The Barbed Crown (The Vatican Knights Book 13) Read online

  The perceived reports were that the Jews were being eliminated as a measure to cleanse the camp for a single purpose: to hide the fact of systematic killing before the Red Army encroached on Polish territory. Though these were intuitions based on the sudden ratcheting of summary executions, they were sound perceptions that spread like wildfire across the compounds, both the men’s and the women’s.

  So the network banded together under duress with time seen as something as an enemy, since there was so little of it. The women in the munitions factory collected gunpowder and stored them within the snakelike pockets that had been sewn into their hemlines. Small satchels had also been filled to capacity, though they carried little of the explosive dust necessary to achieve the means. The process was tediously slow almost to the point of a glacial pace, whereas the pressures to meet Dror’s expectations were exceedingly low, since he calculated at least twenty urns to see this through. But over a period of two days they were only able to obtain enough gunpowder to fill a single urn two-thirds of the way. In one week, by Dror’s estimates, that would fill two-and-a-half urns. In three weeks, and on the day chosen for the moment of attack, just over seven. Anything beyond three weeks was a gamble, given what Chapiro had told them was the end-time for the entire Sonderkommando union.

  So Dror had sent word to Weiner and Avraham that the product coming in was too low. More people were needed to transport the gunpowder, so the network broadened since the clock was ticking against them all, with every second a precious moment of time. Seven urns, after all, was only a third of what was needed to see this mission through effectively—the explosive power would be like comparing a firecracker to a grenade.

  But as the week went on the supply line and the amount of the product remained consistently low due to the fear of being compromised under the watchful eyes of the SS guards, almost to the point of paranoia. Fear was stunting the mission.

  And there were other problems as well.

  One being Moshe Chapiro.

  He kept his word about his constant presence, always there like a vulture waiting to pounce on a carcass after others had had their share. His eyes always flittered about and dancing in their orbs, just waiting to catch a glimpse of something that shouldn’t be. So Dror and Ephraim were careful about extracting the gunpowder from the linings of smocks or from the mouths of the dead, waiting for Chapiro’s attention to be turned elsewhere, at least long enough to pour the contents into an urn.

  But things were becoming increasingly difficult with Chapiro tarrying around the crematorium with his presence a blight in the scheme of things, as if he was a disease waiting to metastasize. All it would take was a glimpse from the corner of his eye, and a mere investigation of what was hidden in plain sight, to kill everything they had planned for.

  By the end of the week, while under pressure and nearly coming under Chapiro’s examination many times, they were able to fill two-and-a-half urns, which was far from what they hoped for.

  But in the end, it was something.

  Chapter Thirty

  Over the days as the gunpowder was being smuggled through the camps by the Network, Frederic Becher also became a problem—unknowingly so—by making his daily rounds to meet with Ayana, who didn’t appear to object to his intrusions.

  They would meet in the back and away from interruption, the two opening up to each other with the establishment of a comfort zone between them. Ayana’s smiled flourished, as did Frederic’s, until Frederic opened up to her about his dream of someday walking down the streets of Paris with Ayana, both hand in hand, as she wore a tailored dress, the two smiling. There would be no more foolish prejudices, just the two of them in a world without labels or tags, but also a world of a different reality.

  And though Ayana knew in her heart that this would never happen since their world was one of great imperfections, she couldn’t help but smile while wishing that something like this could be so. That she could walk down a Paris street in a tailored dress with no worries or cares, or wonder if this day or the next would be her last.

  Such thought in an imperfect world gave her something to look forward to no matter how impossible they may be, and something to override all the darkness that clung to her like a pall that was unwilling to lift itself and disappear.

  Frederic Becher gave her hope.

  And she wanted to believe.

  So she fell for his graces and believed in his kindness and generosity.

  And within days she had begun to trust him rather than err on the side of caution, truly believing that he was different and that the prejudices of others seemed to have skirted him and passed him by. So at night as she lay on her straw-haired bunk, she thought of Frederic—could see his face and the gleam of his smile so clearly in her mind’s eye, which forced upon her a smile of her own.

  And every night as she lay there existing in a world of her own, Ala Robata would watch and fear that Ayana Berkowitz was getting too close to the SS guard who could compromise the entire mission.

  So by the end of the seventh day when Ayana’s smiles became too much for Ala to endure, she brought her concerns to Roza Saperstein.

  “She’s becoming a threat,” Ala said to Roza, referring to Ayana. “She’s a young girl becoming infatuated with a boy who’s doing the same. They’re teenagers, after all.”

  Roza understood. But Ayana was necessary in designing the means to transport the gunpowder, and was doing so at an incredible pace. “I’ll talk to her,” Roza said.

  “Time is getting close to implementing the final stages of the cause. If I’m not satisfied with how you handle things, Roza, then you give me no choice but to handle things myself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just what I said… I’ll handle things myself.”

  Roza gave Ala a hard look, which was equally returned. Ala had always been a tough woman, this Roza knew, and sometimes she was hard to reel in when things didn’t always go the way she believed they should. But Ala could also be an asset in the scheme of things as well, and someone who could be trusted.

  “I will talk to Ayana,” she repeated, this time in a much softer tone, a diplomatic tone.

  “We’re close, Roza. We cannot afford a foolish crush between two children to end what we have worked so hard to promote. We’re looking at freedom here, a chance to live.”

  “I understand, Ala. I’ll talk to her. I promise.”

  Without saying anything additional, Ala gave a simple harrumph that was more a sound of annoyance, and returned to her bunk.

  Once there, Ala lifted a loose board. Beneath the board was a shiv, a small knife made from a wood shard that had been sharpened by a piece of gravel. Its handle was wrapped in a fabric that came from a striped shirt. Having such contraband was a call for immediate execution. Not only to her but to those close to her, whether they knew of the shiv or not, since killing was the promoter of fear, and fear the promoter of continued compliance.

  Returning the shiv back to its hiding place, Ala swore that she would never allow Ayana to screw matters up, even if she had to drive the shiv deep between her ribs.

  If the time came, she wouldn’t even hesitate.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “You must stay away from your German boyfriend,” Roza told Ayana.

  “Why does everyone call him my boyfriend? He’s not,” she said with a stinging tone.

  Ayana’s value in the Network was crucial. Her position and workstation was furthest from the German officer who often patrolled the floor. Whenever his heavy boots hit the floor as he approached her, she would stop whatever she was doing for the cause until he passed. After he had policed the area and moved on, she would return to sewing compartments in the clothing that would secretly pocket the gunpowder for transfer. And since she was willing to do this chore whereas many others had balked, she had become a valuable asset.

  “Word is coming back that the SS guard who calls on you daily is pulling you off your station, and that the tw
o of you are spending more time together. That, Ayana, is not acceptable. The product coming in from the munitions factory is coming in too low. It’s not enough. And time is running down.”

  “I do my share,” Ayana stated. “I do what is required of me—what’s been asked of me. And I do it carefully so as not to compromise the situation. Yet you’re asking me to take risks and do more, even when there is a guard who always watches the floor.”

  Roza reached out to Ayana and gently grabbed her arms, and then she smiled. “What I’m saying, Ayana, is that you’re a great asset to the Network. You provide the means to smuggle the gunpowder to the Sonderkommandos. But this SS guard who calls on you daily is a threat to the cause.” Roza paused while rubbing Ayana’s arms as a gesture to comfort. “Look, Ayana, I was young, too. I understand the infatuation a young girl feels for a boy. I do. But it’s just that. It’s infatuation. He shows you kindness in such a horrible place, and you can’t help yourself but to reach for it. I get that. But he is still an SS guard who has the power of choosing whether or not you live or die.”

  “He’s not like the others,” said Ayana. “And he’s not a threat.”

  “You don’t see him as a threat,” Roza said. “But he is. Right now your mind is in a fog whenever you think about him. Am I right?”

  Ayana didn’t answer.

  “It’s natural for a girl your age. But take it from someone who knows: once this is over, once the gates are down and we take refuge in the woods, you’ll never see him again. His life will go in one direction, and yours in another. Right now I need you to focus on your duties.”

  “I can’t help if he calls on me.”

  “Then keep it brief, Ayana. And never forget that what you’re doing is saving lives. We need your head in the game.”

  Ayana remained silent, torn. Roza was right. The cause was everything.

  “Are you hearing me, Ayana?”

  Ayana nodded.

  “That’s good. And so that you know, others are becoming concerned. So don’t let us down over a boy you’ll never see again.”

  Ayana’s emotions were beginning to embroil with one another, causing a measure of confusion. The stages of a young girl’s life comes naturally when looking toward the opposite sex. And Frederic Becher had become the magnet of her desires, a German and a Jew who didn’t care about their labels, which was the swastika on his arm and the yellow Star of David on hers.

  “Ayana?”

  The young girl refocused her attention back to Roza, after her eyes had apparently drifted.

  “We need more production from you,” said Roza. “Can you do this safely?”

  And Ayana knew exactly what Roza was trying to communicate: If you spend less time with the SS guard, then you can apply your efforts to designing more of what we need.

  “I hear you,” said Ayana.

  Roza’s smile blossomed. “That’s good, Ayana. I knew I could count on you.”

  After proffering the young girl a wink and a pat on the shoulder, Roza headed off to another area of the barrack where she held a short conference with Ala. Two minutes later after Roza moved on, Ala turned her glaring eyes on Ayana that were filled with underlying animosity, something Ayana could clearly see.

  Now she knew where the concerns were coming from.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Moshe Chapiro was becoming a problem to the Sonderkommandos at Crematorium I. True to his word to Dror, Chapiro was more involved with watching them work the ovens instead of patrolling the men’s compound, as the days marched on toward zero hour.

  Under Chapiro’s watchful eye, Dror and Ephraim, although they saw the marked clothing whose linings contained the smuggled gunpowder, could do little else but to remove the garments and toss them off to the side in a pile for later discarding. And what was disconcerting to the Sonderkommandos was that the gunpowder was not getting to where it should be going, to the urns. Over the week the process had been stepped up, the machine now in full swing with the proper amount of powder coming close to filling the number of urns deemed necessary. But with Chapiro standing by the pushcarts slapping his truncheon repeatedly against his palm, the buildup of stock had slowed considerably, even with the powder hidden an arm’s length away. Dror and Ephraim had been hamstrung because of the watchful eyes from one of their own.

  “We have to do something?” Ephraim whispered to Dror. “We still haven’t got the number of urns needed, and we’ve only days.”

  “I know,” said Dror.

  “I don’t see any other way but to take him out. I don’t think we have a choice. Not now.”

  “He’s a kapo,” stated Dror. “His Blockführer will note his absence immediately. By tonight the guards will be out with their dogs, searching. They’ll trace the scent back to Chapiro’s last location, which is here, and they’ll find the urns.” Against the far wall but out of plain sight sat five fully loaded urns filled with gunpowder, with each urn having a light dusting of ash to cover over what was hidden underneath. At least fifty hollow urns stood in full view of Chapiro, which had been set aside to be carted off to the fields and buried in the pits, once Dror and Ephraim had filled them to capacity.

  “What if he looks in the shadows and finds our stockpile?” Ephraim whispered to him. “Then what?”

  Dror had no answer but the obvious. “Then we take the chance. We’ll have Weiner and Avraham transport the urns in their pushcarts to another location. But the urns will stand out and be conspicuous, even with the bodies. Some things you can get past the guards, but they will see the containers.”

  Ephraim closed his eyes and sighed, as if being taxed. “We only have five urns, Dror,” he finally said, his eyes opening. “One to disable the motor pool, one to open the gates, and three to take down all four crematories. It can’t be done.”

  “Then we alter the plan,” said Dror. “We take down one crematorium. This one. And we use the others to disable the vehicles and to blow the gate. We have enough, Ephraim, to do what’s needed to be done. I wish we had more. We need more. But we run the risk of Chapiro compromising everything we’ve done up to this point. So we need to shut down the Network and plan for the final stage.”

  Ephraim shook his head. “We can’t shut down the Network,” he said.

  “We don’t have a choice. Not with Chapiro breathing over our shoulders.”

  “Dror, we don’t have enough to see this through. One canister will not wipe out the entire motor pool. We also need at least one canister for each of the two guard towers. Have you forgotten? The tower guards are heavily armed with .50 caliber machine guns. They’ll cut us down before we even get to the gate.”

  Dror began to rub his gloves over his face as if to wipe away an itch. But what he was really trying to do was to rub away the frustration. “I don’t know what to do?” he finally admitted. “Everywhere we look, everywhere we turn, there’s an obstacle.” Then in a defeatist’s tone, he said, “Perhaps, Ephraim, there isn’t a solution to everything as I have always believed there was.”

  This time Ephraim didn’t support Dror’s constant philosophical declaration of hope, that there’s a solution for everything. Perhaps, he considered, Dror had been wrong all this time. Some things simply didn’t have an answer to them at all.

  “Tell the Network to stop,” Dror said dismally. “Tell them… that we’re being betrayed by one of our own but the mission goes on as planned. We just need to step up the time of execution and take our chances.”

  Ephraim remained silent and didn’t have anything to offer, not even a measure of hope.

  As they discarded clothes to the heap of garments already on the floor, Dror noticed the markings on one of the corpses, an old man whose face had become so gaunt, it looked like a skull. But the marking was there, three dots on the shoulder, all puncture wounds to indicate that this particular body was a transport vehicle.

  With his gloved hand, Dror grabbed the point of the man’s chin and lowered it. Inside was a small satchel fil
led with gunpowder. Then to Ephraim: “We have a transport,” he whispered.

  Ephraim looked into the man’s mouth, which was filled with empty sockets from having his gold teeth removed upon entry, and saw the pouch. “Dammit.”

  “Chapiro is watching us carefully and we can’t toss the body into the flames. The powder will go off.” Dror closed the old man’s mouth.

  Ephraim quickly glanced over his shoulder, which caught the attention of Chapiro.

  “You there!” yelled the kapo, pointing his truncheon. “What are you whispering about?” He started to move towards them.

  When Chapiro was standing within arm’s length, he jabbed the point of his club into Ephraim’s abdomen, causing a force of air from his lungs. “When I see two people whispering, and then they glance over to see if I’m watching, I become suspicious.” He waded between the two by pushing them aside, saw the body, then took a step back. “So I ask you again: What were you two whispering about?”

  “I was just asking Ephraim if he recognized this man,” said Dror.

  “So?”

  “He came on the transport with us from Poland,” he lied.

  “So?”

  “I was just telling him how… wasted he looked.”

  “Everyone wastes away in Auschwitz,” Chapiro returned brusquely. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “He was my friend.” Another lie. Dror was just trying to cover his ass as to what he and Ephraim were talking about, creating a story that Chapiro would accept without drawing suspicion. He had never seen the old man before.

  “And now he’s dead.” Chapiro stated without emotion as be backpedaled away from them. “So put him on the tray and burn him. Do your jobs. And do it without talking to one another.”

  The moment Chapiro had his back to them, Dror opened the old man’s mouth, removed the satchel, and stuffed it into his pocket. It wasn’t much, but a least it was something to add.