Obsessed Page 18

  Not all was lost, of course. The Jew hadn’t been down here on his last unbelievable visit as a city employee. Claude had assured him of that much. Whatever Stephen had found earlier was still here, or he wouldn’t have risked so much to come back for it.

  Roth bent down, pulled the steel lid to one side and stared into the hole. He withdrew the tin box and stared at the picture of a woman whom he immediately recognized.

  Seeing her here, on this box in America, offended him. The fact that they’d managed to smuggle even a picture of her out was an insult to his father. To him.

  Roth demonstrated considerable restraint in not tearing the picture from the lid. Instead he pried the cover off with a controlled hand. Inside, a piece of cloth wrapped around Rachel’s treasure.

  But was it his father’s treasure?

  He set the tin box down and carefully unwrapped the cloth.

  Heat gathered at the top of his skull and rushed down his head, making him momentarily dizzy.

  The journal.

  No Stones, but that didn’t really surprise him. A relic as valuable as the Stones of David would never present itself so easily.

  The journal was treasure enough for now. It was true then. She had smuggled the journal out with the Stones. The journal that could incriminate not only Gerhard, but dozens of others. She’d hid it all these years knowing that if Gerhard were executed for crimes, her hope of finding her son would be dashed.

  She was a smart one.

  Roth lifted the old leather cover and gazed at the contents. Every woman that Gerhard had ever killed was listed, by date of execution. Details of the ritual and a small smudge of their blood by each name.

  With the journal was a letter. The letter told the rest of the story. Rachel’s story.

  Roth sank to his knees and began to weep with gratitude. There was so much hope here. So much fear and desperation and longing. So much power. His resolve to finish what he’d started when he’d bought this building crashed through him like a waterfall.

  Gerhard wanted the journal because it threatened his very life. But Roth knew that the journal would call to Stephen. Roth hadn’t come to Los Angeles for the Stones, no. Nor the journal.

  Roth had come for Stephen.

  He spent an hour with the treasure, soaking in its meaning, plotting his next move. This was good. This was very good. It confirmed everything he’d guessed. He was perhaps the most fortunate man alive at this moment. But fortune had little to do with his success. He was here because he had earned his good fate and been patient in the working for it.

  Thirty long years.

  He set the journal back into the cookie tin as he’d found it, replaced the box in the safe, pulled the lid over the hole, and slid the drum back into place.

  Stephen must find the treasure, and he must find it on his own, in a way that elevated his hope to the highest heavens.

  He stood to his feet. A celebration was in order.

  Roth walked from the basement, determined to find not one, but two women this night.

  24

  Torun

  August 1, 1944

  End of Workday

  THE BIRTH OF LITTLE ESTHER HAD FILLED MARTHA’S BARRACKS with a surreal hope that lingered against all odds. The rumors of mass gassings at Auschwitz came so regularly now that none of the women doubted them any longer. Hungary had been all but emptied of its Jews, they said, and most of them had vanished into the camp at Auschwitz. Only the strongest were occasionally spared and sometimes sent north, to Stutthof. Martha could hardly bear to think of what had happened to her mother and sister. Part of her insisted that she couldn’t afford to think about them—she had to think about one thing only: giving birth to the child within her. Any day now, maybe even tonight. A few days at the most.

  Her heart hammered every time she thought about going into labor. Imagine, not one baby in the barracks, but two! Esther and David. Or if she had a baby girl, Esther and Esther. Two stars of hope.

  Ruth and Martha hurried from the factory and walked quickly to the barracks, where Rachel had been given charge of the baby today. The commandant had allowed Ruth to stay with Esther for ten days before issuing the order that she return to work.

  “She’s going to be famished,” Ruth said breathlessly. “It’s been eight hours since I fed her. He’s a beast!”

  “Of course he is,” Martha said. “But he’s been good to you. And Esther is alive.” She looked up at a group of women passing the other way. “Half the women in this camp grumble about how you’re favored.”

  “Not in our barracks.”

  “No, not those who know you, but they all see you walking up to his house every day with Esther. It drives them mad. They think he likes you.”

  “Then they should try to spend some time with him! He insists I go; what am I supposed to do, slap him in the face? I have Esther to think about now. He hasn’t touched me. Do they know that?”

  “I’ve told them. Keep your voice down.”

  Streams of women crisscrossed the camp, making their way back to their barracks or the bathrooms before the roll call. Here in Toruń, roughly five thousand women, over half of them Jews, clung to the hope that they might be spared, yet they all knew a single order could change everything. The Russians were advancing from the east. If they could just hang on a little longer, surely the nightmare would end. Little Esther had been spared and allowed a new life outside her mother’s womb—perhaps they, too, would be spared.

  Martha imagined an army advancing over the fields to the east, coming to liberate them. What a day that would be. She and Ruth holding their tiny babies bundled in blankets, being whisked away to begin a new life. They rounded the showers and angled for the barracks where Rachel waited with baby Esther. Fifty yards. Ruth quickened her pace.

  “This waiting is making me crazy,” Martha said.

  Ruth faced Martha, eyes bright. “Oh, Martha, you will be so excited. It’s a miracle. You can feel the new life coming from you, and nothing else in the world matters.”

  Martha laughed. “Except for the pain.”

  “No, the pain tries to distract you, but the baby is stronger than the pain, Martha! A baby! You’re giving birth to a baby, and the whole world stops for that.” Ruth touched Martha’s belly. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Yes. Honestly, I’m terrified.”

  Ruth took her hand and squeezed it. “I was too. I was so scared that I couldn’t breathe right. You were telling me to breathe, and while part of me was thrilled with what was happening, the other part was terrified.” She smiled wide, as if her confession had been a secret.

  But Martha knew her friend too well. Ruth, the courageous one who spoke the truth with chin held high, needed comfort and assurance as much as any woman in the camp. She was like a little girl in some ways— wise and confident, as long as Martha was by her side to hold her hand.

  Ruth began to skip.

  “Stop it, Ruth. Do you want to rub salt in their wounds?”

  “They could use a touch of salt now and then. The red scarf hasn’t touched one of their beds since Esther was born. Don’t they see that? They should be grateful for my skipping and all my trips up the hill. Little Esther and I stand between them and that monster. He does like her, you know. It horrifies me to think about it, but that pig is actually fond of my baby.”

  She hurried the last twenty meters, threw open the door, and ran in with Martha on her heels. “Rachel?”

  Ruth pulled up three paces in, and Martha nearly ran her over. Down the aisle between the bunks Rachel faced them, holding the baby in her arms, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” Ruth ran for her baby. “What did they do?” she demanded.

  Something had happened to Esther? Martha felt her heart bolt. She ran after Ruth, who carefully took the bundle from Rachel.

  “Is she okay? Please, tell me she’s okay.”

  Rachel’s lips were quivering. She still said nothing. Ruth peeled the blank
et from her baby’s face. The child cried. So she was alive!

  “Shh, shh. It’s okay now. Mommy’s here.” Ruth cradled the child and rocked her gently. “What is it, Rachel? She’s hungry?”

  Rachel didn’t respond. Why should she? It was a rhetorical question. Several others entered the barracks behind them.

  Ruth pulled her shirt up and let the baby suckle. The child quieted and began to eat noisily. “You see, Rachel? She’s fine. What is it?”

  Someone gasped behind them. “The scarf!”

  Martha looked past Rachel and saw the scarf immediately. The bright red material was draped on a lower bed, six or seven bunks down the aisle.

  The first thing Martha thought was that Ruth had been wrong about the commandant.

  The second thing was the realization that the red cloth lay terribly close to her own bed.

  On her bed.

  She blinked, unable to process the meaning. This silk scarf angled across the corner of her bed. This splash of red against the drab gray blanket. There was a mistake, of course. That bunk was her bunk. She was about to give birth to her baby. The commandant had promised it.

  The barracks filled with more women. Questions—What is it? What’s going on? Why is everyone standing here?—then silence.

  Martha stared, still stunned.

  Ruth’s baby suckled quietly beside her.

  “Ruth?” Martha faced her, suddenly very worried. “What . . . ?”

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said, weeping. “The guard, he came in and asked me which was Martha’s bed. I didn’t know; I swear, I didn’t know. He put the scarf there and then left.” She fell to her knees and gripped Martha’s dress. “I’m so sorry, Martha. I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop it!” Ruth snapped. “Stop your blubbering, Rachel.”

  Golda pushed through the gathered women. “What’s going on?” Then she saw the red scarf and her lips formed a grim line.

  All of this ran through Martha’s mind: Rachel’s weeping, Ruth’s anger, Golda’s silence. They all meant the same thing.

  She would be hanged tonight, before her child was born.

  Her legs started to give way, and she reached out to break her fall, but Rachel and Golda both held her up. She wanted to scream, but she was suddenly hyperventilating. The others were silent, and she hated them for it. A breathy moan escaped her lips.

  They would come for her at six thirty, in ten minutes. But the baby! No, he couldn’t do this! It was inhuman! Why had he placed this cloth on her bed? Didn’t he love little David as he loved little Esther?

  “Ruth.” She touched her belly. “Ruth!” Her voice sounded distant, inhuman. She could see her friend still staring at the scarf, baby cradled in her arms.

  “Hold Esther, Rachel,” she heard Ruth say.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the commandant.”

  “No!” Golda objected. “You can’t just go—”

  “He’s going to kill her!”

  “And if you go, he may kill you as well.”

  “It’s my life!” Ruth yelled.

  “Stop it!” Martha cried. Her limbs trembled, but she couldn’t bear these women screaming at each other. She sat heavily on the nearest bunk. “Please, don’t argue. Ruth, you know you can’t go up there. You have to think of Esther.”

  Ruth stared at her, face flushed. She looked at the scarf then back at Martha. Slowly, she relaxed.

  “I know this is a horrible thing,” Golda said, “but he’s killed dozens of women this way already.”

  “She’s pregnant!” Ruth snapped. “He gave his word!”

  “We have to accept it.”

  Martha knew she was right, but the truth did nothing to temper a sudden urge to claw the woman’s eyes from her face. How many pregnant women had the commandant hanged from his gallows? How many within a day of their child’s birth?

  “No,” Ruth said. “We don’t have to accept it.”

  She walked up the aisle, took the scarf in her hands. “He told me once that the woman presented to him wearing the red scarf was the Jews’ sacrificial lamb. She would die for the whole camp, to appease his wrath.”

  What she did next could not have been anticipated by any of them. She walked to her own bed, lay the red cloth across the corner, and smoothed it.

  “Now the scarf is on my bed. I will go.”

  What was she saying? A sliver of hope sliced through Martha’s heart. Ruth would make an argument for Martha’s life? What if the commandant would listen? There was some hope in that, wasn’t there?

  “What do you mean, you will go?” Golda asked.

  Ruth looked at Martha and then at her own baby. Tears misted her eyes, and she raised her hand to her lips.

  Then Martha understood. “No! No, Ruth!”

  Her friend wasn’t listening. Ruth returned to Rachel, took her child lovingly. Kissed the baby on her forehead and then on her lips, tears dripping on the infant’s cheek. She sniffed softly and then swallowed back her tears.

  “I love you, dear Esther. I love you so much.”

  Martha was horrified by this display. She staggered to her feet. “Ruth—”

  Ruth put a finger on her lips. “Shh. Listen to me, Martha.”

  “What are you doing? You can’t take the scarf !”

  “Listen to me! This is the only—”

  “No!” Martha sobbed. She couldn’t hear this. The panic she’d felt only a moment ago felt small next to the notion that Ruth would follow through with her plan.

  “No, you can’t—”

  “Listen to me!” Ruth shouted. “They’ll be coming soon.”

  Martha blinked.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to shout.” Tears slipped from Ruth’s eyes again. “This is the only way to save both of our babies, Martha.”

  “He will never allow it.”

  “Your child will die with you,” Ruth cried. “How can we allow that? Your child has as much right to live as I do. Should both of you die so that I can live?”

  “Yes! I was chosen, not you.”

  “And now I choose.”

  “You don’t even know if he will accept your choice.”

  “He will. I know him. He will, and he will let you live and have your baby.” She kissed her infant again, several times, all about the face. “Promise me, Martha. Raise her as your own.”

  She handed the child to Martha, who took her, fingers numb. “Ruth . . .”

  The women stared at the scene, dumbstruck. Not even Golda found the courage to object. Martha didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want this to be happening any more than she wanted to die herself. She should stop Ruth. Push the baby back into her arms and run up the hill to demand that Braun hang her.

  She could do none of these.

  For an endless minute, Ruth and Martha stared into each other’s eyes. Then Ruth’s show of bravery slowly began to fold. Her lips began to curve downward and quiver. Her breathing came quicker and sounded forced. She was trying to be courageous, but she couldn’t stand against this terrible onslaught of fear and sorrow on her own.

  This was Ruth, the young woman with more courage than the whole camp put together. But this was Ruth, the girl who’d edged her way through the train to find Martha’s comfort in a time of loneliness.

  Martha gave the baby to Rachel and wrapped her arms around Ruth’s shoulders. The younger woman hugged Martha’s pregnant belly, buried her face in her neck, and began to sob.

  The pain in Martha’s heart threatened to tear a hole through her chest. She wanted to die. She had to say something, anything that would stop Ruth from what she was going to do.

  Golda’s cheeks glistened with tears, and she made no attempt to wipe them away.

  “Please, Ruth. Please . . .”

  The door banged open. “Get back! What is going on?”

  Martha began to panic. “Please, Ruth.”

  The women parted, and there stood the guard, the same young blond who’d come on several occ
asions to lead away women. She was accustomed to some emotion, but this scene made her hesitate.

  “Whose bed is that?” she demanded, pointing her stick at the red scarf.

  “If you have a boy, tell him to marry my Esther,” Ruth whispered. She faced the guard and wiped her tears. “That’s my bed.”

  She retrieved the scarf and glided down the hall, past Martha’s clinging hands, passed her baby with one last kiss and one last sob, and past the guard, out the door.

  Martha slumped to the bed, curled into a ball, and began to cry uncontrollably.

  25

  Los Angeles

  July 23, 1973

  Monday Morning

  THINK, THINK, THINK. HE’D PRACTICALLY THOUGHT HIMSELF TO death these last five days.

  Stephen had returned to the hiding place in Building B two nights before, stripped off the green pantsuit, donned his old dirty slacks, paced, and made an important decision.

  He would not go home tonight.

  He would rent a motel room.

  And so he had. An old, flea-infested room seven blocks down on La Brea. Sunday, he’d made another important decision.

  He would not rent a motel room that night.

  He would sleep here overlooking Rachel’s apartment on the off chance that the German entourage would vacate the building for a spell. Monday, he would go home. After he found a way into that basement. But Monday had come, and he had neither found a way into the basement nor gone home.

  He’d lost his mind to this thing, and he no longer cared.

  Braun had made a threat, and Stephen had dared to defy him. For the first time, he feared for Chaim’s life. He couldn’t go home. As long as he stayed out of reach, Braun couldn’t hurt him or endanger Chaim.

  Besides, Stephen didn’t want to go home.

  On the other hand, he had to at least let Chaim know that all was well, even if it wasn’t. He’d made a phone call from a booth on La Brea. The conversation lasted less than a minute.

  Where are you? Are you okay? What are you doing?

  I’m in a . . . motel. I’m okay. I’m taking a few days to think things through. Are you okay?

  Of course I’m okay. When will you be home?

  Soon. Don’t worry. Please don’t worry.