Warsaw Requiem (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  “Murphy has a bodyguard, of course. An ex-prize fighter named Freddie Frutschy. You cannot miss him. He is not a young man, but he will be like the Maginot Line. Something to go around. Or over. You will not get through him, however. His wife is as protective as a hen. She squawks, but we shall wring her neck.”

  Hess gave his old, patient smile. “When the time is right.” Hess patted Farrell’s arm. “You new fellows. Everything must be done yesterday.” Hess shook his head. “We have opportunity here to change history if we do not rush. Yes? You must not forget which English statesman is the object of our mutual concern—the enemy of your people as well as mine, yes?”

  “Churchill.” Allan’s eyes narrowed in unspoken hatred of the man. “He is responsible for the legislation against us. Thousands of Irish have left England.”

  “But not Irish Americans.” Hess swallowed the last bit of ale. He was feeling very relaxed. “And that is the beauty of it. One of the reasons you have been so tremendously successful. Your work has not gone unnoticed. You may have heard the Führer’s speech? We are all struggling against the same thing, are we not? The oppression of our respective races.”

  Allan’s eyes flashed resentment. “No one has joined me in my struggle until now. I have gone it alone.”

  Hess laughed. “I assure you, your memorandum was personally approved by the Chancellor. You see, it is all a matter of timing. Perfect, impeccable timing. Surely you know about such things. The fuse must be lit at the right moment, you see. Now we are laying the groundwork together.” His eyes flitted toward the heavy, old-fashioned black car that pulled to the curb in front of the Red Lion House.

  Dressed in the summer uniform of a chauffeur, Freddie Frutschy got out and opened the door of the vehicle. A large man indeed. Formidable in a close situation. But perhaps he could be taken out at a distance. No doubt he carried a weapon and knew how to use it.

  Out of the back compartment appeared faces that Hess knew well; Helen Ibsen. Lori Ibsen. James Ibsen. A dark-headed child of no importance. Then Anna Lindheim and Elisa Murphy, who was holding an infant.

  Hess frowned as Grogan came out on the landing to greet them. The two blond boys flanked him and shouted their welcome. Grogan looked out over the square again. His eyes brushed over the corner window of Lamb’s Tavern without stopping.

  With the proper timing, Operation Edifice could be accomplished to the complete and total satisfaction of the Führer. Hess would watch, he would wait and listen, and then at the precise moment the fuse was lit in Poland, London would hear the deafening roar of the explosion in its own streets.

  ***

  Rachel pretended not to notice the boys of Peter Wallich’s little Zionist Youth brigade as they marched by with broomsticks over their shoulders.

  Herr Menkes, the baker, came out from behind the counter. He dusted his powdered hands on his powdered apron and watched the right, left, right, left progress of the group. They did not march with the stiff-legged arrogance of the Nazis or the pomp of the Poles. This was the purposeful stride of the British soldier. Their arms swung in time, their broomstick rifles poised on their shoulder for action!

  They were secretly called the Broomstick Brigade by the younger boys who were jealous and not allowed to drill with them. The oldest of the troop was nineteen. The youngest fourteen. There was a waiting list for those who wanted to join up.

  Peter Wallich shouted his commands in English and was rewarded with precision responses from his soldiers.

  “Why do you watch them?” Rachel asked irritably. Her purchase was left on the rack as the baker looked on with a big smile.

  “They are quite good,” said the baker with pride. “Look at the way the feet rise up and come down all together. An unusual accomplishment for Jews to walk in step, nu?”

  “Let the Germans march in step,” she said scornfully. “And the Poles. Let them beat each other’s brains out, and then maybe we Jews will have peace.”

  Menkes paid no attention to this clever daughter of the rabbi. “It is good for our boys. Good discipline.”

  “Why does Peter Wallich shout his orders in English?” she demanded. “No one speaks English in that whole bunch, but he calls out and they lift their sticks this way and that as though they understand.”

  Menkes watched them all the way to the base of the clock tower. They stood in straight rows while Peter walked up and down and pretended to inspect uniforms. Of course, there were no uniforms. Only ragged shirts tucked more neatly than usual into ragged trousers.

  “I have spoken at length with this young mavin, Peter Wallich. He has good reasoning on the subject. He says that when the Germans attack Poland, the English will come in to fight against the Nazis. Now, everyone knows that the Poles do not think much of us Jews.” The baker paused as the next command was given, and the group whirled around in one splendid movement. “The Poles will not want us fighting with them, you see, but—” he held up a finger— “since the Englishman is coming to visit, some say that the British government has sent him to train our boys.”

  “He is not a soldier anymore. England was unhappy because Captain Orde too much favored the Jews in Palestine. He was sent away because of that.”

  Menkes scoffed. “Just what they want the Germans to think. Just what they want the Mufti to think! England is not so foolish that they would turn out one of the best officers! Captain Orde saved the pipeline in Galilee and trained our fellows there to fight the Arab gangs! Would England punish him for such success?”

  Rachel blinked in a puzzled way. It did not make sense. “But that was what my grandfather wrote us from Jerusalem.”

  “Well, I tell you, Peter Wallich has it figured out! So do some of the other people around here! This is just a decoy! The English want him to train our fellows to join them when they rush to the aid of Poland, you see? That is why Peter trains his boys in English. When the British come, the Poles will not know a British right from left.” Menkes had learned the words by watching the daily parade through the square. “But we will know. We can fight with them right here in Warsaw.”

  “I don’t think there will be a war,” Rachel said. Maybe she did think there would be a war, but she did not want to think about it. “Everything will get worked out. All this is for nothing.”

  “We can hope.” Menkes went back to his work. “It is a nice summer activity for them, anyway,” he added paternally. “And if they don’t fight here, maybe they can go to Palestine. Captain Orde, they say, plans to return and become the general of the Zionist Army one day.”

  “Quite an ambition for a Gentile,” Rachel remarked dryly. “Especially since the newest British policy says there will not be a Jewish homeland, and nobody can get in to Palestine anymore. Not even us. I don’t want to go anyway,” she added. “Warsaw does not have buildings blowing up or Arabs slaughtering helpless settlers. Everyone is just all excited about this and that, and none of it means anything. They just want to march in step and beat their drums.”

  Menkes packaged the sugared rolls apart from the golden brown loaf of challah. “We can hope, nu?” he said, but his voice did not sound hopeful.

  Rachel left the bakery feeling particularly irritated at Peter Wallich for parading around Muranow Square. There were Zionist Youth camps out in the countryside for such nonsense. Why did he have to show off right here? Who wanted to listen to the tramping of feet outside the window for hours at a time? Unpleasant. And David and Samuel were unhappy because they were not old enough for his little soldier games.

  More terrible than all of that was the strange effect it had on Papa! He sat by the window and asked Rachel if perhaps she would not like to join the Zionist Youth movement.

  “There are plenty of girls,” he had said in an offhanded way. It was as if he had lost his mind. Those girls were not from religious families—certainly not from the family of Rabbi Aaron Lubetkin!

  She was indignant. She let him know by raising her nose slightly and becoming very silent. “Th
ose girls,” she told Mama later, “held hands with boys in public and smoked and even passed for Polish.” Assimilationists! They were trying to forget who they were. Rachel asked Mama to ask Papa not to bring such a thing up because it was upsetting. She would not fit. She did not want to fit. Her life was here in Muranow Square with Mama and Papa and the boys until she was old enough to marry. She did not like to think of the world turned upside down. She did not like to think about the great Captain Samuel Orde coming into her home. He was an honored friend of Grandfather Lebowitz, perhaps, but he was also partly what inspired all this marching and saluting and looking so grim.

  She wished it were last year. Or maybe the year before. Things had been even better the year before those years. Nobody thought about anything but who was getting married and who was being born and who was sick or who had gotten well. Nobody was running away from Warsaw. People weren’t coming to Warsaw who had no business being here!

  Rachel entered through the kitchen door. She could hear the voice of Father Kopecky in the other room. He was talking very quietly to Papa and Mama, but Rachel could hear every word.

  “Not a pleasant thought,” Papa said.

  “Must be realistic,” Mama added. “There is not a mother here who would not wish to send her child if it comes to that.”

  “The Nazis will be much harder on Jews than on ordinary Poles. I have compiled a list of a few trustworthy people in the church who will be willing. Small babies. Not yet speaking. Girls will be easier for us to manage. You should know that there are still a few good people willing to take them in.”

  “But the Polish Army?”

  The priest did not sound hopeful. “Provided England and France come in on our side in time. But now it looks as though we may also have the Russians allied with the Nazis. If that is the case, men who know say that Germany will cut through Poland like butter, and England and France will wait on the sidelines. There is too much at stake not to have this little plan. Of course it involves only a handful of children. But . . . it is something.”

  Rachel had heard enough. She turned around and slammed the door loud as though she had just come in. Silence dropped like a curtain. Then Mama called, “Rachel? Is that you?”

  She tried to sound cheerful. “Yes.” She did not feel cheerful. She felt afraid. Why couldn’t life just be ordinary again? Why must they think only of this? Why must they talk about Jewish mothers giving their babies away?

  “Are you all right?” Mama heard it in her voice. Rachel was not all right.

  “I have a headache,” Rachel said. “Too much sun. Too much . . .”

  27

  Preparing the Way

  Passport photos for Jacob Kalner and Alfie Halder arrived among a sheaf of photographs showing the Polish Army parading toward their frontiers with Germany. Harvey Terrill opened the envelope to scan through the material, his critical eye evaluating what could be cropped to fit in a number of different places in the paper.

  He dumped the discarded photos in a basket and then presented the pictures of Jacob and Alfie to Murphy.

  “Passport pictures?” he asked Murphy.

  Murphy attempted to brush off the photographs as routine. “Just mug shots of the kids with Orde in Warsaw.”

  Terrill tossed another handful on the desk. A man, dark and very Jewish-looking. A pretty woman in her late thirties. Two little boys with very close-cut hair and serious eyes. “How about these?” he asked wryly. “Also employees?”

  “I dunno. I’ll ask him. He didn’t send captions?”

  “No. Nor immigration applications, either.”

  Murphy shrugged it off, scooted the mound of pictures to the side, and pretended to be distracted by other things. He would warn Orde to send the photographs to Murphy’s personal attention. There was no getting around the fact that Terrill had the cynical mind and the nose of a journalist. No use arousing his curiosity.

  Twenty minutes later, Terrill was still smiling as if he had a secret. Smiles were rare on Terrill’s face, and somehow Murphy liked him better sour.

  ***

  Word came from the London agent soon after Wolf settled into his hotel in downtown Warsaw. A follow-up note from the Berlin office explained that the name of Lucy’s Warsaw host was the father of the notorious Vienna resister, Rudolf Dorbransky.

  Could there be any question left of her guilt? Any doubt that Lucy had been closely allied with the ring of anti-Nazis in Austria?

  The Führer had been apprised of this, and was most anxious, therefore, that Wolf apprehend Lucy Strasburg and bring her back to Berlin.

  At this news, Wolf had frowned. Hess had said it would be simpler just to eliminate her, but orders from the Führer were orders. Every traitor to the Führer and the Reich must be exposed. No doubt she knew much, Himmler wrote. Hitler believed completely that an appropriate interrogation of this woman would lead to an entire ring of disloyal army officers. With the plans in place for Case White against Poland, it seemed imperative that those traitors be rooted out.

  At such a command, something stirred uneasily in Wolf. Certainly he was not still suspected? Had his association with Lucy Strasburg put his own life in jeopardy?

  That possibility filled him with a fresh sense of anger toward her. He should have killed her in Danzig, and then there would not be this question remaining in anyone’s mind.

  He pressed the ammunition clip into place in his pistol and held his fingers out before his face to watch them tremble. Wolf was afraid. No doubt they were watching him even more closely now from the heights of Berlin’s citadels of power. Nothing could go wrong this time in Warsaw.

  “Why should it?” he reasoned aloud, staring down at the Dorbransky address. He had her cornered. It should be a simple matter of scooping her up.

  ***

  The Bristol Hotel in Warsaw was the gathering place, a home-away-from-home for most of the English-speaking journalists assigned to cover the present chaotic politics of Poland. Not far from the government offices and the Royal Place, motorcades containing every variety of diplomat streamed by. On the first day after Orde’s arrival with the boys, the French foreign minister whisked past the uninterested residents of Warsaw. He met with the Polish foreign minister, Józef Beck, to urge Poland to try a little harder in negotiations with the German government.

  Two hours after the French vehicle passed, Orde stood on the roof of the Bristol and reported the motorcade “live” to London through Polski Radio.

  Murphy sent a telegram of congratulations. He did not guess that the French and Polish officials had already uttered frosty farewells.

  On the second afternoon, a representative of the government of the Soviet Union also passed by. Polish policemen on horses lined the avenue in case there were demonstrations of any kind. They need not have bothered. Orde stood at his microphone and reported that spectators simply had not come.

  He did not mention the one elderly man walking his dog. The mutt lifted his leg on the rear tire of the Russian limousine parked outside the great baroque government palace. Nor did Orde report that not one Polish policeman attempted to interfere with man or beast on this solemn occasion.

  On the third day, there was a demonstration of a different sort. An emissary of the pope arrived in Warsaw, and the square was packed curb to curb with cheering Poles. Now this was worth reporting! The pope had sent a spokesman to plead for peace and restraint in this border dispute with Herr Hitler. The bells of the cathedrals rang out welcome.

  Orde had to shout into the microphone to be heard above the tumult. Blue-coated policemen linked hands to restrain the crowds. What the French and the Russians and the British could not accomplish in Polish corridors of diplomacy, perhaps the prayers of the pope could.

  What passed between the Vatican spokesman and the Polish foreign minister was not reported. Later, a Mass was held at St. John’s. The overflow crowd filled the streets for ten blocks around the cathedral.

  The cardinal prayed for peace. The people
prayed for peace. No doubt the Polish foreign minister prayed for peace right along with them.

  That night there was a shooting incident at the border. Three Polish soldiers were killed by Germans. The frontier between Poland and Czechoslovakia was closed. The spokesman of the pope went home, and another million Polish military reservists were ordered to report for duty.

  All of this was dutifully discussed and reported by the Western journalists. The rumble of motorized and horse-drawn equipment echoed throughout Warsaw, where once the bells of St. John’s had sounded.

  It was decided by those exalted members of the press who had never seen military duty that this war would begin at dawn. Wars were supposed to begin at dawn, weren’t they? A pool was formed for taking bets on the exact hour of the first shots. Then another pool for choosing the exact date and the time of day! This was an American idea. For one buck a pop, the reporter who guessed the closest would win the entire jackpot.

  The hat and the calendar were passed.

  Orde looked at the hat full of money and IOUs. He looked at the list of guesses. Then he stood up and excused himself from the proceedings.

  “Hey, where’ya goin’, Orde?” called a fairly soused journalist from McCormick News in Chicago. Come on, what’s yer guess? When’s the Blitzkrieg going to begin?”

  Orde checked his watch and waved. “There’s a new movie playing at the English theatre. I’m treating my crew. So sorry.”

  “Whatcha say? Dawn? What time is dawn? This one gonna start at dawn, Orde?”

  Orde continued to smile pleasantly, although making a game out of something so deadly and inevitable made him angry and sick.

  He had his opinion. He kept it to himself. He hoped he still had time enough to keep a promise to an old rabbi and, if he was lucky, to the Zionist Youth of Warsaw.

  Upstairs in the hotel room, as Werner played with his shoelaces, Orde placed a telephone call to the home of Rabbi Aaron Lubetkin. In careful Yiddish he explained that he had been asked by Rabbi Lebowitz of Jerusalem to pay a call when he reached Warsaw. Would Monday be acceptable?