Later that day Andrei entered the shambled Orphans and Self-Help building at Mila 19. He went to the converted water closet where the false lavatory once covered the secret entrance to their underground rooms. The lavatory was smashed, but the pipe leading to the cellar was still intact.
Andrei tucked a flashlight and short-handled pick and sledge hammer into his belt, strapped the Schmeisser “Gaby” on his back, and slid down the pipe. He flicked on the light. The beam probed over mounds of wreckage. The retaining walls and overhead crossbeams had been knocked loose, caving in the main tunnel in many places. Andrei inched forward, digging away the blockage with his hands.
He came to the room which had belonged to the children. It was a shambles. The layers of bunks had been wrecked with axes and the books torn to shreds and the few toys smashed. Andrei moved along a ten-foot wall which lay against the Kanal pipe. Seepings oozed through.
He could hear the flow of sewage. He calculated in order to line up Mila 18.
Any decision would most likely be wrong. “Well, I’ve got to start someplace.”
He fixed the flashlight on a single spot, sank his pick into the dirt wall, and hacked away until it crumpled to the outer shell of the pipe.
Andrei smoothed a place big enough for him to carve out a manhole and bashed at the concrete with a sledge until it cracked under the beating. Once through the outer layer, he jarred loose enough bricks from the inner lining of the pipe so that he could fit through.
He wiped the sweat from his eyes and refixed the tools in his belt, cursing that he was on a wild-goose chase, then knelt at the hole and looked into the Kanal with his light. It was not too bad. The tide on the Vistula River was low, as he had calculated, so the sewage was only waist-high.
Andrei squeezed through the hole into the sewer. His feet skidded in the slime. He pulled the strap of his weapon several notches tighter so it would ride higher on his back and not get wet. In both directions dim streaks filtered through the manholes, sending an eerie bluish light glistening on the bricks.
He waded to the middle and looked behind him so he would remain in a line with the children’s room. On the opposite side of the sewer he thrust his ear against the brick, hoping for sound. There was none.
His flashlight moved first in one direction for several yards, then another.
Andrei splashed down a dozen yards. A cluster of bricks were not laid in the same pattern as the rest, as though they had been knocked loose and replaced. Could it be! He felt with his fingers. The bricks were definitely not cemented in. There was room for a man to fit through if they were removed. Was there a bunker on the other side? Were the children hearing smugglers coming in and out of the sewer?
Andrei hit his sledge against the bricks for a sounding. Hollow ring! It was not solid on the other side. There was a room!
He picked at the bricks. They came out easily.
It was hollow on the other side. Andrei shone the light in.
He crawled in and moved his fight in a complete circle.
“Holy God!” he muttered, and whistled with disbelief. He stood at his full height in a huge subterranean room. It was the most magnificent underground structure he had ever seen. Along one wall were sacks of rice, flour, sugar, salt. There were crates of medicine. Salted meats. Cases of tins of food. A bin of dried vegetables. Beautiful couches, easy chairs, furniture, bed.
“Holy God!”
He found the exit into a corridor and inched down it. Five more large rooms were on either side of the corridor, and each as big as the first one and each held stores. Overhead an electric line with light bulbs.
Andrei came to the end of the corridor. It turned into a smaller tunnel holding a series of cells.
“Don’t move,” a voice behind him commanded. “Hands over your head. High!”
Andrei lifted his arms. It had all been too good to be true. He cursed himself for forgetting to unstrap his weapon in the excitement of locating the bunker.
“Put both your hands on the wall,” the voice commanded. Andrei did as he was told. “Now turn your face.”
He looked into a blinding light.
“Andrei Androfski?”
“Is that you, Moritz?”
“How in the hell did you figure out where this bunker was?”
“We added two and two. Put that goddamned gun away and take the light out of my eyes.”
“Don’t rush me into any decisions. I’m not sure whether I have to kill you or not.” He shifted the light toward one of the cells. “Step into my office. What I’m holding on you, for your information, is a shotgun.”
Moritz lit a lantern and settled in back of his desk. He had a grizzly beard and an anemic color. Much of his chubbiness had shrunk away. Underground living had been hard on him. Moritz kept the shotgun leveled at Andrei’s chest Andrei was too busy being awed by the office. In addition to electrical wiring, there was a phone on the desk and a low-wattage radio transmitter.
“What a setup.”
Moritz shrugged modestly at the compliment “We tried to give our customers good service. Only trouble is that we’ve got no more customers. We got no one. Most my boys were grabbed on a haul. Just me and my wife Sheina and a few others. You’ve met Sheina? She’s asleep in the other room. She sleeps through anything, that woman. Even your banging holes into my bunker. She’s sick. She needs a doctor. Change of life.”
“How in hell do you run the lights—the radio?”
“Generator, what else? Used to be able to send messages to my contacts on the Aryan side. Simple code.”
Telephone?”
“One of my boys worked for the phone company. There’s a million ways to screw the phone company. We tied in on a Ukrainian line from the guards at the Brushmaker’s and we speak Yiddish. They’ve never been able to figure it. No, Andrei. I’m sorry you had to find this place because I’ve always held you in high esteem. You were a very smart man to locate my bunker, but naturally I’ve got to kill you.”
“Not so fast, Moritz. Obviously I wouldn’t pull a move like this without a cover. You’ve heard of Joint Jewish Forces?”
Moritz screwed up his face. He suspected he was about to be taken. “I still get around.”
“They know I’m here and what I’m looking for.”
“Oh crap!” Moritz the Nasher said. He lay the shotgun on the desk in disgust. “Minute I saw you barreling through the sewer into the bunker I said to myself that this bastard is too smart to come in exposed. Now you talk to Alexander Brandel. He’ll tell you I’ve been right down the line with his Orphans setup. I always did business on the square with him.”
“Moritz, for God’s sake, stop apologizing. Do you hear me pushing you around?”
Moritz the Nasher was hungry. He opened the top desk drawer and took out a packet of German chocolate, unwrapped it, nibbled, and decried the lack of fresh fruit. “You want my bunker, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
“And seven hundred thousand zlotys’ worth of food.”
“I feel bad, Moritz—believe me.”
“What a kick in the ass life is. If one thief doesn’t get you, another will,” Moritz opined.
Andrei sympathized with him. Moritz the Nasher was a gambler, a smuggler, a man who existed by wit. But he was also a supreme realist. He knew that he had been caught flat. At least Andrei Androfski and the Joint Forces held him no malice. Maybe he was lucky, after all. Had the Germans or the Militia found him first ... curtains ... Umschlagplatz. He had hoped that he and his wife Sheina could ride the war out in Mila 18. They had enough supplies and medicine to see through a year or two without ever coming up. But ... what kind of a life was it for a man? Never to see the sun. Nobody to play cards with. Candy running out. Always in fear that the next minute or the next or the next those goddamn German dogs would sniff him out.