AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That was better, but it wasn’t as good as Mordechai had hoped.
You could go through the magazine of a submachine gun in a matter of seconds. He reminded himself Jager was a panzer colonel. If a German soldier-a German officer, no less-didn’t maintain fire discipline, who would?
Maybe nobody. When bullets started cracking past your head, maintaining discipline of any sort came hard.
“And I, I have only the rounds in my pistol,” Ludmila said. Anielewicz nodded. She was coming along. Jager seemed to think she had every right to come along, but Jager was sleeping with her, too, so how much was his opinion worth? Enough that Anielewicz didn’t feel like bucking it, not when anybody who wouldn’t run away at the sound of a gunshot was an asset. She’d been in the Red Air Force and she’d been a partisan here in Poland, so maybe she’d be useful after all. His own fighters had shown him some women could do the job-and some men couldn’t.
He passed a good many of his own fighters as he hurried with Jager and Ludmila toward the ruined factory. Several shouted questions at him. He gave only vague answers, and did not ask any of the men or women to join. None of them was privy to the secret of the explosive-metal bomb, and he wanted to keep the circle of those who were as small as possible. If he stopped Skorzeny, he didn’t want to have to risk playing a game of Samson in the temple with the Lizards afterwards. Besides, troops who didn’t know what they were getting into were liable to cause more problems than they solved.
A couple of Order Service policemen also recognized him and asked him where he was going. Them he ignored. He was used to ignoring the Order Service. They were used to being ignored, too. Men who carried truncheons were polite to men with rifles and submachine guns: either they were polite, or their loved ones (assuming Order Service police had any loved ones, a dubious proposition) saidKaddish over new graves in the cemetery.
Jager was starting to pant “How far is it?” he asked on the exhale. Sweat streamed down his face and darkened his shirt at the back and under the arms.
Anielewicz wasshvitzing, too. The day was hot and bright and clear, pleasant if you were just lounging around but not for running through the streets of Lodz.This couldn’t have happened, say, in fall? he thought. Aloud, though, he answered, “Not much farther. Nothing in the ghetto is very far from anything else. You Nazis didn’t leave us much room here, you know.”
Jager’s mouth tightened. “Can’t you leave that alone when you talk to me? If I hadn’t got through to you, you’d have been dead twice by now.”
“That’s true,” Mordechai admitted. “But it only goes so far. How many thousands of Jews died here before anyone said anything?” He gave Jager credit. The German visibly chewed on that for a few strides before nodding.
A cloud of smoke was rising. As Mordechai had thought from the sound, it was close to the place where the bomb lay concealed. Somebody shouted to him, “Where’s the fire engine?”
“It’s on fire itself by now,” he answered. “The other explosion you heard was the fire station.” His questioner stared at him in horror. When he had time, he figured he would be horrified, too. What would the ghetto do for a fire engine from now on? He grunted. If they didn’t stop Skorzeny,from now on would be a phrase without meaning.
He rounded another corner, Jager and Ludmila beside him. Almost, then, he stopped dead in his tracks. The burning building housed the stable that held the heavy draft horses he’d gathered to move the bomb in case of need. Fire trapped the horses in their stalls. Their terrified screams, more dreadful than those of wounded women, dinned in his ears.
He wanted to go help the animals, and had to make himself trot past them. People who didn’t know what he did were trying to get the horses out of the stable. He looked to make sure none of the bomb guards were there. To his relief, he didn’t see any, but he knew he might well have. When that thought crossed his mind, he was suddenly certain Skorzeny hadn’t bombed the building at random. He’d tried to create a distraction, to lure the guards away from their proper posts.
“That SS pal of yours, he’s a realmamzer, isn’t he?” he said to Jager.
“A what?” the panzer man asked.
“A bastard,” Anielewicz said, substituting a German word for a Yiddish one.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jager said. “Christ, Anielewicz, you don’t know a tenth part of it.”
“I’m finding out,” Mordechai answered. “Come on, we go round this last corner and then we’re there.” He yanked the rifle from his shoulder, flipped off the safety, and chambered the first round from the clip. Jager nodded grimly. He also had his Schmeisser ready to fire. And Ludmila had been carrying her little automatic in her hand all along. It wasn’t much, but better than nothing.
At the last corner, they held up. If they went charging around it, they were liable to be walking straight into a buzz saw. Ever so cautiously, Mordechai looked down the street toward the dead factory. He didn’t see anyone, not with a quick glance, and he knew where to look. In the end, though, whether he saw anyone didn’t matter. They had to go forward. If Skorzeny was ahead of them… With luck, he’d be busy at the bomb. Without luck-
He glanced over to Jager. “Any better idea of how many little friends Skorzeny is liable to have with him?”
The panzer colonel’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there? I’ll go first, then you, then Ludmila. We’ll leapfrog till we get to where we’re going.”
Mordechai resented his taking over like that, even if the tactic did make good sense. “No, I’ll go first,” he said, and then, to prove to himself and Jager both that it wasn’t bravado, he added, “You’ve got the weapon with the most firepower. Cover me as I move up.”
Jager frowned, but nodded after a moment. He slapped Anielewicz lightly on the shoulder. “Go on, then.” Anielewicz dashed forward, ready to dive behind a pile of rubble if anyone started shooting from inside the factory. No one did. He hurled himself into a doorway that gave him some cover. No sooner had he done so than Jager ran past him, bent double and dodging back and forth. He might have been a panzer man, but he’d learned somewhere to fight on foot, Anielewicz scratched his head. The German was old enough to have fought in the last war. And who but he could say what all he’d done in this one?
Ludmila ran by both of them. She chose a doorway on the opposite side of the street in which to shelter. While she paused there, she shifted the pistol to her left hand so she could shoot from that position without exposing much of her body to return fire. She knew her business, too, then.
Anielewicz sprinted past her, up to within ten or twelve meters of the hole in the wall that led into the ruined factory. He peered in, trying to pierce the gloom. Was that someone lying still, not far inside? He couldn’t be certain, but it looked that way.
Behind him, booted feet thumped on the pavement. He hissed and waved; Heinrich Jager saw him and ducked into the doorway where he was standing. “What’s wrong?” the German asked, breathing hard.
Anielewicz pointed. Jager narrowed his eyes, squinting ahead.
The lines that came out when he did that said he was indeed old enough to have
fought in the First World War. “That’s a body,” he said, just as Ludmila came up to crowd the narrow niche in front of the door. “I’d bet anything you care to name it isn’t Skorzeny’ s body, either.”
“No, thanks,” Mordechai said. “I don’t have much, but what I’ve got, I’ll keep.” He drew in a deep breath. That took some effort.Nerves, he thought; he hadn’t run that far. He pointed again. “If we can make it up to that wall, we go in there and then head for the bomb along the clear path that leads into the middle of the building. Once we’re at the wall, nobody can shoot at us without giving us a clear shot back at him.”
“We go, then,” Ludmila said, and ran for the wall. She made it. Muttering under his breath, Jager followed. So did Anielewicz. Ever so cautiously, he peered into the factory. Yes, that was a sentry lying there-his rifle lay beside him. His chest wasn’t moving.
Mordechai tried to take another deep breath himself. His lungs didn’t seem to want to work. Inside his chest, his heart stumbled. He turned back toward Jager and Ludmila. It had been shadowy inside the wrecked factory. He’d expected that. But here, too, on a bright, sunny day, he saw his comrades only dimly. He looked up at the sun. Staring at it didn’t hurt his eyes. He looked back to Ludmila. Her eyes were very blue, he thought, and then realized why: her pupils had contracted so much, he could barely see them at all.
He fought for another hitching breath. “Something’s-wrong,” he gasped.
Heinrich Jager had watched the day go dark around him without thinking much of it till Anielewicz spoke. Then he swore loudly and foully, while fear raced through him. He was liable to have killed himself and the woman he loved and all of Lodz out of sheer stupidity. You couldn’t see nerve gas. You couldn’t smell it. You couldn’t taste it. It would kill you just the same.
He yanked open the aid kit he’d used to bandage the wounded old Jew. He had-he thought he had-five syringes, one for himself and each man in his panzer crew. If the SS had taken those out when they’d arrested him-If they’d done that, he was dead, and he wouldn’t be the only one.
