by Andrew Gross
“Probably right,” Blum said back to him. He bent his head to reach the two pills sewn into his collar. Strauss had said, even through the material, enough of the poison would get into his system to do the job. And why not now? There was no mission anymore. Leisa was likely dead; they all would be in a matter of hours. He lifted his shoulder up so his collar was close to his teeth. Why not now?
“Except there is one person…” the colonel said. He nodded to Scharf. “One person who still might persuade you. Bring her in.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
They dragged Leisa in from the last cell and ripped the tape off her mouth. She sucked in air and cried out, “Nathan!”
It was hard to look at her. Her face was swollen; her eyes puffy and bruised. Staring at her, Blum was filled with sorrow. But all he could do was helplessly shake his head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Nathan, don’t be.” Leisa looked at him, her eyes flooding with tears. “I’m only sorry you are here.”
He smiled through the tears that streamed down his cheeks. Tears of anguish, powerlessness. He fought with his bindings, desperately trying to wrench his arms through the knots for what purpose he wasn’t sure, almost ripping his right arm from its socket. “Do not ever touch her again,” he seethed at Franke in German, “or I will find a way to end your life.”
“You will, will you? Very daring, Herr Blum. You are quite the protector. And so very touching.” The light reflected off the colonel’s shiny brow. “Don’t you think so, Sergeant Scharf?”
“I do, Colonel,” the SS henchman chuckled, as if things were about to heat up very nicely for him.
Franke said, “I’ve heard about your little reunion at the wire. One question. Did you know your sister was here, or was it just providence that you found her while looking for the professor?”
Blum didn’t reply.
“I assume the latter. All the more, it tugs at one’s very heartstrings, right, Sergeant?”
“Indeed, it does, sir.” The Hauptscharführer grinned amusedly.
“Well, now we’ll see just how very touching it gets.” Franke picked up his gun and softly ran the back of his hand across Leisa’s face and neck.
Blum glared, his blood boiling over. “Leave her alone.”
“Who ordered you to come here and locate the good professor? How were you planning on getting him back? First to England, I presume? Or maybe Sweden? Across land? Or is there a plane?”
“Professor, how are you holding up?” Leo asked, leaning across.
“Not so well, I regret…” Mendl’s head sank back. It was clear the man was slowly dying.
“Don’t you worry about him. Tell me about the bomb the lad was talking about.” Franke sat over Blum, running the muzzle of the gun along Leisa’s cheek. “I’ve heard of such things—heavy water, harnessing the power of the atom. How far along are the Allies in development? Cat got your tongue? Maybe I can loosen it just a little.” He moved the Mauser to Leisa’s head. “How will it be to watch her brains blow into your lap? Very messy, I think. Only you can stop it.”
Leisa shook her head, tears flooding into her eyes. “Nathan, don’t. Not a word. We’re all dead anyway. Don’t give him what he wants.”
Blum screamed and struggled with everything he had to free his bound hands. Just to put them around Franke’s neck, if God intervened for him, and then be bludgeoned by the bloodthirsty sergeant. She was right, they were all dead anyway. “I don’t know what kind of bomb,” he shouted. “Please! Let her alone.”
“I wonder what it must be like to watch your sister die. The sister you so daringly rescued from the women’s camp. And now to see her so close to death. And you are the only one who can save her. With just a word. Merely a squeeze of my finger and…” Franke tensed on the trigger.
“I swear, I don’t know about the weapon!” Blum screamed, his eyes desperate and begging. “I was just sent here to get him out. That’s all I know. I swear it.”
Leisa met his gaze, imploringly. “Nathan, don’t.”
“Why you?” The colonel kept at him. Blum writhed in futility at the bindings. “Tell me, or she’ll be dead in her next breath.”
“Because I spoke the language. And looked the part. To fit in here.”
“You are a Pole?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And where did you come from prior to this mission? From England? The United States?”
“From the United States!” Blum looked at Leisa, shaking his head with despondency.
“From America!” Franke’s eyes lit up. “America. And how did you get there?” He raised the gun again. “Don’t go silent now…”
“I escaped from the ghetto in Krakow in 1941. I enlisted in the Army a year later.”
Leisa looked at him, calmness replacing fear on her face. Suddenly he saw it. All the while, she had thought the opposite. Yet in this moment, with him unable to do anything to stop it, or save it, he saw, with her so willing to die, that she was stronger than he. She was beautiful. “Nathan, I release you from your vow,” she said with a knowing smile. “It’s okay now. It’s okay to stop.”
“So why did you come back?” Franke pressed. Blum’s eyes stung with tears and he shook his head. “Whatever vow she is talking about, it can’t be worth watching her die. You’d gotten out. You were safe. Why did you risk it all to come back? To find your sister?”
Nathan shook his head. “No. I thought she was dead.”
“For your new country then…?” Franke said. He kept the Mauser’s muzzle pressed to Leisa’s temple. She turned her head away.
“No.” Blum shook his head. “Because I was ashamed. Ashamed I had gotten away.” Blum looked at Leisa and his eyes filled with tears. “Because everyone else, my parents, and I thought my sister, were dead.” His gaze settled on Franke. “Because I was the one who would go.”
“See, they always talk. They want to play the big hero but they always talk.” The intelligence officer smiled. “You wanted to avenge your parents’ deaths. And so how do you feel now, Herr Blum, knowing what you’ve done has had just the opposite effect? That it has essentially gotten the person you loved most, who was alive, killed?”
“We would have all died anyway, Myszka.” Leisa looked at Blum. “This only makes it quicker.”
“How do I feel…?” Blum said. In the distance he heard the sound of marching music. Ackermann’s train disembarking. He smiled at her, bringing forth an image of her as a child, maybe just a glance or a mischievous wink while they were doing their lessons, and then looked back at the colonel. “I would do it again. In a heartbeat.” He thought that maybe these would be the last words she would ever hear. “She is half of whoever I am. You cannot separate us. I would rather die with her than live, not knowing.” Then he looked back at Franke and shrugged. “So how does that touch you?”
“Let me show you,” the colonel said, and extended his arm at Leisa’s temple.
He was distracted by the sound of the outside door opening. A woman came in. Pretty. In a patterned dress and a raincoat. Blond hair pulled back in a tight bun.
“Frau Ackermann!” Sergeant Scharf said in surprise.
Leo looked up.
“I have never been in here before,” she said, scanning the room where such grave deeds were said to be done. “I’ve only heard…”
“Frau Ackermann, with all due respect, this is not the place for a woman.” Franke put down his gun. “As such, I must ask you to—”
“I have something to say,” she said. Her gaze turned to Leo, at first with a ray of affection as she noticed the photo and alabaster chess piece on the table, then just as quickly seemed to harden. “I treated you with respect. I gave you food, presents. I said I would watch out for you … And this is how you betray my trust.”
Scharf, behind Leo, held back his smirk.
“These people are worthless, madame,” Franke said. “Show them a little kindness and they behave like…”
She lifted her hand out
of her sweater and removed a gun.
“Frau Ackermann!” Franke’s eyes stretched wide. He took a step toward her.
Her hand was a bit shaky at first—it was clear she had never held a gun—but steadily she extended both arms and leveled the weapon directly at Leo, strapped into his chair. “I took you under my wing. I gave you hope. You shamed me.” She pulled the hammer back.
“Madame, I’m sorry.” Leo looked at her and hung his head, waiting.
“Don’t be.” Greta twisted her shoulders and shifted the gun toward Franke. He stared in shock. “They behave like what, Colonel…?”
She fired, Franke’s jaw opening in a bewildered, wordless reply, and a dark hole appeared between the Abwehr man’s eyes. He dropped like a weight onto the floor.
His smirk erased, Scharf struggled at his waist for his own gun, and Greta fired twice into his chest, the impact hurtling him back against the wall, where he slowly sank, in a smear of his own blood, and slid to the floor.
At first there was only silence. The smell of lead and burnt flesh. For a moment, everyone was simply too stunned to fully comprehend what had just taken place.
“Quick,” Greta said, “there is little time. The train will occupy them only for another few minutes.” She ran over and undid Leo’s bonds. “Do you have a way out?” She directed the question to Blum.
“Yes. I think so.” Still a little stunned.
“Then you can change.” She pointed to the intelligence officer’s uniform. “His car is outside. There’s a driver in it. But you must hurry.”
“Nathan!” Leisa ran over and undid the knot that bound Blum’s wrists.
Blum swung his arms out of the rope and threw them around Leisa, having thought he would never hold her again. Then he quickly ran over to Franke on the floor and did as Frau Ackermann suggested, unbuttoning the officer’s gray jacket, pulling the dead man’s arms through. They heard the far-off sound of music playing and the din of new arrivals on the train platform. People were no longer being separated to the left or to the right but all in one line, quickly processed, likely to their deaths, that very night.
Blum wished he could warn each one of them. But right now they were the best cover he could ask for.
As soon as Leo was free he hurried over to Mendl. The old man’s face was white now. He had lost a lot of blood; the wound had bled completely through his striped tunic. Yet there was kind of a calm and clarity in his eyes even as his strength ebbed away. Blum flung on the German officer’s jacket as Leo untied Mendl’s arms. “Professor, please get up,” he said. “You are coming with us.”
“No.” The old man shook his head. “It’s too late now. I’m not going anywhere. You can see, I’m done.”
“No, you are not done,” Leo pleaded. “Not yet, Alfred. You must come.”
Blum pulled off the dead man’s boots and tore off his trousers. “I think you know more than anyone, sir, how much depends on it.” He thrust his legs through the pant legs and pulled on the black boots, perhaps a size or two too large, but his feet went through without difficulty.
Leo tried to help his friend up. “Alfred, please … you must try. We can take you.”
“No. I can’t. I can’t…” His breaths had now grown heavy and harder to draw. He looked to his side and put his hand there, and when he brought it back up his palm was smeared with blood. He shook his head forlornly. “I will only die on the way and slow you down. Let me stay.”
“Impossible,” Blum insisted, dressed in Franke’s Abwehr uniform now. He didn’t look like the colonel, of course. Not a stitch. He was half his age and with darker features. But at night, in the uniform, with his cap low on his brow—an instant was all they would need. “Get up, sir. I was sent by the president of the United States to bring you back, and as long as there is breath in you that’s what I will do. You more than anyone know what is at stake in getting you out. I will carry you if I have to. It’s only to the car.”
“Blum, please…” The flower of blood had seeped wider on Mendl’s side. There was only a resigned and fading glimmer left in his eyes. “I can’t.”
“You must! I will not leave you behind. Not after what we’ve risked to find you, Professor. Not now.” Blum knew they had only seconds to get out of there. Ackermann had said he’d be back in half an hour. That could be any time. Blum looked at the white-faced physicist, fearing with every passing moment that he would expire and all would be lost: the mission, his oath, Roosevelt’s own voice sounding in his head, Do not fail us, not knowing what to do.
“I’m afraid God had in mind a different ending,” Mendl huffed, giving the faintest smile. “But there is still a way…”
“A way…? The only way is out that door, sir. What is it you mean?” Blum knew that in minutes the man he had risked his life for might well be dead.
“Leo,” the professor said. He reached out his hand, almost blindly, and the boy grabbed it. Mendl looked at Blum. “He’s not my nephew at all. I lied. I’m sorry, I know how it might have slowed us down, but it was for this very eventuality. The boy…” Mendl coughed, then winced, wiping blood off his lips with his sleeve. “He knows it all. Everything I know. Every proof. Every formula. On what it is you need. I’ve taught him it all these past months.”
“You’ve taught him?” Blum stared at Leo, his mouth agape. “Is this for real?”
“Yes,” the boy said. “But—”
“He has it all, Blum. Every bit.” A flame flickered in Mendl’s eyes that confirmed it. “Even more than if I gave you my own notes to take back with you. I give you my oath on this.”
Blum turned to Leo. He didn’t have a pad or a notebook with him. Not a thing. And nothing with him when they attempted to leave the camp. “How? Where…?”
“Tell him, Leo,” Alfred said with a smile, nodding. “Go ahead.”
The boy tapped the side of his head. “In here.”
“In your head?” Blum gaped and looked back at Mendl.
“Remember, I told you he was a remarkable young man…” the professor said, though each new breath seemed to take even more out of him. “He’s as good as an encyclopedia with what he has in there. I knew it the second I met him. Trust me, Blum, what a joy it would be for me to go and reunite with some old friends; to present my work at last. But I would only slow you. You know as well as I do, none of us would make it then. So now go,” he smiled weakly, then coughed, blood on his tongue, “you no longer need me.”
“Quick, you must hurry,” Greta said. “You hear the orchestra? The crowds are starting to move. Kurt will be back shortly.”
“They’re playing Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy,’” Leisa confirmed to Blum. “That means they are being moved off the platform.”
Leo’s eyes filled with tears. “Alfred, please, come … You must.”
“No, son. It’s your path to go, Leo, not mine. That’s why God sent you to me. I see it now. It’s the only thing of which I’m certain.”
“I cannot leave you behind.”
“Yes, you will, Leo. You must leave me. You promised you would. You owe me that oath.”
Blum took Leo by the shoulders and peered into his eyes. “This is all true? You know this? Just as he says. Every bit of it? I need to know this with absolute certainty.”
“Yes.” He hesitated at first, then nodded with conviction. “I swear it.”
“Then we must go. Now.” He took Franke’s Mauser from the floor. “Professor, I wish there was something I could say. God owes you a far better fate than simply for us to leave you here to die.”
“My fate is in good hands,” he said with a resolved smile. “My girls have been waiting for me a long time.”
“And madame…” Blum turned to Greta. “There is room. Will you come?”
“Thank you.” She shook her head. “But I will stay with him.”
“Please, come…,” Leo said, imploring her. Everyone knew what fate awaited her upon her husband’s return.
“No.” Greta smiled
at him. “The professor knows it correctly. It’s not my fate either. And anyway, you may all need a few moments of diversion when my husband comes back here. So go.”
Blum nodded. “Then whatever impelled you to do what you did for us, you have my heartfelt thanks.”
“You must hurry.” She looked deeply into Leo’s eyes and put a hand on his cheek. “Go. The guards will be coming back from the platform any time. God watch over you.”
“And you, madame,” Blum said back. “Leisa, wrap yourself in that cloth.” Blum pointed to a folded blanket on the floor. “Leo, you will follow behind me once I give you the signal that it’s safe. You say his car is right outside?’
“Yes.” Greta nodded. “When I came in, his driver was having a smoke.”
“Well, let’s hope that he’s done with it and back in the car.” Blum checked the Mauser. “Otherwise, his war is about to end and we’ll have to make a run for it in the car as best we can. Leo, is there any chance you know how to drive?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t.”
“Me either, sadly. So let’s both hope he’s back in that car. Professor…”
Mendl didn’t answer. His head was tilted, his mouth open, his lips white and crusted, muttering something. He was dying.
“Alfred!” Leo said, anguish tearing him inside. Again, he seemed unable to leave.
“Leo!” Blum grabbed onto his shoulder. “You have to leave him. It’s time to go.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Greta said. “He will not die alone. Your friend is right, you must leave without delay. But Leo…”
“Yes, Frau Ackermann…” Leo turned at the door.
“Greta.” She smiled. “And you would not embarrass a lady to have so easily forgotten, would you…?” She held out the photo of her in the boat he had taken along with the white chess piece. She went over and wrapped them in his hand and gave him a fond kiss on the cheek. “Good wins out, Leo. Every once in a while. Remember that. Even in here. So you make it, live out your life. If only just for me.”
