Pasha perked up at this information. “Mr. Müller, I am Miss Moran’s friend, Sir Robert Nichols. A year ago an old friend of mine, Vladimir Nabokov, now in America, had asked me to find out the status of his brother Sergey. His last known address was Buchenwald. Do you think someone might be able to help me?”
Hans Müller smiled broadly. “Let’s try.” He turned to the woman and said something to her in German. She nodded and stood up.
“I will take you to the proper place.”
Pasha turned to Slim and asked, “Is that okay?”
Slim nodded, “Of course.” She was happy to have Hans all to herself.
After Pasha left, Hans turned to her and said, “In your telegram you said were looking for a seven-year-old Polish child named Karol Machak, who may have been kidnapped by the Germans and sent to Bavaria to be Germanized and adopted. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Since the war ended, the Polish Red Cross contacted us twice through UNRRA on behalf of his mother Lena. We checked the inquiries against the master index. Then we forwarded them to the child search teams through UNRRA. They were publicized by radio and in the press in Germany. Replies were forwarded to the Polish Red Cross, then to Lena. Nothing was found. I went through the files again and discovered that Karol’s search request from the Polish Red Cross was filled out incorrectly but I think I finally located Karol.”
Slim looked at Hans Müller’s disappointed face. “What is it, Hans?”
“I found information about Karol Machak, age seven, deported from Zamość County in two possible places.”
“Where?” Slim asked incredulously.
“The UNRRA Child Search files have him listed in Auschwitz and also as repatriated to Poland.”
“I was told that UNRRA files were sent to Washington, D.C. to be archived.”
“Who told you that?”
“Felice Scott. She was an assistant to Eileen Blakey. She gave me her journal. It’s quite detailed in regards to the missing Polish children. It has dates and names; I haven’t made my way halfway through it.”
“Felice Scott is wrong. The child search files were all sent here after UNRRA closed up shop in 1947. I insisted upon that. All the other files were sent to D.C., but the Child Search Branch of UNRRA became the Child Tracing Service of ITS. UNRRA became the International Refugee Organization.”
“That’s good news.”
“Probably not. I have him on a list of those deported to Auschwitz at the same time his mother Lena was.”
Slim looked at him confused, “But he wasn’t known as a Jewish child.”
“The Nazis murdered the children who they didn’t want to Germanize. First, they did experiments on them and then, they sent them to the gas chambers.”
“Do you have a date of death for him?” Slim asked.
“No.”
“And the second reference is on a list from UNRRA, Child Search Bureau, stating that Karol was found in Italy after the war and deported back to Poland.”
“So he could be in Poland or have been gassed in Auschwitz?” Slim sighed.
Hans pulled out a photograph of Karol sent in by Lena and then opened a file and took out a photo of a boy with a shaved head and a striped camp uniform buttoned to the neck. He looked wide-eyed as his jaunty striped cap offset his fearful expression.
“That’s Karol,” Slim said.
“Or is it? Here’s the identity card of a boy named Karol Machak repatriated to Poland.”
Slim stared at both pictures.
“I’m going to give you both folders, although I am not supposed to let them out of this room. When you finish, please give them back to me," Hans said.
“Of course,” Slim said.
“Do you have a place to stay?” Hans asked.
“I’ve booked us rooms at Hotel Bad Arolsen,” Slim replied.
“Would you both come to dinner? My wife asked me to extend an invitation to you when I mentioned you were coming, Miss Moran. We always have dinner at eight. It allows us to spend some time with the children before they go to bed.”
“What is your address?” Slim asked.
Hans scribbled an address on a notepad and handed it to her. “We will see you at eight.” He bowed slightly, and Slim repressed an urge to curtsey. Slim met Pasha at the reception desk. He looked grim.
“I take it you have bad news,” Slim said.
“Sergey Nabokov was murdered in Buchenwald. He was sent there because he was homosexual. I knew he was from the time we were boys. We were not always kind to him.” Pasha said with a voice tinged with regret. “ And you, what did you find?”
“I’m going to have to go to Poland.” Slim said to Pasha who looked uneasy.
“Slim, Poland is controlled by the Soviets.” Pasha began.
“But, the Potsdam agreement called for Polish autonomy and free elections,” Slim insisted.
“The Soviets control the government. They’ve shot most of the resistance and the Home Army leftover from the war. It might be dangerous for me to go to a Soviet-controlled zone.” Pasha looked at the disappointment on Slim’s face. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“We’re having dinner tonight with Hans. I accepted an invitation from him.”
Pasha turned to Slim and sighed, “Must we have dinner with that bore?”
Slim looked at him startled. “What’s gotten into you, Pasha?”
Slim was in no mood for an overbearing male ego. Her husband, Daniel, had encouraged her to start the agency. It was probably to keep her out of his business of Nazi-hunting, but, still, it allowed her a certain amount of autonomy.
“In Russia…” Pasha began.
“In Russia, you had some of the first women doctors and scientists. Now I’m starving. Let’s get Phillips to drive us to the hotel and get tea.”
Pasha followed her without another word. Slim could see he was not pleased with her, but she didn’t care. She had spent the last few years catering to Daniel’s every whim, making sure he was happy even if it meant she was not. She was tired of tying herself up in a knot to please another man.
Pasha checked them into the hotel, handed Slim her key and walked off without a word. She followed a bellman to her room. He laid her suitcase on the luggage rack and smiled when Slim handed him a US dollar. She took off her coat, laid out the two photos and got to work. On Karol’s Polish repatriation card, the picture was faded, almost blurry. On the Auschwitz photo, the boy, while he certainly looked like Karol, had an expression of terror and he was older than in the repatriation photo. So where had Karol wound up? Did he die in Auschwitz or had he been repatriated back to Poland? She laid out the images against the one Lena had given her. Karol was squinting into the sun; his hair fell almost to his ears.
Could Karol be all three of these boys? No, that was physically impossible, and none of the dates added up. Slim pulled out Felice’s journal and paged through until she found the entry — ‘Anneliese Jansky was the secretary of the Alpenland Lebensborn Home in Oberweis from 1942 to 1944. She is refusing to answer questions about the missing children from Zamość.’ Could Karol have wound up in the Alpenland Lebensborn Home in Oberweis? Suddenly, Slim was startled by a knock on the door. She opened it and saw it was Pasha looking grim.
“What’s the matter?” Slim asked.
“Phillips has been shot in the head. We have to get out of here.” He pushed into the room and grabbed Slim’s suitcase.
“We’ll take the back stairs. Come, follow me.” Pasha grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down the hall, pushed open the stairwell and then Slim stopped.
“Wait, I have to go back. I left Felice Scott’s journal on the bed.” Slim tried to pull away from Pasha.
“You have to leave with me. There is a gunman on the loose. If he shot Phillips, he’s looking for me.”
“Or he’s looking for me,” Slim said, thinking of Daniel.
“Slim, we have to go.” Pasha pleaded.
Slim pulled away fro
m him and ran back up the stairs. Pasha tried to grab her, but he tripped on the bottom step. Slim ran up two more flights and ran to her room. The door was open a crack. She pushed it open fully and looked towards the bed. The journal was gone.
She heard a familiar man’s voice in a German accent say, “Looking for something?” Slim then heard a thwack on her shoulder and she fell to the ground.
She woke up minutes later with Pasha hovering over her. “Slim? Are you okay?”
She sat up with a start and then feeling light-headed, she fell back in his arms. “I remember being hit on my back and then nothing.” She remembered the book. “Where’s Felice’s journal?” Slim asked, looking around.
“Here,” Pasha said as he handed it to her.
Slim grasped it. “Oh, thank God.”
“Was that worth you nearly getting murdered?” Pasha asked. “Slim, we have to go now. Phillips is dead. We’ll be next.”
“You said you would have a hard time in Poland because of your White Russian past,” Slim said.
“Prince Pavel will have a hard time, but not Sir Robert Nichols, humble servant of His Majesty’s United Kingdom Department Trade and Investment.” He pulled out a passport and showed Slim a photo of himself wearing a monocle. “Now, come. We have to go.”
He attached a monocle to his eye. “Stay close and be quiet. We are going to the front lobby. I will speak to you in French. You will reply in English. You will have caught me in an affair with your best friend. I will reply in whispers trying to shut you up.”
“I’m not an actress, Pasha,” Slim said as he started tying his silk scarf around her hair like a shawl. “Why can’t we just leave through the back stairs?”
“Quite frankly, I have no idea who is chasing us. It's safer in the lobby where people will be milling about. So I need you to perform as your life depended on it.”
“He knows who I am. His voice was familiar. I wish I could place it.”
Pasha opened Slim’s case. “Put on a new suit and walk with a limp. Can you speak with an Irish brogue? Imitate your father.” When he saw her incredulous look, Pasha said, “You are the daughter of a famous movie star. It has to be in your genes — and walk with a limp. Now, let’s go and check out.”
Slim and Pasha got into the birdcage wire elevator and rode down to the lobby. As they exited, Slim saw not one, but two men headed towards their way. Neither of them was Hans. Perhaps, they were Phillips’ men. With an exaggerated limp, she pulled her suitcase away from Pasha.
“No, I am not going with you.” Slim spat at him. The two men stopped.
“This is another one of your nightmares. You imagine things,” Pasha whispered back in French as he went to the front desk and slapped down two keys. “I would like to settle up my bill,” he said in German.
“I imagine things?” Slim shouted. “I imagined a happy life; I do not have one. I imagined a world without pain. I do not have it. I imagined our twins had not been blown up by a landmine, but they are dead. Those are things I imagined, and they are not to be.”
Pasha looked at Slim, a bit stunned. She saw out of the corner of her eye the two men stopped in their tracks suddenly uncertain if this was the couple they were supposed to be accosting.
Slim reached out and slapped Pasha hard. “But, I did not have to imagine you with my best friend!”
Everyone in the lobby turned around. A woman hurried her small child out the door. Another stopped her conversation with the bellman and turned to listen.
“If you had been more attentive, I would not have to seek the solace of other women.” Pasha’s voice began to rise as he examined the bill. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a billfold and counted out three bank notes.
Slim fell to the ground. “What more do you want from me?” She wept. “You’ve taken all the good years of my life and spat me out like a chewed up piece of meat.”
Pasha looked at Slim, a bit confused at the last comparison. He picked up Slim’s case and then started for the door. “Come, enough of the hysterics. You keep this up and you’ll wind up in the asylum again.”
“It was a spa! Not an asylum!” With a final huff, Slim followed Pasha, limping out the revolving door. From the corner of her eye, she could see the two men shake their heads and walk off towards the elevator.
A car was parked in front with the motor running. Slim gasped. Phillips was on the passenger side. Pasha climbed into the driver’s seat after holding the back door open for Slim.
“What in the hell is going on Pasha?” Slim whispered angrily. As Pasha pulled away, Phillips fell forward. Slim could see the bullet hole in the back of his head. She gasped.
Pasha put his foot on the gas pedal and began to drive. Twenty minutes later, they were out of town on a deserted country road.
In the mirror, Slim could see Pasha’s eyes grow wide with amazement. Phillips had a gun pointed at Pasha’s head. Slim reached for Phillips, but he turned around to aim the gun at her. Pasha made a sudden turn and drove them off the road towards a tree. Slim braced herself against the seat in front of her while Pasha quickly folded his arms. Slim heard glass shatter and looked up to see Phillips' head had gone through the windshield. “Pasha, Pasha,” Slim whispered. She reached over the seat and shook his shoulder, but received no response. Slim pulled the lock and pushed open the door. Her feet unsteady, her neck throbbing from being knocked out before, she vomited on the grass. Nothing was making sense. Pasha told her Phillips was dead. Somehow he wasn’t. What was going on? Was she being hunted, or was Pasha?
She straightened herself up and looked again. Phillips was bleeding out. The glass had cut his jugular vein and he gurgled for breath. Phillips was drowning in his own blood; it was a sickening sight. She opened the driver door and placed her hand on Pasha’s back. He stirred.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“The last I remember, Phillips was pointing a gun at your head. You took the wheel and drove us into a tree,” Slim replied.
“Isn’t Phillips dead? He’s supposed to be dead. I saw him with a bullet through his brain,” Pasha said, regaining more of his voice.
“He had us fooled. What are we going to do now?” Slim asked. The night was falling and they were both in the middle of nowhere, injured. Someone was hunting them. It was just a matter of time before they were found.
“We’re going to have to walk away from this, Slim.” He turned and placed his leather-soled wingtips on the soft earth. He drew a sharp intake of the rapidly chilling air. “I think I might have cracked a couple ribs.”
He pulled himself up by leaning on the door.
“How can you walk if you’re injured?” Slim asked, concerned by Pasha’s grimaces.
“We Russians like suffering. Pain is like a treat. Get your papers and that damn book, which got us into all this trouble.”
Slim gathered up the papers Hans had given her, as well as the journal. She was about to leave the suitcase because it seemed too bulky to carry.
“Give me the suitcase,” Pasha said taking it.
Slim looked at Phillips. “Pasha, what about Phillips? We can’t just leave him here.”
“It will look like a car accident, which it was. His bullet wounds were carefully applied makeup.” Pasha felt Phillip’s pockets. He pulled out Phillip’s wallet and passport. He kept the wallet and put the passport back. “His Majesty’s Secret Service is infiltrated with these Cambridge Communist spies.”
They began to walk; leaning into each other, not saying anything. Each of them willing the other to take another step. A couple of cars passed by. Slim looked at Pasha, but he shook his head no.
Finally Slim stopped. She looked at Pasha and said, “I have to sit down. I can’t go on any longer.”
Pasha put the suitcase down. “Here, sit on this,” he said, and she did. “I’ll stop the next car. It's dark enough now. The brush should have hidden the crash.”
“What will you tell whomever stops?”
“We
will tell them we ran out of gas. We just need to get to Frankfurt,” Pasha said, lighting a cigarette and offering Slim the first puff.
“No, thanks. Look, Pasha, what is going on?” Slim asked. If only she had some aspirin or a cold compress for the back of her neck. “Why did Phillips pretend to be dead?”
“Obviously, so he could kill us both — or just me. I don’t know,” Pasha said.
“You do know, and you’re not telling me,” Slim said, annoyed.
“I told you I didn’t like him. He’s working for the Soviets." Pasha took a long drag from his cigarette. “I don’t quite know how to say this without you saying, ‘It’s impossible’ or, ‘It’s not true.’” The ember of Pasha’s cigarette lit up his slender, angular face. He smoked too much, but he looked good doing it.
“When I went to your room to get you after you left me on the staircase…” Pasha began, “I saw a man running towards the elevator.”
“Did you see who it was? Slim asked.
“I know who it was,” Pasha said resignedly, shaking his head.
“Who? Who was it, Pasha?” Slim insisted.
“I could swear it was Hans Müller.” Pasha fixed his gaze on Slim.
“That’s not possible. It can’t be. Hans is my friend. We’ve searched for thousands of people together.”
Slim thought back to the voice she heard right before she was knocked out. At that moment, Slim realized Pasha was right. “Why would he do that? Are those two men in the lobby connected to him?”
“Yes, they’re workmen in the mailroom at ITS.”
“How do you know?”
“When I went to check on my friend’s brother, I passed through the mailroom en route to the SS Barracks. There were many women, but only two men there. They looked at me suspiciously.”
“Are you sure? None of this makes sense. Why would Hans do this? Why would he knock me out and try to take that journal?”
“I think he doesn’t want you to find that lost boy.”
“Why not?”
“That’s your job to find out. I’m just here for the ride — and it’s been quite a ride,” Pasha said.
The Lost Boy Page 9