dug her fingernails into the rotten wood of the windowsill. After five years of war she was used to Nazi barbarism—at least she thought she was—and when Colonel Stag had sent out the appeal for help in Warsaw, she had quickly volunteered for what everyone in the AK knew would be Poland’s last chance for freedom. And now, after seeing the slaughter in the Wola District, and watching the wanton brutality taking place beneath her in the hospital square, she knew they were in a struggle to the death. For years she had followed orders and done her duty, smuggling documents, dodging the SS and Gestapo. But now the stakes had been raised.
Natalia jerked her head to the left at the sudden clamor of clanking steel treads and a growling diesel engine. She slipped her right hand into her jacket pocket, feeling the cold steel of her pistol, then stood up and moved out of sight at the edge of the window.
The Panther tank crept forward along the street directly below. The monstrous machine’s turret swiveled, and the gun barrel arced upward, pointing at the building across the square where the first shots had come from. The tank commander stood in the open hatch, shouting directions, his black leather beret cocked to one side.
Natalia withdrew the pistol and glanced at the boy, who held a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a lit match in the other. She counted to three then stepped in front of the window, gripped the pistol with two hands and leaned out. The tank was almost directly below her. She sighted on the center of the black beret, held her breath and pulled the trigger.
The beret disappeared in a splatter of red and black as the tank commander toppled over the side. Natalia quickly backed away from the window and in a blur of motion the boy stepped in front of her. Without hesitation, he held the match to the Molotov cocktail’s cloth wick, leaned out the window and tossed the flaming bottle of petrol into the open tank hatch. Then he whirled around, and the two of them dove to the floor as a fireball erupted with a jarring whump!
A blast of heat washed over their heads.
Natalia jumped to her feet and scrambled for the door, the boy right behind her, clutching the knapsack as they fled from the room and hustled down the stairs to the ground floor. She stopped in the hallway near the back door of the building to catch her breath.
“Hah, we fried those sons-a-bitches, didn’t we?” the boy chirped, slapping his hand on his knee as he leaned against the wall. He smirked as if he’d just scored a goal in a football match. This was their first assignment together, but Natalia had heard about him before. He was a skinny lad with tousled blond hair and a grimy face. She wondered how many others he had fried since being recruited into the AK.
She slowly pulled the door open, checking the street to make sure it was clear. They stepped out and sprinted through the alley and down the street to another building.
Natalia glanced back at the boy, who followed close behind her as they inched along the side of the building. “Stay alert,” she said, though it was rapidly becoming apparent that he needed few instructions from her in the tactics of guerilla warfare. She turned back and continued on until they had a view of the hospital square.
Thick, greasy smoke from the burning tank drifted across the open area where dozens of hospital patients lay bleeding on the grass among dead Ukrainians. The patients that could walk huddled together in a tight group and stumbled across the lawn toward the street, several of them carrying others on stretchers. Two AK commandos wearing red-and-white armbands ran across the lawn and took up a stretcher. A few local citizens emerged tentatively from the cellars of adjoining buildings and stood watching. A man and woman ran toward the patients. Two others followed, then three more, taking up the stretchers, helping the patients cross the street.