It seemed to Andrei that he had no more than closed his eyes when he felt a sharp slap across the soles of his boots. He and his machine pistol awoke at the same instant. Simon was over him. His finger slid off the trigger. “What ... hell ... Simon ... it isn’t daybreak yet.”
Then he rubbed the thick cakes of sleep out of his eyes and saw Alexander Brandel next to Simon. Andrei propped up on an elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“Moritz and two of the smugglers got captured very close to the Kupiecka entrance to the bunker. They were taken away alive.”
Andrei was fully awake in a second. “We’d better start moving the Fighters to some of Tolek’s bunkers.”
“Can’t,” Simon answered. “Mila Street is crawling with Germans. Movement is impossible. We’ve been lying frozen all night. I’m afraid hysteria is going to break out down there any minute.”
“De Monti,” Andrei said.
“That’s right,” Alex answered. “We’ve got to get Chris moved immediately.”
“Have you heard anything from the Aryan side? Any word from Gabriela?”
“No, but we can’t wait. The Germans are all but breathing on Mila 18. I want you to take Chris over to Wolf’s bunker. We’ll try to reach the Aryan side to set up an emergency hiding place for him.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost five o’clock.”
“It’s going to be a tricky business getting him over there in daylight.”
“I think we’re out of extra chances, Andrei.”
Andrei nodded.
“Get him over there and get back here.”
Andrei was already on his feet.
Chris and Deborah stood in the tunnel exit through the Auschwitz room which led to Nalewki Street. Farther down the tunnel Andrei probed about to make certain there were no Germans near the entrance. Chris tucked his pistol into his belt and flicked the flashlight a couple of times and knelt and tightened the rags wrapped around his feet which would assure greater silence in their movements. And then there was nothing left to check and he was forced to search for Deborah’s face in the half darkness.
“It’s so terribly, terribly strange”—his voice trembled—“how you wait for a moment and dread it. You dread it every living moment of the day and night. Now it is here. Somehow I’m almost glad—it’s almost better to bear the agony than live with the tension.”
“I’ve always known,” Deborah said, her fingers feeling for his face and tracing the contours of his lips and chin. “I’ve known you’d be able to do it, Chris.”
“Oh God, Deborah ... help me ... help me ...”
“I’ve always known you’d be able to make the right decision. Chris ... you must ...”
Then all she could hear were deep futile sighs. “My anger against them is nearly as great as my love for you. All day and all night I’ve memorized the places where the journals are buried. I’ll be tormented until I can unearth them and hold them up for the world to see. I’ll never rest, Deborah ... it’s like a brand seared on my soul.”
They felt a closeness of each other and were softly holding each other.
“Thanks for everything,” Chris said.
“Thanks for ... life,” she whispered.
They could hear the shuffle of Andrei’s rag-covered boots coming toward them and they seized each other desperately. Andrei cleared his throat.
Deborah gasped and spun out of Chris’s arms and bit her hand hard. Chris grabbed her from behind and she sagged and writhed to keep from breaking down.
“We have to go,” Andrei said sternly.
Chris still held her. “Go,” she cried, “please go!”
“Christ!” Chris wailed.
“We have to go,” Andrei repeated. He took Chris’s arms from Deborah and she plunged out of the tunnel into the Auschwitz room of the bunker. Chris started after her, but Andrei grabbed him and his hold was like a vise.
“Steady, Chris.”
Chris collapsed and buried his head in Andrei’s chest “Steady ... steady,” Andrei said as he dragged the grieving man up toward the entrance.
It was turning light outside. They poked their heads out of the drainage pipe in the Nalewki 39 courtyard and sprinted to cover. Around them, fires continued to sizzle. They could hear a rumble of trucks assembling in Muranowski Place.
Andrei gestured that they had to move along under cover to the intersection of Nalewki and Gensia, a single block. They were almost completely hidden by the few walls, shell holes, immense rubble piles.
At the intersection they were in for trouble. It was a main cross street which ran parallel to the ruins of the Brushmaker’s and was filled with patrols and movement. It would be hell to get across the street without being seen.
Andrei crept along a few feet, signaled Chris to follow, crept another few feet, signaled Chris again.
They inched along for fifty yards. It took two hours.
Clump! Clump! Clump! Clump!
They lay flat as a company of soldiers passed. The hoots seemed to be only inches away from them.
A hundred feet north, the Germans had discovered a bunker of civilians. A little emaciated boy and two girls no more than six years old crawled out of a pile of bricks, holding their hands over their heads. They stood trembling under the guns and bayonets of the German soldiers, who were amused with their find. An officer ordered the children to hold their hands higher so he could properly photograph his “prisoners.”
Dogs were moved into the area along with sound detectors.
Freeze or go? Andrei did not like his present position. His only cover was out toward Nalewki Street. The Germans were fanning out and would be behind him. He nudged Chris and pointed to a shell hole a few yards away.
Andrei slid up to it cautiously. It was perfect. The bottom was covered with fallen timber, mud, and muck. He plunged down six feet headfirst and Chris made his move in a leap and dive atop him. They squirmed under the charred timbers to cover their bodies. And they lay.
An hour passed. The sounds of activity overhead never faded.
Grrrrrrr! Grrrrrrrr!
They heard a dog’s claws padding around, sniffing. Andrei opened an eye just a slit.
A dog crouched on the rim of the shell hole. He could see fangs. The animal sniffed and growled.
“What do you see, Schnitzel?” a soldier said.
“Jews down there, Schnitzel boy? I see nothing.”
The animal poked his nose through the boards and sniffed. Chris felt the dog’s wet nose against his face. The animal’s jaws opened and the teeth pressed close to Chris’s throat.
“Schnitzel! Up here, boy!”
“Up here I say!”
The dog backed slowly off the buried bodies. The soldier hooked his leash again and knelt and squinted into the shell hole. He called another soldier.
“Schnitzel smells Jews down there. Do you see anything?”
“No ... Wait. Is that a hand?”
“Where?”
“In the mud there.”
“Ah yes ... I see it now.”
“It looks like they are dead.”
“Well, let’s make certain. Stand back. I throw a grenade.”
... the grenade slowly rolled down the hole.
Andrei lifted his head, snatched the grenade in a lightning motion, and threw it back up.
Blam!
The dog yelped.
“Jews!”
“Move your ass, Chris! Move your ass!”
Chapter Twenty
THE GERMANS WERE IN Mila 18, directly over the bunker, smashing around to find the entrance.
In the dark catacomb the hidden could hear guttural orders being snapped, the clumping of boots, the crashing of axes. Simon Eden slipped from the cot to the floor. The cot creaked too much. It could send up a sound. He propped his back against the dirt wall, and his bleary black-ringed eyes went upward in his head. Alex sat against the wall opposite him, bent double with tension, exhaustion, and grief for his wife. The stunted, lily-pale boy Moses Brandel, who had spent most of his life in silence, was silent again.