Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  Orde sat down on the cool, moist soil beside the grave. He told Katie everything that had happened since he had last been here. And after that he wondered aloud what would happen between this hour and the next time he entered the groaning gate of Winchester where his heart was most at home.

  ***

  Allan Farrell surveyed the materials spread out before him on the floor of his room. One cutting board. Razors. Boxes of ordinary wooden kitchen matches. A hunk of steel pipe sealed at one end. The simplicity of his design was ingenious. The fuse had been the most difficult problem, and now Allan had the solution to it quite clear in his mind.

  This was the sort of weapon that sandbags and bomb shelters could not keep out. The pipe was small enough that it would fit easily up the sleeve of Allan’s jacket. He could enter any public building, any hotel lobby or train station, and no one would know what he had up his sleeve. No one would even think to ask.

  Carefully he razored the heads off the matches, dropping each round blue bead into the pipe. It was important that he not accidentally strike a match, he knew, or half of Mills University Hotel would go up in flames!

  His hands were steady as he worked. He was not afraid even of the possibility that such a minor mistake could kill him before he had a chance to test his pipe bomb somewhere besides his own room. He had written a note to Uncle Colin, telling him to keep his ears open for unusual news about the IRA in London. If Allan died in his effort, he felt certain that his uncle would figure out what he had been up to.”He really was the son of Maureen Farrel, was he not?”

  Allan hoped to live long enough to hear that glorious comment in person. Here was his own small proof that he was made of the same stuff as Colin and Kevin Fahey! More than just a messenger boy, Allan intended to deliver a message to the English that they would long remember!

  He touched the scar beneath his eye. After tomorrow it would not matter how he acquired that scar. He would someday claim to have gotten it from the butt of an English soldier’s gun, and his comrades would not question him! They would look at him with respect and ask his opinion of this action or that demonstration. The son of Maureen would at last have a name of his own.

  14

  Even Twigs Can be Strong

  Consulate Officer Brace was scowling down at his appointment book when the five members of the Danzig Gang entered his office. He squinted up at them through his round wire-rimmed spectacles as though he wanted them to go away. It was, after all, five minutes until teatime. How could he settle all this in just five minutes?

  “You’re late,” he said, cleaning his glasses.

  “The trams, you know,” Lori began. “And then all the people outside the consulate. Hard to get through to the gate.”

  Replacing his glasses on his hawkish nose, he blinked at the group as she made introductions. Bored and impatient, he thumbed through the applications that had been relayed through from London. So these were the children at the center of all the fuss. Ibsen, Lori. Ibsen, James. And these other three? Along for the ride. Holding to the coattails of these two Ibsen children. It was political favoritism, undoubtedly, to let these in when there were so many begging at the gates.

  He checked his watch. Four minutes until teatime.

  “So. You are Lori Ibsen.” Out came the young woman’s papers. “You look older than seventeen.” She looked frightened by that, but she did not reply. “Student visa.” He raised his visa stamp and thumped it down hard on her newly issued identity papers. She smiled broadly and exhaled with a burst of relief as she shoved her brother and the littlest Kalner boy forward.

  The eyes of Officer Brace narrowed as he glanced up at the two boys. “You look your ages.” Out came the papers of James and Mark. “James Ibsen?” Jamie stepped forward. Down thumped the stamp. “Mark Kalner?” Mark squeezed in beside his friend. The third thump resounded joyfully, matching the beat of Lori’s heart. The papers were shoved across the desk, snatched up, and hugged tight to the hearts of the young ones.

  Two and a half minutes until tea. “Right,” Brace frowned slightly. “And now for the genius. Alfred Halder.” Alfie stepped forward as had the others. He wrung his new fedora in his big hands. He blinked hopefully at the officer. Did they take boys like Alfie?

  Brace stared at the papers and then at the young man in front of him. Genius? Ah well, had anyone taken a look at Einstein lately? Hair that looked like the scientist had been hit by lightning. A definite overbite. Brace shook his head slightly. These genius types were all a bit on the imbecilic-looking side, weren’t they?

  “So you are our genius?” Brace asked.

  Alfie shrugged and smiled in a gesture that betrayed modesty. “Yes.” He answered as Jacob had told him, even though he did not know what the officer had said.

  “A linguist, eh?”

  Alfie looked at Lori. Was he doing all right? She nodded and smiled, although she was very pale. “Yes,” Alfie answered.

  “Well, God knows we can use you in the Foreign Service.” Brace thumped his rubber visa stamp across the proper square on Alfred Halder’s papers. “No one seems to be able to understand a word anyone else is saying these days. Much easier if everyone spoke English.”

  “Yes,” Alfie replied seriously. He took the document and bowed slightly.

  “That’s another thing. You Germans are much more polite than the French. Now, that is all.”

  Smiles vanished. Everyone looked at Jacob, who had been standing in the doorway of the tiny office. He had not been called forward. There had been no satisfying crash of the rubber stamp across his papers.

  “Wait!” Lori’s face grew pale.

  Brace consulted his watch. He had been efficient. He deserved first selection on the pastry cart. His hand banged against his desk blotter. “What? What, what, what?”

  Jacob broke through his companions. He smiled nervously and nodded. “Myself. I . . . am here the Bruder of Mark Kalner.” Another timid smile from this very large young man. He was not a child at all—twenty years old if he was a day!

  “Jacob Kalner,” Jacob said.

  Resentment filled the officer’s eyes. “And what is it?”

  “My Papiere, bitte. Papers?”

  This one spoke rotten English. Besides, he did not look like the intellectual type. More like a rugby player who would take the job of some loyal Englishman as a dockworker.

  “Ah, yes.” Brace held up Jacob’s documents and mumbled through them. “You claim to be seventeen?”

  Lori moved to stand beside Jacob. She was frightened. “Yes,” she blurted out. “He is. Seventeen.”

  “Young woman, you are not to interrupt.” Brace was cold, official. The wheels of the pastry cart were no doubt in the tearoom by now. He studied the document a moment longer. “It says here you are of an exceptional intellect. How many years of school did you have, Mr. Kalner?” A muscle in his cheek twitched irritably.

  “I . . . have . . . you know, the Nazis. They do not let . . . uh . . . non-Aryans stay in . . . the school.”

  “So? Yes? Well? How many years of schooling?”

  Jacob could not remember the English pronunciation for the number ten. He held up his fingers. “This . . . and then I am made to . . . how do you say it?”

  “Expelled.” Brace helped him. “Rejected.”

  “Yes.” Jacob did not look at the terrified face of Lori. It was going badly. He knew it. He wished he spoke English better!

  “Well then. So this application is specious.”

  How was he to answer? He did not know that word. “I wish to England to go. With mein . . . Mark, ja?”

  Consulate Officer Brace’s expression turned to steel. He had enough of this nonsense. By now Philip Smith had eaten the eclairs and all because of this . . . imposter! “I will tell you something, Mr. Kalner. This is obviously falsified.” He tapped his finger on the application. “It is my duty to weed out the goats from the sheep in matters such as these, and I think your performance is shameful. In the first plac
e, you have no higher education, that is clear. Your mastery of the English language is rudimentary at best. You cannot be seventeen, certainly. And if you were seventeen, you would still be above the cutoff date for the emergency child refugee provision.” He raised his pointed chin as if to challenge Jacob. “Do you understand my meaning?”

  Now Jacob looked painfully at Lori. Her hands were trembling. Tears hung in her eyes. “Please,” she begged. “I know Jacob. He is very bright! The Nazis forced him from school. If he goes to England, he can go to school again!”

  “As what? Janitor?” Brace dug in his drawer for the other stamp. “This man is perfectly capable of taking care of himself here on the Continent. I could not live with myself if I let him take the place of . . . one of the children out there.” He gestured angrily at the window. The shade was drawn, but he could sense the presence of so many others pressing against the gates.

  Down came the rubber stamp with a loud bang. REJECTED.

  “Please,” Lori said again as she rushed forward to grasp the officer’s hand.

  The gesture was too much for him. He flung her hand away angrily and stood, calling for his secretary to escort these five people from the building.

  By then it was three minutes after tea had begun. His day was quite ruined.

  ***

  A furtive knock sounded on Agent Hess’s door, betraying the identity of the visitor even before Hess turned the knob.

  The Jewish banker from Bremen, perspiring heavily, leaned against the doorjamb. His labored breathing indicated he had run all the way from his post at the British Embassy gates.

  Short, slope-shouldered and balding, the man was a stereotypical Jew. The face was pinched, the nose enormous, and on that nose perched spectacles so thick that the wearer’s eyes appeared unnaturally large and frightened.

  This evening the eyes were even larger than usual. Hess stepped aside, allowing his exhausted accomplice to stumble past him into the room.

  “I saw them!” he cried. But there was no victory in the declaration. Something had prevented the banker from fulfilling his entire duty.

  “Well? Where are they?”

  The Jew shrugged and shrank down onto the edge of the bed in defeat. “They entered just before four o’clock. Teatime at the British Embassy. Everything closes down, but they let these five children in all the same.”

  “Five children?”

  “Yes. The two whom who are seeking were with three other boys. Well, maybe not children. Of late adolescence, I would judge.”

  Hess was not surprised that the Ibsen children had formed a company with others in their own predicament. That would simply mean that Hess would no doubt have more young charges to transport back to the Reich after their capture. “What about the two?”

  The unwitting spy grimaced, giving his face a strangely rodent-like appearance. Like a rat twitching his whiskers, Hess thought. The fellow revolted him, yet he maintained his pleasant attitude in spite of it.

  “Like I said, they all went in, escorted past the rest of us who had been waiting. Taken right into the building as if they had been invited for tea. Everyone was quite disgusted by such favoritism. We could tell they are not Jews like the rest of us. The British make no secret of their dislike of—”

  Hess resisted the urge to slap the little weasel across the face. He let him grumble on about British favoritism and the injustice of Gentiles of jumping line. “How long were they in there?”

  “Half an hour. No more.”

  “And where did they go when they came out?”

  The fellow looked almost angry. “The Englishmen took them to the side gate. I suppose it was so they would not be required to walk through such a large crowd of truly desperate people.”

  “You followed them?”

  The huge eyes narrowed behind the lenses. “I attempted to follow them, comrade. They were a block ahead of me before I spotted them. Two blocks before I managed to make my way through the crowd. I tried not to look as though I was chasing them . . . as you instructed me. But then they turned onto a side street—”

  “What street?” Although Hess knew the outcome of this tale of incompetence, perhaps something could be salvaged from it.

  Once again the rat-like face screwed up in thought. The banker shoved his glasses up the thin bridge of his long nose. Hess had witnessed specimens of subhumans much less Jewish in appearance than this Jew being used as examples of all that was loathsome to the German people. It disgusted him that the Jew was sitting on his bed. Hess felt the muscle in his cheek twitch with suppressed fury as he stared hard at the Jew.

  “Yes. Let me think. Hmmmmmm.I think . . . Tischler Strasse. yes. Yes. It was Tischler Strasse. And then . . . the crowds. I did not see them. Could not find them.”

  Hess whirled to study his map. He traced his finger along the route the Ibsen children must have taken from the embassy. There were only red pins in the entire area. It amused him to think that the last district to be searched would indeed hide the fugitives.

  Behind him, Hess could hear the Jew droning on in a high nasal voice about the difficulty of finding anyone with Danzig so full of refugees and everyone wanting to go anywhere else in the world but here. He congratulated himself that he had seen the children at all and that he had managed to follow them as far as he had. The worm would be expecting some sort of reward, even though he had done only a fraction of what he had been hired to do. This recitation of difficulties was a prelude to asking for money. Hess could stand no more.

  But the fellow was still of some possible use, so Hess mastered the desire to shoot him between his close-set eyes. Instead he dug into his pocket and pulled out a gulden, which he thrust into the fellow’s hand. Then he grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and whispered urgently, “We must find them before the Gestapo does, you understand? Stay at your post. No doubt they will be back. This time don’t lose them!” With that, Hess jerked open the door and shoved the man out into the corridor.

  Slamming the door, Hess returned to the map. Counting the pins within the last twenty-block area of Alstadt, he felt pleased that the resolution of this matter seemed so near.

  It seemed almost providential to Hess that the last area of the hunt was likely to reveal that Lucy Strasburg and the children of Karl Ibsen had been living within a few blocks of one another.

  He tapped his finger against the central landmark of the area. “Heilige Geist Church,” he muttered pleasantly.

  ***

  The City of London Maternity Hospital at the corner of Old Street and City Road was the oldest institution of its kind in the kingdom. A green bronze plaque implanted in the cornerstone gave the date of establishment as 1750.

  Antiquity was admirable in places like cathedrals and palaces, Murphy said, but a maternity hospital was a different matter—especially the hospital where his baby was about to be born.

  The floor creaked as he paced the smoke-filled room where a dozen other expectant fathers waited. The more experienced hands played gin rummy or read the paper. Two fellows slept soundly on a cracked leather sofa—probably an original piece of furniture from bygone days of the hospital’s glory.

  Murphy felt sick. Sick! He wished they had checked out this listing old barn of a medical center before this. Elisa should be someplace with a decent waiting room and clean windows and nurses who had not been born in this very place in the last century.

  The wheelchair they had taken Elisa away in was wicker, for goodness’ sake! Probably willed to the institution by good old Queen Victoria! The electrical wires were all on the outside of the walls and had been painted over a half dozen times! Murphy had not seen round dial light switches of that vintage since he had visited the ancestral farm of the Murphy family as a five-year-old kid! Not exactly the kind of place he wanted to trust with the lives of his wife and child!

  Did the terror show on his face? Why did they not let the fathers be with their wives? Anna could be in there. What was happening that they would no
t let him be with Elisa? And why was this taking so long?

  A big man with a weather-beaten face and the clothes of a taxi driver whacked him on the back. “First time, eh?”

  Murphy managed a miserable smile and a nod.

  “Who’s the Doc, then?”

  “Howarth,” Murphy replied.

  “He’s a good’n,” said the big man. “A fine bloke, that Howarth.”

  Three other gin-rummy players agreed. “Right. Good chap. He’s taking care of my Maggie as well.”

  Heads raised from newspapers. Two more bored-looking men nodded. “My old lady as well.”

  In all, he figured that Dr. Howarth was delivering four babies besides Murphy’s. That fresh and terrible revelation made him feel faint. He groped for a chair. His head was throbbing. This had been a moderately awful day to begin with, even before Elisa had called him and told him to meet her here. Now it definitely ranked right up there with the most horrible. How could one doctor deliver five babies all in the same day? Impossible! Elisa would be left alone in some hallway somewhere! They would forget her there on the gurney, and she would be calling his name, and . . .

  It was too terrible to contemplate. He hung his head and moaned. “We should have done this in the States.”