Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(63)

‘No, no. Look, darlings, forget about the Western Allies! The Soviets are going to get here first. Yesterday they liberated Auschwitz!’

It was all I could do not to yell. We stamped our feet wildly in the black slush, a little defiant dance of triumph.

‘Shit,’ Irina said. ‘I will go straight from a Fascist prison camp to a Soviet one.’

‘Why? You’re a double Ace! A decorated Hero of the Soviet Union! You spent four months being interrogated by the enemy and didn’t tell them anything!’

‘When a person spends four months being interrogated by the enemy and is still alive at the end, the Soviet Union calls her a traitor, not a hero. No, thank you. I would rather hang myself than go home.’

She sounded like she meant it, too, which kind of put a damper on our excitement about being rescued by the Soviets.

Anna caught me in the horrible converted washroom and handed me a list of numbers written on a strip of grey paper a quarter of an inch wide.

‘What is this?’

‘Tomorrow’s list.’

‘Tomorrow’s death list? But –’

There were dozens and dozens of numbers there. I started to read them, and realised that I knew almost every one of them. I associated faces with most of them. 7705 especially – Ró?a. Karolina too. Every single one of the Rabbits was on that list, and a few others, including Lisette.

‘They’re going to shoot eighty people in a day?’ I gasped.

‘Just tell everyone you see. That’s what I’m going to do. Maybe . . .’

I was reeling. Except Irina, my whole family was on that list.

‘They can’t execute all of them!’ I burst out, and the German girl laughed at me.

‘Of course they can. They can do whatever they f*cking want. And what they’re doing now is burning the evidence.’

She pointed to the last number on the list – 32131 – a lot higher in sequence than the others. Also a familiar number.

‘You too!’

‘I’m a witness,’ she said, with bitter irony. ‘My God. I never thought I’d end up shovelled into the Ravensbrück incinerator with that pathetic bunch of Poles.’ She suddenly took the unlit cigarette butt out of her mouth and tucked it down the front of her dress. She looked away. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Tell me how to tell people in German!’ I gasped. ‘Tell me how to say, “They’re killing the Rabbits.” If I tell people in German, everyone will pass it on.’

She wasn’t even listening.

‘They’ll gas us,’ she said, gripping the sides of the dry sink and staring at the stained tiles. ‘That many at once – they won’t waste the ammunition. They’ll do it all at once, now they’ve got that gas chamber operational. It hurts. If you stand by the wall near the crematorium you can hear them screaming. Ach –’

She swore in German and let out a sob.

‘Listen, Anna,’ I said fiercely. ‘It won’t happen! OK? No one in this whole camp will let it happen. Last time they tried to execute any of the Rabbits, we hid them. They killed our block leader because she wouldn’t give them up. But that was just us, fighting back on our own. You’ve got to tell everybody this time.’

She looked up at me with wild, wet eyes, and gave a croak of a laugh. ‘You really believe we can do something, don’t you, kid?’

‘We can try!’

Anna stared at the wall, avoiding looking at any of the bodies piled at our feet. Two more of my team came in, carrying another. I hadn’t started undressing any of them yet.

‘Anna’s on the list,’ I cried, holding it up.

Anna, grey-faced, added indifferently, ‘So are all the Kaninchen.’

‘Les Lapins!’ the French girls exploded in outrage. ‘The Rabbits? The KRóLIKI? All of them? No. Never!’

‘Hide them!’ Micheline exclaimed. ‘Hide every one of them tonight! All of Ravensbrück will fight for the Rabbits. People are waiting for a chance to fight for the Rabbits.’

‘Karolina?’ Irina asked me. ‘Ró?a?’

‘All of them. The whole Lublin Transport. Lisette too.’

Unlike me, Irina didn’t panic.

‘Let me have your armband,’ she said to Anna. ‘And one hour. I can do something.’

‘Where will you go?’ Anna asked sharply.

‘To talk to my friend in the power plant – we were electricians in the Moscow Metro together, before I flew. I think she can switch off the lights. She will do it in roll call tomorrow morning. They will find no one.’

Anna moved slowly and cautiously, like a person with a migraine. She peeled off her red Kolonka’s armband and held it out to Irina. Irina slid it over her own sleeve and stalked out, her shock of white hair catching the gleam of the bare electric bulb overhead as she turned to go.

‘You’d better hide too, Anna,’ I said in English.

‘Who’ll hide me?’ she scoffed with bleak fatalism, her pale eyes bright and wild. ‘You could break my leg maybe, make me look like a Rabbit. See if the disguise fools anyone.’

We all looked at her in pity, and looked away. I sure couldn’t invite her to hide with my Block 32 Camp Family – and even for twenty loaves of bread the Auschwitz evacuees in the tent wouldn’t hide a German criminal. I thought about offering to swap coats with her, to swap our numbers. I really did. It is the Girl Scout in me, always wanting to help. She was an OK group leader and now she just seemed so grim and crazed – so afraid. But I couldn’t come up with a good reason to sacrifice my life for her.