Natalia sighed and turned away from the castle, following the route she had taken dozens of times over the years, through the tree-lined paths of the Planty park then along a labyrinth of narrow, Medieval streets where the rich ensemble of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture remained unscathed by the war that had ravaged the rest of the country.
The Stare Miasto was crowded at this hour, but subdued. There were few vehicles, and pedestrians avoided conversation with strangers, averting their glances as they’d been conditioned to do through the long, dark period of occupation. The shops had little to sell, the cafés offered only a few meager selections and the hundreds of churches were mostly empty under the atheist influence of the communist occupier.
Natalia continued on, moving briskly, avoiding eye contact. She made her way along the boulevards bordering the Vistula River to the Kazimierz District, once a separate city and for three hundred years the home of Krakow’s Jewish quarter. It was a familiar route, a familiar city, remarkably undamaged yet inexorably altered, its royal soul deadened.
Twenty minutes later, in the heart of Kazimierz, Natalia walked down a long narrow street, lined with stone walls on either side, and entered the courtyard of the Church of Archangel Michael and Saint Stanislaus. A rose garden was in full bloom, and an elderly man hunched over, clipping grass at the base of a towering oak tree. The tree shaded a rectangular pond with a granite statute of the saint at its center.
Natalia wore stout shoes and dark trousers, a white long-sleeved shirt and a gray vest. Along with her felt hat and short brown hair, she could be taken for a man by a casual observer, which was safer than a woman alone. But caution was a habit, and she turned away from the elderly man.
She glanced at her watch. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. And it was the sixth of June, a Wednesday. She paused for a moment, studying the red-brick church building with its twin towers and high-peaked tile roof, then slowly climbed the curved, limestone staircase. With her cap folded under her arm she entered the gloomy sanctuary.
There was a faint odor of incense in the air, and she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust. Then she knelt, made the sign of the cross and slipped into the last pew on the right, the one closest to the confessional in the rear of the sanctuary. There were several people ahead of her, and she withdrew a rosary from her pocket. She closed her eyes, absently fingering the beads, thinking about the extraordinary message that had brought her back here.
It had arrived on her last day at the AK safe house in Zyrardow. The NKVD had been closing in, investigating the shooting of the two agents, and it was time to move on. Zeeka had made contact with another AK cell in Lodz and had sent Hammer and Rabbit on ahead. But as Natalia and Zeeka were gathering their things, the AK wireless operator came down from the attic with a message.
“From Lodz?” Zeeka asked.
The wireless operator shook his head. “It’s from SOE in London. It was sent several days ago, but it was routed through three different cells before I got it.” He handed Natalia the message. “It’s for you.”
“From the SOE in London? Are you sure it’s for me?”
“It’s addressed to ‘The Conductor’ and that’s you,” he said with a shrug.
Natalia hesitated then unfolded the paper and read the decoded message:
Avoiding trains and keeping to the back roads and small villages, it had taken Natalia a week to get to Krakow. She had traveled first with Zeeka as far as Lodz, where she parted with her friends and comrades-in-arms. Rabbit had wanted to go with her, but whatever awaited her in Krakow, Natalia knew that she had to do this alone.
She had no idea why SOE wanted to locate the Provider. She had never even known there was a connection between the two. During her years acting as a courier, she’d never met the Provider. It was just a name, someone in the channel who passed documents to the priest, or to someone in between. She really didn’t know; she didn’t need to know. All she had ever needed to know was to kneel at the confessional in this church between one and two o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
But why would SOE contact her? She hadn’t been an active part of the channel since she left for Warsaw at the start of the Rising, almost a year ago. Why now? Why me? She had no idea. But it was an assignment, and it was not her place to question it. She had been instructed to locate the Provider. And this was the only place to start.
A woman sitting on Natalia’s left nudged her elbow, indicating that it was her turn. Natalia took a deep breath, then stood up, and stepped around a marble pillar and over to the confessional. It was an enclosure of rich mahogany wood, a bit larger than a telephone booth, with a peaked roof and adorned with intricately carved scrollwork. A slatted wooden screen allowed the penitent to communicate with the priest waiting inside. Natalia knelt on the velvet-padded kneeler and whispered into the screen, “In the name of our Lord, I come seeking.”
There was a moment of silence. Then a voice from the other side whispered back, “Whom do you seek, my child?”
Natalia paused before responding, her tension momentarily relieved at the familiar voice and the customary words. “I seek the one who has provided us with so much.”
“It has been a long time,” the voice said.
“A difficult time,” Natalia answered.
When the voice spoke again there was a slight tremor. “The Provider is no longer among us.”
Natalia’s stomach tightened as she stared at the wooden screen. She swallowed hard, carefully choosing her next words. “Did he leave anything for me?”
Another moment of silence. Then the voice said, “This afternoon, five o’clock, Dietla and Stradomska. Get on the tram for Stare Miasto.”
The tram was crowded, and Natalia had to stand. The priest sat on the right side of the car, a newspaper folded under his arm. When they reached the first stop in the Stare Miasto District, the priest got up and pushed his way through the crowd. Natalia followed him out of the car.
As they walked toward the Rynek Glowny, Natalia waited for the priest to say something, but he was silent. He was a thin, severe-looking man in his sixties with sharp, chiseled features and an imperious manner that Natalia had at first found intimidating. In later years she had little patience for the man’s haughty nature and had rarely spoken with him outside of the confessional.
“What happened to the Provider?” she finally asked.
The priest remained silent, walking briskly, staring straight ahead.
“Is he alive?”
The priest slowed his pace and glanced at her. His face, partially hidden under his black, wide-brimmed hat, was pale, his eyes blank and distant. “He’s gone.”
“Gone where? When?”
“I don’t know. The day before the Russians arrived, he was just… gone.”
They entered the Rynek Glowny, an enormous cobblestone square surrounded by church spires, Medieval merchant halls and former residences of Krakow’s elite. They found a table at an outdoor café where they tried to order tea but had to settle for bitter, ersatz coffee. While they exchanged small talk about the weather, Natalia glanced at the folded newspaper which the priest had laid on the table. Inside would be an address handwritten in the margin.
The priest finished his coffee, his dull eyes darting around the busy market square. He whispered, “God be with you, my child.” Then he stood and walked away.