by Mario Bolduc
The sound of his drop was muted by the gravel spread on the surface of the roof. A low wall, maybe a bit less than a metre high, surrounded the rooftop. Rusted flagpoles stood at attention every metre or so, probably installed decades earlier for May Day celebrations.
A large door opened on a staircase. Max went down. On the third floor, he reached a deserted corridor, half-light revealing grease on the walls. At the far end of the corridor, a door left ajar. Max moved toward it, anxious. He’d expected a greeting party with the usual hardware. He’d expected to be dragged into a windowless room where Kevin would be tied to a chair. That was what kidnappers usually did, or at least that was what TV shows told him. But the place was empty.
Max pushed the door open. He could make out desks covered in dusty paperwork, filing cabinets, a coffee machine. On the wall, ancient frames showing model airplanes. On a work table covered in newspaper clippings, a coffee cup. Still warm.
“Kevin?”
No answer.
A worrying silence, broken by a passing car in the street.
Max called after Kevin again.
No dice.
He looked for the switch on the wall. His hand slid on something sticky. The light flicked on. The wall was covered in blood. Blood on the floor, as well. Fresh blood, which hadn’t had time to dry. Drops, stains really, growing steadily toward the door at the end of the corridor. Max rushed over to it and ripped the door open. Blood everywhere. A battered arm stuck out from the bathtub in a sort of macabre salute. Max rushed toward the body.
A woman.
She hadn’t been dead long. Her body still warm. Her eyes open.
Laura Costinar. Max recognized her from the picture on the counterfeit passport.
She’d been stabbed several times in the chest. Just like the tenant in the Romani building. Probably the same killers, then, whom Max had missed by only a few minutes.
Where was Kevin? Whoever was keeping him hostage had likely gone after the Romani leader’s wife. What had they done to Kevin? What the hell was his friend doing with these sorts of people?
Max felt frustration, anger, growing inside him. What a mess. He was the one who’d led Kevin down this path of violence that night, when he’d first offered Kevin a job on his team. How would he ever forgive himself for introducing Kevin to the criminal life? How would he ever erase the image of a woman soaking in a pool of her own blood?
A siren broke the silence. Then another. Footsteps coming from street level. As if the whole city had suddenly been alerted to Laura Costinar’s death. From the other side of the office door, from the corridor, Max heard voices.
A trap. He’d fallen for it like an amateur. No time to think about that now, though. Max climbed through the window and onto the fire escape. Down in the street, police cars, their lights revolving. To the roof then. The blaring of sirens continued. Max reached the railing. Down on street level, on the north side of the building, a heavy metal fence. However, it didn’t go all the way around the building. On the south side, an alley, police cars filling it, with more incoming. Max was trapped. Soon enough the cops would climb to the roof.
His cellphone rang.
Max hesitated for a moment before answering.
“Robert Cheskin?”
“Boerescu?”
“What are you doing?” the fixer shouted.
Surprised, worried, Max looked around. He felt as if he was being watched. Had Boerescu been tailing him?
“Behind you, on your right, there’s scaffolding.”
Max glanced in that direction.
“Go. Now. You don’t have much time.”
Max ran across the length of the roof. He found a pile of supplies leaning against the wall. Basic tools and a harness used by construction workers.
“Take the one on the left. It’s already tied to a cable. Use it to rappel down to the roof of the building next door. Do you see it?”
Two or three storeys lower, another squat office building. From there, Boerescu continued, he could reach street level without being noticed.
A moment’s hesitation.
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
Max jumped off the roof.
Part Two
Sacha-the-Red
16
Auschwitz-Birkenau, January 18, 1945
A rumour had been confirmed the night before. It threw the officers of the Kommandantur into a state of extreme panic. The 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front was advancing all along the Vistula, heading to Silesia, aiming to encircle — in conjunction with other Soviet battalions — the German forces around Kraków and its vicinity. The plodding, disorganized Russians had moved far more rapidly than expected. Their tanks were tearing through Central Europe already. In their wake: theft, rape, pillage. The dream of a global Aryan civilization was over. In a few days, the barbarians would be at the gates of Auschwitz. The SS officers in the know had become feverish. There were no more parties, no more dancing. No more champagne from Occupied France. The Americans had driven the Germans out of that country and pushed them eastward. The Nazi empire was shrinking like fresh leather under heavy sun. Soon Poland would fall into the Allies’ hands.
And there would only be one Rom left in all of Auschwitz: Emil Rosca.
Following his humiliation in September 1943, Heinrich Himmler had left the camp, giving Josef Mengele free rein: to prevent typhoid fever, he could gas as many Roma as he wished. A little before August 1, 1944, from his office in Berlin, Himmler had called for the elimination of the family camp. A number of Roma had managed to flee but were caught early the next morning. Martin Hofbauer, the Sinto man who had managed the black market, was led to the sandpit with the other fugitives. They were all shot in the back of the head.
During those days, the gas chambers and crematory ovens of Birkenau were reserved for Roma. Late in the evening members of the Sonderkommando relentlessly pursued their exterminations. Over Auschwitz the stars in the sky paled in the light of constant braziers. A stench of burned corpses permeated the air, making the enclosed barracks smell of death. Thanks to Oskar Müller’s intervention, Emil had once again avoided the ovens.
The only survivor of his kin.
In order to flee from the coming Russian invasion, the SS gathered every prisoner who could still walk from the three camps at Auschwitz — the Stammlager, Birkenau, and Monowitz — and sent them on the road, heading toward Germany. Emil never learned who had decided on this mass evacuation, or why. The war was lost, anyway. The prisoners could barely stand. Many were shot and killed where they fell. Oskar Müller refused to leave. The orchestra conductor on the Titanic.
“We’ll play as civilization collapses,” he said. “Our final contribution to music.”
In the now-emptied Block 28, its former occupants on the road or in mass graves, Müller gathered the last members of his orchestra, wretches holding on to the instruments that had kept them alive, believing with all of the spirit left in their weakened selves that these violins, flutes, or horns would save them at the moment of the final debacle. Emil had believed it, as well. He never kept his patched-up Paolo Soprani far from him. It was a talisman more than a sword. A cloak more than a shield.
The musicians felt a twinge of hope when Oskar Müller arrived dressed in his finest. They all knew that Müller had interceded with his superiors to spare his protégés from the evacuation along a road the Soviets had already begun to bomb. The members of the other orchestras hadn’t had the same luck, including the women’s orchestra, who’d been without Alma Rosé for a few months after she’d died of natural causes. Emil knew, however, through Christina, that Müller and some others — Eduard Wirths, Dr. Josef, Hans Leibrecht, and Matthias Kluge, notably — would soon be high-stepping it to Berlin to prepare their escape to Switzerland. Naively, Emil thought Christina would bring him with her on this uncertain voyage. Another il
lusion.
It all happened so quickly.
Oskar Müller went mad. He pulled his Luger out of its holster and opened fire on the musicians, one after the other, damning the Russians, those barbarians — they would never put a hand on his masterwork, his magnificent orchestra. Emil was at the far end of the room when the shooting began and managed to avoid the first few shots by jumping behind a wooden bed. If he tried to get up and flee, he’d be spotted.
Then the firing stopped. An intolerable silence filled the barracks. Emil held his breath, listening. Perhaps Müller thought him dead? Perhaps he was gone already for Switzerland? He heard footsteps, a sound he’d waited for expectantly every day for weeks and weeks. Christina’s footsteps. She would lead Müller out the door. She’d saved Emil twice already. She would do it again.
“Emil …”
Her voice was soft, unyielding, beguiling. Emil could still see Müller’s boots among the corpses. Unmoving, waiting to finish the job before leaving the barracks.
“Emil,” Christina went on. “Come out. You’ve nothing to fear.”
For once, Emil doubted Christina’s sincerity. The woman he’d held in his arms so many times in the past few months now seemed distant, even threatening.
Then her feet appeared next to her husband’s.
Christina leaned over as if she’d known from the start where Emil was hiding. She smiled, ignoring the bodies around her. Emil hated her for that smile, which seemed like a threat. The young woman stretched her hand out to him. That hand he had kissed countless times, now taking him out of his safe place toward death. Emil knew he couldn’t resist her charms now, in the same way he’d never been able to resist them in the past, though his life hung in the balance.
He slipped his hand into Christina’s, and she pulled him up with all her strength. Oskar Müller was smiling. His gun in his hand, he watched Christina help Emil stand. Emil had left the accordion under the wooden bed. A separation, he thought, that could only lead to tragedy. He had lost everything: the woman he loved, the musical instrument that had kept him alive in the midst of this hell. Christina was smiling. The same frozen smile.
The conductor sighed. “A shame to lose such a talented musician.”
Müller brought his weapon to Emil’s head. A last glance at Christina, her face frozen.
“Let me do it,” she interrupted.
Emil shut his eyes. She had chosen to end this life she’d saved twice already. The betrayal of the woman he loved seemed far more terrible than the prospect of his impending death.
Müller glanced at Christina. Intrigued? Perplexed? It was hard to say.
She smiled. “I’m the one who recruited him, no?”
Müller lowered the Luger and handed it to Christina, its barrel pointed at the floor. Emil discovered in his lover an expertise with weapons: she knew exactly what she was doing. There was no surprise at the heft of the weapon in her hand. She had likely killed before, other prisoners, other men she’d used to her satisfaction.
Christina stepped toward Emil and raised the gun. Emil closed his eyes.
Gunshot.
Emil wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes and saw Christina already leaning over her husband’s body. A red dot at his temple, a single shot. Emil was rooted in place, shocked, not knowing what to do.
Christina turned toward him. “Come on! Hurry up!” She pulled a uniform out of a canvas bag Emil hadn’t noticed before and tossed it to him. “Your name is Reinicke. SS-Sturmmann Reinicke, private first class. Not that ranks matter anymore …”
“Christina …”
“Hurry!”
Emil slipped the uniform on. It was far too big, but there was no time to do anything about that.
Christina handed him documents. “His papers. It’ll be enough to pass the guard post. No one will stop you, anyway. The war is practically over, Emil.”
The young man wanted to take her in his arms, but she pushed him back, raised her hand, and pointed at the far end of the room. She barely shook at all. “In that direction, Russians. Maybe a day’s walk away.”
“Let’s go together —”
Christina put her hand over his mouth. “Too dangerous.”
Emil didn’t care. He would go where she went; he’d follow her every footstep. His freedom was meaningless if he couldn’t be with her.
Christina could read Emil’s determination in his eyes but refused to relent. She took his face in her hands, kissed him, and stared deeply into his eyes. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. From the very first day. I’ll never forget you.”
Emil took his accordion from beneath the bed. By the time he’d gotten back to his feet, Christina was gone. He could hear footsteps, fading fast. Emil rushed out of the block, hoping to catch up, but once outside, he couldn’t find her. Officers were rushing toward canvas-covered trucks. Other vehicles criss-crossed the camp, picking up stragglers. Soldiers rushed toward the crematory ovens with explosives, ignoring the “Muslims.” They were too weak to flee, anyway, barely had the strength to stand. Already the sound of explosions could be heard. The SS had planned to destroy the evidence before the Russians arrived, but the Soviets had moved far too quickly. Now it was every man for himself.
He found himself alone among the corpses. He had to flee. To go where Christina had directed him. A handful of guards appeared out of nowhere and shouted at him, recognizing his uniform. They pulled him with them: “Hurry!”
The blast of a horn.
Emil turned around. Christina was running toward a moving truck, already halfway to the gates. Her arms were extended, trying to haul herself into its covered bed. Just as she was about to climb into the back, Emil saw Hans Leibrecht poke his head out, holding on to the canvas. He smiled and kicked the young woman in the chest. Christina tried a second time, and he kicked again. She stumbled for a few steps and fell. The truck kept moving, leaving Christina behind. Emil wanted to run to her, to save her, but he was trapped. The soldiers flanked him still, carrying the man they thought was a stunned comrade with them. More explosions. A cloud of heavy smoke, of ashes, floating in the grey sky over Auschwitz.
He undid his belt and tied each end of it to the Paolo Soprani, allowing him to use it as a strap to replace the one that had broken. He could carry the gormónya on his back now. However, his pants were falling down. It didn’t seem to raise any questions. The SS he’d left the camp with had all rushed south. Meanwhile, Emil was following train tracks toward the Vistula. He passed soldiers, all in a panic, fleeing every which way. They weren’t guards assigned to prisoners in Auschwitz, but troops in the regular army, abandoning their positions. Clearly, all that was left on the soldiers’ minds was to save their own skins, to escape from the incoming disaster.
No one noticed Emil’s dishevelled air; no one asked him questions about his destination. He was walking east while everyone else was rushing west. Anything but the Russians, the deserters seemed to be saying. The hell of bombardments, a long road to an impasse in Berlin, was preferable to what the Soviets had in store for the Germans. The rumour had reached the ears of the Auschwitz officers. The Red Army was paying in full the soldiers of the Third Reich for the horrors the SS had visited upon them. Emil didn’t care. Christina had ordered him east, so he followed her command without question. Nothing could be worse than Auschwitz.
The young Rom walked for hours in this no man’s land, characteristic of territory abandoned by a fleeing army. The population was boarding up their homes as best they could. The roads were deserted, destroyed, impracticable for anything more than a man on foot. The burning fires lit by bombs bursting in the distance made the horizon glow, an unceasing sunset. Emil found a dead soldier. He was slumped in tall grass, his leg ripped from his body. His abandoned mess kit still contained biscuits and margarine. Emil took the food and walked on. Christina had said a day’s walk. Emil thought he’d been dragging hi
s feet for at least thirty-six hours. He was tired, famished, but didn’t dare stop to sleep. And where would he sleep, anyway? All of the homes, all of the farms, everything was burnt and in ruin. His German uniform made him a tempting target. He would need to get rid of it but couldn’t guess where he’d find fresh clothes.
In the morning, he collapsed in a ditch, overcome with exhaustion. He fell asleep, his head on his accordion. Hours later the sun woke him. It was time to go on.
“Don’t move!”
Emil whipped around. A rifle greeted him. A young soldier speaking a language he had never heard. Russian, certainly. The soldier was hardly older than Emil, threatening him with a heavy rifle he could barely keep steady.
“Don’t move!” he repeated.
Emil was expecting a shot, but the soldier called for someone, without taking his eyes away from Emil. Another soldier appeared; this man was older, perhaps an officer. He told Emil in German to get up and put his hands behind his head.
The older soldier walked toward Emil and took the accordion. The sight of the instrument seemed to intrigue him. “It’s yours? You’re a musician?”
Emil nodded.
The man handed the Paolo Soprani back to the young Rom. “Come.”
Emil was made a prisoner.
He wasn’t the only one. Farther along the road, sitting beside a muddy field, others like him, hands tied or on their heads. Haggard soldiers waking from a nightmare six years in the making. Emil looked for guards who might know him from the camp. He recognized none of the Germans. He’d surely be shot now. Summary execution. Why would the Russians want to take prisoners? The Red Army had advanced so rapidly because they’d executed everyone who’d surrendered, Emil thought. They’d travelled light. And yet no gunfire for now — the soldiers left sitting on the side of the road. They were given meagre rations, which seemed like a feast to Emil, who was used to the food in the extermination camps.