Adam and Rabbit repeated the toast, and they all knocked back the potent drink, Rabbit downing his like it was water.
A few minutes later Rabbit crawled back through the window and headed for the sewer in the pouring rain. Bravo led Adam to a corner of the cellar where there was a wash basin, soap and clean towels. A neatly folded pair of trousers and a clean shirt rested on a stool next to the wash basin. “You can wash up and change here,” Bravo said. “Then I suggest you get some sleep. I’ll be back later with some food.”
Eager to get out of his foul-smelling clothing, Adam stripped off his shirt. “When do we leave?”
“After dark, the rendezvous is set for 2100.”
Fifteen
BRAVO RETURNED SHORTLY AFTER SUNSET and prepared a meal of boiled potatoes, cabbage and black bread. Adam had slept until early afternoon and had been pacing anxiously around the damp cellar room ever since, wondering where his pot-bellied host had gone and when, or if, he was returning. But when Adam smelled the warm food, his anxiety abruptly disappeared, and he ate heartily without asking how the man had managed it. Black market dealing was always better left unsaid, and besides, it was the most he’d had to eat in a week.
Shortly after eight o’clock they climbed the stairs to the ground floor and left the building through the rear door. In the darkness, Adam followed the heavyset man across a gravel drive to a dilapidated wooden shed. Bravo pulled open a sheet-metal door, which creaked loudly on rusty hinges, kicked a rock in front of it to keep it open and struck a match.
Adam was taken aback at the sight of a long, sleek Mercedes Benz. “Jesus Christ!” he blurted. “Where the hell did you get that?”
Bravo shook out the match. “It was the staff car of some SS officer prick that got a little careless one night. We spotted it parked down by the river. The officer was in the backseat fuckin’ some woman while his driver, dumb shit that he was, sat in the front reading a magazine with a flashlight. A few quick shots, and we had ourselves a nice vehicle, complete with the appropriate uniforms. We didn’t even get a lot of blood on the seats.”
Adam clapped Bravo on the shoulder, slipped on the SS officer’s coat and hat, and climbed in the backseat.
Bravo pulled on the driver’s coat, which was a tight fit, squeezed behind the wheel and brought the auto’s powerful engine roaring to life. “You’d better keep down,” he said, as he eased the Mercedes out of the shed. “The first kilometer is the most dangerous, while we’re still in AK territory. Most of the regular commandos in this sector know about the car. But in all the chaos, new ones are coming and going every day, and this thing’s a hell of a target.”
“Christ, that’s just great,” Adam grumbled as he slumped low in the backseat, contemplating the irony of getting killed by his fellow commandos after managing to survive four years of warfare.
“Ah, we’ll probably be fine,” Bravo said and stomped on the accelerator, sending a shower of gravel and rocks in all directions as the long, black motorcar bolted forward. “Let’s go find some fuckin’ Russians!”
Though darkness was on their side, Bravo drove dangerously fast, screeching around corners and dodging piles of debris. The big car sped down the broad thoroughfares of Nowy Swiat and Wazdowskie Avenue, then made a hard left turn and shot past an AK barricade near Lazienki Park. Bravo shouted out the window at the surprised commandos, “Poland fights! Poland fights!”
A few minutes later they emerged “safely” into a German-held section of the Mokotow District. Bravo slowed down as they continued on, waving occasionally at groups of Wehrmacht soldiers, SS troopers and the ever-present conscripted Ukrainians, who huddled near their own bonfires, drinking schnapps and eating tinned sausage, waiting for dawn and another day of stomping out the Polish insurgency.
Adam sat up straight, adjusted his cap and looked out the rear window at the enemy soldiers, wondering what they thought. Did they think it was worth it, wasting all this time, ammunition and their own lives to obliterate a city that was already lost? They had to know that every day they stayed here, they came closer to being surrounded and obliterated themselves by the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops camped just a few kilometers away on the other side of the river. Adam knew the Germans were famous for following orders, but this was a death wish, imposed on them by the lunacy of their Fuhrer. He sighed and slumped back in the soft leather seat and rubbed his temples. It all depended on the Russians, and whether or not they would finally decide to enter Warsaw and help the AK end this madness. And that, Adam guessed, he would find out soon enough.
They drove south along the broad, tree-lined avenues of the Mokotow District. The vast expanse of parks and open areas, stately mansions and modern, upper-class apartments—only a few of which showed any evidence of the conflict raging in other parts of the city—passed like a mirage outside the Mercedes’ windows. It seemed another world from the brutal chaos of the City Center or Old Town, though no one was on the streets save for German soldiers. Most of the windows were dark and there were no lights anywhere. Adam guessed that the civilians in the area, if they hadn’t yet taken to their cellars, were lying low.
As they continued south from Mokotow through the Wilanow District—the summer residence of Poland’s kings—Adam remembered coming there for the first time as a boy with his uncle. They had toured the section of Wilanow Palace that had been turned into a museum. Though it was too dark to see any of it now, he recalled the Asian artwork hanging in parquet rooms the size of most houses, the vast gardens and marble fountains. He had especially loved the ornately sculpted sundial relief on the palace’s south wall and Uncle Ludwik’s patient explanation of how it worked.
Eventually the broad streets turned into gravel lanes winding through orchards and farm fields, past wooden barns and thatched-roof cottages. When they drove through the last German checkpoint well south of Wilanow, Bravo waved to the weary-looking Wehrmacht soldiers without even slowing down.
“Do you have enough petrol?” Adam asked. There was precious little available in Warsaw to anyone except the Germans.
“The tank was full when we got the car,” Bravo said with a shrug. “We’ve got enough for this trip. After that, who knows? Hell, we’ll probably all be dead in a few weeks anyway.”
Twenty minutes later they arrived at a dusty crossroads with a thatched-roof farmhouse on one corner and a tidy brick church on the other. Bravo turned left onto a rutted, dirt road, overgrown with grass, and headed east toward the Vistula River. After another few minutes, he rounded a curve, and the auto’s headlight beams illuminated the rendezvous point.
Bravo brought the auto to a stop, and Adam leaned forward, looking through the windshield. It was an abandoned barge dock, nothing more than a cracked and buckled concrete pier extending perhaps ten meters into the river. Ancient truck tires hung from chains attached to rotted wood posts, and the rusted-out hulk of what was most likely the last barge sat mired in the muck. The night air was heavy with the odor of dead fish and rotting algae.
Bravo turned around. “Well, this is as far as I go,” he said quietly. The big man’s good-natured bluster was now replaced with a note of concern. He reached over and clasped Adam’s hand. “I’ll be right here tomorrow night at this same time. I hope you are too.”
Adam nodded silently and stepped out of the car.
As the tail lights of the Mercedes disappeared around the bend, Adam started down the rutted road toward the barge dock, his right hand resting on the butt of the Walther P-38 strapped to his waist. Colonel Stag had assured him that the Russians knew he was an American and were prepared to receive him, but when Adam spotted the three figures emerging from the shadows, he tightened his grip on the pistol.