Mila 18 - Leon Uris [248]
“All right then, but you don’t have to help them by approval. Simon, think! You’re setting a dangerous precedent. Others may decide to go.”
“Yes ... I know ...”
The rendezvous with Samson Ben Horin was held at Nalewki 37 in a lantern-lit room. It would be daylight in two hours. Samson’s neatly trimmed beard was in straggly disarray, and his hollow features made his weariness more pronounced. “Did you bring me a map of the sewers?” Simon spread it on the table. “Do you still plan to try it before dawn?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to reach the Vistula. They’ll have a barge waiting for us.”
“I don’t want to interfere, but you’re taking your people right under the heart of Warsaw by staying in the main line. It’s dangerous. I seriously suggest that you consider using smaller cross lines ... here ... here ... here ...” he said, pointing. “This way you come out a few miles north in Zoliborz.”
“We can’t change plans now. They’ll be waiting for us.”
“Delay it for a day. Recontact your people on the outside and set up a safer route.”
Samson hemmed and hawed, then sprang from his seat. He had thought of a safer route, but it would cost him twenty-four hours. “It’s a greater risk to stay,” he said. “We don’t think we can hold for another day.”
Simon showed no reaction to the shock he felt. “Do you have a compass?”
“Yes.”
He penciled in the route. “It’s almost perfectly straight. Watch for barbed wire here. Tides won’t be too bad. Hold hands, keep conversation down. Be careful with lights.”
Samson Ben Horin studied the map for several moments, then folded it and put it in his breast pocket. Simon arose. “I’ve got to get back to my bunker,” he said. “We have a meeting scheduled in ten minutes. Our German friends are bringing up another battalion of artillery.”
“Thanks for everything, Simon. Listen, I want you to know. What I mean to say is ... this is a group decision to leave.”
“No explanation is necessary.”
“It’s not as if we are running away.”
“No one has accused you of that.”
“Simon, when the ghetto was started we had five hundred people in Warsaw. There are fifty-two of us left I want you to know that I personally voted to remain. But ... as their leader, I am obliged to take them out to the forests.”
“I figured it was that way.”
“Eleven of my people have decided to remain with you. We have also voted to leave you half our guns and eighty per cent of our ammunition. You’ll find it all in our bunker.”
He extended his hand. Simon shook it. Samson Ben Horin, a rebel among rebels, headed quickly for his bunker.
In ten minutes the forty-one remaining Revisionists were in the main sewer line under Gensia Street. They passed near Wolf’s Franciskanska bunker, under the Brushmaker’s compound, and they were beneath the wall. Every ten yards Samson flicked on his flashlight for a two-second bearing. A chain, hand to hand, moved silently.
The light found the barbed-wire trap.
Five men with wire cutters bit their pliers into the barrier and worked it apart slowly.
Samson peered at his watch. It was going too slowly. It would be light in fifty minutes. “Hurry,” he whispered.
“It’s very thick.”
“Hurry!”
They grunted as their rusty instruments tried to break the wire. Samson flashed his light again. They were only a third of the way through. He pushed past the wire-cutting team and with his hands squeezed the accordions flat. The barbs tore his flesh in a dozen places, but he batted at the wire until there was a partial clearance. They slugged through. The wire ripped their flesh and their clothing and they were bloodied and in pain.
Overhead, a Polish Blue policeman patrolling the area was drawn to the manhole by foreign sounds. He knelt and lay his ear against the manhole, then darted off to the Citadel gate only a block away, where the Wehrmacht had a camp.
“There are people in the Kanal. I’m sure of it. I could