Mila 18 - Leon Uris [51]
“It happens that America isn’t at war either. I’m keeping the bureau open.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Rosy answered. “I know that within two weeks the Germans will put us out of business.”
“I’ll get around it somehow.”
“Why?” Rosy persisted. “You won’t be able to get any news out but watered-down potato soup.”
“You know damned well why I’m staying!” Chris said angrily.
Rosy set his camera down and walked up behind Chris’s chair and put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “It’s not like I don’t want you to stay, Chris. I have a good job. I’d really have to struggle if the bureau closed. But ... when a friend is in trouble, sometimes you don’t think too much about yourself. That’s why I tell you, pack up and leave with the Americans tomorrow.”
“I can’t leave her, Rosy.”
“My Susan has known Deborah Bronski since college days. When two people like you and she come from different ends of the earth there has to be a great ability on both parts to be able to give. She is controlled by inner forces that make it impossible to change, even if she wanted to.”
“It’s not true. Bronski has been cutting away at her beliefs for a decade.”
“Only on the surface. When the final showdown comes she’ll return to them. She doesn’t have the ability to do otherwise, and that is why you are walking down a blind alley.”
“Oh hell—women in Italy and Spain and Mexico and India and half the damned world are driven to a wall of mysticism and superstitions in order to be able to keep existing in a world which fights them every inch of the way. The trouble with you Jews is that you make yourselves believe you have the priority on suffering—”
“But there is a difference, Chris. In all of the world, no matter how sordid the life, no matter how evil and bare and fruitless, almost every man can open his eyes in the morning in a land in which he had his beginning and a heritage. We can’t. And I know what this does to women like Deborah Bronski. I know too many like her.”
“No, you’re wrong, Rosy. If you really know Deborah, then you’d understand that I am unable to ever leave her.”
The bell rang. Rosy answered. It was Andrei. In only a week he had made a remarkable recovery. Much of the pain was still with him and his face showed great weariness, but he pulled himself together for that last battle which had not been fought.
Two days after his return to Warsaw he reported to the commander at the Citadel and was given a spot promotion to the rank of major and placed in charge of a battalion on the southern perimeter. The truce to evacuate the Americans was to take place at his position.
“How is it out there?” Chris asked.
“The same,” Andrei answered. “The bastards won’t attack.”
“Why should they?” Chris said. “They can sit back and blast the city till kingdom come.”
“I want to get one more look at them,” Andrei said.
“We may be looking at them for a long, long time,” Rosy said. “And how are you feeling, Andrei?”
“Never better,” he answered, lifting the glass filled with scotch whisky that Chris had poured. “I’m only in for a few hours. I’ve got to get back. Something has come up that may be of interest to you on that truce tomorrow morning to evacuate the American Embassy personnel.”
They both nodded.
“The Germans contacted us a few hours ago by radio. One of our officers just finished speaking to them personally beyond the lines. The Germans have asked for a trade of prisoners of war at the same time the Americans are evacuated.”
“How many Germans do you have here?”
“A few hundred, more or less. Most of them are ethnics.”
“Seems like a normal procedure,” Chris said.
“No, there’s something fishy about it,” Andrei said. “The Germans are offering us five to one.”
“Why would they do that, I wonder?” Rosy asked.
“I don’t know—but something’s wrong with the whole business.”
“We might as well go down there and cover the truce,” Chris said. “There may be a story, although God knows when we’ll be able to get it out of Poland.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE AMERICAN EMBASSY