Traitor Page 10

  14

  “What did she give you?” Mykola asked.

  I gave him the calling card wordlessly. He spent a moment puzzling it over, sounding out each gilded character softly to himself. He could read Polish, but not well.

  “M-a-r-k-o—”

  “Marka,” I said. “Marka Street, number twenty.” It was in the Halickie District, not far from the Citadel—the moneyed part of town. I could have told him it was in Halickie before I’d opened my fingers to read it, just from those pearls she was wearing.

  Mykola handed the card back. “She gave me chocolate,” he said, sounding pleased that he’d gotten the better deal.

  Andriy trailed behind, his head down, walking carefully, as though he were stepping a waltz—left, right, drag—so that he never trod on the grooves between the paving stones. He was hugging himself tightly around the ribs, but he’d stopped shivering.

  “You don’t have an uncle in Kraków,” he said.

  It was the first time he’d spoken since the alley doorstep.

  “Not as such,” I said.

  He scuffled his feet over the paving stones.

  “Are we going to Kraków?”

  “No,” I said.

  Away from the Brygidki, the streets were quiet enough that you could hear the low rumble of German artillery fire rolling down from the western hills—low, but louder than yesterday. Fifteen kilometers, maybe. Infantry would be closer.

  There were shutters over the windows at Altshuler’s pharmacy. There was a cardboard sign on the door, so new the paint still looked wet: CLOSED FOR SABBATH.

  The Reds were gone. There was nothing to fear.

  I left Mykola and Andriy down an alley with the gun while I went across the street to the Polish-owned pharmacy, Nowak’s. I practiced the Polish under my breath all the way up to the counter. Witamina D was nearly the same as the Ukrainian. Calcium was wapń. I remembered that from the Deming table of elements on the wall in the lecture hall at the polytechnic.

  The words were easy enough.

  There was a lone clerk, a reedy student type, reading a newspaper behind the counter—one of the smeary Polish underground papers, the Information Bulletin. He folded it away just as I caught the headline: Inna Twarz, Ta Sama Walka.

  Different Face, Same Fight.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  I had the advantage of being taller. There’s something confidence inspiring about being able to look down at people.

  “I need vitamin supplements,” I announced. “Calcium and vitamin D.”

  He didn’t show any sign of noticing my accent—no blinking, no recoiling, no curling of the lip—but neither did he show any sign of caring that I was every bit of 1.9 meters and needed vitamin supplements.

  “Have the prescription?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it.

  “A doctor’s order,” he prompted.

  I parried weakly. “For vitamin supplements?”

  “For anything. Store policy.” He moved his newspaper so I could see the notice taped on the countertop.

  “Give him the vitamins, Janek,” the dark-haired nurse said in Polish, shutting the street door. “I’ll write him a prescription. He’s Renata’s patient.”

  “And I’m the one who’s going to get chewed out for it,” Janek said, but he disappeared into the back.

  The dark-haired nurse slid in beside me at the counter, taking a prescription pad from her pocket. She reached across me for the pen by the cash register.

  “That was quick,” she said.

  She said it in Ukrainian. Janek was still within earshot. I could hear him rummaging around in the back.

  She must have seen the look on my face. “You don’t have to be afraid,” she said. “Not here.”

  I leaned casually on my elbows on the countertop, to show her how not afraid I was. “What was quick?”

  “Changing your mind about Kraków.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Because you were never really going to Kraków.” She didn’t look up from her writing. “You’re not as clever as you think you are.”

  “Who says I think I’m clever?”

  “Full name,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I need your full name.”

  “It’s not for me.”

  “I’m writing one for each of you. Full name.”

  “Aleksey Yevhenovych Shevchuk,” I said. That was the name on my fake Soviet passport. There were enough Shevchuks in Lwów that it was safely anonymous.

  “And Mykola Yevhenovych Shevchuk.” She wrote in Latin letters, in a pretty, swooping hand. “And the other boy?”

  “Andriy Andriyovych Proskurivskyi.” Andriy, Andriy’s son, of Proskuriv. Easy enough.

  She tore off the forms and handed them to me. “Take these with you. You can fill in the dates as you need.”

  “That was just your ploy to get my name, wasn’t it?”

  “Not as clever as you think you are,” she said, starting on another form.

  “It got me your name, Anna Kostyshyn,” I said.

  “Good to know you can read,” she said.

  I tucked the forms into my coat pocket. I took out my wad of Reichsmarks and slid it under her hand.

  She paused midstroke, lifting her wrist to look. Then, deliberately, she moved her hand away and laid the pen down.

  “We seem to have misjudged each other,” she said coldly.

  “It’s all I’ve got. I’m sorry.”

  “Where did you get it? Your friends up there at the Brygidki?”

  “They’re not my friends.”

  “Strictly business?”

  “Strictly nothing. I’m not with them.”

  “Not since you realized you needed our help?”

  “We’re good capitalists. Money is money,” I said.

  Her shoulders were straight, her chin up. “Not to me.”

  “Never been on the street, have you?”

  “That’s not an excuse.”

  “Because you’ve never been on the street.”

  “Because I have principles.”

  “All right,” I said, “so how long is the waiting period for principled people? How long did you wait before you started touching rubles? Or maybe you’re interested in other methods of payment, if you know what I mean. I’m willing if you are.”

  She slapped me.

  She put some muscle into it too. I’m pretty sure I would have gone flying if I hadn’t had the counter to catch me.

  Her face was flushed—little blossoms of red on each cheek. She smoothed her apron with stiff, careful dignity.

  “Get out,” she said.

  I shoved the money back into my coat and tossed her prescription forms onto the countertop. My jaw was smarting. My left ear was ringing like a church bell.

  “I don’t need your help,” I said, “yours or your Polish friends’”—loudly, just in case Janek could understand Ukrainian.

  “Get out,” she snapped.

  My pride lasted me out the door and across the street. Once I was safe in the half-light of the alley, I kicked the wall and swore until I’d exhausted my supply of invectives in Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian. Andriy and Mykola watched from a safe distance—Andriy owlishly, his mouth open, Mykola through half-lidded eyes, with the beatific expression of a saint.

  “No medicine for you, chachoł,” he said when I limped over.

  “Not for Nazi money, that’s for sure.”

  “Now we start selling our bodies,” he said.

  “Surprisingly ineffective.” In hindsight, I’d deserved that slap. Honestly, I was lucky she hadn’t decked me. She could have—no doubt about it. “Just let me think.”

  The obvious thing would be to take advantage of the fact that Altshuler’s was closed. I’d stolen before, of course, when I’d needed to. It was easy to justify stealing from Poles and Reds. They were the ones who’d created the need in the first place. Repayment in kind—God would unde
rstand and forgive. But this was different. I had nothing against Altshuler. If anything, I owed him. He’d given us Mama’s medicine on credit all that winter before she died.

  I could leave money and a note. It still meant breaking in, and there was no guarantee the money would be there when the old man opened up again. But my conscience would be clearer.

  “I can get the medicine,” Andriy said.

  I looked at him too sharply. He shrank back, hugging his knees.

  “I mean I know how to get it,” he said in a smaller voice.

  “For Nazi money?”

  “They won’t care,” he said.

  “Good capitalists,” I said sourly. “Very reassuring.”

  15

  Evidently, good capitalists were to be found in an apartment block across the train tracks on Żółkiewska Street, not all that far from our own place in Zamarstynów. We waited in the lobby, Mykola and I, while Andriy conducted business up in one of the flats—not ideal, but necessary. They knew Andriy. They didn’t know us.

  “These aren’t Strilka’s people?” I ventured casually, just to make sure.

  “I’m not an idiot,” Andriy said.

  He looked so hurt that I felt guilty for asking. I gave him the money. He counted out ten marks with careful fingers and handed the rest back to me.

  “They’ll search me,” he said. “Never let them know everything you’ve got.” He smiled at me shyly.

  No, he wasn’t an idiot.

  He gave me the knife from his boot lining. He wouldn’t take the gun. I wished he would. Good capitalists might see a chance to make ten marks at no loss.

  He was gone for a long time. There weren’t any chairs in the lobby. Mykola stood gravely studying the buzzer panel, hands clasped behind his back. I wasn’t going to bother trying to look inconspicuous. What was the point? I didn’t have any way to hide the gun. Anybody who saw us would know we weren’t just a couple of innocent loiterers. I sat against the wall and took the opportunity to close my eyes. I hadn’t done that in a while.

  “Aleks,” Mykola said.

  “Mm?”

  “You don’t have to lie to me.”

  “Mm.”

  “Or pretend to be stupid about it.”

  “I never have to pretend to be stupid.” I was only half listening. “What are we talking about?”

  He was silent for so long that I opened an eye to make sure he was still there. He was scowling at the buzzer panel, obviously fighting some battle with himself. His hands were clasped very tightly.

  “Am I going to die?” he said.

  Oh.

  “We’re all going to die,” I said. “God’s truth.”

  “I mean she told you I’m going to die.”

  He’d been holding this in since the Brygidki. I should have realized.

  “She told me you don’t eat enough. No surprises there.”

  “She wanted me to go to the hospital.”

  “You don’t need to go to the hospital.”

  “She said—”

  “She said you need vitamin supplements. We’re getting you vitamin supplements. You’re not going to die, Mykola.”

  “She said I should go.”

  “You know why you can’t go,” I said.

  “Because she was Polish?”

  “Because you don’t have identification, idiot.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I burned all my Red papers.”

  “It’s too risky. You’d let something slip, or I’d let something slip.”

  “It’s not like I sing the ‘March of Ukrainian Nationalists’ in my sleep.”

  “Think about it. Why can’t you read Polish? Somebody would start putting things together.”

  “So?”

  “So they give you to the Poles. The Poles put a gun to your head and tell the UPA they want the names and whereabouts of every cell leader in Lwów, or else.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care about the UPA.”

  “The problem is the UPA don’t care about you. They’d let the Poles blow your brains out.”

  He didn’t say anything. He scowled at the buzzer panel.

  “Mykola,” I said.

  He flung me a sullen glance.

  “If you needed the hospital, I’d take you to the hospital. All right? I’m not going to let you die.”

  He shrugged again.

  “Papa let Mama die,” he said.

  I knew better than to try debating that just then.

  “Well, I’m not Papa,” I said.

  Andriy came back down the stairs. He was empty-handed. I pretended not to notice.

  “Any luck?” I asked. Mykola watched hollowly from the buzzer panel.

  “Tomorrow,” Andriy said.

  I gave him his knife. My stomach was tight. “We come back tomorrow?” I didn’t want to spend another night in Lwów. At this rate, there could be German infantry in the city streets by morning.

  Andriy knelt to stick the knife back in his boot. His hands, I noticed, were trembling again, fumbling nervously at his boot laces. He’d seemed almost confident on his way up the stairs—in his element. Something up there had shaken him.

  “Andriy,” I said.

  He didn’t look up. “They want ten more marks.”

  Did he think I’d be angry about the money? I knew how black-market bartering worked. Honestly, I was surprised they weren’t asking for more. I’d fully anticipated having to use all thirty marks and throw in my boots and possibly Andriy’s wristwatch on the side.

  “We can do ten more marks,” I said. “We’re just going to have to find some place where we can lie low until tomorrow.”

  He was still fidgeting blindly with his boot laces.

  “Andriy,” I said, “it’s all right.”

  “There’s an order out for you.” He looked up finally. “It’s all over the city. Two thousand marks for your capture. Commander Shukhevych signed it himself.”

  16

  There were plenty of places to hide in Lwów. The trick was finding someplace that I knew and the Nachtigallen didn’t. Andriy didn’t seem to think Commander Shukhevych was in the city yet—he would come in with the Germans, he and the main body of the Nachtigallen—but we still had the immediate problem of Marko and his advance party and the fact that their communiqués seemed to be covering a lot more ground a lot faster than we were.

  “Is he from Lwów?” I asked Andriy. “Marko?”

  He seemed puzzled by the question. “No, from Radziechów.”

  “What about the others? Anybody besides you?”

  He shook his head. “Most of them are from the General Government.”

  He meant the part of Poland under German occupation, not Soviet.

  “Would Marko know the sewer tunnels?” I asked.

  A century ago—back when Poland was still under Hapsburg rule—they walled in Lwów’s river, the Pełtew, and built right over it. The main channel ran for several kilometers, south to north beneath the city center, on an exact line with the grand boulevard. The sewer system fed into the channel. You could move all around Lwów through those tunnels, provided you had a good head for direction and could stand the mud and the stink and the faintly disconcerting sensation that you’d been buried alive. None of the tunnels were much wider than a good armspan.

  Andriy was scowling, still puzzled. “Commander Shukhevych might know about them.”

  “But Marko wouldn’t necessarily, unless somebody had specifically told him.”

  Another slow shake of the head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  The tunnels were as good a place as any—or as good a place as I was going to think of until I’d had some sleep anyway. But I made Mykola and Andriy wait above while I went down the Pełtewna Street drain with the rifle and the box of matches from Mykola’s pack and had a look around. I wasn’t worried so much about the Nachtigallen and the price on my head right then as I was worried about the ordinary scum—thieves, smugglers.

  We were
pretty far from the city center here, and it wasn’t bad in the tunnel, just dark and damp. The quiet was welcome. We sat on the narrow concrete shelf above the water and shared around the last of the dumplings and sausages in the thin light of our grease lamp, the battered tin one we used to take with us when we went camping with Grandfather in the hills above Brzuchowice. Afterward, Mykola carefully divided up his chocolate bar into three exactly equal pieces and handed one piece to Andriy, one to me.

  “So what’s the plan?” he said calmly.

  He didn’t have to say a word about the lobby. I knew this was his apology.

  “Istanbul,” I said.

  He looked up. “Istanbul?”

  “Istanbul.”

  He broke his chocolate into even smaller pieces and laid each piece on his tongue one at a time, making it last.

  “Overland?” he said finally.

  “Or you give me to the Nachtigallen and buy your passage on a ship with your two thousand marks.”

  “If we gave you to the Nachtigallen,” he said, placing his last piece of chocolate on his tongue and shutting his eyes in an exaggerated show of savoring it, “we wouldn’t need to go to Istanbul in the first place.”

  He was joking the same as I was, but it was uncomfortable being reminded that this was all my fault. Andriy didn’t think it was funny anyway. He picked at his chocolate in silence, not looking at either of us.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. If we made good time, it would take us two months. We would be living off the land the whole way—and by living off the land I meant scavenging, because we wouldn’t have much chance to get more ammunition for the rifle. We’d have good weather—even moving on the slower side of my estimations, we’d be out of the mountains by August and across the Turkish border by September—and we’d have the advantage of being far behind the front. Romania and Bulgaria were both staunch German allies, therefore unoccupied. But two months in the Carpathian wilderness was still two months in the Carpathian wilderness, never mind weather and the war.

  Anyway, the front didn’t matter to the UPA. If they wanted me dead badly enough, they could reach me anywhere. There were UPA cells as far away as America.

  I didn’t say that aloud. No need—Mykola and Andriy knew it as well as I did.