The site chosen by the German high command for the assembly and testing of the weapon occupied a polygon, one base of which was formed by a line between Castle Gorka and the Bukowski palace. Since test firings of the secret weapon might carry it far toward Przemysl and empty lands beyond, the experts who had been working at Peenemünde said: ‘An ideal location.’
And now everything changed. Bukowo became a major battleground in the war. Where there had been one German soldier, twenty appeared to guard this vital secret. Where there had been two Gestapo men checking on the citizenry, there were now six. Railroad spurs were built overnight. Buildings appeared mysteriously, their roofs covered with forest branches to prevent detection from the air. Truckloads of workmen came from remote Polish villages and trainloads of technicians from Germany.
When six of Konrad Krumpf’s villages were overrun by the new demands for secure space, so that every Pole had to be evacuated to find such quarters as he might, there was protest, and Krumpf personally warned that this must cease: ‘We must all make sacrifices for the Fatherland.’
But the forced evacuation was so brutally carried out that serious objection had to be voiced; peasants were being treated worse than animals, and they said so. One village in particular, with the grandiose name of Nowa Polska, the New Poland, was especially abused, and its three leading farmers went to see Krumpf, who had always been attentive when the continued production of foodstuffs was involved.
This time the protesters met a man much different from their familiar, bumbling Konrad Krumpf. The high command, recognizing the supreme importance of the weapon which now dominated the Gorka-Bukowo polygon, had sent to supervise the operation a man with a brilliant record of administration and a ruthless determination to succeed once more. He was Falk von Eschl, forty-seven years old, scion of a family whose forebear had fought with the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410, Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in the 1920s, and diplomat in various capitals of Europe.
Tall, slim, a fine tennis player who had once been Baron von Cramm’s doubles partner at Wimbledon, he was a man of unusual talents, especially that of self-preservation. Not a Nazi and often contemptuous of their grosser acts, he saw them as the only agency that had the power to lead Germany to a position of world dominance. His years at Oxford had satisfied him that Great Britain could provide no leadership at all, and the Americans he had met there, most of them Rhodes scholars like himself, were beneath contempt: ‘Country boors who know nothing, lack all character, and have no insights whatever.’
The Nazis did not like him or trust him, but they did need him, for he had an uncanny perception of what steps ought to be taken to achieve sought-for results, as he now proved when the three farmers appeared before him to protest the destruction of their village.
‘We will go there and see,’ he said in broken Polish, acquired by dint of forced study in the brief time since his appointment, and he allowed the farmers to lead him to their village. When he reached there, he indicated to his accompanying soldiers that they were to line the protesters against a wall and shoot them, and this happened within four minutes.
His troops then rousted all the villagers from their cottages, and every man was shot dead as he appeared. Six women who came screaming at Von Eschl were also pinioned, stood against the wall and gunned down. By this time the other women and the children were pacified through sheer terror, and in this condition they were expelled from the village while their homes were razed.
Falk von Eschl had the designated area cleared and ready for tests two weeks earlier than expected, and he spent this grace period training his personnel in their new duties:
‘Any Pole who trespasses into a restricted area without a signed pass is to be shot at the moment he is apprehended, and without further consultation. Anyone smuggling food is to be shot. For any sabotage, you are to execute six hostages. And if any Pole so much as touches a German soldier or workman in anger, appropriate steps will be taken. And you can assure the natives that such steps will become increasingly severe. The Third Reich is nearing victory, and what you accomplish here will make that victory possible.
‘You are here to protect the most precious secret our nation has today. It must be defended with your life. If any one of you betrays even one word of what you see, you will be shot. And if any Pole or any member of the so-called underground is allowed to catch even a fleeting glimpse of what we’re doing, he is to be shot instantly.’
While these draconian measures were being fine-tuned, Von Eschl had an opportunity to inspect the civilian areas bordering on the secret range and to give some attention as to where he might live during the extended period of his command. Naturally, he visited the Bukowski palace, but saw at once that it was too pretentious, and already occupied by Konrad Krumpf, for whom he had only contempt, and by the weak and silly owner, Ludwik Bukowski, whom the advance reports had described as worthless and to be ignored.
With the methodical and judicious approach for which he was famous, he decided quickly that the logical place for his headquarters was Castle Gorka; it was clean and strong and not exhibitionistic like the palace; it was well situated in relation to where the work would be done; and its owner, even though a Pole, was a person deserving of respect, for he had traveled widely, he spoke both German and English, and he had a well-matured understanding of the world. He was probably also a secret supporter of the Polish underground; that made the relationship more exciting and in the long run it might be profitable, for if he could unmask a man like Lubonski, he would strengthen his claim to significant promotions when Russia and the Allies were finally defeated.
He summoned Lubonski to a meeting, and was astonished at how much like himself the Pole was: several years older, hair nicely grayed while his own was still black, most of his teeth apparently, the reserved bearing of a man who rode horses well, and that mastery of languages which marked the European gentleman. But there was a deeper similarity that intrigued Falk von Eschl: Walerian Lubonski gave the appearance of a man of fierce commitment who could absorb much punishment and still keep fighting.
‘I’ve decided to make my headquarters in your castle,’ the German said. Lubonski nodded with just the right degree of deference. ‘You may continue residence, but only in the upper rooms.’ Again Lubonski nodded. ‘My men will convert two of your barns into barracks.’
‘Of course,’ Lubonski said.
‘This fellow Bukowski, at the palace. Is he as stupid as he seems?’
‘His father, you know, was a great hero at Zamosc. In the 1920 battle against the Communists.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It has been an excellent family. For a thousand years.’
‘That I did know. One of his ancestors fought at the Battle of Tannenburg in 1410.’
‘What we call the Battle of Grunwald,’ Lubonski said quietly.
‘Where one of your ancestors fought, too.’
‘And one of yours, as well. With the greatest distinction. Von Eschl is an honored name along this river, especially with my family.’ When the German diplomat realized that this clever Pole had briefed himself on the Von Eschl record, it was his turn to nod graciously.
So the sparring began, and when Von Eschl had time to look into records with his customary diligence, he discovered a most disturbing fact: on several different occasions a Lubonski barn had been raided and food supplies stored there had been stolen. What attracted Von Eschl’s attention was the fact that it was always the same barn, which led him to believe that there was some kind of connivance going on between the count and the partisans.
He therefore baited that particular barn with an extra supply of unground wheat and established near it a concealed bunker manned every night by men with powerful guns; but he was not able to conceal it perfectly, and one morning as Count Lubonski was leaving the castle he spotted the disturbed earth, which had been unsuccessfully smoothed down, and guessed what it meant. He alerted one of his servants, who alerte
d a woodsman bringing fuel to the castle for the German contingent billeted there, and this woodsman warned the Stork Commando that it could no longer obtain food from that cache.
Von Eschl, suspecting some intricate maneuver like this, drove over to the Bukowski palace to do something which irritated him immensely: he had to consult with Konrad Krumpf to learn what kind of record that stupid Gestapo underling had been able to compile on Lubonski, and for the first time he was able to inspect the remarkable card file assembled by Krumpf. It was extraordinary that this seemingly dull man had completed such a splendid work, and he ran through the purple cards with extreme care, noting every name that Krumpf had identified as potentially dangerous. Count Lubonski’s name was not there.
‘We’ve heard rumors,’ Krumpf said. ‘Persons who could be part of the infamous Stork Commando have been seen in the vicinity of your castle …’ Von Eschl noted the subtle introduction of the phrase your castle, as if Krumpf were now throwing the problem into his lap. Perhaps the man was more clever than he had at first supposed.
‘What are those other cards, the yellow ones?’ As Krumpf’s acknowledged superior, he reached for the small carefully guarded file, and although the Gestapo man objected to surrendering it, Von Eschl insisted, and after he had studied the cards, he assembled them into a neat pile and started shoving them back to their owner, but as Krumpf reached out to recover them, Von Eschl kept his own hand firmly on them.
‘Is it wise to have such names in a list? I mean, in a list anywhere but your own head?’
‘This file is secure. Only I touch it.’
‘I’m touching it, now.’
‘You’re my superior. In this particular operation.’
‘If I were you, I would burn those cards. They’re terribly dangerous. What I mean, these people are very vulnerable. Surely you see that.’
‘Is that an order?’
‘I would never give you an order, Major Krumpf. We’re partners in protecting a secret of inestimable importance.’
‘But you recommend burning?’
‘I do,’ and Von Eschl casually lit a match and reached for a wire basket. While he held the match, Konrad Krumpf with considerable anguish held out the first card and watched it burn. Dropping that card into the basket, he surrendered one card after another to the flame until all forty-three were consumed.
‘I feel infinitely safer,’ Falk von Eschl said. ‘If anyone had seen those cards, even someone like me …’ He paused. If this man had been careless enough to maintain such a file, he might be stupid enough to inform others of its existence. ‘Have you ever told anyone about this file?’
‘No. Not even my assistants knew.’
‘Not anyone? Not some village girl, perhaps? No one?’
‘No one,’ but as Krump spoke he remembered that Ludwik Bukowski had once come upon him as he was consulting the cards, and the hesitation that came into his eyes assured the older man that someone else had known, and that the contents were no longer secure.
He said no more to Krumpf, but he did assign one of his best men to make a detailed study of all unusual deaths within the villages under Krumpf’s command, and then the pattern stood forth in brutal clarity: ‘In this village a woman was run over by a runaway wagon, but the bruises on the back of her head were not matched by any wagon marks on her face or chest. In this village a man was shot accidentally while hunting. This man drowned.’ From Krumpf’s list of forty-three traitors to the Polish cause, so far as Von Eschl could remember names, eight had died mysteriously, and as he talked with his agent he could not know that the Stork Commando was even then executing a ninth, at the very edge of the polygon.
From London a Polish officer and an English scientist who had taken a crash course in Polish dropped by parachute into northern Czechoslovakia. They made their way, with the help of the underground of that country, into Poland and the Forest of Szczek, where the Pole told Jan Buk and his commando: ‘It is vital, more important than anything we have ever asked before, that we know for sure what’s going on inside that forbidden area.’
Buk said: ‘We’re engaged in a vital process of our own. Wiping out collaborators.’
‘No longer,’ the Polish officer snapped. ‘You’re to direct every effort to providing this man with solid information on what the swine are doing in there.’
‘But we know nothing,’ Buk said honestly. ‘We’ve counted the trucks and watched the trains, but we haven’t even a guess …’
The scientist had to concede the common sense behind Buk’s complaint; if the commando didn’t know even the outlines of the thing whose details it was seeking, what possible intelligence could it collect? So he told the partisans: ‘If what the Germans are doing is so secret with them, it’s doubly secret for us. We think Hitler’s perfected a completely new kind of weapon with the capacity to wipe out London.’ He had been empowered by the Allied high command to divulge the problem to the men on the site if that became inescapable, so after two days of cautious assessment of the men and the leadership of the Storks, he concluded that if anyone could be trusted, these veterans of the forest could:
‘When we hit Peenemünde with the most powerful armada we’d launched to date, we didn’t really know what our target was. The Americans have cause to think the Nazis were making heavy water there, peroxide we call it, for some new kind of bomb. Devastating it would be, I’m told.
‘We British are convinced that what they were building was a radically new type of flying bomb. Germany to London in one swoop. Tremendous explosive head in the nose.
‘Your job and mine is to determine what in hell it is they are doing. If the Americans are right and it’s peroxide, we’ll see tremendous explosions when they test it. Something quite spectacular, I’m told. If we’re right and it’s a flying bomb, we’ll see them flying through the air. So we’ll listen and watch. But I must inform you of this most stringently. We do not know, we cannot predict, what little fragment of information will prove most valuable. Something so small we’ll overlook it, that might be the key that unlocks the riddle. And if we do not unlock it, London may be destroyed and the whole western effort abandoned.’
The forest men were sobered by the gravity of the situation in which they were now involved, by its opaque definition and their own inability to penetrate the security rim established so effectively by Von Eschl.
‘I heard about him at Oxford,’ the Englishman said. ‘Fantastically good. He’ll stop at nothing to frustrate us.’
For five weeks the men of the Stork Commando and this dedicated Englishman stayed in the forest, watching, listening, but learning nothing. Behind Von Eschl’s perimeter they could see, from various treetops, much hurried activity but not a single object that would indicate what that activity involved. One daring man carried a small Leica camera aloft to photograph with long-distance lenses the terrain inside the stout wire fence which had now been erected for miles, and these undeveloped films were spirited back to London by messengers who risked death each day as they crossed Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Italy before they reached the Allied air base at Bari. When they were studied by English and American experts, they revealed nothing.
So far, Von Eschl’s security had allowed no intelligence to seep out of the polygon, and it had accomplished certain unexpected triumphs of its own. Convinced that Konrad Krumpf’s list of Polish traitors had somehow been compromised and that Polish patriots were engaged in a process of killing them off, one by one, he used as a kind of bait a farmer who had betrayed several underground operations. The man, who had to be a likely target for execution, was allowed to go unattended to his field, and when the expected attack was launched against him from a grove of beech trees, the three Poles conducting it were overcome before they could harm him. One commando was killed, the other two tortured to death without revealing anything.
The increased Nazi forces also enabled Von Eschl to make broad sweeps into the forest, and two retreats of the Stork Commando were overrun, wi
th loss of life. The English scientist, rescued narrowly from one by virtue of heroic covering action by his Polish friends, understood better the hardships these men had faced incessantly for so long. ‘The beaters do try to drive you into the guns, don’t they?’ he joked, but it was obvious that he was disheartened.
Then, on a bitterly cold day in December, the German scientists inside the polygon reached a point at which they must test one of their devices, and a number of Stork Commandos at various lookouts through the forest heard a vast, prolonged explosion, after which a monstrous cylindrical object rose slowly in the frosty air and soared to a great height, then began a swift descent toward an unoccupied area downrange.
With quivering excitement the English scientist assembled his spies and compared their interpretations of exactly what had happened, and aided by his learned guesses as to what the explosion must have been, he put together an accurate profile of what the dreadful V-2 rocket was going to be like when it struck London, but before his report even reached London, something much more dramatic occurred.
One of the rockets, headed toward Przemysl, soared into the air, became confused, turned about, and roared westward almost directly at Castle Gorka, but at the last moment it went north, crashing into the Vistula River some distance north of Bukowo. With heroic effort, Jan Buk and the Englishman, accompanied by four powerful swimmers, burst out of the forest, dashed to the river’s edge, swam out to the foundering rocket, and sank it with a tangled mass of ropes and stones, then hid in the woods to laugh at six different detachments of Von Eschl’s men as they dashed up and down each side of the riverbank looking for their wayward rocket.