Zealot (17 page)

Warsaw: April 18, 1943

Miriam’s face tightened into an emotionless mask as the police officer’s hands pawed over her body. He was Polish, supposedly
one of her own countrymen, the overstuffed pig, but he carried out the orders of his Nazi overlords with great enthusiasm.
“Remove your blouse,” he ordered, and when she seemed to hesitate, he struck her hard across the face with the butt of his
pistol. Her head jerked back and a ragged gash opened beneath her right eye. “Remove your blouse,
moja lalka
,” he mocked her—my little doll.

Biting back tears of humiliation and rage, she complied, slowly unfastening the buttons on her white cotton blouse. At nineteen,
any faith Miriam Kavner had once had in her fellow countrymen, or humanity itself, had long ago been crushed beneath the great
Wall that was her people’s prison. Her father and mother had run an upscale restaurant before the war, which quickly became
a soup kitchen for the starving after the Wall had cut the Jews of Warsaw off from their “purer” Aryan neighbors. Then the
Expulsions began, and Levi Kavner sold everything they owned to buy himself a place on a German work crew, for the promise
of protection that would give his family. But protection was just another Nazi lie—her father sent to a forced labor camp
in Germany, her mother and little brother Zvi marched to the railroad cars, taken away to Treblinka. Now only Miriam remained,
an unlikely warrior, a courier for the
Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa
, the Jewish Fighting Organization, the ZOB.

In the parlance of the ZOB, Miriam Kavner looked “
gut
”—with her bleached blond hair and light complexion, she could easily pass for a Polish Christian and walk openly in the Aryan
sections of the city, carrying messages, smuggling money and food sent from Jews in America or Eretz Israel, negotiating for
the few weapons they’d managed to acquire. She found she was good at what she did, never drawing suspicion as she provided
vital information and supplies to her comrades in the Jewish resistance. She thought her family would have been proud of her.

But today, returning from the Aryan side in the midst of a group of munitions factory workers herded back to the Ghetto after
their day’s forced labor, perhaps Miriam looked too “
gut
.” Carrying what could be the most important intelligence of the war, she had somehow attracted the attention of the collaborators
who guarded the Gesia Street gate.

Miriam could feel the warmth of her blood as it trickled down her cheek, and she could feel the heat of the eyes of the other
Polish police guarding the gate as she pulled the tail of her blouse from the waistband of her skirt, undid the final button,
slipped the blouse from her shoulders and dropped it to the ground beside her. Standing in the middle of the street clad in
her brassiere, she could not stop herself from shivering despite the warmth of the afternoon sun.

Her uniformed tormentor pulled her roughly toward him, slipped one arm tightly around her waist. “You’re very pretty,” he
said, fingering one of her blond curls, “too pretty for a
Jewess
!” His disdainful laugh echoed in her ear. He was a squat, greasy man, desperately in need of a shave and a bath, and the
thought of him touching her sent a wave of nausea through Miriam’s core. “Let’s give everyone a good look,” he said. He reached
between Miriam’s breasts and forcibly ripped the brassiere from her body. The fabric tore away, leaving her exposed to the
rest of the Polish squad, who whooped and hollered their approval.

She shut her eyes and tried to shut down her mind as the officer groped and fondled her breasts, touching places she had never
felt touched by a man before, but finally her tears escaped, uncontrollable. She could feel his excitement rising against
her as he pulled her closer, and she thought about breaking away and running, knowing full well the machine guns at the gate
would cut her down in seconds.

But if she died here, no matter how blessed the relief might be to her, her message would die with her. No one would know
the Germans planned to strike at the Ghetto before dawn tonight, no one would be prepared, everyone would die. She needed
to stay alive as long as she could, to try to get the word to someone—anyone—who could warn the ZOB. Miriam steeled herself
as the Pole rubbed himself against her, his fetid breath hot in her ear, his comrades whistling and applauding. With desperate
eyes, she searched the neighboring rooftops for salvation.

Up on the roof of the apartment building at the corner of Gesia and Okopowa streets, across from the massive gates leading
out of the Ghetto, Avram Mordecai and Duncan MacLeod were arguing as Avram grabbed an old Mauser rifle and thrust it into
Mac Leod’s hands. “You can do this,
goy
. Five shots, five guards. Pick ’em off from the first-floor window,” Avram said, trying to move MacLeod toward the roof door.

“Are you completely insane?” MacLeod stood his ground. “Are you
trying
to get her killed?”

“You see what those pigs are doing to her. I’m
trying
to keep her alive. Now go!”

“Listen to me.” As MacLeod tried to move away from Avram, Avram hung on tenaciously. MacLeod may have had almost a foot on
him in size, but Avram was bound and determined for MacLeod to go. “
Listen to me
, Avram!” MacLeod said. “A grandstand play in front of two machine-gun emplacements does not make ‘alive.’ It makes ‘dead.’
I miss one shot, and they’ll be all over us.”

“Look, I know you.
You
don’t miss.”

MacLeod had to concede he was a great shot, but he still knew Avram’s plan couldn’t work. “Yeah, and what happens when that
piece of German crap jams? Miriam and I’ll both be Swiss cheese. I’ll get up again, but she won’t. What does that accomplish?”
He gave Avram a firm shake to try and knock some sense into him. “We have to get them away from the machine guns.”

Avram stopped and looked at him, hearing his words but frustrated at not being able to act immediately. “Okay, you’re right.
You’re right. We need a Plan B.”

Down in the street, two more Polish policemen from the gate joined the officer, forcing Miriam to her knees while their leader
bound her wrists tightly behind her neck with strips of fabric torn from her blouse.

Avram’s eyes narrowed as he thought. “If he really wants it, they’re gonna take her somewhere. Somewhere away from those damn
machine guns. Even a pig like that’s not idiot enough to pull it out in a public street. It’s a crime against the State to
screw a Jew, MacLeod. Pollutes their good Aryan blood. Doesn’t stop it from happening, but it might keep it from happening
in the middle of Gesia Street, where any goosestepper might see it.” As if to prove Avram right, in the street below them
the police pulled Miriam roughly to her feet and ordered her to walk. She hung back and was rewarded with a rifle butt sharply
in the small of her naked back. Stumbling, nearly falling, she obeyed.

MacLeod watched them start to go—Miriam, her head bent low with shame but her eyes defiant, searching for any avenue of escape;
the Polish police officer, impatient and flushed with his own power; and his two eager lackeys, their rifles ready and trained
on Miriam. “Gesiowska,” he said, invoking the name of the hated prison less than half a mile to the east, the direction Miriam
was being led.

“I think you’re right. Plenty of private little rooms. Very cozy. Damn them.” All of a sudden, Avram was a flurry of motion,
checking his pistol, grabbing two grenades from a small cache near their lookout position.

“So, what’s Plan B?” MacLeod demanded.

“You stay with them. Keep an eye on her—make sure they don’t get her inside. Be ready to ride in like John Wayne and get her
out of there.”

Avram started toward the stairs leading down from the roof. “What’s the signal?” MacLeod called after him.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” MacLeod heard him say as he disappeared down the stairwell.

“Avram!” he called down after him, but there was no response. Damn him and his complicated plans. “Just great,” MacLeod grumbled
under his breath, but one thing he’d learned in three hard months in Warsaw was he could trust Avram’s instincts when it came
to the Ghetto. He quickly checked over his rifle. Fully loaded, the old German Mauser took five rounds, but he knew there
was precious little ammunition left for it. The fact the ZOB had entrusted it, one of less than a dozen they’d managed to
procure, to him was proof of how highly they valued his marksmanship. He’d have to make every shot count.

He ran to the far edge of the roof, climbed a short ladder onto the roof of the adjoining apartment building. Racing across
the rooftop, he vaulted over the side of the building and landed with a tuck and a roll on another building two floors below.
Almost before he landed, he was running again.

In the months since MacLeod had helped Rabbi Mendelsohn escape Warsaw and had seen him on his way to rendezvous with his son,
the ZOB had tried as best they could to prepare for the inevitable day the Germans would return to finish clearing out the
Ghetto. No one deluded themselves that the brief show of resistance MacLeod had witnessed at the
Umschlagplatz
and in the streets of the Ghetto back in January had caused the Germans to retreat for good. When MacLeod had surprised Avram
by keeping his promise and returning to the Ghetto, he found the survivors of the Germans’ aborted January
Aktsia
working feverishly, digging a complex series of underground bunkers, called
malinas
, throughout the Ghetto, bunkers in which the noncombatants could hide to ride out the coming fury for as long as they could.
For the fighters of the resistance, a web of ladders and bridges and chutes was constructed between the closely packed buildings
to give the ZOB a stronghold to fight from cover. They all knew if forced to fight the Germans openly in the streets again,
the battle was doomed before it began. Their skirmishes with the Germans during the three-day January uprising had routed
the Germans from the Ghetto and stopped the expulsions. But the cost in Jewish lives had been high, and they knew the Germans
would not be surprised a second time.

Reaching the end of the next building at a run, MacLeod climbed carefully out onto the narrow wooden bridge across Smocza
Street. He kept low so as not to be spotted against the blue sky. He kept moving parallel to Miriam’s captors three stories
below. Miriam was walking as slowly as she dared, buying herself time, but MacLeod could tell the guards were dangerously
close to running out of patience with her.

“No more little Jewish half-men for you,” the Polish officer taunted Miriam. “Soon you’ll know what a real man feels like.”
He grabbed her from behind and wrapped his beefy arm across her naked breasts. “I’m going to fill you up until you scream
for more, little doll,” he whispered in her ear, and pulled her faster down the street.

MacLeod couldn’t hear the man’s words, but he could read them in the revulsion on Miriam’s face. His hand tightening on his
rifle, he hurried from the wooden causeway and sprinted across the next two rooftops, clearing the low brick wall separating
them like a champion hurdler. After another short ladder and another sprint, he’d pulled ahead of the police by half a block.
He hoped to cut them off before they could reach the prison. All the while he was alert for Avram’s signal.

MacLeod knew more was at stake than just Miriam’s life if he allowed them to take her into Gesiowska. Under interrogation,
especially if these pigs turned her over to the Gestapo when they were finished with her, Miriam could compromise the entire
operation—not only the ZOB fighters in the Ghetto, but the thousands of Jews in hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw and the
handful of sympathetic Poles, Miriam’s contacts, who protected them. Miriam was strong, he knew, but he’d seen firsthand what
the Gestapo was capable of. And he didn’t want to imagine what they might do to a woman. Almost subconsciously, he checked
the sight on his rifle. One way or another, MacLeod knew Miriam would never enter Gesiowska Prison.

With a leap he cleared the narrow on passageway that separated Gesia 122 and Gesia 120, then shouldered on the door to Gesia
118 and started down the stairs, taking them three and four at a time. The building was abandoned and his steps echoed as
he pounded down the stairwell. Avram had once described to him the Ghetto before the cattle cars, how the Germans had forced
nearly half a million people behind the Wall, crammed ten and fifteen to a room, but the Ghetto MacLeod knew was practically
a ghost town.

He kicked open the door of a first-floor apartment whose windows fronted the prison. He passed through the kitchen, where
a pot of rotted food stood on the stove. As he moved into the living area, he could see the dust-covered dining table still
carefully set for dinner, patiently waiting for the family whose meal was so violently interrupted to return. He opened the
front window, looked out cautiously. Miriam and her guards were approaching, less than a hundred yards away. MacLeod readied
his rifle. “Any time now would be fine, Avram,” he muttered.

Out in the street, as the prison came into view, Miriam realized her time was running out. Rescue was not coming. Any escape
she made, whether by foot or by death, she would have to make on her own. Her arms still awkwardly bound behind her neck,
she swung back hard, catching the greasy Polish officer in the throat with her elbow, hoping that in his surprise he’d loosen
his hold on her. Instead, he threw her to the ground.

“Bitch!” he screamed.

As she lay in the street, he drove the steel toe of his jack-booted foot brutally into her stomach, dragging her across the
sharp cobblestones. She cried out in pain and struggled to move away as he drew his foot back and rammed it home again.

Signal or no signal, MacLeod would not stand by and watch Miriam beaten to death. He was out the window and into the street
before the third steel-toed blow found its mark.