It was just like that bastard Prussian, Alfred Funk, to give him the dirty work, he fumed. Where was his promotion to Standartenführer? He had more than earned his colonelcy. It was all part of the German plots against the Austrians.
All winter the Jews had been arming in the ghetto. No telling what those crazy Jews were liable to do. He broke into a sweat.
Damned if he’d walk into a trap on Funk’s whim. Funk simply didn’t understand how dangerous it was.
And then the idea came to him as he heard a shriek down the hall. It was that damned Kutler and his nightmares again. Wait! Kutler. That drunken beast was becoming completely useless. Yes! That was it. Kutler would lead the force into the ghetto. Kutler would set up the kettle. Good idea ... good idea.
Chapter Three
“AHA!” ANDREI CRIED WITH fiendish delight, rubbing his hands together. “Aha, you stupid man. You have made a fool’s gambit!” Andrei moved his knight over the chessboard. “Check!”
Chris countered immediately, lopping off an exposed castle, putting Andrei’s chessmen in an impossible position. “Fool’s gambit, all right,” he said, “but you have the wrong fool.”
Andrei studied the board a moment and cursed under his breath.
Chris pulled back from the table and paced the tiny garret room restlessly.
“What’s the matter, Chris?”
“I’m hungry, I want a smoke, I’m sick of being cooped up—I want to see Deborah.”
“I have yet to hear the first person speak in favor of ghetto living,” Andrei said.
“It has its advantages. It got me out of some bad drinking habits.” Chris patted his stomach. “And notice how slim I’ve become.”
“What’s bothering you?” Andrei asked again.
“To go or not to go. Hell, I know how important it is to get out of Poland knowing where the archives are buried, but it was impossible to leave Deborah before, even believing she hated me. Now, I swear, I don’t know if I have the strength to leave.”
“Women,” Andrei grunted, “they have a way of getting under one’s skin.” He walked up behind Chris and put one hand on his shoulder. “I am confident that when the time comes you will make the correct decision, and if you are very lucky the decision will be made for you.”
Both men froze at the same instant, trying to hear something that alerted a sixth sense beyond their normal waves of hearing. A few seconds later the alarm bell erupted in a series of dashes.
“I’ll never get used to that goddamned bell,” Chris said.
Wolf Brandel came in carrying a large suitcase. He looked at the chessboard. “Who played black?” he asked. Chris jerked his thumb at Andrei. Wolf grimaced and went “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“Got a cigarette?” Chris asked.
“Don’t smoke.”
“Hell.”
“Hey, Andrei. Three Kar 98’s came in with seventy rounds of ammo. Pretty good. We got a line on four Mauser 9-mm.’s day after tomorrow.”
“Good work,” Andrei said. “At this rate we’ll have weapons for half our force in another few weeks. How is Rachael?”
“Fine.”
“What do you have in the suitcase?”
“I want to get some matzo-ball grenades to take back to my bunker. We tested one yesterday. Blam! Nuts and bolts everywhere. I want to talk to Schlosberg about designing a real big matzo ball.” Wolf held his hands out to indicate a four-foot diameter. “Something like a land mine we can detonate with a hot spark. Something packed with a couple thousand nuts and bolts.”
“Good idea,” Andrei said.
Wolf put the suitcase on the table. “Take a look.”
Andrei opened the lid, not knowing what to expect. He unfolded a blanket. An automatic weapon and five clips of ammunition burst into view.
“My God,” Andrei said, not believing what his eyes saw, “my God! A Schmeisser machine pistol. My God!” Andrei licked his lips; his hands trembled to pick up the weapon but feared it would disappear like a mirage. “Where on earth did you get it, Wolf?”
“German tank sergeant, lost a leg on the eastern front. Sold it for only four thousand zlotys.”
“My God!”
“Go on, Andrei, pick it up.”
Andrei lifted the weapon out of the suitcase. He patted it with a gentleness reserved only for Gabriela. He slipped the bolt, sighted in, cradled it against his hip, clicked the trigger.
“It’s yours,” Wolf said.
“Mine?”
“A gift from the Brushmaker’s command.”
“I couldn’t accept it.”
“We had a meeting and a vote. We decided in a democratic manner it would be most effective in your hands. Of course most of the voters were Bathyrans.”
Andrei was seized with emotion. “I love it so much there is only one name for her. Gaby! Perhaps Gaby will fire a shot heard around the world! Wolf, I love you!”
The alarm bell sounded again. Simon Eden came in.
“Got a smoke?” Chris asked.
“Only German ersatz, but they’re yours.”
Chris retreated to the cot, caressing the pack of cigarettes with the same affection Andrei had shown for the Schmeisser.
“Look!” Andrei said, showing Simon the machine pistol.
“Yes, I know,” Simon said. “As commander of Joint Forces, I was given the nominal courtesy of being allowed to cast my vote with the Bathyrans for its disposition.”
It was immediately clear to Andrei that Simon’s dark eyes were trying to shield trouble.
“What’s on your mind, Simon? You’re a worse faker than I am.”
“Funk arrived in Warsaw last night.”
It had been long expected. Everyone knew it would come and what Funk’s arrival meant. Final liquidation. Yet the silence was long and frightened.
“Alfred Funk,” Chris said at last. “The harbinger of spring. The messenger of peace and light.”
Andrei patted his Schmeisser. “Gaby, dear girl, you arrived just in time.”
The tall, angular commander looked doubtfully from Wolf to Andrei to Chris, then exploded his message. “I am making a change in strategy,” he said. “I am pulling our companies out of their exposed positions, breaking them up and putting them into bunkers.”
“Why?” Andrei demanded. “To have them wait in the ground like shivering dogs to be hunted down and butchered bunker by bunker?”
Simon shook his head in defeat. “I have reappraised our strength. We cannot make a street fight.”
“What? Wasn’t it Simon Eden who came to me a year ago oozing Zionist purity from every pore, saying, ‘Don’t fight now, Andrei. Wait! Make your shots heard! Do not die in silence!’ ”
“God damn it, Andrei. Do you think I like this decision?”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“Because ... because I believed with all my soul that we would gather an angry army of ten thousand soldiers. We can’t last more than two or three days. There will be no help from the Aryan side. Nothing ... nothing.”
He unfurled a large blueprint and flattened it on the table. “Look,” Simon continued, “a city engineer’s map of the sewer system under Warsaw. We move our companies into bunkers which can connect to the sewers. I have sent Rodel over the wall to buy trucks and get drivers. The Communists will set up escape routes and hiding places in the forests. We go under the wall a group at a time and move through the sewers, and we will come up five or six miles beyond the ghetto in prearranged locations.”
Andrei snatched the blueprint off the table and crumpled it.
“Do we destroy ourselves with a futile three-day gesture?” Simon screamed. “Or is it our duty—yes, our duty—to get a handful of survivors out? If we stay, we die—all of us. At least this other way a few may get through to tell the story.”
“He’s right, Andrei,” Chris said, stepping between them. “This story must be told.”