Highlander - Donna Lettow [82]
“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.”
MacLeod shook his head in wonder. “Boy, is he singing a different tune. How’d Anielewicz wind up bedfellows with Capone?”
“Izzy is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He realized a couple weeks ago that he needed us to keep him alive. Safecrackers and cat burglars aren’t much help in a firefight. Anielewicz’s place farther down Mila got bombed and Shmuel ‘generously’ opened his doors to the survivors, kindhearted soul that he is. You know how it goes—I scratch your tuchas, you save mine.” They’d reached the end of the corridor. Avram knocked on the door on the right. “It’s Tzaddik.”
The door opened. Inside the room, the remnants of the ZOB command gathered around a table. There were nearly twenty of them, all pale and haggard, hollow-eyed. It was obvious none of them had slept in days, and the nerves that weren’t numb were keenly on edge and ready to snap.
“Tzaddik, thank God!” Mordechai Anielewicz said as they entered. “What’s the news?”
Avram shook his head sadly. “Nothing you haven’t already heard a hundred times, I’m afraid. Miriam’s gone. Half my unit went down when the mortar hit the Smocza base. Three more in the shootout.”
“Mendik’s base was smoked out,” MacLeod added. “As far as we could tell, no one made it out.”
Across the room, Lilka Minski stood, clutching the table for support. “What about Israel? He was going to Mendik’s, Jana was ill. I haven’t seen him since.” Lilka was the doctor’s longtime lover, and it was clear from her face she knew the answer before she even asked the question. “He was there, wasn’t he?”
“I’m sorry, Lilka,” MacLeod said gently.
“Oh, God.” The words caught in Lilka’s throat, and her hands went to her mouth. Mira, Anielewicz’s companion and aide, hurried to her side and quietly helped her from the room so she could grieve in peace.
Anielewicz gestured for them to join the meeting. “Come, sit.” Avram took Lilka’s place, MacLeod pulled an empty chair nearby up to the table. “Quite frankly, gentlemen, I am open to suggestions,” their young leader said wearily. “If you’ve been hiding a miracle in your pocket, now would be the time.”
There were three hundred people in the bunker—fighters, commanders, thieves, murderers—and an untold number still alive in other bunkers scattered throughout the burning Ghetto. There had to be something they could do to save them. But every idea, every scenario they came up with seemed to work out the same way—death.
“What about the Polish Underground?” MacLeod asked, frustrated. There had to be a way. “Any chance of getting them to attack on another front, draw the Germans’ attention long enough to evacuate the Ghetto?”
Zelzer, who had commanded a unit in the Brushmaker’s area, shook his head sadly. “Antek and Kazik are both on the Aryan side now trying to talk some sense into the Armia Krajowa, but no luck. Apparently the heroic AK is too afraid of stirring up the hornets’ nest on its side of the Wall. They claim they’re not ready yet.”
“They’ll be ready enough when the Nazis run out of Jews and start on the Poles. Cowards!” Avram spit.
The door to the conference room burst open. “Mordechai, you have to do something!” The king of the killers and thieves was a quivering mass. “They’re here!”
“The Nazis?” Anielewicz asked for confirmation. The other ZOB fighters looked at each other with grave concern.
Issachar nodded, looking back over his shoulder expecting Brownshirts to be following him down the corridor, guns blazing. “They’ve surrounded the entire block. They’re covering all the entrances.” He grabbed the young ZOB leader