Warsaw Requiem

  She was out of breath and very happy. She took his hands and kissed them. “Oh! It is you! Oh! Alfie Halder! Bless you . . . bless! I thought I was lost. So afraid that I had heard wrong and that I would not find you!”

  “Why? I told you . . . we will be in Warsaw.” He twisted his mouth around because he was embarrassed. Nobody had ever been so happy about seeing Alfie before—except maybe Werner when he was locked up a long time in the hotel room, and they came home and turned on the light. Then Werner bounced all over the room.

  “The address—” she held out a crumpled slip of paper— “the address Peter gave me was . . . the people have gone away, you see. So I . . . have you heard anything from England? Anything about my baby?” Her eyes held part of the sky in them, like the blue part with a heap of clouds moving in. She was worried. She was lonely. Alfie knew all about such eyes. He had seen them many times before.

  “Baby Alfie is very well,” Alfie said. “See?” He held up Werner as an example of how babies can do well even if they miss their mothers. Even if they have to go somewhere else to be safe.

  Lucy bit her lip. “Tell me what you have heard.”

  “You want a letter?” he beamed. “Captain Orde has the letter. I can’t read it . . . but I bet it is a good letter!”

  ***

  Through the window of the TENS office in Warsaw, Orde, Jacob, and Alfie watched as Lucy opened the fat letter from Lori and Elisa. Pictures spilled out onto the park bench where Lucy sat.

  She put her hand to her heart and then scrambled to retrieve them as if she feared some cruel wind would see and begin to blow out of the still air.

  She held them like playing cards. Choosing one at a time, she gazed at them. Her face reflected joy and sorrow, then joy again. There were tears on her face. At this distance they could not see the tears, but she brushed her cheeks the way mothers do when they are happy about something wonderful.

  Lucy went on this way for a long time. She did not open the letter until she tucked the edge of each photograph in a line beside her thigh. Then she read a little and looked down. She read a little more and then looked down once again at the pictures.

  It was not as fine as it would have been if they could put that baby back in her arms, but it was a start, anyway, Orde told them in a gruff-sounding voice.

  “Should we be looking at her like this?” Jacob asked. “Lori always hates it when I stand off and look at her and worry when she is . . . being . . . emotional.”

  “We should keep an eye on her,” Orde said.

  Alfie nodded. He wanted to go sit beside her. “Yes. We should. The man hurt her bad before she ran to the docks.” Alfie put his hand to the place on his face where he remembered her terrible bruises.

  Orde looked sharply at Alfie and then back at Lucy. Alfie’s words made the captain nervous. Alfie could tell. Orde rose up on his toes and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked all around the square.

  “I’ll recognize him if he shows up,” he muttered.

  Jacob bumped his big fist into the palm of his hand. “A fellow like that. I almost wish he would try something.”

  “She shouldn’t go away,” Alfie warned with a frown.

  “We can’t stop her if she wants to go, Elisha,” Jacob said. “Can we, Captain?”

  Was there a way to keep her from leaving?

  Alfie looked at her, so bright and pretty in the sunlight. It was a terrible thing that somebody wanted to hurt someone so nice and pretty as Lucy. But Alfie was certain she should not go. He was as sure of that as he ever was about things. He bit his lip and felt scared inside. “How do we make her stay here, Captain? That man has hurt her bad. They will kill her if she goes. Maybe kill her if she stays. But for sure if she is not with us.”

  Orde and Jacob looked at each other around Alfie.

  “No angels around her, Elisha?” Jacob asked. He was not making fun.

  Alfie frowned and looked everywhere. “No. No angels. Just us.”

  ***

  The letter from London. The photographs of her baby. It was all so much more than Lucy had hoped for. If she never heard another word, maybe she could manage now that he was safe.

  A thousand times Lucy had replayed the escape of her baby from Wolf on the docks of Danzig harbor. Time and again she had seen it in her mind. Lori carrying the child onto the ship. And then Wolf appearing with Hess and the other man, only to be stopped by the grim smile of the sun-browned stranger who stepped between them and the gangway to block their path.

  Lucy sat across from Sam Orde and repeated the story as it had happened to her. She did not tell everything, of course, but she knew from the way he looked at her that he guessed the details she left out. He had the eyes of a priest, full and kind, yet also wondering how Lucy had come to such a condition.

  He did not question her about her relationship with Wolf. It was enough to say that Wolf was SS and that he had fathered the child with the intention of taking it from Lucy. At that, Orde merely frowned more deeply, his eyes reflecting both pity and perhaps a fleeting moment of revulsion. Ah well, Lucy thought, this Englishman with the eyes of a holy man was only human, after all. Should she blame him if his disgust for her was revealed for an unguarded instant?

  She sat erect in her chair and focused straight ahead at the wall as she had done as a child in trouble at the convent school. No doubt Mother Superior would have looked at her more harshly than this fellow did!

  Lucy deliberately passed over her days and nights of anguish as she had grieved and wondered about the baby. Best to stick to cold facts.

  “So you see, Wolfgang von Fritschauer was not in pursuit of the children. He wished only to take the baby away.” She bit her lip. “And I am certain he saw the baby in Lori’s arm.” She turned her eyes on Orde’s face. The emotion she saw there surprised her. Sadness?

  He exhaled loudly as though letting out a pain, deep in his chest. “And the address you gave Alfie?”

  “My friends—the people I expected to be there—have moved away. No forwarding address Apparently the address is months out of date.” She could not stand the intensity of his sympathetic gaze, and so she focused her eyes on the wall again.

  “I am glad you remembered us. The letter only arrived yesterday. I was hoping you would come. Your baby is beautiful.”

  Do not be so gentle or I will cry, Lucy thought as she stood to go. “Danke. Thank you,” she said in English, which made him smile for the first time.

  “You are learning English. Good. Planning to join your child in England?”

  Planning was too strong a word for a dream that was only a prayer. Lucy pulled her green book from her handbag and passed it to him, hoping for a sign of approval.

  “Ah.” He smiled more broadly, but there was a doubt in his eyes. “Studying to be a parlor maid. Good. Yes.” A long pause—too long. “But where are you going now?”

  Lucy pointed toward the park across the street. She held up her sack lunch. She stepped back and extended her hand for the precious little volume. “I will not keep you from your work.” She swept a hand over the cluttered mess of the office. “I have my lunch, as you see.”

  “But do you have a place to stay in Warsaw?”

  “I will go back to the home of the woman who took care of me. I was unwell, you see.” This was one of the details she had not mentioned in her recitation. “Until I can find a place of my own and work.”

  “Ah,” Orde held up his finger. “Work! The very thing I was getting at, Fraülein.” He looked embarrassed as he stepped around an open crate of books. “Work. You see, I have been in need of . . . here in Warsaw . . . a secretary. You were a secretary in Vienna, you said?”

  “Only German.” Lucy tried not to look too disappointed. Work as a secretary until she could get to England! Oh, God! But certainly he needed someone who spoke Polish and English!

  Orde indicated that her parlor-maid instruction book was in English. “German is what I need. Partly, at least. You do take s
horthand? The office is in need of someone who can take down the various speeches of the German government, then transcribe them. You do type as well?”

  Her hopes began to rise. She resisted the urge to clap her hands together in joy. “Yes. I was fastest in the typing pool. I can . . . but my English is very poor,” she concluded doubtfully.

  “Good enough,” Orde said in a businesslike manner. He inhaled and exhaled. A great concern had been lifted from him. “Other office work is required, of course.” He frowned down at the jumble of files left by his predecessor, a Pole who was addicted to vodka as the drink of choice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Orde opened the dusty file drawer full of empty vodka bottles. “Not mine,” Orde said. “But, as you see, more than anything we are in need of organizational skills. Typing, Clerical things.” His lower lip protruded with concern. “And if this fellow, von Fritschauer, should come around, I should not like for you to meet him . . .” Orde’s gaze lingered on the remaining trace of a bruise on the side of her nose. “If he has followed you here, as he followed you to Danzig . . .”

  And so, he said the very thing that Lucy sensed. The thing she feared! She looked through the office window to the sidewalk, where Alfie and Jacob stood talking to a Polish gendarme as they waited for Orde and Lucy to complete their interview.

  Maybe she should go away, Lucy reasoned—simply melt away and call Samuel Orde later when he had more news of the baby. She had come only for news, not expecting sympathy or a job. “Wolf has never let anyone stand in the way of what he wants.”

  “He did not get past me on the Danzig quay,” Orde responded. “I was in his way then.” He smiled the schoolyard brawl kind of smile she had seen that day. “Frankly, this chap is just the sort I enjoy standing in the way of, Fraülein Strasburg. No need to speak further of it. You will need a room in which to stay. Appropriate clothing for work. TENS will assist in this. An advance of perhaps two weeks’ salary? Yes? Good. Then it is all settled. Have your lunch here and then—well, start where you wish.”

  ***

  Doc Grogan crouched behind an ivy-covered wall on the corner of the street opposite Mills University Hotel. Twice he had pretended to be tying his show for the benefit of a passerby, but fortunately there was little traffic to wonder about why the man remained in one spot for so long.

  At last the only pedestrian Grogan cared about appeared at the top of the steps of the hotel. Alan Farrell looked up and down the quiet street repeatedly before proceeding, as if he were trying to cross Piccadilly without using the subway.

  Farrell apparently satisfied himself that no one was observing him, and he strode purposefully down the steps carrying a small leather satchel. Grogan waited until the young man was out of sight around the far corner before leaving his place of concealment and rushing into the hotel.

  Grogan mentally reviewed what it was he was seeking, even while another part of his mind was complaining about having still more stairs to climb! He was panting again when he reached Allan’s door. He started to try the knob, then decided to knock first instead.

  After a moment’s delay brought no response, he tried the door and found it locked. After a quick look up and down the hall, Grogan’s hand extracted a small ring of oddly shaped keys from his pocket. He squinted at the lock, then at the keys.

  Selecting one, he inserted it in the lock and was rewarded with a satisfying click. The door swung open, and Grogan stepped inside quickly and locked the door behind him.

  A glance around the room showed very little that was out of the ordinary. The table had an untidy look, with bits of paper and twine lying about, as if something had been hastily wrapped.

  Grogan’s inspection of the closet revealed a curiosity: nine small leather cases, twins to the one Farrel had been carrying. They were all empty, but identical in description.

  The language professor ran his fingers over the walls and floor of the closet and soon found what he was seeking. The edge of one board protruded past the others just enough for Grogan’s fingers to grasp it and pull it free. He reached through the opening into a recessed compartment, and his hand closed around a small glass bottle.

  Extracting the bottle very carefully from its hiding place, Grogan gently unscrewed the lid. One whiff of the contents told him all he needed to know. He was even more careful as he replaced it.

  He was about to reinstall the board when his fingers brushed something else inside the cubicle. Grogan brought a leather-bound book out into the room with him and carried it to the window to inspect it.

  It was a small red volume entitled Baedeker’s London and Its Environs. The book fell open in Doc’s hand to the place marked by a red ribbon. The indicated section was labeled “St. Paul’s Cathedral—The Dome.”

  A terrible suspicion forced itself to Doc Grogran’s attention. He raced down the stairs and out into the street. After waving a cab down and jumping in, he cursed at the cabbie for driving too slowly and then shoved pedestrians out of his way after he jumped from the traffic-jammed taxi.

  Grogan’s face was distracted, nervous as he appeared in the doorway of Red Lion House. He was sweating ferociously.

  “Come on!” he called to the little boys.

  “Where?” Charles wondered in a puzzled voice.

  “Get out here!” Grogan insisted; then he hefted the twins and hauled them downstairs.

  “What?” Lori insisted. “Why are we—?”

  “Take the children over there,” Grogan demanded. There was no arguing with his tone of voice. He left her on the sidewalk and ran back up into the house with more urgency. She heard him shout now, angrily, for the other boys to get out.

  Moments later, puzzled and irritated, Jamie and Mark emerged. At Grogan’s urging, they hurried into the square to join Lori.

  “Wait for me,” he said. Then he pointed to the bench at the farthest end of Red Lion Square. “Over there.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lori asked him as a cold knot of fear formed in her stomach. She had felt this way at New Church when the Nazis had come in to search, and Jacob had pushed them into the bellows. It was the sense of panic, thinly veiled beneath a calm exterior.

  Grogan did not reply. He jogged across the grass of the square as though he did not hear her question. Then, not waiting until the street was clear, he dodged traffic and recrossed the street in front of the house.

  He knocked on the door of the downstairs flat, where Freddie and Hildy lived.

  “They aren’t home!” Lori shouted. Did he hear her? “Gone shopping! And to pick up Elisa!”

  He turned the knob cautiously, hesitated, then gave the door a shove. It opened. It was not locked. Had extra-careful Hildy ever left the door unlocked before?

  “What’s he doing?” Jamie asked with alarm.

  Grogran reached inside the pocket of his tan linen jacket, and then with a glance over his shoulder toward the children, slipped into the flat.

  “What’s wrong?” Mark echoed. Charles and Louis, who stood apart holding hands, unexplainably began to cry. They had never seen their beloved Doc act so strangely before!

  Suddenly the crash of broken glass sounded from the lower flat. Windows were broken one after another as Doc Grogan threw pieces of furniture out into the street. And then, as if pursued by someone or something, he dashed out the door!

  In that instant there was a great flash of light behind him! A rolling pillar of fire lifted him off the ground and spun him over and over into the air like a bird.

  It seemed to happen in slow motion. Doc Grogan floated above the shrieking cars as the children screamed in horror from the far side of the square. Windows from neighboring houses trembled and shattered inward with the blast. The leaves and limbs of the trees moved as if a giant wind had smashed against them.

  Lori covered Charles and Louis with her body as debris swirled in the sky and clattered down with the same slow motion as the rag-doll body of Doc Grogan.

  And then everything was very quiet. So quiet! Traffic comple
tely still. No birds chirping. No voices calling. Seconds ticked by. The hiss of a car radiator erupted. The cackle of the fire that had flashed and devoured the inside of the downstairs vanished. From far away there came the faint wail of a siren. The boys looked up from where they had fallen. They knew Doc Grogan was dead. The house did not matter. Doc was dead. He had gotten them out, and now he lay in the rubble beside the curb in front of the lovely Red Lion House.

  People began to shout. A woman holding her bloody forehead stumbled from the house next door. A dazed man climbed from his wrecked car and walked carefully over the broken glass to where Doc Grogan lay. He stooped and peered at the body. He leaned closer, then jumped to his feet and shouted, “He is breathing! He is alive!”

  31

  In the Balance

  Hildy Frutschy was hysterical. She sobbed and trembled as the Scotland Yard detective interviewed her. She blamed herself for everything while big Freddie sat forlornly beside her and wrung his cap in his enormous hands.

  Had she left the gas on after brewing her tea? She had worried about that after she was gone. She frequently worried about such horrible things, and now it had come true, hadn’t it? Her very worst nightmare had come true, just as she had always worried about. The children were almost killed. And now poor Doc Grogan lay on the very threshold of death and . . . oh! It was the absolute fault of her own carelessness, wasn’t it?

  Anna and Helen and Theo comforted the boys in a private sitting room at the hospital. Elisa and Murphy sat with Lori as Scotland Yard Detective Thompson asked her to reply the incident once again from the beginning.

  The ordeal has lasted for hours. Lori’s brow furrowed as she repeated the story once more. “He seemed agitated . . . No.1 did not smell gas from the house. He ran up the stairs ad got the boys out . . . ran back, smashing windows and then—” At last Lori began to weep. She leaned her head against Elisa’s shoulder and cried very softy.