The priest had asked, Was it when you were a child and living in this house that the guilt was born? Now, Tadeuz Komiski realized he was close, within a hundred metres, of where that guilt had been conceived — and there were voices.
Voices carried in the quiet of the forest. He crouched, then sank to his knees. He saw two men. He recognized one, saw the close-cut scalp, the power of the shoulders and the heavy leather coat that fell to the man’s hips. He had not seen the second before, and thought him younger. His hair not cut short, he seemed to have a less threatening body and there was a limp to his stride. They were within a few steps of where the first grave had been, a few metres from where the later storm and the rains had uncovered the bones. Tadeuz Komiski had moved those bones, had carried them as far as he was able in an awkward, dangling bundle, then had retraced his steps to retrieve an arm bone and a whole skeletal foot that had fallen away from the main frame of the long-dead corpse. Then he had made the second grave and had buried the man whose death had bred the curse.
The sun dappled down through the trees. Flies danced in its light. The birds, warmed by the sun, flitted above where the grave had been. Had they known where to look they would have walked a dozen paces to the right. The excavated pit was a metre and a half in length, a half-metre in width and a metre in depth. Tadeuz Komiski came here often, was drawn to the place, which was the torment of the curse. Now, all these years later, the grave was a slight indent in the ground. It lay between two pines, one of which had a double trunk. There were enough markers for him to know exactly where the grave had been — and where they had been, the young man and the girl. Now the grave was filled with leaves and needles from the pines, and a branch had come down on it two winters back, obscuring most of it. The priest had said: You do not have to answer me — but the only palliative for guilt is confession.
They moved on.
He could not have said why he followed them. His back now was to the great mound of ashes, the grave for a quarter of a million persons, but it was the first grave of one man that had brought down the curse on him. The sun climbed, and he moved between trees, used cover and did not feel the aches in his old joints. Tadeuz Komiski had the skills gained from a lifetime spent — where ghosts were — in the forest. He told himself he would be satisfied to find out their destination. Then he would turn and look again for dried wood.
Their pace had quickened, and they passed — and did not know it — the place where he had reburied the bones.
Reuven Weissberg said, ‘They were betrayed. My grandmother was betrayed and my grandfather. From her being taken to the ghetto in Wlodawa, from him being captured by the Nazi Army, they faced total and continuous betrayal. They were betrayed by individuals, and by systems and by nationalities … and I am of their blood. Did individuals, systems or nations care about them? None did. They were not important, not valued. They had only one chance, and it was from themselves. Destiny was in their own hands — from every other quarter, every point around them, there was treachery. I have been taught it and I believe it. In me, what happened here — in that camp — is still alive. Do you understand, Johnny?’
The eyes, gleaming, dangerous and bright, overwhelmed Carrick.
They were near to the river where it narrowed, and upstream from where the floodwater had spread over fields. Trees sprouted on the steep banks of either side, and the force of the flow was intimidating. They had reached the small boat and were near to the gathering, dismal, bowed shoulders and dropped heads, of the Russians and Josef Goldmann. Little columns of cigarette smoke eddied up from them. He no longer fought. He had seen the site of the Sobibor camp, and had heard the story, and in his mind was the frail, emaciated woman in black, with the pure white hair, the survivor who had fashioned a grandson. He understood. Almost, he was part of this place. What he had done in the night, beside a lake, before taking his share of the weight of the boat was forgotten.
‘Yes, sir,’ Carrick said.
Chapter 18
Carrick stayed close to Reuven Weissberg.
Hours were there to be killed, the sun had started to drop from its full height and the shadows of the trees were thrust on to the river. Mostly Carrick just looked at the power and drive of its flow. Reuven Weissberg had talked to him about building a church in a village outside Perm, paying for its construction, and had said it was what many did who were in business and who wanted to put something as a legacy into the community. Carrick had nodded and let him talk, had no interest in a church built by a Jew in a place he couldn’t picture. He thought the idea tacky and sentimental, but he didn’t say so and made a pretence of listening.
He watched the far side of the river.
Behind him, hidden, was the boat and the length of rope. The greater preoccupation in Carrick’s mind was getting a rope across the river, then using it as a line to cling to and heave on while they were in the boat. Pretty bloody incredible that the height of the river had not been predicted, or its strength, but he hadn’t criticized.
When he watched the far bank of the Bug it was without enthusiasm. Between where he sat, near to Reuven Weissberg, sharing the same patch of damp sand, leaning against the same wet tree trunk, and that far bank, the river careered by. He watched the far bank, the mess of sprig bushes and taller trees where the base and the roots were submerged, the coloured border marker, and tried to keep his head and his eyeline up. If he did not, he saw the river’s pace and drive, the dislodged trees it carried. If he didn’t watch that far bank, well lit by the sun, he saw the water and the debris running fast in it, and he would think of the boat, and darkness.
He was far from anything that was familiar. Back-up seemed beyond reach.
Carrick — tired, cold, wet, hungry — believed that only Reuven Weissberg cared for him.
He could make out a slight path that came out of the far trees, then dropped down to reach the water’s edge. Maybe deer used it, or pigs, or foxes. The longer he stared at the path, the better he saw it. There would be a torch flashed along that bank, and the answering light would be the signal from Reuven Weissberg that they should move along and get opposite to where they now sat.
What was being brought that would bring the big boss to the Godforsaken side of a river on Poland’s frontier? What was of such value? Not drugs — they came in bulk in container lorries. Not girls — they could be brought, he assumed, by the busload from Ukraine. Not forged passports and not bogus Rolex watches. Not computer chips and not cartons of contraband cigarettes. Didn’t leave much that could take priority on Reuven Weissberg’s shopping list.
He thought of weapons. Looking at the little path across the river, he had gone back over the weaponry he knew from days in Iraq. The improvised explosive device, which had damn near shredded his leg, could have been put together by an engineer — or a car mechanic or an electrician — in the Basra equivalent of a lock-up garage. Rocket-propelled grenades and their launchers were washing about all over Europe after the Balkans fighting. The market was saturated. Ground-to-air missiles would be harder, if they were required to bring down an airliner on approach to or take-off from Charles de Gaulle, Fiumicino, Schiphol or Heathrow, but three or four would be big bulk in their protective casings, and as much as the boat could carry, and there would have to be an easier way to do a border than in darkness and across the Bug in flood.