by Bodie Thoene
Hours would pass before they would be at the border. She could handle the passport and customs officers easily after this.
The door burst open, and light from the corridor flooded the compartment. Lucy and Officer Hess were laughing. He was drunk. Peter could smell it on his breath; hear it in the slurring of his words as he lunged for the seat.
He patted his lap for Lucy to sit. “Come on! Come on! My lap is more comfortable than the seat.” He pawed her crudely.
“Wolf would have you shot if I did!” Maybe Lucy had been drinking, too. Peter frowned beneath his cap, the movement exposing his eye slightly. He did not like the way the SS lieutenant was touching her. Only a dead man could sleep through this.
“Wolf might have you shot anyway, eh?” he asked, pulling her against him.
Lucy was not drunk. From the corner of his eye, Peter caught an instant of fear in her expression. Sober fear. And then it was gone again. She struggled as the lieutenant yanked her down.
It was a playful struggle. The officer tried to kiss her. She pushed him back. “Please . . . you will wake my nephews.”
“Let them wake up,” he slurred, holding her wrist.
“But . . . please . . . Herr Lieutenant . . . Wolf will not—”
“So who cares about Wolf? You are not afraid of Wolf. You have left him, eh?” The voice became harsh. Demanding. The hand clamped harder on her arm, and he threw her back on the bench. “Call me Alex, remember? Old friends. Lucy. I never forget.”
“You are . . . hurting me . . . bitte! Alex! Herr Lieutenant!” There was no charade in her appeal. She struggled harder. The man held her down beneath him on the bench.
Peter could not pretend to sleep. He sat up and switched on the light. His cap fell to the floor. He glared hard at the angry officer. “Leave my aunt alone,” he said, standing slowly to his feet.
Lucy lay where the scowling officer had her pinned. She shook her head at Peter. He must not interfere!
The officer did not let her go; he simply sneered at Peter as if he were an insect to crush when he was not busy with the woman.
“Get out of here!” the lieutenant snapped. “And take the brat out with you.”
“Let her go, I said!” Peter threatened. “You are drunk!”
“Yes? Drunk? In a few hours I will be sober, but you will still be a Jew! You should pray I do not remember the way you order me around!” He sat up. Lucy did not move. Her face reflected all the things she had dreaded. He knew! Maybe he had known all along.
“I . . . I don’t know what you mean,” Peter stammered.
“Oh yes?” The officer pulled his pistol from its holster and waved it at Peter’s face and then at the still sleeping Willie. “You don’t know?”
“Bitte, Herr Lieutenant.” Lucy tried to pull his attention back to her. She laughed as though this was a drunken fantasy. “Don’t play such games. He will leave . . . won’t you Peter? Leave us alone, Peter! Take Willie.”
Peter clenched and unclenched his fists. He would not let Lucy do this for him and Willie. “I will not leave!”
“Too bad.” The officer pulled back the hammer and put the barrel behind Willie’s ear.
“Oh! Please . . . Herr Lieutenant! Don’t,” Lucy begged.
He pushed her back hard. “You see, boy, this woman and I were about to strike a bargain. She was going to give me something in exchange for your life. You see?”
Peter licked his lips. He stared at the gun against the baby’s head. “All right!” Peter cried, looking from his brother to Lucy. “Just let me take him and get out!”
“Sure, sure.” Lucy tried to sound soothing, but her hands trembled. The usually smooth voice cracked. “Let them go, Herr Lieutenant.”
“Too late!” The gun pointed back to Peter’s face. “I am out of the mood for love! The prefer to hunt now!”
“Don’t do this,” Lucy whispered. “You will be sorry. My nephews . . . ” She tried to recapture the illusion.
“Nephews?” His voice was low, barely audible. “Wouldn’t Wolf be surprised that your nephews are the Jews he has been looking for?” He laughed explosively. “Ah, you are going to be in a lot of trouble—”
“Please . . . just too much schnapps!” She sat up slowly, trying to reason with him.
“Imagination, is it?” The lips curled down. He jumped up and pressed the gun into Peter’s heart. “Drop your trousers, Jew! If you aren’t a Jew, prove it!”
Peter looked at Lucy. Such agony on her face! Why had he interrupted this sloppy drunk? Why hadn’t he let her take care of him?
“Did you hear what I said, you circumcised swine? Drop them!”
The gun pressed hard into Peter’s chest, but he did not move. He would not do it! Let this evil man shoot him through the heart! He would not take down his trousers in front of Lucy . . . or anyone! He lifted his chin in defiance. “You are the swine, not me,” Peter said evenly, daring the man to pull the trigger.
Instead, the lieutenant simply reached down and grabbed up the baby, who wailed unhappily in sleepy confusion. The gun went to Willie’s mouth. The baby waved his arms in pain as the officer jammed the barrel into his throat. “Suck on this, you little Judenschwein!”
“All right!” Peter cried, fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. “Don’t! Put him down!”
The drunken lieutenant then pointed the gun at Peter and smiled.
In that moment, Peter glimpsed Lucy’s handbag raise up behind the SS lieutenant and come down in an arch on top of his head. There was a loud thump, and the officer’s eyes rolled back as a trickle of blood dripped down the side of his head. The gun fell from his hand. Willie hit the seat with a thud and gasped for breath before shrieking with rage and indignation. Officer Hess hung in the air for an instant longer before his knees buckled and he fell back on top of Lucy.
***
They ate in silence as they walked the first miles in the center of the railroad tracks. The oak ties across the gravel snagged the toes of boots and shoes, causing each of the children to stumble in turn. Mark tripped on a crosstie and fell, bloodying both knees. He did not cry out, but Lori could see the black stain of blood seeping through his trousers. Jamie stepped into a hole and tumbled down, biting through his lip. Even within the narrow borders of the straight track there were small traps on the roadbed.
Only Alfie seemed never to trip. Lori walked behind him and watched as he held the kitten carefully and walked in a high marching kind of step.
To the right above the treetops shone an eerie white glow. The prison camp, a nameless enclosure where men were caged. Although Lori could not see the guard towers of the electrified fences that stretched for miles, this unnatural light illuminated their path and cast shadows that hid the dangers of uneven places.
Somewhere Lori could hear the steady, distant drone of the generating plant that powered the floodlights and made the fences here and at the border deadly to touch.
It reminded Lori not of the true Light but of the power Darkness had to distort their vision. That ominous hum encircled all of Germany, keeping some people out and others in. The unnatural light pursued them at this moment. She felt it above her and behind her. It sought to close the gate to their freedom, sealing them in this gray, colorless world, where blood was black and flesh was ashen. It distorted what was real, raising small depressions in their way to make them fall and concealing bumps to make them stumble. The light of Darkness made even their straight path treacherous and painful.
As never before, she felt the nearness of personal Evil tonight. It lurked there, in the shadows of the woods, in the iron-gray light of the prison, in the small puddles of blackness beneath their feet.
***
“Is he . . . dead?” Lucy shuddered as Peter propped Hess into the corner of the seat.
“Only sleeping like a dead man,” Peter replied with grim amusement in his voice. He pulled the peaked cap down over the officer’s forehead, then stepped back to study the effect. Not de
ad, only sleeping. Yes. Drunk and sleeping. Peter crossed the officer’s legs at the ankles, giving the overall impression of a man who was very comfortable.
“You were very brave,” Lucy said firmly. She did not scold him for being too brave, although that was implied in the tone of her voice. “My knight.”
Peter hefted the handbag at her feet; it must have weighed twenty pounds. “What have you got in that thing?”
“My inheritance.” She smiled and opened the bag, allowing him a glimpse of a large solid silver crucifix.
“Ha!” Peter cried. “The only weapon against vampires and demons, I hear! Now all we need is a wooden stake through his heart . . . providing he has a heart.”
Lucy cradled Willie, whose bottom lip was split and swollen. He frantically sucked his bottle and looked wildly around the compartment for any sign of other monsters. At last his eyelids drooped. He breathed a ragged sigh; his little body relaxed, started awake, then relaxed again.
It was a dilemma they had not anticipated. Peter sat on the edge of his seat and considered what to do with the unconscious SS lieutenant.
“Very natural-looking like this, don’t you think? At the passport check we tell them he is drunk and asleep. Give them his papers, then dump him out the window on the Polish side.”
“If he wakes up, we are dead.”
“Too bad we did not kill him.”
“I do not relish the idea of being arrested for murder,” Lucy said.
“You think they will punish you less for helping Jews? Why don’t we get rid of him?”
“Because if we throw him off and he wakes up and manages to stagger to a telephone . . . he will call ahead and—” She frowned. “He is SS! One phone call, and we are arrested.”
Peter examined the tall shining boots of the officer. The boy had always wanted a pair of boots like that. “Let me handle it,” he instructed Lucy. “Go to the dining car with Willie. I can handle this.”
“I am not going anywhere until you tell me what you intend to do.” Lucy was adamant.
“You know what makes this fellow an SS?” Peter replied as the officer moaned and stirred slightly. Peter pointed the pistol at him as a precaution while they talked.
“He is waking up,” Lucy said in a frightened voice.
“Yes. The SS lieutenant is waking up. If we throw him off the train like this, he will crawl to some farm and terrorize the farmer and telephone the border guards. Then we will be arrested. A very frightening thing, this skull and crossbones, these lightning bolts. They make a very homely, stupid fellow like this feel man enough to rape women and jam guns into the mouths of babies.”
For a second Peter considered shooting the officer.
“What are you getting at?” Lucy’s heart was racing. The lieutenant was going to wake up and they would have to fight him again!
“It is the uniform, you see. What happens when you take those clothes off a man like him?”
“Disgusting.”
“A naked, barefoot Nazi,” Peter continued. “I, for one, would never let any naked barefoot stranger come to my door and demand to use the telephone.” Peter smiled slyly. “Herr Lieutenant Hess and I have much to talk about between here and the Polish territory. Now take Willie out. I do not want my brother to be frightened again by this monster.”
***
First Peter threw out the SS tunic from the window. He counted to sixty and tossed away the cap, the trousers, and then the army-issue underwear and socks. The small hand-carried suitcase followed. Finally, at gunpoint, Peter instructed the naked officer to lay the briefcase on the opposite seat.
Peter dumped out the contents. A small handgun tumbled out. Peter tucked it into one of his new boots and sat back with the luger pistol pointed squarely into Hess’s face.
Peter had donned Otto’s overcoat; he was chilled, but not unbearably so. “Now shred your papers,” he ordered, “and out the window with them.”
Hess obeyed in jerky, uneven movements. “There are more where these came from,” he snarled, at last picking up his own identity documents.
“Small pieces.” Peter lowered the aim of the pistol toward the man’s abdomen. “Very small.”
The fragments of passport whipped out of the officer’s hand. “Now close the window,” he stammered. “I will freeze to death.”
“No. I want to make certain you are sober before I kill you,” Peter said with a grin.
“You are a smart young man.” Hess managed a smile, but it quickly disappeared. It was too cold to maintain this illusion of a man in control. “Smart like your father was smart. You don’t . . . need to kill me. We can make a deal, ja?”
“What kind of deal?” Peter mocked him. “You expect me to let you go free in exchange for my own life so that you can turn in Wolfgang von Fritschauer?”
For an instant, Alexander Hess looked very sober indeed. “Wolfgang von Fritschauer? No. I swear I would not!”
“You think I will let you go so you can undermine their operation? Exchange my life for Lucy and Wolf? After what they have done for me? For hundreds like me? My honor is loyalty, Herr Lieutenant Hess. Wolf has been like a brother to me. No! I would not think of giving a man like you a chance to ruin it all. I am afraid I will have to shoot you and throw you out the window like your clothes, eh?”
“You won’t shoot.” Hess looked panicked. “You are . . . too young to murder a man . . . like this.” He held up his bound wrists. Hands clasped together, he seemed to be begging for mercy.
“You mean in cold blood?” Peter was smiling. The freezing wind held Officer Hess in a much stronger grasp than either the pistol or the belt on his wrists.
“Give me your coat . . . bitte. I will pay you . . . I swear I will not have Wolfgang or . . . Lucy arrested. Untie?” His skin took on a definite bluish cast.
Peter pushed him a bit further. “It was you who killed my father, wasn’t it?”
“No! I swear it!” Now Hess had something to argue against. “I never met your father!”
“I do not believe you! Justice has delivered you into my hands, Herr Lieutenant Hess! I will not have long before I can avenge the blood of Michael Wallich!”
“No! Really! This I am not guilty of! I swear it! Someone else! Not me!” Again the trembling arms rose up to beg. Hess was altogether sober.
Peter had created his own story, as Lucy suggested. The result was enjoyable. He was in no great hurry to end the play.
“There is still some time before the whistle blows.”
“The whistle?” Hess’s teeth chattered violently. “So? The whistle?”
“I do not want anyone to hear the gunshot that takes your miserable existence.”
“Just listen to me—”
“There is time. Tell me, why should you live, Herr Hess—a cockroach like you?” Peter smiled as Hess proceeded to renounce all his former associations with the Nazi cause. He was doing this, he said, because it was the law of the land, and he must obey. But really, the system was corrupt, he said.
“And what about the Führer?” Peter asked.
“Rotten. Evil and dark! He has brought me to this! The Führer should die.”
“Not the Jews?”
“No! Never! The whole Nazi party! Corrupt. Rotten.”
“But not you?”
“No, I tell you . . . please . . . close the window.” The voice was pitiful.
“Not yet.” Peter said as the wind mussed his red hair. “I have not decided yet whether to let you live.”
***
They had been following the tracks for hours when the light of the Danzig train appeared like the giant eye of a cyclops behind them.
A wide field fringed with fir trees bordered the right side of the track. Jacob took Lori’s hand as they scrambled down the berm and the others followed.
They stepped into the trees to watch as the train—their train—thundered on toward the border checkpoint. The lights several kilometers up the track made a faint, pleasant glow agai
nst the night sky. They had fixed their hopes on this point—until now.
“Well, there it is,” Jamie said gloomily.
“We will never make it now,” Mark added.
“If we hurry—” Lori cried, as the headlight on the train sprayed a circle of track and gravel with illumination.
Locomotive. Coal car. Dining car with candles and waiters and passengers sipping wine. Then the sleeping cars and the first-class compartments, and then . . .
Like a spirit on the wind, something shot out of the window and flew up in the air. Then another object—and another, and another—swept out on the updraft. Like bats, they flapped and floated to earth.
Gathered all together, the clothing tossed from the window of the Danzig train made up the uniform of an SS lieutenant. Everything was there except the boots. Jacob tried on the tunic. It fit a big snug across the shoulders. The trousers were too loose around the waist. But in the moonlight, at any rate, the effect was impressive. Beneath the peaked cap visor, Jacob could easily pass for twenty-one. His crooked nose and his fighter’s physique completed the deception nicely. Mark found an extra pair of size ten boots inside the suitcase. Perfect!
The train could delay for several hours for an examination on the German side of the border. They were not too late, and now they had a Nazi lieutenant as well as a Blackshirted member of the Hitler Youth among them!
Jacob had not yet figured out what use he would make of his marvelous costume, but Lori declared it must be another miracle. Alfie said that the angels had sent them the clothes.
38
The Gate of Liberty
“TEN MINUTES TO FIRCHAU! NEXT STOP FIRCHAU! ALL PASSENGERS FOR FIRCHAU! CUSTOMS CHECK FOR THE POLISH FRONTIER! PLEASE HAVE ALL DOCUMENTS READY!”
Peter and Hess could clearly hear the instructions of the porter through the door. In spite of his shivering, spasmodic muscles, Hess managed to look relieved. Hopeful. Maybe he had convinced the young Jew not to shoot him, after all.
