“Who?”
Andrei halted for a moment. “Wolf Brandel.”
Max whistled. It was getting interesting. He polished his outlandish ring hastily on his vest.
“Where is he?”
“Gestapo House.”
Max put his cigar down and shook his head. Work camps ... easy to make a fix. Pay off a few shnook guards. Koenig’s factories in the ghetto, a little harder. The money went right to Koenig and cost more. The Jewish Militia, hadn’t found one yet who wouldn’t go for two hundred zlotys. Pawiak Prison—difficult, but he always came through.
“Gestapo House,” Max said. “Brandel’s boy. I don’t know.”
Max calculated the pros and cons quickly. He could rat on the Brandel boy and endear himself to the Germans. It would be genuine proof of his honesty and sincerity. Question was, would they appreciate it? On the other hand, the Big Seven and the Orphans and Self-Help Society were doing more and more business with him all the time. He could lose a lot of face in the ghetto if word of a sellout got around. But ... suppose he tried to get the Brandel boy out and failed or the Germans got wind of it. He’d be out on his ass, but good.
Max stood up quickly. “Leave me out of it. Hands off. I’ll forget everything you said.”
“Sit down, Max,” Andrei said softly. “Max, that order of flour for the Orphans and Self-Help—just cancel it. We’re opening up a new source.”
Max slipped into his chair. “Damn you, Androfski, I went to a lot of trouble to ship that wheat in here. I brought in so goddamned much flour that half the bakeries on the Aryan side had to close.”
“Just talking off the top of my head, Max, but forty or fifty of our own people think we can run the smuggling operation just as effectively.”
The message was clear. The Brandel boy had to be freed at any price. Androfski was one of those bastards who didn’t bluff. Max opened his wallet and took out his estimation pad and began to scratch figures down.
“It will cost plenty.”
“We’ll pay.”
“I’ll have to work in gold or dollars. We can only move through high-class people.”
“I’ve only got zlotys,” Andrei lied.
“So have I got zlotys. A warehouse full of them. They aren’t worth the goddamn paper they’re printed on. Gold or dollars, three thousand dollars.”
“Three thousand dollars!”
“Your hearing is excellent.”
Andrei’s eyes watered in anger. He turned his back on Kleperman to conceal the rage inside him. Filthy stinking scum. Bargaining for a life as if it were a secondhand suit on the Parysowski market Goddamned son of a bitch, Kleperman. Rachael’s eyes. Day and night she waited in his flat. Could he look at Rachael’s eyes again?
“It’s a deal,” he whispered.
“Let’s have the details.”
Andrei sat down opposite Max and held his face in his hands. “He got picked up in the Old Town Square carrying an Aryan Kennkarte made out for a fictitious Stanislaw Krasnodebski. He was sent out as a contact for a pickup from one of our girls from Krakow. Now the Germans hauled in forty, fifty people. Mass questioning. No doubt they’ve looked at his penis and know he’s Jewish. We’ve got reason to believe several Jews were grabbed in the dragnet.”
“One of my boys was taken in on the same roundup,” Max said, and added ironically, “He isn’t as lucky as Brandel. Doesn’t have his friends.”
“So, he goes on a story of being Hershel Edelman from Wolkowysk. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t been identified.”
“He’ll need more than luck with Sauer working him over. I’ll find out what his status is. If he is under suspicion we can’t touch him at Gestapo House. That will only endanger him. Sauer doesn’t take bribes. Just hope the boy doesn’t crack. We have to wait until he is transferred.”
Andrei nodded. Max stood up.
“Max ... I know the Big Seven can put us out of business, but if there’s a double cross you’ll get it first from me, personally.”
Chapter Twenty-four
EIGHT DAYS PASSED.
Rachael Bronski waited in her Uncle Andrei’s flat twenty-four hours each day, resisting consolation, eating only enough to keep her alive.
Each time Andrei walked in and shook his head the shock recoiled through her like the jagged glass on the top of the wall. She kept her eyes open in vigil until she collapsed from exhaustion, and then only a few nightmare-filled hours’ respite could be found.
She twitched and sweated on the bed and woke up with her heart thumping and the sweat pouring into her eyes, and Wolf would be standing there at the foot of the bed, gory and dismembered, and she would cry out the horror within her and then start her slow, zombie-like pacing of the room.
All of this silly war of morality I fought with him. All this modesty—all this fear ... Wolf was locked up in that terrible place. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. If Andrei comes through the door and tells me Wolf is dead, then I must die too.
Rachael developed a superhuman sharpness for sound. From four flights up she could hear the door of the lobby open and close. Each time it did she would walk to the door of the flat and lean against it and begin to count footsteps.
It took sixty steps to get to Andrei’s flat.
She would count. Sometimes the sound of footsteps would stop on the first landing or the second or third. She could tell if they were climbing stairs or walking in a corridor.
She could tell if their sound was taking someone up or down.
The ninth day.
She washed her face with cold water and fixed her hair and sat by the window. The door opened and closed in the lobby. Rachael listened and began her count.
... ten ... eleven ... twelve ...
The footsteps had reached the first landing.
... sixteen ... seventeen ... eighteen ...
She was able to distinguish between footsteps as they rose higher. The flat, weary shuffle was a man. The sharp sound was a woman’s heels. The soft sound, the child.
... thirty-three ... thirty-four ... thirty-five ...
Two men! Two men walking up slowly. Everyone walked slowly these days.
... forty-three ... forty-four ... forty-five ...
Her heart began to race. Two men on the third-floor landing. Oh God! Please don’t let them go into a flat down there. Please, God! Please make them come up to this floor. Please, God! I have never heard two men come up to the fourth floor! Please! Please!
... fifty-one ... fifty-two ... fifty-three ...
Rachael backed away.
... fifty-nine ... sixty
The door opened
Andrei walked in ... someone behind him.
“Wolf!”
He walked in slowly and took off his cap. Rachael pitched forward into his arms and fought off the consuming blackness that took hold of her.
For many, many moments she was too terrified to look up. Was this another dream?
No ... no ... no dream. She looked up. He was fine. Just a scar on his cheek. And then she allowed herself the luxury of breaking wide open in convulsive tears.
“Rachael,” he whispered, “I am all right. Please don’t cry. I am all right. ...”
Andrei left them, closing the door behind him.
Alex and Sylvia sat in their room, ghost-faced, drained of life. Neither of them had spoken a word for an hour since Wolf had left to go to Rachael.
Andrei knocked softly and entered.
“Dr. Glazer examined him. None of the dog bites are infected. He’ll be all right.”