Chapter Twenty-Six

LUKAS THE DRIVER. The man who helped me give the young girls cyanide, who supplied the dynamite to blow up the Nazi nightclub, who allegedly was Stach’s lover, is now surrounded by reinforcements. I look around at the half dozen Nazi soldiers accompanied by two cameramen filming the moment. Surprise. The ?egota mole has revealed himself.

Various gazes ricochet around the room, from our side and theirs, all converging in my direction. Lukas and I regard each other, the moment of reckoning palpable between us. I see his true intentions reflected in his icy two-toned potent glare: He means to kill me. And more than that. He plans to enjoy it.

I keep my face blank using every theatrical skill I possess, refusing to give him the satisfaction, as his soldiers aim their rifles at us, demanding we immediately drop our weapons. I watch the slow release of our precious guns as they hit the floor—tak, tak, tak—and are swiftly scooped up by the nearest Nazi and placed in a pile.

Lukas salutes the room with a taut, exaggerated Heil Hitler, a victor’s joust, then turns to me with a weak smile. “Irina? Not dressed as the maid or the whore this time? No, dressed as a Jew.” He laughs, a sound so cutting that it could slit a throat. “Bina Blonski—that’s what he called you. Remember? The baron, the man who ordered his own son’s death, only to be murdered by his daughter.” He lets that revelation sink in around the room. “Just like in one of your beloved Shakespeare plays.”

Lukas’s mawkish laughter is echoed by his lackeys and the surrounding cameramen. I don’t move a muscle. My head spins, my stomach cleaves. It’s out there now. The Nazi’s daughter. Everyone in the room is frozen in disbelief, terrified of what comes next. All eyes are on me. Jakub. Aleksander. I have explaining to do.

“You’re wondering how I found you?” Lukas stares me down. “I offered one of your own policemen fifty zlotys and a loaf of bread, and he led me right here.” His thin-lipped smile is chilling, and I feel myself withdrawing into my body. “And then I shot him dead.”

Lukas waves his burnished Luger high in the air, like a black kite. He pauses for a second when he sees Sammy’s small, limp feet sticking out from the coat, bleeding out onto the floor around him. He walks past the dead child without flinching. “You know, I’ve been waiting for this exact moment, Bina/Irina—waiting to see the expression on your face when I found you, and it doesn’t even come close to how I imagined it.” He places his hand on his heart. “It’s so much better.”

The smile vanishes and he points to the ceiling with his gun. The rapid fire of a machine gun above us is still going at it. Zelda solo-soldiering on the rooftop at the last Nazi stragglers. If only she could aim down into this room. “We will deal with that situation in a minute. Tie everyone up,” he orders his men. “Except for her. She’s mine.” I feel the small knife Zelda gave me yesterday pressing against the sock in my boot. That’s all I’ve got as backup. A pocketknife—a slingshot against swords. Not enough to save us.

“Leave them alone,” I beg Lukas. “Take me. I’m who you came for.”

“You really are such a good actress.” He signals to the cinematographer. “Did I mention that I’m a filmmaker by trade? Make sure you get a close-up of her face. Just like that: the angst, the fear, the terror of what comes next. You can see her racing heart inside her eyes. Capture that.”

He turns his attention to Jakub. “And you must be the husband. I heard you escaped from Treblinka, with help. Johann Haas, was it? Funny, how you survived, and he didn’t.” He makes a loud clucking sound with his tongue, winks at me, and the rage erupting throughout my body is now apparent on my face.

Spurred on, Lukas slowly, dramatically pulls out papers from his uniform’s inner pocket while the cameramen film it all. My heart drops. I recognize the slightly crumpled papers immediately. Jakub’s manuscript... words I wrote on the back of several of his pages because it was the only paper I could find when I was alone in the apartment for days. The rest of the manuscript is hidden inside the suitcase I had given to Anna. My breath begins to shudder. I must have left those pages on the shelf with the supplies. They must have found them when they ransacked the apartment. How could I have been so careless, so stupid? God, if you exist, please end this now. Kill me before he reads those words aloud.

“No,” I plead, trying to divert Lukas’s attention. “Stop.”

But he ignores me, emboldened by my reaction. “Irina, you are not only a stellar actress but also an exemplary writer of pornography.” He glances at Aleksander. “I couldn’t have planned this any better if I had written the damn script myself. All of you in one room. Who knew? So perfect. You, husband!” he shouts at Jakub with an ugly twist to his mouth. “Did you know that your wife slept with your brother?”

Aleksander’s face goes chalk white as Jakub’s round eyes expand into discs—cartoonishly large on his bald head. No, no, no. Please stop. Jakub looks from me to Aleksander, back to me. His chin trembles, his eyes protrude even farther, then his face falls so hard that I can’t breathe. Shoot me now, goddamn it.

I lunge toward Lukas, but a nearby Nazi is quicker and holds me back.

“The evidence is all right here.” Lukas lifts the page in front of Jakub’s face, so that Jakub can see his own handwriting on the back—his opus, the manuscript I was supposed to safeguard and deliver to the outside world but failed to do. I stare at the floor. I can’t look at Jakub or anyone in the room as Lukas begins to recite the intimate details of the night I spent with Aleksander, using my own words.

I begin to see spots as Lukas exaggerates each lewd detail with intense inflection in his voice. The washing of my body, the touching, the stroking, the sucking, the embracing, the lovemaking, the afterward. Every single exact detail I jotted down so I wouldn’t forget anything. Once needed to last me forever. And now once will destroy me and the two men I love.

“Enough!” I beg and scream, dropping to my knees, but nothing comes out, just hollow air. My voice is lost in the recesses of horrors that can no longer be categorized, and instead expand and contract into a kaleidoscope of shady fragments fighting for space in my mind.

“A close-up on the husband right now,” Lukas commands the young cameraman nearest him. “Who needs Nazis when Jews betray one another so beautifully.” He drops the papers onto the floor in front of Jakub. “Don’t feel bad, it even made me blush.”

Lukas hovers over me. “Here’s what’s going to happen. As my comrades take down this silly little revolt, I’m going to give you a choice, just as you gave those stupid little Jewish girls a choice in the synagogue. Oh, and that little Jewess you tried to save... Dina, was it?” He shakes his head, purses his lips. “You’ll never know what happened to her, will you?”

My heart sinks even further. Eryk. Thank God he’s not here. I want to die. Please let me die. I want to throw myself onto the pointed guns surrounding me, but I can’t move. My arms are locked behind me. This demon wants me to see it all.

“Like I said, so much effort on your part, the whole synagogue charade. Truly impressive,” Lukas continues. “I’m going to give you a choice now, Bina/Irina.” He spits out my name, signals again to his sidekick cameraman. “Zoom in. Now, choose...” Lukas turns away from me and aims his gun first at Jakub, then at Aleksander, then back and forth as if he were holding a tennis racquet. “Who will live and who will die? Your husband or your lover?”

“Take me!” I scream.

“Don’t worry, I will eventually take it all. But for now, you must choose,” he shouts over the gunfire resuming outside the building. “Choose, damn it!”

“Me,” Aleksander cries out, begs. “Shoot me.”

“Perfect.” And with that, Lukas comes around me, pushes his way between his guards, grabs my fingers, forcibly curls them around the trigger of his gun, aims at Aleksander, then fakes a shot and shoots Jakub squarely in the chest.

“No!” Aleksander yells with a scream that isn’t human, as Jakub clutches his chest and falls backward to the floor from the impact. No cry, no blame, just a hard thud. My head spins, I can’t breathe. My brilliant husband’s life is reduced to a dull, heavy sound.

“Jakub!” I cry out, thrashing wildly, trying desperately to pull away from this evil man’s grip. He signals for assistance. It takes another two guards to hold me down, as one cameraman hovers over me, his face blocked by the large camera, zeroing in on my agony.

Lukas eyes me with an approving half smile, then turns and shoots Aleksander in the leg. I scream again and again, until my voice becomes an elongated shrill, like the piercing wail of a shofar on the High Holy Days. “That was for insurance,” he tells Aleksander, then points his gun back at me. “I’m coming back for you and for him, for information on the organizers behind all this.”

He looks to his men, gestures to the ceiling, where Zelda is still shooting like a wild banshee. “That crazy bitch on the rooftop is quite good,” he says. “You should see the film I’ve taken of her in action from down below. Running in circles tied to a pole like a spinning top shooting at us. It’s hilarious. I’ve never seen anything like it. They will love it in Berlin.”

He walks over to Aleksander, who is tied up and slumped against the wall, his face perspiring profusely, using his good leg to put pressure over the bullet wound in the other leg. “You not only fucked your husband’s wife, but also the daughter of a Nazi.” He gestures to me and leaves his finger suspended in the air. “Yes, Konrad Sobieski is the same man who ordered your house to be razed to the ground, killing your wife and child. I do my homework. That’s Bina’s real father. So much drama in one family. There’s nothing I love more than a great script.”

Silent tears roll down Aleksander’s face, and it’s excruciating. I can’t look at him and I can’t look away. One by one, like dominoes, Lukas is taking down everyone I love. And there is nothing I can do to stop him.

He signals to the cameraman. “Her face right now. Capture it. It’s exquisite.”

“By the way...” He bends down so that he is at eye level with me. “I’m not only a filmmaker, but I am charged with capturing the highlights of our winning war. My specialty is infiltrating opposition parties like ?egota—filming the takedown, documenting our victories, state by state, country by country, for our national archives.”

His cruel face blurs. I try to look past him, but his tormenting voice is still going at it, buzzing with venom. “And you probably are wondering why I allowed the Nazi nightclub bombing. That, too, was part of a bigger plan. Every single member at the club that night was invited personally by Jürgen Stroop, under my advisement. All the invited guests had one thing in common: Traitors. Liars. Dissidents. Those based in Warsaw who did not represent the Aryan ideal.” He winks, indicating his men don’t know about his sexual preference. “And it was time to do away with those who thought too much of themselves, like that pompous baron—Daddy.”

He sneers, and it’s as though his mouth is being slowly unzipped. He then motions two of his officers to stay with us and signals the others to join him. “Do not let her out of your sight. Now, let’s go take down the Jew bitch going berserk on the rooftop.”