“Where did Wynotski get the Aryan Kennkarte?”
“Most likely bought it from a family where someone died and it wasn’t recorded. Anyhow, I didn’t ask questions. I mean, sir, under the conditions, you just take it and don’t ask questions.”
Clever young man, Sauer thought. Either a magnificent fake or entirely honest.
“Continue,” Sauer said.
“So, I came to Warsaw.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s the biggest city in Poland. I figured I’d have the best chance to stay hidden because I don’t know anybody here and wouldn’t get recognized.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three days.”
“Where have you stayed?”
“I found a loose window in back of the men’s room at the railroad station. Anyhow, it’s like a storeroom for mops and buckets and stuff and I’ve been sleeping there.”
“What were you doing standing in front of the Old Town Square statue?”
“The Madam Curie Museum,” Wolf corrected. “Waiting for someone.”
“Who?”
“Well, you can imagine. I’ve got to figure something out. I start prowling around. My money is running low and stuff. So, pretty soon you hear talk and stuff, and so I went to the Solec because they said you can get fixed up there for just about anything. I went to the Granada Club. Sure got tough guys in there, and I met this—well—whore.”
Sauer was entranced.
“So, I find out she is Jewish. Selma is her name. I’m sure it is a fake name. So, anyhow, I’m cautious at first because I think she may be helping look for runaways like me, but it’s kind of funny how two Jews can spot each other. So, Selma says she knows someone who can help me but for me not to come back to the Granada because the hoodlums in there are looking for hidden Jews and to meet her next day at the Old Town Square.”
“What were you doing with violets?” Sauer snapped.
Wolf scratched his head and blushed. “This whore was sure nice to me, sir. I just wanted to buy her violets.”
Sauer talked softly to Wolf for two hours. The questions were masked in huge traps. Every so often Wolf would whimper, “Sir, if you are trying to confuse me, you sure are succeeding. I’m getting mixed up trying to remember the honest truth.”
That night Wolf Brandel spent alone in a cell. The screams of torture pierced his eardrums from down the hall.
Gunther Sauer, in his meticulous, grinding way, listened to wire playbacks of the interviews with the four Jews. He was oblivious of the cries of pain coming from Rebecca Eisen in the main interrogation room.
In the morning Sauer called Gestapo in Bialystok. In the afternoon they phoned him back. Yes, there was a gift shop run by a half Jew named Wynotski who had disappeared. There was record of a schoychet from Wolkowysk who was sent into the ghetto and who had a son who had escaped. Edelman was, in fact, famous for his hand-carved chessmen.
The whore in Solec? Untraceable. The moment the Nazis approached the Granada Club no one would know anything. Even their informers could not be counted upon. Whores had dozens of names. Selma could be Elma or Thelma.
The weeks of meticulous training were put to the acid test. Each of the underground assumed an identity of an actual person who could not be traced. The identities were taken from information supplied by Bathyran runners in other cities. Wolf Brandel’s story had been carefully worked out for weeks before he was given the name of Hershel Edelman. The real Edelman was obviously masquerading as someone else, somewhere in Poland.
“Bring back Hershel Edelman,” Sauer said.
The boy seemed no more frightened than a night at Gestapo House would demand. Sauer played for the one possible loophole. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a chessboard and a set of chessmen.
“Sit down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Black or white?”
“Your preference, sir.”
“I have seen you defend yourself, Edelman. Now I should like to see your attack. Take the white.”
“Sir,” Wolf said haltingly. “Sir, this is very awkward. I mean, under the circumstances, I’m rather afraid to win.”
“You had better win, young man.”
Wolf did. In nine moves.
He was sent into the main interrogation room to sit alone on the single chair beneath the spotlight. There was nothing else in the room. Gunther Sauer had hit a dead end. His only choice was shock identification—or resort to torture. He was puzzled by the boy and not certain he would break down. Even if he did break down, he might have been telling the truth and could reveal nothing.
Sauer proceeded to the booth next to the interrogation room. There, through an arrangement of mirrors, he could watch the interrogation without being seen. Sensitive microphones piped sounds back to him, refined to pick up heartbeats.
“Bring in that woman,” Sauer ordered.
He watched closely as Wolf sat fidgeting in the hard chair. All Wolf could think of now was to keep his mind on Rachael and keep thinking of her and keep saying to himself that she would be proud of him, no matter what happened.
The iron door creaked open.
Wolf looked toward it slowly. Two Gestapo men stood on either side of the figure of a woman, holding her up. They let her go. The woman staggered, then fell face first to the floor.
Wolf edged out of the chair toward her.
Sauer watched and listened. ...
He knelt and rolled the woman over. It was Rebecca Eisen. Her face was bloated and distorted. One eye was locked tight, a multitude of colors, and blood gushed from her broken mouth and her torn fingernails. She quivered the other eye open. They recognized one another.
“Lady,” Wolf said, “lady, are you alive? I wish I could do something for you, lady.”
“Boy ... boy ... water ...”
A small smile crossed Gunther Sauer’s lips. If they were actors, they had played it to perfection. Hershel Edelman was obviously clean, but the story was so pat—so untraceable—the boy mystified him so. ...
“What do you think, sir?” an assistant asked.
“They don’t know each other,” Sauer said. “On the other hand, they don’t have to if he was actually a contact. The violets—I’m not sure of the violets.”
“Shall we send a dog in there?”
“Let me think about it.”
The Club Miami on Karmelicka Street inside the ghetto was the Jewish counterpart of the notorious Granada Club in the Solec as the center of smuggling, fencing, and prostitution. At the moment, members of Max Kleperman’s Big Seven were the ruling gentry.
The Club Miami had a unique distinction as a “free trading zone.” All activities within the bounds of this unholy sanctuary were looked upon as “off the record.” This confidence was respected even by the Germans. The Nazis realized that, as often as not, they too would need the facilities of a “free trading zone” and thus allowed the operation to exist. A half dozen rooms in back of the main bar were used to carry out transactions which were never taped, nor were the transactors followed or photographed. Unwritten law, gentlemen’s agreement, honor among thieves.
Max Kleperman knew that something strange was afoot when he received a phone call from Rabbi Solomon to go to the Club Miami.
Max arrived, filled with eager anticipation of a huge deal. The bartender advised him his contact waited in one of the back rooms. He entered and closed the door. Andrei Androfski turned and faced him. Max’s inevitable cigar smoke billowed around the room. Extraordinary for Androfski himself to come to him.
“One of our people has been picked up,” Andrei said.
Max grunted in disappointment. From time to time the Zionists had come to him to arrange releases for those stupidly picked up by Piotr Warsinski for the labor battalions. Kleperman had made one big killing when Rodel, the Communist, was thrown into Pawiak. It may be a big one again, Max hoped. After all, Rabbi Solomon personally made the call and Androfski personally made the contact.