Danzig Passage (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  Orde managed to stifle his sarcasm at this remark. “No, sir. I do not expect them to.”

  “Well, then?”

  Orde smoothed his mustache and took his time. “Well, then, I propose inducting the Jewish night squads into our military. It is not required that we state they are Jewish, simply that the men I command are effective in stopping ambushes on the roads and the blowing of pipelines from Lebanon.” He inhaled with an air of satisfaction. “Regardless of what truth Whitehall sends us from London, we know that a bit of sensible muscle applied correctly here in Palestine is much more effective in keeping the peace than all the politics in the world.”

  “Jewish soldiers?” General Wavell shook his head as though he could not believe his ears.

  “With proper training we could clean out a lot more nests than just Galilee.”

  Wavell looked out the window. The weary expression on his face indicated that he agreed. But there was something else. “The Arabs and our own colonial secretary are discussing the idea of a peace conference. Talking.”

  “Ah. And they cannot talk if we fight.”

  “They say you must stop fighting before they will even talk about talking,” he said evenly. Regret filled his voice. “You have done too well, Orde.” His eyes met Orde’s. “I must order you now to defend your perimeters and nothing else.” He frowned. “Is that clear?”

  “Clear. Politics—and dirty politics at that,” Orde said angrily. “You and I both know the intentions of Haj Amin. He would be king here and take over every good thing the Jews have done for this rock. Great Britain is the biggest loser in this political game. We may well be handing over Palestine—first to Haj Amin, and then to Hitler.”

  “We are soldiers, Orde. Bound to obey.” The general seemed to sink down in his chair. “Even when we cannot agree.” Tapping his pipe against the ash tray he considered just how much he could say. “You have been tagged the most dangerous man in Palestine by the Mufti’s henchmen. Watch your back, Orde. You’re a fine soldier. I would hate to lose you to a dagger through the ribs.”

  “That might be preferable to this slow death by politics.”

  ***

  The story would rate only a couple of columns on the back page of American newspapers, but in London, it was front-page news.

  LONDON: At least twelve persons were killed in the winter’s first gale, which at one time today reached a velocity of 108 miles an hour.

  For some U.S. publications, that one line would be all the news printed on the subject. So who cares about a little storm in England?

  For those who lived through it, however, every other news in the world seemed to recede into the background. Winds howled down the English Channel, tossing the huge battleship Royal Oak like a champagne cork on the waters. Waves eighty feet high smashed sea walls and tore steeples from cathedrals. Twice Murphy looked out the window and thought he saw the spires of Parliament bending like trees.

  The Queen Mary was unable to reach Southampton and was forced to spend a long night bobbing at anchor off the Isle of Wight. Bridges and homes were swept into the sea. The funeral procession of Queen Maud of Norway, who had died on a visit to England, was abandoned as royal mourners were threatened by the force of the storm.

  A flock of fifty sheep were blown off a cliff into the sea. Murphy wondered if this last incident might be some sort of divine warning to the political sheep of England that a much more terrible storm was brewing.

  Just as he mentioned this idea to Elisa, the electricity winked off for the rest of the night, leaving the entire nation in a total blackout. Another portent of things to come?

  The storm created quite a bit of inconvenience around London. Only total fools and taxi drivers dared to brave the roads. Business was virtually locked up tight—every business but that of gathering the news, that is.

  Ordering doors at home locked and windows taped, Murphy cast his lot among the fools and went to the office hoping, like Prime Minster Chamberlain, that peace was at hand.

  But there was no peace. It began to snow, and word came in from Southampton that the TENS Paris correspondent was stranded on the English side of the Channel. This was especially bad news; the English Prime Minister was in Paris with the French appeasers attempting to get in on the latest diplomatic maneuvers by the Germans.

  Every reporter was safe at home. As Murphy prepared to close up shop, the telephone rang. He stared at the receiver for a moment, astonished that the telephone was still working. Then he picked it up. “TENS head office.”

  A nasty crackle hissed into his ear, telling him that the phones did not have long before they would be gone as well.

  “Operator . . . Jerusalem . . . Palestine . . . personal to . . . John Murphy.”

  Jerusalem! It was a miracle; while the water of the English Channel sent British battleships running for cover, the cable beneath eighty-foot waves was still intact!

  “Right! Murphy here!”

  Another long vibration ran through the line as words pulsed through Paris and Budapest and Istanbul and then on to Jerusalem. The faraway voice of a Britisher broke through. “Hallo? Are you there, Mr. Murphy? This is your Jerusalem correspondent on the line! Hallo? Are you there?”

  Captain Samuel Orde! TENS’ anonymous correspondent in Jerusalem! Lately, he had filled the wire with glowing reports of battles against the Arab gangs in Galilee. He mentioned his own name in every article as the daring British captain who led the troops to victory. Not a modest man, this unnamed correspondent. He managed to get credit for the skirmishes even if he did not get his name on the byline.

  “Orde! A lucky break! We just got word about the Arab-Zionist conference! What’s the reaction there? Any hopes for peace?”

  Silence seemed louder than the crackle on the line. “Word is that the plan comes straight from Berlin. Rerouted rather like this phone call through the Mufti in Baghdad.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “They are hoping to tie the hands of that dashing Captain Orde who is smashing them in Galilee,” Orde said with a laugh, the words suddenly as clear as if he were in the next room. “The Arabs coached in every word. I’m afraid the Zionists are about to be sold out. Another Munich.” His voice faded. “A hefty price on his head . . . wanted you to have the straight story in case . . . .Tell Winston that—”

  “Tell Winston what?”

  The crackle turned into a roar, and the phone went dead. So much for a modern miracle.

  Murphy scribbled notes from what little he had gathered from Orde. There was a price on his head. There was a plan behind this offer of peace from the Arabs. The British High Command in Palestine was also in the mood for appeasement. Sam Orde might have been winning battles, but they were all in danger of losing the war.

  Murphy stared thoughtfully at the downpour and then picked up the telephone to call Churchill. No luck. The lines across London were down.

  ***

  Otto smelled the woodsmoke of his mother’s kitchen stove before he topped the rise. The air was still, broken only by the jingle of harness bells and the rush of the runners across the snow. On either side of the road, fences and pastures were concealed by a thick carpet of snow that banked the edge of deep green forest. Above the trees, the rocky peaks of the Tyrol were lost from view behind the clouds.

  He slapped the reins down hard on the back of the mare. In spite of the cold, she was sweating after an hour’s hard pull over the snow. Still, at his urging, she picked up her pace, giving the harness bells a ring of urgency.

  At the sight of the farmhouse, Otto swallowed hard and brushed his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. The tears were only from the wind, he told himself as he resisted the temptation to cry like a homesick child.

  Snow was almost to the eaves on the right side of the chalet. A thin ribbon of smoke rose up from the chimney, carrying the scent of baking bread into the crisp afternoon air. “Home,” Otto whispered, suddenly certain that he would not go mad after all!

 
Papa stepped out of the front door. Tall boots topped his baggy trousers. His heavy coat was buttoned crooked and his hat was off. He lifted his chin to gaze with alarm at the distant sleigh. Who would be coming up to the farm after such a storm? Maybe a lost tourist? Maybe Gestapo? Karl Wattenbarger’s posture conveyed suspicion and then, after a long moment, the stiff back relaxed with delight as he recognized his son!

  Otto could hear the call back into the house: “Mama! It is our boy! Otto is home! Marta! You hear me? It is Otto!”

  The Wattenbarger farmhouse was full of guests. Nineteen in all, none of them tourists.

  Children hung on the banister and peered down at Otto like stone carvings that had come to life in the care of the Austrian family. Those same faces had been gray and unhappy when Otto had brought them here. There had been so many over the months that he could not remember every name or the exact circumstances of their desperation.

  “We cannot take in anymore,” Karl said sadly to his son.

  “But, Karl—” Marta started to argue as she poured hot cider for Otto.

  “No.” Karl silenced her. “When there were nine and the first snows closed the passes through the mountains, we said, ‘Well, we have nine guests for the winter.’ Ja. And then there were eleven, and then fifteen. Now nineteen. We have food enough if we eat twice a day. Porridge in the morning and milk for a snack. But nothing to spare. We must pray that the snows melt early and the pass opens before the Nazis come up here to steal our pantry clean.”

  “They have taken seven cows,” Marta added, sitting down beside Otto. “Gert and Ilse and Buttercup, who gave the most milk, as you know. Yes, I think the Nazis will let us alone now. They will let us feed the livestock through the winter, but in the spring they may take everything into their own pastures.”

  “Do the neighbors have any room?” Otto asked, not willing to let go after what he had seen in the cities throughout the Reich.

  Karl shook his head sadly. “Most are as crowded as we. At least those we could trust to ask. Here in Kitzbühel alone there are over two hundred children hidden.” Karl’s brow furrowed with concern for the thousands of children outside the tiny circle of safety. “Maybe the Americans troopers and the English will come through now, after what the Storm Troopers did.”

  “It wasn’t just troopers, Papa,” Otto said. “It was everyone. Friends. Neighbors. Everyone turned out, as though hell had taken over and turned men inside out.” As he stared at his cider, he wondered if he should tell them about the empty hospitals. He could not make himself say it out loud. The brutality of the world outside was measured only in missing cows and homeless children. The reality of it had not yet penetrated, and Otto would not speak of the darkness as long as some light remained here.

  “Surely there are people in Vienna who will help, ja? Just until spring when the snow melts and we can take them out.” Karl was torn by his inability to offer a solution. “And maybe by then the English government will have a plan.”

  Otto nodded. Some families would never be allowed to leave the Reich no matter how wide any nation opened the gates. Children of political prisoners were as despised as their parents. These were the people Otto would face when he returned to Vienna. He would be forced to look into the eyes of Michael Wallich’s children and tell them there was no room for them. No escape.

  Karl seemed to read the unspoken pain in his son’s eyes. He put a leathery hand on Otto’s arm. “You must think of the Holy Family, ja?” He gestured toward the crucifix above the table. “Only they escaped from Bethlehem when Herod’s soldiers killed the little ones. Even the angels of Almighty God could not warn every mother to flee.”

  Marta nodded. “We do what we can, son. And God does not judge for what we cannot do.”

  Emotion crowded Otto’s throat again. “There is so much I must do that I hate. And so much I want to do that is impossible.” He listened to the clatter of young footsteps above them. “There will be a terrible slaughter . . . . He did not finish. What was left to say? Save a few while multitudes perish, and pray you made the right choices.

  “You are not judged, Otto,” Karl replied quietly. “Do what you can and know the angels wept also in Bethlehem.”

  ***

  The Jews of Vienna, forced to clear away the debris of their own broken lives, swept the streets and sidewalks clean. Shop windows were boarded over, never to open again.

  But Lucy Strasburg’s life remained littered with the shards of her shattered illusions. They cut into her heart, then sealed into tough, impenetrable scars. She saw no one’s misery but her own. She grieved for no one but herself.

  Sometimes she felt drawn to walk again on Stephanie Bridge, to look longingly down at the brown waters. But in those moments, certain of hell, she glimpsed her own judgment. To die now would mean that she would take a second life, the life of her unborn child. Could she add murder to her roster of sins?

  Twice she wandered into the great cathedral of St. Stephan’s. Wolf did not like her to go there; the Catholic church labored under the heavy scrutiny and disapproval by the party. But she was a woman and so he overlooked her weakness for religion.

  She did not tell him that she came here like a starving child going to a bakery to smell the baking bread. Like a pauper who looks at a grocer’s stand and longs for what he cannot buy, Lucy sat in the back of the great cathedral and wished that she had whatever was for sale in such a place. But she had nothing with which to buy her salvation. She had given everything good in her for the sake of Wolf’s passion.

  Priests and nuns with worried faces moved about St. Stephan’s. The Nazis had stoned the residence of Bishop Innitzer, declaring war on Catholics as well as Jews in Austria. Maybe the priests had no comfort left to offer Lucy. With that thought in mind she left the cathedral without asking for help. There was, it seemed, no help left for anyone. Look out for yourself, her heart whispered. You are the only one you can count on.

  Lucy walked a precarious high wire with the ravenous Wolf waiting below for her to slip. She teased him and she baited him. She made demands on him and then scorned him when he failed to meet them.

  When he brought her the fox coat, she pretended that it was not good enough quality. “The sort of thing a junior officer would give his spinster sister,” she mocked.

  He had responded with anger, perhaps even with disappointment. She remained unmoved, and so the fur had been returned and replaced by one of richer color than the first. She rewarded him with her passion and left him happy that he had pleased her.

  Only a few weeks before, she would have been ecstatic about the first coat, of course, but she did not let him know that. It was a game. Sometimes she rewarded him with her approval, but not always. And so he began to work at pleasing her without ever knowing that she did not still love him. Power filled the void love had left in Lucy’s heart.

  Secretly she called Wolf her little hound, uttered with the same disregard with which he had once called her his cow. She made him beg for her and try to please her. He never knew that all she wanted was to escape from him, to carry this baby far from the beautiful hands of Wolfgang von Fritschauer and his dutiful little Nazi wife. She determined that the thing he wanted most from her would never be his. How to accomplish that, however, was still a problem she grappled with. Even in their most tender moments that thought occupied her mind. As she smiled and whispered his name, she thought of trains and obscure places beyond the borders of the Nazi Reich.

  One single beam of sunlight broke through the overcast sky and filtered through the window of Lucy’s apartment. Somehow that shaft of light lifted her spirits.

  She sat alone in the elegant little parlor of the apartment. From left to right, according to value, she laid her assets out on the cushions of the pale yellow Queen Anne sofa.

  The Swiss watch Wolf had given her came first, then a small gold and amethyst ring she had received from an aunt who had purchased it in Paris years before. An assortment of gold and silver bangle brace
lets and a necklace lay next to the ring. On the far right she placed the large solid silver crucifix that she had inherited from her grandmother.

  It seemed a pitiful little pile against the expensive furniture of the parlor. She had saved only a few marks from work; the rest she had squandered on clothing and handbags and shoes and treats that she had sent home to her younger brothers and sisters.

  “I have been a fool,” she said aloud to the empty room.

  Few of these possessions could she sell. To sell the watch would incur Wolf’s wrath and suspicion. To present the little ring to the appraisers might cause them to smile and toss her a handful of change. Bracelets and the necklace would bring nothing but outright laughter. “Gold plated, my dear! Not real silver, only polished nickel!”

  Only the silver crucifix offered any hope. Lucy suspected that it was very valuable. She had placed it on the end of the row because it was the one thing she had which she dreaded selling. Still, it seemed that she had nothing else.

  The cross itself was a full twelve inches from top to bottom and quite heavy. The metal was a work of art. Patterned to mimic the grain of wood, Lucy could almost see the rough splinters tearing into the flesh of the mourning Christ who hung on it. And silver spikes ran through hands and feet; a crown of perfect little thorns jammed down into the forehead. There was no wound yet in the side of Christ. Lucy’s grandmother had explained to her many years before, “He is not finished dying yet, you see, Lucy. The soldier thrust the spear into His side after He was dead. But this shows that our Lord still suffers for our sakes.”