The Hunt aka 27 (32 page)

“Your uncle turned other Jews in to the SS?”

Joachim nodded and looked down at the table. “He betrayed me and Avrum,” he said, and nodded toward the young man with the gun, the silent one. “And Werner Gebhart there.”

“My God.”

“Adler was one of the best they had,” said Wolffson. “He was responsible for the arrest of dozens of people. Jews, Gentiles, Gypsies. We tried to reason with Herman, offered to get him out of the country. But he was arrogant about it. There was some yelling, some anger, and then he had a heart attack. Just like that he was dead. We felt sorry for Herman. He was scared. He was doing the only thing he could do to stay alive.”

“He betrayed too many of us,” Joachim, the nephew, said bitterly. “Our grief over him was brief.”

“Then the thought occurred to me that perhaps we could make an example of him, a lesson to other hunters,” said Wolffson. “So we wrote a story about what he—and the other
Judenopferers
are
doing. I realize now it was a stupid thing to do. It merely goaded the wolf. The Gestapo has become obsessed with destroying the Black Lily ever since.”

“And Jenny?”

“Also Adler. He made the
Kettenglied—the
connection. But we did not know it at the time.”

“God, why didn’t she tell me? Maybe I could have.

His voice trailed off as the horror of the situation began to sink in.

“She was protecting us,” Weber said. “The less people know, the better.”

“I should have guessed. She was so secretive about her new apartment. Didn’t want anyone to know her address or phone number.”

The fierce-eyed one with the gun, Weber, said nothing. He simply glared at Keegan.

“The last time she moved it was because she got one of our pamphlets in the mail,” said Wolffson. “She knew it was a trick, we would not mail anything to her.”

“I don’t understand,” Keegan said.

“It’s one of the things the Gestapo does,” said Wolffson. “Germans are required to report anything of a subversive nature. So they send one of our pamphlets to everyone on a particular street and if these people don’t report getting it, they are accused of a subversive act.”

“So she moved?”

Wolffson nodded. “And the only way the Gestapo could have gotten her address is by following you or me—or getting her phone number, which was not in her name.”

Keegan stared in silence, thinking about what Wolffson had just said.
I didn’t even give the phone number to Bert or to Weil,
thought Keegan.
It couldn’t have been me.

“You and I were the only ones who knew where she was, Keegan.”

Keegan was getting angrier but he controlled himself. “I told you before, I didn’t tell a soul.”

“Did you telephone her from your hotel?” Wolffson asked.

“What the hell He stopped.
Was it possible that they had tapped his phone n Paris, got her number and tracked her down? My God, was
he
responsible?

“Did you?” Wolffson asked.

“I tried to call her. There was no answer.”

“The Nazis are all over Paris. And I don’t think there is a hotel operator in the entire city that cannot be bribed. All they needed was her phone number to get her address.”

“Jesus.” Keegan paced back and forth for a few moments. He lit one cigarette off another.

“She contacted the Lily in Paris. They flew her to Leipzig and drove her into Berlin,” Wolffson said. “So Vierhaus had lost her. He was desperate.”

It all began to come together for Keegan.

“And had Conrad Weil call me, knowing I would call her. He was in on it. My old friend, Conrad. I should have suspected something was up when he called me. Conrad bends with the wind, he told me so himself. And von Meister was there waiting for me to take the bait.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, truly sorry. But what does Jenny have to do with all this?”

“Nothing, really. I am sure Vierhaus thinks she can give me up but she cannot. She doesn’t even know about this place. She delivered
The Berlin Conscience,
distributed some leaflets, that’s all. But they think she knows where I am and I am the one they want. Me, Gebhart here and Joachim. We are the leaders of the Black Lily.”

“How did you get involved in this?”

“The newspaper was started by our professors at the university. Sternfeld, Reinhardt and Eli Loehr
m
an. Now Reinhardt and Sternfeld are dead. Only Old Eli is safe. He is in Paris with his son. He is the one who arranged to get Jenny back here.”

“And you boys picked up the banner, eh?”

‘
J
a,
I suppose you could put it that way. But now the Black Lily is very important. So important that Hitler has put a price on our heads and the Black Lily is the main target of the SS.”

Somewhere in another room a phone rang. Joachim got up from the table and went to answer it.

“Three college boys and one gun and you’ve set the entire Gestapo on its ear?” Keegan said to Wolffson.

“Not just three college boys anymore,” Wolffson said. “There are over two hundred of us in the network. We have connections in Switzerland, France, England, even Egypt and America. So far we have been very lucky. But some of our people

have not been so lucky. You know what happens if they catch us?”

“1 can imagine.”

“1 do not think so,” said Wolffson. “We are taken to Stadelheim Prison and tortured. And then we are beheaded.”

“What!”

‘
J
a, Herr Keegan. Beheaded. And most of them are students.”

Weber returned and called Wolffson to the door. There was a whispered exchange, then they walked back into the room. Wolffson looked stricken. The veins around his jaw had hardened into blue ridges.

“The Gestapo arrested Jenny,” Wolffson said in a harsh voice that quivered with emotion. “She has been at Stadelheim prison for five hours. I don’t know that she is still alive.”

Keegan fell back in his chair, ashen.

“You may as well face it, Keegan, they will be very hard on her,” Weber said. “They will assume she knows much more than she does.”

“And we just sit around and let it happen?” Keegan said. “We don’t do anything?”

“There is nothing we can do at this point,” Wolffson said.

Keegan panicked.

“We’ve got to get her out. Get bail, get lawyers! I’ll call the embassy, maybe they can help.”

But hell, what could the embassy do? And why would they help him? He understood now how Wally must have felt the night he was trying to get Reinhardt out. There was one big difference. The Gestapo already
had
Jenny.

“It will do no good,” said Wolffson.

“If we can just get her out on bail,” Keegan pleaded. “I’ll take her to New York, she couldn’t be safer anywhere else.”

Gebhart suddenly spoke up for the first time, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “Damn it, man,” he said, “get it into your head.
It’s too late!”

“There is no such thing as bail,” said Weber. “There will be no trial.”

The shock began to wear off and Keegan slowly realized how desperate her predicament was.
What they ‘re
s
aying,
he thought,
is
that she’s
gone!

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t even say that.”

Dear Jenny,
he thought,
is this what you get for loving me?
Why did this happen? Was it some kind of cruel joke? Crazy things raced through his mind. God, I may never
see
her again! I can’t even say
good-bye.
Jesus Christ! What’s happening here?

“What’s happening here!” he cried aloud, his fists clenched in front of him. Tears flooded his eyes and he tried to fight them back. “It’s unacceptable,
unacceptable.
There’s got to be somebody we can bribe, somebody we can blackmail, threaten

They stared at him with sadness but little pity.

“Now you know vot it iss like for us every day of
der
year,” Gebhart said bitterly. “Every day they take somebody avay. Friends, lovers, children. Sometimes whole families simply disappear off the street.”

“Understand, Keegan, we know your frustration,” Wolffson said quietly. “My hatred and anger consume me. I wanted to be a zoologist—work with animals. Look at me. Running all the time. Helping one out of perhaps every fifty or one hundred who get on the list. Throwing pamphlets around the city to people who don’t care.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“We cannot just surrender our lives without doing something,” Weber said.

“I want to kill Vierhaus,” Keegan blurted. “I want to kill that son of a bitch slowly. I want him t
o
plead .
. .
no beg
beg,
for mercy. I want to hang him up by his heels and pour honey all over that miserable hump on his back and then let the rats eat their way through it right into his miserable black heart.”

He slammed his fist into the wall and then, exhausted, sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I am sorry, Keegan,” Wolffson said. “
B
ut we also love her.

She’s my sister, not just my half-sister, my
sister
in my heart, you understand? Werner has loved her since they were born, they grew up together, same street. Joachim went to school with them, all the way through college. We share your agony. We understand what is happening inside you. But there is
nothing we can do.”

Keegan did understand the awesome frustration of the tragedy. Jenny was just one of hundreds, thousands, who had been lost in these camps. And these people were becoming immune to the pain because of the enormity and futility of the problem.

“I can’t relate to all that,” said Keegan fiercely, pacing the room. “I can’t relate to thousands of people, I can only relate to her, that’s all the tragedy I can handle right now. Right now I hate the world. I hate you for telling me it’s hopeless.”

“I think the time has come to get rid of all
Judenopferers,
teach them they must stop betraying their own,” Weber said.

Wolffson flicked an ash off his cigarette and shrugged. “And become just like them?”

“Why not?” said Keegan. “For the first time I understand the meaning
. . .
the true meaning
. . .
of an eye for an eye.”

“Listen to me,” Wolffson said. “Please, it is important. What we are doing, it is very delicate, a very fragile thing. A very dangerous thing. But it is important. Even to save one life is important, more important than killing.”

“But not hers, right?”

Gebhart stood very close to him, his eyes also misty, his fists also clenched. “Don’t you get it,
Ire,
vunce the Gestapo has dem it iss over. No matter who it iss, even your own mother or father, it iss over. Ye are not an army, ye are students and teachers and old men
mit
no training. Ve cannot take on the SS and the Gestapo.
V
e must help those who half not been caught.”

“We understand how you feel,” said Wolffson. “Please understand our frustration is just as agonizing.”

And suddenly Keegan realized how sorry he was feeling for himself. These three men were family, lifelong friends, silent lovers. His anguish was no deeper than theirs.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was being bloody selfish.”

“It is all right,” Wolffson said. “We know all the feelings.” He stopped for a moment, then said, “Keegan, you must leave Berlin and the sooner the better.”

“I won’t leave, not without her,” Keegan answered.

“Don’t you understand, man, if you go on the list, they will torture you too. You know too much about us.”

“I don’t know anything they don’t know already.”

“You know about our Paris connectio
n
,” Weber snapped, moving very close to him. “
How we got Jenn
y over here, how big the network is. As long as you are in Germany, you are a danger to us.”

“Or Wolffson said thoughtfully.

“Or what?” Keegan asked.

“Or you could go to Vierhaus. Pretend you know nothing. Tell him Jenny is missing and ask for his help.”

“Ask for his help! I want to kill the little freak.”

“Exactly what he would expect, so if you can keep calm you will convince him you know nothing,” Wolffson said. “He may give up some information we can use.”

“You want me to spy for you?”

“For me, for Jenny, for you.”

Keegan settled down again. Maybe the kid was right, maybe he could beat Vierhaus at his own game. It was certainly worth a try.

“All right,” he said, “what can I do?”

“Go back to your hotel

“I don’t have a hotel, I was planning to take Jenny out of here tonight.”

“You usually stay at the Ritz, correct? Go there and check in. Call Vierhaus. Tell him you came back to get Jenny and she is missing. Her apartment is torn up. That’s all you know. It will throw him off, convince him you know nothing.”

“That’s a long shot. That’s about a two hundred-to-one job.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“
I
t doesn’t matter,” Keegan said. “What else?”

“If we should learn they are after you for any reason, we will call,” Wolffson said. “The message will be, ‘This is the tailor, your suit is ready.’ If you get that message leave immediately. Avoid being followed, of course. Go to the city zoo, the
Tiergarten.
There is a phone booth near the carousel. Wait there and we will call you. So you will know it is us, when you answer we will ask if you picked up your suit yet. Your answer will be, ‘No,
they did not fix the torn pocket.’ Then we will give you instructions.,,

“Come on, all this is conjecture and

“Keegan, we’ve been at this for a long time. Believe me, it is not conjecture. If it happens, do not even think, move. Get out of the hotel and to the zoo.”

A silence fell over the room. Cigarettes were lit. Wolffson got a cup of coffee. Gebhart sat in a chair and cracked his knuckles, slowly, one at a time.

“Okay,” Keegan said finally. “I’ll give it a shot. What do you really think they’re doing to her?”

“They will torture her. Even if they know she knows nothing, Hitler wants revenge against the Black Lily. They know she is a
Kettenglied.
They’ll do anything to find out what she knows. Thankfully it is not much.”

“What’s the
best
we can hope for?”

“That she can convince the Gestapo she knows nothing,” Wolffson answered. “And that they let her die quickly.”

“If she survives?” Keegan kept his voice steady.

“If she stays alive? Dachau,” said Wolffson.

“What’s Dachau?”

“A little town about thirty kilometers from Munich,” said Wolffson. “They have built a camp there, an enormous prison stockade for political enemies. It is like a Russian slave camp.”

“How long will she be in for? How much time will she get?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Weber said.

“There is no sentence,” Gebhart said in a low voice. “She will be there forever. Dachau is a forever place.”