Beyond the Shadow of Night(58)

“Don’t be sorry,” Asher said. “You’ve given me hope.”

“We all need a little of that,” Josef said. “But now we should go. Let’s collect up what food we have and head for the medical center.”

They all stood up, and Josef moved toward the shelf of food.

Before he reached it, they all heard a deep, threatening rumble from outside. They stopped completely still, each holding an uncertain, worried stare.

“What in God’s name is that?” Josef hissed.

Then the whole room shook, and a wall crashed in as if a sudden earthquake had hit. Asher tried to crouch down but felt his frame being bowled over by the force of a dozen bricks, and saw the whole room engulfed in a billowing cloud of dust. He got to his feet and took a few seconds to check himself. There were some nasty cuts and bruises on his arms and legs, but nothing more serious.

He looked up at a vision that was almost celestial. Where there had once been the clear yellow light of the candle, there was now bright white light. And yet, he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. Then the tickle in his lungs was too much, and he convulsed into a coughing fit, leaning over, hands on knees.

His ears were still full of the sounds of others coughing and a dull ringing, but beyond those he couldn’t ignore the shouts.

They were angry shouts.

In German.

Asher, blinking and trying to clear his eyes with dusty fingers, realized the bright light was sunshine streaming through the haze of brick dust. A few seconds later, the fog cleared enough for him to make out the four figures of his fellow resistance members, all gasping for fresh air and wiping their faces.

He went over to Rina. They briefly held hands, and Asher wiped a chunk of mortar out of her hair.

The haze cleared more, to reveal a pile of bricks in front of them. Beyond the rubble, an armored vehicle of sorts reversed away, its brakes squealing as it stopped, then sped off down the street.

Also, a few yards in the distance, Asher could just about make out those uniforms he had come to despise and fear. They stood in line, ignoring the dust whirling about them. Oblivious. Victorious, even.

One of them approached the resistance members, picking his steps between the rubble, and started shouting, his rifle aimed at them.

There was no mistaking “H?nde hoch!” All Jews had heard those words before. The same could be said for “Kommen Sie her!”

In seconds there were more guards and more guns, and no way out other than over the rubble and through the large hole in the wall.

Now the shouting conveyed more anger. “H?nde hoch!”

They all obeyed, struggling to keep their tired arms aloft.

Anatoli was the first to start clambering over the bricks, occasionally dropping his hands for balance, each time being reminded not to by a bullet flying a foot or so from his head. The others followed, each stumbling and falling but somehow keeping their arms away from their bodies.

A few minutes later, all five stood in a row outside, hands aloft. All were frosted in brick dust, flecked blood-red in parts. Each one had a guard standing a few feet away, a rifle pointing at their head. Now, in the daylight, Asher noticed a wound above Rina’s eye, and a dust-caked streak of blood down one side of her face.

For a minute or so, nobody spoke—not even the guards. And in the silence, Asher’s mind momentarily drifted off to a better place. There had been too much terror, too much killing. If they wanted his body, they could have it.

The sun was full, and he took a second to bask in its warmth. What else was there left to enjoy? He was distracted by a noise and glanced down the street, where the small armored vehicle had been driven—to hunt out more Jews in hiding places, no doubt, like forcing rabbits out of a warren. He also saw a man holding a portable flamethrower, apparently setting anything and everything he could find on fire. Any parts of the city that hadn’t been bombed were clearly now being destroyed by more manual methods, courtesy of the flamethrower and the armored vehicle.

The leader of the guards, a bespectacled SS officer in a meticulously pressed field-gray uniform, barked an order to the guard on his right, who marched over to Anatoli, standing awkwardly at the end of the row. He was having difficulty holding one of his arms up—where he’d taken the bullet in his shoulder. The guard screamed at him, and Anatoli’s face contorted as he tried to obey.

The guard patted the sides of Anatoli’s jacket, eventually coming across the pistol. He held the pistol in the palm of his hand for a second, as though examining it or trying to guess its weight. Then he put the muzzle of the pistol against Anatoli’s temple and pulled the trigger.

Josef immediately took a pace forward and shouted at the guard, but the guard pointed the pistol straight at him and he stopped, gasping for a moment.

“H?nde hoch,” the guard said, and Josef returned to his place in line, staring at Anatoli’s corpse and the splatter of fresh blood on the bricks behind him.

The guard looked at the pistol again, nodded approvingly to himself, and said, “Mmm, das ist gut.”

Then he moved on to Adolf, searching him too.

And again, he found a pistol. But Adolf bolted, moving quickly for a tall man, sprinting down the street, jerking left and right. The guard laughed for a second, then lifted both pistols and sent four bullets into Adolf’s back.

He sighed, then looked at the pistols again. He nodded, impressed, and turned to Josef.