Adam looked him in the eye. “No, General, I don’t.”
“Fair enough, at least you’re honest. Well, you can trust me on this. Dmitri Tarnov carried out the murders at Katyn. He did it to curry favor with Commissar Beria, who happens to be his second cousin. But it didn’t work out the way Tarnov had hoped. After it was all over, Beria cut him loose, and Tarnov’s dream of a high-ranking position in the NKVD never materialized.”
Regardless of what Adam thought of Kovalenko’s trustworthiness, there was a look in the general’s eyes that left no doubt what he had just said was true. “Is there any proof?” Adam asked.
“Tarnov wasn’t acting alone, of course. This atrocity was orchestrated at the highest levels of the NKVD. Something of this magnitude required an order—probably signed by Stalin himself and the other members of the Politburo.”
Adam turned to Captain Andreyev. “You think that’s what was in the briefcase? Wouldn’t an order like that be top secret and securely locked away in the Kremlin?”
“Perhaps someone made a copy.” Whitehall chimed in. He addressed Kovalenko: “Tarnov’s woman-friend said he was always boasting about his connections. As a relative of Beria’s he’d know certain people, he’d have access to things normally above his station, wouldn’t you say, General?”
Kovalenko nodded. “It’s possible.”
Adam absently rubbed the numb, razor-thin scar on the side of his face. “Are you suggesting that Tarnov gave a copy of the Katyn Order to Hans Frank? Why would he do that? He’s NKVD. That would be committing suicide.”
“Not if he thought the Germans would win,” Andreyev said.
“Of course!” Whitehall exclaimed. “It makes perfect sense. When the graves at Katyn were discovered, Germany and Russia blamed each other for the murders. Think of the leverage Hans Frank would have had with Hitler if he possessed actual proof that the NKVD conducted the massacre. They were prisoners of war—officers, mind you—murdered in cold blood. Tarnov gave a copy of the Katyn Order to Frank in return for his protection if Germany won the war.”
“But Frank never used the information,” Adam said.
“No, he didn’t,” Andreyev responded. “Frank’s window of opportunity closed a few months later, when the tide turned and we had the Wehrmacht on the run.”
Whitehall nodded. “Quite right, by then Frank would have been preoccupied with saving his own neck—and avoiding capture by the Russians. He couldn’t have risked any connection with that order.”
“So, what did he do with it?” Andreyev asked.
“Obviously, no one knows,” Whitehall said, “not even Tarnov, who must be desperate to get it back.”
“Wait a minute,” Adam cut in. “We’re all just speculating here. The woman just said that Tarnov gave Frank a document. We don’t know for sure what it actually was.”
Kovalenko, who had been silent for the last few minutes, took two long strides to the round wicker table and grabbed the bottle of cognac to pour another drink. Waving the bottle in the air he glared at the group. “Six months ago Tarnov tore apart Hans Frank’s headquarters at Wawel Castle looking for something. And now, since this revelation about Ludwik Banach and Hans Frank, he’s ordered that all of Frank’s records be sealed, as though he’s terrified there’s something he missed. He’s obsessed with trying to find something, and I think we all know what it is.” Kovalenko filled his glass and stepped over to Adam, holding out the bottle. “You’d better have another drink, Mr. Nowak, because Dmitri Tarnov hasn’t yet found what he’s searching for… and now he’s going after your uncle.”
Thirty-Eight
THE NEXT DAY, Adam was summoned back to the estate in Grunewald. It was chilly and overcast, with occasional drizzling rain, a dreary day that matched Adam’s mood. He hadn’t slept well, and not just because of recurring dreams of wide-eyed corpses. Listening to Andreyev play Chopin had re-opened all the wounds of the Warsaw Rising: the hundreds of AK commandos who lost their lives, the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed and maimed, the churches and monuments, the history, the culture of a great city… all destroyed.
And the conversation after last night’s dinner had also gnawed at him all night. Could there actually be a document, a written order, authorizing the secret murder of thousands of Polish officers? And could Tarnov have managed to obtain a copy of that order and given it to Hans Frank? If that were all true, then Dmitri Tarnov was far more desperate—and far more dangerous—than Adam had imagined.
Whitehall was waiting for him in the drawing room, dressed casually in gray flannel slacks and a black cardigan sweater. But the butler still wore a tuxedo as he efficiently served coffee and produced a tray of biscuits and jam. When he left the room, Whitehall said, “We’ve received a message from your contact in Krakow.”
The cup and saucer rattled in Adam’s hand, and he quickly set it on a table before spilling the coffee. Whitehall was still speaking. “I’m sorry,” Adam said. “What did you say?”
“The message was quite short,” Whitehall repeated. “Rather cryptic. It said, ‘Find Adam Nowak. We are not pathetic pawns on the perilous chessboard.’”
Adam stood for a long moment, staring blankly at Whitehall as the message slowly sank in.
Natalia was alive.
He hadn’t dared to believe it, even after he’d given her name to Whitehall. It had been ten months since—
“Adam? Did you hear what I said?” Whitehall asked sharply. “Do you know what it means?”
“I’m sorry… do I know what…?”
“The message, do you know what it means?”
Adam silently repeated the message to himself, Find Adam Nowak. We are not pathetic pawns on the perilous chessboard. “My God, where did she get…? I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I,” Whitehall said. “Of course, I remembered the phrase from the research files on Hans Frank. I was hoping you would know why she would use it?”
“What else was in the message?”
“A code that she needs help.”
“Help? What’s wrong? What kind of help?”
“The code she used suggests that she’s found something important and needs someone to rendezvous with her.”
“When do I leave?”
“It’ll take a bit of doing,” Whitehall said. “We’ll prepare some papers identifying you as an American industrialist doing business with the Russian Army. We’ll get you a letter of authorization from General Kovalenko—”
Adam wasn’t listening. He was consumed by the memory of Natalia sprinting along Dluga Street that last night in Warsaw while he watched from the window.
“Must be some big deal goin’ on,” Whitehall’s driver said as they pulled away from the mansion. “A couple of Russians here last night, now you come back this morning.”
Adam met the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “What Russians?”
The driver laughed. “That’s a good one. You keep associating with the likes of Whitehall, and you won’t remember your own name.”
Adam actually enjoyed the man’s impertinence. With everything on his mind, a few moments of light banter felt good. “You know the old saying, if I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’d have to kill me.” The driver glanced at him in the mirror again. “But you don’t look like the type.”
The driver brought Adam all the way back to his lodgings in Schoenberg. Meinerz was sitting in a wrought-iron chair on the front porch when Adam stepped out of the backseat of the Mercedes. The American colonel looked up from the file he was studying as Adam walked up the steps. “Well, well, riding around in a chauffeured Mercedes. Pretty classy,” he said with a smirk.