Beyond the Call (29 page)

When they got up to leave, the women's eyes were aglow with excitement. They looked at Robert as if he were a combination of Galahad and Cary Grant; it was an effort to maintain his officer-like bearing while they smothered his face with kisses. Amid this cloud of bliss, Robert's sensible side was just thankful that he hadn't been followed – this little scene would have made any bird dog suspicious.

While her friends treated him like a hero, Isabelle gazed seriously at him: the same appraising look she'd given him on that first evening at the hotel. ‘
Demain
,' she murmured, ‘
nous verrons bien
. Tomorrow we shall see.' Then suddenly she smiled, reached up to him, and kissed him softly on both cheeks. ‘
Adieu
,' she said. And then, chivvying her friends ahead of her, she was gone, the door swinging shut behind them.

It was the last he ever saw of any of them.

J
ÓZEF WAS BREWING
coffee in the back office when he was startled by a violent rapping of knuckles on the ticket window.

Muttering a curse against impatient travelers, he ambled through. At first he wasn't at all surprised by the sight of a Soviet officer, backed by two armed soldiers. Russians were hardly an uncommon sight in the station, and the officers could often be imperious. But this one did look particularly stern. To a Pole who had lived through the Soviet rule and the Nazi regime, the sight of an irate man in uniform with urgent business was worrying. There was a fourth man with them – a nondescript civilian in workman's clothes. Józef didn't know it, but he was the very man who had followed Captain Trimble out of the station earlier that morning.

This looked bad; Józef had visions of the Brygidki prison, and of himself lying dead in some backstreet.

The officer ordered him to open the door. He obeyed instantly, and all four men came into the office. ‘Where is the coat the American officer left here?' the Russian officer snapped. Józef indicated the parka, still hanging on the chair where he had left it. The officer seized it and searched it, turning out all the pockets, feeling inside the sleeves and the lining, under the fur collar.

Nothing. The officer directed a short burst of angry Russian at the civilian informer, who shrugged and muttered something about having seen what he had seen and come as quickly as he could. No, he didn't know where the American had gone. He only had one pair of legs.

Throwing down the coat, the officer turned to the terrified Józef and uttered the words every Pole most dreaded to hear: ‘You are coming with us.'

T
HE WORD SPREAD
from farm to farm, from village to remote homestead – wherever the Frenchwomen had found refuge, the news came. Deliverance was at hand.

In ones and twos, in small groups and large bands, the women gathered their few belongings and, saying farewell to the kind Polish families who had sheltered them, took to the roads in the fading light of dusk. They passed unseen across fields, through isolated copses and along country lanes.

Arriving first at the woodland rendezvous, Isabelle and her friends watched their countrywomen congregate, chattering excitedly in lowered voices. There were greetings and snatches of song and laughter.

Would it all be worthwhile? Would the American honor his word? Those few who had met him were confident he would, and others just had faith that their fortunes must change. But they all knew that the American's word and his honor might not be enough. There was also skill and cunning to reckon up, not to mention luck. The NKVD was a dangerous opponent.

The women settled down to wait through the long, cold night.

R
OBERT WOKE WITH
a sense of dread.
I'm crazy
, he thought, wondering, not for the first time, what he'd got himself into. How had he ever imagined he could pull off a stunt like this? Four hundred women? Crazy, completely insane.

He went over the plan again and again in his mind. Was there anything he could have done differently? Countless things, probably, but he couldn't think of them, other than to tell Isabelle
No
right at the start. Well, that had been out of the question. Beneath the anxiety, Robert was conscious of a sense of joy at the thought of setting all those women free. The same feeling he had about all his missions, but this was an extra-large slice of it.

When he looked at it cold, he knew he'd done the best he could in the time available – much like all his activities since coming to this country. If it wasn't enough – why, he'd told them all along that he was an airman and a soldier, not a spy. He'd said those very words to Colonel Hampton, back at Poltava on the day he arrived, when they sprung their big surprise on him. (Had that really been less than two months ago?)

Robert went down to the dining room for breakfast. He was determined to resist the urge to go out to the train station. There was no need. He'd set his plan in motion; it was out of his hands now. He absolutely didn't need to go there, no matter how much his curiosity urged him to.

He kept this up for about an hour. Then he put on his hat and jacket (regretting the parka he'd sacrificed the day before) and set out on foot for the station. He had to know whether any problems had arisen, or if there was any news of the outcome.

When he was still making his way along the station avenue, he began to get a sense that something wasn't right. Drawing closer, he noticed that there seemed to be a few more Russian soldiers in front of the station than was normal. They also looked more alert than usual. Robert was already feeling the sinking weight in his stomach when he walked into the station concourse and saw even more soldiers – there must have been a full platoon of them – guarding the ticket office, the
waiting room, the dining hall, and the platform entrances, detaining people and questioning them.

Before he'd even had a chance to take in the scene, Robert was confronted by a Soviet captain. He reeked of NKVD and seemed to recognize Robert on sight.

‘You are Captain Robert Trimble, of the American Eastern Command from Poltava?' he said in English.

Fighting down the sick sensation, Robert acknowledged that he was and produced his passport. While the Russian studied it, Robert glanced at the ticket office; there was a different face behind the glass, no sign of Józef. Gathering up his indignation, Robert demanded to know the meaning of this inconvenience. ‘I am an authorized representative of the United States Military Mission and Eastern Command. You have no right to—'

‘I have every right,' the Russian captain interrupted, ‘to detain and question foreign persons who are suspected of giving aid to possible anti-Soviet spies in the territories governed by the forces of the Soviet Union. I have evidence that you are assisting four hundred such persons to leave Poland, without submitting them to the relevant authorities for screening.'

Now Robert knew for certain that they had got to Józef. This possibility had been discussed, and they had agreed that Józef should not attempt to resist interrogation. He should admit to the number of tickets and the arrangements for payment, but claim ignorance of anything else. Robert could only pray that the Russians hadn't taken the interrogation further, because the thought of Józef resisting torture was as bad as the thought of him spilling the whole plan.

The captain had no power to arrest Robert, but he detained him at the station while his men conducted their searches. The one thing that gave Robert hope was the fact that they seemed to expect the passengers to arrive here. They must have a low opinion of his intelligence. Sometimes it was good to be thought a fool.

Hour followed hour. Robert heard the familiar railroad sounds echoing through the halls – arrivals, departures, freight cars being
shunted in the huge marshaling yard next to the station. It was impossible to tell which of them was the incoming train from Przemyśl, bound for Odessa. He knew the Soviet captain had men up on the platforms, detaining and boarding every train in the hope of finding illicit passengers in it. If the Russian was smart, he'd detain every train for the next 24 hours, or send them all out filled with NKVD guards.

Robert looked at his watch, and wondered how Isabelle was.

F
REEDOM HELD ITS
breath …

Outside the city, once it had shaken itself clear of the suburbs, the main rail line cut across the vast, gently rolling farmlands and flat marshes, taking a great sweep eastward before turning south-east toward the Ukraine and Odessa. About ten miles out from Lwów, it passed through a mile-long stretch of woodland. Shallow banks of scrub grass and bushes rose on either side of the track, and met a dense tree line. Hidden among the pines on the slope above the tracks, shivering in the bitter cold, was Isabelle.

She and her friends had been hiding, keeping their anxious vigil, all through the freezing night, waiting for deliverance or disaster. Isabelle hadn't conceived the plan, but she shared the weight of responsibility. She had believed she could trust Robert and had led her country-women to believe they could too. If the rendezvous failed, or if it led to incarceration in a Soviet camp for all of them, she would bear part of the blame.

Morning had come and worn away; midday had passed, and yet there was no sign of the train. If it didn't come, or if it was filled with Russians, or if any one of a hundred mishaps occurred, all the women could look forward to was more imprisonment, more suffering, quite possibly death. Isabelle, her heart sinking, dug into the dwindling reserves of hope that had kept her going through the past two years. The train
had
to come; it must.

Isabelle believed in Robert. He was a good man; perhaps even a hero. But in this world, there were limits to what good men could do.

Isabelle's faith was wavering, hope slipping from her fingers, when she heard the faint whistle in the distance. She tensed. There was no mistaking it: the sound of an approaching train.

Would it be the right one; would it be expecting the signal? Would there be agents of the NKVD on board? Those creatures were everywhere. This moment would show whether her American was a hero after all. Isabelle's heart beat faster. When she saw the steam above the trees beyond the distant bend in the track, she rose from her hiding place and ran down the slope. Slipping on the ice, stumbling over the stones, she clambered onto the rail bed and stood up in the center of the tracks. She raised the sign she had made: a sheet of board bearing a single hopeful word scratched in charcoal: ‘France.'