Mac wingate 5, p.13
Mac Wingate 5, page 13
“But you have already asked Berensen for help.”
“Yes. Then, if anything goes wrong, you see, we will know where to look for our informer.”
“Ah ...!” Regnais said, appreciating Wingate’s reasoning. “That is very clever, Captain.”
“So what now?” Martens asked.
“Now, we go find Berensen. When the Germans reenter the ghetto, we should be ready to make our move to get Aldini.”
“Suppose Berensen has found no one to take us through the sewers?”
“We will go anyway.”
As they followed Wingate from the now empty bunker, both men seemed pleased with that response.
“Have you eaten, Captain?” asked Berensen, as soon as he saw the three men entering his bunker.
“No.”
“Lisa has saved some sardines and wine for you and your men. She is anxious for you to see her. She says you know where her apartment is.”
“Thank you. Did you find anyone to help us get to the Gestapo, Berensen?”
“I have found no one, Captain. I suggest you forget your friend. As I said yesterday ...”
“I know what you said yesterday, Berensen.”
The man shrugged. The bunker was empty of men. The rest of Berensen’s unit had already left to take up their positions in the ghetto. It was obvious Berensen was anxious to leave the bunker and join them. He was armed with a German MP-40 and his pockets were bulging with spare clips.
“I have spoken to Stern,” Berensen said. “He will leave with you, Captain—as soon as you are ready.”
“Fine. We will leave tonight.”
“His factory was destroyed by flames last night. That was when I talked with him. He sees now that it is hopeless, that perhaps he can punish the Germans more by working with you Americans. I can have my men take him to you now if you like.”
“Barack’s bunker. Take him there. But do not leave him unguarded. Assign your best men to see to that. As soon as Barack gets back, tell him to contact Gimolka and the partisans. If we do not join Stern in his bunker by midnight, he is to take Stern to the partisans without waiting for us.” Wingate smiled slightly, ironically. “That should give Barack and the rest of his men all the excuse they need to join those outside the ghetto.”
“Yes, Captain,” Berensen said. “So it will.” As he left the bunker, he glanced back at Wingate. “Don’t forget Lisa—all three of you. As I said, she has food for you.”
Then he was gone, leaving Wingate with the clear impression that it was more than sardines and ersatz coffee that Lisa had waiting for them.
Lisa opened the door cautiously, then hurriedly pulled it all the way open. “Hurry,” she told him, stepping back out of the doorway. “Are you certain you were not followed here?”
“Yes,” he said, leading his men swiftly into the apartment.
“Since yesterday I am not sure of anyone,” she told him, closing the door behind them. “Lazar was correct. I am sure of it. It must have been an informer who told the Gestapo of that weapons delivery.”
“What is it, Lisa? Why did Berensen send us up here?”
For answer, she stepped out of his way and pointed into the kitchen, where a skinny boy in his early teens with a shock of wild dark hair was sitting at the kitchen table, an empty can of sardines before him. As he looked up at Wingate, his enormous eyes reminded Wingate of Felix—only this boy’s eyes were infinitely sadder.
As Lisa led Wingate into the kitchen, she said, “This is Solomon Dawidowicz.”
“Hello, Solomon,” said Wingate.
Martens and Regnais nodded a greeting to the boy. Solomon swallowed the last of the sardines he had been holding in his mouth. He had obviously begun to wolf them down as soon as he heard them at the door. “You can call me Sol,” he said in reasonably good English. His accent, however, was French.
“Are you French?” Regnais asked quickly.
“No,” the boy replied just as quickly. “Jewish.”
“Solomon can take you to the Gestapo headquarters,” said Lisa.
“I thought so,” Wingate told Lisa. “Berensen gave the impression you had more than sardines waiting for us up here.”
“Oh, but we do have some food,” she said. “Have you men eaten?”
“Nothing since yesterday,” said Martens, “and not much then.”
“Yes. Our supplies are running low. Guns and ammunition is all we have been thinking of for weeks.”
She broke out cans of sardines and beans. There was no water for coffee.
“I will let Sol tell you what he knows while you eat,” she told them. “Oh, have you heard about the ultimatum?”
“No,” said Wingate, slumping down at the table.
“The Germans sent it this morning. The Nazi butchers demanded the ZOB lay down their arms by ten o’clock.” She smiled grimly. “That means we have until ten to get our units ready.”
“How very nice for you,” said Regnais as he sat down beside Solomon.
“So I will leave you now,” Lisa told them, starting from the kitchen.
Wingate turned to look at her. “Can’t you wait a minute?”
“No,” she said. The look she flashed him in that instant told him how much she regretted that she couldn’t. Wingate almost got to his feet to go to the door with her, but reached instead for one of the cans of sardines Martens shoved across the table to him.
“Good luck,” he told her. “Keep your head down.”
And then she was gone.
Wingate looked at Solomon Dawidowicz. “How old are you, Sol?” he asked.
“I am thirteen.”
“And you can take us to the Gestapo?”
“Yes.”
“Without detection.”
“I am sure of it.”
“How is it you know so much about Gestapo headquarters?”
“My father was kept there—before he died.”
“Oh,” said Wingate, doubtfully. “I see.”
“Do you, Captain?” asked Sol. “I have not told you yet.”
“Then do so,” said Regnais gently.
“My father was captured by the Gestapo in January. They wanted him to tell them what he knew about the leadership of the ZOB. It was after we had fired upon the SS and sent them from the ghetto the first time.”
“Go on.”
“He would tell them nothing. Others who were interrogated by the Gestapo and freed said he was still alive after many days, but would not talk. He was a big man and he fought the Gestapo. As a punishment, they kept him alive. Those who heard him said his screams were terrible. So I found a way to break into Gestapo headquarters.”
“You rescued him?” Martens asked, incredulous.
“I killed him.”
The three men exchanged glances. Regnais looked bleakly back at the boy. He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it.
Wingate said, “And you were able to get out again without being detected?”
“Yes. The same way I broke in. Through the attic of the old building. I can take you the same way.”
“When can we leave?”
“As soon as you want. But it would be better if you waited until night.”
“I don’t want to wait. Not if we don’t have to wait.”
The boy’s bony shoulders shrugged. “We will come out of the sewer in a courtyard behind a factory. From there we will go across roofs until we drop onto the roof of the headquarters building. We can do it in daylight if we keep low and are very careful. But it will be dangerous.”
Wingate looked at Regnais and Martens. Martens nodded decisively. Regnais said, “Let’s go, Captain. The sooner the better for Aldini.”
“Yes,” Wingate said, getting up. “That’s what I was thinking.”
As they crouched under the manhole, waiting for the courtyard to clear, they could hear the heavy thumping of the factory’s stamping machines and a high, piercing whine that seemed almost constant. Above the fearsome clamor, they could barely make out the voices of workers on the loading platform as they shouted instructions to each other less than ten feet from the manhole.
Then the truck they were loading pulled out and the workers who had been loading it disappeared back inside the factory. Sol lifted the manhole cover and looked out. Satisfied, he pushed the cover aside and boosted himself out onto the surface of the courtyard. The three of them followed swiftly after him. Sol replaced the manhole as Wingate darted to the steps leading up onto the loading platform.
As he reached them, an old man with a push broom stepped through a door leading onto the platform. When he saw Wingate, he started to rush back inside to give the alarm. Wingate cut him down with a short burst from his Sten. The silencer—along with the noise from the factory—effectively muffled his short burst. Martens dragged the old janitor’s body through the door, Sol leading the way.
“In here,” said Regnais, holding open the door to a narrow closet.
Martens dumped the body inside and pushed the door shut.
“Up these stairs,” Sol said.
As Wingate followed behind Martens and the boy, Regnais whispered to Wingate. “You don’t look so good, Captain.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“You had to do it, Captain.”
“He was just an old man.”
“He might have been that other old man carrying a scythe, Captain,” Regnais reminded him grimly. “And that’s just who he would have been if he had made it back into the factory.”
They reached the top floor and hurried through a door onto a narrow landing. A steel ladder led straight up. Without a moment’s hesitation, Sol clambered up the ladder, Martens close behind. Wingate followed and saw the boy push open a hatch like door that led out onto the roof. In an instant he and Martens had disappeared through it. Wingate followed them out onto the roof, then turned and helped Regnais up after him. Glancing down the ladder past Regnais, Wingate saw a worker step through a doorway and pass within a foot of the ladder as he continued across the landing through another door without looking up.
Sol dropped the trapdoor back into place, then led them across the roof. They came to a series of roofs, leading like giant, irregular steps onto the distant, steeply sloping roof of a large, old house.
Pointing to the house, Sol said, “Gestapo headquarters.”
With Sol leading the way, they dropped about five feet to the first roof, then darted along it to the next, and then the one following. There was a four- or five-foot gap between the next to last roof and the one leading onto the roof of the Gestapo headquarters. It had not been visible as they raced across the rooftops. Sol had expected it, however, and jumped it easily. Martens hesitated a second too long, then misjudged his leap. His left foot missed and he landed on his chest, slamming his Sten down onto the roof, his foot dangling. Regnais jumped across swiftly and dragged him all the way onto the roof; Wingate, leaping swiftly over beside them, turned and glanced down. A woman, standing on her back porch and pinning clothes onto a clothesline, glanced up at the noise Martens had made.
When she saw Wingate looking down at her, she swiftly looked away from him and continued to stab at the line with her clothespins, keeping her face cold and unresponsive—resolutely determined to convince them that she was indifferent.
“Let’s go,” said Wingate, hauling Martens to his feet. “We’re nearly there.”
The roof of the Gestapo building turned out to be just as steep as it had looked from the factory, but the rough tiles gave them the footholds and handholds they needed as they scrambled up its steep slope. The entrance to the attic was through a window in a gable astride the topmost ridge. Reaching it first, Sol raised the window sash and boosted himself through the window, Martens and Regnais following after him.
Wingate was the last one to climb in through the window. He found himself in a small attic crowded to the rafters with steamer trunks and a sad array of old and broken furniture, all of it covered with a thick patina of sooty dust. They had to climb over all this to get to the door leading from the attic. Sol reached it first and carefully opened it. Motioning for them to stay behind, he left the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Martens looked at Wingate. “If Aldini’s hurt bad, Captain, it’s not going to be easy to get him back through here and across those roofs.”
“I know that, Martens. I suggest we keep our eyes and ears open for any alternative routes.”
“We’ll do that, Captain.” Martens said, a wry smile on his face as he looked back at the door through which Sol had just disappeared.
A moment later Sol returned, his finger on his lips. “Follow me,” he told Wingate in a whisper. “We’ll use the back stairs. Your friend is in the basement, the same room my father was in. He is very bad.”
“Shit,” Martens said softly.
Sol moved out. Wingate followed, his automatic in his hand, his Sten slung over his right shoulder. The back stairs were thickly carpeted, effectively muffling their footsteps as they descended through the solidly built old house.
Coming from somewhere in the front, they could hear the sound of a phonograph playing a German song—and for a short while the thump of jackboots going down a flight of stairs. From a room startlingly close to the stairwell, they heard a door slam shut, cutting off a woman’s muffled scream. A moment later, quite close to the landing just ahead of them, they heard the sharp bark of deep, guttural laughter. As they slipped past and continued on down the stairs, Wingate became aware of cold sweat standing out on his forehead.
A door opened below and a man’s heavy footsteps descended the stairs ahead of them. At the same time, through the momentarily opened door, came the smell of food cooking. The aroma of sauerkraut and roast beef was almost overpowering. Wingate’s stomach contracted, reminding him how poorly he had been eating since he entered the ghetto. They continued down the stairs until they reached the basement. Sol pushed through a door, Wingate following him.
They were in a narrow, dimly lit corridor. A Nazi, resplendent in his Gestapo uniform, stepped out of a room three doors down from them. He waited a second too long to believe the evidence of his senses; before he dropped his hand to his holstered revolver, Wingate shot him in the stomach with his automatic. The detonation thundered in the narrow corridor. As the German slammed back against the doorjamb and began to slide crookedly to the floor, someone yelled down the stairs.
“Hans!”
Regnais and Martens hurried into the basement after Wingate. Wingate silenced them with a finger to his mouth, then waved them away from the door and into one of the cell-like rooms beside him. The German called out a second time, then started down the stairs to investigate.
Wingate flattened himself against the wall and waited as the German reached the cellar and pushed the door open. He was a very fat, bald man, so fat there was a thick collar of flesh circling the back of his head. He froze in astonishment when he saw his dead comrade. But before he could utter a sound, Wingate brought the butt of his automatic down as hard as he could onto his shiny, bald pate. The heavy metal broke the scalp and crunched into the man’s skull. The German collapsed forward loosely, uttering a kind of heavy sigh.
Regnais and Martens stepped back into the hallway, Sol following. The boy’s glance down at the two Germans seemed curiously devoid of feeling.
“Where is he, Sol?” Wingate asked. “Which room?”
Sol pointed to the one out of which the first German had stepped. Martens and Regnais hurried into the small room ahead of him. There was no light until Sol, coming in behind them, switched on a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Wingate felt sick.
Aldini was sitting up on the corner of a bloody cot, his eyes staring wildly up at them. His face was barely recognizable, his mouth simply a bloody hole with only a few jagged stumps of teeth left in it. His shirt had been ripped off, and what looked like holes had been punched or burned into his chest. It looked as if something obscene had been tearing at his body in the darkness. And then Wingate saw Aldini’s hands. He had no digits left on his right hand, and only two remaining on his left. All of the stumps were blackened, except where the stark white splinters of bone shone through.
Aldini tried to smile.
“Let’s get him out of here,” said Wingate, his voice sounding strange in his ears.
Martens took one arm, Regnais the other, and together they lifted him onto his feet.
“Can you walk?” Wingate asked Aldini.
He shook his head.
“We will carry him,” said Martens.
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
He turned and left the cell, Sol on his heels. Once they were out in the hallway, Sol said, “We can’t take him over the roofs, Captain.”
“I know that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Is there a cellar door out of here?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
Sol hurried ahead of Wingate down the hallway, Wingate following. They turned a corner and came to a large wooden door. “This leads into the cellar,” Sol told Wingate. “There’s another door leading out to the courtyard in the rear.”
“What’s in the yard?”
“A garage.”
Wingate nodded. “Go on through and wait for us. If you hear shooting, save yourself.”
The boy ducked through the door and into the cellar. Wingate turned to Martens and Regnais. They were, trying to get Aldini to walk some, but he was very weak and looked quite dazed, though he still had that terrible smile on his ruined face.
“His right foot’s been chewed up pretty bad,” said Regnais. “Looks like that’s where he was wounded.”
Wingate nodded. He remembered. “There’s a garage in back of here. That might mean German cars, Regnais. You still like to drive them?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Go on through then. I’ll follow in a minute.”
Regnais appeared ready to argue, but apparently thought better of it as he helped Martens carry Aldini past Wingate into the cellar. Wingate returned to the interrogation cells and glanced down the hallway. It was lit by two light bulbs hanging from wires overhead. The Nazi dungeon—for that was what it was—smelled of blood and vomit and old fecal matter. The screams of tortured victims seemed to hang in the foul air. The two Germans had not stirred after they struck the floor. They looked dead.
