The One Man (42 page)

Mendl was first up. He recited his name and number. The guard dutifully waved him past. Then Leo. The same result. Blum was up next. He pushed Leisa in front of him and held onto her arm.

“Blum,” she muttered in a low voice, showing her forearm.

“A390207,” the guard read off. Leisa kept her eyes down.

Blum eyed the Luger strapped to the guard's side. If he stopped Leisa, if this was it, that was where Nathan would lunge. They would be dead in an instant, of course. But he wouldn't let them be taken, tortured. He would not go without a fight like his parents.

“Next.”

Leisa stepped through.

It was done.

“Mirek. A22327,” Blum said.

“Mirek. A22327…” the guard confirmed. Then his gaze went past Blum to the one in back of him. “And you…”

They had made it.
Their line was now climbing up into the truck. Blum squeezed Leisa's shoulder. It was all going as planned. All they would have to do was work the line for a couple of hours and wait for the attack. When it came, with machine gun fire and maybe a grenade or two, there would be chaos. Smoke. People running about. There was always the last hurdle, of course, to sneak away amid the pandemonium and make it to the river. And now with four of them, that would be a harder feat. But if he had to, Blum was prepared to disable one of the guards; everyone would be distracted in the confusion. It would be risky, of course, that was clear. But the hardest part had passed. He had made it inside, managed to find Mendl, and Leisa too. It was all going to work, he was sure. He felt it in his heart. In a few hours, the plane would land and they'd be on their way to London. And then to America. The thought of Orpheus bringing Eurydice back from the dead came into his head—he was going to do it. And then Hades's own warning passed through his mind:

Whatever you do, Leisa, don't look behind.

Just a few seconds more.

About half the work team had climbed into Truck Number One. The tarp was lowered and secured, and the rest were directed to the one next to it. Slowly they began to file in. Five, then ten, guards herding them quickly into the cargo bay.
“Schnell! Schnell!”

It was almost their time now. Blum's heart surged. A guard pushed each one up who stepped forward.
“You. You.”
Now it was their turn. Leo put his foot on the step and jumped in first. He reached back to help Alfred, who awkwardly put a foot on the step, took Leo's hand, and hoisted himself up with a quick but satisfied look that seemed to say,
Thus far, so good.
Blum put his face close to Leisa's ear and whispered, “I'll help you up. We're almost there. It's only—”

The guard blocked them with his arm.
“Alt!”

An instant later, bright lights flared on; everything was flooded in a blinding glare. Blum shielded his eyes, dogs barking, lunging out of the darkness, all teeth and gnashing jowls. The piercing wail of a warning siren.

What was going on?

To Blum's horror, the commandant he had seen at roll call this morning came around the side of the truck. Closely followed by the Abwehr colonel he had seen as well, his Mauser drawn.

How were they here? What the hell had gone wrong?

Someone pinned him by the shoulders, amid voices in German shouting. “These four!”

The intelligence colonel stood in front of him, his eyes alight with satisfaction. “So our truffle hunter, at last…” he said in English. “And which of you is the prize?”

The commandant greeted Alfred. “Herr Professor.”

In that instant Blum saw in a flash that everything was lost. The mission. Mendl. Leisa. All lost. His blood surging, he lunged for the colonel's pistol, trying to rip it from his hand. He knew it was a futile act. At any second, he would likely be shredded by machine gun fire. He knew he had cost his sister her life, just as he had tried so valiantly to save it. But still he leaped. He got his hands as far as grasping the colonel's gun, focused only on the fact that he would not go like his parents had gone, accepting and scared, when someone struck him in the back with a hard, blunt object and, knees buckling, he fell to the ground.

Leisa ran over to him and screamed, covering Nathan and shouting his name.

“Leisa, no, no…” Blum pleaded. He looked up at her with heartbreak in his eyes, knowing he had failed her. Failed them all.

“Ah, and our missing clarinet player as well…!” the commandant said. Leisa's cap was off her head now and she was totally exposed. “You can be sure you will be properly serenaded by your friends on your way to the gallows.” He nodded and a guard struck her in the back with a rifle stock. With a whimper, she crumpled to the ground.

“
Leisa, no!
Don't hurt her.
Please!
” Blum reached out for her.

“And let us see who this is,” the commandant said. A guard yanked Leo down from the truck.

“I'm sorry, young man,” Mendl said as a guard dragged him down, pummeling the old man on the back and head with the stock of his gun.

“Alfred!”
Leo ripped his arms free and ran to the old man and received a rifle butt across the head, sending him to the ground as well.

Blum was dragged up to his feet and squinted into the bright light. “Let her go,” he said, not even able to make out the faces in front of him. “You have me. Please, let her go.”

Then something firm and blunt made contact with the back of his head, and the sight of his sister being dragged away unconscious was flooded over by a wave of darkness.

 

SIXTY-FIVE

“In a faraway world…” Greta read to the barely conscious man on the cot who stared up blankly, “through the veil of mist you see an image of beauty…”

She came here and read most every afternoon. Today, after what Kurt had done earlier, she couldn't go home. As hard as it was to see the withering, disfigured shapes, more bones than flesh, many in their last throes of life, it was also one of the few places that made her feel whole. Made her believe in life again. To see a brief flicker of a smile or twinkle in the eye of someone on the edge of death, whose mind was now set free. She wasn't permitted to tend to the sick, since she wasn't a trained nurse, nor was it appropriate, Kurt insisted, for the wife of the Lagerkommandant to touch the Jews directly or, even more so, to try to mend them. So she did what she could.

Which was to speak soothingly to those who were dying, assure them that they weren't alone. No one should leave this world without someone holding their hand or sitting by their side. Once she smuggled in precious sulfanilamide to treat a patient with gangrene, which was generally a death sentence in here. And once, when a young female prisoner who tended the sick and kept her pregnancy hidden gave birth—in a state of abject fear, as it generally meant death for both mother and child, because Kurt would insist this wasn't a nursery, and bringing a Jewish life into the world was not worth the milk it would take to feed it—she took the newborn baby and arranged for her housemaid, Hedda, to smuggle it out of camp. And she prayed with all the hope still in her that though she had not brought a child into the world herself, somewhere there was one still living because of her.

One against all who had died.

Mostly she just read. Rilke. Heine. Holderlin. Most of the people she sat by were already more corpse than living. Three days, and then they shipped you to the crematorium and your fate was sealed. But she knew they liked to hear the sound of a woman's voice, momentarily transporting them to a place of calm and rest. And as she helped a few let their final thoughts fly over the dark cloud and wire back to their homes and families, it made Greta feel, at least for a brief time, less trapped and alone herself.

Almost free.

“Pani…”
the patient she was reading to reached out and touched her arm. His lips quivered. He indicated he would like a sip of water.

“Just rest. I'll be right back.” She marked the place and got up to pour him a small cup.

That was when she heard the sound of the siren.

An unmistakable, repeating wail, penetrating the entire camp like a blade through the ears, designed to alert the guards in the case of an escape or emergency and to signal to the prisoners that a capture had been made, since no one ever got beyond the second row of electrified wire.

In her heart, she always cheered for those brave enough to try.

But now she feared, from what Kurt had told her, that they had found the intelligence officer's mole. It demoralized her that they had won again, just as Kurt had predicted.

Still, for just a second she hoped that maybe this time they hadn't won. Maybe this one time someone had made it free.

She put the cup of water to the patient's lips and let him drink, then she excused herself and went outside.

Guards were hurrying, weapons in hand, in the direction of the front gate.

“Rottenführer Langer,” she called, seeing the corporal coming from that direction. “What is going on?”

“An attempted escape,” he announced.

“Escape…?”
Then maybe the mole hadn't been caught yet. There was still hope.

“But do not worry, Frau Ackermann,” Langer said, sarcasm showing through. “You will be pleased to know that it has not succeeded.”

Pleased …
She would have been pleased if anyone had made it beyond the wires, if only for a moment, to die there, as many did, just to end the misery for good. But whoever these escapees were, she knew they would not face such a quick death. “Excellent, Corporal,” she replied, transparently enough that even a dull rod like Langer could see right through.

“But I think you will be particularly interested, Frau Ackermann, to know the identity of one of the escapees…” The Rottenführer's eyes lit up with kind of a gloating grin. “The young boy, I'm afraid,” he clucked.

“
Boy
…?” Her heart rose up in alarm.

“Your chess partner, Wolciek, Frau Ackermann.”

“Leo?”
Greta's blood stopped cold.

“I always knew the little prick had a devious side,” the Rottenführer sniffed, “and with all the kindness you graciously bestowed on him. Anyway, you should make sure he didn't rob you blind before we put him out of his misery.”

Leo.

Her heart felt like it was tied to a weight and cast into the sea. For a moment she thought that maybe Kurt had set it up himself. She knew how much he resented their intimacy. And what had he told her,
My hands are tied.
He could not protect him anymore. She knew he would do anything he could to hurt her. This was right up his alley.

Leo.

She felt shaken. He was a dead man now, she knew. Worse than dead. Kurt would always find something special for those caught trying to escape as a warning to any who harbored the same thoughts. And this one he would apply himself to with relish. How he would gloat later, with that repulsive, self-assured, I-told-you-from-the-start smirk.
“As I recall, Greta, I warned you not to open our house to a Jew and let your defenses down.”

“Yes, you are right,” Greta said back to Langer. “I will check.” Though inside her heart was torn at the devastating news. “And where have they taken him, Rottenführer?” she asked, though, of course, she knew.

“Where they are all taken, Frau Ackermann.” Langer snorted with a cynical laugh. “To give them a fond welcome back to camp. Not to matter, by breakfast he will be on the gallows for all to see as they pass by. An example must be made of such vermin, do you not agree?” he asked.
He
who had dragged Leo visit after visit to her door and had been told to wait outside, who was now seemingly delighting in the pain he knew it caused her.

“Yes, Corporal.” Greta nodded. “An example for certain.”

The corporal excused himself with a smirk and hurried off, cackling inside. No doubt the entire guardhouse would be laughing over it within the hour.
An example,
he had said. Yes. An example indeed.

Greta headed back to her house. Leo was the only thing of goodness she had ever touched in here.

But for once the Rottenführer was right.

That is precisely what needed to be made of these people.
An example.

 

SIXTY-SIX

Water was splashed on him. Blum came to. Suspended by the arms from hooks in a cell, his feet dragging the floor. It was dark. His arms ached. The cell stank of feces and urine. His head still felt fuzzy from the blow he had taken. He wanted to ask, “Where are they?
Leisa? Mendl?
What have you done with them?” But then he realized his mouth was taped. Two men stood in the cell in front of him. One he recognized as Sergeant Major Scharf.
Avoid that one, a born killer,
he'd been warned. The other was Zinchenko. He had no idea how much time had passed. Hours, maybe. The plane, it had likely come and gone by now. His only way out of here.

What did it matter now?

He would die here shortly anyhow.

“Herr Vrba.” The German laughed, grabbing his wrist. “A22327. Welcome back. We had no idea how much you actually missed it here.”

They took him down from where he was hanging.

“Excuse us, we have to pretty you up a bit for your interview. You're looking a little ragged,” the SS sargeant said. Then he drove his fist into the pit of Blum's stomach, forcing whatever air was inside him from his lungs, doubling him over. Zinchenko picked him up and Scharf hit him again. Every cell in Blum's body screamed out in pain for air. He felt the urge to vomit. “This is only the start. Get used to it, yid,” the SS guard said. “We've got all night. For me, this isn't even work. It's pleasure.” The next blow was to his kidneys. Paralyzing pain, rocketing through him.