Danzig Passage Read online

The men of Hanita stepped forward in alarm. The last echoes died away, and still these men stood transfixed and frightened by what they heard.

  “They must have been ambushed,” said Artur glumly, his face again streaked with tears.

  “Fifty Arab Moquades.” Zach frowned and shook his head sadly. “I knew the Englishman was a fool. Now he has gotten more of us killed.”

  Moshe did not speak. He was glad he had not mentioned Gideon in the face of such a massacre by Arab gangs along the road.

  “Should we go after them?” Artur held up his gun.

  “Do you want to die as well?” Zach demanded.

  Artur did not answer; Moshe thought that perhaps this fellow did indeed want to die.

  “What else can we do?” Artur said. “We asked for help from the English, and they send us this reject from a Gentile Yeshiva school!” He was raging now, pacing back and forth in front of the gate. “Shall we call the British Army and tell them that their preacher has just been killed by fifty Arab raiders? Tell us what to do?”

  “He’s right,” agreed two grim-faced settlers who still had blood on their shirts from carrying Sharon and Lazlo in from the fields. “What did those British think they were doing? They send us a crazy fanatic! He preaches the Bible to the People of the Book, and then he gets more of us killed!”

  An angry murmur filled the night air. “What did they expect one lousy man to do? What use is one English soldier to us anyway?”

  They debated further about whether to call in the British to retrieve the bodies from the road. It would have to be done in daylight. That much was agreed to.

  Then, a small double light swept up over a distant hill and then down again. Was that an English vehicle? A truck? Had the British soldiers come upon the ambush?

  Moshe stepped out of the crowd and walked toward the end of the dirt road that led from Hanita to the highway. Again the lights rose up and then disappeared behind a hill.

  Zach stood at his elbow. “What do you think?”

  Moshe managed a smile. “Captain Orde’s staff car,” he said in a low voice.

  “You are certain?”

  “The right headlight is off a bit. He bumped it going around a narrow corner in Jerusalem. It is Orde, all right.”

  The others rushed forward with a cheer as the vehicle turned onto the lane. Hands reached out to thump the battered vehicle as it passed through them and then entered the compound.

  Orde set the brake, turned off the engine, and then stepped out of the car to face the same thumping as his battered car.

  “You’re back!”

  “Of course.” He frowned. “What did you think?”

  “You made it!”

  “Were there many of them?”

  Orde shrugged off the queries and scratched his head languidly. “You’ll have a briefing in the morning,” he said gruffly. “But for now, I am in need of sleep. My quarters?”

  Enthusiasm waned as Orde stalked off to a tent set up especially for him. The others, including Orde’s four troopers, retired to the camp kitchen, where a briefing took place in spite of the commander’s absence.

  Over cups of coffee, they considered the events of the evening and this strange English soldier.

  “What happened?” Zach demanded that Larry Havas, an American from Cleveland, give the details of the sortie.

  “Like I said, he dumped the body at the entrance to the village. Arranged it like he was laying a stiff out in a coffin. Hands folded over the note. Pointed the index finger at the writing. It looked like the guy was pointing at the note, you know? They won’t miss it.”

  “And then?”

  Larry shrugged. “Then he said, ‘Gideon routed the Philistines not far from here. Great acoustics.’ And then he sort of spread us out along the road. One on each hill. He fired first. We fired at five-second intervals.” He grinned sheepishly. “Guess we woke up the neighbors.”

  Moshe considered Zach Zabinski for a moment. With his receding hairline and countenance of a scholar, thin and fine-boned, Zach did not have the look of a man in charge of a settlement of three hundred. His sunburned face displayed the sensitivity of one better suited to working in a library than plowing the hard fields of Palestine. Moshe guessed that such a face seldom smiled; but tonight, Zach smiled slowly and raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

  “We asked ourselves what one man can do,” Zach said with a shake of his head. “They will think we have an army here. And the Muslims are not so eager to go to Paradise . . . or Hell . . . quickly. Our Englishman has bought himself some time, I would say.”

  “Do you trust him?” asked Dori Samuels.

  Zach nodded. “When he looks us in the eye and talks about Zionism and God, I believe him. When he walks away or drives down the road I wonder about his motives. We asked for a troop of British men to defend us. We got one man. Maybe he is as good as a troop. We will see.”

  Larry Havas laughed again. “All the way out there the guy quoted to us from Isaiah—he’s more Zionist than Ben-Gurion!”

  “But effective,” Moshe interjected, conscious that he was an outsider, but more aware of Samuel Orde’s methods than the others were. “I saw him in action against the Mufti in Jerusalem. He is all he seems to be, and more. I am sure of his sincerity.” Moshe’s eyelid’s sagged, heavy from the long trip and the unending tension since their arrival here.

  “Some say he is responsible for the death of your brother,” Zach said, testing Moshe’s defense of the Englishman.

  “My brother was responsible for his own death,” Moshe said flatly. “Captain Orde brought me here for protection, and I will not be so foolish as my brother was to leave him.”

  “You believe in him, trust him, this Christian fanatic?” Larry sipped his coffee and waited for Moshe’s careful reply.

  “Entirely.”

  Zach nodded with resignation. “When you have been plowing all day and repelling snipers and infiltrators all night, and when you have gone out to relieve a sentry post only to find the girl who guarded it dead and mutilated, you are not particularly glad to see strangers. Particularly not British officers, I admit it. I was . . . maybe still am . . . suspicious.”

  Larry added, “He has the smell of a soldier about him. Maybe he can help. But what we need from the English are real guns with more than one bullet, and the legal right to use them when we are attacked. Tonight he has made the death of an Arab terrorist legal because he signed his name to it. But if I had killed him—or you, or any of us—we would be arrested by the same people Captain Orde works for.”

  “I will wait and see.” Zach sighed. “What else can we do but wait and see?”

  ***

  As she wandered through Vienna, a flash of emotion ripped through Lucy’s dull senses. She had wanted to belong to him forever. Every waking moment had been spent imagining life as the wife of Wolfgang von Fritschauer—little Lucy Strasburg, from a village in Bavaria, wife of a wealthy Prussian aristocrat! But she meant no more to him than the cattle on his estate. She must not let herself love him, even if she longed for him to hold her again.

  Her thoughts returned to Wolf. “Remember who you belong to.” He would not ever let her forget that she belonged to him—body and soul. Lucy was at the mercy of Wolf. He would never let her leave him willingly. If she tried, he would simply have her taken to the Lebensborn, where she would be locked away until the baby was born. His baby, not mine. The child I carry for him and for the Reich. Pure Aryan sons for the future of the Thousand-Year Reich.

  Shouts and cries of anguish drifted on wisps of smoke, but Lucy did not hear them. The cries of her own heart were too loud to hear anything else.

  She had no place to run, no safe haven where she might hide, no refuge where Wolfgang von Fritschauer would not find her. “Remember who you belong to!”

  Lucy regretted that she had told Wolf the news. Maybe there was still time. Perhaps she could tell him that she had been mistaken; that she was not pregnant. For the first time she
considered the possibility of having an abortion. Such a thing would have been simple for her a few years ago. And if she were Jewish, the government would not only encourage it, but pay for the procedure and sterilize her without charge. But she was Aryan. Her family pedigree had been researched before Wolf had even dared to take her into his bed. For an Aryan woman, abortion was forbidden by law and punishable by prison, even death. Beyond that was the higher law of faith—the killing of the unborn was counted as murder by the church. Lucy feared that law and judgment as much as she feared the Nazi racial edicts.

  Killing the baby was not an option for her. Lying about the pregnancy to Wolf would be foolish. He wanted everything verified by an SS doctor; to attempt to deceive him would mean that she would be locked inside the SS maternity home immediately. And after the child was born, who could say what would happen to Lucy?

  She frowned and stepped back to make room for a gang of young Nazis who pushed a dozen Jews down the sidewalk.

  “What are you looking at?” a young Austrian shrieked. He pounded a prisoner across his shoulders. “Pig! It is verboten to look at an Aryan woman!”

  “I only . . . she is out alone . . . and I . . . this night . . .” The prisoner attempted to explain but was silenced by kicks and blows to the stomach.

  Lucy looked up sharply, realizing that she was the reason the man was being beaten. He fell to the ground and lay in his own blood.

  In this way the Nazis of Vienna honored her, the perfect Aryan woman. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, striking in beauty, she inspired men to violence and hatred . . .for a look!

  The terrible irony of it made her suddenly feel ill again. She averted her eyes in shame and hurried on, looking for a quiet place to rest. In all of Vienna, it seemed, there was no quiet place left for anyone.

  ***

  The beams and timbers of the Red Lion House creaked and groaned in the darkness as if the noise of tonight’s party had made the walls ache. Elisa lay awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling and wondering if she should wake Murphy.

  The dream had come to her again tonight. Fresh and terrifying in its detail, she had seen the trains filled with children as they headed into the blackness of the East. On the battered cattle cars, uniformed skeletons had stood guard and laughed when the little ones stretched their arms through the slats and begged for water. Elisa, with one tin cup, had tried to reach them all. She had run beside the train and cried out for help as the water splashed out and fell to the bloodred ground. Only then, when the last drop had spilled, did she wake up.

  The grandfather clock in the foyer chimed two o’clock. Elisa reached out and touched Murphy’s back, finding comfort in his nearness and warmth. This nightmare had not returned since they moved into the peaceful old house. She had begun to think of herself as free from all that, free from the sense of helplessness she had felt over the suffering of so many. After all, here in London they were doing what they could to ease the suffering. Concerts and benefits, and parties like tonight’s had netted several thousand dollars in aid for the homeless refugees who still flocked to Prague. Schools had formed in southern France for refugee children. Things were being done that did not require Elisa to risk her own safety or that of the baby she carried.

  But in the small quiet hours of this morning, none of it seemed sufficient. She sat up and cradled her head in her hands as images of Berlin and Vienna paraded before her. Timmons had wired that the synagogues were being burned, shops and homes destroyed, men arrested. Berlin. Vienna. Cities she had once called home. The children of her dreams came from those cities.

  Elisa heard a stirring in the front room—the sound of feet against the oak plank floor, then padding across the thick Persian carpet in the center of the room. A small knock sounded on the door. Without waiting for reply, Charles nudged it open and stood silhouetted in the doorframe.

  “’Lisa?” he said in a small voice. He was too tired to care how well he formed the words. “I dreamed.”

  “A bad dream?” She put out her arms to him, drawing him to the bedside and under the covers.

  “Uh-huh. Real bad. Lots and lots of men chasing. ’Lisa, can I stay?”

  His little toes were ice cold against her legs. She cuddled him close, holding his feet in her hands. “Yes, you can stay. Don’t be afraid,” she whispered in German. “You are safe.”

  “No,” he replied in English, “not me and Louis. The men was chasing other kids. I saw them.”

  So, they had the same dream—similar, anyway. The realization was sobering. “Were you in the dream?” she asked.

  “Ja. I told them kids to come here. To Red Lion, and we will take care of them.”

  She smiled in the dark at his answer. At least he felt unthreatened here. “That was a good thing to tell them.”

  “But, ’Lisa, they couldn’t hear me. I was talking in English, and they was German-talking kids, and they can’t hear me.” He sounded so sad that Elisa wondered if he was still half-dreaming.

  “Go back to sleep, Charles,” she urged gently.

  “But I couldn’t talk German. Because, you know, my mouth was all—”

  “You are safe now, Charles.”

  “But they are not!”

  “Then I will tell them myself to come,” she whispered, feeling his little body relax. “I will tell them in German so they will hear me . . . Kommen Sie hier, bitte. Kommen Sie, Kinder . . . ist das gut, Charles?”

  Charles sighed with renewed contentment. “Sehr gut, ’Lisa.”

  Soon his breathing regulated, growing deep and even with sleep. Elisa lay her cheek against the softness of his hair and closed her eyes to pray that he would never again be touched by the darkness that raged through the streets of Germany even now.

  There are so many like him, Lord. So many little ones. If there is more that I can do, show me. Show us. Help us.

  ***

  Jacob and Mark straddled the ridge of the steep roof. A strong breeze whipped them with ash, still warm from the Berlin fires. Fragments of voices blew past them; the curses of Nazis and the cries of their victims blended into an unintelligible chorus.

  Jacob halted when the dormer window was ten feet directly below them. A metal rain gutter sloped down the slippery shale roof to provide a handhold.

  “Listen,” Jacob said as he examined the rusty bolts that held the pipe in place. “We will keep the pipe between us. We must slide down feet first on our bellies to the roof of the dormer.”

  Mark swallowed hard and then obeyed, positioning himself with his feet dangling over the steep angle of the roof.

  Jacob held up his hand, displaying the belt that linked them. “Don’t be afraid. If you slip, I have you.”

  This was true. Jacob could hold him, Mark knew, but could the pipe support their weight? And what if Jacob slipped? Mark could not hold him. “But what will I do if you slip?”

  Jacob laughed as if such a thought was impossible. “Then we will both slide off the roof. Just be sure to aim for the head of a Nazi, ja?”

  Mark managed a weak smile. Jacob lay down on his stomach and grasped the rain pipe. Carefully he eased himself off the ridge. Mark followed, clinging desperately to the groaning metal of their lifeline.

  The leather soles of their shoes slipped against the shingles as they scrambled for footing. A strong hand seemed to grab their ankles, trying to pull them over the edge to fall three stories to the sidewalk.

  “Hold tight!” Jacob urged as they inched lower, hand over hand.

  The edge of the roof seemed all too near; the fall to the cobblestones seemed too possible. Metal cut into Mark’s fingers. The shingles tore at his knees and stomach. He kept his eyes riveted to Jacob’s grim face. Their breath rose in a steamy vapor to mingle with the smoke.

  “Just a few more feet,” Jacob whispered tensely.

  Mark looked over his shoulder at the roof of the dormer. Only four feet to its safety. Beyond that was empty space; below he could see men sloshing kerosene into a shop while a cr
owd watched.

  Mark’s hands ached from the cold metal. He could not find bracing for his feet. Only hands and arms kept them from sliding off into the abyss.

  Jacob did not seem frightened. He slid down another few inches and then waited until Mark followed. “Just a little farther . . .” The words were accompanied by a groaning as the pipe pulled free from its rusted anchors.

  “Max!” Mark gasped as his section of the rain pipe bowed and broke free beneath him. He clung tighter to the useless metal as he began to skitter down, past Jacob, who struggled to grasp a fragment of still-connected pipe.

  “Hold on!” Jacob cried hoarsely as the length of the leather belt snapped taut. Mark dangled crazily at the end, just out of reach of the dormer. Jacob strained to hold him up with one arm while his other hand grasped at the end of the rain pipe.

  “Let go of the pipe!” he ordered, his face full of pain and fear as he struggled above Mark. If he could swing his brother to the right, the boy could touch the dormer roof with his feet, slide onto the perch and . . . .

  Mark released the metal, which clanged and sparked as it rolled and launched from the roof, tumbling down and down. He reached up and grasped the tether with both hands. He kept his eyes on Jacob’s face and on the big hand that clung tightly to the end of the belt while his other hand gripped one remaining anchor in the roof.

  “I’m going to swing you over.” Jacob’s words were halting, pained with exertion. “Get your feet on the roof.”

  Mark kicked his legs, swimming toward the little island of safety. The toe of his shoe brushed it; then he swung away again, causing Jacob to cry out as if his strength threatened to give out.

  “Again!” Jacob urged. “Come on!”

  One more swing of his arm to the left and Mark found himself with his feet straddling the peak of the dormer. Still he dangled like a fish on a line below Jacob, but there was at least hope beneath him now.

  “I can feel it!” Mark said. His hand was numb from the tight loop around his wrist. “How do I get down?”

  “Untie the belt. Drop down.”