The One Man Read Online Free PDF

they could carry, until the train car grew tighter and more crowded than Alfred could ever have imagined.
    Then the door was slammed shut.
    There was only darkness at first. The only light from outside angled through narrow slits in the side door. There were a few whimpers in the pitch black, but then everyone just became silent. The kind of silence when no one has any idea what will happen next. There was barely room to move, to even adjust your arms, to breathe. The car smelled, the odor of eighty people jammed together in a space that should hold half that, many of whom hadn’t bathed in weeks.
    They stayed that way, listening to the shouts and cries from outside, until they heard a whistle and with a jerk the train began to move. Now people were whimpering, sobbing, praying. They stayed upright by leaning against each other in the dark. In a corner were two jugs, one filled with water—but hardly enough, given the number of them in the car. The other empty. Alfred realized what it was for.
    â€œWhere are they taking us, Alfred?” Marte asked under her breath as the railcars picked up speed.
    â€œI don’t know.” He sought out her and Lucy’s hands and clasped them tightly in his. “But at least we are together.”

 
    FOUR
    Gruppen führer Colonel Martin Franke stepped out on the tracks outside the detention center as the train pulled away. It was over. The Jews were all packed up and gone. The deception had come out and now there was no more recourse for them. All he’d had to do was dangle the bait long enough and he knew someone would grab it. These Jews would fight for a half-eaten piece of tripe off the ground even though it meant giving up one of their own. He watched as the last railcar chugged off to who knew where. Where they were heading, no passport or visa in the world would do them good anymore.
    â€œCaptain.” He nodded to the French police officer, whose men were now cleaning up all the mess in the courtyard, including the two or three stubborn ones who lay behind in pools of their own blood who they’d had to make a show of. “A job well done, Captain.” Now not a trace of those who had just boarded the train would even exist.
    â€œPermit me, Colonel…” The French officer bent down and picked up someone’s scattered ID papers from the ground. “But were they…?”
    â€œWere they what?” Franke looked at him. “Speak up.”
    â€œWere they, in fact, forged? The passports. Were they counterfeit?”
    Franke took the boot-smeared document from him. The Jew’s own kinsmen had probably stomped all over it in their haste to board. “What does it matter anyway?” The officer shrugged. “They were never going anywhere from the start.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Colonel…?”
    â€œSee that the rest of the documents are all accounted for. For our records,” Franke said without answering his question.
    â€œYes, Herr Gruppen führer.” The captain saluted and then went away.
    Franke pulled his heavy, gray officer’s coat closed against the cold. He’d traveled two days from Warsaw, and where was he? Not in Paris; not in some warm, crowded café with a bottle of old médoc and nuzzling at the tits of some loose French barmaid on his lap. No. But packing up a bunch of immaterial, frightened Jews in a prison in the middle of a fucking forest. There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t miss his old post. A year ago, he was part of the German attaché in Lisbon, a plum assignment, spending the war attending parties at the roof bar of the Mundial and sharpening his diplomatic skills. With any luck, he would have been chief attaché within a year, and from there, however the war resolved, there would be influence to trade: Bribes. Exit visas for sale. Artwork stolen from the walls of palaces and stuffed away.
    But his secretary, Lena, a piece of ass who