The One Man (27 page)

It made Franke's blood stir. Blood that had long sat dormant. For the past year he'd been underused and pushed aside.
Someone was definitely here.
From where? England, perhaps. And what for? An attack? An escape? An act of sabotage?

Now he just had to find out the who and the why.

If he was successful, Franke could almost taste how all his past shame would finally be put behind him. Himmler himself would be watching now. His wife would take him back, and with it, his position, the comfortable
schloss
in Rottach-Egern.

Everything depended on him rooting out this man.

Three more hours. He glanced at his watch. “It would be good to arrive
today,
” he called to the driver, who had now slowed for a herd of goats crossing the road. The Polish roads were all oxen paths. The driver hit the horn loudly.

A hunger churned inside Franke. Someone was clearly here. He just had to find him. This man. Wherever he had come from.

This truffle hunter.

It was a match of wits, Franke said to himself. A chess match.

You think you are alone. You think you are under the net. But you are wrong.

There is my net. My nose that will smell you when I see you.

Now it is just you and me.

 

THIRTY-NINE

Blum opened his eyes before first light. Zinchenko, their Lithuanian
kapo,
entered the barracks loudly banging on the walls and bunks with his stick. “
Rauss. Rauss!
Rise and shine, my little pets. Another day of wonder and adventure awaits you. Get your asses moving!”

In their bunks, people began to stir slowly. “Is it light yet?”

“Just another two minutes, please, Zinchenko!”

“
Up!
Up now, pigs!” the
kapo
called back without pity. “I try to be nice to you, letting you sleep an extra five minutes, and look what I get.”

Blum had woken at least a dozen times during the night. Between the awkward position he was forced to sleep in, tugging for a sliver of the thin, grimy blanket that the three of them had to share and that wouldn't have kept the bed lice warm, the constant snoring, and the fitful worry of what lay ahead for him today, he barely got an hour's sleep.

“Work details in thirty minutes! Roll call in five!” the
kapo
instructed. He was a muscular man with a heavy growth on his face and a flattened hat on his head, separating him from the average prisoner. As well as the red triangle sewn on his chest, signifying him as a common criminal. “Five minutes! Everyone outside!”

Slowly the block came alive. There was no washing up. Several lined up for the latrine and peed or shat in the revolting bucket.

Blum climbed down and found the man in the tweed cap he had spoken to last night, folding his blanket. “I need a job,” he said. “Anything you can get me? Something in the camp, if possible. At least for a day or two. I want to find my uncle.”

“Talk to
him
.” He pointed to a short man with heavy-lidded eyebrows. “He was an attorney in Prague. He's
blockschreiber
here.” The block clerk. Wetzler and Vrba had mentioned those. It was their role to assign the work duties.

“Thanks.”

Blum went over and found the man through the hurrying crowd. “I'm new.” He told the block clerk how he wanted a day to find his uncle.

“What's your name?”

“Mirek.”

“Number…?”

Blum showed him his arm. The
blockschreiber
kept note of it in a small black notebook.

“I have just the position.” The man chuckled grimly. “Rosten, congratulations!” he called out. “You've been promoted.”

“Hallelujah!
” someone yelled out from the throng.

“Sanitary brigade,” he said to Blum.

“What is that?”

He jotted it in his notebook. “Rosten will show you the rounds.”

*   *   *

The job, as Blum was shown, was to carry the buckets of shit and piss from the latrine to the camp's cesspool, located outside the main gate. Not just theirs. Blocks 18 through 32 as well. The main benefit, Blum soon realized, was that he would be able to enter several of the other blocks where there would be people around.

“Just be careful,” the
blockschreiber
warned him. “If one spills on public grounds, you'll likely get a bullet in your head. Rosten will be very upset. He'll have to go back to it.”

“Then I'll be especially careful in that case,” Blum agreed.

“And keep your eyes out. Sometime the guards will jab you with their sticks just for sport. If the bucket spills, you can say your prayers. Guess they figure anyone we give this job to isn't much worth feeding.”

“Thanks. So how has Rosten survived at it then?”

“Rosten?” The
blockschreiber
shrugged. “Guess he doesn't eat all that much.”

Outside, whistles sounded and people filed out their blocks and lined up for roll call. The morning was damp with a chill in the air for May, enough that everyone stood around hugging themselves in their thin burlap uniforms. Blum was nervous. The roll call was one of the times he could easily be exposed. The SS Blockführer came up. Lieutenant Fischer. Holding a dog-eared stack of papers on a clipboard. “You know the routine,” he barked. “Line up. A to Z. Step forward when your name is called.” Everyone edged into four long rows. He started in,
“Abramowitz…”

“Here!” a man in the back row shouted.

The guard licked his pencil and checked him off.
“Adamczyk?”

“Yes. Here.”

“Alyneski…?”

Blum huddled amid the crowd in the fourth row. They were going by name. He could get lost in the crowd and not have to shout one out. If they had gone down the rows man by man, and each had to call out his name, his name, Mirek, would not have matched up. That would have been a lot trickier.

“Bach?”

“Here!”

“Balcic…”

It took almost twenty minutes to go through the entire block. The staging area was so crammed with prisoners, each in front of their own blocks, each line melded into ones from the block next to it, making it one vast throng, names shouted out from competing Blockführers. The man next to Blum in line leaned over. “New here…?”

Blum nodded. “Yes.”

“Anyone taken you through the rounds?”

“Rounds? Not yet.”

“So listen up. It'll keep you alive. Fischer,” he nodded toward the Blockführer calling out names, “he's one hundred percent by the book. Doesn't look for trouble, won't help you a lick either. That one…” He pointed to an SS corporal. Reddish hair, flat nose. “Fuerst. He's got a sick sister at home. He does his job, but sometimes he can be open for business, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean a bribe?”

The man shrugged. “If you've got something to trade. But whatever you do, don't get in the way of that asshole…” He gestured to a hound-faced guard with thick lips and heavy-lidded eyes. “Dormutter. He's just a lunatic. He's in heaven in here. He can kill whoever he wants. Stay out of his way. I can't describe the things I've seen done.”

“I will. Thanks,” Blum said.

He took Blum through some of the other guards and
kapos
. The true monsters, the ones who would just kill you for sport. And those who were just doing their jobs. The ones whom Blum could count on and who at all costs he had to avoid.

“We all get the tour once,” the man explained. “From now on you're on your own.”

Before they broke into their work details, the block lineups merged for a while, people catching a quick word with their neighbors, trading stories of what was new, who was lost in the past day, bartering for cigarettes and scraps of food.

Blum took out his photograph. “I'm looking for my uncle,” he said to someone from a neighboring block. “His name is Mendl. Do you know him? He's from Lvov.”

“Sorry.” The person shook his head. “He's not in here.”

Blum went through the crowd and asked someone across the yard. “I'm looking for this man. He's my uncle. His name is Mendl.”

Again the person shook his head. “Don't know him. Sorry.”

He went from group to group, looking around, inspecting faces in the teeming crowd, keeping an eye out for the guards, grabbing onto anyone who made eye contact with him.

“Do you know this man? Have you seen him? Mendl.”

“No,” he kept on hearing. “Sorry.”

“This is his picture. Look, please.”

One said, “He looks familiar. But I can't help you. Do you have any extra smokes though? I'm dying.”

“He's probably dead.” Another shrugged. “Why do you care anyway? We all have uncles here somewhere.”

“Sorry.”

It could all be too late, Blum feared, watching the thousands seeming more dead than alive just trying to get through the day. Vrba and Wetzler confirmed that he was here, but that was January. Four months ago. The cold could have gotten him. Or typhus. Or a club to the head. Or the gas. He realized this could all be futile.
Do not fail us,
President Roosevelt had urged. But even Roosevelt had no control over the whimsy of life and death here.

There was a chance he might have come all this way just for a corpse.

Breakfast came around. Blum made it back to his block and edged into the line with his metal bowl. He hadn't had a bite of food since the stomach-turning soup he'd had yesterday at lunch. This was far worse. He couldn't tell what it was: cabbage, potato, a ladle full of thin, tasteless swill made from rinds, peels, and boiled grizzle. With a stale chunk of bread. He looked around at his barrack mates huddling outside their block, sucking it all in.

What if I'm unable to find him?
Blum asked himself.
What then?

And what if I'm never able to make it out of here?
This would be his life. As long as it lasted.

He sipped from his bowl, wincing at the first rancid taste. Then sipping it again. Sucking it into his mouth. As everyone else was. He would have to work the day too.

The whistles sounded again. “Line up. Line up. Meal's over.”

The work details had begun.

 

FORTY

“
Guten morgen
, Herr Lagerkommandant!” The staff in the commandant's office stood as Ackermann stepped in.

“Good morning. As you were.” With a wave, the major proceeded to his desk.

There was a coffee on his desk for him. He sat and scanned the morning reports. The number of prisoners “processed” yesterday: Over twenty-one thousand.
Very nice.
A full 12 percent above the norm. Most had arrived that very day and had gone straight through. He looked at the number expected for today. Another nice one. Two trains. One from Theresienstadt near Prague and one from Hungary. It would be another busy day and night.

He had his daily quotas, but he wanted to exceed them in Kommandant Hoss's absence. He wanted everyone to see he could run the place both efficiently and with appropriate discipline. And who knows, he had begun to think, perhaps his boss was even being promoted on his extended trip to Berlin. Maybe that's why he remained there the extra days. It was important for everyone to see that, in his absence, the place remained in strong hands. That the work was being maintained; the numbers met. What went on here was under the direct eye of Reichsführer Himmler and his inner circle. If promotions were in the offing, he wanted his name at the top of the column too.

Which left him with a particular problem that morning, Ackermann reflected.

Greta.

It was beginning to worry him that his wife had taken such a liking to the chess-playing Jew she'd invited into their house. One or two games, perhaps; that he could understand. But then it must be seen that she showed him no particular favor. Instead of showering the boy with gifts and petitioning Ackermann for his protection. He would have to clear that up for good, he'd decided, on his short walk over this morning. Apparently it had already become banter for the troops. Which was always bad for morale. Hoss had even mentioned it before he left, not in a direct way, of course, but over a schnapps, almost anecdotally. “Greta must be becoming quite the chess player by now…” He laughed. But Ackermann knew precisely what Hoss meant. He'd take care of it, he resolved, before his boss's return. “Special Treatment” must become what it always was. An organized purification of the Reich. Not some foolish and misguided favoritism. Greta must see that. He could do it in a snap, of course. Get rid of the whole block. No one would be the wiser. But women could be difficult, of course. That's why the problem was so thorny. He knew she wasn't happy here. It had already been over a month since she'd shown any interest in him.

Yes,
he grunted to himself,
it
was getting bad for morale.

His aide, Lieutenant Fromm, stepped in and came up to his desk. “Sorry to bother you, sir. But I have a message for you. From Warsaw.”

“Warsaw…?”
Ackermann looked up.

“Yes, from a General Graebner there. Of the Abwehr.”

“Abwehr…?”
Ackermann rounded his eyes. Intelligence. The camp took its orders directly from Berlin. From Reinhart Heydrich and Reichsführer Himmler themselves. “What the fuck could the Abwehr possibly want here?”

His aide said, “Apparently a Colonel Martin Franke will be arriving today.” He handed Ackermann the cable. “It seems he has some questions. Concerning security.”

“
Security?
Here…?” The Lagerkommandant snorted back a laugh. “He must be joking. A nun's snatch couldn't be any tighter than it is in here.”