The rope burned Carrick’s palms. He thought his arms were being dragged slowly, inexorably, from his shoulders. He took more of the strain because he was taller than Reuven Weissberg.
He had been the confidant who was told the story of the extermination camp and of an escape from that place. Had been the chosen man of Reuven Weissberg when the other rats had fled. Had been the bodyguard of Josef Goldmann, money-launderer. Johnny Carrick had been, also, an officer of the Serious Crime Directorate 10, and had sworn the oath. His knees were clamped on a weapon of massive killing power. He took the Makharov pistol out of the pancake holster, clung one-handed to the rope, twisted and called for Reuven Weissberg to watch him. There was sufficient moonlight. He held up the pistol, where it was seen. He waved it in front of Reuven Weissberg’s eyes, a few inches from them. He threw it, and white spray bounced from the silver, feathered up, then was lost. Again, both hands were on the rope and he dragged the boat closer to the black wall that was the bank. He thought he had seen, against the trees, a man standing but could not have sworn to it; thought he had seen the moonlight flash momentarily on metal, a rifle’s barrel. It was a nuclear weapon and it had jolted the skin off him.
Carrick shouted, ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Why you do that? Why? I hear you.’
‘I am a lie, live one and act one. Time for truth.’
‘What?’
‘Wearing the gun was a lie.’
‘You talk shit.’
‘Truth says I’m a police officer. I’m a police officer seconded to an intelligence agency. I targeted Josef Goldmann for criminal investigation. I came here to live a lie, to betray you.’
‘Not you, Johnny — not you?’ He thought he heard agony, as if a scream was raised, like the owls’ shriek, like branches grating together when a gale blows. ‘Not you? Tell me, not you?’
They were at the mid-point where the strain on arms, shoulders, hips and knees was greatest. The boat juddered and was turned half round. The big log hit it, seemed to snag it, brought water in and freed itself. He pulled the boat nearer to that bank, yard by yard.
‘It’s the truth. When we get there you’ll be arrested. Men are there who have tracked you. I’m bringing you to them, Reuven Weissberg. If it hadn’t been for the weapon it wouldn’t have happened, but the weapon’s there. It’ll be cordoned and there will be guns. Sir, I understand about the camp and I’m sorry.’
The yell cut the night, was over the Bug’s roar. Reuven Weissberg shrieked, ‘We owe them nothing. Everything was betrayal. An officer rode a horse beside them and said they would be shipped to the east. It was betrayal. An officer in a white coat pretended to be a doctor as he led them to the death chambers and betrayed innocence. A man seemed to come from God and led them from the camp, then abandoned them and betrayed trust. A child found them and betrayed them to his father. Nobody, because of what was done, is owed anything.’
I had been in the forest for two weeks and had eaten only decomposing berries, chewed roots, and drunk rainwater from puddles. I was deep in the forest and heard no man, nor saw one. It was because I was asleep that I hadn’t run. I was found by men from a partisan unit. They were Jewish, of the Chil group, and their leader was Yechiel Greenspan. When they woke me, I thought at first they were Polish Christians and tried to fight them. There were too many and I was too weak. They took me back to their camp, far into the Parczew forest.
When we came to where the sentries were they gave a password. It was ‘Amcha’, the password of our people when they fought the Syrians two thousand years before. I learned that it had survived, used through history by Jews in flight. I learned also that their principal enemy was the men of the Armia Krajowa. They said that more of the escapers had been killed by the Armia Krajowa than by the Germans.
I lived with them.
I became a fighter with them.
I killed with them and hunted for food with them.
They were people I trusted, but no other man or woman.
The child grew in me.
My son was born on 22 July, two weeks late. The pain of the birth was worse than anything I had experienced. I called him Jakob, which was the name of our sub-unit commander. The same day that I gave birth we heard the sounds of artillery and tank fire. The noise of the fighting came from outside where we were, in the most dense and remote part of the forest, but still within six hours’ walk of where the camp had been.
It was impossible for me to go. Others went.
On the day after the Red Army had gone through Sobibor and had advanced towards Chelm, Ha
sk, Sawin and Cycow, a patrol of the Chil partisans set off to find out what had happened at the camp, to make contact with the rear echelon of the Red Army, and to beg for food.
They were gone at dawn and were back in the long evening before the late dusk. They had not met Russians but they had seen men of the Armia Krajowa strutting in the street at Suchawa and Okuninka. They had hidden from them. One sat down with me and told me of what he had found at the death camp of Sobibor. He said there were many Poles there.
There were farm peasants, forest workers and women from Osowa and Kosyn. There were shopkeepers from Wlodawa, and some had brought their families. They were all Catholic Poles. With them they had carried abandoned shells and mortar bombs, which had been left by the Germans as they had retreated back from the river Bug, and they had brought a very small amount of dynamite from a quarry, only a small amount was necessary, a few grams, and fuse cord. While I suckled my baby, he told me what he had seen from the cover of the trees.
In the hours after the escape, the Germans had shot dead all the prisoners who had not escaped, shot dead all the wounded and all of those recaptured in the forest. They were shot, in their clothes, above a pit and their bodies fell into it. The Germans covered the pit.
The camp was then closed, abandoned, destroyed and made to look like a farm. The huts were taken down. Work parties were brought to Sobibor, shifted more soil into the pit and levelled the ground. By the next summer it was impossible to know where the pit was, where some four hundred Jews were buried.
Those people who came, whom he saw, did not know where the bodies were.
As he watched, hidden, the people buried the shells and bombs, with the small amounts of dynamite to help the explosion, and they lit the fuse cords. They blew up the shells and bombs, then searched in the craters for Jews’ bodies.
When they found corpses, rotting, stinking, they stripped off the clothes and hunted for gold and jewellery that might have been stitched into them. They believed, those people, that all Jews had money and valuables. And they looked in the jaws of the dead for the teeth.
Even the dead of Sobibor were betrayed.
You should never forget the betrayal of your people, of your blood. You owe no man, no woman, no child anything.
After Sobibor, softness was dead, love and kindness with it.
‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’
Remember what I have told you, dear Reuven. Remember it well.
The boat bucked, rocked.
Reuven Weissberg hung on the rope and launched the kick towards the turned spine of the man he had believed loyal.