Mila 18 - Leon Uris [219]
The ghetto rats scampered through the six exits to alert the scattered bunkers.
Andrei watched the last of his men go up the ladder to the stove upstairs. Stephan, Andrei’s personal runner, followed his uncle as though he were glued to him. Andrei poked his head into Poniatow. Simon was afraid. Andrei slapped Simon’s shoulder hard. “We won’t fire until we can smell their breath,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“We’ll soon find out,” Simon said. “I wish I could be up there with you.”
Andrei shrugged. “Such are the fortunes of a commander,” he said, and was gone with Stephan close behind him.
Tolek ran up and down the tunnel. “Stop the generator! Combat conditions! Deborah, keep the children quiet. Rabbi, I’ll have to ask you to pray silently. Moritz, card game’s over for now. Button up, everyone—button up!”
Adam Blumenfeld at the radio threw a switch to put the receiver on batteries as the generator ground to a halt and the lights went out.
Beep ... beep ... beep ... beep ... he heard in his earphones. He pulled the headset off and called out in the darkness.
“Are you there, Simon?”
“I’m here.”
“Radio confirmation. The Germans are moving.”
Beep ... beep ... beep ... beep ... warned the mobile transmitter from the Aryan side.
Simon struck a match and found the candle on the desk. He cranked the phone handle.
“Haifa ... hello, Haifa.”
“This is Haifa.”
“This is Atlas in Jerusalem. Let me speak to Chess Master.”
“Chess Master speaking,” Wolf Brandel answered from the Franciskanska bunker.
“The Rhine Maidens and their Swans are at Stalingrad. One thousand bottles. They’re coming through the Red Sea. Don’t drink any wine unless it’s offered.”
“Oh boy!”
Simon hung up. He could see Alex and Tolek on the fringe of the candle glow. Now was the commander’s agony. Waiting in the dark. The acid test was here. It was deathly still. Even the endless prayers of Rabbi Solomon trailed to a silent movement of the lips.
Across vacant courtyards, flitting over rooftops, sloshing through sewage, darting up deserted staircases, the runners from Mila 18 flashed from cover to cover to alert the Fighters. The companies moved in ghostlike silence to their positions behind windows, on the roofs, from sewer cover. Yes, it was all quite like a drill.
The streets had a stillness like the face of the moon. Some feathers fluttered down from the rooftops in sudden gusts of wind. Hidden eyes watched the ethereal stillness.
A dim sound of heels cracking against cobblestones. Clump ... clump ... clump ... clump ... clump.
The SS at the Zelazna Gate, barricaded behind machine-gun nests, darted out to remove the barbed-wire gate blocking the entrance.
Rodel looked from the window in the uniform factory out to the picket fence where the black-uniformed marchers flickered past with the broken motion of a film running to a halt. The bootless brown uniforms of the Auxiliaries made a softer tread. Rodel watched, his teeth tightening in his moon-shaped face. On and on they passed.
“Hello, Beersheba,” Rodel phoned to his bunker. “This is Tolstoy. Advise Jerusalem that the Rhine Maidens and their Swans have passed the Land of Goshen. Brunhilde is leading them. They are going up the Jordan River.”
Andrei Androfski looked up and down the rooftops at his dispersed Fighters. He was satisfied that they were deployed properly. Once on the roofs, the Joint Command was able to keep their companies in communication by signal posts from roof to roof. A message was relayed from Ana Grinspan’s company that the Germans were marching up Zamenhof Street almost at the same moment that Rodel’s command had phoned the information to Simon Eden.
Andrei crawled on his belly to the corner overlooking the intersection of Mila and Zamenhof streets, with Stephan at his heels. He wiggled into a position to observe Zamenhof Street through a pair of field glasses.
Andrei grumbled to himself and sharpened his focus. “Brunhilde himself,” he said. “Stutze. How nice.”
Clump! Clump! Clump! Clump! The boot heels cracked, their echoes reverberating off the hollow shells