Chapter Nineteen

AFTER ANNA LEAVES, I shed my clothes and the drab material pools at my feet. I carefully put on the fancy dress and T-strapped pumps that she brought me. I close my eyes and guiltily inhale the deliciousness of refined black lace, remembering what it was like to wear something this sophisticated and experience the tingly anticipation of getting ready for a special occasion. I think back to the large oval standing mirror in my old bedroom, and to my personal maid, Justyna, who laid everything out for me on the bed, then helped me dress for the evening while we’d gossip together about the guests. I can even picture the admiring looks on everyone’s faces when I’d enter the room. I used to live for that moment. I reluctantly let the memory go. Somebody else’s life.

I wonder to whom the dress once belonged. A Pole? A Jew? Have I ever crossed paths with her? I turn the garment from front to back, eyeing the intricate stitching, the train of tiny pearl buttons lining the length of the spine, imagining Aleksander slowly undoing each delicate gem, his fingertips lolling against my flushed, exposed skin.

I pull back my hair into a tight chignon at the base of my neck and apply the bright orange-red lipstick that Zelda had sent with me—my good luck lipstick—and then tone it down with a lighter shade over it. I apply kohl liner around my eyes to create a smoky evening look. I glimpse my face in the small wall mirror. My insides vibrate. I can do this.

Before I leave the apartment, I check my purse for the third time: the thick wad of zlotys, the Irina identification papers, the good luck lipstick, and the two addresses Anna had given me. Memorize them, she said, then rip them up. I do both. I glance over at the coat lying flat across my bed—the “package.” Not exactly a package, not even close. It’s a beautiful handmade herringbone evening overcoat with its lining ripped out and resewn with flattened dynamite inside, collar to hem. I carefully slip into it, my fingers quivering slightly as I belt it closed.

This is for you, Stach.

SEVEN O’CLOCK EXACTLY.Walking briskly in the balmy night, I move as fast as I can in the weighty coat and dress shoes that are at least one size too small. The air is cool and breezy against my face, and I suck it in. I pass the hospital, where there is, thankfully at this hour, still a mad rush of pedestrians gathering at the entrance. I slow down when I spot a Nazi guard at the street corner yelling at an old man to show his papers, and I’m able to circumvent them by blending in with a group of others doing the same. No one wants to be caught in transit, harassed by a Nazi. My heart pounds as Zelda’s voice fills my head. Stay focused. Look like you belong.

In the distance, near the park, I spot the car parked exactly where Anna told me the driver would be waiting. I see his silhouette—Stach’s lover. The same man with two different-colored eyes who drove me to the synagogue and then dropped me off at Stach’s office just before I passed out. Same man, different car. Anna said that Lukas has been her right hand since they captured Stach. He was the one who obtained the dynamite for us. Perhaps I misjudged him. He rolls down the window and I cinch my shoulder blades together, meet his impenetrable gaze, and nod. He motions for me to get in the back seat.

“Not the maid this time?” he comments after I close the car door.

“Off duty,” I respond lightly from the back seat, directly behind him. “How are things going so far?”

“In motion.” He squints at me through the rearview mirror, then turns on the ignition. “Look under the seat. Be careful. It’s loaded.”

I reach my hand beneath the leather seat and feel around until I find what I’m looking for jammed into a secret cut-out compartment, most likely not the first weapon hidden in there. I remove the pistol, keep it low to the floor. A Browning P35, the exact make I’d requested from Stach when he told me his plan. My eyelids suddenly feel hot and heavy. He and Lukas must have worked out the details together before the building was set on fire.

Sweat trickles down my back. Stach... don’t go there now. I stroke the barrel of the gun with its sleek bluish-black finish, and exhale deeply. “Anna, is she all set?”

“Yes.” A man of few words, the driver is not wearing a hat tonight, so I can see him clearly in the rearview mirror. His forehead is wide and shiny, his nose straight and upturned, his square jaw is clean-shaven, and his reddish-blond hair has been trimmed neatly, cropped close to his head. No more little curls peeking out of a hat. He is attractive albeit in a stern dour way, like an unsmiling banker. It’s hard to tell if he’s thirty or forty. A Nazi turncoat. Who was he before he came here? What exactly does he do when he’s not moonlighting as a driver? How is he able to do this without getting caught? I raise a brow at him in the mirror. And when did he have time to get a haircut between the synagogue suicides and the ?egota bombing?

“What now?” I ask, putting the gun back inside the seat compartment as he wends his way through side streets. Up ahead, I see Café Ali Baba all lit up, and I recall the old days, that giddy feeling I’d get whenever I entered the theater district. I feel a tug in my chest, knowing I will never experience that again. Anna told me that the Nazis transformed the cabaret into a “gentleman’s club” filled with handpicked Polish beauties to entertain Nazi officers and their partners in genocide: upper-class Polish sympathizers.

Lukas points straight ahead. “That’s the target. Anna is already inside. Everything is in motion.” He parks in a semishaded area with a clear frontal view of the café and speaks to me through the rearview mirror. “Once you get inside, give her the coat, and immediately find a way to slip out the back door, which is near the bathroom. Timing is crucial.” His voice is frosty, no-nonsense, no level of camaraderie. His Polish is impeccable.

“Yes,” I tell him. “I went over all this with her.”

“This is my operation.” His slitty eyes expand, shooting darts almost childishly. Mine, not hers, mine.

For now, we wait. There is no curfew for Nazis. The club starts getting packed over the next hour. Lukas lights up a series of cigarettes but doesn’t offer me one. I dislike him—my first impression sticks—and focus on the three gleaming black vehicles now pulling up to the entrance with jarring oxblood-red Nazi pennants draped over the hoods. The Reich VIPs have arrived.

The security guards at the club’s entrance leap forward in sync to open the car doors for their superiors, and it’s almost comical. My breath halts when I see him exit the middle vehicle. Konrad Sobieski, the baron, dressed in white tie attire, throwing his head back with pompous laughter, joined by his collaborators, who have donned their Nazi finest for a late night of drink, business, and womanizing. Conquerors who steamrolled our country and make it a point to flaunt their robust victory everywhere they go.

“Fifteen minutes,” the driver mumbles.

Fifteen minutes. Like everything else on the Aryan side. Fifteen-minute slots determining life or death. I think about the dead girls in the synagogue basement. Their blanched faces and ghostly nightgowns, and Lilah, the brave sixteen-year-old leader who would rather die than submit to sexual torture. Suddenly, any hesitation about what I’m going to do and the potential danger looming dissolves like sugar in water, and everything inside me lengthens and strengthens.

“Go now,” the driver orders. “I will be here waiting. Walk slowly. Speak Polish and throw in German words, as though you’ve worked hard at practicing them. Smile, bat your eyes, make those guards at the door wish that it was them in your bed, not their superiors. Look like you belong.” He turns to face me, emitting one last two-toned stare, those unsettling pupils frozen in sync.

It’s the way he pauses, the thick lull in his breath, telling me what we both know to be true: I may look the part, but I will never belong.