The Katyn Order Read Online Free PDF

earlier, the one who stood apart from the group. He was slightly built, but in a wiry, rugged sort of way, with thinning hair. He wore glasses—
    â€œNatalia?”
    â€œWhat?”
    Falcon leaned close. “I said we should go.”
    She nodded.
    The man called Wolf looked directly at her; their eyes met for an instant, then he turned away and headed for the door.
    The meeting was breaking up, but Natalia remained in her chair, staring at the doorway.
    Falcon put a hand on Natalia’s shoulder and squeezed. “Wolf?” he whispered. “You know him?”
    Natalia shook her head. “No . . . I don’t.” She managed a thin smile. “It’s nothing. Let’s go.”
    Adam sat on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette in his tiny third-floor room overlooking the square in Warsaw’s Old Town. The briefing had ended an hour ago, and he was mulling over some details of tomorrow’s mission when his thoughts drifted to the young woman wearing a railway conductor’s uniform who’d been sitting across the room next to Falcon. The uniform must be a cover, allowing her to travel safely from Krakow to Warsaw. He’d heard that someone was making that run—an AK operative in Krakow, an undercover courier who’d been smuggling Nazi documents for years.
    Adam realized he had seen her once before, a few days earlier, in the midst of the battle at the hospital when she had run into the street to rescue one of the women who’d been dragged under the tank. She was petite and rather plain, not remarkable in any way. Yet, there was something . . .
    He shook his head to clear away the distraction. What did it matter? Nothing mattered except the mission. That’s the way it had been for years, just the mission, no distractions, no connections, nothing—just the killing. And that was fine with him. The killing was what mattered. It pushed everything else into a dark corner of his mind and kept things simple. Just the way he wanted it, one single emotion to keep him focused: revenge . . . simple, uncomplicated revenge.
    Adam stared at the glowing end of the cigarette for several long moments. Then he stubbed it out and reached under the bed. He pulled out a leather briefcase, unlocked it and removed the surveillance report on SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Heisenberg.
    â€¢ • •
    Natalia was still wide awake. She rolled over and tilted the brass clock on the nightstand so it caught the moonlight streaming in the window. It was two o’clock. On the cot next to her in the tiny second-floor bedroom, her friend Berta slept soundly. Natalia sat up and stretched. Falcon had wanted her to come home with him last night, but he had started drinking right after the briefing ended and it soon turned ugly. Someone shoved him and he shoved back. There was a fist fight, broken bottles and bleeding noses. He apologized, but she put him off. He was drunk, she was tired, and it wouldn’t have meant anything, so why bother?
    Frustrated, Natalia got out of bed, grabbed her coat from the back of a chair and slipped quietly from the bedroom, pulling the curtain closed behind her. She tip-toed down the creaky stairs, stepped carefully around a dozen women commandos asleep on cots jammed into the parlor of the vacant apartment. Formerly occupied by a tailor and his family, who had fled the city, the apartment was an unusual affair with a parlor, kitchen and bathroom on one floor, and a small bedroom upstairs. It was situated above the ground-floor tailor shop and was one of only a few residential apartments—now all vacant—in the five-story office building on Trebacka Street in the City Center, north of Pilsudski Square.
    Natalia made her way to the cramped, white-tiled kitchen and rummaged through her coat pockets until she found a leftover cigarette. She lit it and sat at the round, wooden table, staring out the dirt-streaked window at a rubble pile—all that remained