Upfall

Finally they came upon another substantial town called Terepol. Shapira's radio squawked and he pushed his way into the cabin between Perchensky and Bolander. Shapira looked tired—he'd dozed off and was orienting himself. She could hear Yatom over the radio, sounding displeased that the lieutenant was groggy. Shapira had slept little over the past two days, but neither had any of the commandos. They were expected to operate like that.

Shapira pulled out his compass and turned to Bolander. "We are going through this big town just like the last one. Stay on the gas."

Bolander nodded. There were no Germans visible in the town, but the streets were a busier than in Wlodawa. Perchansky ducked into her seat. The column sped through, Bolander struggling to keep up with Nir in the lead car. Near the end of Terepol the road turned sharply to the left and continued on in a westerly direction, away from the border. Shapira didn't have a map and looked concerned.

"Commander, is this where you want to go!" he radioed to Yatom.

"Affirmative" came the reply. "The road will go west for a few clicks then veer to the northwest. Just keep up."

"Everything okay" Perchansky asked as they roared out of the town.

"Just peachy" said Shapira in English, with a smile. He was about to translate but she brushed back her hair and said in English "I understand." Bolander turned to her with a boyish smile as the three of them shared a rare relaxed moment.

"Feeling better?" It was Shapira, back in Hebrew. "What?" she said, surprised by the question, and unwilling to admit she had been out of sorts.

"Never mind" said the lieutenant, afraid he'd somehow insulted her. "You just seemed very tired."

"So did you" she said with an air of finality. Bolander kept his eyes on the road.

The column sped on through a few small villages until at a flea-bit place called Konstanynow the road turned sharply to the northwest. They pushed on as the sun set and by 2100 they approached the largest town yet, a place with the tongue-twisting name of Siemiatycze. Rather than chance another run through a built up area, Yatom led the column off on a country road due west. After two kilometers he pulled his vehicle off the path into a copse of trees.

Gratefully, Bolander followed and tucked the truck neatly under a large elm. Night was falling and Perchensky guessed that Treblinka would have to wait another for another day. As she watched the weary Israelis alight from their vehicles, followed by the scarecrow Jewish soldiers from Sobibor and the death train, she wondered how many people would die at that place before they got there.

The commandos didn't have time to ruminate. They hurried to set up a safe bivouac in the trees, cutting branches with which they festooned the exposed parts of the vehicles to hide them from air observation. Perchensky noticed that Feldhandler did not join in. He had tucked himself under a linden tree and was attemting to read a thick paperback book under a red-tinted flashlight beam. She'd spent a fair bit of time with him since their arrival, but they had spoken little, saying only what needed to be said. Her anger and disgust had grown over the past day as she considered her situation and stewed over Feldhandler's duplicity and selfishness. She realized as well, that her former attraction to him, and what she had assumed to be his to her, only made things worse. But she owed it to herself and to the rest of the Israelis to confront him and at least probe his intentions. And she sensed that she was the only person among them that could do it.

Perchensky stepped out of the shadows, took a deep breath and walked to the linden tree. Feldhandler closed his book giving her a glimpse of its title" The Holocaust" by Leni Yahil. A famous book, though she had never read it. Feldhandler looked up at her as he used to, an odd mixture of expectancy with a trace of boredom.

"Trying to figure out what to do next?" she said mockingly, nodding toward the frayed paperback. He ignored her.

"According to German folklore" said Feldhandler patting the trunk of tree "the linden is the tree of lovers."

Perchansky felt herself flush. Then her fury rose, like the bile burning her throat. "You wait until now to make sweet talk with me?"

She was losing it. Tears washed her eyes. "Sorry. It was a stupid attempt at humor."

"You don't do anything stupidly" she croaked. "If you did, you might be halfway human."

"That's harsh."

"You force good decent people..." she wanted to say friends, but in truth, none of them were his friends ".. .into this hell?"

"Is trying to save our people wrong? Is it not worth a sacrifice?"

"'Our people‘ are already dead. They died seventy years ago. You are saving ghosts."

"This world is real Andrea. It's not full of ghosts—it's full of living, breathing men, women and children who are going to die—die horribly—unless we can help them."

"You're crazy."