The One Man

THIRTY-FIVE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Colonel Bill Donovan went down the White House steps and to the black Cadillac waiting for him in the driveway.

Another black sedan pulled up just as he was about to step in. It had a blue flag with a star on the front grille signifying the vehicle of a one-star general. A junior officer in dress khakis jumped out and opened the door for his senior officer who was in the back.

“General,” Donovan said, recognizing who it was before climbing into his own car.

The Army officer climbed out and offered his hand. “Bill.”

General Leslie Groves was the military’s chief overseer of the top-secret weapon program that had every top brain in the country not assigned to code breaking working for it, known as the Manhattan Project. Donovan didn’t understand a word of the “science,” but what was clear was, with the attention it received from FDR and his war secretary, and the rumors of its vast budget and top-secret locations, that if it was successful, whatever they were conjuring up would give the Allies the decisive edge they needed to end the war.

“Got a moment, as long as we bumped into each other…?” Groves asked.

“Of course, General,” replied Donovan.

“Can we walk?” Groves said, leading the OSS chief away from the parked sedans and their drivers and onto the South Grounds.

“I suppose this isn’t about the game Dutch Leonard pitched last night, is it, Leslie?” the head of the OSS asked.

Groves smiled and shook his head. “No. It’s not.”

An engineer by training, Leslie Groves was a brilliant thinker with a driving personality. The concepts he was faced with understanding and evaluating, deciding between alternatives and also funding, required a Nobel Prize winner’s grasp of science and a chief economist’s understanding of finance. He was large, broad shouldered, and tall, with a square, solid jaw.

“That physicist we spoke of a few weeks back… Mendl…? I’m told you’re mounting an effort to locate him,” the general started in.

“I believe we have located him,” Bill Donovan replied. “In fact, we have someone on it now.”

“And at what stage of the operation are you, if that’s something you can share with me?”

Donovan looked the general in the eyes and saw how vital the man he sought was. Still, this was a top-secret operation that was under way with only a few on the inside. “What I can share is that he’s there now. On site. In two days your man will either be in a transport plane on his way to D.C. or you’ll have to do without him for good, I’m afraid.”

Groves nodded soberly. He pulled Donovan farther away from the cars. “We’re in a race, Bill. A race to hell, some might say, but Oppy assures me this Mendl guy can save us six months.You realize what six months can mean-in the race for the supreme weapon. And in lives.”

“All I can say, General, is that I promise we’re giving it our best.”

“Then that’s all I can ask.” Groves checked his watch. “I’d better go. The president expects us military types to be on time. Senators and cabinet members can wander in as they please.”

“Yes, that’s always the case.” The OSS chief and the Manhattan Project overseer started to head back. “Before you go, Leslie, I assume you have other research along these lines going on, simultaneously?”

“Along these lines…?”

Donovan stopped. “In this man Mendl’s field.”

“Gaseous diffusion.” Groves stopped too. “It’s a process. Separates uranium-238 from its lighter cousin, 235.”

Donovan shrugged. “I was never very good at chemistry, Leslie.”

“And if I knew I’d have this job I might have paid a bit more attention myself,” Groves chuckled back. “But to your question, yes, Bill, we do have other avenues being looked into. At Berkeley… and at the University of Minnesota. We’re making progress. But like I said, it’s a race. The Germans might have things going on as well.” They resumed their walk back toward the cars. “Why…?”

“I just wouldn’t want to raise any expectations…” the OSS man stopped and looked at the general again, “on the prospects of this mission. Like I said, there’s a man in the field, and his senior officer, Strauss-I think you met him once-he believes he’s a good one and that there’s a fighting chance of success. But to be frank, we never assigned much hope to seeing either of them sailing up the Potomac. If you know what I mean.”

“Yes, Bill.” The head of the Manhattan Project nodded soberly. “I understand perfectly what you mean.”

“A shame too, if you ask me…” Donovan opened the door to his car. “He seemed like a game young man when I met him.”

THIRTY-SIX

The block Blum had wormed his way into held around three hundred prisoners, two or three to a bunk.

After the outside head count he wandered inside next to weary prisoners returning from their days, emitting audible sighs and groans of exhaustion, tossing their emaciated bodies on the thin straw mattresses and nursing their blisters and sores. Blum figured there had to be some time until they could reconcile the head count with those who were newly dead.

The reek of body odor and human excrement made him hold his breath. There was every noise imaginable. Groaning, coughing, scratching, farting; others simply rambling to themselves in a kind of incoherent daze. Back in England, they’d inoculated him as best they could against the kinds of diseases that were rampant in here. Typhus. Dysentery. But the stench alone almost made him retch. And the thought of lice. He finally located a bunk with only a single person on it.

“This free?” he asked the man lying there.

“Zugangi?” The prisoner looked at Blum with bloodshot eyes. Blum thought his accent sounded Lithuanian or Estonian.

“Sorry?”

“Novy…?” the man above him clarified. Are you new?

“Yes,” Blum answered. “Today.”

“New arrivals in the back.” The man in the bunk pointed to the rear. “Near the shit hole.”

Holding his breath against the smell, Blum kept on going. He saw another bunk with only one in it.

“Up there.” Someone pointed from underneath a bunk, directing him.

Near the very back, two prisoners were stretched out on the top bunk. One was a giant, picking at the sores on his feet, which were open and oozing pus. The other was gaunt with a pinched-in face like a ferret, with flitting, suspicious eyes. Neither moved as much as an inch to let him up.

“We’ve been saving it just for you,” said a man in a lower bunk who had on a flat tweed cap and appeared to be a kind of leader within the block. “The previous occupant died of fever just the other day.”

“My good luck, then,” Blum replied.

“There’s a bowl.” The man in the cap pointed to one hanging from the bedpost. It was made of filthy and corroded tin, and who knew whose disease-inflicted hands had recently been on it. “If I were you I’d attach it to yourself. No bowl, no food. That’s the way it goes here.”

“I will. Thanks.” Blum pulled on the slats of the wooden bunk and hoisted himself up.

“Over there.” The large man grunted inhospitably, indicating the spot closest to the open latrine. Which was basically no more than a separated-off area with a shit hole and a stool.

“Where are you from?” someone called up to him.

“Gizycko. Near Lake Sniardwy,” Blum said.

“Masuria, huh? Pretty. How did you manage to hold out so long?”

“I’ve been hiding on a farm.” He was told to stay as vague as possible about his new identity, as someone might be from there or know someone who could expose him. “Damn postal deliverer gave us away.”

“Postman? You can’t even trust the mail these days. So what can you tell us? From the outside.”

“Not so much.” Blum didn’t want to attract attention or to make himself so well known. Still… “Only that the war in the East is going badly. The Russians are now in Ukraine.”

“Ukraine!” someone exclaimed joyfully.

“And in England the Allies are set to invade.”

“Invade? Where?” Another sat up.

“The French coast. Calais. Normandy. No one knows, of course. But soon, the BBC says. They say it’s the biggest army the world’s ever seen.”

“Not soon enough for us,” someone sighed from the next bed. “Let’s face it, the Germans will kill every one of us before they’ll let anyone see what is going on here. And if they don’t, the Russians surely will. Trust me, I’ve seen what a pogrom looks like there.”

“We’re told the trains are all full of Hungarians now,” another spoke up. “We hear them, thousands arriving every day and night. But, poof, they don’t even bring them into the camp anymore. They just go up in smoke.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” Blum shrugged. Even though he knew well what Strauss had said, and from Vrba and Wetzler, that it was true. “Listen, maybe one of you can help me. I am trying to locate someone. I’m told my uncle is here. His name is Mendl. Alfred. He was a professor. In Lvov. Anyone know of him?”

“Mendl…? Don’t think so,” the man in the tweed cap said. “But no one knows names in here, just faces.”

“I knew a Petr Mendl,” another spoke up. “But he was from Prague. A fishmonger, not exactly a professor. Anyway, he went up the chimney a long time ago.”

“Up the chimney?” Blum said.

He could hear a few chuckles.

“That stench outside, you didn’t think that was from the chocolate factory, did you?”

More laughter.

“Or the kitchens…” someone said. “But you’ll soon see, it surely tastes that way.”

“I have a photograph.” Blum removed a small, dog-eared picture of Mendl from his waistband. “Pass it around. Maybe one of you will recognize him.”

The photo traveled from bunk to bunk. One or two shook their heads, then passed it on. Another just shrugged blankly.

“Looks familiar. But not lately, anyway,” one said, handing it to the next.

“Sorry.” That one passed the photo to the bunk above him. “There’s not many from Lvov here. I try not to look at faces anyway.”

“There are thousands and thousands here.” The man in the tweed cap shook his head solmenly. “And sadly the cast changes daily.”

“I have an important message for him,” Blum said. “If anyone knows him.”

“We all have important messages,” someone laughed. “Unfortunately, none of them get delivered.”

“Philosopher.” The man in the tweed cap rolled his eyes.

“If I were you I’d forget your uncle,” someone advised him. “He’s probably dead anyway.”

“We all have uncles,” another chimed in. “You clearly are new here to even care.”

“Shut the fuck up,” another hissed from down the aisle. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Sorry.” The picture came back up to Blum.

He slid it back into the pocket inside his shirt. The giant next to him was already snoring. Blum leaned back against the slats. It was foolish to even think it would happen like that. At the snap of a finger. There were thousands in here, hundreds of thousands, and as the man said, the cast changed every day. A needle in a haystack, Blum reflected. That’s what it always was. In a hundred haystacks. A hundred haystacks with a lit match thrown onto them, as the clock was ticking down and there was only a short amount of time. Day One was already gone. Just two more. No, of course it wouldn’t happen just like that, he admonished himself.

Blum closed his eyes, weariness finally overcoming him.

“You and your uncle must be very close.” His other bunkmate, the one with the ferret-like face, remarked. “To carry around a photograph of him.” His eyes seemed to carry a flutter of suspicion in them. A distrusting smile.

“Yes,” Blum replied. The same smile. But inwardly, he realized he’d already been careless in his haste. “He was actually more like a father to me.”

“A father… I see,” the man remarked, shifting his eyes. “So it’s Lvov, then,” he added after a pause. “I thought you said you were from Masuria?”

A tremor of nerves ran down Blum’s spine. There were informers everywhere, he’d been warned. And if it wasn’t already enough to have to dodge the Germans for another two days, he now had others to worry about who were even closer at hand.

Yes, very careless.

The man rested his head against the mattress and closed his eyes.

In the distance, Blum heard the sound of music playing, an orchestra. He sat up. “I hear music.”

“New arrivals,” someone sighed, like it was nothing new.

“The ovens are heating up.” Another rolled over. “Someone say a prayer.”

A prayer… Day One was gone. Fifty hours… That was all he had left. There’s a prayer. Blum glanced over at the ferret, who now seemed asleep. Fifty hours to pull off a miracle.

If, he finally shut his eyes, Mendl was even still alive.

THIRTY-SEVEN

On his way back from chess with Frau Ackermann after she’d returned that week, Leo left Rottenführer Langer at the gate and went into Block 36.

He found the old man on his bunk.

“How are you doing today?” Leo sat down across from him.

“Better.” Alfred sat up, forcing a weak smile. “A little more each day.”

“Here, I’ve brought you something. I think you’ll be happy.” He pulled off a cloth napkin and brought out a steaming mug.

“Tea?” Alfred’s face lit up. “This must be a dream. From where?”

“From where do you think?” Leo said. “Of course, Langer was poking at me the whole way back in the hope that I would drop it. But he didn’t dare do it. Still, I’m afraid it’s not as hot as it was when I left.”

“No matter.” Alfred took a sip and inhaled the perfume-like aroma. “Ah, clove… This is heaven.”

“I told you she would watch out for us,” Leo said proudly. “And for you as well.” There was something kind of sorrowful and almost resigned in the boy’s eyes that Alfred detected but couldn’t read.

“Yes. You were right on that one, my boy.”

She did watch over him.

He hadn’t died.

Indeed, it had been typhus after all, but only a glancing blow. Though Alfred remained in the infirmary for a full week while he regained his strength. Now, that was a miracle! Two days in a sweat-filled daze until the fever broke. In his delirium, images of Marte, calling for him; his work and formulas parading before his eyes.

And then this other dream, so very strange, something he couldn’t fully make out until he finally regained lucidity: A young woman. Pretty, blonde, by his bed, caring for him. Overseeing the doctors. Instructing them to make sure he got well. “At any cost,” she insisted.

At any cost.

Why?

Later he found out they had injected him with the vaccine normally reserved only for the Germans. They gave him antibiotics, transfusions.

Leo grinned. “See, she was an angel for you too.”

“Indeed, she was.” Alfred nodded. “I give you all thanks. If thanks is what I should feel to find myself back here.”

He’d been back for a week now. Allowed to regain his strength, instead of being sent to the gas or being thrown back into the toil, like the rest. Though he was still a bit weakened. A nurse even came once to look in on him. Unprecedented. The most surprised people in the camp were his block mates when he came back after being away. “We almost gave away your bunk.” Lazarus, they now called him. Back after a brief respite from the dead. No one had ever done that before.

Leo checked on him every day.

And every day they found a little time to work. Alfred saw that there was still so much to teach him. And now so little time. He took out his chalk and scratched his formulas on his slate tray each day. He put down his tea. “That was wonderful. Now let’s get going.”

“Alfred, there’s no more point in it. We’ve been through it all.”

“No. We haven’t covered the dispersal pattern. You know that all atoms in the diffusion process are presumed to be moving at speed (v), but the fundamental problem is-”

“The fundamental problem is to compute the number of atoms that escape through a hole or even a million holes over an elapsed time.” Leo picked up Alfred’s thought. “Expressed as delta (t). Am I correct?”

“Well, yes, you are,” Alfred admitted.

“And then given that the number of atoms contained would be the product of the volume of the diffusion cylinder times the density of atoms p small (n) plus large N over large V where N is the number of atoms in the cylinder and V, of course… just give me a second… is the volume of the cylinder.”

“Yes, all right, go on…”

“My pleasure. The number of atoms equals the density of those atoms times the surface area of the cylinder… then times the velocity the atoms are traveling times the slant length of the tilt angle.” Leo took a breath. “The entire equation expressed as…” he took the chalk and tin,

Ncyl = ρNS〈ν〉 (Δt) cosθ.

“So how was that?” His eyes twinkled with a ray of pride.

“That was good, son. All right, it was excellent, I have to admit. But have I gone over”-Alfred started to write-“that not all these atoms will be moving in the correct direction to achieve maximum escape? And that will create the dispersion. So to account for it…”

“So to account for it we have to multiply the above formula by the probability of an atom having its velocity so directed. Yes, you went over all of that with me, Alfred. I promise.” Leo tapped his forehead. “It’s all in here.”

“Oh.” Alfred nodded, his memory a bit strained. “I remember now. But did I-”

“Did you tell me that by extending this logic out, we can take our two gases for enrichment, U-235 and U-238, despite the difference in atomic weights, and quantify the extent of the enrichment, which is calculated as… let me think… %(235) = 100 {x/x+1), where x is the number of atoms of 235 over the number of atoms of 238? Yes, you went over that with me as well.” Leo put his hand on Alfred’s arm. “I promise you, it’s all safe. I have it all.”

“Then bravo.” Alfred said. He smiled with satisfaction. “We did it.”

Leo nodded. “To what end, I still don’t know, but yes, I believe we did.”

“So now you’re the world’s reigning expert on the gaseous diffusion process… I offer my congratulations!”

“Second greatest expert,” Leo said.

“Well, I fear soon you’ll have that distinction all to yourself. And I told you, there are people who, once they know that…”

“Yes, Professor, you did. There are people who will need to know this. I will await them all.” Leo’s smile faded and he returned to the kind of look he had when he came in that Alfred couldn’t read.

“Something is troubling you, boy?”

“Not to worry. If everything’s okay with you, I’m fine. Drink up…”

“All right.” Alfred took another sip of tea and closed his eyes dreamily. “I never thought I would ever have this pleasure again. Thank you, son. Now, don’t forget the displacement theory.”

“How could I possibly? It’s as engrained in me as is pawn to king four.”

“Then I’ve done my job. You’ll probably want to be rid of me now. Now that there’s nothing left to learn.”

“You’re telling me there’s nothing of value left to share in that vast mind of yours, Professor…?”

“You’re right, there must be something,” Alfred said. “There’s thermal diffusion… Much harder process and far more difficult to achieve the required enrichment levels.” He looked at Leo, who shook his head crossly. “Anyway…”

Leo put away the chalk and tin. “We’ll work up to that then, shall we?”

“Yes. But something is wrong. I see it. Don’t pretend, boy. You and I are friends.”

Leo finally nodded. “She gave me another gift today, along with the tea.” He dug into his pants, came out with something, and opened his hand.

It was a chess piece. A fine one, Alfred noted. A rook. Of beautiful white alabaster. Carved with great detail.

Leo set it in Alfred’s hand. “I think it means our games have come to an end.”

“Yes.” Alfred nodded and put his hand on Leo’s knee. “That’s what it would seem.”

“Which then means, of course…” Leo smiled, but it was more of a resigned one, with an edge of sadness.

“Which then means you’re lucky you know all this stuff I’ve been teaching you…” Alfred bolstered him and winked. “At least, you won’t go out with an empty mind.”

Leo chuckled. “I don’t think either Lubinksy or Markov or whoever else I’ve trounced at chess would exactly attest that my mind was empty.”

“And what have Lubinsky or Markov ever done to expand the body of knowledge, pray tell…?”

“I took this as well,” Leo said. He brought out a creased photo. It was of Frau Ackermann in a rowboat. She wore a white nautical cap, the front rim raised, showing her bright smile and happy eyes. “I saw it amid a stack of photos. When she left for a moment I put it in my tunic. She looks so happy.”

Alfred saw it was the very woman who had overseen his care at the hospital. “Yes, she does.”

“She won’t let me go.” Leo looked at him. “Or you. Not so easily. You watch.”

“I suggest we do not get ahead of ourselves, Leo. Perhaps it was no more than just her husband putting his foot down. You knew he was no fan of your games. We must continue to have hope. Where there is hope, there is life. And where there is life… there is more to learn, isn’t that right?” Alfred smiled.

“Well, here’s to hope then,” Leo said. He lifted the teacup and handed it back to Alfred.

“And here’s to more to learn.” He raised the cup and took a last sip of tea. “Where our true hope lies. Are we agreed?”

“Why don’t we just leave it at hope, shall we?” Leo replied.

THIRTY-EIGHT

WEDNESDAY.

At dawn, the Daimler personnel car with the swastika under the war eagle on its door sped through the Polish countryside, its headlights flashing through the fog.

Colonel Martin Franke sat in the back.

His still-wet-behind-the-ears driver wore the Abwehr insignia on his collar but was just months out of whatever they were putting the new call-ups through these days as training and clearly didn’t know his way behind a wheel. It was over three hundred kilometers from Warsaw to Oswiecim, four hours in good weather along the rutted S8, longer in this soup.

“Please, faster, Corporal,” Franke said impatiently. “Go around that truck.” A supply truck had slowed in front of them.

“Yes, Colonel,” the corporal answered, hitting the gas.

Franke had persuaded his superior, General Graebner, to authorize him to go to the camp. The call had gone to Berlin, where the camp commander, SS Colonel Hoss, was in conference with Reichsführer Himmler and Reinhart Heydrich he was told. A Major Ackermann had been left in charge. So Franke knew he had better be right on this; the showdown between Canaris and Himmler for the Führer’s favor was not a secret. To embarrass either of them would mean nothing but the Eastern Front for him.

But Franke felt certain, more so each time he went through it, that his instincts were correct. That the camp there had to be the target of whatever was being planned. The cable “the truffle hunter is en route.” The local report of the sighting of a plane. The parachuter who’d been spotted. The birchwood forest. The region was thinly populated and there were no known troop activities or items of any strategic interest that would point to anything else.

It made Franke’s blood stir. Blood that had long sat dormant. For the past year he’d been underused and pushed aside. Someone was definitely here. From where? England, perhaps. And what for? An attack? An escape? An act of sabotage?

Now he just had to find out the who and the why.

If he was successful, Franke could almost taste how all his past shame would finally be put behind him. Himmler himself would be watching now. His wife would take him back, and with it, his position, the comfortable schloss in Rottach-Egern.

Everything depended on him rooting out this man.

Three more hours. He glanced at his watch. “It would be good to arrive today,” he called to the driver, who had now slowed for a herd of goats crossing the road. The Polish roads were all oxen paths. The driver hit the horn loudly.

A hunger churned inside Franke. Someone was clearly here. He just had to find him. This man. Wherever he had come from.

This truffle hunter.

It was a match of wits, Franke said to himself. A chess match.

You think you are alone. You think you are under the net. But you are wrong.

There is my net. My nose that will smell you when I see you.

Now it is just you and me.

THIRTY-NINE

Blum opened his eyes before first light. Zinchenko, their Lithuanian kapo, entered the barracks loudly banging on the walls and bunks with his stick. “Rauss. Rauss! Rise and shine, my little pets. Another day of wonder and adventure awaits you. Get your asses moving!”

In their bunks, people began to stir slowly. “Is it light yet?”

“Just another two minutes, please, Zinchenko!”

“Up! Up now, pigs!” the kapo called back without pity. “I try to be nice to you, letting you sleep an extra five minutes, and look what I get.”

Blum had woken at least a dozen times during the night. Between the awkward position he was forced to sleep in, tugging for a sliver of the thin, grimy blanket that the three of them had to share and that wouldn’t have kept the bed lice warm, the constant snoring, and the fitful worry of what lay ahead for him today, he barely got an hour’s sleep.

“Work details in thirty minutes! Roll call in five!” the kapo instructed. He was a muscular man with a heavy growth on his face and a flattened hat on his head, separating him from the average prisoner. As well as the red triangle sewn on his chest, signifying him as a common criminal. “Five minutes! Everyone outside!”

Slowly the block came alive. There was no washing up. Several lined up for the latrine and peed or shat in the revolting bucket.

Blum climbed down and found the man in the tweed cap he had spoken to last night, folding his blanket. “I need a job,” he said. “Anything you can get me? Something in the camp, if possible. At least for a day or two. I want to find my uncle.”

“Talk to him.” He pointed to a short man with heavy-lidded eyebrows. “He was an attorney in Prague. He’s blockschreiber here.” The block clerk. Wetzler and Vrba had mentioned those. It was their role to assign the work duties.

“Thanks.”

Blum went over and found the man through the hurrying crowd. “I’m new.” He told the block clerk how he wanted a day to find his uncle.

“What’s your name?”

“Mirek.”

“Number…?”

Blum showed him his arm. The blockschreiber kept note of it in a small black notebook.

“I have just the position.” The man chuckled grimly. “Rosten, congratulations!” he called out. “You’ve been promoted.”

“Hallelujah!” someone yelled out from the throng.

“Sanitary brigade,” he said to Blum.

“What is that?”

He jotted it in his notebook. “Rosten will show you the rounds.”

The job, as Blum was shown, was to carry the buckets of shit and piss from the latrine to the camp’s cesspool, located outside the main gate. Not just theirs. Blocks 18 through 32 as well. The main benefit, Blum soon realized, was that he would be able to enter several of the other blocks where there would be people around.

“Just be careful,” the blockschreiber warned him. “If one spills on public grounds, you’ll likely get a bullet in your head. Rosten will be very upset. He’ll have to go back to it.”

“Then I’ll be especially careful in that case,” Blum agreed.

“And keep your eyes out. Sometime the guards will jab you with their sticks just for sport. If the bucket spills, you can say your prayers. Guess they figure anyone we give this job to isn’t much worth feeding.”

“Thanks. So how has Rosten survived at it then?”

“Rosten?” The blockschreiber shrugged. “Guess he doesn’t eat all that much.”

Outside, whistles sounded and people filed out their blocks and lined up for roll call. The morning was damp with a chill in the air for May, enough that everyone stood around hugging themselves in their thin burlap uniforms. Blum was nervous. The roll call was one of the times he could easily be exposed. The SS Blockführer came up. Lieutenant Fischer. Holding a dog-eared stack of papers on a clipboard. “You know the routine,” he barked. “Line up. A to Z. Step forward when your name is called.” Everyone edged into four long rows. He started in, “Abramowitz…”

“Here!” a man in the back row shouted.

The guard licked his pencil and checked him off. “Adamczyk?”

“Yes. Here.”

“Alyneski…?”

Blum huddled amid the crowd in the fourth row. They were going by name. He could get lost in the crowd and not have to shout one out. If they had gone down the rows man by man, and each had to call out his name, his name, Mirek, would not have matched up. That would have been a lot trickier.

“Bach?”

“Here!”

“Balcic…”

It took almost twenty minutes to go through the entire block. The staging area was so crammed with prisoners, each in front of their own blocks, each line melded into ones from the block next to it, making it one vast throng, names shouted out from competing Blockführers. The man next to Blum in line leaned over. “New here…?”

Blum nodded. “Yes.”

“Anyone taken you through the rounds?”

“Rounds? Not yet.”

“So listen up. It’ll keep you alive. Fischer,” he nodded toward the Blockführer calling out names, “he’s one hundred percent by the book. Doesn’t look for trouble, won’t help you a lick either. That one…” He pointed to an SS corporal. Reddish hair, flat nose. “Fuerst. He’s got a sick sister at home. He does his job, but sometimes he can be open for business, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean a bribe?”

The man shrugged. “If you’ve got something to trade. But whatever you do, don’t get in the way of that asshole…” He gestured to a hound-faced guard with thick lips and heavy-lidded eyes. “Dormutter. He’s just a lunatic. He’s in heaven in here. He can kill whoever he wants. Stay out of his way. I can’t describe the things I’ve seen done.”

“I will. Thanks,” Blum said.

He took Blum through some of the other guards and kapos. The true monsters, the ones who would just kill you for sport. And those who were just doing their jobs. The ones whom Blum could count on and who at all costs he had to avoid.

“We all get the tour once,” the man explained. “From now on you’re on your own.”

Before they broke into their work details, the block lineups merged for a while, people catching a quick word with their neighbors, trading stories of what was new, who was lost in the past day, bartering for cigarettes and scraps of food.

Blum took out his photograph. “I’m looking for my uncle,” he said to someone from a neighboring block. “His name is Mendl. Do you know him? He’s from Lvov.”

“Sorry.” The person shook his head. “He’s not in here.”

Blum went through the crowd and asked someone across the yard. “I’m looking for this man. He’s my uncle. His name is Mendl.”

Again the person shook his head. “Don’t know him. Sorry.”

He went from group to group, looking around, inspecting faces in the teeming crowd, keeping an eye out for the guards, grabbing onto anyone who made eye contact with him.

“Do you know this man? Have you seen him? Mendl.”

“No,” he kept on hearing. “Sorry.”

“This is his picture. Look, please.”

One said, “He looks familiar. But I can’t help you. Do you have any extra smokes though? I’m dying.”

“He’s probably dead.” Another shrugged. “Why do you care anyway? We all have uncles here somewhere.”

“Sorry.”

It could all be too late, Blum feared, watching the thousands seeming more dead than alive just trying to get through the day. Vrba and Wetzler confirmed that he was here, but that was January. Four months ago. The cold could have gotten him. Or typhus. Or a club to the head. Or the gas. He realized this could all be futile. Do not fail us, President Roosevelt had urged. But even Roosevelt had no control over the whimsy of life and death here.

There was a chance he might have come all this way just for a corpse.

Breakfast came around. Blum made it back to his block and edged into the line with his metal bowl. He hadn’t had a bite of food since the stomach-turning soup he’d had yesterday at lunch. This was far worse. He couldn’t tell what it was: cabbage, potato, a ladle full of thin, tasteless swill made from rinds, peels, and boiled grizzle. With a stale chunk of bread. He looked around at his barrack mates huddling outside their block, sucking it all in.

What if I’m unable to find him? Blum asked himself. What then?

And what if I’m never able to make it out of here? This would be his life. As long as it lasted.

He sipped from his bowl, wincing at the first rancid taste. Then sipping it again. Sucking it into his mouth. As everyone else was. He would have to work the day too.

The whistles sounded again. “Line up. Line up. Meal’s over.”

The work details had begun.

FORTY

“Guten morgen, Herr Lagerkommandant!” The staff in the commandant’s office stood as Ackermann stepped in.

“Good morning. As you were.” With a wave, the major proceeded to his desk.

There was a coffee on his desk for him. He sat and scanned the morning reports. The number of prisoners “processed” yesterday: Over twenty-one thousand. Very nice. A full 12 percent above the norm. Most had arrived that very day and had gone straight through. He looked at the number expected for today. Another nice one. Two trains. One from Theresienstadt near Prague and one from Hungary. It would be another busy day and night.

He had his daily quotas, but he wanted to exceed them in Kommandant Hoss’s absence. He wanted everyone to see he could run the place both efficiently and with appropriate discipline. And who knows, he had begun to think, perhaps his boss was even being promoted on his extended trip to Berlin. Maybe that’s why he remained there the extra days. It was important for everyone to see that, in his absence, the place remained in strong hands. That the work was being maintained; the numbers met. What went on here was under the direct eye of Reichsführer Himmler and his inner circle. If promotions were in the offing, he wanted his name at the top of the column too.

Which left him with a particular problem that morning, Ackermann reflected.

Greta.

It was beginning to worry him that his wife had taken such a liking to the chess-playing Jew she’d invited into their house. One or two games, perhaps; that he could understand. But then it must be seen that she showed him no particular favor. Instead of showering the boy with gifts and petitioning Ackermann for his protection. He would have to clear that up for good, he’d decided, on his short walk over this morning. Apparently it had already become banter for the troops. Which was always bad for morale. Hoss had even mentioned it before he left, not in a direct way, of course, but over a schnapps, almost anecdotally. “Greta must be becoming quite the chess player by now…” He laughed. But Ackermann knew precisely what Hoss meant. He’d take care of it, he resolved, before his boss’s return. “Special Treatment” must become what it always was. An organized purification of the Reich. Not some foolish and misguided favoritism. Greta must see that. He could do it in a snap, of course. Get rid of the whole block. No one would be the wiser. But women could be difficult, of course. That’s why the problem was so thorny. He knew she wasn’t happy here. It had already been over a month since she’d shown any interest in him.

Yes, he grunted to himself, it was getting bad for morale.

His aide, Lieutenant Fromm, stepped in and came up to his desk. “Sorry to bother you, sir. But I have a message for you. From Warsaw.”

“Warsaw…?” Ackermann looked up.

“Yes, from a General Graebner there. Of the Abwehr.”

“Abwehr…?” Ackermann rounded his eyes. Intelligence. The camp took its orders directly from Berlin. From Reinhart Heydrich and Reichsführer Himmler themselves. “What the fuck could the Abwehr possibly want here?”

His aide said, “Apparently a Colonel Martin Franke will be arriving today.” He handed Ackermann the cable. “It seems he has some questions. Concerning security.”

“Security? Here…?” The Lagerkommandant snorted back a laugh. “He must be joking. A nun’s snatch couldn’t be any tighter than it is in here.”

“Nonetheless, the general has asked that, in Kommandant Hoss’s absence, we would show him every courtesy.”

“Courtesy, huh?” Ackermann scowled. “Let him come.” Just what they needed today, the Abwehr poking their uppity noses around. When there were numbers to be met. “But I’m not showing him around. Get Kimpner to do that.” Kimpner was a bean counter in charge of operations. Kitchen. Infirmary. Procurement. “There are other things for me to attend to today.”

There were two trains. Another twenty thousand to process. And then this matter with his wife.

But on this he had to find the right way. His pecker was getting edgy. He had to show her that what was bad for morale, and for him, was bad for her too.

Yes, this had all gone far enough, the Lagerkommandant thought.

He passed the cable back to Fromm. “Let me know when he arrives.”

FORTY-ONE

Blum carted the buckets of congealed waste across the camp’s grounds to the refuse ditch located just outside the wire. He held his breath at the awful smell. He moved past the guards, swiftly but carefully, keeping his eyes down, knowing he could be the target of any of them at their whim. Then he emptied the contents in the ditch, hosed the buckets clean, and brought them back inside.

In each block, even with the majority of prisoners out on work details, there were always a few around. Those that were either infirmed or simply resting, back from the overnight work shifts.

And in each block Blum took out his photograph of Mendl. “I’m looking for my uncle,” he would ask. “Have you seen him?”

And in each he received the same, deflating response.

“No. Sorry.”

“He’s not in here.”

An indifferent shrug of the shoulders. “Sorry. There are so many.”

He began to think it was fruitless until finally, in Block 31, a man lying in bed took the picture and after a few seconds actually nodded. “I do know him. Mendl. He’s a professor, right?”

“Yes,” Blum said, lifted.

“From Lvov, I think.”

“That’s right,” Blum confirmed. He grew expansive.

But then the man just shook his head fatalistically. “Haven’t seen him in over a month now. I heard he had the fever.” He handed Blum back the photograph. “Sorry, I think he’s dead.”

“Dead,” Blum said, falling back to earth. “Are you certain?”

“I know he was taken to the infirmary. Very few end up coming back from there. Ask the chess boy. They were friends. He would know.”

“The chess boy…?”

“The camp champion. They play here every couple of weeks. You’ll see them. Over by the infirmary. Sorry. I can’t be more help.”

The chess boy. They play every couple of weeks… Blum said to himself. His hope plummeted. He had two days. Less, now. I think he’s dead. Had he risked everything, come all this way, he thought as he lifted the wretched shit bucket out from under the stall, only for a corpse?

He considered checking at the infirmary. If he’d been sick, someone had to know of him there. But that might also arouse suspicion. This “chess boy…” It couldn’t be too hard to find him. But he’d already put himself out there, showing the photograph to anyone who would look. Now, to suddenly start asking around for someone else… That would definitely make him stand out.

But what other choice did he have?

He lugged his new set of buckets outside the gate. Guards were everywhere. He was especially careful here, to avoid direct eye contact. And not to spill a single drop. Yet these particular buckets were especially heavy and filled to the top. He sensed a guard snickering at him as he hurried by. Just get past him…

“Stop!” someone called out from behind him.

Blum stood there, erect.

“Where do you go so quickly with such fine wares to sell?” a guard said to him mockingly.

Blum closed his eyes for a second and then shuddered when he opened them and saw it was the very guard pointed out to him during roll call this morning. Dormutter. He’s just a lunatic. At all costs, don’t provoke him. He’s one to avoid.

The guard had a khaki SS cap tilted over a square face, deep-set sunken eyes, thick lips, and a sneer of superiority in his gaze. “Looks heavy,” he said, brandishing a thick club. He stepped up behind Blum.

“It is heavy, sir,” Blum replied. “But it’s fine.” He took a step forward. “If I might just continue to the-”

“I’ll tell you when to go, yid,” the guard snapped back with ice in his tone.

“Yes, sir.” Blum froze.

“What’s your name?”

“Mirek,” Blum answered, his tongue dry and coarse as sandpaper.

“Yes, they’re definitely overloading this poor man!” Dormutter said loudly to his fellow guards nearby in mock concern. From behind, Blum felt a tap from the club on his left arm. The bucket lurched forward. Blum brought it back as best he could to keep it from tipping over.

“Hmmph,” Dormutter grunted, from behind him.

Then Blum felt a second tap. On his right arm this time. And this time, the bucket, filled almost to the rim, swung forward too. Remembering what the blockschreiber had warned, Blum put every ounce of strength he had into righting it. But it was clear what the guard was trying to do.

“We don’t like it when they are careless and let these buckets fill too high. It brings up the possibility that…”

Blum felt the club bump into his left arm again. This time harder. Both buckets swung. Petrified, Blum struggled to keep them righted. The handles dug into his fingers. The pails grew heavier.

If one spills on public grounds, you’ll likely get a bullet in your head, echoed through Blum’s head.

“You can see what a health risk it is, should any happen to drop. Jew shit, all over a public setting. Not so good?”

“No, Sergeant.” Blum nodded in agreement. His arms began to feel like they would soon give out.

This time he felt the end of the heavy club jab into his back. The buckets lurched forward. Blum did everything he could to keep them from tipping. Literally commanding them not to spill. Somehow they didn’t.

“By health risk, just to be clear…” the German said, digging the club into the small of Blum’s back. “Of course I meant to you, yid.” He jabbed the club into him again.

The buckets dug deeply into Blum’s fingers. He knew he couldn’t withstand a much harder nudge. Sweat wound down his brow. At any second he expected to feel the weight of the club smack into his skull like a bat on a ball and he would drop, a dead weight, the buckets spilling, and then be finished off.

Blum felt the club nudge him forward again, the buckets jerking, and he took a step. Waste lapped right to the edge and dripped onto the side of the pail, sending panic through Blum.

He could not hold them much longer. If so, he resolved he would not die like his family. Without putting up a fight. A similar man, with a similar hate in his eye, had likely murdered them all. He would turn and empty his buckets all over the guard. Let whatever would happen, happen. He tightened his grip, waited for the final provocation. Waste that had accumulated lapped over the rim’s edge.

This could be it.

“I merely wanted to tell you,” the SS guard said with a sniff, “that the officers’ guardhouse needs to be cleaned out as well.”

“The officers’ guardhouse,” Blum muttered back, dry-mouthed. “Yes, sergeant.”

“And consider yourself lucky,” Dormutter said, “that we have an important visitor today in camp and that I’ve just shined my boots. Or otherwise…” The German made a kind of clicking noise with his tongue. “I might find some other Jew to lick out the guardhouse latrine. Now go.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Blum nodded, picking up his step.

“And remember, the guardhouse. You’ll need a pass.” He came up again and stuffed a white form into Blum’s clenched hand.

“Thank you, sir.” A breath of relief blew out Blum’s cheeks. He hurried on with his buckets.

“And Mirek… You have quite good sense of balance with the pails there,” the SS man called after him. “You should consider the high wire in your next life.”

He laughed, as did a couple of the other guards in listening range, and turned away, letting Blum go on.

Blum hurried through the gate, his legs almost giving out from under him. He put down the buckets next to the waste ditch and let out a grateful sigh. He wrung out his fingers and then disposed of the waste.

He just wanted out of this place now. It was clear, there was no longer a mission to fulfill. Mendl was likely dead. Now he just had to make it back out himself. He wanted so much to have brought back the man they needed. Do not fail us. You have no idea how much depends on your success. But what could he do? Even if Mendl was somehow here, alive, it was clear there were so many places and no way to search them all, and not enough time. Three days. That was all they had given him. A needle in a haystack. From the very start… In a hundred haystacks, Blum said to himself. The task was impossible.

He hurried back through the gate and replaced the buckets in Block 31. He still had two more barracks to clean. But he didn’t want Dormutter finding him again before he had fulfilled his task. He knew where the guardhouse was. He had memorized every building in the camp on Vrba and Wetzler’s map. Part of him said, Go fuck the Nazi bastard. With God’s help, Blum would only be in here another day. The name “Mirek,” if Dormutter looked it up, would mean nothing. There were thousands and thousands here. The SS man would never find him. Just as he had never found Mendl. Let some other yid lick out their shit.

Still, he went.

He went because some other yid would only be taunted or even killed to do his job. And he went because he had been lucky at the gate, and to ignore God’s grace that had been bestowed on him would make him undeserving.

The officers’ guardhouse was through a gate near the clock tower.

“Over there.” The guard manning it pointed without even looking at Blum after inspecting his pass.

It was a long, brick building with a peaked, slate roof. On one side, there were a couple of vehicles parked. An empty troop truck with a war cross on the door. And the German version of a Jeep. A guard stepped out, heading past him.

Blum showed him his pass. “Latrine…?”

The SS man pointed around the back. “Back there.”

On the other side of the building, there was a bicycle rack, and in front of it, a man, another prisoner, hunched over, scraping the tires of mud. Blum prepared to go around the back as his gaze fell on him.

Blum’s heart came to a stop.

The man was clearly older than most here. Hair, white now, no longer gray, and thinned. But still combed over to the side.

Thinner. His cheek bones coming through. A shadow of himself.

Barely even resembling the photo Blum carried on him.

But when he looked up, Blum saw the full, flat nose, the sagging line of the chin that had been burned into his memory. Can this be? And then, a tide of joy rising up inside him, the black mole on his left cheek. That will be your confirmation, Strauss had said.

Confirmation, Blum said exultantly.

He took a step forward. “Professor Mendl?”

FORTY-TWO

The man looked up.

For Blum, it was like he was seeing a mirage, in the desert. Was it real? Or was it only what he wanted to be real? The old man looked so gaunt and sickly, it was amazing he hadn’t already been shipped off to his fate. It was amazing Blum even recognized him.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“Professor Alfred Mendl? You taught at the University of Lvov? You lectured in electromagnetic physics?”

The old man squinted at Blum as if he was some student he had once had. “Yes.”

Elation surged in Blum. It was him! Thinner. The color gone from his face. His eyes beaten. Barely a shadow of his former self, physically. Somewhere between a ghost and a man.

But him!

“Don’t be alarmed, sir.” Blum came a step closer. “And please don’t think I’m crazy, what I’m about to say.” He looked around to make sure there were no other guards around. “But thank God I’ve found you. I’ve been looking for you all over.”

“Looking for me…?” The professor squinted back uncomprehendingly.

“Yes.” Blum nodded. “You. Look.” He brought out the photograph he had tucked inside his uniform.

Mendl stood up and stared at his own likeness, his eyes growing wide. Then, not quite understanding, he handed it back to Blum. “Why me?”

“Professor, what I’m about to tell you may sound crazy.” Blum met the old man’s gaze. “But it’s not, I promise, and I can prove every word.” He spoke low enough that no one could overhear. “But I’ve snuck inside here. Inside the camp. I’ve come from Washington, D.C. In the States.”

“Washington…?” Now the professor did squint back with a look of incredulity. “And you say you’ve snuck in here? Into the camp. Why, possibly…?”

“For you, Professor. To get you out.”

“Out of here…?” Mendl sniffed, as if he were definitely speaking with a lunatic. “Now you are talking nonsense, whoever you are. Only two people have ever gotten out of here. And no one’s ever known how they ended up.”

“Wetzler and Vrba,” Blum said back. Mendl’s eyes raised. “Look…” Blum yanked up his sleeve and showed his wrist. “This is Rudolf Vrba’s number. A22327. They made it, Professor. They’re in England now. They helped me. In order to get inside.”

Mendl took Blum’s arm and stared, bewildered, at the number, then back at him.

“I realize how this sounds, sir. But I can prove every word.”

“Then who the hell are you, having gotten your way inside here? Some kind of commando? You hardly look it. But your Polish is flawless. Yet you say you came from Washington? I’m old, but I’m not a fool, young man.”

“My name is Blum. I am Polish. Until three years ago I lived in Krakow. My family was killed by the Nazis, and I escaped to the United States. I enlisted there in the Army. A month ago they contacted me to come back here. For you specifically. To get you out. And take you back to the States.”

“To the States…” Mendl’s eyes grew wide. Then he just smiled and shook his head. “Look around, son. Do you not see two rows of electrified wire and all the guards? Do you intend to just call a cab and have it drive up to the front gate? Get out how, do you propose?

“We have a way. It’s been worked out. They are still working on the train tracks, are they not, outside the camp gates?”

“Day and night. You can smell the ovens over at Birkenau. Twenty-four hours a day. The more trains, the more fuel for the fires.”

“Tomorrow night, we volunteer for the work detail there,” Blum said under his breath. “There’ll be an attack. By Polish partisans.”

“Partisans? Here?”

“Yes. It’s all been arranged. We have a plane. Two days ago it dropped me off. It’s to take you back to England and then on to the United States. Whoever you are, sir, I can only say they want you very badly.”

“Whoever I am…?” The professor’s look grew skeptical. “If this is a ploy of some kind, I assure you I-”

“They tried to get you out before with papers from the Paraguayan embassy. You were contacted by an emissary from the embassy in Bern.” Blum rattled off what he knew. “You went to the Swiss border and then on to Rotterdam to board a cargo ship. The Prinz Eugen. Is that not right? Then you ended up in France, at the detention center at Vittel…”

Mendl’s look slowly changed from disbelief to one of astonishment. Gradually, he nodded. And then smiled. He saw now.

“This is no ploy, sir. I promise you.” Blum looked him in the eyes. “They wouldn’t tell me what it is you did or why they need you. Only that it was vital to get you out. Which is why I’m here. And to give you this…”

Blum tore a seam on the inside of his uniform and reached inside. He came out with a folded piece of paper and handed it to Mendl. The old man looked at it, still suspicious at first or, at least, still a bit unsure, and then unfolded it, continuing to eye Blum with a bit of wariness. He took out his wire glasses and put them on.

It was a letter.

An image of the White House at the top.

The professor’s eyes stretched wide.

“Professor Mendl…” He read softly under his breath in English. “The war effort needs you. I am encouraged to tell you that we are close. On what, due to security, I am unable to say here. But I know you know of which I speak. I am writing to say that you can trust this man, Nathan Blum, with your life. He is my direct emissary. Freedom and the fate of the war require that you come here and share your research. The grateful arms of the United States need you and await you. With all God’s speed, Professor. And for the good of mankind.”

“My God,” Mendl uttered, his jaw slack.

It was signed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.

Mendl looked back up at Blum, the color drained from his face. “How did you possibly get this?”

“It was given to me. In England, before I left.”

“The heavy water experiments?” Mendl began to put it together. “Are the Americans close? They must be, if they sent you here for me.”

“I’ve heard of this, but I don’t know. I was only told to give you that letter. And to get you back.”

“The bastards have destroyed all my work.” Mendl shook his head forlornly. “Not once, but twice. And besides, you can see I’m hardly in the top of health. I’m way too old to be playing secret agent.”

“You must come.” Blum insisted. “I’ve put my life at risk to bring you out. And that’s what I’ll do. I don’t know what it is you know, or why they want you, above all others, but many people have put their lives on the line to get me here and to hand you this, Professor. So you must. You must come.”

Mendl let out a breath and ran a hand fitfully across his face. “We must put this away now.” He folded the letter back up again. “If anyone would see this…” He looked around with both foreboding and bewilderment in his gaze, still in shock, stuffing the letter into his waist.

“I have to ask, sir,” Blum inquired. “Your family…?”

Mendl shook his head. “They are gone. Soon after we arrived.”

“I’m sorry. Mine are gone as well. So then there is nothing to hold you back. I can vouch for the partisans. They are capable and dedicated soldiers. They will do what they are charged to do.”

“And then we do just what?” The professor chortled skeptically. “Throw down our shovels and run? Toward the woods. And the Nazis will simply look the other way?”

“No. Not toward the woods. Toward the river,” Blum said. “The opposite direction. We’ll be met there.”

“Met there…” The professor laughed cynically. “It’s been a while since my track running days, I’m afraid, if you can’t already see that. Plus, I’ve been sick.”

“They’ll be chaos all around. The attack should occupy the guards. I’ll get you there.”

“And when is all this to happen?”

“Tomorrow night. At zero thirty hours.” Blum said, “I’ll be going, whether you’re with me or not. Though I’d much prefer it if it was the two of us.”

“And you say that there’s a plane?”

“It will land about twenty kilometers from here. The partisans will take us.”

Mendl closed his eyes for a second and nodded as if deep in thought. “This is where my Marte and Lucy died. A part of me feels it’s right that this is where I should die too.”

“What’s right, to me, is that you make something of their deaths, Professor. As I am trying to of mine. I’m only here another day. That’s all the time there is. Whatever it is you know, sir, the Allies seem to desperately need you.”

“This is all just so incredible…”

“That may be, sir. Nonetheless, you must come.”

Two soldiers stepped out of guardhouse, chatting. They came down the wooden steps, spoke for a second, then noticed Blum and Mendl. “Was gibts hier?” one questioned. What’s here?

“Latrine, sir.” Blum held out his pass to them. “I was just asking…”

“Then get on with it,” he snapped. “Let the old man do his work. It’s back there. Go on.” They went off, resuming their conversation, and climbed into the half-track on the other side of the building. The engine started up.

Blum looked at Mendl. “I need your answer, sir. I should go. It’s best I don’t draw any attention…”

“My answer.” The professor still seemed conflicted.

“Yes. There is still work to be done.”

“Then, yes! My answer is, yes, I’ll come.” Mendl put his bony hand on Blum’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re right, it is too late for Marte and Lucy. But not for what I know. I’ll come with you.”

Blum squeezed the professor in return. “I give you my word, sir, I’ll get you back. Or die trying.”

“There’s just one thing…”

“What?”

“I won’t be coming alone. There is someone who must accompany me.”

Blum shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“There’s a boy. In truth, he’s no longer a boy. He’s seventeen.”

“It’s out of the question,” Blum insisted. “It will be hard enough to make sure I can protect you. But a boy like that… This isn’t a popularity contest. This is about the war. The government of the United States has gone to extreme lengths to set this up.”

“I’m afraid it’s not a wish, Panie Blum. It’s a condition. For me to come. And he’s not just some boy…” Mendl hesitated a moment. “He’s my nephew. I won’t leave him.” His gaze was resolute. “Without him, I don’t go.”

“Nephew…” Blum drew in a troubled breath. Three would be more to manage. To take responsibility for. More conspicuous in the escape. What if the boy was hit? What then? Would the professor go or remain with him? He saw it clearly. Mendl would not so easily leave him behind.

“You wouldn’t leave your own flesh and blood behind, would you, Panie Blum?”

Blum felt himself soften. What choice did he have? And Mendl’s question seemed to hit the right nerve. “This boy, he can keep a secret?”

“I’ll make sure of it.” Mendl nodded. “He’s a remarkable lad. In many ways.”

“I don’t care how remarkable he is, he still can’t breathe a word. Everything depends on it.”

“He won’t,” Mendl promised. “I give you my oath.”

Blum saw that it was a risk. He didn’t know what someone like Strauss would do, faced with the same decision. But what choice was there? He saw the resolve in the professor’s eyes. Without this boy, there was no Mendl. And that was why he was here. “All right. But no one else can know. No one.”

“You’ll see, he won’t be a burden. I give you my word.”

“I hope so. All our lives depend on it. Before we go, I want to meet him. Which block are you in?”

“Thirty-six.”

“I’m in twenty. And we’ll have to get our way onto the work detail.”

Mendl nodded. “I know how to get that accomplished. There’s a guard, Richter, who generally oversees it. And a kapo I know. They are always looking for workers. Or bribes. If I had money.”

“I can take care of that part. So I will find you tomorrow. Maybe play sick.” Blum put out his hand. “I’ll be by your block.”

They shook.

“You know, from the day we left Lvov,” Mendl looked at him sadly, “Marte and I dreamed of taking our daughter to America. Of course the minute we got on that train we all knew that dream was dead. So maybe it’s best, in a way, that they’re gone now. Maybe that’s how history intended it to be. If either was alive, even by a breath, you know I would never leave them.”

Blum nodded. “I know that.”

“I wonder whether anyone will ever take note of that fact one day, should we reach there?” the professor mused. “Or in the end, if it even really matters?”

FORTY-THREE

The Abwehr Daimler was waved through the camp’s front gate and directed to the administrative offices.

Martin Franke stepped out.

A major in an SS uniform, handsome, with strong, dark features, came down the steps to greet him.

“Herr Colonel…” The officer gave Franke a quick Heil. “I am Lagerkommandant Ackermann. I am in charge of the camp while Kommandant Hoss is away.”

“Major.” Franke raised his palm. They shook hands.

“You’ve come a long way this busy morning for a visit. I’m very sorry the commandant couldn’t be here himself to welcome you.”

“I’m sorry to have arrived on such short notice. I hope I’m not interrupting your work. But I have a matter of some importance that I believe relates to your camp.”

“If the Abwehr feels it is a matter of such urgency…” Ackermann smiled, his sarcasm showing through, “then no work is too important to interrupt. Come, it’s been a long journey from Warsaw. We shall discuss it over a kaffee inside.”

They went into the administrative offices. Lieutenant Fromm came in with two coffees, and they sat around the small conference table in front of a map of the camp. “I am sorry that the commandant is not here. Unfortunately, he’s been detained an extra day in Berlin, in meetings with Obersturmbannführer Eichmann and Reichsführer Himmler.”

“So I understand,” Franke replied, noting the SS man’s superior tone. While technically Franke had the higher rank, the political battle between the Abwehr and its chain of command through Admiral Canaris and Göring, and the SS, reporting to Himmler himself, all competing for the Führer’s ear, was not a secret. This Ackermann, Franke judged, would likely hide behind that protection. Franke was determined to prove him wrong.

“So please, if you don’t mind…,” Ackermann said with a glance at his watch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but there are many things I must attend to.”

“I’ll get right to it then. I believe that someone may have entered your camp, Major.”

“Entered the camp?”

“Someone dropped in by plane, nearby. Either as an advance agent of some kind, perhaps to liberate it for the Allies. Or possibly for some other reason…” Franke put down his coffee.

“Some other reason…?” Ackermann leaned back skeptically and crossed his legs.

“Perhaps to locate someone, Major. Someone inside.”

“No one can just enter here without being detected.” The camp commander looked at Franke with a narrow, skeptical gaze. “And for what…? You have seen the Jews rounded up in Warsaw. You must have some idea what goes on here. Only the biggest fool in the world would make his way in here knowingly.”

“Perhaps to take someone back out then.” Franke looked at the major’s deep-set eyes.

“I’m sure you took notice of the security as you drove in. There is a double row of wire. Electrified. It is patrolled night and day by guards with dogs. Everyone has a number, accounted for daily. Every vehicle in and out is thoroughly searched.”

“Yes, Major.” Franke opened his briefcase and took out the file he’d prepared. “I did notice the security here. But I’m not sure if you are aware that a low-flying plane was heard two days ago near Wilczkowice, approximately twenty kilometers from the camp, and a parachuter was spotted coming in. Likely to link up with Polish resistance on the ground.” He laid out the report of the local farmer’s sighting. Ackermann read through it slowly.

It appeared he wasn’t aware.

“You are busy, Herr Lagerkommandant. This is the sort of drudgery we in the intelligence corps concern ourselves with. By the way,” Franke laid out the next sheet, “you don’t happen to have any truffles in the surrounding forests, do you, Major?’

“Truffles? Truffles are indigenous to northern Italy. And France,” the SS man replied.

“I thought not,” Franke said. “But you do have birchwood?”

“Birchwood? Yes, wood is in no shortage.” The camp commander looked at him curiously as Franke passed him the intercepted communiqués about the “truffle hunter” and the birchwood forest. He read them and put them down. “But this all proves nothing, of course. This person, even if it is what you say, could be anywhere in the region.”

“Is there any other target of strategic importance in the area?”

“There is a prisoner of war camp as part of the overall complex. And the IG Farben facility that is under construction.”

“Which you provide the labor for, I believe,” Franke said.

Ackermann leafed through the report again and put it down. “Well, if he is here, as you suggest, there are no ways out. There are over three hundred thousand prisoners here,” the Lagerkommandant said. “In all the camps.”

“Yes, and I want every one accounted for,” Franke said. “Today.”

“You want, Colonel?” Ackermann raised a countering eye at him.

“Yes. As per General Graebner in Warsaw and Admiral Canaris in Berlin.” Franke pulled out an official order. “And Reichmarshall Göring…”

Ackermann took the paper and stared with mounting rage at the signed order from an Abwehr general. “Lagerkommandant Ackermann, please be aware that on the suspicion of a matter of security I have spoken with my superiors in Berlin and they have instructed you…” He read through the memo without hiding his contempt and then put it down. Canaris, the Abwehr head, was a weakened but still powerful man, known to lock heads with SS Reichsführer Himmler for the Führer’s attention.

“Herr Lagerkommandant, we do not want an investigation into something that is potentially harmful to the war effort to be hung up in, how shall we say, a kind of political squabble, while you spend the day attempting to reconfirm with your own superiors what they will likely simply approve anyway. And in the event I am right on this, I cannot conceive you would want this kind of lapse to have taken place while the commandant is in Berlin.”

Ackermann’s face grew tight. He stared at the order again and slid it back across the table, though Franke could see he would rather have taken it and ripped it up in front of Franke and thrown the pieces on the floor. Then out of nowhere the commandant grew pensive. “You said two days ago…?”

“Yes. On the morning of the twenty-third.”

“Yesterday we let in thirty-one laborers into the main camp to assist with construction. Only thirty were counted leaving.”

Franke’s eyes grew wide. “And you did not follow that up?”

“The guards assumed it was a miscount. It happens from time to time. Not a single prisoner was unaccounted for. And what kind of fool would choose of his own accord to be left behind in this hellhole, Colonel?”

“Maybe a very daring and well-trained fool, Major. I would like you to bring me the person who organized that work detail.”

“That will take some time, of course.” There was massive work to be done today, numbers to be met. Two trains were arriving. To be weighed down chasing a folly like this would cost a lot of manpower. Throw everything off. And to what end? There were three hundred thousand prisoners within the wires here. “I’m afraid I will have to discuss this with Kommandant Hoss, Herr Colonel…”

“I repeat, Herr Major, I am certain you would not want such a lapse of security to occur while the commandant is away and you are insistent on waging a tug-of-war over who has proper authorization…?”

The SS had little respect for the Abwehr in general, Franke understood. Ackermann likely thought of himself as a man of action, dirtying his hands with the Führer’s proper work each day, whatever horror that entailed and was behind the gruesome smell Franke had noticed upon arriving. Ackermann no doubt looked upon Franke as merely some overzealous desk clerk who only got his hands soiled going over reports.

Yet Franke could see the assistant commandant knew he was boxed in.

“Fromm!” the Lagerkommandant buzzed in his aide. The lieutenant who had served them their coffee ran in.

“Yes, Major. Are you ready for Captain Kimpner now?”

“No. I want you to bring me that jacket that was found this morning. In the equipment locker.”

“Yes, Major.” The lieutenant looked back, confused. “I’ll have it brought up now.”

Franke looked at the assistant commandant. “A jacket was found?”

“Just this morning. It could have been from anyone, Colonel. It might have been there days, even weeks…”

“Someone is here, Major!” Franke jabbed his finger against the table and his eyes lit up with zeal. “Of that you can be sure. He put his life on the line to get himself in here. And now we are going to find out why.”

FORTY-FOUR

Before the evening meal, Alfred wound his way over to Block Forty and found Leo looking over a makeshift chessboard on his bunk.

“Come in the back,” he said. “I have something important to show you, son.”

“I’m going over some things,” the boy said. The old man seemed quite excited.

“Just come. Quick. Now.”

“I haven’t seen such a spring in your step in some time,” Leo commented as they made their way back to the sick area of the block. “What’s going on?”

“Your prayers have been answered,” Alfred said with a wide smile. “What I am going to tell you remains exclusively between us. You tell no one, not another friend or a bunkmate. Certainly not your new chess partner. Do I have your word on that?”

“My word? Of course.” Leo saw the spark in Alfred’s eyes. “Tell me, what is up?”

Alfred squeezed his arm. “Someone is here to get us out.”

“Here…?”

“That’s right. In the camp.”

“And by ‘get us out,’ I assume you mean…?”

“Get us out of the camp. He has a way to escape.”

Leo curled a smile. He put his hand against Alfred’s cheek, as if checking his temperature. “Has the typhus hit you again, old man? Because this time you have truly crossed over into the delusional.”

Alfred’s eyes drilled into Leo. “Do I look sick, Leo?”

“In truth, for the first time in weeks, no.” Leo shook his head.

“So then look, I have something to show you.” Another prisoner passed by and went to the latrine. “Come over here, and keep your voice low.”

“You are certainly going to a lot of precaution. This is some kind of joke, right?”

They went to another corner of the sick area, where, at least for the moment, they found themselves alone. “Listen to me, Leo, someone has snuck into the camp from the outside. Not just from the outside… He came from Washington, D.C. In America. For me! I know this sounds crazy, and before you think of taking me to the infirmary again…” Alfred took out the folded letter from his trousers. “He gave me this. Read it.”

Leo reached to take the sheet of paper.

Alfred closed his hand over it again. “First I need your oath once again that this stays entirely between us.”

“I already gave that to you, Alfred. As I said, I swear.”

“On your family.”

“Yes, on my family,” Leo swore. “As much as is left of them.”

“Then, here…” Alfred released his hand.

Leo slowly unfolded the letter, casting a wary eye on his friend, whose mind he thought had completely crossed over the edge. He didn’t read English, only a few words he knew from seeing Chaplin films and Westerns at the cinema before the war. However, he fixed on Alfred’s name at the top of the letter, Professor Mendl. And then above it, his eyes registering the sender in absolute shock, he saw the words The United States of America and the image of the White House in Washington, D.C. Where the U.S. president lived.

Leo looked back at him, his throat dry. “How did you get this…?”

“Read on, my boy. And look, look who has signed it!” Alfred said, jabbing his finger.

Leo scanned the short letter and his gaze came to rest on the bold signature with the printed letters underneath.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

President of the United States

The breath grew tight in his chest. “Is this a ruse? If it is, Alfred, I give you credit, but I’m not sure why you would want to-”

“It’s no ruse, boy. They’ve come to get me out. They have a plan. And it just might work.” Alfred’s eyes were so purposeful and lucid Leo knew for sure that it was no trick. “But there’s a catch.”

“A catch?”

“Yes.” Alfred put his hand on Leo’s shoulder. “I need you to come along with me.”

“Me?”

“You, son.” Alfred nodded. “You know it all now. Every formula. Every progression of everything I’ve done related to diffusion. It’s why I’ve been teaching it to you all this time. God forbid, something goes wrong for me…” He took Leo by the shoulders, his eyes brimming with life and renewed purpose, and stared deeply at him. “I need you to be my brain.”

FORTY-FIVE

Buoyed with hope, Blum finished up his work detail for the day and went back to his barrack. He’d found him! The exhaustion and misery of his fellow block mates could be heard all around him, yet inwardly he was soaring with expansiveness and pride.

He had his man.

His needle amid a hundred haystacks. Now all they had to do was execute their escape tomorrow, still no simple task. It was clear in a second’s notice that the professor was in no condition to be dodging bullets. He’d be lucky to even be allowed on the work detail. That was where the bribe came in. And now they had this boy, Mendl’s nephew, someone else for Blum to have to watch out for. That added to the risk as well. Still, he saw it was the only way he could get the professor to come. You wouldn’t leave your own flesh and blood behind, would you…? So it had to be done, regardless of how it turned out.

Tomorrow… Blum tried to block out the groans of misery and exhaustion coming from the rest of the barracks. Their task was just to get through their day; but hopefully by tomorrow night, he would be gone. He went through in his mind how the plan would unfold. They had to position themselves on the side closest to the river. At 0030, gunfire would erupt from the woods. Presumably the guards would return fire. In the midst of the chaos, they would move away from the fighting, toward the Sola. A detachment would meet them there. If everything went well, a little over twenty-four hours from now he would know whether he had pulled off the biggest miracle of the war, or just become another forgotten number among the thousands and thousands here whose fates would never be known.

All he had to do was get through the next day.

“So? Did you ever find him?” someone asked Blum from below. It was the man in the tweed cap. “Your uncle?”

“No.” Blum said. He’d been careless once; he didn’t want to arouse even the slightest suspicion over it. “Everyone was right. He must be dead.”

“Well, at least you got the first-class tour of the place on your new job,” the man joked good-naturedly. “Don’t worry, many of us have had that pleasure. What was it you did before the war?”

“We were milliners,” Blum replied. “My father had a shop with a small factory above it.”

“Hats, huh…?” The man took off his own crumpled cap and inspected it. “Maybe if we ever get out of this hole, I’ll be in need of a new one.”

“If we manage to get out of this hole, you may never want to take yours off ever again,” Blum played along, “for it will surely be lucky. Anyway, if you’re ever in Gizycko, be sure and come in. I promise you a good price on a new one.”

“Maybe felt, this time,” the man said longingly. “With a nice, sturdy brim.”

“Yes, beaver,” Blum said. “It’s by far the best.” He thought back to his father, who loved to take Blum through the factory above his shop. Workers, almost exclusively men, shaping and banding over machines. “Crushed and properly shrunk. It’s called pouncing. It-”

Suddenly there were shouts and loud banging all around. Guards had come inside the barracks and were cracking their sticks into the walls and bedposts.

“What’s going on?” people whispered worriedly. “Can you see?” Any unexpected intrusion filled the ranks with terror.

“You are all in luck,” Muller, the Blockführer, announced, walking amid the bunks. “The Red Cross is coming tomorrow and we want you looking your best for them. Time to bathe and clean yourself. Leave all your belongings. You will be coming back shortly. Come on, get up! You’ll all feel one hundred percent better in an hour.”

Uncertainty swept over them. Mixed with fear. The Red Cross? They had never been there before. In the children’s camp once maybe. Many of them had been in the camp for years. Are they lying to us? Was this finally it?

“You know what that means. They are going to kill us,” someone cried out. “Just like Thirty-Four last week. They’re all gone!”

“No, that’s silly.” Muller tried to calm things. “Where did you get such a notion? It’s just a bath. You’ll be no more dead than I am. And you’ll likely smell a whole lot better. And with no lice. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? And your friends in Thirty-Four, they were just transferred. To a different work camp. So, c’mon, up, up, everyone! It’s for the Red Cross inspection. Everyone get in line! You know you can trust me.”

One by one, people considered their options and slowly climbed out of their bunks. Anxiousness spread among them. Was this a ruse? Were they telling the truth? Was this the dreaded “selection” they’d all witnessed? Guards passed through the rows, knocking on bedposts, suddenly acting more like concerned caretakers than the ruthless killers they all knew them to be. “Come on now. Don’t be alarmed. No reason to worry here. Let’s go!”

The man with the cap Blum had been talking to just sort of tipped it back on his head and muttered philosophically, “Perhaps that hat will have to wait after all.”

Worry rippled through Blum. He knew precisely what was happening, where they were being taken. He’d seen Vrba’s and Wetzler’s reports. But of all the times… He had just found Mendl. One more day and they’d be gone. He jumped down from his bunk. Amid the unease and commotion, he searched for a way out. Maybe through the latrine. There were windows there. Then he saw that their kapo, Zinchenko, had made his way back there and in the same calming tone as Muller was reassuring everyone that it was nothing to worry about. “Nonsense, this is not a ‘selection.’ I’ll see you all there. You’ll likely be back here before I will,” he said, pushing those that had gotten out of their bunks but were making up their minds exactly what to believe toward the front. “Leave any possessions. In an hour you’ll be back.”

His falsely solicitous tone alone was a dead giveaway of what lay ahead for them.

Blum’s mind raced as everyone formed a line, as instructed. Were they so beaten down over time that when their number was finally up, it was easier just to submit than resist? Or the understanding that any resistance was futile anyway and merely delayed the inevitable?

“Line up! Line up!” The guards pushed them all forward. One man remained in his bunk and tucked himself into a ball underneath his blanket in a desperate attempt to remain hidden. A guard merely tapped him on the leg and lifted the blanket with his stick. “Have you ever seen anyone so scared of a little bath? C’mon, no stragglers, you as well.”

“No, no!” the prisoner shouted. “I don’t want a bath. I want to stay here.” He clung to the bedpost.

“Get up now, Holecek!” Zinchenko came and pulled up the man off the bed.

“Please… please,” he begged, clutching the kapo’s arms.

“Go on now!” The kapo pushed him into line.

The man in the tweed cap merely folded his blanket neatly and set it on the foot on his bunk.

They know, Blum was certain. They had to know. It was no secret. Still, they were all just going to their fate like sheep.

“We should fight,” someone said, lining up.

“With what?” another asked. “Our fists? They have clubs. And guns. And there’s always the chance they’re right this time. The odds are better than to resist.”

“Yes, my friend Rudi got a shower the other day and he came back just fine,” another confirmed. “We should just go.”

Blockführer Muller barked, “Everyone stay in line and move outside!”

Blum saw there was no option for him but to get into line as well. At the door, an officer was checking off their numbers. Guards were everywhere. Tonight, they’d brought out the whole playing team. There was no point in trying to make a dash for it. And to where? There was nowhere to go. Guards were watching every step, Blum gradually made his way to the front of the line. He pulled up his sleeve. “Mirek. A22327.”

“A22327, an old-timer, huh?” The officer looked him in the eye and wrote it down. “Go ahead now. Enjoy your shower.”

Outside, they huddled together in anticipation until the entire block had been emptied. Guards went through the barrack to make sure. Blum looked around. There were several helmeted soldiers just watching them, submachine guns drawn. To run would be to be cut down in an instant. The soldiers looked on with impassive stares on their young faces, fingers ready on the triggers.

If there were any doubts before that this was no ordinary trip to clean themselves up for the Red Cross, it now became clear.

A few of them began to whimper.

“Let’s go, in a line, toward the front gate!” the officer who had been checking off numbers called.

Toward the place where that awful smell emanated from. His heart beating fiercely, Blum looked into stonelike stares of the guards around them, knowing his life depended on making the right call on whom he could approach. He ran his hand along the inside of his waist seam.

They began to march.

“We’re finally going on Himmelstrasse,” someone muttered. The road to heaven.

A few muttered prayers, the Shema, and some even wept. Others just kept looking around for a familiar face, saying over and over that it just can’t be true. It can’t be happening now. “Why us? There are still so many others.”

“Our numbers just came up, that’s all. Say your prayers, Walter. We all knew it was just a matter of time.”

“Why must we die? We can still work.”

As Blum filed in, he vowed he would not go along without a fight. As his parents had gone. Lined up against a wall. Probably lied to just the same. Told they were just looking for someone inside. Then mowed down. His father, obedient to the end, probably reassuring his mother and Leisa not to fret, they’d all be back upstairs having tea in a matter of minutes. Blum trudged in step, his gaze darting around. There had to be a way out. There always was. As back in Krakow-a tunnel, a rooftop. There was always something. If you found it.

Then he remembered.

One by one, as he went forward, he fixed on the guard’s faces. Who? One of them had to be the one.

The one who would spare him.

Under his shirt, he ripped through the seam in his waistband and took hold of the diamond that was embedded there. His heart was pounding.

It was large, like a polished shell in his hand. Ten karats. Blum glanced at it for just a second, just to be sure.

It was worth a bloody fortune.

It’s better than cash, Strauss had said. In case you run into trouble.

It had better work. Because it was his only chance.

And this, Blum felt the panic start to rise up in his chest, definitely qualified as trouble.

FORTY-SIX

Blum clenched the stone tightly in his fist as he went along.

“Don’t slow down! Keep it moving!” The guards pushed them along, people muttering, weeping.

Knowing that his life hung on his next decision, Blum searched up and down the line of guards. They were positioned every ten paces or so, moving the line forward with their clubs and submachine guns. “Come on, keep moving. You’ll be happy when you’re clean.” Most were faces Blum had never seen; he’d only been in the camp for a day. He spotted Dormutter on his left side of the line, the one who had tormented him earlier with the waste buckets. That would be suicide, Blum knew. He saw another who had been at the front gate when he’d carried the pails through and to the ditch. And Muller, the Blockführer. What was it Blum had been told this morning? He just goes about his job. Nothing more, nothing less.

Not him.

Time was seeping away.

Who, then? He searched the impassive faces. A wrong choice, and he would be shot on the spot right there.

They trudged ahead in two rows, each maybe fifty yards long. Rostow, whose job he had taken this morning, was the row in front of Blum. No celebration now. Two rows behind him was the kind man who had taken him through his “rounds.” Even the blockschreiber, who had lasted so long here, two rows ahead, his head down.

Nothing could help them now.

As they neared the front gate, they merged with a line of women coming from the women’s camp.

Their heads shaved, their haunted faces were white with the same unknowing fear.

“Why us…?” a few pleaded to some of the men, sobbing. “We don’t want to die.”

“Can’t you help us?” another begged.

“We can’t even help ourselves,” a man said back to them. “What can we possibly do for you?”

“Just be strong,” the man in the tweed cap, a few rows up from Blum, told them. “What else is there to say?”

Everyone was praying, whimpering, but slowly stepping forward.

Blum looked in the eyes of each of the guards. Who?

They were now not far from the brick building with the circular chimneys. That was when, ahead of him, Blum spotted the reddish hair and thick lips of Oberscharführer Fuerst with a Luger at his side.

Fuerst.

The one who’d been pointed out to him this morning who might be “open to doing business.”

It had to be him.

Suddenly a woman with a scarf around her shaved head jumped from the line and cried out loudly, “I won’t go!” She broke away, defiantly shaking her head and seemingly heading at a brisk pace back toward the women’s camp.

“Get back in line!” a guard ran up to her and shouted.

“No, I’m going back,” she said, ignoring his command.

“Get back now! Now!” the guard demanded, raising his submachine gun.

“Get back! Come on back!” people from both lines called to her. “You’ll be-”

Then it seemed to occur to everyone at once, what did it really matter? In minutes they would all suffer the same fate. Only hers would be quicker. The line stopped and they all went quiet, everyone watching her.

“Stop!” the guard shouted, red-faced. The woman just kept on going, seemingly ignoring him. “Now!”

There was a burst of gunfire. She fell forward, her tattered rag dress suddenly dotted in red. She continued to struggle, crawling, gasping for air, her fingers digging into the dirt. “Go on!” people in the line called out to her. “Go.” But the guard stood over her and the gun erupted again. Then there was a moment of silence as she just lay there.

“Now, go! Go! Don’t even look!” Muller waved everyone on.

The merged lines were fast approaching the crematorium gate. Soon it would be too late.

Blum edged his way through the crowd toward where Fuerst was positioned. The Oberscharführer didn’t look like a man who was open for business. His SS cap was tilted to the side and he stood there with a stolid demeanor, without so much as blinking his eyes, waving everyone on with his gun. Blum knew, in a moment, if he’d made the wrong choice, it might well be over for him, just as it had been for that woman. But in only minutes they would all file into the flat-roofed building, the door closed behind, and they’d all be dead anyway. There was no other option.

He was now on Fuerst’s side of the line, only a few feet from him. He clutched the diamond in his hand. This would be his only chance. He prayed those penetrating, stolid eyes had a mercenary spark behind them. Another step; they all inched forward.

It had to be now.

His heart racing, Blum broke out of the line and flung himself onto the startled German.

“You! Get back in line!” Fuerst stepped back and raised his Luger, his eyes flashing with rage.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Please…” Blum begged him in German. He whispered, “I have something valuable if you get me out of this line. It’s a diamond. Ten karats…” He put his fingers an inch apart. “I have it on me. It’s yours. Just get me out of this line.” Their gazes locked for a moment. “What do you say?”

At first, Blum was sure the German was about to squeeze the trigger and end it right there. Whatever “business” might be going through the guard’s calculating mind, there were simply too many people around to risk it.

Blum was sure he was done for.

Then the guard took hold of him and blurted out with a scowl of disgust, “You call me what, filth? Don’t lay your dirty hands on me. Get over here…” He pulled Blum out of the line. “And you too, bitch…” He grabbed a young woman out as well. “What did you say? Both of you, over here, on your knees!” He pushed them both around the corner of a long, flat building. “The showers are too good for you two!”

As they turned the corner out of sight, Fuerst cocked his Luger, threw Blum against the wall, and shoved it underneath his jaw. The woman began to whimper, sure her end was close at hand. Blum felt the cold steel against his throat and said his goodbyes too.

Then under his breath the guard hissed, “You’d better not be lying or I’ll put a bullet through your brain right now. Let me see it, quick! Don’t delay a second or they’ll be mopping you up where you fall.”

Blum knew there was every chance Fuerst would simply take the stone and shoot him regardless. But he’d be dead in minutes as it was, so what choice was there?

“Here.” He opened his palm and thrust the diamond in the German’s face. Fuerst stared at it, his eyes lighting up. Satisfied, he took the gem from Blum’s hand and stuffed it inside his uniform.

Then he spun Blum around and put the Luger to the back of his head.

“Please…” Blum stood there, his face against the wall, his heart hammering against his ribs. “I gave it to you. Like you asked.” He closed his eyes and waited for the darkness to overwhelm him. “We made a deal.”

“You bought yourself some time, Jew.” The German spat. “But that’s all it is, time. Now get the fuck out of here.” He pushed Blum along the wall. “If I were you, I’d head into the first block I find before I change my mind.”

“Thank you.” Blum’s blood started pumping again and he nodded. “I will.” Then he looked at the girl. No more than eighteen, he thought. Pretty. White with fear. They both knew what Fuerst was about to do. Blum looked at him. “Her too.”

“Her? She’s as good as dead anyway.” The German grunted. “Don’t waste your pity. For her, this is quicker anyway.”

Terrified, the girl, who didn’t speak German but clearly understood what was being said, reached out and grabbed onto Blum’s leg. “Please, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me!” she blurted in Polish.

He had the cash. He could barter for her life too. Any life is as worthy as another, the Midrash said. But that money was needed to bribe the guards tomorrow night. Without it, he had no way to get Mendl out. And that’s why he was here. Even now, he knew he had only seconds to get away without anyone seeing what was going on.

“I’m sorry.” Blum looked down at her.

“No, don’t go! Please…” She lunged for him in desperation, her wide eyes filled with terror.

“Get away from here now,” the German said. “Or you both die.”

Blum pulled out of her grasp and started to run, hugging shadows of the long, dark building, taking one last glance behind.

He heard a shot. The woman’s sobbing pleas went silent. Then he heard a second one.

The one Fuerst pretended was meant for him.

“Filthy, fucking Jews,” the guard grunted loud enough to be heard back in the line, wiping his hands on his uniform.

Blum hurried off in the darkness and turned at the far side of the building. Block 12 was just across the yard. If I were you, Fuerst warned him, I’d get into the first block I see.

Blum ran across the yard and twisted open the outside door. People were huddled at the one window. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

“I need a bunk,” Blum said. His heart almost clawed out of his chest. “I was in Twenty. We were being taken to the gas. I was able to bribe a guard…” He looked through the window and saw the end of the line of his block mates disappear toward the front gate.

“You can sleep there.” Someone pointed to an empty spot.

Blum nodded, blowing out a blast of air from his cheeks. “Thank you.”

“Twenty…” someone whispered. “Levy was in twenty, wasn’t he? He always wore a tweed cap.”

“Yes.” Blum nodded. “He was.”

“Too bad. He was a good man. He lasted a long time.”

Blum climbed onto the bunk, encased in a layer of cold sweat, a part of him holding back the urge to retch, another part on the edge of tears, knowing how lucky he was to be alive.

“Stop shaking,” the person next to him said.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

The young woman he had just seen killed came into his mind. He heard her begging him in her last breaths to save her; saw her young and pretty face. For her, this is quicker. He’d basically purchased his life with hers, though, truth was, she would have been dead in minutes anyway. Strauss was right: There were things a whole lot worse than a dead cat lying ahead of him.

He lay on his back, eyes wide open, his heart unable to stay still. Both joyful and ashamed.

Shamed that he had bought his life with another’s. And that she was now dead.

Joyful that, by doing so, the mission was still alive.

FORTY-SEVEN

EARLY THURSDAY MORNING

NEWMARKET AIR BASE, ENGLAND

Though it was well past mightnight, Peter Strauss was unable to sleep. Just as he hadn’t slept more than an hour or two the two previous nights.

Instead, he wrote letters to his wife and kids and then just lay in his bunk, anticipation coursing through him. He took comfort in the early morning drone of the squadron of Wellingtons returning from their nightly runs over Germany. He would count the planes one by one as they went off-thirty of them tonight-rising into the sky at twenty-second intervals and disappearing into the night, pounding the coast of Brittany and the “impregnable” German homeland into rubble and dust. Then, hours later, still awake, he would count them on their return. Imagining, almost like a private wager with himself, that the last one back carried Blum and Mendl, as he prayed that the Mosquito that would leave tomorrow night to pick them up would. Strauss was a thorough man, but these last two nights, he’d given himself over to games.

What else was there, except to drive himself crazy? Each hour crept like an eternity. Imagining details they may have overlooked, things that could go wrong. Each night, an ocean of time for him to navigate until light, and each day, pretending to go about his work, but his mind thinking of nothing else. But what else had his work been for the past year except to plan this one mission? He knew Blum’s schedule inside the camp. What would he be doing now? Waking? Having his meal? Finding his way onto a work detail? Did he have access to the others in the camp? It was one in a million. Had Vrba’s number held up? Had Blum been killed on the whim of some guard, and they would never know?

Was Mendl even still alive?

Their contact, Katja, had radioed back that Blum had landed successfully and then, a day later, that he had entered the camp. So far it all seemed to be going as planned. But they could only plan out so much. Now it was up to Blum. Strauss could do nothing more, but wait. And play these games.

And pray.

Yes, he’d even prayed. For the first time in years. He read over the lines in the Sanhedrin that Blum had shown him about any who saves a life is as if he saved the entire world. His father, the cantor, would be proud of him. What would he have called Blum? “A real Kiddush Hashem,” he would say. A man who acts honorably. Who deserves our admiration.

Strauss smiled. It was true. As much as any man he knew.

But the phrase also carried a second meaning, one far more tragic. It referred to those who had died as martyrs for the faith. They too were Kiddush Hashem. And it made Strauss think. What if all the doubters were right? What if Blum didn’t make it back? What if it was a suicide mission he had sent him on? Could Strauss live with that? Sending a man off to his death on such an improbable task? Would he one day look at his own son and say, “I never killed a man with my hands, but I sent one, a good one, on a wild chase, and never heard from him again”?

Yet from the moment Blum had turned at the door in Donovan’s office that first meeting and asked how they would get him out, Strauss knew he had picked the right man.

Outside, Strauss heard the faraway drone of the first bomber to make it back that night. Zero two thirty hours. He got up from his bunk and stepped out. To the west, he saw the first lights from the Wellington coming in, wings steady, descending smoothly, then touching the tarmac and quickly pulling off the runway as another appeared, not far behind.

And then another.

He’d counted thirty leaving that night, and one by one he felt lifted by their safe return. Soon it was eight, then ten, fifteen, twenty. They kept on coming in.

At last twenty-eight, then twenty-nine…

He looked at the sky and waited.

One more.

Ambulances and maintenance workers rushed up to the ones that had landed. Two or three airmen who had been hit were carried off in gurneys. Pilots jumped down from their cockpits.

C’mon, he said to himself, his eyes peeled to the moonlit sky. Where are you? Make it.

In his mind, it was the one that carried Blum and Mendl back to England.

One more.

Finally he heard a buzzing. He looked to the west. He saw a wing light that seemed to be wavering, dipping and then rising in the night.

The last of the big, old flying fortresses limping home. It had been hit. It descended lower and lower, dark smoke coming from its left engine. Make it, you bastard. Watching while holding his breath, Strauss balled his fists.

Make it.

Finally the bomber touched down. Strauss let out a sigh of relief. A good omen. All back safe and sound. He didn’t know who he’d been telling to make it, Blum or the plane.

Tomorrow it would be he running out and embracing Blum and Mendl as they climbed out of the fuselage.

A Kiddush Hashem.

Whatever happened, Strauss knew he had picked the right man.

FORTY-EIGHT

THURSDAY.

At first light, the kapo came into the block where Blum had spent the night. He banged on the boards. “Everyone outside. Roll call. No delay! Outside, now! On the double!”

Everyone leaped out of their bunks and hustled out, running to take a quick piss or shit, wiping the sleep out of their eyes. The Blockführers were all outside. “Everyone line up by blocks,” they ordered. They were told to form rows of four in the main yard. Thousands of prisoners were milling around. The entire camp. No one had any idea what was up.

Blum had a bad feeling inside. What the hell was going on?

“Something must be up,” the person next to Blum said as they organized themselves into a line. “You rarely see it this way.”

A shiver of unease ran down Blum’s spine. He’d already cheated death once. He’d found Mendl. All he had to do was hide out in the numbers and make it to tonight, then they’d be out of here. But lining up, seeing the vast array of guards hustling everyone together, “Schnell! Schnell!” searching the barracks after they had been emptied, it was clear to him that there was a reason for this kind of attention. No one was being fed or readied for the work groups. Blocks were being counted. Every man. One by one.

If work was being delayed, something had to be up. It was almost as if they knew something.

The prisoners all stood there, thirty, forty minutes, until the entire camp was lined up in the vast staging area. Then a dark-featured major in full uniform and boots came up in front of them, clearly the man in charge.

The camp commandant, Blum suspected.

“What the hell is Ackermann doing here?” the man next to Blum wondered out loud. The man was short, with heavy eyebrows and large ears, and spoke in Czech, which Blum knew a smattering of. “And who’s that with him? We’ve got a visitor of some kind.”

“I don’t know.” Blum craned his neck to see.

An important-looking colonel, his gray uniform jacket buttoned to the top, war eagle wings on his chest, walked aside the commandant.

“Intelligence.” The word spread down the line like wildfire. It traveled from block to block. “From Warsaw. Some big shot.”

“Intelligence…?” Blum’s neighbor grunted. “What the hell is an intelligence colonel doing here? Looking for something…”

Blum’s heart began to pick up. Any deviation from the normal routine was a worry, but this lineup, the entire camp, some Abwehr bigwig… Today, of all days. Going block to block, stopping in front of each man, the Rapportführer recording the names. Each barrack going through every prisoner both by name and by number.

This wasn’t for show. They were clearly looking for someone.

Blum inched up his sleeve and stared at the number burned into his wrist. A22327. Vrba’s number, but once it was matched up against whom it rightfully belonged to, the game would be up. They’d be able to trace it back to the block Blum was in now. And the false identity they’d created for him, Mirek from Gizycko, didn’t match up against any prisoner in the camp. He listened to the names and numbers being called out, craning, having lost sight of the two officers walking row to row.

“Berger. A33546.”

“Pecsher. T11345.”

“A transfer. From Theresienstadt,” the Czech muttered. “Like me.”

Blum’s heart began to pulse with worry. Strauss had warned him, this was as big a risk as any he would face inside. There was no way they were able to provide him a valid name and number. The numbers in the documents Vrba and Wetzler had smuggled back with him all belonged to people who were dead now.

The roll call grew closer.

What Blum needed was a name. A name that would match up against someone here and buy him some time.

Each block took about fifteen minutes to go through, the camp commander and his distinguished visitor weaving amid the rows as the names were called out. Time passed-forty minutes, an hour. Then two. Everyone was weary and going back and forth on the balls of their feet. They were on Block Nine now, only three until his. Blum looked around warily.

Occasionally, someone dropped in his tracks from exhaustion.

Suddenly the man next to him leaned over and asked under his breath, “You’re the one who came in last night, aren’t you?”

Blum’s heart stopped cold. He looked straight ahead and didn’t answer.

“From Twenty? You’re the one who bought himself out?”

Blum hesitated again, nervously watching the role draw closer.

“Abramowitz. A447745.”

“Aschkov. T31450.”

“Don’t worry, you’ve got nothing to fear from me,” the man next to him whispered under his breath.

Blum looked at his wrist again. It would give him away. Mirek wouldn’t match up. What the hell, he’d be caught anyway. Blum glanced at the Czech and nodded. “Yes.”

Had he just signed his own death warrant?

“Well, you’re ahead of the game,” the man said. “Look over there, Twenty’s spot is vacant this morning.” Blum craned around. Indeed, all the people he knew whom he had stayed with two nights back were missing. Their space was empty. “Must have been something very special you gave up to get you off the list?”

Blum picked up the intelligence colonel again as he strode, arms behind his back, his gaze focused and narrowed, as they stopped in front of each man in line. They listened to the name and the number.

“Weisz.”

“Ferber.”

The Rapportführer checking them off on his board, one by one. Staring impassively into each prisoner’s face. As if he were looking for someone. For one man. Amid the thousands here. One man who he would know the moment his eyes set on him.

Him.

The closer they came, Blum’s blood began to course with fear.

“Krausz. A487193,” a prisoner called out. They were up to Block Ten now. Two to go.

“Hochberg. T14657,” said a transfer from another camp.

It was almost as if they knew. Knew he was here. Hiding out somewhere. Slowly tracking him down. But how…?

The call of names was drawing closer. Blum’s heart began to throb. Only one block to go.

“Halberstram. A606134.”

“Laska. B257991.”

The Rapportführer and the two officers moved on. “Twelve.” The clerk read off.

Blum’s block.

“Twelve! What happened to Eleven?” Blum said to the man beside him.

“There is no Eleven.” The man looked back at him curiously.

“No Eleven?” Blum let out a nervous blast of air. Mirek, it was then. What else? Now there were just a few more prisoners to go.

The intelligence colonel stopped in front of each man. Blum could see him now, if he leaned slightly forward. He was balding under his cap. The eyes of a patient and methodical man stopping, going face-to-face. A man who would not be deterred. Who would not give up.

“First row…” The Rapportführer stood in front of someone.

“Aschensky. A432191,” the man called out.

“Kurtzman.” The next man said his number and presented his wrist.

A bead of sweat traveled down Blum’s neck. He checked his number again, ready to show it. He caught the man next to him glancing over to him.

Was he a spy? All these questions he was asking. Blum had already told him. Would he expose Blum the moment they stood in front of him?

“Gersh. A293447,” a prisoner called loudly.

“Bodner. T141234,” said the next in line.

For a moment Blum contemplated just dropping in his spot like a few of the others. Maybe be taken to the infirmary. All he needed was to make it through the day.

“You need a name, don’t you?” the man next to him whispered, leaning over.

Blum didn’t answer. How had this person read his mind? And his fear. There were spies and informers all over this place. It would be worth a king’s ransom to root out an imposter like him. Someone who had bargained his way out of death last night. But now last night seemed a lifetime away. Now it was about just getting through this roll call.

“Row Four.” The Rapportführer came to the head of Blum’s row.

“Livshitz. A366711,” the first in line answered.

“Hirsh. 414311,” said another.

Blum’s heart had climbed in his throat now. Only ten or so until they got to him.

What to do?

“Yes.” Blum finally nodded to his neighbor with a glance of desperation, really more of a plea.

“Fisher,” the man whispered.

“Fisher…?”

“Use it. You’ll be safe. Everyone knows me here. You have my word.”

The commandant and the intelligence officer were only a few prisoners away now. Every cell in Blum’s body seemed set to burst like an overheated furnace.

“Liebman. A401123.”

“Halpern. T27891.”

They held out their arms.

The Rapportführer stopped at the man two down from Blum. The commandant’s gaze steady and penetrating, then they moved on. The colonel a step behind. Staring at each man with the look of a hunter who could spot his prey the instant he set eyes upon him.

“Koblic,” the person next to him announced. “A317785.”

“Seven, eight, five…?” The Rapportführer stopped and looked at the man’s wrist before he wrote it down.

“Yes.”

Then he stepped in front of Blum.

Blum’s heart stood as still, as if a single heartbeat would give him away. “Fisher,” he said, his mouth dry as sand. “A22327.” He raised his sleeve.

“Fisher…?” the clerk repeated, looking at the list.

The commandant and the intelligence colonel stepped directly in front of him. Blum was certain the name was a fake, and he was given away. That is, if his own face, which he knew was devoid of color, and the trail of sweat trickling down his neck had not already done so. He avoided the colonel’s eyes as he felt the heat from the intelligence officer’s gaze fix on him, intense as the focused light in a police interrogation room. Instead he looked at the block clerk and swallowed. “Yes.”

It wasn’t longer than a second or two that the colonel and the commandant fixed their gazes on him. Yet it felt like an hour. An hour in which he did everything he could just to hold himself together. Like they could see through him right to his core. He half expected them to remove their guns and order him to get onto his knees right there.

“Next,” the Rapportführer said, moving on to the short man next to Blum.

“Shetman.” The man presented his forearm. “T376145.”

The commandant and the intelligence colonel strode past.

Every cell in Blum’s body that a moment ago had been coiled as tight as a wire now relaxed, and he let a breath escape from him.

The two officers continued down the line. The call of names grew more distant.

Blum stood there, rigid as a statue until they moved farther away.

Then he heard the Rapportführer announce, “Block Thirteen.”

Blum exhaled. He glanced at the man standing next to him, sweat dampening his sides. “How did you know?”

The short man smiled and gestured to the writing on Blum’s arm. “Old number, new ink.”

Blum looked at it.

“Stick around here long enough, it’s the kind of thing you notice. I was a policeman back in Zilina. You’re lucky they didn’t pick that up.”

Blum nodded.

“Plus, everyone who’s been in this place a week knows about Block Eleven. Eleven’s where they take people. No one ever comes back. It’s a place you don’t ever want to find yourself.”

“Thanks.” Eleven. This was twice now he’d been spared.

“As you heard, my name’s Shetman,” the short man said. “Whatever it is you’re hiding is safe with me. Though God knows what it is you’re doing in this hellhole.”

He’d made it through the roll call. At least, until they matched up the names with numbers and saw the discrepancy. Then… Now all he had to do was get through the rest of the day. Then the dangerous part began…

“So who’s Fisher?” Blum leaned to Shetman and asked.

The man shrugged. “Died last night. So fucking many, always takes them a day or two to catch up with the paperwork. It’ll be caught, though, you can be sure. They’ll trace it back to the block. So it won’t give you much time.”

Blum followed the colonel and commandant as they made their way onto the next block. They were on to him. Somehow. He was sure. He just didn’t know how. Maybe one of the local partisans had turned him in. Maybe Josef himself. That would mean their escape plan was compromised as well. There’d be no way out.

No, he decided, Josef would not turn on him. He’d seen the man’s resolve.

Still, the colonel was here for some reason…

“Let me know if you need anything else,” the short man said. “Sometimes I can get things done in here.”

“Thanks. I will.” Blum leaned over and shook his hand.

Ten hours more. The block count had taken three.

Ten more hours to keep himself concealed in the vast numbers of the camp and stay out of the Abwehr colonel’s way. And he and Mendl would be out of here.

FORTY-NINE

After roll call, everyone wandered back to their blocks for the morning meal and to break into their work details. Blum made his way through the crowd toward where he saw Block Thirty-Six had been assembled. He spotted Mendl amid the throng, slowly heading back toward his barrack. He was with a young man, who looked around sixteen and who Blum presumed was the nephew he spoke about yesterday.

“Are you still ready for later on, Professor?” Blum said, approaching.

Mendl turned, surprise written all over his face, but clearly elated to see Blum. “I’m so glad you’re all right.” He put his arms around Blum. “We all heard about Twenty. I was sure you were lost. How did you make it out?”

“I was lucky,” Blum said. “I found a guard whose greed was greater than his sense of duty.”

“Who?”

“Oberscharführer Fuerst.”

“The right choice. Bribing the executioner on the way to the gallows…” Mendl grinned. “I commend you.”

“These past three hours in that roll call haven’t exactly been a walk in the park for me either,” Blum replied.

“Yes, something is definitely up. Typical Germans. Count, count, count. Anyway, we’re both relieved to see you are okay.”

“This is the boy you were speaking of?”

“Yes. Leo.” The professor put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Leo, this is the man I was telling you about. So now you know I’m not crazy. And you already have a sense of just how resourceful he is.”

“I’m Blum.” Blum put out his hand to the lad. He looked barely old enough to shave. “The professor explained the conditions of coming along?”

“You won’t need to worry about me,” the boy replied.

“I think you’ll find that Leo here is quite resourceful as well in a very useful place. Up here…” Mendl tapped his forehead. “But I fear something is going on. We haven’t had a full roll call like this in weeks. Then today of all days. You noticed the fancy intelligence officer…?”

“I noticed. I noticed as he stared straight into my eyes. I thought I was going to shit. But after tonight, that won’t be our problem. We’re still a go. Nineteen thirty hours.”

“The lineup for the overnight work detail is at the gate over by the clock tower,” Mendl said, “near where we met yesterday. There’s one for the IG Farben factory. Another for the railway tracks into Birkenau, which are almost complete. People always drop out due to sickness or even death. And there are always people looking to fill in for the extra meal. That’s where a little money can get us to the front of the line.”

“How much do we need?” Blum asked.

Leo shrugged. “I’m pretty sure twenty reichsmarks per head should do the trick. Four or five pounds sterling would do even more.”

“I told you, a very agile mind,” the professor said. “And quite famous in here. Already the camp chess champion. I told you he won’t slow us down.”

“Ah, the chess boy,” Blum remarked. “Yes, I’ve heard of you…”

“And here in camp for only two days. See, Leo, your fame precedes you. And in another day, if all goes right, you’ll be a legend in here!”

“Whatever happens,” Blum lowered his voice and turned his back to a passing group of prisoners, “we wait for the partisans to attack and then you stay by me,” he instructed the boy. “My task is to bring the professor out at all costs. And that’s what I intend to do. If you’re not by me, or if you’re wounded and can’t make it, we can’t help you.”

“I understand.” Leo nodded.

“And that goes for you as well,” Blum said to the professor. “If he goes down, you leave him behind.” Blum looked him in the eyes. “You understand that, don’t you, Professor? This is a condition upon going.”

“I admit, that won’t be easy,” Mendl said.

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to make the choice.”

“You must, Alfred. It’s the only way I’ll go along myself,” Leo urged him.

“Then it works for both of us.” Mendl nodded reluctantly.

“I agree,” said Leo.

Blum said, “I need your oaths on that. Both of you.”

“You have it.” They both nodded again.

Music started up from somewhere. The orchestra. It was set up on the other side of the yard behind a row of wire near the infirmary. Their playing was the signal to get ready for the morning work parties. Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. The Overture.

“Curtain’s rising.” Mendl looked over at them with sarcasm. “Anyway, I think it’s best we go. Do you still have your sanitation job today?’

Blum shrugged. “I suppose it’s the best cover I have.”

“So we meet near the clock tower? Nineteen thirty hours. Before the night work details?”

Blum nodded. “I’ll have the money. And may God watch over us. This time tomorrow, you’ll be in England, Professor.”

“England…,” the old man smiled wistfully, “or the hereafter.”

“England, preferably,” Leo said.

“This time, I agree with him,” said Blum. “So stay out of sight today. And I’ll see you both there. Nineteen thirty hours.”

Blum waved discreetly and melded into the crowd. Lines had formed in front of the blocks for meals, then to split up into work details. Blum figured, even if his job had already been reassigned, whoever the unfortunate party was who had inherited it would gladly split up the blocks and share. He needed to just stay low and out of sight until it was time to go.

The orchestra changed music. A piece he recognized: Beethoven. The famous Leonore Overture from his opera Fidelio; it had always been one of Leisa’s favorites.

For the first time, Blum turned and focused on the musicians. There were seven: a trombone, a French horn, a cello, a piccolo, a flute, a bass drum, and a clarinet. He knew the story behind the piece. In the last act, Florestan, the hero, should have died as witness to Pizarro’s misdeeds. Yet he lived on, just as the music secretly encouraged all here to live on, not to despair and lose hope but to persevere with strengthened wills.

“Hail to the day, the hour of justice has come…” The words came back to Blum. “So help, help the poor ones…”

It was Beethoven, hero to the Germans, but whoever had chosen it, it was like a slap in the face to the forces who were in charge.

Blum went closer. The orchestra was set up on a platform near the infirmary on the other side of the wire. No guards around. He fixed on the musician playing the clarinet. A woman. With her shaved head and withered frame, she played as a ghost might play, with a kind of haunting detachment, her head bowed. Yet she seemed to stand apart from all the other performers in her skill.

It was as if there was still some fleeting spark of hope in her that found its way into the music. Even in this darkest of places.

The notes drew him closer, both rousing and familiar, fondly remembering what it was like to hear such beautiful playing. No one stopped him. Most everyone else was in the midst of their meal. Until he stood only a few yards away. Staring up at her. The flow of her fingers on the keys. The precision with which she played. And the feel… Such haunting beauty, and…

Suddenly everything in him came to a stop.

The woman lifted her head, pale, shaven, as if in a trance, and fixed on him.

Her instrument fell to the floor.

Slowly she stood up, her jaw slack. Life breathed back into her face. Their gazes meeting.

“Doleczki,” Blum whispered, staring at the face he had pictured in his mind a thousand times.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Nathan,” she uttered back.

He could not move. His heart stood still. Joy, unbelievable joy flooded every space in him where for these past three years only emptiness had been.

He was staring at his sister.

FIFTY

At first, Blum was too filled with shock and disbelief to even speak, terrified that everything in this moment would shatter and it wouldn’t be real. A dream.

But it wasn’t a dream. She was standing there. Not ten yards away. She had called out his name. All feeling that had been shut off in him these past three years, that had left him thirsting with grief and guilt, now rose like a basin overflowing with cooling water.

Releasing him.

“Leisa!”

They both ran to the wire and locked fingers-grasping, touching, disbelieving, letting the amazement wash over them like a blanket of inexpressible joy.

“Nathan?” she said, eyes wide. “Am I dreaming?”

“No. You’re not,” he said. He squeezed her fingers, touched her face through the gap in the wire. “No more than I!”

It was only as he put his hands on her and squeezed that he could truly admit to himself that it was real.

“Leisa, you’re alive!” He stared at her with eyes stretched wider than they had ever been in his life, drinking in the incredible sight. She wore a tattered, waistless rag with holes in it. Her head was shaved. She had sores on her face. Yet he had never seen such a beautiful sight. Tears flooded his eyes. “I was told you were dead. That you had all been killed.” He grasped onto her hand and squeezed, the tears of joy overflowing now.

“Nathan, what are you doing here? You got away. We were told you were in America. That you were safe! How can you possibly be here?”

“Leisa, I-” He wanted to tell her. I came back. I’m on a mission. I have a way out. Tonight. But he couldn’t, of course. Not here. There were still guards around them. He glanced toward the infirmary. People were going in and out, both prisoners and orderlies. Anyone might overhear. Suddenly it flashed through him that if his sister was here, against all reason, then maybe there was still a chance that somehow they all had made it. That what he’d heard was untrue. “Leisa, is there a chance that Mother and Father are…”

“No, Nathan.” She shook her head. “They are dead. They were rounded up as part of a retaliation against a German officer who was killed and put against a wall and executed. Right on the street outside our house.”

“Yes, that is what I heard. But I heard also you!”

“I only got away because I happened to be giving a lesson to Mr. Opensky’s daughter when it took place. When I got back, people wouldn’t even let me go to our house to see. I was taken in for a month, friend to friend, until finally the entire ghetto was evacuated and I was sent here.”

He held back more tears, his fingers still locked with hers, this time for them. His parents were gentle, civilized people. They loved music, the ballet. They had not an ounce of hate in them, even for their oppressors. So what he’d heard was true. To be left there in the street like homeless dogs. Even worse than criminals.

“I’m sorry, Nathan. There was no way for me to get word out to you.”

“Leisa, I thought you were dead.” Blum’s eyes shone. “My world has been a nightmare for two years since the news.”

“And I thought you were safe, Nathan. In America. And yet you are here!” She looked at him again, this time with something verging on anger in her voice. Reproving. “You got out. It was everything Papa wanted for you. How can you possibly be here, Nathan? How?”

“Quick, come over here…” They moved farther away from the orchestra, which continued to play. “Come close now. Leisa, I can’t tell you,” he said under his breath and with haste, “but you must believe me, I will only be here until tonight. You are in the women’s camp? Is there a way through the wire between them?”

“No, that is impossible.” She shook her head. “But what do you mean, ‘only until tonight’? Look at you, you’re a prisoner. You are trapped here like any of us. What are you talking about, Nathan?”

He glanced around to make certain no one was eavesdropping on them. The staging area had pretty much emptied. Everyone was back at their blocks now. The guards were at their posts as well. They wouldn’t have much time. A woman passed nearby, carrying a stack of sheets to the infirmary. “Listen, can you be here later? Just before dark?”

“Here?”

“In the Main Camp. Near the clock tower.”

“No. Once we finish, there’s no access between the camps. If I’m found there, they would shoot me like anyone else. And anyway, come here for what? What are you doing here, Nathan?” Her eyes shook with incomprehension. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“You’re in the orchestra. You must have freedoms. What about to the infirmary then?”

“We have our own infirmary back at the camp.”

“Then you must come now.”

“Now…?” She looked both frightened and perplexed.

“There must be a way through the wire. I will hide you. Leisa, I am only here until tonight. It’s our only chance.”

“What are you saying, Nathan? I don’t understand.”

“Leisa!” someone whispered sharply. Another woman in the orchestra gestured worriedly at something beyond them.

Blum looked around. A guard was heading their way.

“Leisa, what block are you in? In the women’s camp,” he said quickly.

“Thirteen. But why?”

He tightened on her fingers through the wire and put his lips close to her face. “Leisa, I can get you out of here! I know it sounds crazy, but you have to trust me. That’s why I’m here. I have a way. But it is only for tonight. That’s why if you can somehow make it in here, whatever you had to do, I could-”

“Ssshhh, Nathan!” Her eyes looked beyond him and tremored with alarm.

The guard came up and jolted Blum between his shoulder blades with the stock of his rifle. With a shout, Blum fell to his knees. “No fraternizing, lovebirds. Get wherever you have to go,” he barked at Blum. “And you,” he said to Leisa, “back to the music. Or next time it won’t be this end of the gun for you to be concerned about, do you understand?”

“Yes.” Blum nodded, one hand still locked on his sister’s.

“We’re done, sir,” Leisa said, trembling. “Please, don’t shoot. Nathan, we have to go.”

“Leisa…” His heart fell like it had plunged into the sea, weighted down with sadness. We still haven’t arranged…

The guard kicked him in the ribs and Blum fell over. “Did you not hear me? Go!” He cocked the rifle and pointed it at Blum. “Go now! Or do you want me to shoot both of you here? Now?”

“No. No!” Leisa begged the guard. “We’re going. Nathan, go! Listen to him.” Tears of grief and helplessness welled in her eyes too.

Blum put his hand out, feeling her fingers slip away from him, possibly for a last time. He couldn’t just let her go. Not after three years. After miraculously finding her again. And now with the means to get her out. But there was no way he could do anything with the guard hovering over him. Except look at her as she helplessly backed away from the wire.

Aching, he pulled himself up to his feet.

“Now, go!” the German shouted, jabbing at him with the gun. “Go!”

“Nathan, please…” Leisa looked at him a last time, begging him. “I have to go back now. I love you. Be safe.”

“I will contact you,” he said, as he staggered away, knowing the guard couldn’t understand. “Wait for my word. Tonight.”

The guard pulled back the action of his weapon. “I said enough! This is the last warning!”

Leisa nodded back at him, her eyes flooded and hopeful. She hurried over and rejoined her colleagues on the stand. But Blum knew it was a promise she would never keep.

The woman carrying bedsheets hurried away.

Leisa stepped back up on the stand. The flute player who sat next to her handed her her instrument. She picked up the piece in midpassage and resumed playing. Blum turned once more as he went back across the yard, the guard still behind him, knowing each look he caught of her could well be his last. That he had found her, agonizingly, but only for a few fleeting seconds. And only to lose her once more.

“Lovesick, huh, Jew?” The guard smirked at Blum, nudging him toward the blocks. “Makes me cry.”

“Yes,” he said, holding back his torment. He couldn’t just leave her. He wouldn’t, no matter what the mission.

Not again.

He turned and caught sight of her a final time, as the orchestra switched to some happier show tune, and saw the sadness pool in her eyes.

You wouldn’t leave your flesh and blood, would you? Mendl had asked of him.

No. He’d already done that once. Never again.

The mission was still everything. Getting Mendl back. The oath he’d made to Strauss. To Roosevelt.

But for Blum, who from across the yard returned Leisa’s last, longing look with a nod of promise in his own gaze, the mission had just changed.