Eli's Promise

by Ronald H. Balson

  Colonel Bivens nodded. His expression slowly changed to warm and considerate. He reached into an inlaid wooden box on his desk and took out two cigars. He offered one to Eli, but Eli politely declined. The colonel cut the end off of his cigar and lit it. “So where is this fellow, Max, now?”

  “At this moment, I don’t know. We think he will soon be at Camp Landsberg and maybe at Camp Feldafing. He has contacted residents there who are raising money to buy his visas.”

  The colonel rubbed his chin. “Do you know what he looks like? Can you ID him?”

  “If he’s the same man I knew in Lublin, then yes I can.”

  The colonel pressed a button on his intercom and said, “Send in Major Donnelly.” Then he looked across his desk at Eli. “We’ll catch this fellow and put an end to his monkey business; you can take that to the bank. When you talk to Lucius, you tell him George says hello and that I’m on top of this assignment, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A few minutes later, Major Donnelly entered the office. Eli explained Max’s operation. “Last month we set up a sting in Wolfratshausen,” Eli said, “but unfortunately someone tipped Max off and he didn’t appear. We know that he has contracted to sell visas at two other camps within the next few weeks. We’ll need the U.S. Army to act quickly and take him into custody.”

  “We thank you for bringing this criminal enterprise to our attention, Mr. Rosen,” Colonel Bivens said. “We’ll take it from here. Major, I want you to contact this Helstein woman and catch this rat.”

  “I’d like to be present when he’s arrested. I can positively identify him for you.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Rosen. You’ve done enough. Helstein can ID him, can’t she? We’ll catch this fellow in the act, and that’ll be sufficient evidence to prosecute him.”

  “You don’t understand. I need to be there. I need to confront him. He has information about my wife.”

  Colonel Bivens and Major Donnelly glanced at each other and then back to Eli. “So this is not just about a guy trying to sell phony immigration visas, is it?” Bivens said.

  “They’re not phony,” Eli snapped indignantly. “They’re valid. I know of two Föhrenwald residents who have emigrated to New York on black-market visas. That’s criminal and it should be stopped. But I also have a personal matter, a history with this man that goes back several years. He was known as a fixer in Lublin. He betrayed me and many others, and I think he knows what happened to my wife.”

  Bivens’s expression softened. “She didn’t make it out?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I pray that she did, but like a million other people, I’m searching for a lost relative in postwar Europe.”

  “What makes you think this fixer knows what happened?”

  “Because”—Eli paused to swallow—“I entrusted my wife to him. He pledged to protect her.” Eli lowered his gaze. “I paid him. When I was sent away, I relied on him to safeguard her. When I came back, she was gone.”

  “And Max?”

  “I thought the Nazis killed him. Apparently, I was wrong.”

  Bivens stood and pointed a commanding finger at Donnelly. “Major, I want you to contact the directors of the Munich-area DP camps. Alert them to the problem and find out any information you can about this character. But be careful. Make sure we don’t spook him. Then get up to Landsberg and Feldafing. Talk to their directors. Impress upon them the gravity of this scheme. Tell them that the United States Army takes it very seriously.” He tipped his head at Eli. “Take Mr. Rosen with you.” He extended his hand to Eli. “When you talk to General Clay, you tell him that George Bivens is going to put a stop to this fraudulent scheme once and for all. Major, show Mr. Rosen out and make arrangements to get up to the camps posthaste!”

  On the walk down the hall, Major Donnelly said to Eli, “Have you requested information about your wife from the CTB Register in Bad Arolsen?”

  Eli shook his head. “No. I’ve heard about it, everyone has, but I really don’t know much about it or how to access it. I know there’s an office that collects information about survivors and I’ve always assumed they’ve been sharing it with the DP camps.”

  “That’s your first mistake. Don’t assume.”

  “I’ve been checking the logs at the Föhrenwald office. Her name is not listed.”

  “DP logs are unreliable. The Central Tracing Bureau has a much broader database. In January of this year, the CTB moved its offices to Bad Arolsen, which is a town located at the juncture of the U.S., British and Soviet occupation zones. CTB has collected millions of documents—anything that could be found with a name on it—Gestapo records, concentration camp registers, secret police records. I’ve been there. It’s impressive. Typists write hundreds of letters every day, trying to put missing relatives together. If anyone can help you find out what happened to your wife, they can. When you get up there, ask for Ann Stewart. Tell her I sent you. If there’s any record at all, there’s a good chance Ann can find it. If I were you, I’d go up there and fill out a request as soon as you can. In person. It’s good to put a face with a request.”

  “Bad Arolsen?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s about 350 miles north of Munich. Unless you can requisition a jeep, you’d have to get there by train. In the meantime, I’m going to touch base with Landsberg and Feldafing. Colonel made it clear he wants arrangements made immediately. I’ll leave a message for you at the Föhrenwald administration office as soon as I can set up an appointment. I’ll pick you up, and we’ll ride up there together.” The major stuck out his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  * * *

  Snow began to fall heavily on Eli’s return to Föhrenwald. The roads were snowbound, the night was dark and Eli’s vision was occluded. The jeep lacked a heater, and the windshield wipers swept erratically. Eli periodically stuck his arm out of his window to brush the snow off the windshield. Speed was kept to a minimum. By the time he arrived back at Föhrenwald, the accumulated snow depth was well over a foot and Eli was chilled to the bone.

  He stood in his entryway, shook the snow off his overcoat and hung it by the front door. Adinah was in the kitchen and something smelled very good. “I made soup,” she said. “I asked Izzie what he wanted, and he promptly told me chicken soup.” She smiled warmly and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Thank you very much; that was sweet. Where is Izzie?”

  She tilted her head toward the back of the house. “He’s in his room. He had a small bowl of soup at six thirty and told me he was tired. He fell asleep.”

  “At six thirty? That’s unusual for Izzie.”

  Adinah nodded. “I don’t think he feels well tonight. He came straight home from school. He didn’t even go to basketball.”

  Eli grew worried. “Did he say what was bothering him?”

  “No, but he looked tired and he felt warm to me. He said he had a little sore throat and he asked me not to tell you. Then he went into his room.”

  “Was he coughing?”

  Adinah nodded. “Some.”

  Eli hurried into the bedroom. Izaak was sound asleep in his clothes on top of his covers. His face was flushed. Eli reached over and felt his forehead. It was hot.

  All the alarms went off. “I’m going to the clinic,” Eli said to Adinah, quickly grabbing his coat off the hook. “He needs medical care. I’m going to ask my friend Dr. Weisman to come here and examine him. I certainly can’t take Izzie out in this storm. Would it be possible for you to stay here a little while longer while I go fetch the doctor?”

  “Of course. I am here as long as you need me.”

  PART II

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ALBANY PARK

  CHICAGO

  ALBANY PARK NEIGHBORHOOD

  MAY 1965

  On the seventh day of May 1965, exactly twenty years from the date that Germany surrendered, a tall man stepped off the Montrose Avenue bus at Lawndale Street in the Albany Park section of Chicago. He was dressed as a businessm
an in a blue suit and white shirt. His dark black hair was graying at the temples. The weather was agreeable, and he smiled as he surveyed the area. He peered down Lawndale, a pleasant residential street gracefully shaded by a canopy of elms, and then proceeded down the sidewalk with a copy of the Chicago Tribune folded back to the real estate section. Brick bungalows and small apartment buildings lined the parkways. Daffodils and pansies added splashes of color. He gazed at the pleasant setting. Urbs in horto, wasn’t that the Chicago motto? “City in a garden.”

  Back in 1893, wealthy bankers and industrialists purchased the 640-acre McAllister Farm, developed it into a large residential and commercial area and annexed it to the city of Chicago. Streetcar magnate DeLancey Louderbeck named the project after his boyhood home: Albany, New York. Twenty years later, Albany Park had seven thousand residents, and commercial land was valued at $52 per frontal foot. By 1940, Albany Park reported 56,692 inhabitants, and the cost per commercial frontal foot had jumped to more than $3,000.

  By 1965, Albany Park was an established neighborhood and a pastel mural of diversity. Its tree-lined streets and parks had become beacons for European immigrants. They came from Poland, from Sweden, from Russia and Germany. Many were refugees. They fled the Russian pogroms, the devastation of the First World War and the ravages of the Second World War. A person waiting for a bus on the corner of Lawrence and Kimball might hear seven different languages.

  When the man reached a redbrick three-flat with a FOR RENT sign hanging on the front gate, he stopped. He consulted his paper, nodded, walked up four concrete steps and pressed the door buzzer.

  “I’m here to see about the apartment,” he said to the woman who answered the door.

  “Oh, well, I can tell you straight off, it’s lovely,” she said. “And it’s currently vacant.” She appeared to be middle-aged, a tad over five foot six, and was neatly dressed in a fitted dress, navy with small white polka dots. Her shoulder-length auburn hair had soft curls. He thought she had a pleasant face.

  “My name is Ruth Gold,” she said.

  She looked him over as well. He was square-shouldered and handsome in his suit, and his shoes were shined, always a good sign for Ruth. He seemed well mannered. In some ways, he reminded her of Cary Grant. He must be a downtown businessman, she concluded, though she detected the hint of a European accent.

  “My name is Eli,” he said with a smile and a slight nod. “Eli Rosen.”

  She took a step back and tipped her head toward the apartment door. “The unit is right here on the first floor, a very nice one-bedroom with a full kitchen. The former tenants moved to Skokie. It’s only been available for three weeks.” She unlocked the apartment door and beckoned him to enter. “Rent’s one hundred and sixty dollars a month, payable in advance, promptly on the first.”

  The apartment was spotless. The kitchen was small but certainly sufficient for Eli. Two windows overlooked a small patch of grass and bushes in the front. The floor was covered in patterned linoleum. He nodded. “I think this will do nicely, Mrs. Gold,” he said.

  “What is your line of work, Mr. Rosen, if I may ask?”

  “I work for the government.”

  Ruth’s eyes widened. “The government? Oh, my goodness.”

  Eli smiled. “Just an office desk job. Really quite unexciting.”

  Ruth nervously tipped her head from side to side, hesitated and then said, “I know this is kind of awkward, but I have to inform you that we have rules. This is a quiet building. There’s just my eighty-two-year-old mother, my twenty-five-year-old daughter and me. I mean, you don’t look the type, but we don’t want any wild parties or loud music or drugs, you know?”

  “I’m not the type, Mrs. Gold.”

  “Hmm. Okay. So do you want the apartment? I have other people that might be interested.”

  He took a money clip from his pocket and counted out one hundred and sixty dollars. “I’ll take it,” he said with a warm smile. “You can tell all those other interested people that it’s been rented.”

  Ruth took the money and shook his hand. “Welcome to Albany Park, Mr. Rosen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHICAGO

  ALBANY PARK NEIGHBORHOOD

  MAY 1965

  In her bedroom in the second-floor apartment, with her arms contorted up over her shoulders, twenty-five-year-old Mimi Gold struggled with the zipper and clasp of her new two-piece dress. “Mom,” she called, “would you please come help me?”

  “I love that dress, Mimi,” Ruth Gold said as she fastened the hook and eye.

  Mimi did a quick spin and her pleated dress twirled. “$49.95 at Bonwit’s. How do I look?”

  “Fabulous!”

  “Do I look professional? I’m on assignment tonight.”

  “I thought you were going to Christine’s engagement party.”

  “I am, but I’m also covering it for the Trib. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a few columns on the society page.”

  “Is Nathan going with you?”

  “Are you snooping, Mom?”

  Ruth smiled and bit her lip. “I don’t know, maybe. You seem to be seeing quite a bit of one another.”

  Mimi smiled and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Okay, I forgive you. Nathan is a close friend of Preston’s. He’ll be at the party as well. I’m sure we’ll meet up, but we’re not going together.”

  Ruth disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a cake plate covered in foil. “Mimi, before you go, would you mind taking this cake down to Mr. Rosen? He moved into the Levinsons’ apartment last week.”

  “Does Mr. Rosen have a family? The Levinsons were pretty crowded in that little apartment.”

  She chuckled. “Yes, they were. I’m sure that’s why they moved. Mr. Rosen is a single man. Very nice-looking.”

  Mimi raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Do you have your eyes on him, Mom?”

  “I do not! He’s quite the gentleman, but there’s something about him, Mimi. I sense an air of purpose. There’s a reason he’s moving into this neighborhood. A man like that doesn’t just wander down Lawndale and ring my doorbell. He’s very polished and very professional. You have to wonder why isn’t he renting an apartment on the Gold Coast or on Lake Shore Drive? Why Albany Park?”

  “Maybe he likes quiet neighborhoods.”

  Ruth wasn’t convinced. “No, there’s something more. He says he works for the government.”

  “What branch of the government?”

  Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know. He looks like James Bond to me. Maybe he’s a spy?”

  “In Albany Park? In a one-bedroom apartment? That’s his purpose, to be a spy in Albany Park?” Mimi giggled. “James Bond of Lawndale Street! Seriously, Mom?”

  She shrugged again. “Okay, maybe the FBI. But I’m telling you, he’s here for a reason. I have a nose for these things.”

  Mimi laughed, took the plate, inhaled deeply and smiled. “I have a nose for Grandma’s cake. Can I have a piece?”

  “No.”

  “How is she feeling tonight?”

  “Much better,” Ruth said, and nodded her head in the direction of the living room. “She’s watching the news. You know she has a crush on Chet Huntley.”

  Grandma was sitting on the couch, straight and tall. No slouching allowed, as she would say. Her silver hair was permed, and a print robe hung loosely from her thin shoulders. Her eyes were glued to the nightly news and an interview with a NASA engineer at Cape Kennedy.

  “The leak in the Gemini Four rocket has been repaired,” the engineer said to David Brinkley. “Lift-off is a go for Thursday.”

  “He’s going to walk in space, Mimi,” Grandma said without looking up. “Ed White, the astronaut. Can you imagine floating outside a space capsule, hanging on with some kind of a rope?”

  Mimi shook her head. “Nope. Would you do it, Grandma?”

  “I should say not. I’ll be up there soon enough.”

  Mimi leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night
, Grandma.”

  “Are you taking that cake down to the new tenant?”

  Mimi nodded. “Is this your famous babka?”

  Ruth walked up and interjected. “Yes, it is, and you take it straight to Mr. Rosen. No pinching pieces off the bottom. Tell him that we welcome him to the building.”

  “Oh, come on, Mama. Just a small pinch, just a biselleh. He’ll never notice.”

  Ruth stood firm with her hands on her hips.

  “All right, I’ll take him the cake, but I don’t think it’s fair that I don’t get a piece.”

  * * *

  Eli opened his door to find a pretty young woman holding a cake plate. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Rosen, I’m Mimi Gold. I live upstairs. This is a welcome gift for you. My grandma baked it, and her cakes are really good. I personally vouch for them.”

  “Oh, how nice.” He eyed the plate, pulled back the corner of the foil and said, “Oh my, this looks like babka. Is it?”

  Mimi nodded. “Yes, and this one’s my very favorite. It has raspberries inside.” She put her finger to her lips and whispered, “And a little whiskey. My grandma’s from Lodz.”

  It only appeared for the tiniest of moments, but Mimi saw it. A sudden freeze in Eli’s expression, an unexpected splash of ice-cold water. He quickly replaced it with a smile, as though he drew a curtain to hide a secret room. “Lodz?” he said. “Of course. I know it well. It was about three hours from Lublin, where I grew up.”

  He pulled off the foil, pinched a small piece of cake off the bottom between his thumb and forefinger and popped it into his mouth. “Mmm, Mmm. Just like I remember.”

  Mimi laughed. “Just a minute ago, my mom warned me not to pinch a piece on my way down here.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, holding the plate out. “That’s how he always did it. I promise I won’t tell.”

  Mimi blushed and pinched a piece of cake. “Mmm. It’s the best.”