Zealot Page 19

  MacLeod pulled aside some half-eaten timbers that had fallen, revealing a trapdoor.“Lock’s broken,” he indicated. “Nazis have been here.” He dug into the debris, clearing the door with his bare hands.

  “Then why are we still here?” Landau wondered. “The building’s burned down, and the Germans would have cleared out any survivors. We can’t do any good here—we should move on.”

  “They can only burn it down once,” MacLeod said. It only took Avram a moment to understand his plan. “The goy’s got a point. If the malina is still intact, we may have a place to hide our people.” Avram opened the door, releasing a stench of smoke and mildew and rotting flesh. “After you,” he gestured. MacLeod grimaced and started down the darkened stairway.

  Avram pulled a candle from his pack as they moved down the stairs and lit it. The flame burned brightly.

  “Air’s breathable, at least,” MacLeod noted.

  As they reached the main room of the shelter, the flickering light of the candle revealed a tragic tale. Thirty, maybe forty bodies, men and women, their bodies bloated and decomposing, lay dead on the dirt floor arranged as if sleeping. Only the horrifying grimaces etched in their faces bore witness to how slow and agonizing their deaths must have been, suffocated in the smoke that had poured in through their only source of air. Only as the building had cooled had the air through the ventilation shafts become breathable again, too late for those trapped in the bunker by the fire above.

  Avram held the candle close to some of the ghoulish faces. Dr. Cohen, who had fought tirelessly throughout the war to save the sick and the dying, and in the end could not save himself. Mendik, the unit commander, and Jana, his wife of less than a year, locked together forever in one last embrace. Nahum, the cantor, whose voice would rise to God no more. Avram turned away as a light flared behind him.

  In a jumble of tools and supplies that had been swept off a nearby shelf onto the floor, MacLeod had located more oil for the lantern that had once illuminated the malina. As Avram blew out his candle, MacLeod pointed out, “No weapons” The Nazis had indeed been through, stripped the bunker and its victims of weapons and whatever other valuables they took a fancy to, then left the bodies there to rot. “I’ll go topside and get the others.”

  Avram looked at him in horror. “You don’t mean to leave them down here with all these bodies? You can’t be serious.”

  MacLeod explained, “The Germans won’t look down here again. They’ll be safe here. The dead will protect them. I’ll try to prepare them for what they’re going to see, then bring them down.” He started up the stairs.

  When MacLeod was gone, Avram turned back to the bodies of his friends. He knelt beside Mendik and Jana, entwined, and touched Mendik’s hand, stroked a lock of hair from Jana’s cheek. Softly. he began to sing over them. “El Male Rachamim, Thou who dwellest on high. Grant perfect rest beneath the sheltering wings of Thy presence, among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the firmament, onto the souls of these who have gone unto eternity.” A single tear drifted down Avram’s face. So much death he’d seen. So much. “May their repose be in Paradise. May the Master of Mercies enfold them under the cover of His wings forever, and may their souls be bound up in the bond of life eternal.” An eternal life denied to him. “May the Lord be their possession, and may their repose be peace.”

  MacLeod returned, leading the others down the stairs, barely in time to hear the choked sob that broke Avram’s “Amen,” but by the time they’d made it to the bottom and into the room, Avram was all business once again. He handed his rifle and its remaining ammunition to Rubenstein, ignoring the shock registering on the fighter’s face as he took in the gruesome sight of the decomposing bodies. “You and Landau take the watch. We’ll be back as soon as we’ve met with Anielewicz and the others.” He quickly turned and started for the stairs. “C’mon, MacLeod. The dead can wait, but we can’t.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Warsaw: May 8,1943

  Their password was a stale one—it had been a couple of days since they’d last seen a courier from the Central Ghetto—but it gained them admission to the smugglers’ bunker beneath the apartment house at Mila 18 just before dawn. So far the building seemed miraculously untouched by flame or German shell. They were relieved to be off the streets before the German patrols returned in force.

  Issachar met them at the bottom of the stairs as they entered. “Gentlemen!” he greeted them expansively, then put a beefy arm around MacLeod’s shoulders. “So, what’s the word from the French Underground about our little … arrangement?” It was clear the corpulent gangster was in denial of the reality of the tragedy taking place outside his palace.

  “You can talk business later, Shmuel,” Avram interrupted. “First we need to find Anielewicz.”

  “In the conference room. East wing, last door on the right.” As Avram and MacLeod started down the corridor, Issachar called after them. “Remember, you need anything, you let me know. Everything I have is yours.”

  MacLeod shook his head in wonder. “Boy, is he singing a different tune. How’d Anielewicz wind up bedfellows with Capone?”

  “Izzy is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He realized a couple weeks ago that he needed us to keep him alive. Safecrackers and cat burglars aren’t much help in a firefight. Anielewicz’s place farther down Mila got bombed and Shmuel ‘generously’ opened his doors to the survivors, kindhearted soul that he is. You know how it goes—I scratch your tuchas, you save mine.” They’d reached the end of the corridor. Avram knocked on the door on the right. “It’s Tzaddik.”

  The door opened. Inside the room, the remnants of the ZOB command gathered around a table. There were nearly twenty of them, all pale and haggard, hollow-eyed. It was obvious none of them had slept in days, and the nerves that weren’t numb were keenly on edge and ready to snap.

  “Tzaddik, thank God!” Mordechai Anielewicz said as they entered. “What’s the news?”

  Avram shook his head sadly. “Nothing you haven’t already heard a hundred times, I’m afraid. Miriam’s gone. Half my unit went down when the mortar hit the Smocza base. Three more in the shootout.”

  “Mendik’s base was smoked out,” MacLeod added. “As far as we could tell, no one made it out.”

  Across the room, Lilka Minski stood, clutching the table for support. “What about Israel? He was going to Mendik’s, Jana was ill. I haven’t seen him since.” Lilka was the doctor’s longtime lover, and it was clear from her face she knew the answer before she even asked the question. “He was there, wasn’t he?”

  “I’m sorry, Lilka,” MacLeod said gently.

  “Oh, God.” The words caught in Lilka’s throat, and her hands went to her mouth. Mira, Anielewicz’s companion and aide, hurried to her side and quietly helped her from the room so she could grieve in peace.

  Anielewicz gestured for them to join the meeting. “Come, sit.” Avram took Lilka’s place, MacLeod pulled an empty chair nearby up to the table. “Quite frankly, gentlemen, I am open to suggestions,” their young leader said wearily. “If you’ve been hiding a miracle in your pocket, now would be the time.”

  There were three hundred people in the bunker—fighters, commanders, thieves, murderers—and an untold number still alive in other bunkers scattered throughout the burning Ghetto. There had to be something they could do to save them. But every idea, every scenario they came up with seemed to work out the same way—death.

  “What about the Polish Underground?” MacLeod asked, frustrated. There had to be a way. “Any chance of getting them to attack on another front, draw the Germans’ attention long enough to evacuate the Ghetto?”

  Zelzer, who had commanded a unit in the Brushmaker’s area, shook his head sadly. “Antek and Kazik are both on the Aryan side now trying to talk some sense into the Armia Krajowa, but no luck. Apparently the heroic AK is too afraid of stirring up the hornets’ nest on its side of the Wall. They claim they’re not ready yet.”

  “T
hey’ll be ready enough when the Nazis run out of Jews and start on the Poles. Cowards!” Avram spit.

  The door to the conference room burst open. “Mordechai, you have to do something!” The king of the killers and thieves was a quivering mass. “They’re here!”

  “The Nazis?” Anielewicz asked for confirmation. The other ZOB fighters looked at each other with grave concern.

  Issachar nodded, looking back over his shoulder expecting Brownshirts to be following him down the corridor, guns blazing. “They’ve surrounded the entire block. They’re covering all the entrances.” He grabbed the young ZOB leader by the arm and shook it frantically. “You’ve got to do something!”

  “Calm down, Shmuel.” Anielewicz shook him off. “They won’t try to enter the bunker, we know that. They’re afraid of the bunkers. You need to stay calm and stay put.” The underworld prince was twice Anielewicz’s age and nearly three times his size, but he backed away.

  Suddenly, there was a rumbling, and they could feel the ground move around them. “Grenades,” MacLeod said. “They’re trying to blow a way in.”

  Issachar, panicked, opened his mouth to speak, but Anielewicz silenced him with a look. “I told you, Shmuel,” he said warningly. “Here’s what you have to do. I want you to gather all your noncombatants and get them as far away from the entrances as possible. Now go!” As Issachar scurried away to fulfill his orders, the ZOB leader turned to his people and indicated four of the commanders. “Yossel, Linder, Zaleski, Rabinowitz—gather your fighters, make sure everybody has a rifle. Take every grenade in the place and do whatever you have to to keep the bastards away from the entrances.”

  As the commanders raced from the room to gather their troops, Avram turned to Anielewicz. “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  “Wait? They’re not going to just go away,” Avram said, frustrated at the inactivity.

  Anielewicz gave him a look that said he was just as frustrated. “Look, Tzaddik, you got a better idea, we’re all listening.” Avram was forced to concede that he had no better plan.

  Another, more powerful explosion rocked the complex, and the electric lights flickered but held. Close on its heels, a second explosion of equal magnitude. Mortars. MacLeod got up from the table and started for the door. “I’ll see what’s happening.”

  He hurried down the corridor. At the base of the steep stair-well leading to the main entrance to the malina, fighters were gathering, tense, afraid, pistols and rifles trained on the door to the world above as if waiting for Satan and the forces of Hell itself to come bursting through. MacLeod pushed his way through the young fighters and up the stairs.

  The door was locked and barred with metal rods. Yossel, one of the captains, peered intently through the small peep-hole cut into the door. “Yossel,” MacLeod said, tapping him on the shoulder. The captain stepped back so that MacLeod could look out.

  “They haven’t found the basement yet,“ Yossel reported, and MacLeod could see that the basement of the building at Mila 18 was empty. He needed to see what was going on outside. MacLeod began unbarring the door.

  “What are you doing?” Yossel tried to stop him. “You can’t go out there.”

  “We have to know what’s up there,” MacLeod said, and another mortar shell exploded above them, causing the walls of the bunker to quake.

  Yossel looked at him as if MacLeod was a madman. “You’re going to get your crazy head blown off!”

  “Then you’ll be in for quite a show,” MacLeod said as he unbolted the final lock. With a last look through the peephole, he threw the door open and darted into the shadows along the walls of the basement. He could hear the sounds of the door being barred behind him.

  He crept along the basement wall, one with the shadows, until he reached the stairs leading to the ground floor. In one quick motion, he stuck his head around the corner, then pulled back to safety. There was nothing on the stairs. Nothing alive, that is. He looked again, more slowly this time. At the top of the stairs, he saw the sprawled body of the gorilla who had guarded Issachar’s entrance, riddled with bullets. A white handkerchief was still clutched in his hand. The mobster had tried to surrender to save his own skin. But obviously the Nazis weren’t interested in surrender.

  MacLeod dropped to the ground and slithered up the stairs on his belly, using the body of the dead mobster to shield his own from sight. As he reached the top, he peered over the corpse into the back hallway of the apartment building where the basement stairs let out. Empty. Another shell impacted against the building with a deafening blast, and MacLeod ducked back beneath the dead man as plaster and wood rained down on his head. When the shaking stopped, he leapt up and over the body and into the hallway. He felt fairly secure that there would be no Germans in the building until the shelling stopped, but still he led with his rifle as he hurried down the hallway.

  He reached an apartment that fronted Mila Street. The door had already been forced open and hung crookedly from one hinge. As quietly as possible, he widened the opening enough for him to slip into the empty room. He dropped to the floor again so he couldn’t be seen from the street through the shattered windows and made his way across the room to those windows, ignoring the painful broken glass in his path.

  At the window he chanced a look out the bottom corner. The street was full of soldiers. He looked again, noting the positions of the sharpshooters scattered among the infantry. He could see only one mortar, its crew in no rush to reload, target, and fire—their quarry wasn’t going anywhere. Coming down the road he could see a tank and, in front of it, a German staff car.

  The car pulled up near the building, and a German officer jumped out, hurrying to open the back door for his superior. As the man emerged, MacLeod recognized the uniform—that of an SS general. He knew the wearer could be none other than Jürgen Stroop himself, the Nazi butcher charged with the task of completely eradicating the Ghetto.

  Stroop’s aide handed him a bullhorn. “Übergeben!” The general’s words commanded the Jews to come out voluntarily, to surrender, but all around him his troops were readying their weapons. Even the mortar crew moved with renewed urgency. There would be no surrender. Only execution.

  MacLeod’s hand tightened on his rifle and he raised it to just below the level of the window. He knew he would have only one shot. One chance. But if he could take out Stroop, maybe he’d buy the Ghetto a little more life. It might be only another hour or two. But at this point, every additional second of life was a precious gift.

  “Raus, Juden!” the general announced. MacLeod spun to his knees in front of the window, aimed and squeezed off his shot—

  —just as the general’s aide passed in front of him, taking the bullet in the head. His brains splattered across the general’s impeccable uniform and the gleaming staff car behind him, but Stroop himself still lived.

  Shit. But MacLeod had no time to dwell on his failure, as the air filled with answering bullets. He scrambled from the room and ran for the back hallway. Behind him, the apartment blew apart as a mortar shell ripped into it. The wall beside him as he ran buckled, and the ceiling started to collapse in pieces all around him.

  He dived down the stairs to the basement headfirst, hitting the steps two-thirds of the way down, tucking and rolling to the basement floor. He scrambled to his feet, across the basement, and reached the camouflaged door to the bunker just as Yossel opened it and pulled him in, locking the door behind him.

  MacLeod sagged against the door for a second or two, catching his breath. Then with a wry smile he pointed out to Yossel, “Well, at least I’ve still got my head.” He hurried down the stairs and returned to the conference room.

  He gave Anielewicz and the commanders a full report. What he’d seen. What he’d done. And what he’d left undone. No one blamed him—at least he’d tried. Still, he blamed himself.

  Anielewicz seemed withdrawn, as if his brain was working overtime, trying to out think the German general, trying to figure out what the Naz
i plan could be.

  “Stroop’s here,” Anielewicz repeated to himself. He turned to his commanders, grim. “He knows. He knows who’s down here. He’s come for us.”

  “But who would have told them?” Mira asked.

  MacLeod ventured, “I’d lay odds it’s one of Issachar’s rats.”

  Avram pulled his pistol and started toward the door. “Where is that son of a bitch?”

  “Tzaddik! Wait!” Anielewicz commanded. “It’s no use fighting among ourselves. No use fighting the Germans’ battle for them.” Avram was about to protest when suddenly there was screaming from the other end of the hallway. Everyone in the room grabbed for their weapons as one. Avram rushed out into the corridor.

  A yellow smoke began to seep into the conference room through the air vent. MacLeod was the first to notice it. For an instant, he was back on the battlefields of the Marne.

  “Poison gas!” he shouted. “Out of the room!” Then he held his breath, but he could already feel the toxic gas burning his throat, his eyes. He grabbed for Anielewicz, who had begun to choke, and dragged him into the hallway and away from the room. He thrust him at Avram. “Take care of him!”

  MacLeod rushed back down the hall and into the conference room to make sure the others had made it out. One fighter nearest the vent lay wide-eyed on the floor, drowned by his own body fluid as it erupted into his lungs. Back in the hallway, water flowing from his burning eyes, MacLeod slammed the door to the conference room behind him and took a tentative breath. So far the air in the corridor seemed safe. He assessed the situation.

  Zelzer, who’d also been seated near the air vent, was sprawled unconscious near the doorway. As MacLeod bent down to him, he could already hear the gurgling in his lungs as he struggled to breathe. He’d taken in too much of the gas; he’d be gone soon. There was nothing that anyone could do to save him now.