Recently Thompson started a new activity. The Home Army, a large Polish underground, was forming and growing quickly and he had been working with them. This was a more serious matter. He was earmarked to be thrown out of Poland shortly.
The Gestapo decided to make an arrest of the next runner who left Thompson. From the moment that Thompson passed a package of eight thousand dollars to Wanda, the Bathyran runner, they were on her.
Trained and alert Wanda became suspicious when there had been a dragnet at the Warsaw railroad terminal and she was allowed to pass through the inspection far too easily, her fake papers not scrutinized and her package unchallenged.
She entered the Old Town Square with the intuition she was being tailed. The square was not badly crowded—only thirty of forty people. Yet it was impossible to spot a stakeout because the quadrangle of five-story buildings could have hidden a hundred pairs of searching eyes. She entered on purpose from the corner opposite the Madam Curie Museum and walked cater-corner over the cobblestones. From the corner of her eye she glanced at the partly bombed-out museum. A lanky young man leaned against the wall. She came closer, still moving diagonally, calculated to pass him at a distance of some twenty or thirty meters in order to study him.
Click-click-click went her heels on the cobblestones.
Blue violets wrapped in newspaper. She shot a glance upward. It was Wolf Brandel. Smart boy, Wanda thought. He sees that I am going to pass him by.
Now Wanda had put a block and a half of open space behind her. If she was being tailed they would have to show themselves in the vast square or face the danger of losing her. She wanted to look back but dared not She. could not make her contact with Wolf until she was certain.
Wanda spotted a grate next to a sewer hole. Perfect! She walked over the grate and intentionally jammed her high heel into it so it would stick. She knelt down to free herself and in doing so stole a look behind her. Two men stopped dead in their tracks halfway over the square.
Trap!
Wolf was watching her closely. He saw the men trailing her. He saw her quickly throw the package into the sewer, pull her heel loose, and walk from the square. In a moment the place was flooded with Germans rounding everyone up. Wolf held fast.
“Violets for your mother, sonny?”
Wolf looked into the eyes of a pair of waiting Gestapo.
Chapter Twenty-three
AS A MATTER OF standard operational procedure, any Jew caught on the Aryan side was personally interrogated at Gestapo House by the chief, Gunther Sauer.
A few moments after Rebecca Eisen, known as Wanda, disposed of her package of dollars she was arrested and the forty-two people in the Old Town Square were rounded up and hauled in for questioning. Four hidden Jews were found among them.
Gunther Sauer’s appearance was deceptive. Pouchy, elderly, and of medium build, he owned an extraordinarily high forehead with a widow’s peak of neat silver hair. His eyes were a bit puffy and half closed and his voice was gentle.
One would easily mistake him for a kindly grandfather instead of a Gestapo chief. He was, indeed, an adoring grandfather.
And Gunther Sauer loved animals. A bright-eyed dachshund named Fritzy sat beside his desk in a cushioned basket all the time. Sauer would break from his work at intervals and go into spasms of laughter when Fritzy performed for a tidbit.
He was, first and last, a policeman utterly devoted to his job, a master of his profession, and living in that world apart, as policemen often do. Sauer was a master at political terror, which became the prime job of the state police after the Nazis took power. The eradication of political and intellectual opposition was a dogma which had to be executed with ruthless objectivity.
He was also a master of the psychological warfare that one uses to break down the nerves and will of the opponent. Intellectuals were putty. Business competitors of the Nazis even easier. The intelligent application of fear could win the battle of a hundred armies.
Unlike many of his Gestapo compatriots, Gunther Sauer never used terror or torture for its own sake, but as a tool of the trade to gain an end. Torture did not always work on some people, nor did psychological fear tactics. In his estimation, it was a waste of time and energy to dismember someone who was not going to help you solve your “police” problem. Sauer abhorred the brutality of Sieghold Stutze, who received personal pleasure from inflicting pain.
One had to be completely objective about his victim. After a study of a person he could fairly well establish the limit of his moral endurance. He never used torture on prisoners whom he knew would not break under torture.
On the other hand, he never hesitated when he spotted weakness. And it never annoyed him that he resorted to torture more often than not. Once or twice, early in his career, he had spent sleepless nights after torturing a child in front of its mother, but he learned to harden himself to it as part of a day’s work.
Sauer interrogated the first three Jews. All of them were nervous and talky. The first was a smuggler who implied a bribe and friends in high office.
The second, a fool who had escaped from Lemberg, a vagrant.
The third, one of the many thousands of “hidden” Jews living as Christians in Warsaw on the Aryan side. This man gave such a garbled version to cover his tracks and contacts that he was most suspect as the contact for Rebecca Eisen.
Wolf Brandel was shoved into the office. Sauer was leaning over his desk, scratching Fritzy’s chest. The dog whined and begged as Sauer teased the animal by opening and closing the drawer containing the box of tidbits. Fritzy won his prize, ran in a happy circle, then settled on the rug and crunched the hard biscuit.
Wolf snatched his cap from his head and stood at attention.
A quick appraisal. Eighteen or so. Not too Jewish in appearance. Strong, well fed, therefore resourceful. A perfect size and shape for a runner. He shifts from one foot to the other, nervously, but his eyes are innocent. He looks forward at me.
“Jew?”
“Yes, sir, I got caught.”
“Name?”
“Hershel Edelman.”
“Where are you from, Hershel?”
Watch his sweet talk, Wolf. They had the line on Sauer. Deceptive. He’ll tie you in knots.
“I’m from Wolkowysk.”
“How did you get to Warsaw?”
“My family was taken to the ghetto in Bialystok. I hid in the church during the roundup. After, I walked to Bialystok to look up a friend of my father outside the ghetto.”
“What was the name of the church in which you hid?”
“St. Casimir’s.”
“What was the name of the priest?”
“I don’t know, sir. He didn’t know I was hiding there.”
“Go on.”
“So I saw this friend of my father. He used to do business with him.”
“What is his name?”
“Wynotski.”
“What’s your father’s business?”
“Schoychet.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a man who kills chickens and cows so the meat will be kosher.”
“Fritzy, bad boy. Now get in your bed and stay there. ... But, Hershel, you said Wynotski did business with your father. If Wynotski sold kosher meat, wouldn’t he be in the ghetto?”
“No, sir. Wynotski has a gift shop. You see, sir, my father carved chessmen in his spare time and sold them to Wynotski. If you lived around Wolkowysk and Bialystok, you’d have heard about my father’s chessmen.”
“Go on.”
“So, anyhow, Wynotski got me this Aryan Kennkarte and travel pass.”
“I take it Wynotski is not Jewish.”
“Half Jewish, I think. Anyhow, his house and gift shop was lousy with crucifixes and rosaries and Bibles and stuff like that.”