The Hunt aka 27 (39 page)

“Perhaps you remember me?” he whispered from the shadows. “We met in Berlin.”

Keegan was astounded to see the young German. “My God, Gebhart, of course I remember you,” he said, motioning him into the open. “Come in, come in.”

Gebhart moved quickly. They shook hands as Keegan led him through the private entrance and down the hallway to his private elevator. Gebhart looked frightened, his eyes frantically checking the street as they entered the hallway.

“Is something wrong?” Keegan asked.

“Yes,” Gebhart answered. “I am an illegal.”

“Not here you’re not,” Keegan said with a reassuring smile.

“Mazel t
ov
,”
Gebhart said, and there was relief in his voice.

When the elevator doors closed, Gebhart relaxed. Keegan remembered him as being an innocent, slender man-boy, youthfully arrogant and suspicious. He had put on twenty hard pounds and his face was ridged by hard times. He had tortured eyes, half pleading, half angry, the kind that had seen too much suffering, had lost too many friends and had seen the kinds of things that rob the young of their innocence. His black beard was already streaked with gray. How old was he, Keegan wondered? Mid-twenties at best. Looking at the toll the Nazis and Black Lily had taken on Gebhart in four years, Keegan wondered what the years had done to Avrum Wolffson.

“Avrum?” Keegan asked.

“Alive.”

“And well?”

Gebhart nodded. “He has become too hard. It shows.”

“And what of your other friend
. . . ?“

“Joachim Weber?” Gebhart answered. “Joachim was murdered by the Nazis.

Keegan’s shoulders sagged.
My God,
he thought,
the madness never ends.
“I’m sorry, Werner,” he said.

Gebhart simply nodded.

“When did you get here?” Keegan asked.

“About ten o’clock.”

“You’ve been waiting here for five hours?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been in the country?”

“Since ten o’clock. I came on a steamer from Portugal.”

“Good! You must stay here. It’s perfectly safe and all my people have closed lips.”

Gebhart held up his hand. “Please,
ire,
that part of it is taken care of. I have a place. Someone who has worked with us for years. On Fifth Avenue. I understand there is a park across the street.”

Keegan smiled. “Central Park. Pretty fancy digs up there, Werner.”

“So I have heard.”

“You haven’t been there yet?”

Gebhart shook his head. “I came here first. It was Avrum’s wish that I see you first.”

“God, it’s good to see you again,” Keegan said finally. “I haven’t heard from Avrum for all these years. I thought.
. .
hell, I thought everything.”

“It is dangerous even to send out letters. But I have a present from him. And a message for you. He said to tell you it is the one you owe him.”

Keegan laughed. “He has a helluva memory. The last thing I said to him,
That’s one I owe you.
It was a joke.”

“Avrum doesn’t joke.”

Keegan thought for a moment before he nodded. “I had forgotten.”

He was avoiding the big question, almost afraid to ask. The elevator reached the penthouse and he led Gebhart into the kitchen. “I have a cook,” he said, “but she won’t be here until seven. I’m sure we can scrounge up something. How about a steak and some eggs?”

“Such a lot of trouble.”

“Peel off the coat and grab a chair. It’s no trouble at all. I can scramble a mean egg and burn a steak.”

Keegan opened two bottles of German pilsner and put one in front of Gebhart. Gebhart reached in
t
o his duffel bag and took out a package. He laid it on the table and slid it in front of Keegan.

“From Avrum.”

Keegan picked it up. It was flat, about the thickness, size and shape of a sheet of typewriter paper and bound with twine. He held it in both hands for a moment as if it were emitting some kind of psychic energy.

“All right, how about Jenny?” Keegan finally asked as he reached into a drawer, took out a pair of scissors and cut the string.

“It’s
...
probably
. . .
in the letter,” Gebhart answered haltingly.

Keegan stared at him but Gebhart averted his look, stared down at the beer bottle, took a long swig of beer.

“Werner?”

His visitor stared slowly back up into his eyes.

“Is she dead, Werner?”

The moment seemed to poise in the air before Gebhart finally said

“Yes”

and stared away again.

Keegan said nothing. In his heart, h
e
had known she was gone. He felt no tears, no numbing pain of reality. He felt only outrage and the galvanic anger which had consumed him for almost five years. He looked down at the table, nodded very slowly. There was very little expression on his face. He remembered what Beerbohm had said once about getting even. But how? There was no way to
really
get even. Get even with whom? That was part of the frustration, there was no one to fight, no one to take on.

“I am sorry,” Gebhart whispered.

Keegan sat down and held the unopened package tightly between his two hands, then he put it back down on the table.

“Excuse me a minute,” he said in a voice that was just above a whisper. He walked over to the sink and, holding cupped hands under the tap, splashed his face with cold water. He sat back down at the table, his hands splayed out on either side of the package, staring at it.

“I’m sorry for you, too, Gebhart.”

“Why,
Ire?”

“Because you were in love with her too. It was obvious—the way you talked about her, the way you looked when you spoke her name, your concern. Your obvious dislike of me. You did love her, didn’t you, Werner?”

The German did not answer for a full minute. The lines in his face seemed to grow harder. Then he shrugged and smiled for the first time.

“Ire,
I fell in love with Jenny the first time I saw her,” Gebhart said softly. “I was fourteen and she was seventeen. Her family moved to the house next door. Avrum and I became best friends but she always loved me as sister to brother, so that is what she was, my good friend. My good, good friend. But I do understand how you must feel,
Ire.
To hope for so long

“I gave up hope a long time ago,” Keegan said. “But I kept hanging on to a fantasy.”

He went to the stove, cracked two eggs on the griddle and threw the steak on beside them. He put bread in the oven to make toast. When it was all ready, he put the food on a plate and set it in front of his visitor.

“Coffee? Milk? Anything else?”

“This is quite grand,” Gebhart said. “The food on the ship was
. .
less than desirable.”

“So,” Keegan said, sitting across from him. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Are you sure you want to hear,
Ire?”

“Yes. I want to know everything you can tell me.”

Gebhart ate like a starved man, talking between
m
outhfuls in a monotone, bereft of emotion.

“There was an attempted escape from the camp. Half a dozen of the younger men attempted to breach the fences. They used steel rods they made in the foundry to short-circuit the electricity. Three of them actually got out. The others were shot down on the wires. But the cleared area between the fence and the trees was mined. One of them stepped on a mine and
…
and it.
. .
blew off his legs.”

Gebhart put down his fork and looked away, out through the living room toward the big window. Keegan could tell it was difficult for him to talk about the incident.

“The other two were knocked down by the explosion,” he went on. “The Germans machine-gunned those two and left the man with no legs in the field to bleed to death. They left all of them, the man with no legs, the two they machine-gunned, the three on the fence, left them there until
. .
until their bodies rotted. Then they lined up all the inmates. Eicke, the man in charge of the camp, walked down the rows with his swagger stick, tapping every third or fourth prisoner on the shoulder, and the guards dragged them from the line. There were fifty of them and they were forced to dig a long trench and fill it with lye. They threw what was left of the six who tried to escape in the pit. And then.
. .
then the bastards ordered the fifty hostages into the hole and.
. .
and.
.

“And what, Werner?”

“And buried them alive with a bulldozer. Then they planted flowers over the entire field so we cannot find the mass grave:

Jenny.
. .
was one of them.”

They both sat in silence for a very long time. Keegan’s face hardly changed. Except for the muscles in his jaw which jerked in endless spasms, his face was a mask.

“I’m sorry,” Keegan said finally in a hoarse whisper. “I

“It is all right,” Gebhart said quickly. “There is nothing to say. How does one speak about the unspeakable? And to bring such horrible news on this night. I am truly sorry.”

“When did it happen?” Keegan asked.

“In September. We would have tried to tell you sooner but it was quite impossible to get a message out and your friend Rudman was not in Berlin.”

“Rudman was killed in Spain.”

“My God,” he said sadly. “When?”

“In June.”

“I am really sorry,
Ire.
To lose two people so close together.
.

“Danke.”

‘We knew I was going to come to America so Avrum decided to wait until I got out to bring you the news.”

“Why are you here? Can I help you in some way?”

Gebhart shook his head.

“I think the package will explain many things. You should know that Avrum has changed a lot. It is like a demon has him by the arm. All he thinks about is killing.”

“He’s declared his own war, Werner.”

“I do not believe in this kind of vindictive violence,
Ire.
I am Hasidic. This eye for an eye is against my beliefs. Even when we threatened you that time, it was an effort to hold a gun—and it was unloaded! But Avrum has the fire of vengeance in him. Finally I told him I could not take part in it anymore. He was very understanding. He sent me here to raise money and arrange for our defectors to get into the States.”

“Which I tried and failed to do

“You didn’t know the right organizations,” Gebhart said. “And they didn’t trust you. I know the people to contact and how to achieve my mission. Avrum has something more important for you to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Open the package, please.”

Keegan tore off the wrapping. Inside was a primitive sketch of an old man in the humiliating striped uniform of Dachau prison, staring with burned-out eyes through the barbed wire. Keegan remembered that man. The vision of his hopelessness was burned into his memory forever.

“I remember this man,” he said.

“He is dead now. The painting was smuggled out. You will notice the signing.”

In the lower right
hand corner was written: “Jennifer Gould, Dachau Prison, 1937.”

Keegan drew in a sharp breath. His hand trembled as he turned the painting over. There, on the back, was a letter.

My dearest Kee:

I hope this letter will eventually find its way to you.
Jus
t
imagining that you might hold this slip of paper in your hand one day makes my heart sing.

How sad that we never said good-bye. How many times I have said it over and over to myself and hoped that perhaps my love for you would be strong enough to carry the message across the miles and through the air and into your heart.

I wish we had lived in a different time when there was love in the world instead of hate, when there was caring instead of cruelty. Such wishful thinking!

My days with you were the happiest time of my life. You shared the world with me and what a splendid world it was! In this misery, that memory makes me smile, makes my heart beat faster, brightens these awful hours.

And I think of Bert, too, and how serious he is and how hard he tries to tell the rest of the world what is really happening. Give him a kiss for me. But save the rest for your lips.

I love you, my darling. Please remember me as someone who gave her heart freely and gratefully and who was rewarded with joy and love and happiness.

My heart’s love, sweet Kee. Stay well.

Jenny

September 23, 1938

There was a note attached to the painting:

Keegan:

Werner has a story to tell you. When last we saw each other, you said “I owe you one.” Werner will tell you how you can pay it. I am sorry about Jenny. If her blood had been the same as mine, I could not have loved her more. Avrum.

There was one other item in the package. It was the list of the hostages murdered by Eicke.
Jenny Gould
was the first name on the list.

Keegan felt only cold wrath.

“You have a story to tell me,” he said.

Gebhart found it difficult to tell the story. Raised within the strict religious confines of the Hasidim, that most disciplined of Jewish sects, he so detested violence that to consciously relive the night he was about to describe was a painful experience. But he had promised Avrum he would take the message to Keegan and he was a man of his word.

“Before I start, I must
tell you that I cannot see you again after tonight. I think you understand why. I must trust that you will not give up my identity.”

“I might be able to help you.”

Gebhart shook his head. “You will understand when I finish.”

Keegan nodded. “Whatever you wish. I’m just sorry we can’t be friends, but I agree.”

Gebhart took a swig of beer, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and then began:

“A
Spion
infiltrated our group in Berlin. He was friendly and very clever, very quick. A young man named Isaac Fish. He was planted by Vierhaus and he came to us very roundabout. Munich, Düsseldorf, Essen, finally Berlin. He worked his way slowly to get next to Avrum. His mission was to kill Avrum. Supposedly he had escaped from Dachau. They have begun now to tattoo numbers on the arms of the prisoners and this man had such a number.”

“Tattoo numbers on their
arms?” Keegan said incredulously.

‘ja. It has become so bad now,
everyone
is paranoid. So Avrum decided to double
-
check Fish. We got the list of Dachau prisoners and sure enough, there was Isaac Fish and the correct number. The only thing wrong was that the real Isaac Fish was one of the hostages killed with Jenny.”

He pointed to the name on the list in Keegan’s hand.

“Avrum went crazy! I have never seen him like that before. He howled like an animal when he realized we were being betrayed. We took Fish to a farmhouse outside Berlin. It was supposed to be an important meeting of the Lily. Avrum had gone out beforehand and set up a torture cell in the smoke cellar.

“When Avrum accused Fish, the
Spion
went crazy. He pleaded for his life. Avrum laughed at him and the more Fish pleaded for his life, the harder Avrum laughed. Avrum
. .
attached electrodes from a twelve-volt battery to
. . .
to
. . .
his testicles. The screaming.
. .
it was the worst sound I ever heard in my life. We had a woman with us, one of our members, who is a trained secretary, and she took down every word Fish said. He identified three other agents. One of them in Zurich had set up the trap for our friend Joachim. They had ambushed him in the street and cut his throat. He lay there..
.
he could not scream from the pain. He could not
. . .
cry
. . .
for help

He paused for a moment. His lips were trembling as he continued.

“Another one had infiltrated our group in Vienna. When it was obvious the man who called himself Fish had nothing else to tell us, Avrum shot him in the head. And then he swore to kill the other three. He killed the man in Zurich and the one in Vienna but the third one was out of his reach.