Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

I can picture her strolling up to the gate in high heels, waiting for the night-watchman to emerge, as I had told her he would. She would have had just a few moments to make her impression. She was not the blonde these Germans liked, but she was beautiful and her body, at least, was young. I can see him unlocking the gate, then stepping forward to give Rosa a proper looking-over. She would have probably let him grope a bit, just to close the deal, and as he touched and squeezed, she would have moved nearer, more intimate until he was so close she would only have had to push the blade a few inches forward to find his heart.

Then Manik would have run from his hiding place across the street, his shoes soft-soled and quiet, to help Rosa drag the dead body out of the way. Then they would have given the signal to the truck over the road. The vehicle was from the British Army transport pool, signed out by a friendly member of the Jewish Brigade, using forged papers. With its lights switched off, it drove through, Manik closing the gate after it.

That was when I headed for the drying room and, from there, to the outside loading area. By the time I was there, keeping the door open, they were all out of the truck, five of them, their faces blacked up with boot polish. With Manik and Rosa, it made seven. All were armed.

I guided them through the drying room until they were huddled around the far door that led into the bakery proper. Silently, Aron counted the group off then one, two, three – they burst through, shouting ‘Achtung!’ and training their guns on the half dozen bakers, my fellow workers, they found within.

I did not go inside, but watched through the glass window in the door. The bakers offered no resistance. They had been sitting around, either playing cards or finishing up for the night: they were in no position to fight against a gang of armed men. All of them raised their arms in the air, a group of Germans surrendering to a gang of Jews. It should have been a sweet moment but it had come at least three years too late.

Three of the group began to bind and gag the bakers, tying their ankles and wrists and finally tethering each of them to a pillar or table leg.

I saw our leader swivel around, looking for me. He needed me to show him where the supplies – the sugar, yeast and flour – were kept. I emerged, ready to point at the storeroom. I tried hard to avoid meeting the eye of the men tied up all around me, but I could not do it. I looked into each pair of eyes, most of them aghast with surprise, some ablaze with hatred. So, the little Polish boy betrayed us. They could say nothing, but they did not need to.

Aron and one other set about emptying the storeroom, taking turns to go back and forth between there and the loading area, filling up the truck that was waiting outside. They took their time, making sure this activity lasted as long as necessary.

I was back in the drying room. Once the bakers had all been restrained, I set about prising open each memorized floorboard, bringing out the concealed bottles of poison. Earlier I had brought in a set of metal mixing bowls, the biggest I could find. Rosa and I began filling them as fast as we could. The Frenchman had been right: the fluid was clear and smelled of nothing.

The other four in our group opened up their bags and pulled out the paintbrushes. The first dipped the bristles in one of the full metal bowls, letting them absorb the liquid. He looked at me, waiting for guidance. I showed him to the wheeled rack, gesturing at the top row and, methodically, he started painting on the poison, loaf by loaf.

Soon we had a rhythm, a veritable production line as Rosa and I ensured at least five bowls were full of poison at any one time, shuttling again and again to various hiding places under the floor for fresh supplies.

Every ten minutes or so, Aron passed through the drying room but he could not stop for long: he had to maintain the charade of loading up the truck with sacks of sugar and flour. He could not let the bakers, gagged and bound inside, know that anything was going on inside the drying room. For that reason, we worked in silence and only occasional whispers.

The day itself had dragged but these two hours – less, of course, by the time we actually started – flew by. We were sweating through it, each of us possessed by the same fierce desire: to poison as many of those loaves as we could in the time. I counted the racks we had done and I estimated we had painted arsenic onto about three thousand.

Then Aron joined us, gesturing at his watch. It was quarter to five; the American trucks would arrive in fifteen minutes. He urged us to pack up. I began putting the unused bottles of poison back in their hiding places under the floorboards. Of course they would be found eventually, but by then, with luck, it would be too late to matter.

I hid the last bottle and caught my hand on a spike sticking out of the floorboard I had been trying to replace. My hand began to bleed. I was pressing the board in, harder and harder, but it would not stick. And now a pool of blood was spreading.

‘Come on!’ Aron said in a loud whisper, glaring at me. It was three minutes to five. The trucks would be here any second. Yet I couldn't leave, not while blood and an uneven floorboard were calling out to be noticed, advertising the poison hidden below. If I at least removed the bottle, then, even if they looked, the Americans would find nothing. They would assume this was just damage caused by the intruders as they went about their business.

I looked around. Everyone else had gone, Rosa and the rest of the poison team were all outside, in the truck by the loading platform waiting to go. Only Aron remained, now looming over me. I was on my knees, trying to retrieve the hidden bottle. He looked as if he was about to knee me in the face, to knock me out and drag me into the truck.

But when he saw the blood and the stubborn floorboard he understood. He shoved me out of the way and, in a single jump, he let his entire weight land on the uneven plank of wood. Still, it would not settle. We now had less than two minutes.

He stepped out of the way and gestured for me to remove the poison. Once I had, he wheeled over one of the racks and placed it over the board and the bloodstain. There was nothing else we could do.

He then marched out, heading for the truck. I was behind him and was already outside, in the loading area, when I saw it – lying on one of the steel counters, too close to the loaves not to be suspicious. An oversized paintbrush, too large and crude to be used for glazing pastries. In all the haste to rinse out and hide the mixing bowls, clearing them of arsenic, as well as filling our bags with the empty bottles that had once contained poison, someone had forgotten the biggest and most obvious piece of equipment. I rushed back and grabbed it and when I turned around I saw our leader, now crouching with the others in the back of the truck, aiming his pistol at me.

I realized then that if I had taken even a second longer he would have shot me in the back. Any further delay caused by me would have been simply too costly: better to kill me and leave me on site. It would not even have looked suspicious. The apprentice boy killed in the course of an armed robbery on a bakery. That, after all, was our cover story.

The Americans would untie the workers and draw the obvious conclusion. Armed thieves had come to steal the sacks of flour and sugar and huge quantities of yeast they knew were held within, filling their truck with the hoard and making off just before the Americans arrived at dawn. It would be no great surprise. Foodstuffs and raw materials fetched a good price on the German black market of 1946. The workers, gasping for breath and nursing the welts on their wrists, would tell them all about it. ‘It was an inside job,’ the manager would say. ‘That little Polish bastard let them in.’