The Far Side of the Sky (45 page)

“The Japanese!” Berta whispered urgently. “They’re here!”

Franz squinted.
“Here?
Why?”

“They have brought wounded soldiers,” Berta said.

Franz dashed for the entrance, and Sunny followed. Two uniformed Japanese medics sporting Red Cross armbands marched down the pathway toward the door. The medics slung a wooden stretcher between them that held a sailor in a bloodied white uniform.

The medic at the rear of the stretcher called in English, “A bomb exploded at the wharf! Chinese sabotage. We have four injured sailors. Get us beds!”

“How serious are the injuries?” Franz asked.

“You are doctor?” the medic demanded.

“A surgeon, yes.”

“Two are bad,” the medic snapped. “You have operating room here, yes?”

They cleared four beds in a row for the wounded sailors. Sunny and Franz stood at the foot of the beds beside the English-speaking medic and assessed the casualties. Blood and debris covered the men. They reeked of burnt clothing and sulphur. Three of the four sailors had their heads bandaged. Sunny could see that the patients in the first two beds suffered far more serious injuries than the other two.

The sailor in the second bed lay still with his head and half of his face draped in heavy bandages. His blood-soaked pants were shredded over his left leg. A towel covered his leg, but from the thigh down, the limb twisted unnaturally and the foot pointed at a right angle to the rest of the
leg. The medic nodded at him. “Shattered femur from a falling wall. Many cuts to his head and face.”

The medic swung his finger to the first bed, where a wide-eyed sailor, as pale as the wall behind him, stared silently back. His tunic had been sliced open, exposing his chest and abdomen. He clutched a blood-soaked towel to his belly. “He has lost much blood,” the medic grunted.

Franz leaned closer to the sailor. “May I?” he asked, pantomiming the act of removing the towel.

The sailor nodded warily. Franz gently peeled it back. Blood caked the man’s abdomen, and more oozed out from a central hole the size of a fist. A greyish-pink loop of bowel poked out of the wound. A long shard of glass glinted under the skin. Franz lowered the towel back over the abdomen and rested the sailor’s hand on top of it. He turned to the nearest nurse. “Berta, prepare the operating room.”

“Certainly, Dr. Adler,” she replied.

Franz motioned to Sunny as he spoke to the medic. “Mrs. Adler is an able surgeon. She will be in charge of the others while I operate on this man. All right?”

The medic glanced at her skeptically before turning to Franz with a single nod.

Franz pointed to the patient with the shattered leg. “Sunny, you might need to reset his femur while I’m in surgery.” “I will,” Sunny said. “Go.”

As soon as Franz left, Sunny turned to the plump nurse near her. “Irma, I will need catgut and several needles. Also, can you bring a fresh supply of bandages and plaster?”

Irma hurried off in search of the supplies.

Sunny looked at the grey-haired nurse who stood against the far wall motionless with fear. “Miriam, can you please draw me up three full syringes of morphine?”

Sunny assessed the man in the fourth bed. He was moaning the loudest. He had an obvious wrist fracture, broken ribs and a deep laceration over his head that required multiple sutures, but his repairs would have to
wait. She turned to the sailor in the third bed. Aside from cuts and nicks to his head, he had a probable pelvic fracture and multiple fragments of wood and debris embedded under the skin of his chest and back. His care would not be a priority either.

Sunny turned to the man with the misshapen leg. As she reached for the blood-stiffened towel covering his wound, she noticed that his non-bandaged left eye had opened. He stared at her groggily. As she gently pulled back the towel from his leg, she suppressed a gasp. A ragged crater the size of a soup bowl cut into his thigh. Inside the wound, Sunny saw tattered flesh, torn muscle and fragments of bone and metal. Only the belt-tourniquet cinched above the wound stemmed the bleeding, but the leg had turned blue and mottled from lack of blood.

Sunny saw that resetting the leg would be futile. Only an amputation could save his life. As she laid the towel back down, he shifted. A grimace formed on what she could see of his lips.

“Miriam, where is that morphine?” Sunny called.

“Coming, Sunny,” Miriam replied shakily.

Sunny examined the sailor’s head wounds. She peeled back the bandages from his scalp to reveal three or four deep lacerations and began to remove the dressings over his face. He lay still as she worked, but she saw that his exposed eye had come into focus and was watching her more intently.

Suddenly, there was a horrible familiarity to his face. Nausea swept over her. Her hands began to tremble as she pulled off the rest of the dressing to reveal the jagged scar running between the man’s upper lip and nose.

Holding the bandage limply in her hand, she gaped at the man who had murdered her father and tried to rape her. She had to resist the impulse to grab his neck and squeeze with all her might.

The sailor’s right eye was swollen shut from the bruising, but his left eye stared back at her with a glint of fear.

“Sunny. Sunny!” Miriam prompted with a light shake of her shoulder.

“Yes?” Sunny said without taking her eyes off the sailor.

“Your morphine.”

Sunny grabbed the three full syringes out of the nurse’s hand. Each one held at least three standard doses of painkiller; enough morphine to reliably kill a patient with a narcotic overdose.

The sailor tried to lift his head off the bed, but it fell right back. Spittle flew from his lips as he muttered something unintelligible.

“What is the wait?” the medic barked. “Are you going to give him medicine or not?”

“Yes, I will,” she said evenly. “He is in a great deal of pain. He will require extra doses of painkiller.”

Three days after the wounded Japanese sailors had been rushed to the refugee hospital, Franz hurried through his ward rounds and returned home before noon. He found Esther and Simon nestled together on the overstuffed sofa in the sitting room. Hannah sat in the chair in the corner with her cello between her legs. Sunny moved between them, a teapot in hand. Hannah pushed the cello aside and rose to greet her father.

Simon pointed at Hannah’s cello. “You missed it, Franz. That girl of yours is terrific. Carnegie Hall terrific, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Oh, Onkel Simon!” Hannah groaned. “I am still not good.”

Esther patted Simon’s wrist. “My husband is right, Hannah. Once you get past his American tendency to exaggerate, of course. Your improvement is wonderful. You must keep practising now.”

Franz mussed her hair gently. “Will you play again for me,
liebchen?
”

“Later, Papa.” Hannah pulled away from him and fixed her hair. “I am off to meet Natasha now.”

“Give my best to Mr. and Mrs. Lazarev,” Franz said. “And have a glass of water before you leave. It’s scorching hot outside.”

“Oh, Papa, don’t worry so much. I’m not a little girl anymore,” Hannah said as she packed up her cello and hurried out of the room.

Franz watched her go, astounded by how his daughter had changed in the past year. Her limp was almost imperceptible. And he could not deny that she resembled a teenager more than a child.

“Sunny, may I speak to you in the kitchen?” Franz asked.

“Don’t blame your poor wife for our presence.” Simon chuckled. “We invited ourselves over.”

“It concerns a patient, Simon,” Franz said. “We will only be a moment.”

Franz and Sunny stepped into the kitchen and he shut the door behind them. “The man whose leg I amputated three days ago,” he said, referring to the sailor with the scarred lip. “He died from his wound infection.”

Sunny showed no response.

Franz folded his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. “It’s over now, darling,” he whispered into her ear.

“I suppose it is,” she murmured into his shoulder.

“I still do not understand why you waited a day to tell me that he was the one who had killed your father.”

Sunny wriggled out of his embrace. “If I had told you before the surgery, Franz, would you have still operated? Would you have tried as hard as you did to save his life?”

“Yes.” He considered the question further. “Perhaps not. I can’t be sure. What he did to you and your father … I will not lie, Sunny. I am relieved that he is dead.”

“I am too,” she said. “But—oh, Franz—I almost killed him with morphine. I was wrong to have ever considered it. And I worried you would be tempted to do something similar. I couldn’t let you. Especially not in a hospital, of all places.”

Before he could say anything, the hallway phone jangled.

Sunny walked out to answer it. A moment later, she came back to get him.

Franz picked up the receiver.

“Dr. Adler, Herr Silberstein calling,” Schwartzmann said gravely.

“Sorry to disturb you, but I was hoping you might be free to meet me at the usual place.”

“Of course, Mr. Silberstein. When?”

“Would in half an hour be inconvenient?”

“So soon?”

“It really is rather urgent.”
“Natürlich.”

Back in the sitting room, with Hannah departed, Simon’s expression had turned grave. “Franz, we have to talk about Grodenzki. I have a lead on a radio transmitter—”

Franz held up his hand. “Not now, Simon. I have to go meet Hermann. It sounds urgent.”

Esther straightened. “Schwartzmann? What does he want?”

“I am not sure, but I think there could be trouble.”

Tight gasoline rationing had kept almost every civilian car off the road, including taxis. The once-thriving rickshaw trade had withered as people saved their money for essentials such as food and coal, the prices of which had soared under occupation. Franz covered the more than two miles to Public Garden on foot. He was drenched in sweat by the time he reached the park.

Schwartzmann sat on their usual bench wearing a three-piece wool suit despite the heat. At the sight of Franz, he rose from the bench with a hand extended. “Good afternoon, Dr. Adler. I trust married life agrees with you. Is Mrs. Adler well?”

Franz shook his hand. “Very well indeed, thank you.”

“Wunderbar.
Delighted to hear it.” Schwartzmann pointed with the bowl of his pipe toward the pathway that led away from the gazebo and through the garden. “It’s such a lovely day. Shall we stroll?”

Franz’s concern rose. They had never left the bench on previous encounters.

As they walked, Schwartzmann indicated the sparse flower beds lining the pathway. “Not quite the same as in other years, is it?”

In previous summers, the colourful peonies and roses were in bloom
by summertime, but Public Garden, like most of Shanghai, had wilted under Japanese occupation and neglect. Schwartzmann stopped to examine a patch of dried, barren soil. “I am sorry to drag you out on such short notice, but I have news that I feel compelled to share.” “What news, Hermann?”

Schwartzmann glanced from side to side. “Have you heard of a man named Meisinger? Standartenführer Josef Meisinger?”

The SS title set Franz’s heart pounding, but he could not place the name.

Schwartzmann brought his pipe to his lips. “Meisinger is the highest-ranking Gestapo officer in Tokyo. Nominally, he is the police attaché at our Tokyo embassy, responsible for Reich security in all of East Asia. Of course, his unofficial duties go far beyond that.”

Franz’s internal alarm sounded, but he kept his tone even. “I see.”

Schwartzmann looked over his shoulder again. “Before Tokyo, Meisinger was in Warsaw. The chief of the Gestapo there.” He pulled the pipe from his lips. “He … ah … developed somewhat of a reputation in Poland.”

Franz swallowed. “What kind of a reputation?”

“Meisinger was known for his brutal methods. Even by SS standards. To the point that his own men gave him a rather crude nickname.” Schwartzmann cleared his throat. “They call him the Butcher of Warsaw.”

Franz’s mouth went dry. He glanced at the lifeless soil. “Is Meisinger here in Shanghai?”

“I saw him this morning. A man hard to miss.” Schwartzmann shook his head grimly. “Meisinger is not alone. He has come with a contingent of SS officers from Tokyo.”

“Why?”

“The SS is nothing if not secretive. They tell us diplomats as little as possible.” Schwartzmann stopped to chew on his pipe stem. “But I have heard rumours.”

The park was hot and silent. In the distance, a mother and her child walked hand in hand. But for Franz, the world stood still. “What kind of rumours?”

Schwartzmann viewed him with a sympathetic smile and held his hands out helplessly.

“Us?”
Franz gasped. “These Nazis have come to Shanghai to deal with the German Jews?”

“I hear that they refer to you as ‘the escapees.”

Franz’s sweat-soaked shirt suddenly felt icy. “What do they have in mind for us?” His thoughts flashed back to the atrocities at Chelmno that Grodenzki had related three days earlier.

Schwartzmann averted his gaze. “A colleague in my office went out with one of Meisinger’s aides, an old school chum. They drank too much. He returned with … with outlandish tales.”

Afraid to ask, Franz held his breath and waited for Schwartzmann to continue.

“Apparently, Meisinger intends to present several options to the Japanese authorities here,” Schwartzmann said. “Options?”

Schwartzmann avoided Franz’s eyes as he spoke. “One plan involves tugging old barges that are no longer seaworthy out to the China Sea. Another concerns an undersupplied labour camp on a remote island in the Whangpoo.” His voice fell to a near whisper. “Apparently, Meisinger even brought a canister with him that contained a substance called Zyklon B.”

Franz felt as though his throat was closing over. “What is Zyklon B?”

“I am told it’s a form of odourless cyanide gas contained within solid pellets.”

“God help us. They want to turn Shanghai into Chelmno!” “Chelmno? I am not familiar with the place.” “I will explain later, my friend. Thanks for this.”