Chris looked at Von Epp, who was enjoying a cigarette. Orders are orders. A wall of indifference built around him that shut out a struggle of good and evil.
And then ... the thoughts of the massacre outside Kiev seared into his mind. Chris had to make his move. Make it soon. Now ... now ...
And Horst von Epp was his only chance.
Do it, Chris prodded himself, do it—tomorrow may be too late.
“I want to go into the ghetto,” Chris said quickly, fearing his own courage.
“Come now, Chris,” Von Epp said, concealing his delight. “It will put us both in a bad light.” All of Horst von Epp’s patience was beginning to pay off now. Chris had held a card up his sleeve from the beginning. His desire to stay in Warsaw at any cost. His reluctance to join the parties after a reputation as a lothario in other places at other times. Chris wanted something. Von Epp knew that from the start. Now the card was being played with caution.
“I’ve got to see Rosenblum and clean up a lot of odds and ends.”
“If you insist on this ...”
“I insist.”
Von Epp threw up his hands in “defeat.” “All right.” He glanced at his watch. Enough for one day, he thought. He looked for his car, which had trailed them and parked at the foot of the bridge. “Can I drive you into town?”
“I’ll walk. I’ll see you later.”
“Try to change your mind about going into the ghetto.” Horst turned briskly as he started for his car.
“Horst!”
The German turned to see Chris walking grimly toward him, on the brink of a terrible decision.
“Suppose I want to get someone out of the ghetto?”
“Rosenblum?”
“No.”
“A woman?”
“And her children.”
“Who?”
“My grandmother.”
Horst von Epp smiled. Christopher de Monti had played his card. Every man had his price. Von Epp always found it With most, petty bribes ... favors. That was for petty people. Christopher de Monti? Tough. An idealist in the throes of conflict. Blackmail often worked. Almost everyone had dirty tracks they tried to cover. Von Epp found them too.
No matter how tough, how idealistic, how clean, every man had his price. Every man had his blind spot.
“How important is this?” Horst asked.
“Everything,” Chris whispered, culminating the decision, putting himself at the mercy of the German.
“It can be done, I suppose.”
“How?”
“She can sign papers that she isn’t Jewish. We have handy form letters for all occasions, as you know. Marry her, adopt the children. A ten-minute detail. Then send her into Switzerland as the wife of an Italian citizen.”
“When can I pick up my pass for the ghetto?”
“After we settle on the price.”
“Like Faust? My soul to the devil?”
That’s right Chris. It will be steep.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
ANDREI WAITED FOR TWO restless, mood-filled weeks before he could corner the man known to him as Roman, the Warsaw commander of the fledgling underground Home Army.
Time and again Andrei had to stifle his desire to go back into the ghetto with his friends. He drank heavily in the evenings, and when his mind became fuzzed he was filled with remorse. He had been intolerant of Alexander Brandel’s struggle. He had acted wrongly to friends who believed in him.
He thought about everything since the war had come. Bullheaded ... angry. Perhaps he was no good for a command again. There was a time when he had settled down and moved about Poland on mission after mission. He had pieced together a secret press. He had acted with a cool head and a quick mind.
But always, anger surged. Rebellion against tyranny. He was overpowered by this drive to throw off his containment and fight.
And Gaby. He was remorseful about her too. What kind of life had he given her? He had taken her from a world in which she thrived and placed demands upon her, giving little or nothing in return. When the command in the Home Army comes, maybe I will get away from Warsaw. Then perhaps she can forget about me slowly and find the thread of a decent life.
At long last the word came back through super-cautious networks of information that Roman would see him. It was with an immense feeling of relief that he followed out the instructions. A contact in Praga. A blindfolded ride back over the river. Two dozen false turns to throw off his sense of direction. Men whispering, leading him up a dirt path. A door, a room. Where was he? He did not know exactly.
“You may take off the blindfold,” a high tenor voice said in immaculate Polish.
Andrei adjusted his eyes to the shadows of the room. They were in a large shed. Crude curtains shutting out light. A kerosene lantern on a shelf. A cot. A few garden tools.
Roman’s face came across the flicker of light. He had seen the prototype of Roman a thousand times in a thousand places. Tall, erect, blond, high forehead, curly hair. He wore the unmaskable glower of perpetual arrogance of a Polish nobleman. It was the sneer of a Ulany colonel, the innuendo of superiority, the thin mocking lips. Andrei could almost tell Roman’s story. The son of a count. Landed gentry. Misused wealth. Medieval mentality. Roman most likely lived in the South of France before the war. He cared damn little about Poland except to bleed his estate dry with the blood of legalized serfdom. He saw damned little of Poland except during the social season.
Andrei’s estimation was deadly accurate. Like many of his ilk, Roman had become suddenly smitten with latent Polish “nationalism” after the invasion. He joined the government in exile in London because it was the fashionable thing to do. London was jammed with Poles who gathered to hear Chopin and recite poetry and live memories of Warsaw in the “good old days.”
He parachuted into Poland to work with the Home Army, a play of immature romanticism. Despite the guise of workman’s clothing, Roman’s frailties shone like a beacon. “You are persistent, Jan Kowal,” Roman said to Andrei.
“Only as persistent as you are evasive,” Andrei answered.
“Cigarette?” American, of course. He’d rough it later with the local product. No use carrying nationalism to extremes.
“I don’t smoke.”
Roman did. With a long cigarette holder.
“You’re Androfski, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I remember seeing you in Berlin in the Olympics.”
Andrei began to have that uneasy feeling he had had a thousand times in the presence of the Romans. He could read the thoughts hidden behind Roman’s eyes.
... Jew boy. We had Jewish families on our estate. Two of them. One was the village tailor. Had a little son with earlocks. I beat the hell out of him with my horsewhip. He wouldn’t fight—only pray. The other Jew ... grain merchant. Thief. Cheat. Always had my father indebted to him. The inbred hatred of centuries could not be belied by Roman’s small, tight smile.
“I am afraid,” Roman said, “that our position is such that you cannot expect too much co-operation from us at the present time. Perhaps later, as we are better organized ...
“You mistake my mission,” Andrei said. “I represent only myself. I wish to place myself at the service of the Home Army. A fighting command, preferred.”
“Oh, I see. That puts a different light on everything.” Roman’s slim elegant fingers caressed the long cigarette holder. “The Home Army does not work under conditions of a peacetime military force, naturally. All our people are volunteers. The maintenance of discipline cannot be as simple as a day in the guardhouse or the loss of pay. Discipline is life and death.”