Mila 18 - Leon Uris [267]
“Rest,” he said.
Rest ... rest ... rest ... the magic word fired back along the line.
They sat in the pipe with the sewage waters swirling around their chests and they gasped and groaned with hunger and thirst and weariness and bloody hands and knees.
Tolek and Chris held the head of Ana, who was unconscious from falling into the water.
Wolf crawled away alone, counting each step carefully until he came to a large Kanal. He was utterly confused, for the Twarda Street line veered into the system at an angle. He could not understand. They were more than a mile away from the designated Prosta Street manhole and completely confused as to direction, but the big Kanal had ledges and would give them a place to recover their strength.
Wolf retraced his steps and led them to the Twarda main, and they crawled on the ledges and collapsed.
Wolf and Tolek and Chris stayed half awake, trying each in his own mind to comprehend the situation, and the same set of questions crossed their minds without conversation. Had their message to the Aryan side been received? Would someone be waiting for them on Prosta Street ... if they reached Prosta Street?
As commander, Wolf Brandel had other decisions to reach. He tried to reason out their proximity. He guessed rightly that they were under the former little ghetto area which was now largely reinhabited by Poles. The area, he knew, was under close watch of the police because of its proximity to the ghetto. Overhead they could hear motor vehicles and the marching of soldiers. Perhaps we are near Grzybow Square, Wolf thought. It was an assembly point for the Germans to enter the southern end of the ghetto.
Daylight showed through manholes on either end of their ledge. Wolf looked his people over. It was a battle of endurance against exhaustion more than anything at this point. One by one his people had passed out into semi-consciousness. If his guess of location was right, they would now be safe from poison gas and out of reach of the prying sound detectors. The tides were going high again. Water splashed over the ledge. Nothing to do but wait until darkness ... nothing to do but wait.
Kamek’s house in Brodno was the first stop in the underground railway to the Machalin and Lublin forests. Gabriela arrived shortly after the morning curfew was lifted.
“They’re down there!” she cried.
Kamek was unexcitable. He put his hands behind his back and deliberately pieced everything together. “Where are they? We do not know. Neither you nor I got the signal clearly. It could be one of fifteen manholes.”
Gabriela pressed her temples and tried to reason.
“Moreover,” Kamek continued, “both of our trucks are gone. The Gestapo raided our headquarters last night; our people are dispersed.”
The Home Army ... Roman ...”
“We cannot depend upon them. Someone may sell out.”
Gabriela knew he was right. She winced. Kamek, once Ignacy Pownicki, had been a journalist and an ardent supporter of both the ruling colonel’s clique and the reactionary pre-war noblemen’s caste. Events during the war changed his thinking. Humanity overpowered nationalism. Kamek was one of the few who were revolted by and ashamed of the behavior of the Polish people toward the things happening in Poland’s ghettos. He did not embrace the leftists’ philosophy personally, but he joined them, for they were the ones who gave the fullest support to those in the ghetto. Kamek lost his identity as Ignacy Pownicki to immerse himself fully in the underground work of the People’s Guard.
He was a cool man, seeming almost lazily detached from the urgency.
“They’re under