Mila 18 - Leon Uris [250]
Horst concentrated heavily on which woman to bring in for a weekend. Alfred Funk wrote his daily report. The report was concise and boasted of progress which had not been made and exaggerated enemy strength and expanded the myth of a large army of Polish bandits helping the Jews. Crisp, dull, military. Copies to Police General Kruger in Krakow, to Globocnik in Lublin, and to Himmler. Ultra-secret.
Horst walked over to him in a turmoil between a redhead and a blonde and lifted the report and scanned it. “Have you ever heard of the Ass of Balaam, Alfred?”
“The what of what?”
“The Ass of Balaam in the Bible.”
“Of course not.”
“The Ass of Balaam attempts to curse the sons of Israel and ends up praising them. I think the Americans call it a left-handed compliment.”
“Must you always talk in riddles?”
“Look at these phrases in your report You refer to the ‘enemy.’ Since when do we admit the Jews are a military enemy? And here—‘Jewish disregard for death and the unshakable decision to resist’—why don’t you recommend we decorate them with Iron Crosses?”
Funk took the report and tore it in half. “I’ll do it over.”
“They tell me it’s like a nightmare in there,” Von Epp said.
“I don’t understand this at all. Most of these troops have performed well on the eastern front ... I simply don’t understand it.” Horst’s mind was back on the women. Alfred Funk’s was not “We have to get them off the roofs,” he said. “Must get them down on the ground ...”
The phone rang. Funk answered. He turned sallow and clapped his hand over the mouthpiece. “Himmler calling from Berlin.” Alfred Funk lifted his latest reports and read passages, spoke of German devotion and courage, gave assurances. Then he became quiet and listened and listened. His shading turned to crimson and then to gray. He placed the receiver on the hook very, very slowly.
“News of this insurrection has spread all over Europe. Hitler has been in a rage all day.”
Horst von Epp’s hand clutched his throat unconsciously.
“Damn! Damn!” Funk walked to the window in a violent anger. “Damn their filthy Jew souls!”
He whirled to Horst. His face was a mask of evil. Von Epp was frightened.
“What are you going to do, Alfred?”
“I’ll get these filthy animals down from the roof. I shall burn the ghetto to the ground!”
Chapter Eighteen
“HEINKEL BOMBERS!” CRIED THE Fighters on the roofs.
The German airplanes swooped in at a height of two hundred feet over the Brushmaker’s and slowed their speed. Tons of black bombs fell from their opened wombs on the crush of buildings. They hurled down, tore through the roofs, splattered on the streets, ignited.
The incendiaries smoldered and their groping flames licked around for fuel. The wood spurted into sudden fire and roared up the stair wells to the roofs.
“The ghetto is burning!”
The Heinkels zoomed in on a second and a third pass. There was nothing to shoot back and deter their “drill” with human targets. Palls of smoke billowed and spiraled heavenward and flames leaped on the roofs, turning them into frying pans. Glass windows exploded and scattered on the streets, and orange-and-red fingers of flame leaped violently through the windows.
A scorched runner spilled into the bunker at Mila 18, holding his blackened hands, and another with wild eyes came in, and another. All of them had the same story.
“We have to abandon the roofs.”
The ghetto burned crisply, concisely, and helplessly, for there was not so much as a single drop of water to stop the conflagration. Fire, a hungry beast, devoured all that would succumb and relentlessly searched for more.
Warsaw’s fire brigades surrounded