Wingate and Aldini were in no danger of being spotted by the SS patrols as they made their way to the orphanage Lisa Goldman was running. With the boy Felix to guide them, they stayed entirely out of sight as—keeping to the underground passageways and bunkers—they sped swiftly through the ghetto.

  Wingate did not need to be told what had happened, since Gimolka had already done so. After that stunning and remarkable day in January when the Jews had finally risen up and sent the SS reeling, those thousands remaining had gone underground and were now living illegally in the nooks and crannies, the cellars, attics, and rooftops, of the sprawling ghetto.

  The bunkers seemed capable of concealing dozens and even hundreds of the ghetto’s inhabitants for weeks, possibly months. Like Barack, some of them had running water piped in through cleverly concealed piping, and electric lines capable of providing their occupants with lights and radios. Their entrances were cunningly concealed, or in some cases blocked by piles of garbage or broken furniture.

  In addition to the construction of bunkers, the Jews had been careful to carve out passageways from one apartment to another, from attic to attic, from cellar to cellar. The Warsaw ghetto was now a desperate fortress, honeycombed with a vast network of invisible arteries, enabling its fighters to move through entire city blocks, and even between blocks, without going outdoors.

  Before they reached the synagogue, their young guide led them through an empty, gutted building and out through a skylight. From there, with only the light from the dim moon to show them the way, they raced over the narrow catwalk that ran along the rooftop. It was barely a foot wide. Looking nervously down at the steeply sloping zinc roofs, Wingate glimpsed the streets and courtyards far below, then looked hurriedly away and kept his eyes on the boy trotting swiftly ahead of him. He and Aldini were soon having difficulty keeping up with Felix, as the youngster fled with the ease and assurance of an alley cat across the moonlit roof. Wingate heard Aldini panting behind him and occasionally cursing bitterly through clenched teeth.

  The corporal was frightened and Wingate did not blame him.

  At last Felix disappeared behind a chimney stack. When Wingate caught up to him, he was waiting for them halfway through a hole in the roof. They followed after him and found themselves crawling through a narrow, stifling attic. They had to stay on the crossbeams, since the flooring under it appeared to have rotted away. The joists formed a sharp angle at the beams, and it was difficult for Wingate and Aldini to squeeze past them. Always, the boy seemed leagues ahead of them.

  “Felix,” Wingate muttered angrily. “Hold up!”

  “That’s what he is, Captain. You said it. Felix the Cat.”

  Wingate smiled grimly as the boy paused in the darkness ahead of them and waited. Felix the Cat. Yes.

  The only light came from a sliver of moonlight shining down through a crack in the roof that followed along the catwalk above them. Wingate stopped suddenly, causing Aldini’s head to ram the bottom of Wingate’s shoes.

  “Damn it, Captain!” the man protested.

  Wingate did not reply. He was watching the two pairs of luminous eyes that peered out of the darkness at him. He groaned inwardly, praying the rats did not see themselves as cornered. Wingate heard a scraping, and then a scuttling sound as the two rats turned and fled before them.

  “Jesus,” breathed Aldini. “I hate rats, Captain.”

  The rats came scurrying back, evidently surprised by the boy further down the passage. Wingate’s skin crawled as he felt one of them dash over his back while the other brushed past his left cheek.

  Aldini made a tiny cry as the rats swept over him.

  Wingate and the corporal kept going through the nearly lightless coffin, brushing past cobwebs and what seemed like centuries of dust. And then they were following Felix down a knotted rope he had lowered through a trapdoor. Wingate found himself in a hallway lit by an unshaded bulb hanging from a wire.

  The boy said something in Polish. Wingate was not sure, but it sounded as if Felix had just told them they had arrived. Wingate asked him if he spoke German. Felix nodded warily.

  In German, Wingate asked, “Are we there?”

  “Yes.”

  “The synagogue?”

  The boy nodded. “Lisa is below us, in the bunkers. Follow me.”

  “Where are you from?” Wingate asked Felix.

  The boy did not look back as he led them down the narrow, winding stairway. “Dresden.”

  “And this Lisa. Where is she from? Poland?”

  “No. Hamburg.”

  Wingate was not surprised. From all over Europe, even from the Third Reich, the Jews had been sent to await their fate in this massive ghetto.

  Once again they had to follow Felix through a rabbit warren of tunnels that burrowed beneath the synagogue until they reached the orphanage. Felix went through the entrance, waited for them to follow after him, then pointed toward a dark entranceway on the other side of a crumbling brick wall.

  “In there,” he said, and vanished back the way he had come.

  The orphanage was simply a long, reasonably well-appointed series of bunkers. There were, at least, toilets for the little ones, and toys as well. At this hour, the children should have been asleep, but they weren’t. Obviously, night and day had gotten hopelessly mixed up for them, and in this dim, sunless world all they seemed able to do when Wingate and Aldini entered was stare up at them with wide, uncomprehending eyes. Why? Wingate read in each wan face. Why? What have we done that we must be shut up here like this?

  The woman Wingate knew at once was Lisa Goldman was not alone. There were four much older women with her, all of them busy trying to keep the restless, overtired children entertained. The problem, as Wingate saw at once, was that the light from the string of bulbs overhead was too bright to let them sleep, yet not bright enough for them to read by, even though many of the older boys and girls were attempting to do so.

  Lisa Goldman had a little boy on her lap and was attempting to read him a story. But he was restless and overtired, and all the boy wanted to do, it seemed, was wriggle away from her. She had seen Wingate the moment he entered and glanced up curiously as Wingate approached her. Wingate smiled. She handed the boy to one of the women and got to her feet.

  She was as tall as Wingate, and quite thin. Wingate was struck at once by her hauntingly beautiful face. Her dark, luminous eyes, peering at Wingate from out of deep hollows, melted whatever hardness had grown within him these past days. Her cheekbones were prominent, her chin strong, almost defiant, her hair long and lustrous. Incredibly, considering the conditions under which she had to live, she radiated vitality.

  And yet, most of what Wingate felt upon contemplating her fragile beauty was a deep, disturbing ache—as if he knew for certain that despite her defiant loveliness, she was doomed to be crushed underfoot like a spring flower.

  “I am looking for Lisa Goldman,” Wingate said, speaking to her in German. “Kurt Barack said you might be able to help.”

  Lisa smiled and held out her hand. “I am Lisa,” she said in very poor Polish.

  “We can speak in German,” Wingate told her.

  Lisa shrugged and nodded. Wingate thought he saw just the trace of a frown cross her face. German, obviously, was not exactly a popular language in the Warsaw ghetto.

  “I am Captain Mac Wingate,” he told her. “I have been sent by London to liberate a physicist, Aaron Stern. I have reason to believe he is hiding here in the ghetto somewhere, and I was hoping you could help me.”

  “Why me?”

  “You are quite famous,” Wingate told her with a smile. “It is rumored you keep grenades under your skirt and that you would be likely to know if Stern was hiding in your sector.”

  “My sector?”

  Wingate smiled. “I am only repeating what Kurt Barack led me to believe.”

  “Do not believe that Communist bastard, Captain, or you will not find anyone in this ghetto.” She smiled coldly at both him and Aldini. “And you will die here with us Jews.”

  “Could we go somewhere to talk in private?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  After a few words in Polish to one of the women, she turned and led Wingate and Aldini from the bunker. They went up a short flight of steps that led to the first floor of the synagogue. She led them through a doorway across a courtyard, and into an apartment building. Her apartment was on the top floor.

  She let them in and Wingate saw, by the dim light of a few candles placed about the room, that the apartment was a shambles; it had obviously been searched more than once, and recently. Nevertheless, the living room table was covered with handguns, German rifles, and even a few German machine pistols. On a battered upholstered chair Wingate saw a cardboard box containing at least a dozen grenades.

  “Isn’t this dangerous?” Wingate asked. “Letting all this sit out in plain sight, unguarded?”

  “Lazar!” she cried.

  As if by magic, the walls opened and three men, armed with German machine pistols, stepped into the room, grins on their faces. The one Lisa had called Lazar stepped toward Wingate. He was a man in his late thirties, who had scarcely an extra ounce of flesh on his lean frame. He had a narrow face, a blade of a nose, and frank, intelligent eyes of a hard, steel blue. Eagle’s eyes.

  “Captain,” said Lisa, a trace of irony in her voice, “meet Lazar Berensen.”

  “You have papers? Identity cards?” Berensen asked in English.

  “Take it easy,” Wingate said. “I’m an American. My name is Wingate. This is Corporal Aldini. We are from London.”

  “From London, is it?” Berensen was eyeing hungrily the Stens Wingate and Aldini were carrying. “And you have come to bring us weapons, have you?” he asked with bitter irony. “Can it be the Allies want to save the Jews after all?”

  “No weapons,” Wingate said, somewhat apologetically. “I am here to find someone who has fled to the ghetto from Stettin.”

  “Does he have a name? This fool who would attempt to find safety in this death trap.”

  “Aaron Stern.”

  “I do not recognize the name,” Berensen told Wingate coldly. “And what is so important about this Jew, Captain?”

  “He is a physicist,” Wingate replied. “That’s all I know. Precisely why my government wants him, I do not know. It’s a top secret project of some kind. Very hush-hush. And very important. Apparently this fellow Stern would be of considerable help to them.”

  “One man. You come all this way—into this anteroom to hell—for a single scientist.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “All I know is that he is a large man, oversized, almost. Gray-haired. He wears glasses.”

  Berensen looked for a long moment at Wingate. Then, abruptly, his curt manner of a moment before vanished. He smiled, brilliantly, and clapped Wingate on the shoulder. “Good luck, Captain. You have your work cut out for you. There are close to fifty thousand Jews in this ghetto, and a great many of them fit the description you just gave me.” Berensen turned his attention to Lisa then. In German he told her she should handle Wingate, that they would take the weapons now. She was to tell the smuggler responsible—his name was Levinson, Wingate gathered—that they needed many more rounds of ammunition, and that at the prices they were paying, they should be getting weapons of considerably better quality.

  She nodded. The three men gathered up the weapons and grenades and left.

  Aldini cleared his throat.

  Wingate turned to face him.

  “Captain, I’d like permission to go with this fellow, Berensen.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t help noticing. Them grenades have faulty pins. Maybe I better go show him how to fix them.”

  Wingate frowned. “Can you do that, Corporal?”

  “Sure, Captain. I was a member of a demolition team before I joined this operation.”

  Wingate looked back at Lisa, eyebrows raised in query. He should have noticed this himself.

  She stepped to the door, pulled it open, and as softly as she could, called down the stairwell. There was a dim reply from below.

  Lisa looked at Aldini. “Thank you, Corporal. They are waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Meet me back here by morning,” Wingate told Aldini as the man hurried out the door.

  Lisa closed the door behind him and smiled. She was no longer as wary as before. “We will all be grateful to the corporal,” she said, “if he can help us.”

  “I didn’t know he had that kind of talent.”

  “This rotten business brings out all kinds of talent,” she told him, slumping wearily into a chair at the table.

  Wingate sat in a chair opposite her. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked, speaking once again in German.

  “No,” she said.

  “Coffee?”

  “Ersatz.”

  “I’d appreciate some.”

  “I would too. But later. I am exhausted, Captain.”

  “Let me get it.”

  “If you wish. Why do you insist on talking in German? I understand English.”

  “I’d like to practice some. I have an idea my linguistic abilities might come in handy before I get out of here.”

  “You may be right,” she sighed.

  As Wingate put a pan of water on the gas stove to heat, he rummaged about in the cabinets and found a can of coffee and some condensed milk. He asked for the sugar and was told there was none. He found spoons and coffee mugs. In a few minutes, he placed two steaming cups of ersatz coffee down on the table.

  While Wingate had been preparing the coffee, Lisa had leaned her head down upon her crossed arms. Now, as he sat back down and reached for his cup, he realized that the exhausted woman had fallen asleep.

  He drank his coffee, made a face, and continued doggedly to sip it. He needed something, even if it was only this miserable substitute for the real thing. He had tasted ersatz coffee before and had thought it abominable, but this was a triumph in that it made all other ersatz coffee a delightful revelation in contrast.

  Lisa slept in perfect silence, her long dark hair spread out over her arms and the edge of the table. Through the hair he caught a glimpse of one of her ears. It was very white, and so exquisitely was it fashioned, it reminded him of a seashell.

  He glanced down at his coffee. It must be having a narcotic effect on him, he decided wryly; it was causing him to lose his head over a woman’s ears. He decided reluctantly to wake her. He needed her help and time was short. If Aaron Stern was not found soon, he might easily fall into the hands of the SS. From the way they operated, there was no chance they would listen to his protestations. He would either be shot on the spot or clubbed to insensibility and hauled off to the Umschlagsplatz. And from there, Wingate understood, no one ever returned. The Umschlagsplatz was the staging area for Treblinka.

  He heard a shot from the street below the window, followed by a scream. He hurried to the window and looked down.

  “Get away from that window!” Lisa cried.

  Her warning came too late. The winking muzzle flashes in the darkness below and the sound of bullets smashing window panes caused him to throw himself to the floor. He was just in time. The window shattered and a neat line of bullets stitched their way across the ceiling. Plaster drifted down. Lisa had already snuffed out the candles.

  She had come awake instantly, it seemed.

  In the darkness he heard her moving swiftly across the floor to him. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have put out the candles before going to the window. Some of Frankenstein’s men are down there—the night ones.”

  “Frankenstein?”

  “I’ll explain later. You’ve attracted a crowd, Captain. Shall we go meet it?”

  He did not know what she meant for a minute, and then he heard the sound of jackboots coming from below and the harsh bark of a German noncom issuing orders. He scrambled to his feet as Lisa, a large semiautomatic pistol in her hand, flung open the door and hurried from the apartment.

  Wingate pulled back the cocking lever of his Sten and raced to catch up to her. Here, in the middle of occupied Poland, he was about to do battle with Hitler’s legions in the company of a beautiful woman who carried grenades under her skirt. The incongruity of it—the madness of it—filled him with a dangerous sense of unreality as he pulled up beside Lisa in front of the banister railing.

  From below them on the stairwell came the guttural shouts of the SS as they plunged up the stairs toward them. Wingate heard a laugh from one of them. He looked at Lisa. She was not laughing.

  In her hand she held a grenade. As he watched, she pulled the pin with her teeth and dropped it.

  Chapter Six

  They both ducked back and flung themselves to the floor. Wingate heard the Germans pull up in sudden confusion when the grenade struck and began to roll down the stairs. One of the Germans cried out a warning, after which they all began a frantic scramble back down the stairs, their jackboots filling the stairwell with thunder.

  The grenade detonated. Wingate’s ears rang painfully. The sound of panic below them gave way to the moans of the stunned and wounded. Wingate glanced over and saw Lisa scramble to her feet, the oversized Walther P-38 still in her right hand. Before he could reach her, she plunged down the stairs to finish off the Germans.

  Wingate followed after her.

  Two of the Germans were already dead, their lifeless forms lying athwart the narrow stairs. Lisa picked her way swiftly over the two bodies with no more than a single glance at either of them. As she was turning a corner in the stairway, she pulled up swiftly and ducked back. A ragged spurt of fire was directed at her from below.

  Wingate had reached her by this time, but Lisa paid no attention to him as she crouched low and charged quickly back around the stairwell, her Walther thundering in the narrow space. Wingate plunged down the stairs after her and was in time to see two Nazis, already bloodied from the grenade, their backs torn up by Lisa’s slugs, tumbling raggedly headfirst down the dark stairwell.

 

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