Mila 18 - Leon Uris [125]
Max stood up quickly. “Leave me out of it. Hands off. I’ll forget everything you said.”
“Sit down, Max,” Andrei said softly. “Max, that order of flour for the Orphans and Self-Help—just cancel it. We’re opening up a new source.”
Max slipped into his chair. “Damn you, Androfski, I went to a lot of trouble to ship that wheat in here. I brought in so goddamned much flour that half the bakeries on the Aryan side had to close.”
“Just talking off the top of my head, Max, but forty or fifty of our own people think we can run the smuggling operation just as effectively.”
The message was clear. The Brandel boy had to be freed at any price. Androfski was one of those bastards who didn’t bluff. Max opened his wallet and took out his estimation pad and began to scratch figures down.
“It will cost plenty.”
“We’ll pay.”
“I’ll have to work in gold or dollars. We can only move through high-class people.”
“I’ve only got zlotys,” Andrei lied.
“So have I got zlotys. A warehouse full of them. They aren’t worth the goddamn paper they’re printed on. Gold or dollars, three thousand dollars.”
“Three thousand dollars!”
“Your hearing is excellent.”
Andrei’s eyes watered in anger. He turned his back on Kleperman to conceal the rage inside him. Filthy stinking scum. Bargaining for a life as if it were a secondhand suit on the Parysowski market Goddamned son of a bitch, Kleperman. Rachael’s eyes. Day and night she waited in his flat. Could he look at Rachael’s eyes again?
“It’s a deal,” he whispered.
“Let’s have the details.”
Andrei sat down opposite Max and held his face in his hands. “He got picked up in the Old Town Square carrying an Aryan Kennkarte made out for a fictitious Stanislaw Krasnodebski. He was sent out as a contact for a pickup from one of our girls from Krakow. Now the Germans hauled in forty, fifty people. Mass questioning. No doubt they’ve looked at his penis and know he’s Jewish. We’ve got reason to believe several Jews were grabbed in the dragnet.”
“One of my boys was taken in on the same roundup,” Max said, and added ironically, “He isn’t as lucky as Brandel. Doesn’t have his friends.”
“So, he goes on a story of being Hershel Edelman from Wolkowysk. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t been identified.”
“He’ll need more than luck with Sauer working him over. I’ll find out what his status is. If he is under suspicion we can’t touch him at Gestapo House. That will only endanger him. Sauer doesn’t take bribes. Just hope the boy doesn’t crack. We have to wait until he is transferred.”
Andrei nodded. Max stood up.
“Max ... I know the Big Seven can put us out of business, but if there’s a double cross you’ll get it first from me, personally.”
Chapter Twenty-four
EIGHT DAYS PASSED.
Rachael Bronski waited in her Uncle Andrei’s flat twenty-four hours each day, resisting consolation, eating only enough to keep her alive.
Each time Andrei walked in and shook his head the shock recoiled through her like the jagged glass on the top of the wall. She kept her eyes open in vigil until she collapsed from exhaustion, and then only a few nightmare-filled hours’ respite could be found.
She twitched and sweated on the bed and woke up with her heart thumping and the sweat pouring into her eyes, and Wolf would be standing there at the foot of the bed, gory and dismembered, and she would cry out the horror within her and then start her slow, zombie-like pacing of the room.
All of this silly war of morality I fought with him. All this modesty—all this fear ... Wolf was locked up in that terrible place. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. I have sent him to his grave, unloved. If Andrei comes through the door and tells me