Highlander - Donna Lettow [92]
“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.
“You’re next, Rivka,” MacLeod prompted.
“Can’t I wait for you?” she asked.
MacLeod laughed. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise. Now, go!” She turned to go.
“Rivka, wait!” Avram told her. She turned to him, eyes wide and questioning. He bent down and kissed her gently on the forehead, tousling her pigtails with one hand. “Be brave, Rivkaleh,” he whispered. Then he swatted her on the backside, saying “Go!” and she took off across the square.
“Avram?” MacLeod could sense something was troubling his comrade.
Avram ignored him, turning to Landau instead. “Send Tosia down, then you follow. Hurry, it’s almost dawn.” Landau stepped from the shadows and made his way to the manhole.
“You’re not going.” It wasn’t even a question. MacLeod could read the certainty on Avram’s face.
“Take this,” he said, handing MacLeod the rifle. “You’ll need it. I can find another one.”
“Why, Avram?” MacLeod pressed. “Tell me why.”
“My place is here, MacLeod. With my people. As long as there’s one Jew left alive in Warsaw, I have to be here. I have to help.”
“Then I’ll stay with you.”
Avram shook his head, touched deeply by MacLeod’s gesture, but adamant. “No. You’re their only hope. You get them out of here. You get them safe.” Then he grabbed MacLeod firmly by both shoulders and stared intensely into his eyes, as if imparting his commandment upon him: “And then you find a way to stop that bastard, you hear me?”
Both men’s eyes began to tear, and MacLeod could feel his lower lip begin to quiver. “I swear,” he answered in a voice deep with sorrow, then he embraced Avram to his he.
After a moment, Avram pulled away. “Daylight’s coming,” he said, trying to put on a brighter face. “Time to roll.” He started across the square toward the manhole, MacLeod following, holding the rifle.
MacLeod started down the ladder into the sewer. “Hey, Tzaddik,” he called up out of the hole. Avram looked down at him from the street. “God be with you.”
“You, too goy.” Avram slid the manhole cover into place, leaving MacLeod in darkness.
Chapter Eighteen
Paris: The Present
“You’re a goy, you’ve always been a goy.” To Avram, there was no longer anyone in the room but MacLeod. Constantine, Methos, both had faded into the background of his awareness, leaving him alone with the man he felt was his betrayer. “I never expected you to understand what it’s like. To never have a place you can call your home. To be hunted down like a dog in the street because of what you are. But I never thought you’d be the one to side with the murderers.”
MacLeod understood all too well. He knew what it was like to be run to ground like an animal by a pack of English butchers and their hounds, his only offense wearing a kilt in defiance of English law. He knew what it was like to be exiled and outlawed from his homeland on pain of death. But he knew as well that all explanations would be lost on Avram in his current state.
“She’s not a murderer.” MacLeod tried again to get him to hear, knowing as he did he might as well be shouting