THE SPYMASTERS.

W.E.B. GRIFFIN.

AND WILLIAM E. BUTTERWORTH IV.

THE MEN AT WAR SERIES IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN HONOR OF.

Lieutenant Aaron Bank, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS.

(Later Colonel, Special Forces).

November 23, 1902April 1, 2004.

Lieutenant William E. Colby, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS.

(Later Ambassador and Director, CIA).

January 4, 1920April 28, 1996.

It is no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

-Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill.

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot, and hang on.

-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I.

[ONE].

Between Rzeszow and Blizna.

German-Occupied Poland.

2145 25 May 1943.

"There! It's coming!" Kapitan Mordechaj Szerynski announced at the faint chugging sound of the small steam-powered locomotive. The twenty-six-year-old resistance fighter in the Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army, had a wiry five-foot-eight medium build, light skin, and thick bushy black hair and eyebrows.

He turned to the twenty-one-year-old guerrilla beside him. Porucznik (Lieutenant) Stanislaw Polko looked like Szerynski, though was a head taller. They were hiding under a loose layer of downed limbs and leaves next to the narrow gauge railroad track that wound through the dense forest of the Carpathian mountain foothills in southern Poland.

"Pass the word for everyone to move on my command," Szerynski ordered, "not a second sooner!"

"Yes, sir," Polko said, and touched the tips of his right index and middle fingers to his forehead, the two-finger Polish Army salute signifying Honor and Fatherland.

Polko crawled over to the other five guerrillas-the majority of them, like Polko and Szerynski, Jewish and in their twenties-spread out to their right. All were dressed in clothing that they had acquired from farmers who for months had been supplying the Armia Krajowa with details of Nazi activity in the area. And all were armed with weapons smuggled to them by the Allies-the U.S. Office of Strategic Services working in London with the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile.

As Polko crawled back beside Szerynski, and the train chugged closer and louder, Szerynski thought he could hear in the cool night air the sound of men singing.

Jesus! he thought. That's not "Horst-Wessel-Lied," is it?

Hearing Polko mutter "bastard pigs!" seemed to confirm that there indeed was singing-and probably that of the Nazi anthem.

After another moment of listening, Szerynski then thought: And the bastards sound drunk!

"I swear I kill first Nazi pig," Polko muttered as he smacked the magazine of his Sten 9mm submachine gun, the cold fury in his voice unmistakable.

Is he going to follow orders? Szerynski thought.

Or just start shooting?

Szerynski knew that if not for the dark night he now would see in Polko's deep-set coal-black eyes the same anger he'd often seen at the mention of German soldiers.

"Keep your damn head, Porucznik."

Polko grunted.

Only a month earlier Szerynski and his men had been in the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa-the Jewish Fighting Organization-bravely, but futilely, battling the Nazis in the ghettos of Warsaw, about a hundred kilometers to the north.

Szerynski had seen the brutality inflicted by the Schutzstaffel-the German SS-including last December the torture of his little brother and two other Boy Scouts caught running ammunition to the ZOB. The teenagers had had their testicles torn out, their eyes gouged, and their teeth pulled before being killed and thrown into the snow-covered street as a message to others.

That Szerynski and his men weren't among the thousands of other Poles who were mass murdered after being forced into Warsaw's slums was nothing shy of a miracle. And they had avoided being packed in freight train boxcars for what the Nazi soldiers announced was simply a "relocation" to the SS-run konzentrationslager.

Instead, they had fled the city, finding refuge in the forest.

The resistance fighters, after having joined up with the Armia Krajowa, then discovered the truth about the relocations. At the heavily armed concentration camps, the passengers were made prisoners-the SS called them sonderkommandos-put in striped outfits, and within weeks worked to their death.

When the farmers alerted the Armia Krajowa that a new camp was being built by slave laborers outside the village of Blizna, Szerynski and his men moved south through the forest to investigate.

The conditions they found at the construction site staggered the mind. Under the cold eyes of SS guards, hundreds of malnourished prisoners struggled at hard labor-hewing timber, pouring concrete, cutting stone, even digging their own graves. Nearby, the slave laborers also worked at carving out of the woods a small airstrip for light aircraft to reach the remote area. They saw the SS summarily beat-and execute on the spot-those judged not to be working hard enough.

And twice weekly the boxcars came on the narrow gauge railway to deliver sonderkommandos, many of the prisoners from Warsaw, as replacements for the dead.

Kapitan Szerynski had told his men: "If we cannot stop the Nazi pigs, we damn sure can rescue some of our people."

"As we planned," Kapitan Szerynski now ordered, "after the train comes to a stop, follow my lead. Maintain discipline. No shooting unless absolutely necessary."

Porucznik Polko was quiet for a long moment.

He thought back to the previous two days, when they had practiced the ambush of the train inside a deserted barn. Using bales of hay as a mock-up for one of the thirty-foot-long freight cars, Szerynski had drilled the discipline into their heads. Each boxcar-it sickened Polko to call them what they were, foul-smelling cattle cars-would be packed with at least fifty prisoners, and possibly as many as a hundred or more, with a shared bucket or two being the only method for the disposal of human waste. Szerynski had cautioned his men that a single stray shot at some Nazi bastard could also easily kill or injure others-and, as they had seen during ambushes with the ZOB in Warsaw, an anxious, undisciplined shooter could almost instantly empty his weapon's entire magazine.

Polko grunted.

"Understood," he said, then looked over his shoulder and motioned for the men to await his signal.

To force the train to a stop, the resistance fighters, using explosive Primacord that resembled a thick bootlace, felled two mature black alder trees across the tracks just past a curve. They trimmed the limbs, then manhandled the trunks so that they were between the narrow gauge rails; the heavy V-shaped "pilot" metalwork on the front of the locomotive would not be able to push the trees off the tracks. Instead, the locomotive would become wedged on top of the heavy timbers, and they could storm the train's freight cars that carried the prisoners.

As they had practiced in the barn, each resistance fighter then would run to a particular door on a boxcar, unlatch its lock, swing it open, then repeat until all doors were open. It was expected that the guards would be either dazed or injured or both from the sudden stopping of the train, and that the guards could then be disarmed and secured-or, if necessary, killed.

The prisoners, once helped out of the boxcars, would be led deep into the forest to where another dozen guerrillas waited to split them up and, later, absorb them into their resistance cells. They knew that each train arriving at the camp near Blizna had averaged three boxcars, and that that meant there could be anywhere from 150 to 450 prisoners to rescue. (The long trains leaving Warsaw for the initial "relocating" had fifty boxcars carrying upward of five thousand people to the death camps.) The sounds of the steam locomotive and the singing continued getting louder.

The bastards celebrate bringing our people here to die! Szerynski thought bitterly.

But if there is any good news it is that their being drunk should make this ambush easier.

The locomotive's carbon arc headlight, heavily masked so as not to project its full brilliance, could now be seen bouncing a dim beam through the trees by the curve in the train track.

The beam grew bigger as the train approached the curve at a fast clip. The sound of singing grew louder. Then the nose of the train-and the masked headlight-were visible. The locomotive steamed on into the turn, its beam of light sweeping the forest of trees on the far side of the track as it did so. Then, just as the beam of light squared with the train track, it illuminated a huge obstacle on the tracks-and the conductor slammed on the train's full brakes.

Something about this train is different, Szerynski suddenly thought, straining to make out its shape in the darkness.

But what?

At once a stream of sparks began to spray out from where the locomotive's heavy steel wheels slid on the iron rails and the air filled with an ear-piercing high-decibel metallic screech. There then came a deep dull thud that was caused by the underside of the locomotive impacting the tree trunks. The pitch of the screech lessened somewhat, and the trees now could be heard thumping together under the pressure of the still moving train.

It looks to be a shorter train. Maybe only one car?

And it is a smaller car, almost half the size of a boxcar . . . a passenger car? . . . why?

What happened next did not go according to plan.

The locomotive, grinding along the tree trunks, did not stop. It did not appear to slow very much, either. Instead, its right wheels stopped screeching and sparking as they rode up onto one, then both, of the tree trunks.

And then the locomotive veered off the tracks.

Holy mother of God!

He felt the ground shudder repeatedly as the locomotive hit the shoulder, then the coal car followed, then the small passenger car.

That is a small passenger car! What the hell?

The pilot metalwork plowed ground as the locomotive continued to the treeline, where it sheared off a half-dozen trees before finally coming to a stop. The locomotive then rolled onto its left side. The coal car immediately crumpled behind it, then rolled onto its side. And then the passenger car, after impacting the coal car with a deafening crunch of steel and wood, rolled over, too.

"Damn it!" Szerynski said, jumping to his feet from under the ground cover.

"Where is the prisoner boxcar?" Polko said.

"How the hell do I know? Let's go!"

Polko was on his feet instantly. He made a shrill whistle to his men, then hand signaled them to follow their lead. Polko turned in time to see Szerynski leap across the narrow rails, then run in a crouch, his Sten machine gun trained on the passenger car.

Flames began to rise from inside the locomotive, lighting the night, and the steam engine's boiler made a strange pulsating hissing sound.

When Szerynski looked in that direction, a man he immediately decided had to be the engineer appeared on top of the rolled-over locomotive. The engineer struggled with a long-barreled weapon-Damn it! He's got a shotgun!-and Szerynski smoothly took him down with a three-round burst of 9mm from the Sten.

Polko and Szerynski then carefully approached the rear of the passenger car. There was no more singing to be heard.

A young Nazi soldier, bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth, then came crawling out the back door, grunting at the effort. Szerynski saw that the collars of his gray-green SS field tunic bore the insignia of a master sergeant. The hauptscharfuhrer looked to be maybe nineteen, somewhat younger than the SS they had seen guarding the sonderkommandos.

With the Germans suffering staggering casualties on so many fronts-nearly a million killed or taken prisoner in the Battle of Stalingrad alone-a new conscription law in January had ordered men between ages sixteen and twenty-five and women between ages seventeen and forty-five open to mobilization.

The hauptscharfuhrer was going into shock-though not so severely that when he saw Szerynski he couldn't turn on his side to pull at the flap of the holster on his belt.

Polko saw what was happening and quickly covered the distance between them. He slung the strap of his Sten over his left shoulder while slipping a Colt .45 ACP semiautomatic from his waistband. He aimed the pistol and fired once, hitting the hauptscharfuhrer square in the chest and causing him to roll almost into a fetal position. Then he reached down and put another round in the base of his skull.

Polko glanced over his shoulder. He saw the rest of their men running up as Szerynski signaled for them to provide cover.

Szerynski and Polko then stepped closer to the passenger car.

There were no sounds-human or other-coming from it.

Szerynski peered around the corner of the doorway that the young hauptscharfuhrer had crawled out of. But even with the flames from the locomotive he saw nothing inside but dark shadows. He could, however, smell the interior of the car. It reeked of peppermint-schnapps!-and cheese.

As he reached for his flashlight, he looked over his shoulder at Polko. He saw him pulling the dead bodyguard's pistol from its leather holster. Polko put his .45 back in his waistband, then worked the action of the Luger. A 9mm round ejected. It landed at Szerynski's feet. He saw it was a live one.

Well, that one sure as hell would have had my name on it.

Szerynski flicked on his flashlight and, pistol ready, shone the yellow beam inside the passenger car.

A parlor and a forward sleeping compartment . . .

This is a wealthy man's transport!

The luxurious interior-rich carpet and draperies, leather-upholstered seating, and highly polished wooden paneling and heavy tables-was a shambles. Two more baby-faced young SS scharfuhrer bodyguards lay crumpled against the door to the sleeping compartment, one sergeant atop the other. The one on top, whose head was turned at an impossible angle, suggesting a broken neck, had a drinking glass impaled in his blood-soaked face.

Szerynski's flashlight beam next found the high-peaked black uniform cap of an SS officer-light reflected off its silver skull-and-crossbones Totenkopf and, above that, SS eagle insignias-then found the officer himself. He lay sprawled on his back against the crushed ceiling of the car. One of the highly polished wooden tables had sheared free and smashed into his upper body. A cut across his forehead had coated his face in blood.

So who the hell could he be?

Szerynski waved the flashlight beam around the interior one more time.

No one else in here . . . he's got to be the one.

He turned to Polko and said, "Let's get him the hell out of there."

Polko signaled for two of his men to come closer.