Jacob's Oath (9 page)

Ari’s left hand held the doorknob. He squeezed it gently and began to turn. The slightest
squeak and he would just throw the door open and barge in. But the more he could open
the door undetected, the safer.

The knob turned all the way, both men nodded again, and it was time. Ari opened the
door, Omri went in first.

It was a small room. Aiming the gun straight at Langenscheidt’s head, Omri stood before
him in three quick strides. The Nazi was sitting in a chair at his desk, his mouth
wide in shock, color draining from his face; they saw him turn white. One hand was
in the air, as if to push them away, the other on the desk. Omri flicked his gun at
the hand and it was in the air too. Langenscheidt was so shocked he didn’t say anything.
As he began to collect himself and opened his mouth, Ari put his left index finger
to his lips. He whispered in Hamburg dialect: “If you make a sound I will rape your
dear wife and kill her.”

At the front door, Ari looked from left to right, saw Topf busy with his bone. Behind
Ari, Langenscheidt, his hands tied behind his back with the steel cord, glanced upstairs.
Omri’s gun pressed below his right ear. “One sound and she dies,” Omri whispered.

Ari gestured, Follow me, and they moved down the garden path. Omri was tall but Langenscheidt
was taller, and broader, he was an ox. In the street they were alone in the dark,
Omri’s gun now in Langenscheidt’s back, Ari leading the way. Langenscheidt began to
say something but Omri pressed the gun harder and hissed: Shut your mouth.

They came so silently Yonni started when they loomed before him. He was standing by
the jeep with his Webley .38 in his hand. He looked at Langenscheidt with a face of
pure hatred.

“Who are you?” Langenscheidt said, at last. “What do you want?”

Yonni said something in a strange language and stepped forward.

“What are you speaking? Who are you?”

Standing clear of the jeep, with Yonni’s pistol cold against the skin between the
Nazi’s eyes, Omri and Ari took off their German helmets and combat jackets to reveal
their brown British army uniforms. Omri stuffed the German clothes back into the kit
bags. Langenscheidt took a step back. “You’re not German. You’re English?” he said.
His voice was strong, he had regained his composure, he had the confidence of the
biggest man in the room, even with his hands tied behind his back and a gun in his
face. “What are you doing here, this is the American zone. You have no rights here.”
And then he added, placatingly, “The war is over, what do you want?”

Ari said, “Auch kein Engländer.” Not English either.

Bluish light from the quarter-moon filtered through the clouds and the branches. They
were all shadows, silhouettes in the woods.

“You are SS-Obersturmbannführer Uwe Langenscheidt,” Ari said.

“What? Who? Of course not, I am Winkler, Kurt Winkler.” Now he seemed confused. He
looked desperately from man to man, and struggled with his bound hands. “I was never
a Nazi. I worked on the railroads. I don’t know this man. This is a mistake, a terrible
mistake.”

“You are SS-Obersturmbannführer Uwe Langenscheidt,” Ari said.

“No. No. You are wrong. I am Kurt Winkler, come back to my house, ask my wife my name.
I will show you my identity card. My ration card. My library card, for God’s sake.
This is all a terrible mistake. My name is Kurt Winkler. Please. You must believe
me.” His forehead gleamed with sweat.

Blue had shown them a photo of their target. Big, swept-back brown hair, fleshy eyebrows,
a drinker’s red-veined nose, fat lips.

Omri said, “You coward, and liar, and murderer. Do you speak English?”

“Yes, a little.”

Ari, gripping his commando knife, grabbed Langenscheidt by the hair from behind, and
yanked his head back, exposing his throat. He pressed the blade above his Adam’s apple.
He hissed in English into his ear, “SS-Obersturmbannführer Uwe Langenscheidt. In the
name of the Jewish people, I sentence you to death.”

Langenscheidt responded as if a red-hot rod had been stuck up his ass. His body jerked
so hard he appeared to rise from the ground, knocking the knife away. His hands still
tied behind his back, he roared and charged into Omri, knocking him against the jeep
fender, which tripped him up. Out of knife range, he kicked backward with his heel
and caught Ari below the knee. His leg went from under him. Langenscheidt whirled
around and kicked Ari in the head, a glancing blow, for Ari managed to roll to the
side, though he lost the knife. As Omri scrambled to his feet in the slippery mud,
Langenscheidt kneed him in the head and began to run. He’d taken three steps and passed
the back of the jeep when Yonni pointed his gun at his head from two meters. Langenscheidt
froze. Yonni pulled the trigger. Nothing. The gun jammed. Langenscheidt roared in
relief and began to run again, toward the lane, but Yonni spun around, dropped the
gun, grabbed the spade, and wheeled it over his head and caught Langenscheidt smack
in the face on the run. The force of the blow lifted the big man off his feet and
stunned him. Blood poured from his crushed nose as he lay motionless.

Ari whipped out the other steel cord and garroted Langenscheidt from behind. Lying
in the mud behind him, he pulled with all his strength while he pushed with his foot
against the big man’s neck. Tighter and tighter he pulled and the cord cut into the
Nazi’s throat as Langenscheidt kicked and squirmed and finally gargled and groaned
until his giant body went limp. To verify the kill, Ari whipped his seven-inch blade
from his boot and cut Langenscheidt’s throat.

Ari lay back gasping, spent, with Langenscheidt’s bulk pinning his leg. “Get the bastard
off,” he said. “Oh, my fucking knee.”

Omri stood above him, one hand covering his swelling forehead. “Well,” he said in
Hebrew, “that went well.”

EIGHT

Elbe River,
May 8, 1945

“Where are we? Are we there yet?” Sarah’s slurred little voice barely reached the
front.

“That’s twenty-seven,” Lieutenant Brodsky said, turning around. He saw deep into Sarah’s
yawning mouth.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said as the yawn faded. “Oh, my neck. It’s stiff, I think my
head weighs more than my body.”

“It probably does. We’ll have to fatten you up.” He smiled and touched her hair. “You
look rested, believe it or not.”

“Where are we?”

“Dessau. About a hundred clicks from Berlin. On the river Elbe. We’re waiting in line.
There’s a holdup on the bridge.”

“How far to go?”

“By the way, that’s twenty-seven,” Brodsky said. “I’ve been counting.”

Sarah leaned out and sucked air as deeply as she could. The din was deafening: engines
roaring, gears crashing, people yelling, but the night was fresh and the wind was
cold on her cheeks. She strained her head down, massaging her neck. “Twenty-seven
what?” she said.

“Twenty-seven times you’ve asked if we’re there yet. You even ask in your sleep. You’re
like a little girl.” Brodsky pushed open his door and stuck his legs out stiffly,
rubbing his knees and thighs. He groaned in relief. Next to him his driver’s head
was slumped over his chest. Each time they’d halted for more than a minute he’d fallen
asleep. Brodsky looked back. “You look comfortable,” he said.

The backseat was crammed with piles of documents, box files, and maps. A blanket draped
them and Sarah was squeezed between the mound of paperwork and the metal frame. She
was slumped against the boxes, with the blanket providing some comfort. At her feet
was a wooden ammunition box full of food.

“What is it?” Brodsky asked a driver walking back to his command car behind them.
They were in a vehicle convoy with half a dozen officers escorted by soldiers in two
“Bobik” armored cars. The war was not yet officially over; it was too early to celebrate.
Germany’s final surrender could come at any moment, but with armed soldiers from the
Wehrmacht mingling with refugees on the roads, remnants of German units still wandering
in the woods, and the guerrilla threat from Nazi Werewolves militias, nobody wanted
to be the last person to die on the last day of the war.

“You ask what is it, Tovarich Lieutenant?” the driver answered. “What isn’t it? Take
a look. Everyone wants to cross at the same time. It’s a mess.”

There was shouting in English, Russian, and German, engines revved, soldiers stood
around smoking, and even now, an hour before dawn, German children were dashing between
the cars, looking for handouts or something to steal. Dessau, an industrial town on
the junction of the Elbe and Mulde rivers, had been bombed to bits in the last weeks
of the war and the old steel bridge destroyed. The only way across the Elbe was an
American pontoon bridge that the Yanks thought gave them priority.

An American sergeant stood at the entrance to the bridge, waving, pointing, ordering,
as if he owned the place. A line of American armored cars and Willys jeeps with mounted
machine guns clattered off the wooden struts onto the cobbled ramp that led to the
street. They gunned by, Stars and Stripes flying, their camouflage paint and olive
stars barely visible beneath the caked mud and dust. There was a sudden flurry of
hands and shouts, leaving a little boy jumping up and down in delight, right in front
of Sarah. He was waving a Hershey bar until a friend made a grab for it, but he was
too quick and whipped it away and ran off. His friend, left with nothing, held out
his open hand to Sarah and made a sad clown face. She began to smile but the smile
went away. Unfair, she thought. He’s just a little boy.

“Kiss, kiss. Hello, beautiful,” the boy said in American.

Brodsky laughed. “He’s right!”

“Fuck, fuck?” the boy said, hoping to wheedle some candy out of her.

*   *   *

It had all been so quick. When Isak had asked in the basement how long it would take
to get ready, she could only laugh. She had nothing but the clothes she wore, and
one little dusty purse of documents and photos she had guarded with her life for three
years. They were all that remained of her life and her family, her only link with
the past. In her loneliest moments, and they were many, she would stare at the creased
and cracked photos of Mutti and Papi, and Hoppi, and kiss them, and would smile. She
would look at them for so long, and so intently, it was as if she dissolved into the
photo with them, they were together again, their bodies merging, until slowly her
hands would fall and her head would follow and sleep would take her to a peaceful
place.

Get ready. She tried to laugh. It came out as a snort. Sarah could have walked straight
out the front door, if there had been one, if it hadn’t been used for firewood long
ago, but first she went upstairs to say good-bye to the Eberhardts and to give them
the last of Viktor’s food. They had been kind, as kind as anyone could have been while
risking death to help a Jew in hiding.

She emerged from her basement like a troglodyte from its cave, throwing her hands
up to protect her eyes from the sudden light. She had cowered from the explosions
of the last few days, and now she saw what she had escaped.

Houses leaned dangerously to the side with smashed roofs and ragged gaps in the walls,
scarred with pockmarks from bombs and shrapnel, some with façades ripped off so you
could see into the rooms. There were people sitting inside as on a stage. It made
sense. Where else would they go? It stank, of sewage and stagnant water and God knows
what diseases. Fat blue-black flies swarmed around a pile of garbage. There was a
scarlet pile of torn, discarded swastikas. On top was a torn German poster with its
stale warning: “Any Man found in a House with a White Flag will be Shot.” In the garden
opposite were two stakes driven into the ground, with steel helmets on top. German
graves. But whereas the street had been deserted after the German army had fled, with
everybody hiding in their shelters and basements, with just the booms and cracks of
bombs and guns, now it was like market day.

Russian military vehicles lined the street, soldiers lounged about at a roadblock,
each one of them smoking and chewing. Soon the bottles would come out and trouble
would start for the girls. That’s why young women searched for food and water only
in the mornings, when the Russians were sleeping it off. Older Berliners, shabby and
beaten, wandered among the soldiers, docile yet full of disdain for the eastern peasants,
even while begging them for food and cigarettes. Sarah prayed she wouldn’t see Viktor.

Her head lurched against the sharp edge of a box as they hit another bump in the road.
Viktor. She felt her lips turn into a snarl, even as she felt her head for blood.
There was none. She should have let Isak punish him. Why did she stop him? Isak had
said he would make sure Viktor got a taste of his own medicine, he’d leave orders
to beat him badly, at night, he had the authority. But Sarah had said, No. Why? Despite
what he had done to her, she could not bear the thought of such low revenge. Stop
him doing the same thing to another woman? Yes! But beat him? That wasn’t the way.
It wasn’t right. It would make her as bad as him. Violence was never the answer, look
at the Nazis. That was what she had thought at the time. But now? Tapping her forehead
with her fingers, feeling for blood again, she wondered, Why not? She should have
said yes. Beat the animal. But no. That’s really not the answer. There’s been enough
violence, enough killing. Please, she prayed, let it stop.

She looked at the back of Isak’s head, swaying with the movement of the vehicle. He
meant well, she thought.

Now, this is a good man.

The lieutenant had taken her to his quarters in a solitary grand house spared by the
bombing. He had issued orders and half an hour later, as she sipped hot sweet tea
under a cherry tree stripped of its blossoms by bomb blasts, an orderly came and led
her by the hand to a room with a bath and four, yes four, large buckets of water.
Cold, but she couldn’t dream of hot. Soap. A towel. And a pile of clothes for her
to choose from. She wondered who had been forced to hand them over. The lieutenant
had thought of everything. On top of the clothes was a red apple, a hairbrush, and
a cracked mirror.