In the Land of Armadillos (31 page)

*  *  *

There was a squadron of mounted policemen, forty of them, cantering four abreast down the road toward Adampol. It was morning, just after breakfast. Outside, the sky was a brilliant heavenly blue, but it was brisk. He could smell winter in the air.

With a flutter of apprehension, he watched their approach from his office window, where he was cooped up with Friedman, going over the final numbers for the harvest. Then he sighed. “Better go warn Ostrowski that there will be forty more to feed today. And the horses are going to need water, tell Linker.” More out of habit than hope, he asked, “Any word on Soroka?”

Regretfully, Friedman shook his head, then left the office.

The saddlemaker had vanished two weeks ago, and Reinhart's anger was still fresh. A tangle of emotions roiled his heart, sometimes fury taking the lead, other times betrayal, or a deep, aching sense of loss.

He didn't deny it, that last episode had been a close one. On a perfectly random, ordinary Friday night, a squadron of Wehrmacht had rolled up to the palace. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, they went right to work collecting his Jews and leading them into the forest. Reinhart had been fast asleep. By the time Wysocki roused him, they were already half a mile away. He had to drive like a maniac to reach them before anything drastic happened.

Striding down the long line of terrified laborers, he'd found the commanding officer and gone right to work. Bullied, flattered, wheedled, persuaded. Blackmailed, coerced, cajoled, and threatened. Insisted, and wouldn't take no for an answer, that the officer accompany him to the castle and have something to eat. He had to make some phone calls, Reinhart explained, and the officer could help himself to brandy and anything else from the pantry while he waited.

Fortunately, he'd recently hosted Lischka, the Gestapo chief of Lublin. One, two, three, he phoned him up, explained the spot he was in (
My best workers! Middle of the harvest!
), then spent a few pleasant moments reminiscing. Lischka asked if he could speak with the officer in charge, and Reinhart handed him the receiver. A few choice words in the right ear, and the excitement was all over.

So yes, he could see how it might make Soroka a little jumpy. But he'd pulled it off, hadn't he? How could Haskel leave him? After all the times he'd saved them, didn't that mean anything? He was Willy Reinhart, the man with the silver tongue, no one could refuse him!

Since then, he'd tried to strike up a friendship with the bookkeeper, but it wasn't the same. Friedman was too refined, too courteous, too apologetic, too eager to please.

Soroka felt like family. He missed the saddlemaker's square, careworn face, his determined, plainspoken honesty. For the hundredth time that morning, he wondered where they were. Haskel knew all the roads, every path through the forest, every partizan, every horse, every wagon, every farmer in the province. Obviously, they'd gone into hiding, in someone's barn or root cellar. He was evenly divided between hoping they were safe and hoping they would come crawling back.

Outside, a rook stalked pensively through the grass. Reinhart turned away from the window, shrugged on his suit jacket, straightened his tie. He practiced a couple of cheery smiles in front of a small mirror he kept stashed inside his desk before drawing himself up to his full height and striding down the hallway.

An unfamiliar police captain waited for him under the portico. He clicked his boot heels together and smiled thinly through his toothbrush mustache. His breath came out in puffs of white vapor.

“Welcome, Captain. What can I do for you?” Reinhart greeted him with a friendly smile. But not too friendly; after all, he was a very important man, and he needed this officer to know it.

On the driveway, the police had divided into two columns and were making their way around the flanks of the house. Their horses' hooves struck sparks against the paving stones. Reinhart said sharply, “The palace and everything on the grounds are property of the Reich Agricultural Commission. Your men are not permitted to wander around by themselves.”

“They're going to search the buildings,” said the captain pleasantly. “We're here for your Jews.”

He'd heard this line before. “I'm sure this is a mistake,” said Reinhart genially, staring down into the strange officer's eyes. “These people are my best workers, every one of them a master craftsman, tops in his field. Absolutely necessary to winning the war.”

This gimmick had always worked. But now, unperturbed, the captain returned his gaze. “Those are my orders.” His voice was not angry, and it was not unfriendly. It was the voice of a man who had no doubts, no qualms, and no questions.

Reinhart felt a twinge of dread, the clammy sheen of perspiration collecting between his shoulder blades. “Of course, of course, we all have orders. Captain, why don't you come in and have something to eat? Your men, too, all of you, sausage and eggs for everyone, right from the farm, a real feast. I won't take no for an answer. I can promise you, you haven't eaten like this in years!”

“Sausage and eggs, that sounds wonderful,” said the captain, allowing himself a rueful smile. “We left Różanka early this morning. But we're on a tight schedule. We have two other operations after we're done here.”

“Różanka! Hmmm. Pretty girls in Różanka. Is Braumueller still the chief of police there?”

“No,” said the captain. “It's me now.”

“I see. Let's talk in my office. Can I offer you coffee? Tea? I know it's early, but something stronger, perhaps?”

The captain followed him into the foyer. Reinhart saw him glance appreciatively at the glossy woodwork, the polished floors, the paintings, the furniture; at Petra, who stood at the top of the grand staircase, remote and pale.

Wysocki edged out of the kitchen, his broad forehead a typographical map of worry. “Kommandant Reinhart, I was just going to send a wagon to Farmer Swaboda for some more bacon. I'm sure our guests are hungry. Also, with your permission, I'd like to speak to the gamekeeper. I haven't seen such a perfect day for hunting in ten years.”

Conversationally, the captain said, “Tell your Polacks to go home and lock themselves inside.”

Wysocki hesitated, his eyes darting to his master.

“
Schnell schnell!
” the captain yapped.

Another man might have been pissing his pants by now. But he was Kommandant Willy Reinhart, he'd snatched people from the jaws of death a hundred times. Why should today be any different? He just needed to get to his telephone. He ran through a mental list of contacts. Who loved brandy, women, hunting? Who craved custom leather riding boots, fur coats, diamond jewelry? He wasn't going to waste precious minutes with Haas or Rohlfe, not while these
schweineren
were out there rounding up his people. He would call Kastner, the Business Director of Agriculture, based in Chełm, or perhaps Lischka again. And if they failed to help, he still had an ace up his sleeve. He would reach out to Obergruppenführer Globocnik, who'd spent two sunny weekends at the palace last year and had recently been promoted to a new post in Italy.

Reinhart was too nervous to sit. Sliding behind his desk, he stood hunched over the telephone, a handsome Bakelite objet d'art trimmed with gold. Who to call first, Kastner or Lischka, Lischka or Kastner? Lischka, he decided. Goldfeder had just finishing repairing the clasp on a five-strand pearl necklace. Lischka's ugly wife had a penchant for pretty things.

He lifted the receiver and cradled it to his ear. When the operator came on, he said, “Hello, Else, when are you going to leave your husband and run away with me? I need to speak to—”

A hand slapped down on the cradle, severing the connection. “No calls,” the captain said.

Reinhart calculated. In his experience, some men didn't respond to pleasantries and gifts, they only respected authority. He revised his tactics.

“Do you have any idea who you're talking to, you cockroach?” he snapped. “I'm on a first-name basis with half the Reichsleitung in eastern Poland. I won't be told what I can and can't do in my own camp by a fucking
captain.
” He stalked to the door. “Who's your commanding officer? He's going to hear about this. You can just bend over right now and kiss your ass goodbye.” Forget Lischka, he would approach Kastner in person. How long did it take to drive to Chełm?

The captain had lashless, close-set eyes that trod the line between gray and brown without the warmth of either one, the color of a shadow sliding along the side of a building, or the barrel of a gun, like the one he was holding now. “Stop right there. You're under arrest, Kommandant Reinhart.”

His legs loosened under him, and he gripped the back of the Louis XIV chair for support. “I'm— What? What for? What are the charges?”

“You're too close to your Jews,” said the captain. The sun gleamed on the death's-head badge on his cap, outlining it in gold.

Reinhart's throat closed up, it was hard to breathe. His mouth gapped open and shut, searching for the right words, but for once, he had nothing to say. “I'm going to be sick,” he said unsteadily. The captain made a face of disgust, but he didn't stop him when Reinhart flung aside the velvet curtain, wrenched open the window, and leaned out as far as he could.

In the courtyard, an untidy procession of his workers was forming, the men gathered from their workshops, women and children from the huts, storehouses, and barns. A tall needle-nosed policeman bellowed that they were moving out, hiking through the forest to another work camp where their services were needed, and he wanted them to organize themselves into a line that was four across. Reinhart saw Friedman at the head of the line, arranging his family to the officer's specifications, always so helpful. Friedman had two sons, Reinhart knew; the youngest was only three. It was this little boy whom Friedman kept beside him now, taking his hand. Reinhart counted six soldiers. There had been dozens more. Where were they?

“Jews, march!” the needle-nosed policemen yelped. A few men turned around, darted inquiring looks in the direction of his office. The horror of the situation swelled up and overwhelmed him.
Dear God. They're waiting for me to show up and save them.
Then the line seethed forward, filing out of the courtyard and toward the woods. Reinhart leaned out as far as he could without falling. Once they passed the stable, they'd be out of his range of view.

But at the stable, the parade lurched to a stop. “First row,” the policeman bawled, “follow me!”

Obediently, Friedman and his family scurried off, following the sergeant behind the stable and out of Reinhart's sight. Friedman wasn't a big man, but the little boy's legs still pumped to keep up with his father's pace.

For a long moment, there was a curious silence. Then
crack crack crack crack.
The gunshots echoed, reverberating off the windows and walls, loitering for a while on the thin, cool air.

The line shuddered like a living thing. The mass of waiting Jews writhed and churned, husbands and wives calling to each other in alarm. Another police officer trotted to the front. “All right, all right,” he groused. “Let's have order!”

For the past three years, in a thousand other villages throughout Poland and the Ukraine, this approach had undoubtedly worked. But this was Adampol Palace, just six kilometers from Sobibór concentration camp, and each of Reinhart's handpicked Jews was a wary veteran of previous
Aktzias.
All hell broke loose. The line spun apart and dissolved, three hundred and fifty men, women, and children punting off in all directions. In a matter of seconds, there was no one left in the courtyard, nothing to see but the yellow lawn, some stripped trees, and a fountain wrapped in burlap for protection against winter winds.

Reinhart closed his eyes and concentrated.
Go, go, go,
he urged his workers silently.
There are only a few guards, and the woods are fifty feet away. You can make it. Come on, Linker! Come on, Goldfeder! Come on, Trachtman and Stein and Cohen and Amsel and Baumgarten! Faster, faster, faster!

He didn't know which God had awarded him his magical abilities, Jesus Christ, the God of the Jews, Buddha, or the Holy Trinity, but he prayed to Him now with all his might.
This is it, Lord. Anything you say. I'll stop screwing around, I'll eat fish on Fridays, I'll go to church on Sundays, I'll leave Petra and cleave to my wife, I'll divorce my wife and marry Petra, I'll become a priest if that's what you want, only please, Holy Father, just one more miracle.

It startled him away from the window, the unmistakable spitting of machine guns, so out of character with the bright blue morning.
Tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
 . . . it came from all directions, and he realized that the missing policemen must have fanned out and made a perimeter around the camp.
Tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
 . . . the barrage of bullets went on and on and on.

Groping for his chair, he lowered himself down into the cushions. Surrounded by items of peerless beauty, helpless in his handsome home, Willy Reinhart sat and listened to the gunfire.

*  *  *

It is finally quiet. The captain holsters his gun and departs; he has a special operation just like this one designated for Natalin, one town over. “You're free to go,” he says before he rides off. “It was only house arrest.”

He can tell his Poles to come out now, the captain adds with an ironic glint in his eye, he's going to need their help.

Has there ever been a silence as thick as this one? Every child can imitate the sounds of a farm. Cocks crow, pigs grunt, horses neigh, sheep bleat, the cow goes moo. But not here, not now. Crossing the courtyard, he sees no one.
Maybe it worked, maybe they all got away,
he thinks hopefully. He walks through the empty stable and steps into the paddock.