Zealot (28 page)

MacLeod dropped back to the ground and watched the startled Germans hurry toward the door. Almost simultaneously, he thought
he could hear the soft intake of breath that signaled that Avram was back among the living. Now if they could just play dead
until the Germans left, they might still get out of this place.

But it was hours before the Germans finally left the
malina
at Mila 18. Hours of lying among the ranks of the dead, wondering what went wrong, what he could have done differently, replaying
in his head how he’d failed his people once again—Avram was merciless on himself.

When they were finally truly alone, MacLeod got up and moved to Avram. Avram’s eyes were tightly closed. MacLeod touched him
lightly on the shoulder. “Avram?”

At his touch, Avram opened his eyes and MacLeod could see the tears he’d trapped inside. “Why does this keep happening?” Avram
sat up. “Everyone dies, and I keep living on. Just me and the memories. Why, MacLeod? Why am I cursed?”

MacLeod knelt beside him. “Maybe it’s because books and libraries don’t last forever?” He put an arm around Avram’s shoulders.
“A very wise old
Rebbe
once told me that unless the truth is known, everything your people are, everything they were, will vanish into nothing,
like the smoke from the camps. And then the Germans will have won. Maybe someone has to be left to remember them, to make
sure it never happens again.”

Avram laid his head against MacLeod’s shoulder and finally allowed the tears to flow. “I tried … Oh, God, I tried so hard.
And it still happened …” MacLeod could hear the anguish of a thousand years in his voice. “I couldn’t stop it.”

“It’s not your fault. You have to believe that.”

“It’s like trying to save the beach from the sea, MacLeod. For every one I think I’ve helped, I lose ten thousand more.”

“You’re not God, Avram,” MacLeod said gently. “You can’t save everyone. But if you’ve helped one person live one day, one
minute longer, you’ve won. Look at how you saved Miriam.”

“Yeah, and she’s still dead,” Avram said bitterly.

“But you gave her three weeks of life that she wouldn’t have had. Remember what you told me? It’s not a curse, Avram. It’s
a
mitzvah
.”

Avram smiled a bit. “Oh, Lord, what have I done? You’re starting to sound like a Jew, MacLeod.” Avram got to his feet, wiped
his face with his arm. He took one last look around the room, at the friends and comrades who’d been his only family, who’d
chosen the dignity of death by their own hands. “But you’re right. I’ll make sure no one ever forgets what happened here.
As long as I live, another year or another two thousand, their sacrifice won’t be forgotten. And it will
never
have to happen again.”

There were still German patrols stationed at the Mila Street entrances to the
malina
, but the enterprising smugglers who’d designed the bunker had allowed for a back door as well, which was, for the moment,
unguarded. MacLeod and Avram emerged onto Zamenhofa, cautious, weaponless. It was still dark, which would provide them some
protection as they made their way back to Mendik’s base. Still, to avoid the patrols, they kept to the alleyways and building
courtyards.

In a courtyard less than a block away from the carnage at Mila 18, another abomination waited. As they entered, MacLeod counted
nearly fifty bodies, neatly arranged in patterns of five and six, then gunned down by firing squad. Fresh blood pooled between
the paving stones like the water’s edge at ebb tide, and the stone floor was rust with a stain that would never come clean.
Many of the groups were naked, ordered to strip before their execution, the clothes on their backs worth more to the Germans
than their lives. Two piles of the dead closest to the entrance were still clothed and in disarray, their executioners grown
tired or bored with their game or simply running out of time.

“God in Heaven,” Avram whispered. He hadn’t thought he still had the capacity to be horrified but the cold, calculated nature
of the massacre and the obvious pride the murderers had taken in their work sickened him. MacLeod waved one hand to shush
him.

“Listen!” From within one of the piles of corpses near the entrance, MacLeod could just make out a sound. The mewing of a
cat? The crying of a child? MacLeod hurried over, Avram following. Together, they began to roll bullet-ridden bodies from
the pile. Death was recent—not all of the blood had dried, and it smeared MacLeod’s hands and leather jacket as the two men
worked in respectful silence.

Suddenly, a scream! And from out of the pile, a bloody hand buried a knife through the leather and deep into MacLeod’s forearm.
Surprised, he pulled back, freeing the blade from his flesh, and the knife came after him again. This time, he was able to
grab the arm wielding the blade and haul the wielder out from beneath the corpses.

Screaming, crying, covered in blood, Rivka fought like a wildcat to free herself. “Let me go, you bastard!” She flailed with
the knife, kicking and clawing.

“Rivka, stop! It’s me, Duncan.” He pried the knife from her hand and gathered her to him in a tight embrace, restraining her
until she would hear him. “
Alts iz gut
. It’s okay, you’re safe now. It’s Duncan and Tzaddik.”

Rivka looked up at him and the veil of terror left her eyes. “Duncan?” She stopped struggling, but he could feel her heart
beating out of control against him. “Duncan?” she said again, not believing what she saw.

He touched her face. “It’s me,
Rivkaleh
.”

The twelve-year-old melted against him, her relief so great she could barely stand. “Duncan…”

“Hey, look what I found,” MacLeod heard Avram say behind him. He turned to see Avram pull a little girl, no more than five,
from the midst of the charnel. She’d had a quiet little cry, as if she no longer had the strength, but it had been strong
enough to lead MacLeod to her. Avram settled her on one hip and she wrapped her arms gratefully around his neck.

“That’s Zara,” Rivka explained, still in a daze. “I tried to get her to stop crying, I tried really hard, but she wouldn’t.
I thought for sure the Germans had found us.”

“Rivka, tell me what happened,” MacLeod said.

Rivka looked around the courtyard wide-eyed, the horror still too fresh. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. MacLeod smiled
at her encouragingly and held her hand, and suddenly the words came flooding out. “They … they found our bunker. They took
people out, a few at a time, and they never came back. They took Zara’s mother. And then they said if we’d tell where the
other
malinas
were, they wouldn’t kill us. But nobody told the pigs anything. I told Zara that as soon as she heard a gun, to fall down
and pretend she was dead. And the guns fired and we fell down. Then there were people on top of me and they were too heavy
and I couldn’t get them off. And there was blood, there was so much blood…” Rivka began to shake as she looked down at herself,
covered head to toe in other people’s gore. “Oh, God, Duncan…”

MacLeod held her close to him once again. “Shhhh,
Rivkaleh
… it’s all right,” he consoled her. “You’re with me now.” He looked up at Avram. He could see little Zara was holding on
to Avram like a vice, as if she’d never let him go. She was quiet now, her head resting against his shoulder, eyes tightly
closed. “What do we do?” MacLeod asked.

“We’ve got to get them out of here.”

“Right.” MacLeod started walking out of the courtyard, leading Rivka by the hand. “We’ll get them back to Mendik’s base, then—”

“No, MacLeod, I mean out of the Ghetto.” Avram and Zara caught up with him. “Out of Warsaw. Out of that monster’s reach.”
Avram wasn’t sure there was even such a place anymore, a world safe from Hitler, but he knew now they had to try to find it.
“Rivka, Zara, Moshe Singer and his family back at Mendik’s base, anyone else we can find still alive. We’ll get them out of
here.”

“Avram, there’s no way out” Mila 18 had finally convinced MacLeod how hopeless their situation was. He stopped walking, grabbed
Avram by the arm. MacLeod’s face was dark, his jaw firmly set against the frustration that threatened to overtake him. “They’ve
got the Wall surrounded, they’ve got tanks at the gates. They’re patrolling the streets in and out of the Ghetto. We’re trapped.”
The ache in his voice begged Avram to prove him wrong. “How, Avram? You tell me
how
?”

“I don’t know. Dammit, I don’t know! But we have to try.” Avram pulled away and started down the street. Zara could sense
the tension that hung between them and began to cry softly again. Without a thought, Avram reached up with his free hand to
pat her head, whispering calming words, and Zara settled down again.

MacLeod wished it was that easy. He, too, wished he could comfort Rivka and the others, free them from this prison, but how
could he give hope to others when he himself saw no hope left? No way out. He’d begun to see that Miriam, Anielewicz, all
of them, had been right after all. Theirs was not a choice between life or death. The choice for them was between death or
death. Death on their own terms or at the whim of the Nazis.

“The sewers?”

“What?” MacLeod almost didn’t hear what Rivka had said.

“The sewers,” she repeated. “I got under the Wall through the sewers once. It’s really disgusting and deep in parts, but I’ve
done it.”

MacLeod looked to Avram with renewed hope, only to see him shake his head. “We’ve tried. Even if you managed to find the tunnels
under the Wall, you come out of one of those manholes on the Aryan side, they’ve got you. There’re informants on every corner,
just waiting for some Jew to stick his head up. We’ve probably lost a hundred couriers in the sewers. Not an option.”

A thought came to MacLeod. “Who says we’d have to come up on the Aryan side? How far beyond the city do the sewers go?”

“No one knows. We’ve never been able to map them. You don’t know what it’s like down there, MacLeod. It’s a labyrinth. You
could wander for days and come up to find you’re back in the Ghetto again. Or in front of Gestapo headquarters. If you don’t
drown in shit higher than your head, first. I said no.”

MacLeod disagreed. “I like those odds better than what we’ve got up here. Look, I saw a compass back at Mendik’s. If we could
keep to one heading, say north, we might eventually have to reach the end of the tunnel, right?”

Avram was unconvinced. “Maybe. If they don’t all starve to death first.”

“If we don’t do something, they’re going to starve anyway. So, when we reach the end of the tunnel, if we’re not out of Warsaw,
we’re at least beyond the active patrols.”

Avram finally saw. “Right…” He began to piece it together. “And from there, you could get to the forest. You can hide ten
people in the forest for a couple of days, no problem. We’ve done it before. They’re so intent on the Ghetto right now, they
probably won’t even be looking out there.”

“And a couple of days is probably all I’d need to arrange some transport out of the Reich. I’ve still got some connections.”

Avram looked happier than he had since the Germans had entered the Ghetto three weeks earlier. “MacLeod, you are a genius!”

MacLeod shook his head, humble. “Don’t start passing out the Nobel prizes yet. We’ve got a long way to go.” He quickened the
pace. “Let’s get back to the others.”

Rivka looked up at MacLeod with undisguised awe as they hurried down the alley. “I always knew you’d save us, Duncan.”

MacLeod looked helplessly at Avram, who shrugged and laughed in relief. “No pressure, MacLeod. No pressure at all.”

They stopped at Mendik’s
malina
only long enough to collect Rubenstein, Landau, and the Singer family, and to gather what they would need to attempt to escape
the Ghetto. The compass, the lantern and oil, a dimming flashlight, all the food and water they could find, which sadly only
amounted to a day’s worth of crumbs when split among a dozen people. They hurried to make ready before dawn, when the Nazi
patrols would return in force.

In the predawn silence they slipped from the bunker beneath the ruins of the Bundist library in two groups. MacLeod led Landau,
Moshe Singer, and his wife and son through the alleyways. Singer’s son, Jacob, no longer a child but not quite yet a man,
shouldered the responsibility of caring for Zara, while his father and Landau covered MacLeod with their pistols as he took
the point on their trek to Muranowska Square. At the last minute, Rivka, who had been assigned to Tzaddik’s party, declared
she couldn’t leave Zara’s side, and traveled with MacLeod instead.

They passed through the streets like ghosts, unseen, unheard, and finally rendezvoused with Tzaddik’s party at the edge of
the square, in the shadowed doorway of a long-closed bank. Muranowska Square marked the northernmost boundary of the Ghetto.
Rubenstein and Singer’s nephew, Tosia Gross, were in the square, Rubenstein already down the manhole into the sewers to make
sure it was unguarded. Tosia stood at the mouth of the hole, exposed, unprotected, waiting for Rubenstein’s signal. He looked
around nervously, not comforted by the fact Tzaddik’s rifle covered him from the shadowed doorway.

Suddenly, Tosia dropped to his knees by the manhole, listening intently. Then he waved frantically to Avram and MacLeod.

“This is it,” Avram said. “You first,
mamelah
,” he directed Mrs. Singer. She looked at him fearfully and then at her husband.

“Moshe?”

Avram reassured her. “He’ll be right behind you. Now, go, the sun is nearly rising.” He gave the woman a gentle push and she
ran across the square to her nephew, who helped her into the hole and guided her down the ladder to where Rubenstein waited.
“Now you, Moshe,” he directed her husband, who hurried toward the hole, head looking rapidly in all directions, waving his
pistol wildly.

MacLeod leaned closer to Avram. “If we’re not all shot by Moshe Singer first, this might just work,” he whispered.

“Just don’t let him get behind you.”

The Singers’ upstairs neighbor was the next down the manhole, helping the little boy who had no family, no name. The sky was
starting to lighten in the east. Jacob dashed out of the shadows with Zara clinging tightly to him. At the hole, Tosia managed
to loosen Zara’s hold on his cousin and take her from Jacob, who scrambled down the hole. Then he handed Zara down.