by Andrew Gross
“My answer.” The professor still seemed conflicted.
“Yes. There is still work to be done.”
“Then, yes! My answer is, yes, I’ll come.” Mendl put his bony hand on Blum’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re right, it is too late for Marte and Lucy. But not for what I know. I’ll come with you.”
Blum squeezed the professor in return. “I give you my word, sir, I’ll get you back. Or die trying.”
“There’s just one thing…”
“What?”
“I won’t be coming alone. There is someone who must accompany me.”
Blum shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“There’s a boy. In truth, he’s no longer a boy. He’s seventeen.”
“It’s out of the question,” Blum insisted. “It will be hard enough to make sure I can protect you. But a boy like that … This isn’t a popularity contest. This is about the war. The government of the United States has gone to extreme lengths to set this up.”
“I’m afraid it’s not a wish, Panie Blum. It’s a condition. For me to come. And he’s not just some boy…” Mendl hesitated a moment. “He’s my nephew. I won’t leave him.” His gaze was resolute. “Without him, I don’t go.”
“Nephew…” Blum drew in a troubled breath. Three would be more to manage. To take responsibility for. More conspicuous in the escape. What if the boy was hit? What then? Would the professor go or remain with him? He saw it clearly. Mendl would not so easily leave him behind.
“You wouldn’t leave your own flesh and blood behind, would you, Panie Blum?”
Blum felt himself soften. What choice did he have? And Mendl’s question seemed to hit the right nerve. “This boy, he can keep a secret?”
“I’ll make sure of it.” Mendl nodded. “He’s a remarkable lad. In many ways.”
“I don’t care how remarkable he is, he still can’t breathe a word. Everything depends on it.”
“He won’t,” Mendl promised. “I give you my oath.”
Blum saw that it was a risk. He didn’t know what someone like Strauss would do, faced with the same decision. But what choice was there? He saw the resolve in the professor’s eyes. Without this boy, there was no Mendl. And that was why he was here. “All right. But no one else can know. No one.”
“You’ll see, he won’t be a burden. I give you my word.”
“I hope so. All our lives depend on it. Before we go, I want to meet him. Which block are you in?”
“Thirty-six.”
“I’m in twenty. And we’ll have to get our way onto the work detail.”
Mendl nodded. “I know how to get that accomplished. There’s a guard, Richter, who generally oversees it. And a kapo I know. They are always looking for workers. Or bribes. If I had money.”
“I can take care of that part. So I will find you tomorrow. Maybe play sick.” Blum put out his hand. “I’ll be by your block.”
They shook.
“You know, from the day we left Lvov,” Mendl looked at him sadly, “Marte and I dreamed of taking our daughter to America. Of course the minute we got on that train we all knew that dream was dead. So maybe it’s best, in a way, that they’re gone now. Maybe that’s how history intended it to be. If either was alive, even by a breath, you know I would never leave them.”
Blum nodded. “I know that.”
“I wonder whether anyone will ever take note of that fact one day, should we reach there?” the professor mused. “Or in the end, if it even really matters?”
FORTY-THREE
The Abwehr Daimler was waved through the camp’s front gate and directed to the administrative offices.
Martin Franke stepped out.
A major in an SS uniform, handsome, with strong, dark features, came down the steps to greet him.
“Herr Colonel…” The officer gave Franke a quick Heil. “I am Lagerkommandant Ackermann. I am in charge of the camp while Kommandant Hoss is away.”
“Major.” Franke raised his palm. They shook hands.
“You’ve come a long way this busy morning for a visit. I’m very sorry the commandant couldn’t be here himself to welcome you.”
“I’m sorry to have arrived on such short notice. I hope I’m not interrupting your work. But I have a matter of some importance that I believe relates to your camp.”
“If the Abwehr feels it is a matter of such urgency…” Ackermann smiled, his sarcasm showing through, “then no work is too important to interrupt. Come, it’s been a long journey from Warsaw. We shall discuss it over a kaffee inside.”
They went into the administrative offices. Lieutenant Fromm came in with two coffees, and they sat around the small conference table in front of a map of the camp. “I am sorry that the commandant is not here. Unfortunately, he’s been detained an extra day in Berlin, in meetings with Obersturmbannführer Eichmann and Reichsführer Himmler.”
“So I understand,” Franke replied, noting the SS man’s superior tone. While technically Franke had the higher rank, the political battle between the Abwehr and its chain of command through Admiral Canaris and Göring, and the SS, reporting to Himmler himself, all competing for the Führer’s ear, was not a secret. This Ackermann, Franke judged, would likely hide behind that protection. Franke was determined to prove him wrong.
“So please, if you don’t mind…,” Ackermann said with a glance at his watch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but there are many things I must attend to.”
“I’ll get right to it then. I believe that someone may have entered your camp, Major.”
“Entered the camp?”
“Someone dropped in by plane, nearby. Either as an advance agent of some kind, perhaps to liberate it for the Allies. Or possibly for some other reason…” Franke put down his coffee.
“Some other reason…?” Ackermann leaned back skeptically and crossed his legs.
“Perhaps to locate someone, Major. Someone inside.”
“No one can just enter here without being detected.” The camp commander looked at Franke with a narrow, skeptical gaze. “And for what…? You have seen the Jews rounded up in Warsaw. You must have some idea what goes on here. Only the biggest fool in the world would make his way in here knowingly.”
“Perhaps to take someone back out then.” Franke looked at the major’s deep-set eyes.
“I’m sure you took notice of the security as you drove in. There is a double row of wire. Electrified. It is patrolled night and day by guards with dogs. Everyone has a number, accounted for daily. Every vehicle in and out is thoroughly searched.”
“Yes, Major.” Franke opened his briefcase and took out the file he’d prepared. “I did notice the security here. But I’m not sure if you are aware that a low-flying plane was heard two days ago near Wilczkowice, approximately twenty kilometers from the camp, and a parachuter was spotted coming in. Likely to link up with Polish resistance on the ground.” He laid out the report of the local farmer’s sighting. Ackermann read through it slowly.
It appeared he wasn’t aware.
“You are busy, Herr Lagerkommandant. This is the sort of drudgery we in the intelligence corps concern ourselves with. By the way,” Franke laid out the next sheet, “you don’t happen to have any truffles in the surrounding forests, do you, Major?’
“Truffles? Truffles are indigenous to northern Italy. And France,” the SS man replied.
“I thought not,” Franke said. “But you do have birchwood?”
“Birchwood? Yes, wood is in no shortage.” The camp commander looked at him curiously as Franke passed him the intercepted communiqués about the “truffle hunter” and the birchwood forest. He read them and put them down. “But this all proves nothing, of course. This person, even if it is what you say, could be anywhere in the region.”
“Is there any other target of strategic importance in the area?”
“There is a prisoner of war camp as part of the overall complex. And the IG Farben facility that is under construction.”
“Which you provide the labor for, I believe,” Franke said.
Ackermann leafed through the report again and put it down. “Well, if he is here, as you suggest, there are no ways out. There are over three hundred thousand prisoners here,” the Lagerkommandant said. “In all the camps.”
“Yes, and I want every one accounted for,” Franke said. “Today.”
“You want, Colonel?” Ackermann raised a countering eye at him.
“Yes. As per General Graebner in Warsaw and Admiral Canaris in Berlin.” Franke pulled out an official order. “And Reichmarshall Göring…”
Ackermann took the paper and stared with mounting rage at the signed order from an Abwehr general. “Lagerkommandant Ackermann, please be aware that on the suspicion of a matter of security I have spoken with my superiors in Berlin and they have instructed you…” He read through the memo without hiding his contempt and then put it down. Canaris, the Abwehr head, was a weakened but still powerful man, known to lock heads with SS Reichsführer Himmler for the Führer’s attention.
“Herr Lagerkommandant, we do not want an investigation into something that is potentially harmful to the war effort to be hung up in, how shall we say, a kind of political squabble, while you spend the day attempting to reconfirm with your own superiors what they will likely simply approve anyway. And in the event I am right on this, I cannot conceive you would want this kind of lapse to have taken place while the commandant is in Berlin.”
Ackermann’s face grew tight. He stared at the order again and slid it back across the table, though Franke could see he would rather have taken it and ripped it up in front of Franke and thrown the pieces on the floor. Then out of nowhere the commandant grew pensive. “You said two days ago…?”
“Yes. On the morning of the twenty-third.”
“Yesterday we let in thirty-one laborers into the main camp to assist with construction. Only thirty were counted leaving.”
Franke’s eyes grew wide. “And you did not follow that up?”
“The guards assumed it was a miscount. It happens from time to time. Not a single prisoner was unaccounted for. And what kind of fool would choose of his own accord to be left behind in this hellhole, Colonel?”
“Maybe a very daring and well-trained fool, Major. I would like you to bring me the person who organized that work detail.”
“That will take some time, of course.” There was massive work to be done today, numbers to be met. Two trains were arriving. To be weighed down chasing a folly like this would cost a lot of manpower. Throw everything off. And to what end? There were three hundred thousand prisoners within the wires here. “I’m afraid I will have to discuss this with Kommandant Hoss, Herr Colonel…”
“I repeat, Herr Major, I am certain you would not want such a lapse of security to occur while the commandant is away and you are insistent on waging a tug-of-war over who has proper authorization…?”
The SS had little respect for the Abwehr in general, Franke understood. Ackermann likely thought of himself as a man of action, dirtying his hands with the Führer’s proper work each day, whatever horror that entailed and was behind the gruesome smell Franke had noticed upon arriving. Ackermann no doubt looked upon Franke as merely some overzealous desk clerk who only got his hands soiled going over reports.
Yet Franke could see the assistant commandant knew he was boxed in.
“Fromm!” the Lagerkommandant buzzed in his aide. The lieutenant who had served them their coffee ran in.
“Yes, Major. Are you ready for Captain Kimpner now?”
“No. I want you to bring me that jacket that was found this morning. In the equipment locker.”
“Yes, Major.” The lieutenant looked back, confused. “I’ll have it brought up now.”
Franke looked at the assistant commandant. “A jacket was found?”
“Just this morning. It could have been from anyone, Colonel. It might have been there days, even weeks…”
“Someone is here, Major!” Franke jabbed his finger against the table and his eyes lit up with zeal. “Of that you can be sure. He put his life on the line to get himself in here. And now we are going to find out why.”
FORTY-FOUR
Before the evening meal, Alfred wound his way over to Block Forty and found Leo looking over a makeshift chessboard on his bunk.
“Come in the back,” he said. “I have something important to show you, son.”
“I’m going over some things,” the boy said. The old man seemed quite excited.
“Just come. Quick. Now.”
“I haven’t seen such a spring in your step in some time,” Leo commented as they made their way back to the sick area of the block. “What’s going on?”
“Your prayers have been answered,” Alfred said with a wide smile. “What I am going to tell you remains exclusively between us. You tell no one, not another friend or a bunkmate. Certainly not your new chess partner. Do I have your word on that?”
“My word? Of course.” Leo saw the spark in Alfred’s eyes. “Tell me, what is up?”
Alfred squeezed his arm. “Someone is here to get us out.”
“Here…?”
“That’s right. In the camp.”
“And by ‘get us out,’ I assume you mean…?”
“Get us out of the camp. He has a way to escape.”
Leo curled a smile. He put his hand against Alfred’s cheek, as if checking his temperature. “Has the typhus hit you again, old man? Because this time you have truly crossed over into the delusional.”
Alfred’s eyes drilled into Leo. “Do I look sick, Leo?”
“In truth, for the first time in weeks, no.” Leo shook his head.
“So then look, I have something to show you.” Another prisoner passed by and went to the latrine. “Come over here, and keep your voice low.”
“You are certainly going to a lot of precaution. This is some kind of joke, right?”
They went to another corner of the sick area, where, at least for the moment, they found themselves alone. “Listen to me, Leo, someone has snuck into the camp from the outside. Not just from the outside … He came from Washington, D.C. In America. For me! I know this sounds crazy, and before you think of taking me to the infirmary again…” Alfred took out the folded letter from his trousers. “He gave me this. Read it.”
Leo reached to take the sheet of paper.
Alfred closed his hand over it again. “First I need your oath once again that this stays entirely between us.”
“I already gave that to you, Alfred. As I said, I swear.”
“On your family.”
“Yes, on my family,” Leo swore. “As much as is left of them.”
“Then, here…” Alfred released his hand.
Leo slowly unfolded the letter, casting a wary eye on his friend, whose mind he thought had completely crossed over the edge. He didn’t read English, only a few words he knew from seeing Chaplin films and Westerns at the cinema before the war. However, he fixed on Alfred’s name at the top of the letter, Professor Mendl. And then above it, his eyes registering the sender in absolute shock, he saw the words The United States of America and the image of the White House in Washington, D.C. Where the U.S. president lived.
Leo looked back at him, his throat dry. “How did you get this…?”
“Read on, my boy. And look, look who has signed it!” Alfred said, jabbing his finger.
Leo scanned the short letter and his gaze came to rest on the bold signature with the printed letters underneath.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
President of the United States
The breath grew tight in his chest. “Is this a ruse? If it is, Alfred, I give you credit, but I’m not sure why you would want to—”
“It’s no ruse, boy. They’ve come to get me out. They have a plan. And it just might work.” Alfred’s eyes were so purposeful and lucid Leo knew for sure that it was no trick. “But there’s a catch.”
“A catch?”
“Yes.” Alfred put his hand on Leo’s shoulder. “I need you to come along with me.”
“Me?”
“You, son.” Alfred nodded. “You know it all now. Every formula. Every progression of everything I’ve done related to diffusion. It’s why I’ve been teaching it to you all this time. God forbid, something goes wrong for me…” He took Leo by the shoulders, his eyes brimming with life and renewed purpose, and stared deeply at him. “I need you to be my brain.”
FORTY-FIVE
Buoyed with hope, Blum finished up his work detail for the day and went back to his barrack. He’d found him! The exhaustion and misery of his fellow block mates could be heard all around him, yet inwardly he was soaring with expansiveness and pride.
He had his man.
His needle amid a hundred haystacks. Now all they had to do was execute their escape tomorrow, still no simple task. It was clear in a second’s notice that the professor was in no condition to be dodging bullets. He’d be lucky to even be allowed on the work detail. That was where the bribe came in. And now they had this boy, Mendl’s nephew, someone else for Blum to have to watch out for. That added to the risk as well. Still, he saw it was the only way he could get the professor to come. You wouldn’t leave your own flesh and blood behind, would you…? So it had to be done, regardless of how it turned out.
Tomorrow … Blum tried to block out the groans of misery and exhaustion coming from the rest of the barracks. Their task was just to get through their day; but hopefully by tomorrow night, he would be gone. He went through in his mind how the plan would unfold. They had to position themselves on the side closest to the river. At 0030, gunfire would erupt from the woods. Presumably the guards would return fire. In the midst of the chaos, they would move away from the fighting, toward the Sola. A detachment would meet them there. If everything went well, a little over twenty-four hours from now he would know whether he had pulled off the biggest miracle of the war, or just become another forgotten number among the thousands and thousands here whose fates would never be known.
All he had to do was get through the next day.
“So? Did you ever find him?” someone asked Blum from below. It was the man in the tweed cap. “Your uncle?”