While Still We Live (57 page)

“I
asked
them to burn that skirt and jumper,” Sheila said unhappily. Olszak’s brows frowned. She hadn’t been listening to anything since he had mentioned that grey material.

He said sharply, “You should have done the burning yourself. You cannot expect anyone who has so little to throw away anything that costs good money.”

She closed her eyes wearily. She was afraid to ask the next question.

“The woman and the children?”

“The woman was questioned—unpleasantly—in front of the children. They screamed out the truth. That last phrase is Hefner’s, as recounted to Hofmeyer.” Olszak paused. “The children were deported. The woman died from the questioning. But not before Dittmar had proof that you weren’t dead, that you were travelling south with a man and a boy.”

“And now?” An impulse to shoot a spy in the dark, a stained grey skirt whose weave and colour matched a torn, discarded jacket—small things to end one’s feeling of success, small things to bring such complete failure and tragedy...

“Dittmar is continuing his search for you. He didn’t return to Warsaw with Hefner. He has disappeared meanwhile.”

“It’s you he is really after,” Sheila said slowly. “I alone am not worth all this trouble.”

“That he is searching for Kordus is nothing new,” Olszak said coolly. “I think a psychiatrist would perhaps give us the real answer to Dittmar’s persecution of you.”

“He’s searching for Olszak now. If he finds that Olszak isn’t so harmless as he pretends, then he will have all Olszak’s friends and contacts arrested, too. He has already killed most of Kordus’ friends, and found that wasn’t enough.” Now she knew why this man had doubled his name. Not to keep his Kordus activities secret, as anyone would naturally suppose; but to keep Olszak’s interests and friends quite safe. It was the use of the pseudonym in reverse.

And as Olszak still kept silent, his thoughts hidden, behind his clever eyes, she said quickly, “Don’t men ever suffer from intuition? Or, as Steve would say, haven’t you heard of anyone having a hunch?”

Olszak was looking at her, at least.

“For I think Dittmar has one. And he doesn’t want to chase away all the others he could catch with Olszak, if he hunted him slowly and carefully.” The last time she had seen Dittmar, he had brought Olszak’s name into the conversation. Subtly, cleverly. She tried hard to remember Dittmar’s exact words, and failed. She had had so many things to think about recently she was forgetting. She had believed that her life in Warsaw as Anna Braun was over, and she had tried to forget it. She had succeeded.

Olszak had risen from the table and paced in front of it, his hands clasped behind his back. “I don’t disbelieve in intuition,” he said. “I’ve had attacks of it myself.” Then he stopped his pacing and faced her squarely. “Well, we won’t discuss that any more. I’ve one thing to ask you.” And it seemed as if the imperturbable Mr. Olszak didn’t enjoy asking it. There was a pause, a sharp look from his quick eyes, some more pacing round the table. He wasn’t looking at her any more.

“I want you to take Madame Aleksander and Stefan out of the
country. You will have papers in order, you will travel by train to Vienna and then to Switzerland. You will be given suitable clothes and money and a story to fit your papers. Stanislaw Aleksander will do an excellent job for you. In Vienna you will be met and sheltered by an Austrian. In Switzerland, Stevens will see that you are sent safely on to France and then England. Others have already travelled this way. You need not worry. Just keep your head and stick to your story. That’s all.”

Sheila said in a low voice, “But now, more than ever, I want to stay here.”

Olszak said with remarkable gentleness, “I know.”

“I can’t go,” she said in sudden desperation.

This time, he said nothing.

“Surely, if the journey is to be so prearranged, surely Stefan is old enough to take care of Madame Aleksander?” Her voice became pleading. “Isn’t he?”

“Yes,” he said gently. “They could go alone.”

“But you want me to go. Is that it?”

Watching the controlled face in front of her, she half-guessed the reason.

“Why don’t you say it?” she demanded angrily. “You’ve never been afraid to hurt, before.” And then she wished she hadn’t said that. She had placed the barb too well.

Firm footsteps sounded on the hard earth threshold. It was Sierakowski. Sheila’s face lightened as she turned hopefully to him. He was her friend. He was Adam’s friend. He could answer Olszak. And then, as she noticed the relief with which Olszak greeted him, she realised that there would be little help here. Sierakowski had known of Olszak’s plan to send her away. He had come, not to help her, but to join in persuading her.

She looked at both men in turn. “I won’t go,” she said. She was fighting for all her happiness now, the only real happiness she had ever known. Even in war, Uncle Edward had told her, even in war happiness need not be refused.

“If I were to say that sacrifice of individual happiness is sometimes necessary for the good of the whole?” Olszak asked.

“But that doesn’t apply to us. I won’t keep Adam from being a good leader.”

“
White hands cling to the bridle rein, slipping the spur from the booted heel
,” Olszak quoted the lines slowly.

“No!” Sheila protested. “No.”

“Would Wisniewski have risked that shot this morning, risked the camp, if it hadn’t been you who were about to be savaged by that boar?”

As Sheila’s eyes widened and her lips, half-opened, couldn’t speak, Sierakowski said quietly, “As his wife, you would follow the camp rules and live in one of the villages. You would always be in danger of being taken by the Germans and held as a hostage. If Adam weren’t our leader, I should say that it would be your own choice to face that. As our leader, he needs a free mind.”

“Antoni and Marian—” began Sheila, and then stopped. It was a weakening of her defence.

“Antoni is hardly Wisniewski, either in his duties or in his—emotions,” Olszak said. “When I chose Wisniewski for this job, I knew he had enough energy and training and brilliance for it. I had to wait and see if the responsibility would make him into a true leader. It has. He has learned to think of the good of the whole, rather than the happiness of the individual. His job is only beginning. This winter is only the planning stage.
He has proven himself. We need him. He’s more important to us as a fighter for freedom with eventually thousands of men depending on his leadership, than he is as the husband or lover of a pretty girl. All we are thinking of now is the freedom we have to regain.”

Sheila felt the mild rebuke sting at her eyes, flail her cheeks until they were scarlet.

“I didn’t think that—that one thing cancelled out the other...” Her voice trailed even as her eyes said, “You are being too harsh.”

“That is why, I suppose, that generals bring their wives or mistresses into battlefields? Why captains of warships have their women living on board?”

Sheila rose. She didn’t look at either of them any more. Her heart rebelled but her mind agreed with them. That was why she had fought so badly: her mind agreed. The choice was not hers to make. It was only in peace and freedom that you could make your own decisions.

The tears, which she had thought were dried up forever, soaked her face. She turned her head away. She fought for control over her voice, and, having failed, kept silent. She walked suddenly towards the door. This large room was suddenly crushing her, stifling her. Sierakowski was at her elbow, holding her arm gently. She shook herself free and ran into the open.

She saw a man staring at her as he hobbled towards her. “We are going to eat,” he was calling. “We...” He stopped as he saw her face.

She turned and ran away from him, away from the Lodge, from Olszak, from Sierakowski standing so silently in the
doorway. As if to torture herself still more, she had chosen blindly the short path where Adam had led her last night.

* * *

In the Lodge, Olszak said abruptly, “All plans made for me to leave tonight? Guide ready? Patrols warned?” Sierakowski turned slowly back into the room.

“Yes, everything’s ready,” he said slowly.

“I’ll take Miss Matthews with me as far as Dwór, where she will find Madame Aleksander. Is the boy Stefan here yet?”

“He hasn’t come back yet. There is scarcely time for his return. It will be difficult to persuade him to leave us.”

“He will do as he’s told. He needs some discipline. He has lived too long with too many women. If he hadn’t gone with that fool Jan, this morning, Sheila wouldn’t have gone after them, Wisniewski wouldn’t have left us when that young nurse told him where Sheila had gone, the shot would never have been fired, and all this emergency would never have arisen. If that Jan had gone alone, then the score would have been still the same—one dead man... But the results would have been very different.”

“It
was
the shot, then, which decided you that Miss Matthews must leave? This morning, you accepted her here. You had plans for Madame Aleksander to join us here and help in the hospital.” Sierakowski’s quiet voice softened still more. “And yet I, myself, would have fired that shot. So would the rest of the men in the camp. So would you.”

Olszak looked at him keenly. The smile which wasn’t a smile appeared once more on his lips. “Are you trying to plead for them, Sierakowski? No, it wasn’t the shot that decided me. I made the decision when that worried nurse came interrupting
me, when Wisniewski leapt to his feet, left us—like that!” He cracked his thin fingers. “Until then I thought it was one of those mad attractions, infatuations, blood-fevers—call it what you will. But then I knew it wasn’t. I saw his face. And now after this last hour, I know I am right. This isn’t an infatuation that will spend itself in six weeks. It isn’t a pleasant decision for me to make. The right one seldom is.”

He walked over quickly to the silent Sierakowski. “When this fight is over, I’ll be the first to find Sheila Matthews and bring her back. She will have earned her happiness.”

“If either of them is still alive,” Sierakowski said heavily.

“If any of us is still alive. It is everyone’s risk.” With his short brisk step Olszak crossed the patch of fading sunlight at the doorway. Evening was coming. Night would follow, and with the darkness, Olszak would leave the camp.

Olszak’s arranged everything, Sierakowski thought bitterly, everything except Adam Wisniewski. Olszak won’t be here to face him when he returns. I’ll have to do that. And there will be hell to pay.

The colonel swore softly to himself. The shadows in the room were cold. He moved to the doorway and watched the reddening sky and the trees’ dark skeletons. If the Germans hadn’t heard the shot, if there were no attack, if this alarm were false, then the camp would settle back here. Adam had planned to leave this week at latest for the Carpathians. Sierakowski was to have been given command of this camp, while Wisniewski made the long preparations for a summer base in the mountains. It would have been pleasant to be in command, here... Sierakowski shook himself free from his thoughts. There was no time now for regrets. Captain Mlicki
would make as good a commander as he would: Mlicki had wanted the command as much as he had.

Under the tree, he paused again to listen. No shooting, as yet. No warning signals. Well the camp would know in another twenty-four hours. It would be able to judge better when the boy Stefan got back with any information from the village. Perhaps there had been no Germans near the forest at the time of the shot. Anyway, the camp would know in another twenty-four hours. If the Germans were going to attack, they would strike before then.

Sierakowski looked round him with approval. The men had worked well. The camp had been thoroughly prepared for evacuation. There was a certain sense of pleasure in seeing what had been prepared on paper, against such an emergency as this, suddenly working so smoothly, becoming a fact instead of a series of sentences. His soldier’s training approved, even as he silently cursed this blasted dislocation of camp life. He heard the voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. Better find the English girl and persuade her to eat something, too. She would need it.

This was the path he had seen her choose. He entered it quickly as if to make up for these last minutes of hesitation. He was as nervous about meeting her as he was before a skirmish with the Germans.

When he found her, she was lying on the thick bed of leaves round the broad roots of a beech tree, her eyes fixed on the patchwork of sky overhead. She had heard a twig crack under his foot. She rose and came towards him. His nervousness began to disappear when he saw she was quite calm again.

“I think we’d bett—” he began hesitatingly.

“Yes,” she said, and walked beside him back to the camp.

Olszak’s wrong, he thought suddenly. And so was I. She would take any amount of punishment without a whimper or complaint. She’s as good a soldier as any man.

He said, “If the Huns don’t attack and the camp settles down again, Adam will go to the mountains. All his plans are made. He’s been ready to leave for the Carpathians ever since he got back from the raid.” And now I know why he postponed it to the last minute, he thought, looking down at her guarded face. “That is where he is going to be this winter,” he said.

“I know.” She suddenly looked up at him. The brown eyes with their long sweep of lashes veiling them seemed to be saying, “Did you think I was afraid of mountains or cold or hunger or danger? Did you think I’d be afraid of anything, even ultimate capture by the Germans, if I were with him?”

“I am going with him.”

“I thought you were to be in command here.” The brown eyes were puzzled now, as if searching for the reason behind his decision.

“I am going with him,” Sierakowski said, and he saw she had understood why.

The brown eyes softened, and her hand touched his arm for a moment, and she said, “I am glad.”

THE VILLAGE OF DWÓR

In Warsaw, Volterscot had helped her. Now he helped again. He helped all of them.