Striking the Balance

He yanked open the aid kit he’d used to bandage the wounded old Jew. He had-he thought he had-five syringes, one for himself and each man in his panzer crew. If the SS had taken those out when they’d arrested him-If they’d done that, he was dead, and he wouldn’t be the only one.

But the blackshirts hadn’t They hadn’t thought to paw through the kit and see what was inside. He blessed them for their inefficiency.

He took out the syringes. “Antidote,” he told Ludmila. “Hold still.” All at once, speaking was an effort for him, too: the nerve gas was having its way. A few more minutes and he would have quietly keeled over and died, without ever figuring out why he was dead.

Ludmila, for a wonder, didn’t argue. Maybe she was having trouble talking and breathing, too. He jabbed the syringe into the meat other thigh, as he’d been trained, and pressed down on the plunger.

He grabbed another syringe. “You,” he told Anielewicz as he yanked off its protective cap. The Jewish fighting leader nodded. Jager hurried to inject him; he was starting to turn blue. If your lungs didn’t work and your heart didn’t work, that was what happened to you.

Jager threw down the second syringe. Its glass body shattered on the pavement He heard that, but had trouble seeing it. Working as much by touch as by sight, he got out another syringe and stabbed himself in the leg.

He felt as if he’d held a live electrical wire against his flesh. It wasn’t well-being that rushed through him; instead, he was being poisoned in a different way, one that fought the action of the nerve gas. His mouth went dry. His heart pounded so loud, he had no trouble hearing it. And the street, which had gone dim and faint as the nerve gas squeezed his pupils shut, all at once seemed blindingly bright. He blinked. Tears filled his eyes.

To escape the hideous glare, he ducked inside the factory. There, in real shadows, the light seemed more tolerable. Mordechai Anielewicz and Ludmila followed. “What was that stuff you shot us with?” the Jew asked, his voice a whisper.

“The antidote for nerve gas-that’s all I know,” Jager answered. “They issued it to us in case we had to cross areas we’d already saturated while we were fighting the Lizards-or in case the wind shifted when we didn’t expect it to. Skorzeny must have brought along gas grenades, or maybe just bottles full of gas, for all I know. Throw one in, let it break, give yourself a shot while you’re waiting, and then go in and do what you were going to do.”

Anielewicz looked down at the dead body of the sentry. “We have nerve gas now, too, you know,” he said. Jager nodded. Anielewicz scowled. “We’re going to have to be even more careful with it than we have been-and we’ve taken casualties from it.” Jager nodded again. With nerve gas, you couldn’t be too careful.

“Enough of this,” Ludmila said. “Where is the bomb, and how do we get to it and stop Skorzeny without getting killed ourselves?”

Those were good questions. Jager couldn’t have come up with better if he’d thought for a week, and he didn’t have a week to waste thinking. He glanced over to Anielewicz. If anybody had the answers, the Jewish fighting leader did.

Anielewicz pointed into the bowels of the building. “The bomb is there, less than a hundred meters away. See the opening there, behind the overturned desk? The path isn’t straight, but it’s clear. One of you, maybe both of you, should go down it. It’s the only way you’ll get there fast enough to be useful. Me, I set this place up. There’s another way to get to the bomb. I’ll take that-and we see what happens then.”

Jager was used to sending others out to create distractions for him to exploit. Now he and Ludmila were the distraction. He couldn’t argue with that, not when Anielewicz knew the ground and he didn’t. But he knew the people who created distractions were the ones likely to get expended when the shooting started. If his mouth hadn’t already been dry from the antidote, it would have gone that way.

Anielewicz didn’t wait for him and Ludmila to argue. Like any good commander, he took being obeyed for granted. Pointing one last time to the upside-down desk, he slipped away behind a pile of rubble.

“Stay in back of me,” Jager whispered to Ludmila.

“Chivalry is reactionary,” she said. “You have the better weapon. I should lead and draw fire.” In strictly military terms, she was right He’d never thought strictly military terms would apply to the woman he loved. But if he failed here out of love or chivalry or whatever you wanted to call it, he failed altogether. Reluctantly, he waved Ludmila ahead.

She didn’t see the motion, because she’d already started moving forward. He followed, close as he could. As Anielewicz had said, the path wound but was easy enough to use. With his pupils dilated by the nerve gas antidote, he could see exactly where to place each foot to make the least possible noise.