Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(77)
She picked up a cigarette package on the table next to her and shook out a cigarette, lighting it. The brand was a German one, Roth-H?ndle, and Romy figured if the Germans could smoke that cardboard, they were indeed the master race.
Irina exhaled a plume of smoke that made Romy’s stomach roil. Nerves, surely. All these surprises, one after the other, were unsettling her. “You were right, Romy, when you told my fortune, back there at the Gypsy camp. When you said I would be happier than I have ever been.”
Romy recalled her card layout for Irina – and a child in the shadows. She had tried to postulate some meaning out of the spread that she could turn to her advantage. “Where was your son? Adrian?”
“Adrian was taken from my breast, even as I nursed him. As part of the Lebenstraum policy.” Her pretty lips thinned. “The project’s aim is to acquire and Germanize Polish children with Aryan-Nordic traits. Giorgio tracked Adrian for me to a German foster home and staged a phenomenal kidnapping.” She shrugged her shoulders. “After that, how could I not fall in love with such an epic hero?”
“Well, he is quite. . . eye fetching,” she conceded.
“But, alas, as you well know, Gypsies do not marry outside their tribe. We stay in touch, through the Resistance.” Irina allowed a wry smile to lighten her composed expression. “We count on the distance of four-hundred miles to short-circuit the magnetism coursing between us.”
Would life’s wonders never cease? She could only hope the same held true for her and Duke. Surely, fifty-five hundred miles could dilute their combustible chemistry.
From there the subject turned to rescuing Luca, with Romy sharing the latest information, from Moe, little though it was. “Moishe Klein is a collaborator of the Nazi’s. Until I killed him, that is.”
A delicate eyebrow arched. “You killed him?”
“Aye,” she said with a small, rueful smile. “With the help of your purse here. Flung it at him I did, as he was about to blow me brains to bits and pieces. After that, it was a tussle as to who fired the next shot.”
Irina nodded approvingly. “The Resistance could surely use your pluck.”
“Crazy, is it not? Me, wanting back inside Germany, when everyone with any common sense is wanting out.”
Irina stubbed her cigarette in the coffee cup’s saucer and, going to a small counter drawer, rummaged through it. She returned with pencil and paper. Reseating herself, she said, “Can you draw from memory the interior of Sachsenhausen?”
She considered. “I know but a wee part of what I saw the two times I was interned there, but every brick of those parts is tattooed on me brain and shows up in me dreams.”
She took the pencil from Irina. “This is the layout of Sachsenhausen. Now here is the intake room,” she said, sketching quickly a rectangle within the larger triangle that was Sachsenhausen.
“Beside the wooden barracks, constructed for us inmates, there are several bricks buildings built for the SS, as well as, a kitchen and laundry room. And, oh, aye, the infirmary, here.” She jabbed the pencil point at the southern portion of the triangle. “Also, Moe – Moishe – mentioned my brother was working during the day in the brick factory at Klinkerwerk.”
“Yes, from what we know, the prisoners are marched to and from the works each day, nearly three kilometers away, to build docks on the Havel River.”
Romy pointed her pencil at the base of the triangle. “Radiating from the main gate, I would guess there are seven or eight watchtowers and machine guns positioned around the camp.” She sketched this out, adding, “From what I remember, the barrack huts are in back of a roll call area directly behind the entrance gate. I could see the gallows from there, and the extermination banks, where some of the prisoners were occasionally shot.”
“And afterwards, their bodies are hauled off to a crematory in Sachsenhausen.” Irina shoved back a wave of soft butter-yellow curls that had drifted across her wide forehead and sighed. “That might be a possibility to explore – substitute your brother for a cadaver headed to the crematory. Still, how do we pull that off – and how do we then arrange for your brother’s escape from the crematory. So many angles to calcu – ”
A staccato three-rap-knocks on her apartment door, followed by a pause and two more, cut short her audible musings. “Most likely, it is one of us,” Irina assured, but Romy did not miss the strained smile automatically pasted onto the Polish woman’s lovely face.
As she rose with her skater’s graceful, gliding motion, she drew a fortifying breath, smoothed her dress’s soft pleats, then headed back into the living room.
From the kitchen, Romy heard Irina’s exclamation, “Giorgio! And Gideon! What are you – and who is this?”
At once, Romy was on her feet, sketch pad and pencil still in hand. She got no further than the kitchen doorway to see the three men. Irina was hugging Gideon with one arm and Giorgio with the other, while staring up and up and up at the third, as he doffed his straw Stetson.
Romy felt like a Fourth of July sparkler set alight. Heat flushed her skin.
“Name’s Duke McClellan, ma’am,” he told Irina. His jaw was beard-shadowed. His intense, slate-blue gaze swept past her to light on Romy. “I am that gal’s American sponsor.”
She braced a sweaty palm on the kitchen doorjamb to keep her knees from giving way.