by Andrew Gross
“I will, madame,” he said, tears winding down his cheeks. “I will.”
“Then go.” Greta went back over to the professor and took his hand. “He needs to hear a soothing voice now.”
“Thank you again,” Blum said, and opened the cellblock door a few inches. He peered out. He saw the large car only a few yards away. It all looked clear. “Are you ready?” He glanced at Leo and Leisa. They both gave him a nod. This was it, then. He took one more look at Alfred and then smiled at Greta a last time. “To good, then. Seems as right as anything.”
“Yes. To some good.”
Blum drew the colonel’s cap down over his eyes and stepped outside.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Luck was with them outside. No guards were visible. A huge din and the sheen of bright lights came from the direction of the train platform near the front gate. Franke’s driver was in the front seat of a large Daimler sedan, the driver’s door open.
“Come.” Blum, holding Leisa in a blanket in his arms, waved to Leo.
The driver jumped out to open the door.
“Remain in the front,” Blum snapped officiously in German. He had Franke’s Mauser in his hand and was prepared to use it if the driver didn’t comply. Fortunately, the intelligence colonel must have been enough of a taskmaster that the driver merely snapped back to attention, uttering, “Yes, Herr Colonel,” and remained behind the wheel.
Blum twisted the latch on the Daimler’s trunk and a large hatch opened. He tucked Leisa inside. “Now.” He looked around and waved Leo out of the door. The boy ran out and climbed in the trunk as well. Blum told them, “Stay quiet. I will get you both out when we are safely away.”
He shut the latch and came around the side. “Start the engine,” he barked, climbing in the backseat, the colonel’s Abwehr cap pulled low. “We head back tonight. Let’s go.”
The driver turned around. “Back to Warsaw, Herr Colonel…?” It was already close to midnight and it was a many-hour drive.
His eyes widened in shock.
Blum had the Mauser at his face. “If you want to live, you’ll just drive. Once we are past the gates, I will let you out. But if you say one word or give even the slightest signal that something is wrong, that will be the last thing you ever do. Are we understood?”
The driver, a corporal in a gray Abwehr uniform and soft, peaked cap, at most a couple of years older than Blum, nodded and turned back around. “Yes, sir, I understand.” He turned the key and the Daimler’s engine rumbled to life.
“Keep both hands on the wheel so I can see them. And as you can hear, Corporal, my German is perfect, so no games. Be assured my gun is at the back of your head.”
“Yes, Colonel.” The driver nodded nervously.
“Drive.”
He turned the car around and headed slowly back toward the main gate. No one seemed to take notice or come after them. Blum could see guards in the watchtowers behind machine guns, but their attention seemed directed toward the tracks, not the fancy officer’s car below. There was a lot of activity ahead as the train had let off its cargo. Floodlights glaring, music playing. A festive Slavic dance. Guards barking orders. Blum could see a huge crowd, thousands, like a black wave, congested on the railway platform.
Likely none of them would be alive to see the light of the next day.
“Stop at the gate, as normal,” Blum instructed. His heartbeat began to pick up. He saw two or three guards manning the entrance. “And let me say again, one wrong word and it will be the last breath you ever take.”
“Yes. I hear you.” The driver nodded.
“Good.”
They slowed on the brick approach and pulled up to the front gate, the very one Blum had been brought through three days earlier. The clock on the tower read twelve oh eight. Another hour and a half or so until the plane was scheduled to land. If it would still land. Blum suddenly pushed back a tremor of concern, thinking how he and Mendl would not be there at the river as planned when the attack took place, twenty minutes from now. A guard stepped out of the guardhouse and came up to the Daimler. The driver rolled down his window. Blum pulled the action back on the Mauser so the driver could hear it. “Remember, I’m listening to every word.”
“Leaving so late?” the gate guard asked, with a look around the car.
“Back to Warsaw,” the driver said. “Urgent business, I’m afraid.”
“Herr Colonel…” the guard acknowledged, perfunctorily peering in the back.
Blum, sitting deep in the darkness of the rear seat, gave him a wave in return. The gun was hidden by the colonel’s greatcoat draped over his arm.
His heart almost beat out of his chest.
“Well, watch out for the fog, then,” the guard said, and signaled the guardhouse. “It gets bad in the valley at night.”
“I will. Thanks,” the driver replied. The gate slowly rose and the guard stepped away.
Blum let out a deep exhale.
The Daimler pulled ahead. As they passed through, Blum glanced behind and watched the guard take his place back in the guardhouse. The gate lowered again. His heart began to resume its normal cadence.
He had spent three days inside the worst hell on this earth.
And now they were free.
SIXTY-NINE
Ackermann knew something was wrong as soon as he and Fromm approached the cellblock.
Whistles sounded. Guards were running all around, shouting. Lieutenant Kessler stood ashen in the doorway and came to attention as he approached.
“What has happened?” the Lagerkommandant asked, a nervous feeling grinding at his belly.
Kessler just motioned inside.
Ackermann stepped in. His jaw tightened sharply as he took a look around.
Franke was dead. Impossible. On the floor. A dark hole in his forehead. His eyes as wide as a two reichsmark coin.
And Scharf … He was sitting upright against the wall, looking as startled as a man can appear, two red holes in his chest and a trail of blood smeared where his body had slid.
Greta turned to him. In a blue print dress and raincoat. She was holding a gun.
“What’s gone on here?” he said, aghast, though the answer was irrevocably clear.
“They’re gone, Kurt. That what’s gone on.” Greta smiled, though not with humor. “Your precious mole. His sister. Oh, and my little chess player. All gone. The professor…” Mendl sat in the chair with his head back, eyes blinking at long intervals, a large bloodstain on his stripes, muttering something. “He stayed with me.”
“What the hell is he saying?” Ackermann asked, not sure why he cared.
“He’s speaking German, Kurt. You should understand. Something about ‘Ist das wirklich so?’”
“Is that really so?” Ackermann said, bewildered.
“Maybe he’s as amazed as you are, Kurt, at what he sees.”
“Greta, put down the gun. Please.”
“No, Kurt. I won’t.” Instead, she raised it at him.
Fromm went for his pistol, but Ackermann held his arm.
“I could kill you as well, Kurt. But why would that even matter now?” There was pleasure in her eyes and voice. “Your career is done. Everything you worked so hard for. All your precious numbers. And I don’t even need to pull the trigger. You’re already dead. As dead to them now as you are to me. Dead to everyone.”
Ackermann stared at her in horror and then slowly looked around. “Greta, what have you done?”
“What have I done?” She laughed. “The question is, Kurt, what is it you have done? What have you all done? They were people. Your precious numbers … Not digits, Kurt. They were mothers. Husbands. Little children. They had lives. Hopes. Just like we did once. People.”
“I did what I had to, Greta. If not me, someone else.” He took a step forward. “Fromm, go sound the alarm. I want those three brought back now.”
“Yes, Herr Lagerkommandant.” The aide slowly backed away to the door, aware of the gun in Greta’s hand
s, which never shifted from her husband’s chest. He hurried out.
“We’re going to catch them, Greta. It will all be for naught. We’ll catch them, and you already know what we will do to them. Now put down the gun.”
“I’m afraid I can’t, Kurt. It’s too late. We both know that. Not now. And one last, little thing, my darling husband … something you should know.”
“What is that, Greta?” He looked at her, rage building up in him. She was right. His career was ruined. Their lives. What else was there?
“You were right. I did fuck the little Jew.”
The Lagerkommandant’s jaw twitched in anger.
“I let him do to me willingly what you had to force on me.”
He gritted his teeth. “Greta, give me the gun.”
The old man had stopped muttering. His head hung to the side. His mouth was open. But his eyes seemed clear. A last, deep exhalation came out of him.
He was gone.
“I think I know what he means, Kurt. Ist das wirklich so? Anyone who has lived in this hell would know. I think he sees his wife and daughter. As I now see something…”
“What do you see, Greta?”
“I see beyond this.You still have to believe in something. Even in this hell, right?”
“And what do you believe in, Greta?”
“What do I believe in…?” She smiled at him thinly. “I believe in the sky, Kurt. The big blue vastness of the sky.”
“Greta!”
She raised the gun to her head and squeezed the trigger.
After Greta’s body slumped to the floor, she was able to lift herself up. She no longer felt bound by a place of ugliness and death. She walked right by Kurt, still staring in horror and disbelief, as if she wasn’t there. The door was open. She went past the barracks, one after another, in their geometric sameness, and the grim, red-bricked crematorium. Guards running around. Past the bitter smell and the heavy cloud that always hung so low you could never see the blue behind it, even on clear days.
But now she could see the sky. Infinite and beautiful. She could see stars, galaxies. She could see all the way to a faraway place she had read about. Of grass and rivers and beauty. It all seemed so close, just up ahead of her. It made her smile. Through the mist. It was always just an arm’s reach away, she thought. Always so close.
Just beyond the wire.
SEVENTY
“Head for the town of Rajsko,” Blum told the driver as soon as they were clear of the camp. The road sign said it was to the southeast, twelve kilometers. “Remember, there’s still a gun to your head.”
“Please,” the young driver said. “I’ll do what you say. Just don’t shoot me. I was just married four months ago.”
“Then just drive. And two hands on the wheel. At all times.”
The drop location had been a field three kilometers south of the hamlet of Wilczkowice, and the landing site was on a farm road cleared just enough to accommodate the Mosquito a quarter mile to the north. Josef had pointed it out when he picked Blum up.
“What time do you have?” he asked the driver.
“Time? Zero zero fifteen hours, sir,” he answered, glancing behind.
The attack on the work crew was set to take place in fifteen minutes. The plane was well on the way. But when there would be no one at the river, Blum’s fears now turned to whether it would even land at all. He only prayed there would still be people at the landing site. They had to clear the field and light the way. They would be in radio contact with the plane.
Now he just had to locate the site.
“What is the mileage, Corporal? On the odometer.”
“The mileage? Seventy-eight four two nine,” he read.
“Seventy-eight four two nine,” Blum repeated. “Thank you.” For the first time he sat back.
The road was dark; after midnight there was almost no one on it. He wondered how much of a head start they had until they were discovered. Until Greta Ackermann was discovered. At first the Germans wouldn’t know for certain which direction they had taken. But they likely had checkpoints at each town, and, in a fancy Daimler, they would be spotted in a flash.
“Hit the lights,” Blum ordered the driver.
“But, sir, the road is dark. It’s dangerous.”
“Trust me, not as dangerous as if you don’t.” Blum put the gun to the back of the driver’s head. “Hit the lights.”
The driver switched off the headlights.
Blum’s thoughts went to Mendl and Ackermann’s wife. He was probably dead by now; and she, who knew. He only prayed that what the professor said was true. That all he knew was safely locked away in Leo’s brain. Everything depended on that now.
Rajsko, three kilometers.
“Slow down. We’ll be making a left-hand turn up ahead.”
“A left? I thought you said you wanted to go to Rajsko.”
“There’ll be a kind of mill on the right-hand side, and there should be a dirt road on the left. Take it. Go slow, or you’ll pass it.” It was one of the back roads Josef had taken to avoid detection on his way to Brzezinka the night Blum arrived.
Up ahead, he suddenly saw headlights in the distance coming toward them. “Quick, pull off the road now.”
“Here, sir?”
“Now! In this gully to the right.” Blum put his gun to the driver’s head again. “And don’t even think of flashing your lights as they pass unless you want to make that new wife of yours a war widow.”
“Yes, sir.” The driver nodded. He swung the Daimler, its lights off now, into a clearing to the side of the road. The oncoming headlights grew brighter. Blum saw that it was a truck. Heading toward the camp. As it passed, his heart stood completely still. He leaned forward, the gun at the driver’s head.
“Not a move.”
As it passed, Blum saw it was a troop truck—filled. He knew there was a detachment in Rajsko. So likely the word had gotten out. He held his breath as he watched the truck pass by and keep on going, its taillights fading into the night.
Blum let out a breath. “Okay, let’s get going again. And keep your eyes out for that turnoff.”
They found the road and skirted the sleeping town. It wound past dark farms and cottages, their inhabitants asleep. The road was rutted and uneven, fit more for a farm truck or a tractor than a heavy Daimler built for cruising. He felt bad for what Leisa and Leo must be going through in the hatch.
Finally it let them out onto the main road again.
“Which way now?” the corporal asked.
“Left. Toward Wilczkowice.”
The driver took the turn, and for a few kilometers the only vehicle they came upon was a chemical truck heading east, likely for the IG Farben facility. Blum searched for anything even remotely familiar. There was nothing, but, to his joy, a couple of miles down they came up on the train crossing where the guards had stopped him and Josef three nights ago, now deserted and quiet. Blum knew he was on the right path. But now was where it began to get tricky. He, Josef, and Anja had been talking, and he hadn’t paid attention to the way. It never occurred to him he’d need to find his way back. He knew he was looking for a back road, unpaved, off the main thoroughfare. But where? He passed a farm with a conical silo. Yes, he thought maybe he’d seen that before. Perhaps. “Keep going.”
Farther along, they passed a darkened farm road blocked by a fence. “Stop!”
The driver applied the brakes.
“What is the mileage now?” Blum asked. “On the odometer?”
“Seventy-eight four fifty-one,” the driver read off.
They had driven twenty-two kilometers. Fifteen miles.
This had to be the road.
“Get out, and pull back that gate,” Blum instructed him. “Make one move to run and I’ll shoot you in the back. I don’t need you now.”
“I won’t. Don’t. Please.”
“Hand me your gun.”
“I don’t carry a gun,” the driver said. “I’m only a mechanic. See�
��” He lifted up his jacket. As he said, there was no gun strapped to his belt.
“Okay, then quickly.” Blum stepped out of the car with him. “The gate should unlatch.”
The corporal ran over, fumbled with the lock for a few seconds, then finally threw open the gate, all the time Blum keeping his gun trained on him. It was pitch dark. Blum wasn’t 100 percent sure about the road. But the gate had to be the one Josef had flung open on their way to Brzezinka. They hadn’t passed another that fit. And the mileage seemed correct.
“Now go back and open the hatch,” Blum instructed him.
“Okay,” the driver said, his palms raised to his shoulders. “Just don’t shoot.” He opened the trunk of the car. Leo and Leisa peeked their heads out, uncertain.
“Where the hell are we?” Leo inquired.
“Close to where we need to be. Climb on out.”
Leisa looked around. “Is everything all right, Nathan? Do you know where we are?”
Blum gave her a positive wink to convey it was all okay.
“What do we do with him?” Leo said, speaking of the driver, who was starting to look at them with an anxious concern.
“We’ll decide. For now, climb in. Leo, you’re in front.”
They continued down the dark road, headlights on now. Blum focused at every stretch and turn, trying to find something that looked familiar to him. A barn. A farm gate. A sign.
Nothing.
“What’s the time?” he asked the driver again.
“Zero zero forty,” he said. Fifty minutes to landing. If they missed the plane, it didn’t matter if they were right or wrong. Or where they were. They had no other way to get home. There was the safe house back in Rajsko, but that would entail driving around in a vehicle every Nazi in Poland probably knew of by now. Plus, their escape plan had been infiltrated, that was clear. Who knew if the “safe” house was even still safe?
They suddenly came to a fork.
The driver turned around. “Which way?”
Three kilometers west of Wilczkowice, Josef had said. “That way,” Blum said, pointing left.
