Zealot Page 4

  “My wife is gone,” the rabbi said quietly, not looking at MacLeod.

  “I’m sorry,” MacLeod said after a moment. “I…I didn’t know.”

  “Irena was taking medicines to her sister on Franciszkanska Street. That was at the end of August, two weeks before the Aktsia, the expulsions, stopped. I never saw her again…A neighbor said he saw her and Irka at the Umschlagplatz—those Nazi demons were putting them on the train to Treblinka.” The rabbi stood and turned to MacLeod. “In two months, they took a half a million people—my wife, my neighbors, my congregation. All gone. And now those of us they’ve left behind wait in fear of the day the demons decide to come and finish the job.” His voice was quavery but his eyes were hard, boring into MacLeod. “So you tell me again how no one cares, Mr. MacLeod. You tell me again how they can say this isn’t happening!”

  MacLeod could say nothing. Instead, he reached out and placed a hand on the rabbi’s shoulder, for strength, for comfort. Rabbi Mendelsohn grasped his arm like a lifeline and buried his face in MacLeod’s chest, his own shoulders shaking with mute anger and grief.

  MacLeod gave him a moment, then gently reminded him, “Rebbe, we have to go. There is transport waiting to take you to Shimon, but we have to hurry.”

  The old man released MacLeod’s arm and stepped away, nodding his understanding. He wiped his eyes. “Yes, yes, but first, I must get the rest of my things.” He hurried to a basement door.

  “No, wait—” MacLeod tried to stop him, but he disappeared down the dark stairs.

  MacLeod checked his pocket watch, concerned. This was taking longer than he’d expected. It was nearly six in the morning. Soon the sun would be up. He hurried to the window and cautiously pulled back a comer of the drape.

  She was still there, across the street on the corner, still vigilant, keeping watch for the soldiers just as she’d promised she would. It was a good sign.

  Her name, she’d told him, was Rivka. MacLeod knew she couldn’t be any older than thirteen. He first saw her soon after he arrived in Warsaw. He’d traveled from Paris as a German businessman—his German and his papers were both impeccable and “Herr Münte” had had little trouble passing border guards and checkpoints throughout the New German Reich. But “Herr Münte” couldn’t help him in occupied Warsaw, where most of the Poles would sooner spit on a German than give him the time of day. It certainly wouldn’t get him past the formidable iron gates and machine-gun emplacements barring the entrances to the Jewish Ghetto.

  He’d spent a day carefully studying the Wall surrounding the Ghetto, analyzing it surreptitiously from the apartment buildings and shops across the narrow streets. It was almost beyond his comprehension—wherever he stood outside the Wall, Polish children played in the streets while their mothers went about their daily chores, shopping, chatting with their neighbors, trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the face of the Nazi occupation. Meanwhile, less than twenty yards away, if the sketchy reports reaching Paris were at all accurate, hundreds of thousands of their fellow human beings were being systematically murdered. It just didn’t seem possible.

  When he thought no one was looking, he’d stood by the Wall, touched it. In some places it was as tall as he was, in others it must have been as much as six feet taller, all of it of sturdy red brick and mortar. At the top, barbed wire spiraled its length, supplemented in places by shards of broken glass embedded in the mortar. A serious wall, designed to let no one in, and no one out. He could take the Wall, he knew—especially under the cover of night—and make it into the Ghetto. But back out, with an elderly rabbi and his wife…He had to keep looking for a weakness in the Germans’ design.

  It had been midafternoon when he noticed Rivka near a bakery on Zelanza Street, close to the western face of the Wall. He had remembered seeing her in another market earlier in the day, the dark-eyed waif remarkable among the other pigtailed Polish girls because of the tattered and frayed overcoat that seemed way too large for her but not nearly warm enough for the January cold. But now the coat seemed to fit her, in an odd sort of way.

  From across the street, he had watched her go into the bakery and, quick as a flash, stuff two loaves of bread into the coat while the baker was distracted. She scurried from the shop before the baker had even looked up from his customer, then she strolled casually down the street as if nothing had happened.

  Smuggling. Stealing food to smuggle back into the Ghetto, MacLeod was willing to bet. And she was good at it, too, by the look of things. If she could get in and out of the Ghetto, there must be a way for him, as well. He had followed her from a distance.

  Soon they had reached a section of the Wall that faced onto several blocks of apartments blown to hell by the Germans in the battle for Warsaw. Corners of brick buildings jutted up out of rubble a yard deep, bleak monuments to those who had lived and died there. There were no other pedestrians around, no shops, no residents. Only devastation, and a young girl on a mission. MacLeod was careful to stay hidden in the shadows.

  She looked around carefully, then started toward the Wall. Then, in that paranoia that is only bred of desperation, she must have heard something, or caught a glimpse of something, because she turned around abruptly and spotted MacLeod.

  Her eyes grew wide with fear, but the fear quickly mixed with something that could have been defiance when she realized he wasn’t a soldier and he was alone. MacLeod spoke fast, before he lost her. “Little girl,” he said quietly, “I need your help. Proszg.” But his strangely accented Polish had only proven to her he was an outsider, and she turned and ran through the rubble, away from the Wall as fast as she could, as if the devil himself was chasing her.

  MacLeod had tried to follow—she left a clear trail of food dropped from her overcoat that would have pleased Hansel and Gretel—but when he’d made it through the shifting rubble and back to a busy street nearby, he had lost her.

  All the next afternoon he had hidden in the rubble, hoping against hope that she’d make her rounds again and have to return his way. Just before sundown he finally saw her, coat bulging with stolen food, looking around her constantly as she walked, wary, waiting. He took a big chance—”Shimon Mendelsohn shikt mir,” he called out in halting Yiddish.

  She stopped, looking around for him, frightened but not running. At least, not yet. “Shimon sent you?” She was wary, waiting for a trap.

  “I’ve come to see the rebbe.” He threw a large bag over the ruined wall behind which he was hiding, and it hit the ground with a thunk. She moved away from it quickly, then cautiously approached it again when it was clear it would not explode. “Please, can you help me?” MacLeod asked. After looking around quickly, furtively, like a squirrel with a nut, she opened the bag, rifling through bread and potatoes and cheeses. She touched them reverently, like manna from heaven, then reached farther in the bag and pulled out the sausages. Stunned, she looked around for her benefactor, still wary, but with tears pooling on her cheeks. Looking at her gaunt bare legs, red with cold, and her dark sunken eyes, MacLeod wondered how long it had been since she’d had any meat.

  Slowly, arms spread to show he had no weapon, that he was no threat to her, MacLeod came around the wall. She hurriedly stuffed the food back into the bag, as if afraid he’d take it away from her. “Will you help me find Rebbe Mendelsohn?” MacLeod asked again and held his last treasure out to her—a sturdy woolen coat, lined with fleece. He’d purposely gotten one too large for her, so she could still ply her craft in it. But at least she’d be warm.

  She snatched it from his hand and stepped away from him. She considered him solemnly for a long moment, child’s eyes, shadowed with hunger and fatigue, searching him. MacLeod met her eyes with sincerity, and realized hers were a child’s eyes no longer. He’d seen those eyes before, in many lands, in many wars—eyes that had seen too little happiness and far too much death.

  “Two hours before sunrise,” she finally said in Polish. “Meet me here. I will take you.” Before she had even finished
speaking, she scooped up the bag of food and, with bag in one hand and new coat in the other, hurried away from him.

  “Wait!” he called after her. “Vi haist it?”

  “Rivka,” she called back from the shadows, and disappeared.

  She’d kept her promise, returning in the dead of night to lead him silently to a breach in the Wall, hidden away behind a tailor’s shop on Krochmalna Street. Though Rivka could pass easily through the small opening, it was a tight fit for an adult, but with effort MacLeod managed to make it through to the Jewish sector.

  More relaxed in the relative safety of the Ghetto, Rivka took his hand and led him through the dark, abandoned streets to the rabbi’s home. There she promised to wait outside and lead them back to the Aryan side again.

  “Best lookout in the Ghetto,” she told him proudly.

  MacLeod had smiled at her warmly. “I have no doubt,” he said, playfully tugging at one of her plaited pigtails. He was rewarded with the first smile he’d seen from her.

  Now, as he watched her on the corner, there was no trace of that smile. He watched her hunker down in her ragged cloth coat as the wind blew against her. A light snow was just beginning to fall. He wondered why she hadn’t worn her new coat, then realized with sadness she had probably sold it for more food.

  MacLeod heard Rabbi Mendelsohn coming up the basement stairs and turned from the window. The rabbi was carrying a large metal strongbox. “No, no, Rebbe, you don’t understand,” MacLeod explained patiently. “We have to travel light. You’ll have to leave that here.”

  “No, Mr. MacLeod, it is you who does not understand.” He pushed the box toward MacLeod, who took it reluctantly. “These are my writings, my journals. I keep a history for Oneg Shabbat. It is all there—the expulsions, the camps, the hunger, the disease—everything that has happened since the Germans.” The old man was adamant. “What happens to me does not matter. But these must survive. These must go to Shimon. These must bear witness to the world when we no longer can.” He pleaded, “That is the only voice we have left. You cannot allow it to be destroyed, Mr. MacLeod, or everything we are, everything we were will vanish into nothing, like the smoke from Treblinka. And then the Germans will have won.” He grabbed MacLeod’s arm with surprising strength. “Promise me.”

  MacLeod could feel his voice catch in his throat. “I promise.”

  “Gut,” said the rabbi, suddenly all business. “Now my coat, and we’ll be on our way to Shimon.” He fetched his coat and shrugged it on, the dingy white armband with its blue Star of David prominent on one sleeve. Settling his hat on his head and picking up the scroll of the Torah, he said “After you, Mr. MacLeod,” gesturing toward the door.

  Suddenly, two sharp whistles pierced the predawn quiet. MacLeod quickly pushed the rabbi behind him and looked out the small window embedded in the door. Rivka was gone. And coming around the corner where she once stood was a small convoy of German vehicles.

  Damn.

  “Vos?” the rabbi asked. The squealing of wheels and the shouts of the soldiers answered his question before MacLeod could even try. “Tei’er Gott!” The rabbi grew pale. Dear God. It was a sound he’d not heard in nearly four months, a sound he’d prayed every night he’d never hear again. “The Aktsia—it has started again.”

  MacLeod thought fast as he watched the Germans pile out of their trucks. Too many to try and fight. Too many to try and hide. He turned from the window, setting the strongbox on the table and removing his jacket. “Take off your coat,” he ordered the rabbi.

  “What? Why?”

  “Just do it. There’s no time to explain.” MacLeod took the Torah from the rabbi, placing it on the table, then helped him off with his coat. Pressing the Torah and the strongbox into the old man’s arms, he guided him by the shoulders to the basement door.

  They could hear the Germans fanning out through the neighborhood, calling the Jews from their homes. “Raus! Juden, Raus!”

  MacLeod lifted the hat from Rabbi Mendelsohn’s head and placed it on his own. “You can’t do this!” Rabbi Mendelsohn protested, beginning to realize what MacLeod had in mind. “I won’t let you.”

  “Shvieg!” Quiet! MacLeod commanded, “Stay here. I’ll be back for you.” He could hear soldiers banging on the door. “Jude Mendelsohn! Raus!”

  “My life is not worth losing yours,” the rabbi whispered urgently, begging. ”Take the box and run! Please!”

  MacLeod gave the old man a gentle push onto the basement stairs and swiftly locked the door behind him. “Wait for me. I will be back. I swear it.”

  The pounding grew louder, more insistent. “Mendelsohn!” They were trying to break the door down.

  “MacLeod!” he could hear the rabbi cry out as he began to put on the old man’s coat. “Do not do this! No one comes back!”

  Quickly, he tugged on the coat. Even at his prime, the rabbi had been a smaller man than MacLeod, and the seams of the old coat strained but held.

  The same could not be said of the door, which finally broke under the force of the battering, and suddenly the room seemed full of uniforms. Two of the soldiers grabbed him by the arms and forced him painfully to his knees.

  “Mendelsohn, Zalman?” their leader barked in his face, and MacLeod nodded in mute acknowledgment. The soldier looked at him suspiciously for a long moment—MacLeod held his breath—then signaled to his men to take him away. As they dragged him roughly from the house to a truck waiting in the street, he overheard the leader tell another soldier he probably wasn’t Mendelsohn, but they had a quota to fill and “one dead Jew’s as good as any other” as far as the final tally was concerned. MacLeod had been counting on that.

  The canvas-covered truck stank of stale urine and fear. Three guards, armed, rode the tailgate, completely ignoring their defenseless cargo. There were about two dozen Jews packed tightly in the truck, mostly women, a few children, a few old men, all terrified. As the truck pulled away, MacLeod maneuvered his way toward the tailgate, trying to calculate the best way to escape and take the others with him. Or at least not get them all killed in his attempt. He had a pistol in his boot and knew he could take out the guards before they could get off an answering round. Surprise was in his favor—they obviously weren’t expecting any resistance.

  His dilemma was the vehicle he could see out the back of the truck, an open car with six more Germans. Yes, he could take out the guards, but at the first shot the chase car would be alerted, and then there would be nothing to prevent them from opening fire on the truck.

  He heard the other passengers whisper nervously among themselves. They were nearly to the Umschlagplatz, the railway station that led to Treblinka. Pressed against one canvas wall of the truck, a toddler in his mother’s arms began to wail, as if hearing the name of the bogeyman. His mother hurried to shush him, clutching his face tightly to her bosom, but the wailing grew louder.

  “Stille!” a soldier on the tailgate commanded, annoyed by the sound. The young mother did what she could to quiet the little boy, putting her hand over his mouth, cooing words of comfort in his ear, but the boy was inconsolable. The others in the truck looked at each other with helpless dread. The wail became a scream as the toddler fought to get away from his mother’s suffocating grasp.

  “STILLE! “

  A single shot rang out. The scream was silenced. The young Jewish mother slumped where she stood, killed by the same bullet that had passed through her child, but her body could not fall, held in place by the crush of the other prisoners. Behind her, the splatter of her blood leached into the fabric of the wall.

  One of the old men near her, his hair, his clothes, his face all gray, rocked back and forth, eyes closed, lips moving in silent prayer.

  MacLeod reached down and cautiously pulled the pistol from his boot. At the train station would be more soldiers, and more innocent victims. He knew he didn’t dare make his stand there. He felt trapped. He had made a solemn promise to Shimon, and then to Shimon’s father, but how many lives wa
s he willing to sacrifice to keep that promise? He watched the gray man praying. They both would need a miracle.

  Then, before MacLeod’s eyes, someone’s prayers were answered. The chase car erupted in flames!

  Not stopping to thank God for this unexpected blessing, MacLeod acted on it. As the three guards registered what had just happened behind them, he fired three shots in rapid succession. Just as rapidly, three stains of blood blossomed on three brown shirts. One guard fell from the tailgate to the rapidly moving pavement below. MacLeod pushed the other two from the truck as the other prisoners looked on in astonishment.

  The sound of gunfire was all around now, and another explosion rocked the truck. “Get down!” MacLeod ordered the stunned passengers. “Vart doh!” He pushed the gray man to his knees for emphasis and the other passengers followed.

  As the truck lurched to a halt, MacLeod vaulted over the tailgate, landing on the street in a crouch, then rolled under the truck. From there he surveyed the situation. He could see they were about a block from the train station. All around, hundreds of people wearing the white armband were fleeing, taking cover, or dropping to the ground where they stood, covering their heads. In the midst of them, a fire fight—a handful of Jews, maybe twenty in all, young men and women, practically children, were taking on the Germans with nothing more than some pistols and a few grenades. And, incredibly, the Germans were retreating to cover under the barrage!

  Another grenade impacted nearby and rocked the truck. MacLeod could hear the occupants still above him in the truck scream. He crawled along the underbelly of the truck until he reached the cab. Reaching up from below, he threw the driver’s side door open. When the driver leaned out, MacLeod grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him from the cab to the ground.