“We have to help him,” I said, my voice rising with urgency.

“There’s nothing to be done.”

“Surely if you tell one of your contacts with the Home Army, they will try to do something to rescue the men.”

She shook her head. “They can’t risk it, not now. And we’ve been given orders not to attempt anything that would compromise operations. The men who were captured would not want us to save them at the expense of the larger mission. They are good men and they won’t break and tell what they know. We just have to pray for them.”

I tried to process what Kara was telling me: no one was going to help Krys. For all he had given, he would be abandoned to certain death. I had to do something.

“I’m going after him,” I said, starting from the piwnica. I had no idea how I would get to Krys, but I had to try.

“Stop!” Kara grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me back toward her. “You behave like an impulsive child and it is going to get you killed. There’s no coming back from where Krys went, do you understand?” I did not answer, unwilling to acknowledge the truth in what she said.

“But I can’t just leave him,” I protested. “I can’t lose him, not now, when we finally found each other again.”

Krys was lost to me forever. My heart screamed. “If you go after him and get yourself arrested, then everything he did, all of his pain and suffering will have been for nothing. Make it count for something. Go save your friend and yourself, just as you were meant to do.”

My thoughts turned to Sadie. Krys would never disclose her location to the Germans. But the thief who had stolen the munitions had surely told the Germans where he had found them. It was only a matter of time before the Germans searched the sewers to see what—or who—else might be there.

“Kara, please...” I hardly dared ask. “Krys had a plan to get Sadie and her friends out of the city.”

Kara didn’t answer, but I could tell in her eyes that she knew where he’d meant to take them. “Why should I help you?” she asked bitterly. “Krys and the others are gone.” I saw then that her eyes were rimmed with red, and there were stains on her cheeks where tears had fallen. “It’s over, Ella. None of it matters anymore.”

“Of course it does. There’s still the fight in Warsaw. Krys and I were going to join it as soon as we got Sadie out. That matters, and Sadie and her friends do, too. You should help them because it’s what Krys would want you to do. And because if you don’t, everything he has done would have been for nothing.”

Something seemed to flicker in her eyes then. “All right,” she relented. “Kryspinów, do you know it?” I nodded. I was familiar with the small village about fifteen kilometers from Kraków. “There’s a livery behind the rail station. A truck driver there has been paid to ferry essential packages to the border for the Home Army. He is supposed to take Sadie and her friends through Poprad over the Tatras into the Slovak Republic.”