by Daniel Kalla
“To the ghetto?”
“Yes. To see Ghoya.”
Franz grimaced. “He is asking Ghoya for permission to attack us?”
Ernst waved off the idea. “No. He is coming with food and presents. To show Ghoya and the others a traditional German Christmas.”
“It must be a ruse.”
“Of course it is.” Ernst patted his pocket in search of cigarettes but came up empty. “But one that will get them inside the ghetto after dark.”
“After curfew,” Sunny murmured.
Ernst nodded. “Precisely.”
Franz interlaced his fingers and squeezed them until they hurt. “So his men will have free rein to plant their bombs, at the synagogue and wherever else they want to, without us being able to watch.”
“That is the general idea, no doubt.”
Franz once again pictured the walls of the synagogue buckling. “As soon as the curfew is lifted in the morning, we will have to scour every inch of the synagogue’s grounds.”
Sunny turned to Franz, her eyes frantic with worry. “What if we’re wrong, Franz?” she murmured. “What if the synagogue is not their target? Perhaps they plan to explode bombs tonight. In the heime or the other buildings where the refugees live.”
But Franz felt certain in a way that he rarely did outside the operating room. “Going to all this trouble to bomb a few apartments would not satisfy the Nazis. No. Von Puttkamer promised something spectacular.”
“I know, darling, but what if . . .”
“We need to spread word among all the refugees. Everyone must guard their homes and look out for signs of unusual activity.”
Ernst jutted out his lower lip. “Ja. It’s a good idea.”
“Our telephone exchange is still not working,” Franz said. “Someone needs to go tell Charlie. We will need him in the morning, first thing.”
“I will go,” Sunny offered.
Ernst held up a hand. “No, Sunny, let me. Frenchtown is practically on my way home.”
Sunny shook her head. “Ernst, you have already risked more than enough for us.”
Ernst stroked her cheek. “Do you remember last year? When the Japanese were hunting for Shan and me? You risked everything to hide us here in the hospital. In plain sight among the cholera patients.” He chuckled. “In retrospect, it was not really much of a plan.”
“We did shave your head,” Sunny pointed out.
“My beautiful locks.” Ernst ran a hand through the wild tangles of hair that were part of his current disguise. “After what you risked, this—this is nothing. Besides, I fear that the real danger is yet to come.”
Chapter 46
“I suppose it would not be appropriate to wish you Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah,” Charlie said as he approached Franz where he stood in the lane behind the synagogue.
“No, not today,” Franz whispered, adjusting his old camera around his neck. The Kodak Brownie box camera had originally belonged to Sunny’s father. Franz had been out of film for months but, the day before, had sent Joey to trade a pair of Sunny’s earrings for a fresh roll on the black market.
Franz might not have recognized Charlie were it not for the crutches. Under his snow-covered straw hat and mismatched, tattered clothes, Charlie could have passed for one of Shanghai’s beggars.
“I do not remember Shanghai ever being this cold.” Charlie’s cloudy breath obscured his face.
Franz was almost oblivious to the temperature. Sunny had found him an old pair of her father’s woolen long johns. And adrenaline had coursed through his veins since Ernst’s visit, helping to keep him warm and alert despite his lack of sleep.
He had stayed awake through the night, vigilantly watching out the window for any sign of Nazi saboteurs. Each moan from the pipes or creak of the floorboards sent his heart up his throat, but the hours had passed without incident. He had heard no reports of unusual activity in the ghetto, which cemented his belief that the Hanukkah service at the synagogue had to be where and when von Puttkamer planned to strike.
Charlie turned back to the temple and slowly scanned it. “The snow provides the perfect camouflage for planting bombs.” Unlike Franz, he seemed calm.
“I used to love the cold winters in Austria,” Franz said. “But today I hate the snow.”
“Well, it also presents certain challenges to the bombers.”
Franz frowned. “What do you mean?”
Charlie let a few snowflakes fall onto his tongue. “Igniter cord will not burn reliably through snow. They would have to use an alternate fuse. A pencil detonator, probably.”
“What is that?”
“A narrow cylinder packed at one end with a detonator. You crush the copper tip with pliers.” Charlie held up his forefinger and squeezed its tip between the fingers of his other hand. “Acid is released inside and eats through the wire holding the striker away from the detonator. The small explosion detonates the bigger charge.”
“How long does the fuse take to ignite?”
“Depends on the detonator. Anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.”
“Several hours?” Franz coughed. “So they might have triggered the detonators already and left?”
Charlie pointed to the thin layer of snow around the building. “Do you see any footprints?”
“Surely they could have triggered them last night when the bombs were planted? The fresh snow would cover tracks.”
“No. Long-delay detonators are unreliable in such cold weather.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “How much time do we have before the service begins?”
Franz glanced at his watch, dismayed to see that it was already past seven thirty. “An hour at the most. How can we search the whole area with all this damned snow?”
“We do not need to search the whole building.”
“Why not?”
“They would only place explosives at load-bearing points. Where the most damage would be done to the target.”
The target. Franz winced at Charlie’s choice of words, but it must have been exactly how the Nazis viewed the temple and the Jews inside it. “Shall I go around to the front and collect the volunteers?”
“Let’s first see what we are facing.”
Franz followed Charlie around to the rear of the building. As he slipped and slid on the snow, Franz was impressed by the other man’s stability on crutches. Charlie stopped to stare up at the upper levels of the synagogue. He shifted right and left, then settled on a spot. “Here. This is where I would plant it.” He laid his crutches against the wall and lowered himself to the ground.
Franz hurried to the synagogue’s back door, where the shovel Rabbi Hiltmann had promised was waiting. By the time he brought it back, Charlie had already cleared away a patch of snow at the base of the building that was at least ten feet wide.
“Should I shovel more snow?” Franz offered.
Charlie shook his head. “Safer to do this by hand.” He carefully patted the patches of ground that he had exposed.
Taking care with his camera, Franz kneeled down beside him. The knees of his pants were soaked on contact with the ground. Not knowing how else to help, he began to extend the cleared area by patting away armfuls of snow.
“Here,” Charlie said in a hush. “Right here.”
Franz turned to Charlie, who was gently pawing at the ground. After a few moments, Franz made out the edges of a green object about the size and shape of a loaf of his favourite Schwarzbrot—black bread. Charlie cleared dirt from the top of the object. Franz spied two metal cylinders stuck into it like stubby antennas. “Pencil fuses. They placed two for good measure.” Charlie ran his fingers up and down the cylinders and then said, “Not activated yet.”
Franz’s throat constricted. “So someone will return during the service to ignite them.”
“Yes. They must have a sho
rt delay.” Charlie skimmed his fingers along the edges of the green block and let out a low whistle. “Plastic explosive. British issue. Highly effective. The Americans dropped us some for our work in the field.”
“Let me take a photograph,” Franz said, rising unsteadily to his feet.
Franz angled the camera to capture the bomb, along with as much of the wall as he could. It was awkward: he was accustomed to photographing architecture, not weapons of mass murder. He shot the scene from three different angles to ensure that he had documented it sufficiently.
Franz dropped back to his knees and joined Charlie. Together they gingerly excavated the explosive. Franz reached out to touch its surface, but just as he made contact with the smooth block, Charlie’s hand shot out and clamped onto his wrist. “Leave it,” he snapped.
As soon as Charlie’s grip loosened, Franz jerked his hand away as if he was pulling back from a flame. Charlie eased his fingertips under the edge of the explosive and gently pried upward. He raised it an inch or two. He snaked his other hand around and swept along its undersurface, then stopped suddenly. “Booby-trapped,” he murmured.
Franz’s heart leapt into his throat and he resisted an overwhelming urge to run away. Instead, barely breathing, he watched as Charlie slowly eased one side of the block up off the ground until he exposed a string dangling beneath it.
Franz spotted a round green object attached to the far end of the string. Half-buried in dirt, it resembled a dark pear. “Is that a . . . a grenade?”
Charlie didn’t reply, just extracted a knife from under his coat and sliced through the string with a flick of the blade. He lifted the brick up off the ground in one smooth motion. “The trip wire is attached to the grenade’s pull cord. A favourite booby trap of the Germans.”
Charlie wrestled with the detonators to tug them free of the bomb. He stuffed them in his pocket, then placed the explosive beside his crutches. “How much time do we have?” he asked.
Franz checked his watch again. “Forty-five minutes, if that.”
“We must find the rest of them.”
Franz stared down at the brick they had found. He could not imagine the force that it was capable of unleashing. Even though he had expected to find bombs, seeing the object itself was jarring, almost surreal. “How many do you think they would have planted, Charlie?”
“At least four, possibly as many as six.”
“So much ground to uncover,” Franz said.
“Only the load-bearing points,” Charlie reminded him. “And if someone was coming to set off the detonators in broad daylight, they must have planted them in other spots behind the building. And no deeper than this one.”
“Should I go get the others now?”
“Yes.” Charlie nodded to the hand grenade, which stuck out of the hole they had made as a deadly reminder. “But no shovels.”
Chapter 47
Rabbi Hiltmann was waiting inside the synagogue’s main entrance along with nine or ten male volunteers. The stale air smelled of sweat and fear, and the young men crowded around Franz, hanging on his words. When he got to the booby trap and the bombs, the men exploded into a frenzy of chatter and wild gesticulations.
Hiltmann clapped his hands above his head. When the room went quiet, he spoke only two words: “Pikuakh nefesh.”
Franz exhaled in relief. “You will cancel the service, Rabbi?”
“Even I can distinguish between defiance and martyrdom.” Hiltmann’s gaze ran across the collection of volunteers, several of whom Franz knew. None looked to be older than twenty-five, and they all wore similar wool coats over the dark suits they had dressed in for the service.
The rabbi gestured toward a curly-haired volunteer and the young man standing beside him. “Sol and David, go tell everyone. The service is cancelled.” He looked around the room. “The rest of you, go outside and assist Dr. Adler.”
In tense silence, the volunteers followed Franz outside to where Charlie had already discovered another bomb and was in the process of defusing the grenade underneath it. The others watched in awe. After Charlie cut the trip wire with his switchblade, he held up the plastic explosive—its two detonators still wedged into the surface—to show them what to look for. Franz translated his English into German. Charlie then divided the men into teams of two and directed them to spots around the synagogue’s perimeter.
Soon, the building was surrounded by men in suits crouched on their hands and knees as though they were praying to the Western Wall. They nervously swept away snow and examined the surrounding dirt with their fingers. Within fifteen minutes, they had located two more booby-trapped bombs. Within half an hour, Charlie declared the temple free of explosives, and the group pushed the snow back against the building, making it look as natural as possible. They finished two or three minutes before eight thirty, just when the day’s service had been scheduled to commence.
From a distance, Franz thought, the temple’s snowy perimeter looked undisturbed, similar to how they had found it, but he realized that it would be unlikely to fool anyone who got much closer. Fortunately, snow was continuing to fall, covering their tracks.
The volunteers wanted to stay outside to guard the synagogue but Charlie insisted otherwise. “Go inside and make noise. Chant and sing,” he instructed. “Be loud. Convince anyone who nears the building that a service is underway.”
As the men reluctantly shuffled back inside the synagogue, Charlie motioned to the columned archways. “We will wait there. Behind the pillars.”
“What if they come around from the front?” Franz asked.
“No. They cannot afford to be seen. They will come from behind.”
“And if they are armed?”
Charlie pulled open his coat to reveal a pistol tucked into his waistband. Franz had no idea what Charlie planned to do with the bombers if and when he caught them, but the sight of the gun helped to calm his nerves.
Following Charlie’s lead, Franz squatted down behind one of the pillars. Neither spoke a word as they peered out from behind the brick columns.
Half an hour passed. The cold wind nipped at Franz’s ears and snaked under his coat until he began to shiver. Just as he was about to lift his arm to check his watch again, he heard Charlie cough quietly, as if clearing his throat.
Franz directed his gaze over the field of snow and saw something in the lane that ran along the property’s border. Two young men strode purposefully down it. They were dressed in wool caps and parkas, with packs slung over their shoulders as if they were headed for a hike in the woods. As the men approached the synagogue, they shared a glance and then separated, slinking off in opposite directions.
Franz watched in trepidation as the first man approached the temple, but he did not seem to notice that the snow had been moved. He stopped about ten feet back from one corner of the building and then carefully paced off three steps. He then made a quarter turn and headed straight for the spot where one of the bombs had been uncovered.
The man lowered himself to his knees, no more than ten yards from where Franz and Charlie were hiding. Franz’s shallow breathing sounded like cymbals in his ears. But the man kept his head down and cleared snow away with gloved hands before he reached inside his pack for a small spade.
Out of the corner of his eye, Franz saw Charlie manoeuvering his crutches before vaulting silently to standing. Franz quickly got to his feet.
Charlie brought a finger to his lips. They studied the trespasser, who was hunched over on his knees, digging at the dirt with the spade. Charlie mouthed the word “now” and then bolted, moving as fast on crutches as Franz could on his own two feet.
Charlie was only a yard or two away when the young man’s head swivelled around. Just as he dropped his spade and pushed himself up to his feet, Charlie flung his crutches away and lunged. Landing on the man’s back, he slammed him headfirst into the snowy ground.
The young attacker’s acne-studded face was pale. His eyes darted wildly from Charlie to Franz. “Ich verstehe nicht,” he croaked.
“He doesn’t speak English,” Franz whispered to Charlie.
“Tell him.”
Franz translated, and their captive blinked his agreement.
“How many bombs did you plant?” Franz asked.
“Why would I tell you, you filthy Jew?” the young man snarled, though his eyes belied the defiance in his words.
Without waiting for a translation, Charlie slid the knife along the captive’s neck until blood trickled along the blade.
“Four!” the man gasped, holding up four fingers. “Four bombs in all.”
“Are there others here beside you and the other one?” Charlie demanded.
“Nein,” the man replied. “We were the only ones sent to the synagogue.”
Franz began to relay the answer to Charlie but stopped mid-sentence. He spun back to the captive. “What do you mean the only ones sent here? Where were the others sent?”
“I . . . I . . . No, we were the only ones.”
“Tell me,” Franz growled.
Suddenly another voice cried out from somewhere behind Franz: “Eine Falle! It’s a trap!”
Franz spun around to see the second bomber appear from behind the corner of the synagogue, a gun swinging in his hand as he ran.
The young German struggled violently in Charlie’s grip. Franz heard a whooshing sound and felt something warm spray his cheek. He glanced over to see the man go limp in Charlie’s arms, blood gushing down the front of his parka. Charlie lowered the bloody knife from his throat.
Franz heard the crack of a gunshot overhead as particles of brick showered down on them. Instinctively, he dropped to his chest.
