Free The Katyn Order by Douglas W. Jacobson

“Poland Fights! Poland Fights!”
    And the loudest voice in the group belonged to Falcon, who had started drinking early and now stood unsteadily atop a table, waving a bottle in the air.
    â€œIt’s all over for the fuckin’ Nazis!” he bellowed hoarsely. “They’ll tuck their tails between their legs and run back to their sniveling, knob-kneed Fuhrer!”
    Someone shouted from the center of the room, “Give the bastards hell, Falcon! And the same to the Russians!”
    Falcon spun around and threw both hands in the air, responding with a mighty roar. “The
Russians?
Fuck the Russians! Let them sit on their sorry asses. We don’t—”
    He lost his balance. The vodka bottle flew from his hand, soared across the room and shattered against the phonograph, sending the needle screeching across the record. Falcon staggered once, then fell backward off the table on top of a half dozen men, who all toppled to the floor with loud bursts of profanity and uproarious laughter. Falcon’s friend Pierre helped him to his feet and tried in vain to boost him back on the table.
    Natalia stood in a corner of the room watching the uncouth display, growing more disgusted by the moment. She’d never considered her affair with Falcon anything more than casual. And she’d been losing interest rapidly over the last few weeks as he’d become increasingly possessive. She could still tolerate him when he was sober. But not when he was like this, which was becoming more frequent all the time.
    Some break her friends had given her, Natalia thought. When the table split down the middle and collapsed, she had seen enough. She forced her way through the sweaty mob, climbed the stairs two at a time and pushed open the door.
    Outside, she stood on the cobblestone walkway and took a deep breath, inhaling the cool night air. It was her birthday, but she didn’t feel like celebrating. Her best friend had been badly wounded and, as much as she loathed the Nazis, the sight of desperate men leaping from a burning tower was another in a long list of horrendous images she knew she would carry forever.
    She glanced down the street where a family huddled around a small fire. The father held a stick with a clump of something on the end while two little boys, one wrapped in a blanket on his mother’s lap, stared listlessly at the flames. Smoke wafted up, drifting toward Natalia in the breeze, carrying the pungent odor of horsemeat.
    She turned away and looked in the other direction, then froze as a figure emerged from the shadows of a building across the street. She took a step backward, instinctively reaching into her jacket pocket and gripping her pistol. From inside the pub she heard Falcon’s voice, hoarsely bellowing another curse.
    The figure stepped into the street and came toward her. “Sounds like things are getting pretty wild in there.”
    In the moonlight, Natalia could now make him out: a thin man wearing glasses. “Wolf?” she asked.
    The man motioned toward the raucous party inside the pub. “That sounds like Falcon. Is he always like that?”
    â€œOnly when he drinks . . . He’s . . .” She stopped, conscious of her hand still in her jacket pocket, clutching the pistol. “He’s just someone I . . .” She stopped again, realizing she couldn’t tell him any more. Falcon had been her contact for the documents she smuggled from Krakow. “You and I met once before,” she said, changing the subject, “that day at the hospital square.”
    The man called Wolf took a step closer. “Yes, I know. Are you always that impulsive?”
    â€œThat bastard just shot her . . . like she was . . .” Natalia shuddered as the hideous scene of women being dragged beneath the tank flashed through her mind. “I guess I should thank you. You probably saved my life.”
    Wolf shook his head. “I think Rabbit did that.