The One Man

by Andrew Gross

  “Well, here’s to hope then,” Leo said. He lifted the teacup and handed it back to Alfred.

  “And here’s to more to learn.” He raised the cup and took a last sip of tea. “Where our true hope lies. Are we agreed?”

  “Why don’t we just leave it at hope, shall we?” Leo replied.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  WEDNESDAY.

  At dawn, the Daimler personnel car with the swastika under the war eagle on its door sped through the Polish countryside, its headlights flashing through the fog.

  Colonel Martin Franke sat in the back.

  His still-wet-behind-the-ears driver wore the Abwehr insignia on his collar but was just months out of whatever they were putting the new call-ups through these days as training and clearly didn’t know his way behind a wheel. It was over three hundred kilometers from Warsaw to Oswiecim, four hours in good weather along the rutted S8, longer in this soup.

  “Please, faster, Corporal,” Franke said impatiently. “Go around that truck.” A supply truck had slowed in front of them.

  “Yes, Colonel,” the corporal answered, hitting the gas.

  Franke had persuaded his superior, General Graebner, to authorize him to go to the camp. The call had gone to Berlin, where the camp commander, SS Colonel Hoss, was in conference with Reichsführer Himmler and Reinhart Heydrich he was told. A Major Ackermann had been left in charge. So Franke knew he had better be right on this; the showdown between Canaris and Himmler for the Führer’s favor was not a secret. To embarrass either of them would mean nothing but the Eastern Front for him.

  But Franke felt certain, more so each time he went through it, that his instincts were correct. That the camp there had to be the target of whatever was being planned. The cable “the truffle hunter is en route.” The local report of the sighting of a plane. The parachuter who’d been spotted. The birchwood forest. The region was thinly populated and there were no known troop activities or items of any strategic interest that would point to anything else.

  It made Franke’s blood stir. Blood that had long sat dormant. For the past year he’d been underused and pushed aside. Someone was definitely here. From where? England, perhaps. And what for? An attack? An escape? An act of sabotage?

  Now he just had to find out the who and the why.

  If he was successful, Franke could almost taste how all his past shame would finally be put behind him. Himmler himself would be watching now. His wife would take him back, and with it, his position, the comfortable schloss in Rottach-Egern.

  Everything depended on him rooting out this man.

  Three more hours. He glanced at his watch. “It would be good to arrive today,” he called to the driver, who had now slowed for a herd of goats crossing the road. The Polish roads were all oxen paths. The driver hit the horn loudly.

  A hunger churned inside Franke. Someone was clearly here. He just had to find him. This man. Wherever he had come from.

  This truffle hunter.

  It was a match of wits, Franke said to himself. A chess match.

  You think you are alone. You think you are under the net. But you are wrong.

  There is my net. My nose that will smell you when I see you.

  Now it is just you and me.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Blum opened his eyes before first light. Zinchenko, their Lithuanian kapo, entered the barracks loudly banging on the walls and bunks with his stick. “Rauss. Rauss! Rise and shine, my little pets. Another day of wonder and adventure awaits you. Get your asses moving!”

  In their bunks, people began to stir slowly. “Is it light yet?”

  “Just another two minutes, please, Zinchenko!”

  “Up! Up now, pigs!” the kapo called back without pity. “I try to be nice to you, letting you sleep an extra five minutes, and look what I get.”

  Blum had woken at least a dozen times during the night. Between the awkward position he was forced to sleep in, tugging for a sliver of the thin, grimy blanket that the three of them had to share and that wouldn’t have kept the bed lice warm, the constant snoring, and the fitful worry of what lay ahead for him today, he barely got an hour’s sleep.

  “Work details in thirty minutes! Roll call in five!” the kapo instructed. He was a muscular man with a heavy growth on his face and a flattened hat on his head, separating him from the average prisoner. As well as the red triangle sewn on his chest, signifying him as a common criminal. “Five minutes! Everyone outside!”

  Slowly the block came alive. There was no washing up. Several lined up for the latrine and peed or shat in the revolting bucket.

  Blum climbed down and found the man in the tweed cap he had spoken to last night, folding his blanket. “I need a job,” he said. “Anything you can get me? Something in the camp, if possible. At least for a day or two. I want to find my uncle.”

  “Talk to him.” He pointed to a short man with heavy-lidded eyebrows. “He was an attorney in Prague. He’s blockschreiber here.” The block clerk. Wetzler and Vrba had mentioned those. It was their role to assign the work duties.

  “Thanks.”

  Blum went over and found the man through the hurrying crowd. “I’m new.” He told the block clerk how he wanted a day to find his uncle.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mirek.”

  “Number…?”

  Blum showed him his arm. The blockschreiber kept note of it in a small black notebook.

  “I have just the position.” The man chuckled grimly. “Rosten, congratulations!” he called out. “You’ve been promoted.”

  “Hallelujah!” someone yelled out from the throng.

  “Sanitary brigade,” he said to Blum.

  “What is that?”

  He jotted it in his notebook. “Rosten will show you the rounds.”

  * * *

  The job, as Blum was shown, was to carry the buckets of shit and piss from the latrine to the camp’s cesspool, located outside the main gate. Not just theirs. Blocks 18 through 32 as well. The main benefit, Blum soon realized, was that he would be able to enter several of the other blocks where there would be people around.

  “Just be careful,” the blockschreiber warned him. “If one spills on public grounds, you’ll likely get a bullet in your head. Rosten will be very upset. He’ll have to go back to it.”

  “Then I’ll be especially careful in that case,” Blum agreed.

  “And keep your eyes out. Sometime the guards will jab you with their sticks just for sport. If the bucket spills, you can say your prayers. Guess they figure anyone we give this job to isn’t much worth feeding.”

  “Thanks. So how has Rosten survived at it then?”

  “Rosten?” The blockschreiber shrugged. “Guess he doesn’t eat all that much.”

  Outside, whistles sounded and people filed out their blocks and lined up for roll call. The morning was damp with a chill in the air for May, enough that everyone stood around hugging themselves in their thin burlap uniforms. Blum was nervous. The roll call was one of the times he could easily be exposed. The SS Blockführer came up. Lieutenant Fischer. Holding a dog-eared stack of papers on a clipboard. “You know the routine,” he barked. “Line up. A to Z. Step forward when your name is called.” Everyone edged into four long rows. He started in, “Abramowitz…”

  “Here!” a man in the back row shouted.

  The guard licked his pencil and checked him off. “Adamczyk?”

  “Yes. Here.”

  “Alyneski…?”

  Blum huddled amid the crowd in the fourth row. They were going by name. He could get lost in the crowd and not have to shout one out. If they had gone down the rows man by man, and each had to call out his name, his name, Mirek, would not have matched up. That would have been a lot trickier.

  “Bach?”

  “Here!”

  “Balcic…”

  It took almost twenty minutes to go through the entire block. The staging area was so crammed with prisoners, each in front of their own blocks, each lin
e melded into ones from the block next to it, making it one vast throng, names shouted out from competing Blockführers. The man next to Blum in line leaned over. “New here…?”

  Blum nodded. “Yes.”

  “Anyone taken you through the rounds?”

  “Rounds? Not yet.”

  “So listen up. It’ll keep you alive. Fischer,” he nodded toward the Blockführer calling out names, “he’s one hundred percent by the book. Doesn’t look for trouble, won’t help you a lick either. That one…” He pointed to an SS corporal. Reddish hair, flat nose. “Fuerst. He’s got a sick sister at home. He does his job, but sometimes he can be open for business, if you know what I mean.”

  “You mean a bribe?”

  The man shrugged. “If you’ve got something to trade. But whatever you do, don’t get in the way of that asshole…” He gestured to a hound-faced guard with thick lips and heavy-lidded eyes. “Dormutter. He’s just a lunatic. He’s in heaven in here. He can kill whoever he wants. Stay out of his way. I can’t describe the things I’ve seen done.”

  “I will. Thanks,” Blum said.

  He took Blum through some of the other guards and kapos. The true monsters, the ones who would just kill you for sport. And those who were just doing their jobs. The ones whom Blum could count on and who at all costs he had to avoid.

  “We all get the tour once,” the man explained. “From now on you’re on your own.”

  Before they broke into their work details, the block lineups merged for a while, people catching a quick word with their neighbors, trading stories of what was new, who was lost in the past day, bartering for cigarettes and scraps of food.

  Blum took out his photograph. “I’m looking for my uncle,” he said to someone from a neighboring block. “His name is Mendl. Do you know him? He’s from Lvov.”

  “Sorry.” The person shook his head. “He’s not in here.”

  Blum went through the crowd and asked someone across the yard. “I’m looking for this man. He’s my uncle. His name is Mendl.”

  Again the person shook his head. “Don’t know him. Sorry.”

  He went from group to group, looking around, inspecting faces in the teeming crowd, keeping an eye out for the guards, grabbing onto anyone who made eye contact with him.

  “Do you know this man? Have you seen him? Mendl.”

  “No,” he kept on hearing. “Sorry.”

  “This is his picture. Look, please.”

  One said, “He looks familiar. But I can’t help you. Do you have any extra smokes though? I’m dying.”

  “He’s probably dead.” Another shrugged. “Why do you care anyway? We all have uncles here somewhere.”

  “Sorry.”

  It could all be too late, Blum feared, watching the thousands seeming more dead than alive just trying to get through the day. Vrba and Wetzler confirmed that he was here, but that was January. Four months ago. The cold could have gotten him. Or typhus. Or a club to the head. Or the gas. He realized this could all be futile. Do not fail us, President Roosevelt had urged. But even Roosevelt had no control over the whimsy of life and death here.

  There was a chance he might have come all this way just for a corpse.

  Breakfast came around. Blum made it back to his block and edged into the line with his metal bowl. He hadn’t had a bite of food since the stomach-turning soup he’d had yesterday at lunch. This was far worse. He couldn’t tell what it was: cabbage, potato, a ladle full of thin, tasteless swill made from rinds, peels, and boiled grizzle. With a stale chunk of bread. He looked around at his barrack mates huddling outside their block, sucking it all in.

  What if I’m unable to find him? Blum asked himself. What then?

  And what if I’m never able to make it out of here? This would be his life. As long as it lasted.

  He sipped from his bowl, wincing at the first rancid taste. Then sipping it again. Sucking it into his mouth. As everyone else was. He would have to work the day too.

  The whistles sounded again. “Line up. Line up. Meal’s over.”

  The work details had begun.

  FORTY

  “Guten morgen, Herr Lagerkommandant!” The staff in the commandant’s office stood as Ackermann stepped in.

  “Good morning. As you were.” With a wave, the major proceeded to his desk.

  There was a coffee on his desk for him. He sat and scanned the morning reports. The number of prisoners “processed” yesterday: Over twenty-one thousand. Very nice. A full 12 percent above the norm. Most had arrived that very day and had gone straight through. He looked at the number expected for today. Another nice one. Two trains. One from Theresienstadt near Prague and one from Hungary. It would be another busy day and night.

  He had his daily quotas, but he wanted to exceed them in Kommandant Hoss’s absence. He wanted everyone to see he could run the place both efficiently and with appropriate discipline. And who knows, he had begun to think, perhaps his boss was even being promoted on his extended trip to Berlin. Maybe that’s why he remained there the extra days. It was important for everyone to see that, in his absence, the place remained in strong hands. That the work was being maintained; the numbers met. What went on here was under the direct eye of Reichsführer Himmler and his inner circle. If promotions were in the offing, he wanted his name at the top of the column too.

  Which left him with a particular problem that morning, Ackermann reflected.

  Greta.

  It was beginning to worry him that his wife had taken such a liking to the chess-playing Jew she’d invited into their house. One or two games, perhaps; that he could understand. But then it must be seen that she showed him no particular favor. Instead of showering the boy with gifts and petitioning Ackermann for his protection. He would have to clear that up for good, he’d decided, on his short walk over this morning. Apparently it had already become banter for the troops. Which was always bad for morale. Hoss had even mentioned it before he left, not in a direct way, of course, but over a schnapps, almost anecdotally. “Greta must be becoming quite the chess player by now…” He laughed. But Ackermann knew precisely what Hoss meant. He’d take care of it, he resolved, before his boss’s return. “Special Treatment” must become what it always was. An organized purification of the Reich. Not some foolish and misguided favoritism. Greta must see that. He could do it in a snap, of course. Get rid of the whole block. No one would be the wiser. But women could be difficult, of course. That’s why the problem was so thorny. He knew she wasn’t happy here. It had already been over a month since she’d shown any interest in him.

  Yes, he grunted to himself, it was getting bad for morale.

  His aide, Lieutenant Fromm, stepped in and came up to his desk. “Sorry to bother you, sir. But I have a message for you. From Warsaw.”

  “Warsaw…?” Ackermann looked up.

  “Yes, from a General Graebner there. Of the Abwehr.”

  “Abwehr…?” Ackermann rounded his eyes. Intelligence. The camp took its orders directly from Berlin. From Reinhart Heydrich and Reichsführer Himmler themselves. “What the fuck could the Abwehr possibly want here?”

  His aide said, “Apparently a Colonel Martin Franke will be arriving today.” He handed Ackermann the cable. “It seems he has some questions. Concerning security.”

  “Security? Here…?” The Lagerkommandant snorted back a laugh. “He must be joking. A nun’s snatch couldn’t be any tighter than it is in here.”

  “Nonetheless, the general has asked that, in Kommandant Hoss’s absence, we would show him every courtesy.”

  “Courtesy, huh?” Ackermann scowled. “Let him come.” Just what they needed today, the Abwehr poking their uppity noses around. When there were numbers to be met. “But I’m not showing him around. Get Kimpner to do that.” Kimpner was a bean counter in charge of operations. Kitchen. Infirmary. Procurement. “There are other things for me to attend to today.”

  There were two trains. Another twenty thousand to process. And then this matter with his wi
fe.

  But on this he had to find the right way. His pecker was getting edgy. He had to show her that what was bad for morale, and for him, was bad for her too.

  Yes, this had all gone far enough, the Lagerkommandant thought.

  He passed the cable back to Fromm. “Let me know when he arrives.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Blum carted the buckets of congealed waste across the camp’s grounds to the refuse ditch located just outside the wire. He held his breath at the awful smell. He moved past the guards, swiftly but carefully, keeping his eyes down, knowing he could be the target of any of them at their whim. Then he emptied the contents in the ditch, hosed the buckets clean, and brought them back inside.

  In each block, even with the majority of prisoners out on work details, there were always a few around. Those that were either infirmed or simply resting, back from the overnight work shifts.

  And in each block Blum took out his photograph of Mendl. “I’m looking for my uncle,” he would ask. “Have you seen him?”

  And in each he received the same, deflating response.

  “No. Sorry.”

  “He’s not in here.”

  An indifferent shrug of the shoulders. “Sorry. There are so many.”

  He began to think it was fruitless until finally, in Block 31, a man lying in bed took the picture and after a few seconds actually nodded. “I do know him. Mendl. He’s a professor, right?”

  “Yes,” Blum said, lifted.

  “From Lvov, I think.”

  “That’s right,” Blum confirmed. He grew expansive.

  But then the man just shook his head fatalistically. “Haven’t seen him in over a month now. I heard he had the fever.” He handed Blum back the photograph. “Sorry, I think he’s dead.”

  “Dead,” Blum said, falling back to earth. “Are you certain?”

  “I know he was taken to the infirmary. Very few end up coming back from there. Ask the chess boy. They were friends. He would know.”