Authors: Douglas W. Jacobson
Tarnov.
The trooper snapped at the receptionist in Russian. The young lady looked flustered and stood up, wiping her hands on the sides of her skirt. The officer stepped forward and said something that Adam couldn't quite hear, and made a gesture as if reading a book. The receptionist frowned, shook her head, then pointed toward the stairway.
Adam picked up the magazine and lowered his head, peering over the top as Tarnov and the officer marched across the circular gallery. The trooper remained at the information desk, resting his right hand on the butt of the pistol strapped to his waist.
Adam slipped his hand into the pocket of the suit coat he'd borrowed from Karol and gripped the handle of the Browning.
Sit still. . . just for a moment.
It was almost more than he could bear, but he knew he had to give it a moment to play out. Natalia wore a gray head scarf and walked with a cane. Even if Tarnov had beaten her description out of the priest, he'd be looking for a young woman. Perhaps she'd slip past him. It was a slim chance, he knew, but it was better than a three-on-one firefight.
As Tarnov and the officer reached the Copernicus bust halfway across the room, Tarnov barked some instructions, and the officer continued on toward the stairway. Tarnov stood in the center of the cavernous room, looking around at the dozen or so persons sitting at tables, all of them now scrunched down in their chairs, heads buried in books. He stepped over to the table closest to him and knocked the book away from a terrified woman.
Adam slid the Browning out of his pocket and held it under the table. It was heavier than the Walther P-38 he'd used in Warsaw. The barrel was shorter, and it didn't have the same comfortable feel in his hand. But it was all he had. He glanced toward the stairway.
Natalia hobbled down the steps. She passed the NKVD officer at the bottom of the stairway. A few steps farther, and he turned suddenly toward her and snapped,
“Prikrashchát!”
Natalia hobbled on.
The officer shouted again and took a long stride toward her, reaching for her arm.
Natalia spun around and whacked him on the side of the head with the cane.
The blow knocked the stunned officer to the floor.
Natalia dove on the ground and rolled under a table.
Tarnov jerked his head toward the commotion, pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster inside his coat and started toward Natalia.
Adam jumped to his feet, brought the Browning up with both hands and aimed at Tarnov. Just as he pulled the trigger a wave of dizziness swept over him, and the bullet ricocheted off the bronze Copernicus bust. It toppled off the pillar and bounced on the marble floor with a deafening
clang!
Chaos erupted. People screamed and crawled under tables. The receptionist at the information desk bolted out through the atrium.
Tarnov dropped to one knee, turned and fired at Adam, blowing away a bookshelf directly behind him.
Adam toppled the table on its side, crouched behind it and concentrated on the stairway. The NKVD officer was on his knees, reaching for the pistol on his belt. Adam exhaled slowly, took careful aim and fired. The officer collapsed backward, clutching his stomach.
Adam flinched as a gunshot from the direction of the information desk slammed into the table. Splinters flew in every direction. A chunk of wood struck his head and blood ran into his eyes. His ears ringing, blinking his eyes against the blood, Adam crawled under the next table.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Tarnov's coarse voice echoed through the room. “Throw out weapon, Nowak! In two minutes, more NKVD come!”
Adam searched the room for him.
Where was the son of a bitch?
He finally spotted him, crouching behind the pillar.
Before Adam could figure out how to reach Tarnov, the trooper at the information desk ran to the closest table and abruptly shot the man cowering there in the back of the head. The trooper tipped over the table, dropped to one knee and fired in Natalia's direction.
Adam stuck his head above the table, aimed the Browning at the trooper and squeezed the trigger. He missed, knocking a painting off the wall on the far side of the room.
A woman leaped from her chair and ran screaming toward the entrance. She made it only a few meters before the trooper gunned her down. He moved to aim at Natalia again, but a gunshot from the direction of the atrium hit him in the back, exploding through his chest in a burst of red.
Adam turned toward the entrance and saw Rabbit sprinting from the atrium to the information desk, a pistol in his right hand. The boy ducked behind the desk just as Tarnov fired at him from behind the pillar. Then Tarnov darted from the pillar and rolled under a table.
The sirens grew louder.
Adam stood and fired at Tarnov.
Tarnov swore loudly.
Adam dropped to his knees. He looked under the tables and saw the Russian crawling toward the far side of the room, trailing blood. Cursing his dizziness, Adam lay prone on the floor and propped his right arm against a table leg for support. He sighted in on Tarnov's back and squeezed the trigger.
Tarnov shuddered. He groaned, then lay still.
Adam stood up slowly. He leaned on the table for support as the suddenly quiet room spun around in his field of vision. Then he staggered toward Tarnov, holding the pistol out in front of himself.
Tires screeched outside the building.
“Adam!” Natalia shouted.
Adam continued on toward Tarnov, desperately wanting to make sure the bastard was dead.
“Adam! There's no time!”
Adam stopped, his stomach churning, his temples throbbing. “Up the stairs! Now!” he shouted.
Natalia screamed, and pointed toward the front of the room. “Rabbit! Jesus Christ!”
Rabbit stood halfway between the information desk and the stairway, swaying from side-to-side, the front of his shirt covered in blood. He slid slowly to the floor.
Natalia rushed past Adam and dropped to her knees next to the boy. He lay curled in a ball, clutching his stomach, blood oozing between his fingers. Adam followed her and knelt down on the other side. “How bad?”
Natalia shook her head.
Rabbit thrashed his legs. His face contorted in pain as Natalia carefully rolled him onto his back. Blood had soaked through his shirt and the front of his pants. She ripped the scarf off her head, folded it and pressed it against the boy's abdomen. He cried out and clawed wildly at her arm.
Heavy boots stomped into the atrium.
“Shit! They're coming,” Natalia said.
Adam scooped up Rabbit, struggled to his feet and bolted for the stairway. Natalia trotted alongside him, pressing down on the bloody scarf as they hobbled up the stairs and down the hallway.
They burst into the Reading Room, slipping on the blood dripping from Rabbit's wound. The startled librarian backed up against the card catalog. The man with the felt hat huddled under the table. Natalia held the scarf against Rabbit's stomach.
“Fuckin' . . . Ahhh . . . no . . .” Rabbit moaned. He twisted and jerked in Adam's arms.
“Hurry, through that door!” Adam shouted. He motioned with his head toward the far end of the counter and prayed that Andreyev would be at the loading dock.
Natalia kicked open the door, and they ran down the steps to the lower level. At the bottom of the stairs, she grabbed Adam's arm and jerked him to a halt. She peeled away the blood-soaked scarf and dropped it on the floor, then quickly pulled off her sweater, folded it in half and pressed it hard against the flow of blood from Rabbit's abdomen.
The boy grunted and clawed again at her fingers. Then his head rolled back, and his arms went limp.
“Stay with me, Rabbit,” Natalia shouted. “Stay with me!”
Trailing blood, they ran past Room L-3 and down the hallway to the service door next to the loading dock. Natalia pushed open the door, and they burst through to the cobblestone lane.
Andreyev stood next to the GAZ-11. He jerked open the rear door.
“Lay him on his back!” Natalia commanded as she crawled into the vehicle and crouched on the floor of the backseat.
Adam eased the boy onto the seat, then crawled in next to her. Andreyev slammed the door shut, jumped in the driver's seat and they sped away from the library.
Natalia lifted the sweater and opened Rabbit's shirt, exposing the bullet wound in his abdomen. It was no larger than the size of a ten-groszy coin, but blood pulsated out, running onto the seat and the floor of the auto in a dark, sticky mass. She reached around underneath him feeling for an exit wound, but there was none.
“Give me your coat,” she said to Adam. “Quick!”
Adam pulled off his coat, and Natalia folded it up, pressing it against Rabbit's stomach. She grabbed Adam's right hand and placed it on the folded coat. Blood was already seeping through. “Press down firmly, right here, use both hands,” she said, grabbing his left hand and bumping against him as the auto careened around a corner, tires screeching. “Keep pressure directly on the wound. We've got to stop the bleeding. It's the only chance he has!”
Andreyev shouted from the driver's seat, “Can he hang on until we get out of the city?”
Natalia placed her fingers against Rabbit's neck, directly under his chin, and knew instantly the boy was in deep trouble. His pulse was racing as his heart struggled to keep up with the loss of blood and rapidly falling pressure. “His heart rate's going wild; he's losing too much blood! He could go into shock!” She leaned over and put a hand on Rabbit's forehead. “Rabbit, can you hear me? Stay with me!”
The boy's eyes rolled from side-to-side. “I hear . . .”
Natalia slid her hand under his head. “That's it, that's it, stay with me, Rabbit.” She turned to Adam. “Keep pressing down, hard!”
“We can't stop,” Andreyev said. “The NKVD will have every hospital within five kilometers surrounded in the next few minutes.”
“I know that,” Natalia snapped. “Just get us the hell out of here!” She looked up, straining to see out the back window of the speeding auto and get her bearings.
“Where are we going?” she yelled to Andreyev.
“Through Kazimierz and over the river to Podgorze, then farther south from there.”
“There's a village I know about a few kilometers south of Podgorze,” Adam said. “They had a doctor, a friend of my uncle. Do you think he can make it?”
Natalia looked at the boy. Rabbit's eyes had closed. She leaned close to Adam and whispered, “I don't know. This is bad.” She held up her hand. It was covered in dark, sticky blood. “I think the bullet hit his liver.” She turned back to Rabbit. “Can you hear me, Rabbit? Are you with me?”
The boy's eyelids fluttered. “Conductor . . . I . . . can . . .”
The auto raced on, swerving around corners, barreling down avenues at top speed. Natalia couldn't see much from her position on the floor of the sedan, but after what seemed like an eternity Andreyev yelled back to them again. “We're crossing the river into Podgorze,” he shouted over the roar of the engine and squealing tires. “I don't see any tail, but we have to keep going.”
“Just let us know when we're south of Podgorze!” Adam shouted back.
Natalia leaned over the boy. “Rabbit, are you still with me?”
He didn't respond.
“Rabbit! Stay with me!” She turned her head to the side, her ear just above his mouth. She could barely feel his breath. She put her fingers to his neck again and checked his pulse. It was getting weaker. His face was the color of chalk. She slapped his cheek. “Rabbit! Please, stay with me!”
The auto bumped hard over a pothole, then swerved around a corner. Natalia was thrown against Adam again, knocking his hands off the bloody coat. She gently lifted the coat and examined the wound. The bleeding had slowed to a dark oozing. She slid her fingers under the boy's chin and checked his pulse.
Nothing.
She swallowed hard and switched to the other side of his neck and checked again. Nothing.
She slapped his cheek, harder this time. “Please, stay with me, Rabbit! Open your eyes!”
The boy lay still. His chest stopped moving.
Goddamn it, no!
Tears clouded her eyes as Natalia stared at the boy's still face. She ran her hand through his matted, blond hair. He looked peaceful, almost serene. She remembered the first time she had met him, at the massacre in the hospital square in Warsaw, a battle-hardened veteran at the tender age of thirteen. She remembered his cool, quick action with the NKVD agents at the village near the Bolimowski Forest. But most of all, she remembered how he'd laid his head on her lap after his friend Bobcat had been killed in the sewer. He'd asked her why God would let these things happen. She hadn't been able to give him a good answer then. And she certainly couldn't now. She studied his face for another moment, then leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Oh Rabbit, I'm so sorry.”
Adam put his hand on her shoulder.
She slumped against him, shaking her head, letting the tears flow.
They rode in silence as the auto sped through Podgorze and the southern suburbs of Krakow. A quarter of an hour later, Andreyev pulled over to the side of the road and stopped near a flat, open field surrounded by deserted factory buildings. Parked in front of them was an old farm truck, faded and rusty, a load of hay in the back. There was no driver.
Andreyev got out of the car, opened the rear door and motioned for them to get out. Then he turned away and walked a few paces into the field.
With Rabbit's body lying in the backseat of the car, the three of them stood in silence for a long tense moment. “You can't go back,” Andreyev said. “None of us can. The NKVD will be tearing Krakow apart within the hour.” He motioned with his head toward the farm truck. “The key is in the ignition. It doesn't look like much, but I'm told it runs well. You can be in Nowy Targ by this afternoon, and from there you can make your way to Prochowa. Your Górale friends should be able to get you safely over the mountains into Slovakia.”