Codename Vengeance

by APC APC

  #

  He didn’t dare stop and he didn’t dare turn onto a main road. Surely they would be looking for him, scouring the countryside, as it were. By now his description had been broadcast to every checkpoint in a ten-mile radius. Henrik was behind enemy lines, a fugitive from his friends and foes alike. He wondered vaguely how he’d somehow managed to make an enemy of just about everybody in the past month, but there was no time for regrets.

  Five miles down the dirt road he came to an unnamed railroad junction and got an idea. He could follow the tracks. All of the major camps on the Chancellery map were linked by railways. Finding Auschwitz would be as easy as connecting the dots. He could stay clear of the main roads, and he could always take cover if he saw a train coming or heard a train whistle. Henrik turned onto a trail following the south track and began the long bumpy ride through occupied Poland.

  It had been nearly three years since the German invasion, but the signs of the war were evident everywhere—cratered fields, ruined buildings, Polish road signs painted over in German. Poland once had a proud army with a long and noble tradition, but they were no match for the German blitzkrieg. The Luftwaffe swept over Poland like a hurricane, bombing key transportation routes and sending terror through the front lines. And before the Polish army could regroup, German Panzers were running them down like bowling pins.

  At one point, the Polish cavalry even charged the tanks on horseback. The Polish generals were still counting on the conventions and timetable of the Great War when troop movements were ponderous, tedious operations that took weeks if not months to coordinate. The German blitzkrieg took hours.

  Since then, Poland had fallen into a state of perpetual decay. Henrik saw no sign of industry, no farmers tilling their fields or herding their cattle. Henrik knew that many of the men had been conscripted for labor projects throughout the Reich, some to labor camps and others to special mobile brigades, but what about the women and children? Where were all the people? The countryside was virtually uninhabited. The only improvements the Germans made to the nation since the invasion were the modern roads and railway networks, which now crisscrossed the country like an iron spider’s web. An army can’t rule if it can’t move. That much Germany had learned from the Romans.

  About fifty miles down the track, Henrik felt as if he could travel no farther. The sun was beginning to set and he could no longer feel his legs. He spotted a sliver of smoke rising from a thatched-roof farmhouse in the distance. It was the first sign of life he’d seen all day. But as he approached, the smoke dwindled. The house was completely boarded up and dead quiet.

  Henrik wondered if his fatigue and hunger were playing tricks on his brain. But lived in or not, the gloomy place would make just as good a hideout as any. Henrik parked the motorbike under an overgrown apple tree and buried it in branches and leaves. Then he climbed the rickety steps onto the front porch.

  “Hello,” he called in German, but there was no answer. He tried again in Polish. He wasn’t fluent, but he knew a few words. Still no answer. He decided to claim the house in the name of all disenfranchised spies and kicked in the door. With the windows boarded up, the interior of the little one-floor cottage was pitch black. Henrik could smell smoke. So there had been a fire.

  “Hello,” he called again. “Is there anyone home? I’m sorry about your front door. I thought—” Henrik took a step into the darkness and then they struck. There were at least two of them, but they were slow and somewhat less than stealthy. Henrik heard voices and then saw a frying pan swing for his head. He ducked it easily and struck out with his boot. There was a grunt and then the sound of crying.

  “Stop. You’ve hurt her,” an elderly voice called out in Polish. “We surrender. We surrender.”

  Henrik still could not see who was speaking. “You have the frying pan. I surrender. Just turn on the light.”

  There was a pause.

  “You won’t shoot?” said a voice with the frail timber of the old and sickly.

  “No, I won’t shoot. Look! I don’t even have a gun.” Henrik pointed to his empty gun holster. “I just need a place to rest and—” Henrik wondered how much he should say. “May I come in?”

  After a long second, a match ignited in the darkness. Henrik’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. The little cottage was indeed inhabited, by an elderly couple, little more than skin and bones dressed in rags. The woman was on the floor holding her stomach with one hand and a frying pan with the other. The man was crouching beside her holding the burning match. There was only one piece of furniture in the room, a small dining table with three candles on it and only three wooden legs under it. The man stood up cautiously and lit the candles on the table.

  “We have grown accustomed to the dark,” he said. “I suppose it was my fire that brought you here.”

  “Yes,” Henrik said.

  The old man shook his head. “It was foolish of me, but, you see, I found a potato in the cellar. A potato!” he repeated the word as if it carried some special significance. “I wanted to celebrate with a cooked meal. I suppose now you will take it from us.”

  Henrik felt his stomach growl. “No, I’m not hungry at the moment. Enjoy your potato.”

  The man looked at his wife with the frying pan in her hand. She still did not say anything. Henrik realized that she was the one he had kicked in the dark. He felt his face flush with embarrassment. Who were these people? Why was their quaint little farmhouse boarded up like an abandoned shack? Who were they hiding from and why had they attacked him?

  “I only need a place to rest for a few hours,” Henrik repeated, “a bed, if you have one.”

  “We have no bed, but there is a blanket in the bedroom.”

  “Thank you.” Henrik peered into the next room. It was even darker than the rest of the house. Henrik wondered if he wouldn’t be better off sleeping in a ditch outside. What would happen when he was asleep? Would the mute old woman finish the job she’d started with her frying pan?

  “Where is your gun?” the old man asked.

  “I dropped it somewhere along the tracks.”

  “Why ride on the tracks? The German engineers have built us such modern roads.” The man’s voice was so deadpanned that Henrik could not tell whether he was serious or sarcastic. Either way, he was taking a big risk. For all he knew, Henrik was a Gestapo.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Henrik explained truthfully, “someone at Auschwitz. Do you know the way?”

  The old man grunted. “Just follow the ghosts.”

  Henrik didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

  “The train people. Have you not seen them? Ghostly eyes that stare out at you from between the rungs of their cattle cars. They pass by here five times a day on their way to hell.” He looked at his silent wife. “I suppose we will join them soon enough.”

  The man did not talk anymore after that. Henrik could no longer keep his eyes open. He walked into the bedroom and closed the door. He felt around until his hands found the blanket. It smelled of death, and now Henrik was glad the room was dark. He closed his eyes and dreamed of a cursed ship on an empty, starless sea.

  When he awoke a few hours later, the elderly couple was gone, but the hearth was aglow and the potato was in the frying pan sizzling. The smell made his stomach groan, and despite his previous show of restraint, he found himself unable to resist. He gobbled down the lonely spud as if it had been the most expensive cut of prime rib in Europe.

  It was still dark out yet, but Henrik felt compelled to escape the horrible little house. He threw what Reichsmarks he had onto the rickety wooden table and left. He heard a train whistle in the distance and remembered what the old man had said about following the ghosts. Was Esther waiting for him at the end of those tracks or had she already become one of those ghosts?

  Henrik kick-started the two-stroke BMW and raced off in
pursuit of the train whistle. Just as the sun began to rise, he caught up with the slow-moving train. From a distance, it was nothing out of the ordinary, an average diesel engine pulling a long line of wooden cattle cars. But as he approached within twenty or thirty feet he saw the ghostly faces appear in the cracks between the sideboards, beady, empty eyes in sunken, shadowed eye sockets. He felt his skin crawl.

  A Hungarian guard armed with a Mauser rifle peered down from the roof of the caboose and Henrik feared he’d strayed too close. He should have hung back and waited for the train to pass. It was too late now. He had been spotted. He gunned the BMW into high gear and popped off the tracks. As Henrik accelerated past the caboose, the Hungarian took off his hat and waved. Henrik waved back. The Nazis and their allies were just one big happy homicidal family.

  Henrik veered away from the train along a paved road that roughly paralleled the track. If Esther were on that train, he would never be able to get her off, not with those Hungarians guarding the cars. His best course of action now was to meet the train at the labor camp. What he would do then was a complete mystery to him. He still had no gun and he was still a fugitive. Even if he laid low and made for the Baltic coast, he’d be darn lucky to avoid capture. But bombing all the way across occupied Poland on a stolen motorcycle to a heavily guarded labor camp was just plain suicide.

  The ghost train faded into the distance behind him as ahead of him an industrial complex of vast size sprung up like a weed. Henrik wondered if the road had veered off towards a major city like Krakow, but if that were the case, surely he would have seen signs. It was more likely that a new factory had been built for the war effort. But what kind of factory?

  In the center of the complex was an enormous train junction surrounded by hundreds of dwarf-like houses all lined up in neat little rows like an army of toy houses on parade. In another part of the camp was a group of red brick buildings with smoke stacks rising a hundred feet into the air. As he approached, the bitter stench of smoke became nauseating. Henrik stopped at an iron gate, above which molded from iron bars, was a sign that read Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes One Free).

  Henrik had finally arrived at Auschwitz.

  “Papers,” a guard barked in German. Henrik reached for the only papers he had, and handed them to the guard. The young man seemed bored and sickly. His cheeks were sunken and smudged with dirt and his eyes were red. Guard duty was never fun under any circumstances, but this place seemed to have taken a special toll. The guard scratched his greasy head as he read over the forged documents.

  “This is for Wolfsschanze!” he said with some surprise.

  “Yes. That is where I have been, and now I am here.”

  “But this is to enter—”

  “Look here, sergeant!” Henrik exclaimed with surprising fury. “I have not traveled over a hundred miles simply to argue with you about things that I already know. If you will look carefully, you will see the seal of the Chancellery. Do you not see it?”

  “Yes, b-but—” the guard stuttered, no longer bored.

  “And if you look very carefully, you will see the words ‘urgent’ and ‘special weapons.’ Do you know what those words mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “If there is any delay in my mission, those responsible will suffer dire consequences!”

  “Yes, sir. Heil Hitler!” the young guard saluted abruptly and handed back the papers. A moment later, the iron gate opened and Henrik drove on through. The camp was exceedingly large, dwarfing the mere eleven barracks at Peenemunde. And every part of it seemed to reek of the infernal smoke coming from its hundred-foot smoke stacks. Henrik could not identify the smell. It was unlike the scent of burning wood or coal or diesel, and yet somehow familiar. What was this place?

  He decided to go to the camp headquarters and present himself directly rather than risk searching the camp on his own. He would never find Esther otherwise, and if he were caught sniffing around in the wrong place, the authorities might become suspicious enough to make inquiries. It wouldn’t take long before he was identified as one of the fugitives and then his ridiculous little game would be over before it even got started.

  “But this says Wolfsschanze,” SS Colonel Rudolf Hoess said, echoing the sergeant’s query at the front gate.

  “Yes, Colonel. You are very perceptive. Have you heard of Wolfsschanze?”

  “Of course. Who has not?” the colonel said pompously.

  “Have you been there?”

  The colonel shook his head. “I don’t see what—”

  “But you have been to the Russian front?”

  The colonel’s proud countenance fell. “No. I have been stationed at Auschwitz since the invasion of Poland,” he said impatiently.

  Henrik had seen the colonel’s type before. Like many officers sitting out the war on guard duty in occupied territories, he aspired to greater things. Having little combat experience himself, he reveled in reports of Germany’s victories abroad and dreamed about the day when he would be called upon to show his valor. Henrik decided to give him that chance.

  “Then you are precisely the man that he is looking for.”

  “Who?”

  “You see the document you are holding? Please turn it over.”

  The colonel obeyed and then his eyes widened. There, to his surprise, was a handwritten message addressed directly to him and signed by Adolf Hitler himself.

  “The Fuhrer apologizes for the haste with which this message was written and delivered, but it is a matter of dire urgency and there was no time to attain the proper Chancellery seals.” Henrik leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You see, an attempt was made on the Fuhrer’s life yesterday. Now is the time for loyal Germans to show the true color of their hearts.”

  “He will find mine to be made of pure gold,” Hoess declared.

  “Then you will help me carry out the Fuhrer’s orders?”

  “Of course. I will muster the entire camp immediately.”

  “No!” Henrik said, a little louder than he’d wanted to. “That would not be prudent at this time. The fewer people who are aware of the Fuhrer’s orders the better.” Henrik took the papers back and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. “This is a very sensitive matter and must be handled quietly. Perhaps you could dispatch a clerk to help me search the records for the Jacobs. I will be sure to notify you as soon as they are found.”

  Hoess seemed to consider the question for a moment, his eyes glancing at the jacket pocket where Henrik had stuffed the hastily forged documents, and then he nodded. “You will notify me immediately they are found.”

  “Yes, Colonel. Heil Hitler!” Henrik saluted sharply. Hoess answered the salute with a sloppy wave of his hand and then turned to the files clerk and barked his orders.

  Searching the files turned out to be a much larger task than Henrik had imagined. Auschwitz was a major junction for all the work camps in Poland. This equated to literally millions of names to search through. Henrik felt overwhelmed. Would the Nazis enslave the entire world? The only upside of so many names was that the colonel eventually became impatient, or bored, and headed out for lunch. This left Henrik with a free hand and a lowly junior warrant officer to pump for answers.

  “What is this place for?”

  The clerk looked over his round spectacles timidly. “Auschwitz? It’s a labor camp.”

  “Yes, I know Auschwitz is a labor camp, friend, but what do they labor at? Do they make airplanes? Tanks? Flags? What?”

  “Piles,” he said after a moment’s deliberation and then pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “I don’t really know what they make. I’m only a clerk. But I’ve seen piles of all sorts of things.” His glasses slipped forward. “Glasses like these useless things. They’re in a place called Canada.”

  “Canada?”

  “It’s a warehouse. I don’t know why it’s called that, but they have piles of ever
ything there. Watches. Boots. Dolls. Even teeth.”

  “Teeth?”

  “Gold teeth.”

  Henrik had other questions like, for example, why the numbers didn’t add up. There were a thousand more “in” transfers than “out.” Surely Auschwitz didn’t grow by that many prisoners every week. But before he could get an answer to this question, the warrant officer asked a question of his own.

  “Jacobs? Did you say the name was Jacobs?”

  “Yes. Have you found them?”

  “There are hundreds of them. It is a very common Jewish name.”

  Henrik felt his hope wan. “Search for a family with two men and two women.

  “Families are split up upon arrival.”

  “Why? Never mind. Search for the names Zelman, Eli, Esther and Sarah.”

  He shook his head. “These Jews breed like rabbits and they call all their children by the same names. This could take all day.”

  “Just keep looking.” The clerk’s petty complaints were beginning to grate on his nerves. Henrik felt his stomach growl. The little bit of food energy he’d gotten from the old couple’s potato was wearing off. “And order us something to eat,” he barked impatiently. “You won’t have time to visit the mess hall today. We have important work to do for the Reich. Very important work.”

  The clerk cringed.

  It wasn’t until later that afternoon that the mousy little warrant officer finally located three of the names Henrik was looking for. Zelman Jacobs, the Rabbi, had arrived two weeks ago, and Eli just last week. The clerk showed Henrik their photographs, black and white snapshots taken upon their arrival. Henrik recognized them immediately although they were mere shadows of their former selves. There was an “x” beside their names, which, according to the clerk, meant they were deceased. Henrik had been too late to save them, but was he too late for Esther and her sister?

  “There is no Sarah Jacobs on the list, at least not with a sister named Esther and a father named Eli,” the clerk explained.

  “So what does that mean? Where is she?”

  “She could be at another camp in Poland or somewhere else. She just never came through Auschwitz.”

  “But Esther did?”

  “Yes.” He looked at the file card and his child-like lips fell into a frown.

  “Well, where is she?” Henrik snatched the index card out of the clerk’s hands. There was her name, Esther Jacobs, and beside it the number 11. “What does this mean?”

  “She’s in block 11, but—”

  “Take me to her.”

  “What? Now? But I can’t. It’s way over on the other side of the camp. I never go there.”

  Henrik grabbed the clerk by the throat. “You’ll go there today if I have to choke you all the way.” Henrik felt the warrant officer’s fragile neck in his large, powerful hand. He could have snapped it like a twig.

  “But the colonel—”

  “We’ll report to the colonel when we find her. Bring me there now!” He released his grip and the clerk fell to the ground, panting. Henrik didn’t give him time to catch his breath. Grabbing him by his starched collar, he dragged the clerk out to the motorbike and deposited him roughly in the sidecar. Passing soldiers cast cursory glances in their direction, but no one came to the clerk’s rescue.

  “Which way?” Henrik demanded. The clerk pointed mutely down the paved road toward the smoke stacks. Henrik kick-started the BMW and gunned it, leaving a long strip of smoking rubber in his wake. It was late afternoon and crowds of black and white striped prisoners were just making their way to their barracks before the sun went down. Henrik laid on the horn to clear a path in front of him, but the weary prisoners were slow to move. He saw their ghostly faces as he passed. Dark, cavernous eyes, jutting cheekbones, and hollow cheeks. Henrik slowed to let them pass.

  As they traveled further from the train junction, the prisoner shacks became more decrepit and the smell of smoke became more unbearable, stinging Henrik’s eyes and making his stomach turn. Up ahead, he could see the hundred-foot smoke stacks churning out their pollution into the air and the redbrick buildings beneath them.

  “What are those for?” Henrik asked, but the nervous clerk just shook his head. And then he pointed to a shack near the tracks, the number 11 painted above the door. Henrik skidded to a stop. “Come with me,” Henrik commanded. The clerk got out of the sidecar reluctantly. He looked like a frightened fawn about to bolt at any second.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” he said vaguely. “We don’t have permission.”

  “Never mind that. The colonel put you at my disposal. Follow my orders. If you don’t, I swear to God I’ll kill you.” The clerk gulped again. “Now open that door.”

  “I don’t have a key. I’m just a clerk.”

  Henrik pulled the little man out of the way and kicked in the door. The wood was new and stubborn, but a second powerful kick cracked the door right down the middle. A horrible smell of rotting flesh and human waste hit Henrik like a sledgehammer. He fell back instinctively, his arm covering his face.

  “I told you. We shouldn’t be here. The Einsatzgruppen—” The clerk left his sentence unfinished. Henrik thought he was about to start crying. Something had him spooked and it wasn’t just the bad smell. Henrik decided to leave the frightened clerk behind as he pushed on in. The barracks was much like the prisoner camp at Peenemunde with one major exception. No prisoners.

  “Where are they?” Henrik screamed at the clerk as he burst out of the barracks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they took them already.” Tears of terror ran down the clerk’s cheeks. Henrik felt no sympathy for the young man. A rage was growing inside him.

  “Where did they take her?”

  “The showers. They took her to the showers in the little red house. It’s too late.” The clerk pointed at the redbrick buildings.

  “Take me there.”

  “No, no. I won’t go there.” He was crying openly now, like a frightened child. Henrik grabbed him by his jacket and slapped him hard across the face. The clerk became frantic. He lashed out at Henrik with surprising fury, cutting Henrik’s cheek with his fingernails. Henrik let go and the little man fell into the mud. But he was up and away so quickly that Henrik was unable to grab hold of him again. Henrik watched the clerk running down the dirt road like a man possessed and decided not to follow. In his present state of mind, the clerk would attract too much attention. Maybe he already had.

  Henrik looked past the barracks. Fortunately there were no soldiers around this area. It seemed odd. An empty barracks. No soldiers. And what were these showers the clerk had mentioned? Henrik wouldn’t be able to ask him now. He’d have to find out on his own. Henrik hopped back on his motorbike and drove towards the redbrick buildings. Before he reached the courtyard, an SS officer dressed all in black stopped him.

  “This area is forbidden. What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I’m on official business.” Henrik handed the forged papers that had already served him so well, to the inquisitive guard. The guard saw only the Chancellery seal and handed them back. “I am looking for a prisoner from block 11. Her name is Esther Jacobs.”

  The guard scratched his head. “Block 11 has already gone in,” he said as if that should mean something to Henrik, which of course it didn’t. Henrik shut off the engine and dismounted his motorbike.

  “Take me to her immediately.”

  “Into the showers?” the guard asked with some surprise, but Henrik was adamant.

  “Yes, corporal. I must see the prisoner immediately. It is an order straight from the Chancellery!”

  The guard took a step back and then saluted. He snapped a command to the young private by the gate and then led Henrik into the compound. Henrik’s apprehension was growing by the second. Why were the showers housed in redbrick buildings behind barbed wire? None of it made an
y sense.

  The SS corporal opened the door and Henrik entered. He braced himself for a horrid stench, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. The interior of the building was much like a warehouse, with a high ceiling and industrial lights, but instead of being filled with boxes or machine parts, it was filled with people—vacant, diseased, ghostly people, more dead than alive. Half of them were naked, but with their heads shaved and their bodies so desiccated, Henrik wasn’t sure at first whether they were men or women. The other half were still removing their clothes and depositing them on a large pile of filthy rags.

  “Good,” the guard said behind Henrik, startling him. “They’re still being processed.” He looked at Henrik and his mouth twisted with rye humor. “First visit to the showers? You get used to it, eventually.”

  “I don’t plan to be here that long. Where is she?” Henrik was afraid to look. They were all women, he decided, but were they still human? They looked like walking skeletons. Was Esther among them? What had they done to her?

  “Esther Jacobs,” the guard bellowed. The women turned to look at the guard but none of them stepped forward. Behind them, Henrik could see the piles the clerk had talked about—piles of boots, piles of glasses, piles of gold teeth, and belts, and rings, and necklaces, and earrings, even hair. Canada, he called it. It seemed a funny name.

  He knew little about Canada except that it was a cold place, north of the U.S. and relatively bountiful. And that was when Henrik finally solved the puzzle. The piles and piles of miscellaneous articles. They didn’t make these things at Auschwitz. They harvested them. Auschwitz wasn’t a factory. It was a slaughterhouse. And then the horror stuck him with a vengeance. Esther, if she were here with all these other women, was about to die.

  “Esther Jacobs!” the guard yelled again, a hint of menace in his voice, but what else could he do to them now? Surely they were well past the fear of pain or death.

  “She’s not here,” a woman answered from the crowd. It was a small voice, barely audible.

  “Who spoke? Show yourself.” The naked women parted like the Red Sea, revealing a shriveled girl cowering in the corner. Could that be Esther? She was not as thin as the other walking skeletons around her, but as Henrik approached he saw the white rash that nearly covered her entire naked body. She looked up with vacant eyes.

  “She’s my sister,” she said, and only then did Henrik realize who she was.

  “Sarah!” he said impulsively.

  The guard looked at him. “You know her?”

  “Corporal!” Henrik snapped, recovering his composure just in time. “Take this prisoner to my motorcycle.”

  “But she’s scheduled for—”

  “And get her some clean clothes.”

  The corporal obeyed, barking an order at one of the nearby privates who was corralling the women. Meanwhile Henrik tried to figure out his next move and what had happened to Esther. Did they somehow get their names mixed up in the transfer order? If so, Esther might still be at another camp. Or she might be dead already. Henrik tried not to think about that. He must not think about that. He had to hang onto hope as long as he could.

  The corporal finished putting Sarah in the sidecar and before he could utter another word of protest, Henrik was racing through the camp like a madman. He made it as far as the front gate, but no farther. A black Mercedes with the license number SS-3 was waiting for him.

  “Did you really think you could get away with this?” Heydrich asked sharply. Sergeant Klein sneered beside him, his Luger drawn. “Did you really think we wouldn’t catch up with you?”

  Henrik gritted his teeth. The gate was shut tight. He had no gun, and even if he did, there was no way he could take on the whole camp. The SS guard at the gate had his MP40 ready. Next to him, the colonel and his cowardly clerk looked on with great interest, eager to see this bizarre drama reach its inevitable climax. Henrik had one last card to play.

  “Obergruppenfuhrer, thank God it’s you. The traitor escaped but I have discovered information—”

  Heydrich laughed. “Oh yes. The major. How did he escape? We nearly missed you because of him, following that stinking farm road for hours on a wild goose chase. You wouldn’t happen to know where he toddled off to, would you? But no, you wouldn’t tell me the truth even if you knew. I seriously think that you are incapable of speaking the truth. Enough of your games, Herr Kessler. I know all about your silly charade at Wolfsschanze. Now be a good loser and come with me quietly and I promise to save the truly sinister interrogation until we reach Prague.”

  Henrik weighed his options for a long moment, his motorcycle idling noisily. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t fight. And apparently he could no longer bluff. Heydrich must know enough to sign his death warrant or he wouldn’t have tracked him to Auschwitz. But there was still a chance that Sarah would be spared if he had time to spin a convincing yarn. The only thing left to do was stall. Henrik let the engine die and got off the bike slowly. Heydrich smiled.

  “Is that it?” Colonel Hoess protested indignantly. “Are you simply going to take him away without a word of explanation?”

  Heydrich turned to the colonel. “Yes, Herr Hoess. That is precisely what I’m about to do.”

  The colonel sputtered. “And what of the girl? Do you wish to take her too?”

  Heydrich shrugged. “She’s your prisoner. Do with her as you will.”

  “No!” Henrik screamed. Now was his chance. He had to make his case or Sarah would return to the redbrick buildings and an unimaginable death. “Obergruppenfuhrer, this Jewess was in contact with the traitor. She has important information—”

  “I told you before, Herr Kessler,” Heydrich interrupted. “No more games. Guards, shoot her.” Klein cocked his Luger immediately, but Henrik jumped in his path with his arms raised above his head.

  “No games, Herr Heydrich. She knows the identity of a German double agent. If she dies now, that information will die with her. At least bring her in for questioning.” Henrik had pushed his gambit as far as it could go, perhaps too far. German interrogation can be a vastly painful experience. Perhaps Sarah would be better off dead. But if there was life, there was hope.

  Heydrich seemed to ponder the situation for a moment, and then he made his decision. “Take him to my car,” he said calmly, “and then shoot her.”

  “No!” Henrik screamed, greeting the gate guard with a knife-hand to the throat that left him flat on his back, gasping for air, before he even had a chance to raise his machine gun. Henrik turned to face Klein, but the boxing champ of Austria was too quick for him, catching Henrik in the solar plexus with a powerful upper cut that doubled him over painfully. As Henrik gasped for air, two more guards emerged from the colonel’s office.

  “No!” Henrik grunted, but he was helpless. He felt his body being manhandled into the backseat of the limo, his wrists cuffed behind his back to the door handle. He kicked and screamed, but all in vain. He was out muscled, outmaneuvered and outnumbered. A moment later, he heard the lone rapport of a Luger pistol.

  It was over.

  Heydrich’s smiling, ugly face appeared in the window. “Are you quite finished? Good. Then we can go.” Heydrich entered the front passenger door while Klein sat beside him in the driver’s seat. Henrik’s last view of Auschwitz was the ironic sign, Work Makes One Free, with Sarah’s bloody corpse sprawled on the pavement beneath it.