by Boyd Brent
“He's inside?”
“Yes, David. And he suspects his arrest is imminent.”
“What has given you that impression?”
“He has secreted himself in a narrow space between two walls.”
“Alright. Be advised that I intend to shoulder my way through this door in three seconds.”
The bolt within came away with a muted 'crack' and landed with a thud on the carpet. David stepped into the apartment and pushed the door closed behind him. He was standing in a small entrance hall with three doors. “Go through the door to your left,” said Gull.” It led into a bedroom where a double bed sat opposite a high chest of drawers. A writing desk nestled awkwardly in a corner too large for it. Bluebottles thudded and droned against a window. David sat on the bed and removed his tin helmet. He laid down and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the bluebottles. In Polish he said, “My name is David. I'm dressed in the uniform of a German soldier. I am not a German soldier. I killed the man it belonged to. I'm here to help you, Antol.” There was no reply. David sat up.
“The secret compartment is located to the right-hand side of the chest of drawers,” said Gull. “Be advised that Antol's heart rate is high. He is either very afraid or very annoyed.”
“How long till the Gestapo get here?”
“Fifty-seven minutes.” David walked up to the wall that contained the secret compartment. He spoke quietly. “In just under an hour, the Gestapo are coming to take you in for questioning. Someone's tipped them off about your involvement with the Zegota. Two hours ago I was with Roch in the woods. A good man. I entrusted him with the care of some friends of mine. Jewish friends. It's my intention to impersonate you, Antol … to let the Gestapo take me in for questioning in your place. All hell broke loose earlier. It's unlikely you would have left Pomorska Street alive, so my offer to take your place is a good one. Please. You need to come out of there. I'm going to need information … a change of clothes … your identification papers. Then you can go back in … get on with your life.” No reply. David leaned his shoulder and head against the wall. “I don't want to have to come in there after you.” David heard movement behind the wall. A section wobbled and a door-sized crack appeared. Antol peered from one side of it. He was about thirty years of age, and lean, his eyes furtive and streetwise. He studied David's face and his mouth opened in readiness to make a pronouncement. It came. “You are suicidal.”
“Maybe. I've never really given it much thought.”
“How do you know the Gestapo are coming here?”
“I have it on good authority.”
“You intend to get arrested in my place? Why would you do that?”
“Like I said. I need to get inside 2 Pomorska Street.”
“You're an agent? British? American?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Antol lifted out the section of wall and stepped into the room. He placed the wallpapered plywood against the wall and stepped back. “Whoever chose you chose you well. We are of a similar height and colouring,” said Antol.
“I'm assuming the Gestapo have never picked you up for questioning before now?”
Antol shook his head. “I've managed to stay one step ahead of them. I would not be breathing otherwise.” Antol crossed the room to the desk and opened a drawer. He held up some identity papers. “You can take these. I have spares.” He crossed the room to the dresser and took out a grey shirt and a pair of trousers.
While David got changed, Antol picked up the German uniform and examined it like it held the answers to extinguishing the Nazi contagion. “It should be a pretty good fit,” said David. “The identity papers are in the jacket … inside left. You speak German?”
Antol glanced at him, shrugged his shoulders. “Some.”
“There's a motorcycle and side-car parked down the alley outside. After they take me away it might be a good idea to head out of Krakow … find the Zegota. There's only one checkpoint on the eastern road. There's a good chance the sentry will wave you through. He did me.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Please.”
“What do you intend to do at Pomorska Street? Maybe my reputation will be affected?”
“I'm going to kill Adler.”
Antol pressed his fingers together and then parted them. “Whouuuf!”
David wasn't sure if he was referring to David's short life expectancy or his own fragile reputation. He plumped for the latter. “I'm sorry. You'll have to go into hiding.”
“You're apologising? If you succeed in killing Adler you'll be a hero to the Resistance. He has murdered many freedom fighters in that basement. This is a kamikaze mission?”
Gull said, “The kamikaze were Japanese soldiers who guided their planes into ships and died in the ensuing explosion.” David watched a large bluebottle thudding against the window. “I suppose all life could be described as such.”
Antol took a packet of cigarettes from the desk and offered David one. David shook his head. Antol placed a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match across the top of the desk. “So … you're a kamikaze philosopher?”
“Apparently so.”
“Do I know you?”
“No.”
“You look familiar.”
“Some people say I look like Christ.”
Antol stepped towards David and took his hands in his own. He turned them palm up and looked at the criss-cross of scars at their centre. “Who are you?”
David's gaze dropped to a silver cross round Antol's neck … and the man being crucified upon it. “I'm not Him.”
“Factually speaking, you are him, David,” said Gull.
David shook his head. Antol watched him and said, “Only too true. If you were Him you would not have allowed any of this to happen.”
“Neither would any decent man with the power to stop it.”
Antol returned to his hiding place and David secured the fake wall behind him. From inside came a muffled, “Do me … do us all proud, my kamikaze philosopher friend, and kill that bastard Adler.”
David stood by the bedroom window and looked out. An old man was pushing an empty wheelbarrow down the street. He stopped, put it down and stood as though waiting to cross a busy road only he could see. He grasped the wheelbarrow's handles and trudged on. A staff car pulled up outside, and two Gestapo officers climbed out. They wore jet-black uniforms, red swastika armbands, and flat-visored caps. One removed his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, and shared a joke with the other who smiled. David made his way back out of the bedroom and opened the front door in a gesture of welcome. He returned to the bedroom and sat on the bed.
Jackboots clumped up the stairs and down the corridor towards him. They entered the apartment and spotted David sitting on the bed. They were out of breath and sweating, but so cocksure as they entered the bedroom that it might have been their own. They were big men, and they stood with their thumbs hooked inside their belts and cast their gaze over the room. The bigger of the two looked down at David. “Antol Bacik?”
“That's right. What do you want with me? I have done nothing wrong.” David sounded like an actor bored of his lines, bored of his Nazi audience.
The two men glanced at one another. The smaller stepped forward and slapped David across his face. “Where are your papers?”
“Alright,” murmured David. He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled them out. The smaller man handed them over his shoulder to his companion, who looked them over. “They are in order.”
“Get up.” David looked up at the man and shook his head as though the sight was a terrible disappointment. The man took out his revolver and pressed it to David's forehead. “Insolent swine.”
“We are at the location of an exit point,” said Gull. “Do exactly as he asks or kill them both immediately. Be advised that the second option will scupper our mission and hand victory to Goliath.”
David raised his hands. “I'm very sorry. I'm going to get up now.”
&
nbsp; The Mercedes glided through the streets of Krakow like a black shark searching for prey in grey waters, and radiated similar menace. Civilians pretended they had not seen it, and in so doing demonstrated their awareness by slowing down or speeding up or stumbling as a result of indecision. Patrolling soldiers were similarly affected, and David made a mental note to take the car when the task was done. Maybe I'll take Alix and Anna for a ride. They pulled up outside 2 Pomorska Street, and he remembered he would be leaving this building via a portal that led to another time where cars may or may not have been invented. He shook his head. You must look to the future, not to the past. If you look back, you're going to trip on something in your path … and take humanity down with you.
Beneath a plethora of ceiling fans, the lobby of 2 Pomorska Street was a hive of activity. Boxes were being stacked high by young men in brown shirts with their sleeves rolled up. “Germans are methodical people,” said Gull. “The boxes contain evidence of their crimes against humanity. They are being removed from Pomorska Street as a precaution.” The smaller of the men who'd arrested David clasped his shoulder and walked him across the lobby into a corridor. The other followed. There were portraits of Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis on the walls – dark-haired, serious-looking men, chins held high, devoted to the Aryan ideal. Not one amongst them Aryan.
They descended a stairwell at the back of the building that corkscrewed into the basement. The hand-rail was black except for a trail of silver where the paint had been stripped by nervous, grasping hands. They walked along a narrow corridor towards an open door. Beyond this door a red swastika had been painted on a grey wall. David was shoved into the room and made a show of stumbling forwards and catching his fall on its only table. David looked down at the table. Its wooden surface was ripped up and stained by the blood of a thousand severed fingers. To David's left a dark beam ran the width of the room. In its centre a noose had been fashioned from chicken wire and hung down like a snare. Running the length of the room were a number of thick pillars. Two young Nazis were securing ropes to metal rings in one of these pillars.
David stood up straight and turned to the Gestapo men. “Where's Adler?”
The larger of the two dug some dirt from beneath his fingernails. “Where's Adler, he asks.” The big man clenched his fist, stepped forward and rammed it into David's solar plexus. David shook his head, and both men grabbed him and bundled him towards the waiting ropes. David cast his gaze over the intended torture.
“It's nothing to be concerned about,” said Gull. “They mean to soften your resolve by hanging you with your arms secured behind you. The fastenings are worn and will not present a problem should you need to extricate yourself in a hurry.”
“Alright.” David was spun about and the bigger man shoved him against the pillar. “Alright, he says. Tell me if this is alright?” They grabbed David under his armpits, lifted him and held him against the pillar while the young Nazis wrenched his arms up behind him and secured his wrists to the pillar. They released him. David hung suspended from his twisted arms like a ship's figurehead. They left him alone. “How long, Gull?”
“A couple of hours. By then they will expect the pain to have rendered you unconscious, and Adler will imagine your arms to be paralysed for the duration of the interrogation. You may as well get some sleep. I will wake you when Adler gets here.”
“Thank you, Gull.” David closed his eyes.
Forty six
“Wake up, David. David.” David opened his eyes. He licked his cracked lips and blinked at his surroundings. “Two men are making their way along the corridor.”
David cleared his throat. “Is one of them Adler?”
“Yes.” David turned his head to the right, towards the door.
“He will expect to find you unconscious, David.” David closed his eyes again. “I'd hate to disappoint the bastard before I kill him.”
David felt the ropes being loosened about his wrists and under his armpits. He was carried to a chair at the far side of the table and placed in it. “Use the bucket …” David recognised this voice as Adler's. Water splashed into his face.
“I suggest you don't move your arms until you're ready to terminate Adler,” said Gull. David opened his eyes and shook the water from his face. He looked at the man sitting on the other side of the table. Adler's chair was pushed slightly back, and he sat with his left leg curled around his right, an arm draped casually over the back of the chair. On the table before him were two sheets of paper, one covered in black type and the other blank. A gold fountain pen with a silver nib sat between them. Adler reached out and moved the pen a fraction to the left, centering it between the two sheets. David glanced at the door. Closed. A guard stood to attention in front of it. David looked at the man across the table. “Ralph Adler?”
Adler looked at the manicured nails of his right hand. He nibbled on the nail of his little finger, then stopped himself and shook his head. “I have little doubt that my reputation precedes me. It will make this experience much more efficient for us both. You should know, I am not having the best of mornings. I have lost some good friends, and the Polish Resistance have been running amok in the woods.” David closed his eyes and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, then remembered Gull's advice and lowered it again. He opened his eyes. Adler indicated to his left with a glance. “You see that noose attached to the beam? I need only to raise my hand and snap my fingers. The man behind me will summon assistance and your head will be placed inside it. The wire will garrotte you. In the seconds before you die you will struggle and it will sever a path all the way through your neck to your spine. Just as that very wire has to so many of your fellow conspirators.”
David leaned forwards, placed his arms on the table and interlinked his fingers. Adler regarded David's arms with no little curiosity. David glanced down at the fountain pen. He jutted his chin towards the guard. In a whisper, he said, “In ten seconds, I'm going to use your pen to terminate that man.” David leaned in closer. “You imagine I'm whispering because you think I think I stand a better chance if he doesn't know of my intentions. That is not why I'm whispering.”
Adler's chin disappeared into his neck. “It isn't?”
“No. It isn't. The reason I'm whispering is because I take no pleasure in causing a man undue stress before I kill him – a claim that I do not believe you can make.”
Adler regarded David like he was obviously mental, and in his experience mental people were quite useless. He raised his hand and pressed his thumb and forefinger together. Click! David sprang up and smashed his jaw with a right hook. As the guard fumbled with his sidearm, David leapt upon the table and used Adler's unconscious head as a stepping stone. He fell upon the guard and plunged the fountain pen into his neck. David lowered the dead and spurting man to the ground. He turned to Adler. Adler's head lay on his shoulder, his arm still draped languidly over the chair. David glanced at the hanging snare.
“It seems only fitting,” said Gull.
“Fitting, maybe, but unnecessary. I'll just snap his neck.”
“You could have snapped the guard's neck.”
“I could have, but that would have made me a liar. And when dealing with people of this type, I believe any declaration of intent should be stuck to.” Adler raised his left arm slowly like a child with a question, and his chin swung from side to side as though attempting to ratchet up his head. David scratched his cheek. “Alright.” He walked around the desk. Tears streamed down Adler's cheeks and his eyes pleaded for mercy. His lower jaw dropped and jutted sideways, where it remained, oddly askance, like the jaw of a faulty puppet. A voice gargled up from inside his throat, but it was not Adler's, and when he spoke neither his lips nor his tongue moved. “Bear with me, son. I am experiencing difficulty fitting this individual. In a manner of speaking we are related. Could be this is an incestuous coupling, if you catch my drift.”
David narrowed his eyes, watched him.
“You look like hell, son.
Take a seat.”
“David …” said Gull.
“I know. Kill him now.” Goliath crossed one leg over the other. Saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth and his lips remained still as he said, “Gull sure does have a mean and spiteful nature. You might say he is an embarrassment to my kind.” David lowered his backside slowly onto the chair as though felled by the hypocrisy of that statement.
“Congratulations are in order,” continued Goliath. “Well done for making it this far.”
David continued to watch him.
“There has a been a major development since I last visited you in your shit-house. A development I wanted to discuss.”
“The location of my death,” murmured David.
Goliath attempted to slap the table top and missed, but his face, caught in the momentum, did not. Goliath lifted Adler's face off the table. Adler's nose was busted and bleeding and tears streamed down his cheeks.
“I'm actually beginning to feel sorry for him,” muttered David.
Goliath attempted a nod, but only managed to shake his head. “You have a look approximating pity on your face. Either that or you're about to empty your bowels and make a shit-house out of this place also. So Gull has discovered the existence of the latest VIP to enter the fray. Gull sure is a plucky little bastard. You are therefore aware that your death marks the location of this VIP, and that within their memory is stored the 'Omega Protocol'.”
“Omega Protocol?”
“That's what I have called it. The protocol required for communication with the Architects, to be made available to me following your final gasp. I appreciate this may not be the best news for you, mortal as you are. And me being immortal, my organic self being replaceable.”
“Then you'll also appreciate that my mortality makes me pressed for time. So get to the fucking point.”
Adler's lower jaw nudged left and right, and from deep inside his throat came a long, gaseous burp.