Highlander - Donna Lettow [66]
Without breaking the kiss, MacLeod lowered Miriam back onto the blanket, cradling her head on his jacket. Then, with deft hands, he began to unbutton her dress.
Chapter Thirteen
Warsaw: April 18,1943
“This is the moment we planned for, prepared for, and prayed for. Now is the time to be strong. Not to falter. Not to show fear. And above all, not to lose faith.” Mordechai Anielewicz was only twenty-three, but as he paced in front of the gathered unit commanders, gesturing broadly with his hands, outlining strategy, boosting morale, Avram thought he spoke with the wisdom and confidence of a man more than twice that age. “Whether we go to fight in the streets or stand firm in the bunkers, we still resist. Armed Jewish resistance to the Germans is a reality, and, no matter what happens from this moment forward, they can’t take that away from us. Or our people. No more will the Jews go peacefully to their deaths. No more!”
They were in close quarters, meeting in the protected basement of an empty butcher shop, and the “Amen!” that answered Anielewicz from the throats of the men gathered there resounded from the thick stone walls. He was their elected commander and, since the uprising in January, the de facto leader of the less than fifty thousand Jews surviving of the half a million who once walked Warsaw’s streets.
A heavy burden at twenty-three, the fate of a people, but Anielewicz had proven himself equal to the challenge. He had somehow taken Zionists and anti-Zionists, farmers and intellectuals, Communists and Socialists, the devout and the secular, the left and the right, and all the other schisms that had crippled Jewish Warsaw and gotten them to see beyond their ideologies. Avram had once believed that in itself would take a miracle, but now they worked together for a common vision. Some in the ZOB compared him to Eleazar, the heroic commander of Masada. Perhaps, thought Avram, who knew the strengths and weaknesses of both men firsthand, but Avram thought instead of the legends told of Judah Maccabees, who’d led his own small force of poorly equipped Jews against a heartless empire bent on their destruction. But Maccabees had restored the Great Temple to his people; Avram was sorely afraid the most Anielewicz could hope for was to restore his people’s honor. Nothing could ever restore the lives of the hundreds of thousands of innocent souls lost in Warsaw alone. Nothing could ever punish their murderers enough.
But if anyone could try, it would be Anielewicz, and Avram followed and supported him like he had no other mortal in nearly two thousand years. From the back of the crowded room, he watched his leader plan for the coming battle. Avram wondered if anyone else was struck by the irony—here on the stone killing floor of the butcher’s shop, site of a hundred years of ritual slaughter, the Jews meet to plan the death of their enemies. And very probably, their own.
“Tzaddik?” Anielewicz called to the back, finally getting to Avram. “Your unit?”
“We’ve set up two stations on opposite corners of Gesia and Smocza. Thanks to the sudden generosity of Shmuel Issachar, each station has a rifle, four or five grenades, and a dozen cocktails. There’ll be six fighters in each station, each has their own pistol. Der Alte and I are overlooking the Gesia gate; we’re wired for both alarm and the explosive charge in the tunnel under the gate.”
It was a run-of-the-mill report. Avram expected Anielewicz to move on to the next unit. Instead, he said in front of all gathered, “I’m still not sure about Der Alte. What’s his game? He’s not one of us.”
“What?” He thought they’d gotten beyond this