Zealot (25 page)

Suddenly, Miriam pushed forward. “I have an idea,” she shouted. She pulled the cloth mask from her face and dipped it in a
cup with a little water still at the bottom. As quickly as she could, she used it to wash the soot and grime from her face,
then pulled the scarf from her hair, shaking her hair out so it was full and loose. Then she handed her pistol to Mr. Singer.

MacLeod protested, “Miriam, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Cover me,” she told MacLeod, hurrying toward the access tunnel. “And be ready to get the hell out of here!” MacLeod followed
her up the tunnel. Behind him, he could hear Avram directing the others to do the same.

As she reached the door to the outside, Miriam unbuttoned the top buttons of her shirtdress until the tops of her breasts
were visible. She licked her lips and ran a hand through her hair. Then she threw open the door and ran out into the smoky
street.

“
Hilfe!
Don’t shoot!” she cried out in fairly good German, good enough at least to catch the German squad’s attention. “Help me,
bitte! Der Juden
, those horrible Jews, they kept me prisoner. Please, save me!” To add impact to her performance, Miriam dropped to the ground
in a swoon.

The squad started down the street toward her at a trot. As they drew near, Miriam reached into the pocket of her dress and
wrapped her fingers around the prize secreted there—her last grenade. She and the other ZOB fighters had spent days working
on this drill, she could do it in her sleep. She pulled the grenade from her pocket in one fluid motion, pulled the pin, and
pitched it expertly into the center of the squad. Leaping to her feet, she took off running in the opposite direction.

A second later she could hear the explosive erupt behind her. Almost instantly, the shock wave caught up with her, knocking
her to the ground.

MacLeod watched the explosion from the mouth of the bunker. Soldiers in the air, arms, legs flying apart from bodies. The
air was filled with blood and the screams of maimed and dying men. Not a German was left standing. Immediately, he began to
pull Landau and the others from the tunnel, pushing them toward the street in the opposite direction. “Run, run, hurry, move!”
Rubenstein followed after the Singer family, carrying the little boy out of the bunker. “Go! Hurry!” Avram brought up the
rear, herding them all toward a nearby alleyway.

Only when everyone was out could MacLeod turn his attention back to Miriam, who was rising to her feet with a huge smile.
Thank God
, MacLeod thought, as she gave him a thumbs-up to let him know she was fine.

“How was that?” Miriam called out, nearly laughing from relief. She began to run to catch up with him.

“You were magnificent. Now let’s get out of here.”

She’d nearly reached his outstretched arms when, blam, a single shot rang out. MacLeod watched helplessly as Miriam’s body
jerked unnaturally in the air, then hit the cobblestones at his feet with a sickening impact.

“MIRIAM!” he screamed, dropping to his knees, reaching out for her, heedless of any danger to himself as two Germans rounded
the corner at a run, their rifles firing. Her eyes stared lifelessly into his own and he could see the light was gone. The
bullet had shattered her spine, ricocheted into her brain. Death had been instantaneous. “Oh, God, no,” he whispered, and
closed her sightless eyes with hands dripping with her blood.

A shot whizzed close to MacLeod’s head. Before he could even respond, another rifle fired, this one from behind MacLeod, and
the closest German fell, one side of his face blasted away.

“C’mon, MacLeod, she’s gone. We have to go!” he heard Avram shout behind him as he fired again. “Let her go.” He knew Avram
was right. He gathered up his rage and grief and managed to fire a shot straight through the heart of the second German before
the tears came and blurred his sight. He staggered down the street, toward Avram and the others.

*    *    *

Midnight. The near-constant shelling from the artillery outside the Wall abated, and the streets of the Ghetto were once again
quiet, a quiet broken only by the sporadic burst of gunfire and the shuddering collapse of buildings still aflame.

MacLeod and Avram were still trying to make their way across the Ghetto to rendezvous with the ZOB leadership. It was little
more than a mile as the crow flies from Tzaddik’s outpost at the edge of no-man’s-land and the
malina
on Mila Street where they were to meet, but the route was thick with German patrols, with entire blocks burning out of control
and mutilated bodies strewn along the sides of the roads like so much driftwood. The burning streets were bright like day,
but on the passable streets, long since burned-out or mercifully untouched, it was black, and the smoke that hung over the
Ghetto made it even harder to see. Familiar landmarks were gone, reduced to rubble. The journey seemed endless.

Now MacLeod and Avram faced the added problem of what to do about the family Miriam had given her life to rescue from the
Ostrowska
malina
. They needed to find another safe place for the Singers to hide. But they all knew that “safe” was a relative term.

They made their way in complete silence, keeping to the alleyways, staying off the main avenues. They moved a block, a half
block, sometimes only the length of a single building at a time. MacLeod and Avram scouting ahead, signaling the others to
catch up, they moved their party of ten from shadow to shadow. MacLeod was grateful that Avram’s decades in Warsaw gave him
an innate sense of the Ghetto. He seemed to know instinctively where they were, where to go, what to avoid in this now alien
landscape.

At Lubeckiego Street, Avram signaled everyone to stop. They had no choice but to cross this major thoroughfare. He waited
for a few minutes, trying to detect any signs of life, any movement. The street was dark, deserted, silent. Finally, Avram
signaled everyone on. They crossed the street single file, each barely able to see the back of the one in front of them in
the smoke-filled dark, moving quickly to get to the protection of the buildings on the other side.

“Halt!”

An unseen German barked the command. Suddenly the street was bathed in a blinding white light. Everyone froze where they were,
unable to move, as if transfixed by the light.

The spotlight seared into MacLeod’s eyes. He forced himself to try to see beyond it, but his entire world had turned to white.
Tears streamed down his face from the effort. Finally, he raised his rifle, closed his eyes, and fired two shots into what
he hoped was the center of the brilliance.

The light was extinguished in the shattering of glass.

“Run!” he heard Avram scream as several shots were fired by the Germans into the sudden darkness. MacLeod opened his eyes
but could see nothing but the afterimage of the blinding light. He started to run toward Avram’s voice, in the direction he
thought was safety. He’d gone several paces when Rubenstein grabbed his arm, helped him up the curb, and into the narrow passage
between two buildings. As his sight began to clear, he could see the others had made it safely across as well.

“Whoa, nice shooting, Tex,” Avram said with a drawl.

“All in a day’s work,” MacLeod answered. Then, more somber. “Let’s move.”

Another two blocks brought them to the burned-out hulk that used to house the Bund, the Jewish socialist youth movement. It
was obvious the building had burned early in the battle, and the remains were now cold and dead. MacLeod watched a cloud of
anger pass over Avram’s face as he surveyed the devastation. “What?” MacLeod asked.

“There once was a library here,” Avram said quietly. “Thousands and thousands of volumes they’d managed to save. Generations
of Jewish thought, Jewish lives, Jewish dreams. Gone. Just gone. Just like the rest of us. Like they never existed.” He waded
into the rubble, gesturing MacLeod to help him while Landau and Rubenstein stood guard, pistols at the ready, watching the
streets.“The entrance to Mendik’s base should be right around here.”

MacLeod pulled aside some half-eaten timbers that had fallen, revealing a trapdoor.“Lock’s broken,” he indicated. “Nazis have
been here.” He dug into the debris, clearing the door with his bare hands.

“Then why are we still here?” Landau wondered. “The building’s burned down, and the Germans would have cleared out any survivors.
We can’t do any good here—we should move on.”

“They can only burn it down once,” MacLeod said. It only took Avram a moment to understand his plan. “The
goy’s
got a point. If the
malina
is still intact, we may have a place to hide our people.” Avram opened the door, releasing a stench of smoke and mildew and
rotting flesh. “After you,” he gestured. MacLeod grimaced and started down the darkened stairway.

Avram pulled a candle from his pack as they moved down the stairs and lit it. The flame burned brightly.

“Air’s breathable, at least,” MacLeod noted.

As they reached the main room of the shelter, the flickering light of the candle revealed a tragic tale. Thirty, maybe forty
bodies, men and women, their bodies bloated and decomposing, lay dead on the dirt floor arranged as if sleeping. Only the
horrifying grimaces etched in their faces bore witness to how slow and agonizing their deaths must have been, suffocated in
the smoke that had poured in through their only source of air. Only as the building had cooled had the air through the ventilation
shafts become breathable again, too late for those trapped in the bunker by the fire above.

Avram held the candle close to some of the ghoulish faces. Dr. Cohen, who had fought tirelessly throughout the war to save
the sick and the dying, and in the end could not save himself. Mendik, the unit commander, and Jana, his wife of less than
a year, locked together forever in one last embrace. Nahum, the cantor, whose voice would rise to God no more. Avram turned
away as a light flared behind him.

In a jumble of tools and supplies that had been swept off a nearby shelf onto the floor, MacLeod had located more oil for
the lantern that had once illuminated the
malina
. As Avram blew out his candle, MacLeod pointed out, “No weapons” The Nazis had indeed been through, stripped the bunker and
its victims of weapons and whatever other valuables they took a fancy to, then left the bodies there to rot. “I’ll go topside
and get the others.”

Avram looked at him in horror. “You don’t mean to leave them down here with all these bodies? You can’t be serious.”

MacLeod explained, “The Germans won’t look down here again. They’ll be safe here. The dead will protect them. I’ll try to
prepare them for what they’re going to see, then bring them down.” He started up the stairs.

When MacLeod was gone, Avram turned back to the bodies of his friends. He knelt beside Mendik and Jana, entwined, and touched
Mendik’s hand, stroked a lock of hair from Jana’s cheek. Softly. he began to sing over them. “
El Male Rachamim
, Thou who dwellest on high. Grant perfect rest beneath the sheltering wings of Thy presence, among the holy and pure who
shine as the brightness of the firmament, onto the souls of these who have gone unto eternity.” A single tear drifted down
Avram’s face. So much death he’d seen. So much. “May their repose be in Paradise. May the Master of Mercies enfold them under
the cover of His wings forever, and may their souls be bound up in the bond of life eternal.” An eternal life denied to him.
“May the Lord be their possession, and may their repose be peace.”

MacLeod returned, leading the others down the stairs, barely in time to hear the choked sob that broke Avram’s “
Amen
,” but by the time they’d made it to the bottom and into the room, Avram was all business once again. He handed his rifle
and its remaining ammunition to Rubenstein, ignoring the shock registering on the fighter’s face as he took in the gruesome
sight of the decomposing bodies. “You and Landau take the watch. We’ll be back as soon as we’ve met with Anielewicz and the
others.” He quickly turned and started for the stairs. “C’mon, MacLeod. The dead can wait, but we can’t.”

Warsaw: May 8,1943

Their password was a stale one—it had been a couple of days since they’d last seen a courier from the Central Ghetto—but it
gained them admission to the smugglers’ bunker beneath the apartment house at Mila 18 just before dawn. So far the building
seemed miraculously untouched by flame or German shell. They were relieved to be off the streets before the German patrols
returned in force.

Issachar met them at the bottom of the stairs as they entered. “Gentlemen!” he greeted them expansively, then put a beefy
arm around MacLeod’s shoulders. “So, what’s the word from the French Underground about our little … arrangement?” It was clear
the corpulent gangster was in denial of the reality of the tragedy taking place outside his palace.

“You can talk business later, Shmuel,” Avram interrupted. “First we need to find Anielewicz.”

“In the conference room. East wing, last door on the right.” As Avram and MacLeod started down the corridor, Issachar called
after them. “Remember, you need anything, you let me know. Everything I have is yours.”