Upsetting the Balance

By way of reply, he got a laugh as discreet as the whisper had been. “You damn Jews are too damn smart, you know that?” the partisans’ point man answered. “Come on, though. You can’t hang around here. Sooner or later, they’ll spot you. I did.”

If Jerzy said staying around wasn’t safe, it probably wasn’t. Anielewicz scrambled up and out of his hidey-hole. “How’d you notice me, anyway?” he asked. “I didn’t think anybody could.”

“That’s just how,” the point man answered. “I looked around and I saw an excellent hiding place that didn’t look like it had anyone in it. I asked myself, who would be clever enough to take advantage of that kind of place? Your name popped into my head, and so-”

“I suppose I should be flattered,” Mordechai said. “You damn Poles are too damn smart, you know that?”

Jerzy stared at him, then laughed loud enough to alarm them both. “Let’s get out of here,” he said then, quietly once more. “We’ll head east, in the direction they’re coming from. Now that the main line of them is past, we shouldn’t have any trouble slipping away. They’re probably aiming to drive us against some other force they have waiting. That’s how the Nazis hunted partisans, anyhow.”

“We caught plenty of you Pole bastards, too,” someone behind them said in German. They both whirled. Friedrich sneered at them. “Poles and Jews talk too fucking much.”

“That’s because we have Germans to talk about,” Anielewicz retorted. He hated the arrogant way Friedrich stood there, feet planted on the ground as if he’d sprung from it, every line of his body proclaiming that he thought himself a lord of creation, just as if it had been the winter of 1941, with the Lizards nowhere to be seen and the Nazis bestriding Europe like a colossus and driving hard on Moscow.

The German glared at him. “You’ve got smart answers for everything, don’t you?” he said. Anielewicz tensed. A couple of more words to Friedrich and somebody was liable to die right there; he resolved he wouldn’t be the one. But then the Nazi went on, “Well, that’s just like a Jew. You’re right about one thing-we’d better get out of here. Come on.”

They headed east down a game track Mordechai never would have noticed for himself. Just as if they were raiding rather than running, Jerzy took the point and Friedrich the rear, leaving Anielewicz to move along in the middle, making enough noise to impersonate a large band of men.

Friedrich said, “This partisan business stinks.” Then he laughed softly. “Course, I don’t remember hunting you bastards was a whole lot of fun, either.”

“Hunting us bastards,” Mordechai corrected him. “Remember which side you’re on now.” Having someone along who’d been on both sides could be useful. Anielewicz had theoretical knowledge of how partisan hunters had operated. Friedrich had done it. If only he weren’t Friedrich…

Up ahead a few meters, Jerzy let out a hiss. “Hold up,” he said. “We’re coming to a road.”

Mordechai stopped. He didn’t hear Friedrich behind him, so he assumed Friedrich stopped, too. He wouldn’t have sworn to it, though; he hadn’t heard Friedrich when they were moving, either.

Jerzy said, “Come on up. I don’t see anything. We’ll cross one at a time.”

Anielewicz moved up to him as quietly as he could. Sure enough, Friedrich was right behind him. Jerzy peered cautiously from behind a birch, then sprinted across the rutted, muddy dirt road and dove into the brush there. Mordechai waited a few seconds to make sure nothing untoward happened, then made the same dash and dive himself. Somehow Jerzy had done it silently, but the plants he dove into rustled and crackled in the most alarming way. His pique at himself only got worse when Friedrich, who would have made two of him, also crossed without producing any noise.

Jerzy cast about for the game trail, found it, and headed east once more. He said, “We want to get as far away from the fighting as we can. I don’t know, but-”

“You feel it, too, eh?” Friedrich said. “Like somebody just walked over your grave? I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. What about you, Shmuel?”

“No, not this time,” Anielewicz admitted. He didn’t trust his own instincts, though, not here. In the ghetto, he’d had a fine-tuned sense of when trouble was coming. He didn’t have a feel for the forest, and he knew it.

“Something-” Jerzy muttered, just before the shooting started. The Lizards were ahead of them and off to one flank. At the first gunshot, Mordechai threw himself flat. He heard a grunt and a groan from in front of him. He groaned, too-Jerzy was hit.

In Lizard-accented Polish, a tremendously amplified voice roared, “You have been tracked since you crossed the road. Surrender or be killed. You cannot escape. We shall cease fire to allow you to surrender. If you do not, you will die.”