Undying Love Books 1 and 2 by Brian Hesse (best romance books of all time .txt) 📕

demeanor, like a wall finally giving away to the pressure of raging waters.

    Without changing his serene expression, Eldric grabbed Helen’s pinky finger and quickly snapped it back until her nail touched the back of her hand.

     “My God!” she screamed, falling to the bloodstained cement of the dimly lit drafty room. She rolled back and forth with her limp swollen finger in her mouth, like an infant on its back struggling to roll over and begin the first steps of crawling.

  Eldric watched patiently only breaking his stare to raise his left hand to cover his mouth as he yawned.

   After thirty minutes, as the pain receptors became flooded with endorphins, causing the pain to reduce to manageable interrogation levels, Eldric helped Helen to her chair with the paternal gentleness of a new Father holding his first-born child.

   “Now Helen. We can avoid any more pain today. I simply need you to tell me everything about Anastazja that you can remember. Oh, and it is imperative that you be honest, because you never know how much information I already have.”

    Helen wasted no time in telling Eldric about the brutal murder of Anastazja’s friend Sarah.

    “Hans Gruber could see that Sarah could barely stand in the work line, stated Helen, through loud sobs and sniffling. “Sarah could not stand and Hans Gruber spotted her as he inspected the workers that morning. He grabbed Sarah and shot her in the head. Anastazja watched as Sarah twitched in a pool of her own blood.”

  “Go on. Tell me more dear,” commanded Eldric.

  “Some time later, her friend Ann was caught talking to Anastazja in line. He grabbed Anne, and beat her to death in the very same spot he killed Sarah. Anastazja swore that she would kill him.”

   “Tell me more. I know there is more. If you don’t, I will break your other fingers one by one.”

  This threat was more than enough to keep her talking. The only other conversation concerned her lover, Aleksander. “She said that her lover, Aleksander was his name, fought also during the battle of Warsaw. She said that she did not know if he was dead or alive, but that perhaps he was taken to the Warsaw ghetto.”

   This was all that he needed to know. Eldric suppressed his growing excitement as he considered how he expected to receive no useful information during his Lodz visit. To his amusement, he learned that Aleksander fought during the defense of Warsaw. Polish Army soldiers were either sent to Lodz or Warsaw ghettos. He also deduced that if he was sent to Auschwitz, he must have been identified as a Jew, since Polish prisoners were not being sent to Auschwitz.

   “Now how did you manage to impersonate a Jew, and stay hidden in the Jewish barracks designated for Auschwitz”, he stated under his breath as he walked out of the interrogation room into the dark hall. “I’m willing to bet you had some help.”

    “Major, what shall I do with the woman and these other two?” asked a young SS Lieutenant, as Eldric passed by his post.

     “I don’t care Lieutenant, he stated, with genuine cold indifference. I’m finished with them.”

    As Eldric walked up the cellar stairs shielding his eyes from the blinding morning light, he barely noticed the three gunshots echoing in the darkness of the cellar behind him.

One Step Closer

  Eldric reached the entrance of the Warsaw ghetto the next morning to speak with SS Brigadefuhrer, Klause Hoffman. The Brigadier General was not like Lieutenant Fritz of the Lodz ghetto. Eldric felt his characteristic unease while in the presence of men like Klause. It was not his rank that intimidated Eldric, it was his immense presence. With a full head of silver grey hair and piercing grey blue eyes to match, he was apparently not a man to cross.

  “Yes, yes, Heil Hitler, barked Klause, as Eldric walked into the spacious and orderly office of building number five, just outside the walled gates of Warsaw.

  By October 1942, the Warsaw ghetto was still overflowing with prisoners, despite the horrific casualties of typhus, starvation, and increased deportations to forced labor camps, and death centers across Poland. Slave laborers were also being deported to the heart of Germany to replace German workers sent to the Russian front, a clear sign that Germany was experiencing terrible losses in the Russian campaign.

   “I already know why you are here Major. I know of the escape of this Jew, Aleksander Walczak. Now listen Major, I am the commanding officer here. I am responsible for the happiness of my guards. Unlike many of my stuck up Prussian left overs from a time long passed, I see my noncommissioned officers as my most valuable resource. Do you get me/”

    Eldric did understand. This man had connections throughout the Wehrmacht, and required handling with those proverbial kids gloves.”

    Eldric considered the fragile relationship between the SS and the regular Army. His desk in Berlin was once piled with reports of this Army officer, or that Army officer, voicing his descent with SS behavior behind the lines. The Russian invasion, under the name Operation Barbarossa, only increased such reports. Regular Wehrmacht officers were horrified at the mass executions of civilians. To them, death was of varying degrees. At the top rung of the ladder was the intimate dance of killing and dying among armed combatants. This was a noble, acceptable, action. Moving closer to the bottom killing becomes less acceptable, almost taboo. Killing unarmed women and children was not acceptable to most regular career Army officers.

   The difficult job of cleansing Germany of imagined internal enemies, was a job only for Himmler’s SS elite.

   So, he answered accordingly, always adapting to the situation like how a chameleon so successfully employs in nature. “Yes sir, I understand the sensitivity of the situation. I only need to talk to the guard on duty the night before the transport of worker Jews to Auschwitz. If he is still one of your men here.”

  “That will be Sergeant Hermann Kline, and he is being brought to my office as we speak.”

   Eldric admired this man’s cunning, as much as he was capable of admiration for another. The General was exercising his prerogative to be present at the interrogation. Eldric had no intention of torturing a German soldier. Before a German soldier could be physically interrogated, he must undergo the transformation from soldier to civilian through court martial. Hermann was untouchable as long as he was still a soldier.

 This will require a more psychological approach, thought Eldric, as the young Sergeant entered the room and took his place in the chair in front of the Generals desk.

   “Hello Sergeant. My name is Eldric Richter of the Reich Security Office.”

            Eldric watched for any sign that his credentials would have a positive effect on the interrogation. To his satisfaction, he watched as the naturally rose color of the young man’s cheeks became a pale white-but only for a few moments.

            “Eldric continued, “You were on guard the night of the escape. Did you hear, or see anything?”

            “No sir, it was a typical night, no different from any other.” The boy hesitated then added, I did stop for an extra smoke behind the clothing shed, building number seven, for this I am guilty.”

            Eldric thought, excellent, I have you now poor man.

            “When did you hear of the escape?”

“I didn’t hear of the escape until a month later. But nobody could pinpoint the night it happened.”

            “I see.” Eldric moved closer to the boy’s face, to cause his natural bodily processes to knock the young man off balance. Eldric could see the boy slightly shake under his uniform as the adrenaline was released into his blood. He could see the blood drain slightly from his face, pooling to the extremities in response to the increased stress.

    “So, when I asked you about your activities during the night of the escape. How did you know I was talking about that particular night you stopped to have an uncharacteristic smoke?”

   “You better tell the Major everything young man,” commanded the General, now covering his face with his large hands. He knew that he could do no more for his guard. Like a Father helplessly listening to a death sentence imposed legally by the courts on his only son, he remained silent in a state of depressed acceptance.

     “I caught Aleksander scaling the wall with a homemade ladder. The ladder was caked with mud and filth from, I imagine, broken piping under the latrines. He must have hidden the ladder there. We recognized each other from the University of Warsaw. I slipped him into the workers barracks, slated for transport to Auschwitz. He dawned the Jewish star and passed himself off as a Jew. I cannot tell anything more.”

     “I am done here General. I am sending a report immediately to the Reichsfuhrer office in Berlin. Good day.”

    Eldric left the Generals office knowing that the young soldier will surely face court martial, and possible firing squad for his act of kindness. His act of weakness, thought Eldric, without feeling the slightest emotion.

A Network of Friends

  Aleksander and Anastazja prepared to move from their location the next morning. He packed whatever food they had stored in an old handkerchief, still stained with the ashes of the red house victims. He tightly squeezed his eyes closed as if this physical gesture could wipe away the memories of his actions at Auschwitz. At night, Anastazja would lie awake feeling his muscles twitch and strain under sweat soaked flesh. She never mentioned the nightly sweat soaked nocturnal spasms to him the next morning. She believed that the soul has its own way of expelling pain and trauma, like the skin pushing a deeply imbedded splinter out of the body before the onset of infection. She also knew, that sometimes, the splinter is too deep and infection of the blood is sometimes inevitable. She hoped and prayed that he could push away the memories of the camp before his soul became infected.

   Aleksander looked at the soot colored stains of the handkerchief, and frantically covered the stains with the moldy bread, dried beef, and three potatoes, generously given by the Kowalski family. He remembered being forced under threat of death to build the camps first airtight gas chamber. He felt a wave of nausea assault his stomach as he relived the first day of dragging corpse of Mothers holding their children, slick with their own excrement and sweat, out of the back of the chamber. He could still taste the Zyklon B pesticide gas in his throat, the gas used to kill eight hundred innocent human beings in one killing session.

    Seeing his torment, Anastazja walked cautiously to him, as if he were a sleepwalker, not too be startled awake by a rough touch. She wrapped her arms around him gently and said, “one day, when you’re ready, you can tell me all about what happened at the camp.”

   Before he could reply, Fabian Kowalski entered the barn. Fabian owned a farm just a few miles from the area. He is a Polish farmer, struggling to feed his family under the iron fist of the Nazi occupation. Not all Poles were sent to forced labor camps. Many farmers kept their farms, and worked their crops, forced to feed the German war effort. Most of Fabian’s crops went to Auschwitz to feed the SS and Ukrainian guards after a hard work day of mass murder. The camp inmates, received the left-over bits scraped from the bottom of the pots. Fabian hated the invaders and, although never discussed openly, was a member of a local partisan group known to stockpile weapons, sabotage German supply lines, and help escaping Jews flee certain death at the hands of the SS.

 “Hello, my two runaways,” stated Fabian, smiling his