A dim sound of heels cracking against cobblestones. Clump ... clump ... clump ... clump ... clump.
The SS at the Zelazna Gate, barricaded behind machine-gun nests, darted out to remove the barbed-wire gate blocking the entrance.
Rodel looked from the window in the uniform factory out to the picket fence where the black-uniformed marchers flickered past with the broken motion of a film running to a halt. The bootless brown uniforms of the Auxiliaries made a softer tread. Rodel watched, his teeth tightening in his moon-shaped face. On and on they passed.
“Hello, Beersheba,” Rodel phoned to his bunker. “This is Tolstoy. Advise Jerusalem that the Rhine Maidens and their Swans have passed the Land of Goshen. Brunhilde is leading them. They are going up the Jordan River.”
Andrei Androfski looked up and down the rooftops at his dispersed Fighters. He was satisfied that they were deployed properly. Once on the roofs, the Joint Command was able to keep their companies in communication by signal posts from roof to roof. A message was relayed from Ana Grinspan’s company that the Germans were marching up Zamenhof Street almost at the same moment that Rodel’s command had phoned the information to Simon Eden.
Andrei crawled on his belly to the corner overlooking the intersection of Mila and Zamenhof streets, with Stephan at his heels. He wiggled into a position to observe Zamenhof Street through a pair of field glasses.
Andrei grumbled to himself and sharpened his focus. “Brunhilde himself,” he said. “Stutze. How nice.”
Clump! Clump! Clump! Clump! The boot heels cracked, their echoes reverberating off the hollow shells of the buildings.
“Halt!”
The SS, Wehrmacht, and Auxiliaries broke ranks and scattered at the corner of Zamenhof and Gensia streets under the eyes and guns of Ana Grinspan’s company.
With the enemy three blocks away, Andrei shifted his position, risking a little more exposure to get a better view. He saw the Germans surrounding the Civil Authority building and the Jewish Militia barracks. SS men smashed into the abandoned Civil Authority. In a few minutes Andrei watched a confused command meeting in the middle of Zamenhof Street. Stutze pointed and ranted.
“Hello, what’s this?” Andrei whispered.
Jewish militiamen appeared in the streets for the first time since they had been terrorized into their barracks, but now they came at the end of Wehrmacht bayonets. Several Jewish militiamen, obviously of rank, were pulled from the herd and beaten into the Civil Authority building.
The sounds of machine pistol shots split the air.
“Runner!” Andrei snapped. Stephan crawled alongside him.
“Get a message to Simon. The Germans are rounding up the Jewish Militia. Some of them are being executed in the Civil Authority building. Apparently the Germans don’t know that the Civil Authority has defected. We can anticipate the Germans taking the Militia straight up Zamenhof to the Stawki Gate and the Umschlagplatz. We want instructions.”
Stephan repeated the message, then scooted down the middle of the roof for the short run through the skylight of Mila 18 and down the stairs to the bunker. Stephan appeared at the same moment that Ana Grinspan’s runner appeared with an identical message.
Simon looked to Tolek and Alex.
“Andrei wants instructions,” Stephan said.
The Germans would march the Jewish Militia under the massed guns of Andrei’s companies and a company of Wolf’s Fighters near the Stawki Gate. There were a thousand Germans in the street. They would be sitting pigeons. Should the rebellion begin on a note of saving Jewish traitors? Would it not be poetic and historic justice to see those ghouls marched off to the Umschlagplatz just as they had taken their own blood and flesh? An outburst which would give these bastards a chance to spread and hide would all but deplete the ammunition stores of the Joint Forces.
Command decision! God. If only Andrei were down here to knock me on my back. Tolek and Alex continued to watch him in the dim light. Simon sucked in a deep breath, then another. The Germans were in a box such as they might never be caught in again. But ... did it not take just as much courage to make the decision to let them pass out of the ghetto to give his Fighters a day, a week, ten days to find more ammunition?
“Tell Andrei ... to keep absolute discipline. Let them pass.” He spun the cranks of the phone to confirm his opinion, to assure himself. “This is Jerusalem. Atlas speaking. The Rhine Maidens are at Herod’s Palace and are taking Korah and Absalom to Egypt. Let them pass.”
In the bunker of the Revisionists at Nalewki 37, Samson Ben Horin faced the commander of his Chayal group who were spread along the roofs over Zamenhof near Ana Grinspan’s company. The Chayal officer, Emanuel, snorted at Ben Horin.
“We will not let them pass!”
Samson Ben Horin stroked his newly grown beard. He liked it. The liaison runner from Eden’s headquarters looked from Ben Horin to his officer.
“We are not obliged to carry out orders from Eden,” the officer prodded.
“You are obligated to take my orders,” Ben Horin answered. “By coincidence they are exactly the same. Let the Germans pass through.”
Emanuel was enraged. “The Germans are in a box!”
Ben Horin shrugged.
“You are a flunky of the Labor Zionists,” Emanuel cried.
“I shall relieve you of your command this instant if you cannot obey,” Ben Horin threatened angrily.
Emanuel sulked, simmered, calmed, and was returned to his post, distressed that Ben Horin had taken a position concurrent with that of the Joint Forces.
Clump! Clump! Clump! Clump!
Andrei crawled as close to the roofs edge as he dared. He looked over his people. Their sweaty hands tightened around their weapons. Black eyes blazed from hidden corners. Andrei poked his fist into the air in a “hold fire” signal.
Beneath him the Germans took the Jewish Militia toward the Umschlagplatz and Treblinka.
Andrei licked his lips. He sighted “Gaby,” the Schmeisser, on Sieghold Stutze’s heart. “Ah,” he whispered to himself. “What a lovely, magnificent target. So full of nice plump syphilitic blood.” He clenched his teeth, pulling his itching, wiggling finger off the trigger.
The Fighters strewn out above Zamenhof Street looked down on their tormentors, gnawing pains of restraint holding them from unleashing their wrath.
“Look at that juicy Austrian. Ah, Stutze ... Will I ever get such a lovely shot at you?” Andrei half cried to himself. “What a goddamn war!”
“Hello, Jerusalem,” Wolf Brandel said. “The Angel from Lebanon advises us that the Rhine Maidens have taken Korah and Absalom into Egypt. They are boarding the train for hell. All is clear.”
As the tail end of the German force disappeared out of the Stawki Gate, the hands gripping the guns and grenades and bottle bombs relaxed and their bodies slumped in exhaustion, drained by tension.
A waving of signal flags, rooftop to window, window to rooftop to street. A scampering of the runners. “All is clear.”
The generator in Mila 18 sputtered and spun into life. The lights flickered on. The children in Majdanek, lying tightly against Deborah on the floor, resumed their reading game and Rabbi Solomon lifted the chant of his prayer and Moritz the Nasher cut the double deck of cards for another round of sixty-six and Alexander wrote down the notes in the journal.
Simon Eden was doubled over the desk with exhaustion. Andrei came in and slammed him across the back. “Simon! Did I have that syphilitic Austrian in my gun sights! I ached from head to toe to blast his head off. What discipline! Not a whisper up there! Not a sign. Not for a single second did Stutze know he was under our guns! Simon! Simon! By God, we have an army!”