“Almost five,” Adam said as he shook Whitehall’s thick hand and sat down on the straight-backed chair in front of the large wooden desk covered with an array of file folders. Whitehall shuffled back around the desk and plopped heavily into the chair. He seemed much older.
“Had a nice rest?” Whitehall asked, rummaging through the folders. “It was fine.” Adam watched the colonel curiously, wondering what the old man had in store for him this time. As one of the founders of SOE—the Special Operations Executive—Whitehall was a shrewd old war horse appointed by Churchill himself with orders to “set Europe ablaze.”
They’d certainly accomplished that, Adam thought grimly. He’d left behind more than enough corpses to attest to it.
Whitehall found the file he was looking for, flipped through a few papers, then leaned forward, peering over the top of his reading glasses. “Can you guess why you’re here?”
It was the type of mind game Whitehall loved, but Adam had little patience for it. Not now. Not after Warsaw. SOE had financed and directed hundreds of sabotage and covert resistance operations throughout the war but, like everyone else, they had looked the other way when Warsaw was leveled. Now the Germans were gone, and the Russians had moved into Poland—different enemy, equally dangerous. “No, Colonel, I really have no idea,” he said.
Whitehall grunted, removed a sheet of paper from the file and passed it across the desk. Adam picked it up and read the single paragraph.
Sachsenhausen prison camp at Oranienburg, Germany, liberated 22 April, 1945, by Soviet Red Army. Less than 3,000 survivors including, 1,400 women. Most starving and too weak for transport to medical facilities.
“If I remember correctly, that’s where Ludwik Banach was sent after he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939,” Whitehall said.
Ludwik Banach. Hearing his uncle’s name so abruptly after all these years took Adam’s breath away. After a moment he looked at Whitehall, nodding slowly.
Whitehall opened another folder. “A war crimes investigation team is being sent to Berlin to negotiate with the Russians. They want to get into Sachsenhausen as soon as possible. The Americans are taking the lead, along with some of our boys, but the Polish Government-in-Exile here in London wants a representative on the team. I’ve recommended you.”
Adam had been struggling to follow what Whitehall was saying, suddenly consumed with thoughts of his uncle. “I’m sorry… I don’t understand. You want me to join a war crimes investigation team… representing the Polish Government?”
Whitehall lifted his bulky body out of the chair, lumbered across the room and closed the door. When he sat down again, he took back the sheet of paper and closed the file. “Your uncle, Ludwik Banach, was one of the original founders of the AK. He was known under a code name—the Provider—and he set up an information channel several months before the war broke out to smuggle secret German documents to Warsaw, which were, in turn, passed on to us here in London.”
Adam shifted in his chair. He wondered about the code name “Provider,” trying to recall if he’d heard it before. He thought that he had, but where, when? A dozen images flitted through his mind like random puzzle pieces, but nothing clicked.
“I didn’t discuss any of this with you when you arrived here in ’39,” Whitehall said, “because your uncle’s involvement in the AK was known to only a select few within the Polish Government. At the time, you didn’t need to know. Now you do.”
“But what’s all this got to do with a war crimes investigation—?”
Whitehall held up a hand, stopping him. “Here’s something else we know.” He paused for a moment, glancing briefly at another piece of paper. “Last month the government of the Soviet Union invited sixteen of the surviving commanders of the AK to a peace conference in Moscow—then arrested them.”
Adam sat silently. He had heard about the arrests.
“Do you know what became of them?” Whitehall asked.
“I heard they’re locked up in Lubyanka Prison. The whole thing was a sham, a trick to destroy the remaining leadership of the AK.”
Whitehall looked at Adam for a long silent moment, then leaned across the desk. “You’re quite right. The leaders of the AK are now in Russian hands, all of them, the last roadblock in the takeover of Poland by the Russians. All of them, that is, except Ludwik Banach.”
“Banach? My uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen six years ago, Colonel. He’s probably…” Adam’s voice trailed off as he remembered the last time he’d seen his uncle. He was dressed in his best suit and heading off to a “seminar” at the university. He never returned. But that night, before he left, he’d given Whitehall’s name and telephone number to Adam.
“I know how much he meant to you, Adam. And it’s quite possible he didn’t survive. But, then again, perhaps he did. You saw the report, there were survivors.”
Whitehall pushed back from his desk and stood up, a clear signal the meeting was over, the issue decided. “The Polish Government-in-Exile wants a representative on that investigation team,” he said matter-of-factly. “Ludwik Banach is important to them. He’s an icon, symbol of Polish independence and all that, especially now, since the arrest of the other AK leaders. They want to know what happened to him.”
Whitehall stepped around the desk and laid a big hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Sleep on it. We’ll meet tomorrow with one of my staffers, chap named Donavan. He’ll give you the run-down on Sachsenhausen.” Then he cocked his head and looked closely at the thin scar on the side of Adam’s face and his mangled ear. “Nasty wound. That happen in Warsaw?”
Adam nodded.
“Well, could’ve been worse. But we should get those glasses of yours fixed while you’re here.”
Twenty-Five
ADAM DIDN’T GET MUCH SLEEP. He had dinner in his room, drank half a bottle of wine and smoked cigarettes—real ones from a package, instead of the limp and soggy, hand-rolled ones he’d put up with for years, filled with as much sawdust as tobacco. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for most of the night, thinking about Ludwik Banach, the man who had been like a father to him during the first eleven years of his life, the man who had taken him in a second time, years later, and become his teacher and mentor. The man who had given him a family.
And then, in September of 1939, it was all abruptly and brutally torn away. His uncle’s arrest had been part of a sonderaktion, the beginning of the Nazi plan to strip Poland of its professors and teachers, its lawyers and political leaders. At least that’s what Adam had always thought.
But the conversation with Whitehall brought back forgotten details, memories of his uncle that didn’t quite fit the picture Adam had constructed of him. They were just fragments, a few bits and pieces, things that Banach seemed to know when no one else did.
He recalled a conversation in August of ’39 when Banach speculated about the secret treaty between Germany and Russia—a week before it happened. Then, just two days into the war, Banach knew before anyone else that Krakow would not be defended. And, two weeks later, he wasn’t surprised when the Russians attacked.
An “information channel,” Whitehall had called it. And Ludwik Banach, one of the original leaders of the AK, had set it up. That’s why he was arrested. Adam thought again about his uncle’s code name, “the Provider,” almost certain he’d heard it before… but then again…
He lit another cigarette, watching the smoke curl its way toward the ceiling, remembering the moment when he learned of his uncle’s arrest and the cold, ice-blue eyes of the SS officer who delivered the news. Though seething with rage, Adam hadn’t had the opportunity to kill that particular officer at that moment. But in all the years since then he’d sought his vengeance through sabotage and assassinations, forcing every emotion from his heart except pure hatred for his uncle’s murderers. It drove him, it kept him going, and he’d shut out his past.