Beyond the Call Page 10

  The two agents gave Robert an intensive, efficient briefing. Completely free of the camaraderie and military etiquette of his previous briefings, it was nothing but business: straight and concise. There wasn’t the time, nor were there the facilities, for any kind of practical training, so their advice had to be sufficient. They instructed him on contact procedures and codes, providing him with a basic system of communications protocols which he had to memorize there and then. They advised him on outdoor survival and gave him tips on fieldcraft. He believed that his upbringing ought to equip him for the job – all those winter weekends spent deer-hunting in the Pennsylvania hills had given him an understanding of outdoor living. What was entirely new to him was the instructions on avoiding pursuit, throwing off a tail, and most crucially of all, how not to get yourself killed.

  Above all, he was told, the most important thing was not to antagonize the Soviets, especially not the NKVD. And if he sensed that he had antagonized them, he should on no account accept any kind of hospitality or transportation from them. There were all kinds of hazards in an occupied zone that had recently been a combat area, and it was only too easy to explain away a sudden death as an accident or the work of German agents. Robert’s passport made him immune to arrest, but all the more vulnerable therefore to murder.

  Robert didn’t sleep well when he eventually hit his bunk that night. His mind kept going back to his talk with Colonel Helton at Debach, and the scale of the lie they’d both been told. So much for being ‘safely out of the combat zone’. He wondered if there was any way out of it, any reason or excuse he could give that would make it clear that he couldn’t possibly undertake this mission, that they’d got the wrong man. But everything that made him unsuitable – the fact that he was a pilot, not a spy, his lack of familiarity with the country and its politics – made him precisely the man they needed.

  His course was set.

  IN FRONT of the brick gatehouse, the road crossed over the railroad just before the track ran in under the larger of the two archways. The jeep bumped over the sunken rails and followed the road through the smaller arch, waved past by the Russian sentries standing by.

  What Robert saw inside that place would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  He knew what the camps here had been used for. Everyone knew about Majdanek, and this appeared to be more of the same. And yet Auschwitz had attracted little attention in the Western press since its liberation – it was just ‘another Majdanek’, and was overshadowed in the news by coverage of the Yalta Conference.23 Few people had seen it with their own eyes. What was unprecedented about this place was its sheer scale. The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was vast. Beyond the gatehouse, the road and the rail tracks ran on and on, straight as a die, the tracks dividing to straddle a long station platform. On either side, behind more layers of barbwire fencing, stood rank upon rank of barracks buildings. A few appeared to have burned down, but most were standing, hundreds of them in rows that stretched out to the left and right and marched away into the far distance.

  There had been a thaw here lately; the snow was thin on the ground and turning to slush, adding to the air of grim, gray misery that pervaded the place. The jeep drove slowly on. It was hard to believe that this camp was just one part of a complex of dozens of camps that had sprouted in this corner of Poland like a malignant infection.

  For Robert, Auschwitz-Birkenau remained in his memory as a collection of disjointed images. The shed where bodies, thin to their bones, naked, frozen stiff, were piled up, spilling out of the broken door – prisoners who had died of starvation, whose corpses the SS hadn’t had time to destroy in their retreat. In another building Robert saw stacks of cans with bright red-and-yellow labels. The initial impression that this was a store of canned food was dispelled by the skull-and-crossbones symbol on the labels.

  Robert picked one up. ‘Giftgas!’ the label said, and ‘Zyklon’. He asked Maiya to translate the label. ‘Giftgas means poison gas,’ she said. ‘This here is saying, “To be only opened and used by experienced persons.”’ There was a manufacturer’s logo on the other side, beneath which was a warning that the product was authorized for use only in regions of the Reich east of the Elbe River, in Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and Sudetenland. The Nazis who had been captured and interrogated were claiming that the gas was used for disinfecting the inmates’ clothing. But as Maiya told Robert, its true purpose was the extermination of human beings. They went to look at the place where it had been done.

  Screened by birch groves at the far end of the camp stood the remains of the ‘crematoria’, the death houses where victims had been gassed, hundreds at a time, and their corpses burned. The SS had tried to destroy the evidence; the ‘Krema’ buildings had been half-demolished and set on fire. Reduced to slabs of broken concrete and brick, the gas chambers lay open to the sky and the sleet. Scattered about were more of the yellow-and-red-labeled canisters, open and empty.

  It was almost unbelievable that there were still people living in the camp, nearly three weeks after its liberation. Thousands of inmates had chosen to stay behind when the others were force-marched westward by the Nazis, and the SS squads had only had time to murder about 600 before fleeing the approaching Russians.

  Just a few hundred people now remained in the barracks blocks, those too sick or scared to be moved. After liberating the camp, the Soviets had done all they could to alleviate the suffering of the thousands of survivors. Red Army medical teams, together with the Polish Red Cross, had set up a hospital in the main labor camp, in the town of Auschwitz itself, where the buildings were larger and more suitable for the purpose. Even now, a convoy of horse-drawn carts was taking weakened inmates, living skeletons bundled up in blankets, down the main road through the Birkenau camp, heading for the hospital.

  The Russian doctors and the Red Cross had saved many, but others were beyond help. There had been 7,650 survivors in the Auschwitz complex when the Red Army arrived on 27 January. By 6 February, only 4,880 were still alive. Many left of their own accord, hoping to get home. Hundreds died, mostly of exhaustion.24 Some were killed by kindness; Russian troops in the front line sent gifts of food to the camps, on which the starving survivors gorged themselves, and died.25 Conditions were almost indescribable; shortly after the liberation, a thaw set in, and the thousands of frozen bodies began to rot.26

  By the time Robert viewed Auschwitz-Birkenau, the cold had resumed, and the worst was past, but it left him with images that would live in his nightmares for decades to come.

  In all of his guided tour, Robert heard little mention of the Jews. As with Majdanek, the Soviets affected not to recognize that the mass murder had been focused primarily on the destruction of the Jewish race. The Communist view was that the camps represented the ultimate obscenity of fascism and capitalism: an industrial system which incarcerated and murdered its workers.27

  But it could not be denied that the Soviet authorities had reacted promptly, efficiently, and humanely to the plight of the thousands of prisoners. Was it possible that American fears for their liberated POWs were misplaced? Might the Russians actually honor their obligations?

  Robert didn’t know. But when he got back aboard the jeep for the return journey to Kraków, he felt a grim resolve that had been absent since his briefing at Poltava. His lingering feeling that this mission wasn’t for him, that they had chosen the wrong man, had dissipated. Whatever happened, he would do whatever he could to save his fellow men from suffering, and to bring them to safety and freedom.

  ON THE SAME day that Captain Trimble visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, three American ex-prisoners of war arrived at the US Embassy in Moscow, having made an extraordinary journey on foot and by train across Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia. The three officers told their story to an amazed General Deane.28

  They had been in Oflag 64, a camp for officers at Szubin in western Poland, liberated on 21 January. With no help from the Red Army, the three officers had traveled by themselve
s, and encountered hundreds of fellow Americans, all wandering, all wary of going to the camp that the Soviets were said to have established at Rembertów. Dodging the NKVD, the three officers headed for Moscow. They were the first ex-POWs to tell their stories in full to the American authorities. From them came the first detailed eyewitness testimony of the Russian failure to honor their obligations to Allied prisoners of war.

  Soon, more and more stories began to filter through: stories of neglect, stories of abuse. Liberated prisoners had been fired on by Russian troops, robbed, herded with captured Germans; sick POWs had been force-marched along with their comrades, and hundreds were abandoned in the wilds of Poland or incarcerated in squalid camps.

  It seemed that in the Soviet mind, the victims of fascist capitalism formed one category; soldiers who had surrendered to the enemy were still firmly in an entirely different one, a category for which no human sympathy was reserved.

  Chapter 6

  RUNNING WITH THE BIRD DOGS

  FEBRUARY 1945: SOMEWHERE IN SOUTH-EAST POLAND

  THE ATMOSPHERE INSIDE the little stone-built barn was one of aching cold infused with the sour smell of damp, filthy clothing and unwashed bodies, almost strong enough to override the animal odors of the livestock. For the two dozen men who had taken up residence in it, the barn was better than being outdoors in this cruel weather, where the wind could cut to the bone; and if the rumors were true, it was better than being under the care of the Russians.

  Some of the men lay sleeping uneasily on the straw; others sat huddled against the walls, wrapped tight in their greatcoats, swaddled in rough blankets, with mufflers and hoods made from woollen rags, anything that could provide a layer of protection against the sub-zero temperature. There was warmth as well as a feeling of security in numbers, and men who had been utter strangers until a week ago bonded like old friends. The instinct for comradeship that had kept each of them going in combat now held them together in adversity.

  The men, mostly Americans, had come from Stalags III-C in eastern Germany and XX-A in the north of Poland, both liberated by the Red Army at the end of January.1 Of the thousands of prisoners set loose, with hardly any aid from their liberators and nowhere else to go, many had hidden out in the local countryside for a while and then returned to the camps, desperate for shelter.2 Hundreds of others, without food or transport, were force-marched by the Russians to towns and villages away from the front line, then abandoned there.3 They were told to make their own way to Warsaw, where they would be collected for repatriation. Warsaw was more than 200 miles away.

  The bolder spirits struck out right away. A tiny handful made it out of Poland all the way to Moscow, or to the American outpost at Poltava. Hundreds were diverted from town to town, trying to get aid from the Soviet authorities and find some way home. Eventually they ended up in camps that the Russians had set up in cities such as Lublin, Lwów, and Rembertów, where they were kept under guard in unspeakable squalor, worse than the prison camps they had come from, without heating or sanitation and on starvation rations.4 In some cases they were subjected to prolonged interrogation by Soviet NKVD officers.5

  As small groups and pairs of ex-POWs drifted through Poland, news and rumors spread among them. Already, many were wary of venturing into the towns or coming into contact with Russian troops. They took refuge in small villages and farms, where they found Polish citizens willing to give them shelter and what little food they could spare.

  Twenty-three of them had gathered in this small barn. They were a burden on the farmer, who attempted to feed them but couldn’t provide more than a fraction of what they needed. They were also a potential danger to him. If the NKVD found out that Poles had sheltered foreigners, who could potentially be spies, they could face serious trouble.

  Day followed day, and the men in the barn grew colder and weaker. A few had fallen sick. Sooner or later they would have to make the decision to give themselves up to the Russians. Each time it was discussed, they decided to wait a little longer. Perhaps some miracle would happen. Surely the American or British authorities must come for them soon, to take them out of this purgatory? The men hunkered down, huddled together, and waited.

  ROBERT WAS WOKEN by a gunshot. He lurched upright, gasping for breath, the loud bang echoing through his skull.

  For a second he couldn’t think where he was, or why, but then it came back to him. The pleasant dark tones of the Victorian furniture, aglow with polish, the ornate wallpaper, and the soft bed under him. He was in his room at the Hotel George in the Polish city of Lwów. Arriving late in the evening, dog-tired, he’d fallen asleep across the bed, half-undressed.

  He looked blearily at his watch. Eleven o’clock. The gunshot was still reverberating in his head. He must have dreamt it, though he couldn’t recall any dream. He stood up to finish undressing, and was startled out of his skin by another bang – as loud as if it were in the room with him. This time it was unmistakable – the sharp report of a rifle, echoing in the street outside. It was followed by raised voices, and laughter.

  Edging back the curtain, he peeked out. At first he couldn’t see anything alarming, just a couple of Russian soldiers loitering near some trash cans on the sidewalk below. One of them was holding his rifle in the crook of his arm, and both men were looking at the trash cans and laughing. By the dim glow of a nearby window, Robert could see something in one of the cans: something that seemed to be moving. With a cold, creeping horror, he realized that the thing was a person. A woman.

  She had been forced into the trash can, with her upper body and lower legs sticking out the top. The soldiers were taking turns to swig from a bottle, and chatted idly, occasionally directing a taunt at the woman. She struggled weakly and moaned, but all she got in return was more abuse. She appeared to be naked from the waist down, and there were wounds visible where she’d been hit by rifle shots.

  Trembling – either with horror or fear, he couldn’t tell which – Robert reached for the washstand, where he’d left his belt; he unclipped the holster and drew out his Colt. Glancing out the window, he saw that the two soldiers had been joined by a third, who shared in their little party. Robert looked up and down the street. There was nobody about. There was a curfew, and citizens weren’t allowed out after seven in the evening. Did he dare to intervene? It was unthinkable. Even if he survived – one pistol against three rifles – what would the consequences be for his mission, for all the souls depending on him? Not to mention all the organization and secrecy that had brought him here. The sights he had seen at Auschwitz flashed into his head (they were hovering on the edge of his thoughts constantly). Would he have raised a hand to stop that happening, if he’d had the chance? He gripped the Colt, his finger trembling on the guard, and tried to force himself to act. He had to do something, didn’t he, no matter what?

  The decision was taken for him. One of the soldiers raised his submachine gun and fired a short burst. The woman jerked, and then was still. The soldiers went back to their liquor bottle.

  Robert stepped back from the window, shaking from head to foot, and sat down heavily on the bed. After a moment, he realized that he was still gripping the Colt. He laid it aside.

  Again he found himself wondering what the hell kind of world he had come to. The boy in Rostov, the horrors of the Nazi camp, and now this.

  He wouldn’t be sleeping anymore that night, so he sat for a while, regaining control of himself. Then he went back to what he’d been doing before dozing off. Laid on the nightstand were some slips of paper on which he’d noted down the messages he’d already begun receiving from the OSS agents out in the field. He picked them up. Forcing himself to concentrate in spite of the scene he’d just witnessed, which kept replaying itself in front of his eyes, he read through the messages again, separating out the originals from the decoded versions he’d been working on.

  The system was simple enough. With no way to maintain direct contact, the agents communicated their intelligence bulletins to him via Mosco
w. Robert had been given a phone number which put him through to an office at the US Embassy. Once he had checked in and confirmed his identity, the voice (he had no idea who the person was, or what position they occupied) dictated the information. He then had to decode the message, which was designed to appear routine or trivial. It wasn’t an ideal way to communicate, but it was all they had.

  He was under observation most of the time. The George, like most hotels in Soviet territory, was owned by the Intourist organization, the USSR’s state travel agency, which was run from Moscow by the NKVD.6 He had been advised to use it as his headquarters. It was commonly used by Americans on salvage missions, so he could be reached easily there, and the Russians were comfortable with the arrangement.

  The seemingly uninteresting, apparently routine communiqués from Moscow contained vital information on POW numbers, locations, and rendezvous points.7 Armed with the information, it was up to Robert to do the rest.

  To help him, he’d been supplied with money. A lot of money. It was stashed in a special vest worn under his jacket, an uncomfortable garment with multiple pockets that he would grow to loathe as his mission progressed. It had given him a shock earlier that evening when he’d shut himself in his room (the first time he’d been alone since leaving Poltava) and taken the vest off. Opening one of the pockets, he found a wad of bills, so fresh they had to be peeled apart. Opening a couple more pockets and adding it all up, he figured the vest contained about 10,000 dollars’ worth. A disturbingly large sum to carry around in a violent, seemingly lawless place like this.