The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  Nothing had changed since his visit to Zosia’s parents. He never left the encampment alone, he had no access to Communications. He was essentially a prisoner. He knew it and he had decided perhaps it was time that he let them know that. It was time to end the charade.

  The buzzing of the lights intensified. Barbara approached him; in a whisper she asked, “Prisoner?”

  He nodded in a somewhat noncommittal way, indicating that he would explain later. The Council was still silent; perhaps all he had managed to do was arrange his court-martial. Sighing with exasperation, he motioned for Olek to join him and Barbara and said, “Come on, we’ll work with what we have.”

  They were at the door already when he heard Zosia call his name. The three of them turned to look at her. In fact, the entire Council was looking at her, some members clearly menacingly. Zosia ignored them all. “We know that certain members of the Führer’s inner circle have resurrected the idea of secret, masssterilization for inferior populations. There’d be”—she waved her hands to indicate that she was guessing—“something like contamination in the water. I don’t know, maybe they’d have an antidote for themselves and so they could wipe out populations at will, and without needing to bother with the messy business of mass murder. We clearly need to find out more about what they are up to and find a way to prevent it. We need to get the information to our biologists; we need chemical formulas, effectiveness, methods of counteraction.”

  “Zosiu!” Katerina nearly screeched. “Enough! We haven’t got clearance for this!”

  “We don’t have time for that. And he’s right. We need them! We need to let them know what’s going on and what to look for.”

  “Let her speak,” Tadek said. Marysia and several others nodded.

  Peter raised his eyebrows slightly, but otherwise made no response. Tadek?

  Zosia continued,“We believe the Führer himself supports the program, but he’s maintaining deniability by running it through the greater London section of the Sicherheitsdienst , through an official named Schindler—he’s a crony of Vogel’s.”

  Peter made a face as he remembered all too well that obnoxious man.

  Zosia continued, “The experimental operation has been farmed out to several provincial sites, including the Breslau office from which we got the files you’ve been working on. They’re trying to keep things quiet, so after they amass the data, we think they’re forwarding it to Berlin for review, but then moving it out to somewhere more politically quiet for analysis.”

  “Where?” Peter asked.

  “The outskirts of Hamburg. There’s a military installation in a cleared area near the village of Undeloh, and they’re using the headquarters and the fellow who runs the place to accumulate their findings. They have a small staff working right in the director’s residential mansion. Everything seems to fall under a special section and outside the normal chain of command there. Schindler runs the Berlin end of things; the director at the lab is named Rattenhuber. Most of the information is transmitted via couriers since they don’t trust the codes—that’s why there are all these paper and tape files. One of our agents has tried to get inside, but that has fallen through.”

  Zosia stopped, somewhat stunned by the enormity of her decision to speak. She stood and turned toward the Council. “There, it’s said. The damage is done. I take full responsibility for this decision.” She looked back at Barbara, who was observing her with renewed respect, and smiled, thinking: I’ll probably be pulling guard duty under your command next week.

  There was a rancorous debate after the three left. Tadek insisted they present their breach of discipline to HQ as a majority vote of the Council. Katerina was adamant that Zosia had acted alone, and Zosia insisted that the record reflect that. The message was sent the following day and passed on to a Warszawa Council member—Zosia’s mother, as it happened. She shook her head at her daughter’s decisive impetuousness, presented the request of the Szaflary mountainencampment to inform their analyst of the top-secret information, argued their case, received the clearance, and wired it back to the mountains the following day. So, Anna Król thought, the minutes of the various Councils won’t match exactly. Nobody would ever be the wiser.

  By the time the Szaflary Council received the surprise clearance and Zosia realized there would be no sanctions against her—even Katerina could not stay angry at her for very long—Peter and his staff had filtered through two-thirds of the documents. And they had something.

  The crucial names had helped them home in on a copy of a communiquó sent from Breslau to Berlin and Hamburg. Upon translation, they learned that an adjutant from Berlin was being sent out to pick up data from experiments conducted in the neighborhood of Breslau for review in Berlin and would then transport the files to the laboratory in Hamburg. They had missed the adjutant’s visit to Breslau, but learned that he would be leaving Berlin for Hamburg in five days. A brief physical description of the adjutant was included—apparently nobody in Hamburg knew him personally—as well as a description of his travel arrangements.

  Barbara’s hands shook as she showed Peter her version of the translation. He scanned her work and complimented the job she had done. She beamed with shy pride.

  “Let’s stop,” he said, and went over to the bottle of Scotch that had relocated itself from Zosia’s flat to the office. He poured each of them a shot and they toasted their efforts. Once they had finished their impromptu celebration, Olek and Barbara took the document and went to round up the Council. Peter insisted they should have the fun of presenting the information, and besides, the less he saw of that group, the better.

  23

  THE SECOND DAY after the Council had been presented with the communiqué, Zosia took the unusual step of having Peter summoned from his office back to their apartment. As he walked down the narrow hallways to their rooms, he thought that now everything else had settled down, she might have decided it was a good time to return to the unresolved conversation about his brother. Since their lunchtime discussion, they had hardly even seen each other. He had been totally absorbed in his work, slipping into the flat long after Zosia and Joanna had gone to bed and leaving early in the morning before they were up. Joanna had come to say hello and help with simple tasks now and then, and Zosia had found time to stop by, but they had never found an opportunity to talk in private.

  His brother, and the information Zosia had given to Peter, had occasionally come into his head as he had worked, but he had not really spent much time thinking about what it meant to him. His dreams and nightmares had not changed, nothing seemed different, and he had essentially put the issue to rest— there was nothing to be done about it and it was long in the past. Besides, the chain of events his brother’s action had set into motion had brought him here and he was happy with his life. Even as a virtual prisoner. It was, after all, exactly what he wanted: to remain safe and secure. And who in this world, he asked himself philosophically, wasn’t severely constrained?

  He ascended the ladder to the level of their flat with a technique he had perfected using mainly his arms and thus avoiding stress on his legs. As he carefully stepped off the ladder and gently set his weight back onto his feet, he realized that the boy who had summoned him had used his military title. Clearly Zosia was not calling him to talk about his past—it must be business, and that it could not wait until evening implied it was bad news. The January winds howled outside the encampment, the snows had piled up deeply, and Peter, on the several walks he had taken, had come to feel that they were living in an entirely isolated and independent part of the world. Zosia’s summons and the serious look on her face as she asked him to sit down warned him that his illusion was only that. The world was intruding again.

  She offered him a drink and then began without preamble, “We’ve organized and gotten clearance on what we need to do with respect to that communiquó you unearthed for us. We’ll remove the adjutant and insert our own man in his place.”

  “Who?”


  “Tadek fits the physical description the best, and he’s a good man to have in there. Unfortunately, since he’s supposed to bring information and pick up a general report on how things are going, he’s not supposed to receive much in the way of specifics. So, we still need to get at their files, and that means into their computer.”

  “But he doesn’t know anything about computers, does he?”

  “Not much, so I’ll be accompanying him as his wife.”

  “What’ll happen to the real adjutant?”

  “If possible, he’ll be held hostage and exchanged for someone we want. If not . . .” Zosia shrugged ruefully.

  “And where do I fit into all this?”

  “Well, you’ll be coming, too.”

  Peter took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, but he did not say anything.

  “We’ve learned that . . .” Zosia continued. “Well, we’ve ascertained—from other sources—that nearly everything is on the computer there.”

  “So, you’ll hack into it. Remotely?”

  “No, they’ve been careful, it’s not on a network. So, the problem is, we not only have to hack into it, we have to do it on-site, and at the same time we haveto overcome any security arrangements protecting the data. We don’t know what we’re going to come up against, so we want you along. With your expertise we’ll have a better chance of actually retrieving something from their system.”

  Peter furrowed his brow. “Just like that?”

  “Well, I’ll be along to help. We’re hoping you’ll be able to overcome whatever file-protection mechanisms they have in place.”

  He shook his head. “You should know that’s impossible! You don’t sit down at a foreign computer and break into protected data just like that—don’t they know that?”

  Zosia shrugged. “We were hoping that the file protection . . . We know they’re trying to keep this secret and so it’s all run by one officer. Apparently he doesn’t have much training in this stuff.”

  Peter shook his head forlornly. “That might well make it more difficult. I wouldn’t even know where to begin . . .”

  “We were hoping that it might be simple enough to break in one night.”

  “You’d be better off praying.”

  She ignored his comment. “The security officer is the director of the laboratory—this Major Rattenhuber. He’s the one who devised their network code. You’ve already defeated him once, maybe you can do it again. Maybe he’s been careless.”

  “Well, that at least is a good bet, especially with the military, but I still don’t think it’s a realistic plan.”

  “Nobody will blame you if you don’t succeed.”

  Peter snorted in disbelief.“How long will we have?”

  “We’ll be there three days, we’ll probably manage access for one night. We’ll have a three-pronged attack: Tadek will try to get information from the major directly, I’ll talk to the wife, and you’ll . . . While we’re there, Tadek will do everything in his power to get the major to show him things on the computer. He’ll pass on whatever information he can get to us, and we can try to formulate a plan of attack. I’ll help you hack into the files as far as possible, and then you can make a stab at accessing them.”

  Peter nodded absently. One night! What were they thinking? “If Tadek is the liaison, how am I going to be integrated in? As some junior officer?”

  “No, they know only one officer is coming.”

  “As a guard?”

  “Again, they know only one military person is coming. We can only manage to come along as the personal retinue of the adjutant.”

  “How then?” Peter asked, afraid that he already knew the answer.

  She glanced at his left arm apologetically.

  Peter followed her eyes down to the numerals on his arm. “No,” he breathed softly, shaking his head. “No, Zosia, you can’t ask me to do that. There must be another way!”

  She raised her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness.

  “I could go as a brother-in-law or a friend or something.”

  “Do you really think they’d believe that the adjutant would be bringing along rogue members of his family?”

  “Why not?”

  “Be serious. This is the best strategy.”

  “There must be some other possibility.”

  “Think about it. This is the safest. If anyone sees your arm, well, there’s no problem this way. And what about Vogel’s trips? You told me sometimes he would take his wife and you to tend to her. It’s not unheard of. But any other grouping, well, it would raise suspicions immediately.”

  “Then get somebody else. I can’t do it.”

  “You must,” Zosia insisted coldly.

  “What do you mean ‘must’?”

  “It’s not a request.”

  “Oh, I see.” Did she think he was stupid? Since such missions were completely dependent on the acting ability and the conviction of the agents, everyone knew that ordering someone into a situation with which they were uncomfortable was not only ineffectual but dangerous. It was, therefore, also against policy.

  “We are a military organization,” she explained. “Your rank means something, you know.”

  “Yes, of course.” He looked away from her. She clearly assumed he was unaware of the policy, and so, to save herself the trouble of convincing him or having him participate in the planning, she was issuing orders. Worse still, he knew he would obey them—not because they were orders, but because they came from her. Couldn’t she have just said please?

  “Peter! Don’t be like this. We wouldn’t ask you if we didn’t think this was the best way to do it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll do it. I’ll do my best for you. All of you.”

  “It’s for your people, too.”

  “I have no people. Don’t you know that? Don’t you remember what Tadek said?”

  “Oh, forget that already! He was angry. Look, it’s your chance to prove yourself!”

  “Prove myself? It’s almost impossible, it’s dangerous, and, I swear to you, Zosia, there will be trouble. You don’t take it seriously, you don’t understand—if you put me in that uniform, if you put that band around my wrist, I won’t be able to move freely, I’ll get harassed for trivialities, and if anything happens, anything at all, I’ll be the first person they suspect! That will put all of us and our mission in jeopardy!”

  She rubbed her head, pushed her hair back in exasperation. “Look, we’re not naive. We know the dangers involved. But have you got any better ideas?”

  “Take someone young, then they could be your son or daughter.”

  “The adjutant’s too young: a glance at his pass will tell anyone that. We’re already pushing the age thing a bit.”

  “Well, then, let me go as the adjutant. Nobody there knows him, do they?”

  “No, we don’t think so. But you don’t fit his description.”

  “So what? Dye my hair. If nobody knows him . . .”

  “He’s taller than you, and lean, like Tadek, and there might even be a photograph . . .”

  “Then make me military, some junior officer.”

  “I told you, they know only one officer is coming.”

  “So, the information is wrong. People change plans all the time.”

  Zosia shook her head slowly as she thought over the idea.“No,” she whispered as if, upon consideration, the idea was impossible.

  “Why the hell not?”

  Zosia bit her lower lip, thought a long moment, then said hesitantly, “You’re not ready for that.”

  “Not ready?”

  “I know from your experiences you’ve never done this sort of infiltration, isn’t that right?”

  Peter glared at her, wishing he had never told her anything about himself.

  “You’ve never masqueraded for any length of time or acted out a role, have you?”

  Still he did not answer.

  “You’re not trained for this, and we don’t have time to go through
the necessary training.”

  “I lived with them,” he reminded her angrily. “I know better than anyone how they act. Damn it, I acted for four years!”

  Zosia looked away, drummed her fingers a bit, then suddenly she reached toward him.

  He flinched visibly and cursed silently at his all too obvious response. “That proves nothing!” he asserted angrily.

  “What if someone in uniform jovially slaps your back and you cower in response? Who knows what that sort of proximity to those uniforms and people will provoke. You wanted to step into the gutter in Neu Sandez. Remember your outburst in Göringstadt? And look what happened the other day, in front of the Council. We can’t take the chance!”

  Humiliated, he kept silent. She had proved her point; nevertheless, he was sure there was more to it than she was saying. Making it an order! What was she hiding?

  Apologetically she added, “We just don’t think it’s practical. You know, in view of . . .”

  “In view of these?” he asked, holding up his arm. “Or is it in view of the fact that the Council still doesn’t really trust me?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “They want to make sure I’m in a position to be closely watched!”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Admit it!”

  “Yes, there were some words to that effect; after all, you never have been completely vetted. You know we can’t reorganize everything around your being a special case. It would be irresponsible,” she defended herself tiredly.

  “Then why not send someone else altogether? Why put me in there at all?”

  She sighed. “There is no one else we could get. Politically, it’s important that the Szaflary group manages to handle this on its own; we’ve been losing too much authority to Warszawa. We predate them, yet now we have to ask them for permission to do anything! But that’s not the point, it’s more than that: you’re good at what you do, creative, intuitive. Brilliant. We need that.” Her voice had dropped as she spoke, and she ended by staring at her feet and mumbling something.