OŚWIĘCIM
By Gabrielle Lawson
Thomas tightened the belt of her coat and checked the chronometer. It was nearly time. She was glad that Chief O'Brien had left her some access to the computer's historical database. He had pulled power from nearly every other unessential system to get the sensors working again. He left two terminals open for the database. One for her and Lieutenant Commander Dax, the other for Lieutenant Novak. The costumes were not particularly hard. SS uniforms would have been more complicated, but they had chosen Gestapo. And besides, it was winter. They'd all be wearing coats. Thomas had been more concerned with the hair. She knew what styles were popular with American women at this time, but she wasn't so certain about Germans. The computer helped to fill in this information. Both she and Dax finally decided on severe buns. Gestapo agents probably wouldn't be concerned with fashion.
"You ready?" Dax asked. She checked her comm badge to make sure that it was hidden well but still functional.
"I'm a little tired," Thomas admitted. "My body was getting used to sleeping right now."
"You'll probably wake up when you get down there." Dax stepped forward so that the door opened and then extended a hand to show that Thomas should go first.
"I'll probably wake up ten seconds before the transport," Thomas quipped, stepping out. "It's exciting. This is Nazi Germany, after all. Of course, that also means that it's terrifying."
"We're counting on you to keep us apprised of that side of things." The turbolift doors closed behind them. "Transporter room," Dax told the computer.
"We should be fine in these outfits," Thomas assured her. "We're the secret state police. People denounce other people to us. We're the ones they're afraid of."
"Let's just hope they don't check our badges," Dax smiled, and Thomas couldn't help but notice that it looked out of place on her today. She had always thought of the Trill as serene or fun-loving. But today, she looked as severe as her tightly pulled back hair. She fit the part. Except for that smile.
The turbolift stopped. The transporter room was only a few meters away from the lift, but Thomas felt her pulse increase with each step. The captain was waiting for them inside, as was Major Kira though her shift had ended three hours ago. Chief O'Brien himself was handling the transporter. Lieutenant Novak entered last. He was tall and blond and imposing—the picture of the Aryan "master race."
"I've been tinkering with the universal translator," O'Brien said, stepping forward. He held three communicator badges in his hand. "These comm badges don't have one. Thomas told us there were a lot of foreign workers in Germany. You want to sound the part. So you'll have to rely on the lieutenant."
"Good thinking, Chief," Dax said, taking off her old badge and replacing it with the new. Thomas and Novak did the same.
"Make it quick, Old Man," Captain Sisko admonished. "Try to stay out of trouble."
"We'll be fine, Benjamin," Dax said, smiling again. "Who's going to be in a science lab at one in the morning anyway?"
"You would be," Sisko answered dryly. "Just be careful." He faced Novak and Thomas. "Lieutenant, your primary responsibility, once inside, will be to find the records and bring them back to the ship and translate them. Dax will get the badge. Everything must be put back exactly as it is found."
Thomas already knew her duty. She would watch the door to the lab. It seemed anticlimactic for her first mission into Nazi Germany, but she knew it was crucial. Novak was there to read German files. Dax was there to deal with the electronics. Thomas was there to protect them while they did it.
"Good luck," Sisko said finally and he nodded.
The three of them stepped onto the transporter pad. Dax checked to make sure her team was ready. "Energize."
They reappeared in a dark alley just beside the target building. Dax removed a tricorder from her jacket and scanned the area. She nodded, and slipped it back into a pocket. "Let's go," she whispered.
Thomas was amazed. It was different than she had thought it would be. She had thought she'd be overwhelmed by the sense of history here, the different-ness of everything from what she was used to. But all she felt was cold. It felt normal here, like any of the old European universities she had visited before choosing Starfleet Academy. The only difference was the presence of Nazi banners and flags. It looked like a picture from the Holocaust Museum in Washington.
They found a back door to the building, but it was locked. Dax didn't seem worried. She had her tricorder out again, scanning the lock. "This shouldn't be too hard," she said. She opened her coat a little and withdrew a small, slender tool. She bent over to press it into the lock.
"Was machen Sie da?" an angry voice asked behind them.
Dax froze for exactly one second. Then she glanced up at Novak and continued her work, using her body to block the intruder's view.
"Geh nach Hause," Novak told him in perfect German. He showed the man his Gestapo badge. "Das hier ist Angelegenheit der Gestapo. Du tust gut daran, dich hier herauszuhalten."
Thomas caught enough of the German to realize that Novak had subtly threatened the man, using his fear of the Gestapo to turn him away. It worked. The man's angry demeanor melted in an instant. "Es tut mir leid," he said, stepping backwards. He kept his face to them, but disappeared quickly around a corner.
The door snapped open, and the away team stepped inside. Thomas gladly closed and locked the door behind her. "That went well," Dax whispered. "You have a lovely accent, Lieutenant." She checked her tricorder again. Thomas peeked over her shoulder. The comm badge's signal was much stronger here, and the tricorder easily picked it up. "Two floors up."
Dax led the way past what Thomas assumed were offices and classrooms, using the tricorder readings as a guide. There was a light shining through one door. Someone was still at work. Captain Sisko had been right to be cautious. Dax made a motion with her hands to show that the stairs were further down the hall. They would have to be extra quiet as they passed the office and hope its occupant didn't look up.
Dax went first. Her shoes never made a sound. Novak followed, his own boots emitting a muted shuffle, but he was past the door in two steps. Thomas was last, and she listened carefully as she walked. She heard talking in the office, but it was steady and seemed uninterrupted by their passage.
The stairs were just beyond the door, so they still had to climb them quietly. It was an old building, and no matter how silent the three of them tried to be, the creaky steps seemed determined to give them away. Once they had made it up a flight, Dax held her hand up to stop them. They listened to see if anyone had noticed. They heard nothing. The light from the doorway never changed, so they continued up to the proper floor.
The hallway here seemed wider than the other one, and the doors were set wider apart. Dax checked the tricorder again and stopped suddenly beside one of them. "Here," she whispered. Again, the door was locked, but it took her less time now to open the laboratory door than it had outside. She inserted the tool inside the lock and turned. Thomas heard a click and the door opened.
The lab looked like any other lab Thomas had ever seen, except that there were beakers and tubes here as well as electronic equipment, but no computer or scanning equipment that she could recognize. There were several long black-topped lab tables in the center of the room with tall, glass-fronted cabinets lining two walls. Windows lined the third. One tall file cabinet stood in the far corner, and Novak headed there immediately. Dax found the badge on the center table. She looked up to Thomas and smiled. Thomas stepped back out into the hall, pulling the door behind her. She stopped it just before it could latch into the frame.
Dax waited for the door to shut and then turned her attention back to the badge. It was in pieces, literally. Luckily it was all laid out on a soft felt pad. It could be lifted as one piece. The face of it was deeply scratched, but in the low light she couldn't see it clearly. Two small wires attached it to what her tricorder told her was a low level power source that sat nearby. She would have to disconnect it. Careful not to disturb anything just yet, she began lifting the biggest pieces, turning them over and squinting in the dim light to see if they were numbered. She lifted only one at a time and replaced it just where it had been before picking up another.
Novak was using a palm beacon to read the files, but without knowing what the Germans had labeled the badge, he'd have little luck in finding its records. He closed the top drawer and pulled open the next one.
Dax finished her search of the tiny pieces without any success. Then she turned up the edges of the pad . . . and found a label. "Lieutenant!" she whispered, waving him over.
Novak left his drawer open and walked back to the center of the room. He approached from the opposite side of the table and leaned over to look at the label, using the beacon to light it. He smiled. "Not very imaginative," he whispered back. "'Electronic Jewelry.'"
Dax smiled too. She had used that one before, telling a twenty-first century man that her comm badge was a brooch. She nodded again and Novak returned to the files. He closed the open drawer and reopened the top one. He began rifling quickly through the folders inside.
Dax, satisfied now that the records would be found, turned her attention back to her work. She opened the tricorder, setting it on the tabletop just beside the disemboweled little badge. She checked its readings and memorized them. Then she carefully pulled the two wires loose.
Novak stopped rifling and pulled one of the files out. He opened it, flipped a few pages, then snapped it shut again. He held it up for her to show that he'd found the right one.
Dax straightened back up and reached inside her jacket, touching the cool smooth surface of her own badge. There was a familiar chirp and the comm line opened. "Dax to Defiant," she said, keeping her voice low.
"Defiant here," Sisko's voice answered, equally quiet.
"Prepare for transport," she told him. She waved Novak over with the file. She noted that he again left the drawer open with one file sticking up vertically to mark the place of the one he'd removed.
"I'll patch you directly through to the transporter room."
A second later, the Chief's voice acknowledged the connection. "O'Brien here. We've lost the signal. What are your instructions?"
"I detached its power source," she explained. "Lieutenant Novak has the file and he's ready to go. The badge is on a felt pad. Best to beam it all up together. They've really done a job on it." Even as she said it, she hoped they hadn't done the same to its former owner. "Lock onto my tricorder signal. The pad is approximately twenty by thirty centimeters in area, just to the left of the tricorder."
"Got it," O'Brien confirmed. "Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant."
Novak waited for a nod from Dax and then spoke, "One to beam up, Chief."
By the time the lieutenant and the badge materialized on the platform, Captain Sisko and Major Kira were back in the transporter room. "How did it go, Lieutenant?" the captain asked, as the Chief tried to collect the felt pad and its myriad minuscule pieces of comm badge. He couldn't move the pad without disturbing them.
"Fairly smoothly thus far, Captain," Novak answered, snapping to attention.
"Let's go, Lieutenant," the Chief called. He snatched the file from Novak's hand and slipped the rigid folder beneath the felt pad. It lifted easily then and he headed out the door to the turbolift. The mess hall was still the only place with a working replicator. Major Kira stepped up to the console to man the transporter while he was gone.
O'Brien tried to walk quickly, but he didn't want to spill or move any of the small pieces. He studied the pieces as he went. The front face of the badge was badly scratched, but he noticed a familiar pattern to it. He wanted to turn it in the light to get a better angle, but the turbolift arrived and moved too quickly. The mess hall was just around the corner.
Despite the hour, the mess hall was still busy with crewmembers finishing up their short breaks or grabbing breakfast before their regular duty shift. Everyone backed away from the replicators at the Lieutenant's order. O'Brien couldn't help but notice the response and felt the costume held a large part of the responsibility.
O'Brien knelt and set the pad in the replicator, smoothly sliding the folder out from under it. He pressed a few controls and the replicator scanned the pad and its contents. He'd already preset the computer to make a mock-up of the badge, replicating the appearance of its parts but not their function. The Germans would only be able to get the same low-level signal from it. Using the folder again, O'Brien slipped the pad out of the way. A new one, identical to the first appeared in its place. He handed the original pad to Novak, who commandeered a table to set it on. Then he handed the folder back to O'Brien.
O'Brien removed the new badge, setting it on the floor in front of him. Its face contained the same familiar scratches. Then O'Brien placed the file in the replicator. A new file appeared beside the old one and Novak removed it, checking its content before he nodded his okay. O'Brien took the original file and lifted the new badge from the floor with it. He stood and found a Security officer in the crowd that was now watching them carefully. "You," he ordered. "Nobody touches that." He nodded toward the original badge. The Security officer nodded as well. O'Brien looked to Novak, but the lieutenant was no longer paying attention. He had already sat down with a PADD in hand to translate the file.
O'Brien left the mess hall and retraced his steps back to transporter room. Barely four minutes had passed since he had left, but he knew that Dax was waiting for him. He set the PADD back on the transporter platform, laying the file beside it. "Ready to go, Major," he called and stepped back out of the way. The familiar sparkle of transporter energy fell immediately upon the two objects, and they disappeared quickly from view.
Thomas heard the footsteps on the floor below and held her breath, trying to listen harder. The stairs creaked and she knew they were coming. She backed up, letting the door open behind her while she kept her eyes on the stairway. A small circle of light played on the far wall. She stepped inside.
Dax looked up when she entered, but Thomas said nothing. She closed the door quickly, but stopped just short of the frame. Then she pushed it slowly, listening to their footsteps still on the stairs, until she heard it click into place. She locked it. "They're coming," she whispered to Dax.
Just then the tabletop beside Dax's tricorder began to sparkle. "Take the file," Dax ordered. "He marked its place."
The footsteps now sounded loudly in the hall. Thomas snatched up the file folder as soon as all its molecules were in place. She ran as fast as she could without making noise to the file cabinet and found one file sticking up. She checked its label and the label on the folder she held. It belonged just after the vertical one. She slid it in place and closed the drawer, hoping it was a new file cabinet so that it wouldn't squeak.
Dax was still working on the badge when she turned around. The circle of light she'd seen from the hall was now poking underneath the door. Someone turned the handle, tried the lock. Dax was attaching a wire to some of the exposed sections of the badge. There was a short spark and then she was satisfied. She snapped her tricorder closed and moved toward the door. She called for transport as she went.
Thomas wasn't sure why she wanted to go closer to the danger, but Dax was her superior officer and she followed her lead. Whoever was outside was fumbling with the lock now. "Wer ist da drinnen?" a male voice yelled.
Dax flattened herself against the wall beside the door's hinge and pulled Thomas over beside her. The lock gave and the door swung open quickly just as the transporter took hold of them both.
"Beautiful timing, Major," Dax said as she stepped down from the pad.
Thomas took a moment to catch her breath. She held her stomach. "I think I felt the doorknob."
Captain Sisko gave them a slight smile. "Good work. Now let's see what we got."
Sisko led the way to the mess hall. It was still the best place to have a meeting. Besides, they had another half hour before the next shift went off duty. By the time Worf arrived from the bridge, all other crewmembers, except Novak and the Security officer had left for their quarters, some with trays of food in hand. Sisko dismissed the Security officer and O'Brien and Dax began to analyze the badge. Sisko wanted to give them a little time, so he asked Ensign Thomas for a report.
"Things went well enough at first, sir," she told him. "We were seen entering the building, but the lieutenant was able to scare the man off. There were at least two other people in the building, but they didn't appear to hear us. However, someone found out we were up there in the lab. They must have heard something. I heard them coming up the stairs so I went inside and locked the door. We had just enough time to replace everything before they got the door open."
"They didn't see you?"
"No, sir," she replied. "The major beamed us out just in time."
Sisko nodded. He remembered her remark on the transporter pad. It must have been close.
"It's Cardassian!" O'Brien exclaimed.
Sisko and the others crowded around the table to see what Dax and the chief were discussing. He was holding up the face of Bashir's comm badge.
"Well, then we know he was alive to scratch it in there," Sisko decided.
"Let me see it," Kira said. O'Brien handed her the badge. She grew up under Cardassian rule, and, though the crew had become familiar with Cardassian symbols, she would still be the best at reading them. She held it up and tilted it so that the light caught the etchings and further defined them. "It's not Cardassian. He used Cardassian syllables to write in Standard. 'Ar, es, ed, po, len' and then a stardate. Arrested?" she said, putting the syllables together.
"Poland," Thomas finished unenthusiastically. "Do you know how many camps there were in Poland? I don't. There were hundreds, literally hundreds."
"What's the date?" Sisko asked.
Kira peered closer at the badge. She frowned. "The day after we arrived in this century." She passed the badge to Sisko.
"Well, at least we know he was alive for that long," Sisko said, trying to put a good face on it. "That's a good sign. Most of the others weren't. Now we just need to know which camp he was taken to. Could you hazard a guess as to his chances, Ensign?"
Thomas took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "Well, it depends where he was taken. If it was a concentration or labor camp, his chances might be, relatively speaking of course, rather high. He was young and probably healthier than any of the other new arrivals. If he kept his head down, didn't draw attention to himself, his chances would be pretty good."
"Let's work on that assumption then," Sisko said. "Is there anything else the badge can tell us?"
"Well, we can give it a good working over," O'Brien suggested, "maybe find a DNA trace. Then we'd know for sure that he wrote it."
Kira must have still been tired. "Who else would know Cardassian?" she asked.
"The changeling," Dax answered.
"Mr. Novak," Sisko snapped, breaking the mood and drawing the lieutenant away from the corner table where he had been sitting the entire time. "Did you find anything useful?"
"Most of it," Novak said, checking his PADD, "is scientific readings and measurements and suspicions about the badge. They think it might be a radio device used in espionage." He set the PADD down and lifted a piece of paper from the file. "But," he said with a flourish, "we also have a custody receipt of sorts, giving the university rights to hold and study the object. They were to extract the electronics and send the precious metals back for deposit with the Reichsbank. Orders given by the Economic Administration Headquarters in Berlin. Unfortunately, it doesn't say where the Economic Administration got it in the first place."
Lieutenant Novak walked back to his quarters, trying to think in German. His grandmother had spoken German always, never bothering with Standard or universal translators. So when, as a child, he had visited her for the summer in Dusseldorf, he had spoken German as well. Always in May it had been difficult because he first had to translate what he wanted to say before he said it. But by August, his thoughts were in German, and his speech just flowed from that.
The university had been easy. Two sentences to a guy in the street. But the Economic Administration Headquarters would be different. They would be going down in broad daylight to a Nazi government agency in Germany's capital. He had to sound like a Gestapo agent, a native German. So he needed to think like one, too.
The Defiant was well within transporter range for the headquarters already. But they had to wait for the offices to open, so he still had a few hours to catch up on his interrupted sleep. He was fortunate in that the away team members were pulled off the regular duty roster. They would now hold shifts that fit Europe's daylight hours, at least until it became necessary to handle things at night. Bureaucracy took place in the daytime, though, and it was bureaucracy they would be dealing with until they tracked down the camp where Doctor Bashir was being held.
He slept for six hours. Halfway through, his dreams changed over to German, and when Lieutenant Commander Dax called to wake him, he even acknowledged her in that language first and had to translate his thoughts back into English. He was glad. It would make things easier down below.
The first time she'd removed her spots for an away team, she hadn't minded. Though that had been a serious mission, there was a lot of fun involved, running around Captain James T. Kirk's Enterprise. But yesterday and now today, it was disconcerting when she looked at her reflection. She admitted to herself, it wasn't just the unmarked skin around her face, but also what she was wearing. She didn't recognize herself. Her visage in the mirror was not ugly, but it wasn't pleasant either. To her at least, it was eerie. Still, she fit the part.
Today they would be facing something much worse than the few Germans they had run into the day before. Today, they'd have to delve into the Germans' bureaucracy. That was frightening in any culture. She was glad she didn't speak German. Novak would, in outward appearance anyway, be the senior officer while on the planet. He would do the talking, and he would be the one to deal with the bureaucrats.
She met Thomas at the transporter room. She looked just as eerie, Dax thought. But she chalked it up to the ensign's mood, which she figured was a mixture of excitement and curiosity tinged with disgust and utter horror.
Novak arrived shortly after. "Guten Morgen," he said without thinking. "Um, good morning, Captain."
Sisko was there again to see them off. "You should be asleep, Benjamin," Dax scolded.
He didn't look too tired really. He smiled. "I'll catch up during my next break, Old Man. Be careful down there. Don't spend too much time in the streets."
"Of course," Dax acknowledged, stepping onto the transporter pad. "We'll be back before you know it. Energize."
She couldn't have been more wrong. But then, it had been an awfully long time since she'd had to contend with a bureaucracy that actually dealt with paper records. As slow as computerized red tape could be, paper was a thousand times slower. And the people dealing with the paper weren't much faster. In fact they were all rather unhelpful in spite of the obvious fear in their faces when confronted with Novak's imposing Gestapo presence. The first person they had met was a security guard who enjoyed too much the power of his office. He kept them waiting and answering questions for nearly half an hour and had concluded by calling to verify their information. Only a quick call to the Defiant had saved them. Worf intercepted the telephone call, verified their identities, and told the guard, in no uncertain terms, to let them pass. Then, of course, the guard had to call ahead to warn those inside that the Gestapo was coming up.
The receptionist they were sent to wasn't any better. She kept telling them to wait. The man they needed to see wasn't in yet. They had waited for him for two hours while the receptionist kept filling them full of some sort of fake coffee. The real thing was scarce apparently. When the man finally did come, they were still kept waiting while he had his ersatz coffee and got settled in to his office. Finally, they were allowed to see him, only to be told, after forty-five minutes of explaining, that they were in the wrong office. They needed to see a different person, the regional director, on the next floor up.
When they got up there, the secretary informed them that her boss had stepped out for lunch. She suggested they do the same and come back later that afternoon. When Novak reminded her that they were in a hurry, she pointedly reminded him that they had not made an appointment. He tried explaining to her that they needed to see the director about an investigation, but she became even more adamant that it was impossible to see the director. She couldn't make him appear when he was at lunch. She couldn't help and they would just have to wait. Dax had noticed that she was nearly in tears at that point, so they did as she suggested and went out for lunch.
The streets themselves were filled with banners as the university had been. They were also full of uniforms, even on children. Thomas explained some of them. Hitler Youth for the children and teenagers. SS, Wehrmacht, and other organizations for the adults. Even those not in uniform showed their support of the system by armbands, lapel pins or flags hanging in their shop windows.
They found a quiet little restaurant a couple blocks down from the Economic Administration Headquarters. They chose a dark booth in the back and Novak ordered for them. The food was actually quite good. While they ate, Novak filled them in on what had been said that morning. He spoke in quick, almost harsh, words. Dax thought maybe she even heard an accent. He was obviously quite agitated by the stubbornness of the others. Thomas explained that they were probably afraid.
"Maybe going Gestapo was overkill," she said. "We terrify everyone. They probably think we're investigating them."
Dax decided it was best to let the Defiant know why it was taking them so long. Thomas then remembered that they had no money for the meal. No one was watching, so they had O'Brien beam down a hundred Reichsmarks. It would pay for the meal and leave some extra for any other contingencies that came up.
When they returned to the Economic Administration Headquarters, the regional director's secretary was even more uncomfortable. The director had been called away in an emergency and wouldn't be back until next week. It seemed that Thomas was right. Dax figured that the director had returned while they were at lunch. The secretary had warned him, and he ran off leaving her to cover for him. That was why she was so uncomfortable.
Novak tried to explain to her that they were not there to arrest anyone. They only wanted to find out where a certain item had come from. But she insisted that she couldn't help them. The director was out of town and she knew nothing. And, no, there was no one else who would know where the object came from. They would have to wait to see the director or find another way to trace its origin. She obviously preferred the latter.
That there was no other way to trace it seemed of little importance to her. She just wanted them to leave. With assurances that the director would be back on Monday, she got her wish. Novak made an appointment for two in the afternoon on Monday, and the three of them left.
Novak had managed to keep his temper in check while in the office, but once they beamed back up to the ship he let it go. "That is crazy!" he exclaimed. "How can anyone be so stubborn? I told her we weren't after her or the director."
"She was afraid," Thomas explained. "Everyone was afraid of the Gestapo. Anyone could denounce anyone else. The Nazis didn't just terrorize their enemies. They used terror as domestic policy."
Novak wasn't the only one who was disappointed. It was Friday down on the planet. They would have to wait three days before they could try again. Sisko was upset as well, but he tried to hide it. O'Brien had managed to get the ready room's computer in working order, so the debriefing had been moved to there.
"So what are we going to do for three days?" Kira asked, clearly annoyed.
Sisko sighed and stood up. "Fix this vessel. We want to be ready to leave once we do find him. Unless someone can come up with another way to scan for Bashir, we should put everyone to work repairing the shields and warp engines and any other systems we'll need for the jump. For now, the three of you are back on the roster. Major, work with the Chief for assignments."
Julian Bashir had decided that the changeling was depressed. She hardly seemed to notice him all that day, even when he slipped in the snow and fell down, narrowly missing the wet cement. Normally, she would have at least been entertained. More often, though, she would have beaten him for being clumsy. But today she was letting her partner do the beating. And he couldn't be everywhere at once. The result was, in a sense, a day off. The prisoners still had to work, of course, but not at the usual pace. Now they only worked hard when the human SS was around or when Heiler seemed to be paying attention. The kapo, as usual, kept up appearances, yelling and haranguing the prisoners with a ferocious intensity. But it was only verbal and rarely came to actual blows.
The kapo again picked Bashir to carry the midday meal. His partner was someone Bashir didn't know, though he'd seen him working at the site before. But he hadn't seen him around for the last few days. The man said nothing as they trudged along the road leading back toward camp. Bashir wasn't surprised. Szymon was the only person in the kommando who would speak to him now that Henri was in the hospital. Bashir had tried to visit the Frenchman but found it to be impossible. Each night the lines of the sick and wounded waiting to get into the hospital were just as long as they had been the night they had taken Henri there. Visitors were out of the question. Still, he planned to go and try again after evening roll call.
The man who was with him didn't look particularly well himself, even for a prisoner. His face was red, and he was sweating despite the cold wind. Fever. He looked nervously at the hospital area when they passed it and sped up his steps making it hard for Bashir to keep up. Bashir glanced over but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary there. The man was even worse after they got the soup. At first, the man had wanted to take the left handle so that he could carry it with his right hand. Bashir had been forced to unwrap his hand to show him why it was impossible for Bashir to take the right side. And once that was settled, the pace again became a point of contention. Bashir wanted, and needed, to go slowly. It was difficult to walk, given his flogging injuries, but it was worse with the heavy can. Despite his fever, the other man seemed in a hurry to return to the work site.
He tried to speed up again as they passed the hospital block, but Bashir let his side of the can down to the ground, stopping them both. There was something out of the ordinary going on there now. A truck had been pulled up in front of one of the buildings, and prisoners, without clothes or blankets, were being carried out and stacked inside it. Bashir thought at first that they were dead, but he saw one of them still moving and then another. And he could faintly hear their cries for mercy. It had to be a selection, like Henri and Szymon had talked about. An SS officer in a white lab coat came to the door yelling something to the prisoners loading the condemned into the truck.
"Chodź!" his partner urged, shoving Bashir in the arm until he turned away from the scene. "Musimy lecieć w tej chwili!"
Bashir picked up the can and continued walking. He knew that Henri would be put in the truck. His injuries had been too severe. He thought of Henri and his dream of going to America to see his sister. He wondered if his sister would ever even know what happened to him. Who was there to even notice that he was gone?
This was not the first time that someone died in Auschwitz, nor the first that Bashir had seen, but it was different this time. He had known the man, even if only for a few days. All the rest had been nameless pieces of history, and Bashir had felt a twinge of guilt at the near-nothingness he felt at their deaths. He was too much surrounded by his own body to feel their pain and anguish. He had too much of his own to deal with. He had only been glad every day that he was not yet among them.
But this time it was Henri. Henri, who probably wasn't quite dead yet, but who most likely had been piled in that truck, stacked like so much firewood, on top of other bodies and more placed over him. He felt different this time, almost as if he was with them. But it didn't last long. He had to pay attention to reality. He had to think about his feet. Each step was perilous due to his wooden shoes, the poor condition of the road, the heavy can he carried, and his own stiff, unnatural gait. And the other man was still going too fast. Henri would have to wait.
The weekend passed uneventfully on the Defiant, with the exception of the shields, which were currently functioning at forty percent capacity. Stevens expected they would be twice as strong by the end of the day. Everyone knew that still would not be enough to protect the ship from the sun's radiation on the trip back, but Stevens and O'Brien both concurred that there was no indication that the shields would not be completely repaired by the end of the week. That left only the warp drive and, of course, Bashir.
This time, Thomas remembered to replicate a pad of paper. It wouldn't be unusual for Gestapo agents to be taking notes for their investigation. But she had really wanted it to jot down notes on what was being said for Dax. Thomas caught enough words and phrases of the German that Novak and the secretary were speaking that she could understand the gist of the conversation. Dax, without the universal translator, got nothing, and Thomas had noticed how bored she had looked on Friday. With the notepad, Thomas could at least provide a running score, so to speak, of the away mission.
Ten minutes after they beamed down, though, she was sure the Germans were winning. The security guard detained them at the door a second time, until Novak, in a stroke of genius, complimented the man on his attention to duty and offered to put his name in with the SS. Perhaps he could be transferred to a concentration camp, maybe Majdanek. Poland was lovely this time of year, after all. Dax had smiled as she read the rough translation Thomas offered her as they walked up the stairs to the director's office.
They had left the Defiant early, anticipating delays like the security guard. As a consequence, they were still ten minutes early for their appointment with the regional director. His secretary looked no less nervous than she had before. In fact, she seemed more nervous. Her hands shook and she kept wringing them together.
"Sie sind früh dran!" she squeaked. It was a short phrase, and Thomas had no problem understanding it. They had surprised the secretary by being early.
"Nur ein paar Minuten," Novak replied. He smiled genuinely and tried to engage her in a little small talk. She didn't converse though, and only agreed to his assessments of the weather and the city. Novak sighed and then asked if they could see the director now. "Können wir den Direktor sprechen?"
The secretary stopped wringing her hands and placed them on her desk. She stared at Novak with wide eyes and slowly shook her head. "Ich fürchte," she said, "der Direktor ist nicht im Hause. Er fühlte sich nicht gut."
Dax tugged Thomas's elbow, so Thomas quickly scribbled an interpretation which Dax read over her shoulder. He's not in, she wrote. I think he's sick.
Novak, who had been doing his best to appear kind and patient with her, now rolled his eyes. "Wir hatten einen Termin," he told her, reminding her of the appointment.
"Er hat seine Termine für die ganze Woche abgesagt," the secretary tried to explain. Thomas wrote on the pad that the director would be out all week. No appointments. "Ich wußte nicht, wie ich Sie erreichen sollte. Vielleicht können wir den Termin umlegen." The secretary reached for the appointment book she kept at the corner of the desk.
Novak leaned forward and put his hand on the book, closing it. "Wir haben keine Woche Zeit." He was right. Thomas knew they couldn't wait a week to see the director. And she also suspected that if they did reschedule the appointment, the director would come down with some other sickness then.
The secretary was speechless. She didn't know what to say now. Novak smiled again. "Vielleicht können Sie den Direktor telefonisch erreichen."
The secretary looked at the telephone and then back to Novak who was still smiling. Her hand reached slowly to the receiver. Then she drew it back. "Er mag es nicht, wenn ich ihn zu Hause anrufe."
"Ich denke, daß er es weniger mögen würde, wenn ich ihn zu Hause anrufen würde," Novak mumbled. He stopped smiling and sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Würden Sie bitte aufstehen?"
Thomas didn't understand what Novak was getting at. He was clearly losing his patience. Telling the woman to get up from her desk had terrified her. Very slowly, she stood. Dax couldn't say anything, but her eyebrows furrowed as she read the notepad.
"Bitte treten Sie rüber zur Couch." Unfortunately, Thomas and Dax were sitting on the couch. Thomas nudged Dax's elbow and they stood. The secretary moved out from behind her desk. Tears welled up in her eyes, though she held her head high and tried to hide her fear. Novak didn't move, but stayed put at the front of her desk, turning as she passed him. She looked back once at him, but he motioned for her to continue, smiling again.
Thomas was afraid she would faint, but she kept on, one slow step at a time, coming toward the couch as she had been instructed. Thomas watched the woman's face, offering no emotional reaction so that she might not blow her cover. She was supposed to be Novak's subordinate. She had to support his decisions. Dax did the same, though she shot Novak a questioning look. From the corner of her eye, Thomas saw Novak reach into his pocket. He shrugged and then fired the phaser he now held.
The secretary stopped when the beam hit her and just stood for a few seconds, the fear in her eyes gone. Then her knees buckled and she fell. Thomas let the pad and pen fall from her hands and reached out to catch her. "Only stunned," Novak reassured them as they placed her on the couch. "We were getting nowhere."
"You could have warned us," Dax said as she placed a small pillow under the woman's head.
"Sorry, Commander, but I don't think that was possible. Besides, I have an idea." He walked around the desk and sat in the woman's chair. "The director is ill," he said, raising his eyebrows on the last word, "and won't be in all week. So maybe we should go to him. We just have to find where he lives." He started looking through the drawers of her desk.
"By the telephone," Thomas offered. She was on the floor. Her pen had fallen under the couch. "There should be some cards or a list with phone numbers and addresses. But he might not be home. He might be out of town."
"Right," Novak exclaimed. "Found it." He started flipping through the cards looking for the director's name.
Thomas finally took hold of the pen and stood. The skirt she wore didn't make it easy. It didn't offer enough movement for her legs. Dax was looking through the appointment book. "He had appointments this morning," she said. "He hasn't had time to leave town."
"I'll bet he's home packing then," Novak said. "Can I borrow that please?" He pointed to Thomas's pad.
She let him have it and the pen too. He'd found the address. "We should beam over. He probably figures he has some time before we'd come after him."
"I guess he'll be surprised then," Dax quipped and then called for the transport.
They rematerialized in a small wooded park about a block away from the director's house. There was a car parked out front. Its engine was running. The driver inside saw them walk up and seemed nervous, but he made no move to drive away. A woman answered the door. She smiled broadly until she noticed that it was the Gestapo. "Er ist nicht zu Hause," she stammered as Novak took a step inside the door. She staggered back away from him as she kept trying to convince him that her husband was not in. She raised her voice so that anyone in the house was bound to hear.
"Wir sind nicht hier, um Ihren Mann festzunehmen," Novak tried to console her. "Wir brauchen nur ein paar Informationen. Es ist sehr wichtig."
By that time, the director's wife had retreated well into the house. Novak didn't let up, though he still spoke to her kindly, explaining that it was information, not her husband that they were interested in.
Just then a man started down the stairs from the second floor with a small suitcase. "Steht das Auto bereit?" he asked. He froze when he saw the four of them. His wife looked up to him. Her eyes plead for him to run away. And he obeyed. He dropped the suitcase and ran back up the stairs.
Dax was the first to react, and she bounded up the stairs after him, taking the steps two at a time. The wife began to cry and tried to run herself, but Novak caught her. Seeing that she was under control, Thomas followed up the stairs. Dax had the man tackled at the top. He tried to pull away and fight her, but he was no match for Dax, who wrestled holosuite Klingons as a form of exercise. "Wir wollen nur Informationen haben," Thomas told him, hoping her grammar was correct.
"Lassen Sie meine Frau in Ruhe," he pleaded. "Sie hat nichts damit zu tun. Nehmen Sie mich fest, aber lassen Sie sie in Ruhe." Thomas wondered just what it was that his wife didn't have anything to do with. Perhaps the director really did have reason to fear arrest by the Gestapo. Maybe he was keeping some of the valuables from the camps for himself. But it didn't really matter, not to the mission at hand.
"Bitte, Herr Direktor," Novak shouted, "wir sind nicht hier, um Sie oder Ihre Frau festzunehmen. Wir brauchen nur ein paar Informationen. Bitte kommen Sie nach unten."
It took a while, but things went more calmly after that. It took an hour and a half to convince the two of them that they had nothing to fear. By the time the clock on the wall cuckooed three o'clock, the wife was offering them each second cups of the ersatz coffee she was serving, and the director was ready to return with them to the office.
The driver had since left the premises and a taxi had to be called. It took another half hour to get to the office, but Novak kept the director busy talking while Thomas and Dax sat quietly staring out the windows at the city. Thomas had been to Berlin before. It was a beautiful city, if more modern than most of the other European capitals. The Reichstag building, the Brandenburg Gate, and some of the old churches still remained though, echoes of this time and before. It was odd to Thomas to see the streets and buildings bedecked with Nazi banners. She had imagined them that way on her trips here when she was studying history. She remembered standing outside the Reichstag, looking over at the Brandenburg Gate and seeing, not the peaceful scene of tourists and Federation citizens walking by past its columns, but a long parade of black-uniformed SS goose-stepping beneath it while thousands of adoring Germans saluted from the sides of the street. It had been just a flash, an instant of history thrust before her eyes, before it faded to the familiar site of modern transport vehicles and pedestrians. She caught more than a glimpse of it this time as they drove by.
The secretary was awake and still afraid when they returned to the office. She stared at her boss, mouth wide, when he walked in laughing at something Novak had said. Thomas had stopped trying to interpret it for Dax long before they had gotten into the car. It wasn't relevant to the mission anyway.
"Bitte bring unsern Gästen doch etwas Kaffee," the director told her.
Thomas shook her head and held up a hand. "Nein danke." She'd really had enough coffee for the day. Dax did likewise, mimicking her German perfectly.
"Ich hätte gerne welchen," Novak said. He smiled pleasantly, but the secretary still seemed suspicious. She didn't smile back. She went to fetch the coffee, but every few steps she would turn her head back toward them. Thomas wondered how much she remembered before she was stunned. She must have been very confused.
"Wir sollten etwas finden können," the director was saying as he invited them into his office. "Kann ich die Akte nochmal sehen?"
"Selbstverständlich," Novak replied, removing the copied file from his pocket. He handed it to the director who read it over carefully as he sat down behind his large desk. The secretary never did return with the coffee, but Novak didn't mention it. He and the director were getting along well now. Thomas was getting bored. She couldn't contribute to the conversation or the search for information. Dax apparently felt the same way. She struggled every few minutes to stifle a yawn. The director didn't seem to notice, but Thomas did. And it made it all the more difficult for her. Every time Dax tried not to yawn, her body wanted to follow suit.
It took several calls to a few other offices before the director was able to offer them a lead. With him on their side, they now found that there was quite a bit more cooperation forthcoming from the office. Still, bureaucracy was bureaucracy and the information about the badge was difficult to track down. It was nearly five when they had the file in their hands. Novak borrowed Thomas's pad again as he jotted down information. Thomas tried to peer over his shoulder, but he really was a tall man and she wanted to keep her decorum. She would have to wait.
The director had accompanied them to every office and department. Novak thanked him heartily, and the two even shared an embrace before the director showed them to the door. Once outside and alone again, Novak dropped his smile instantly and sighed. "What a monster!" he whispered.
"You seemed to get along rather well, Lieutenant," Dax teased.
"I always enjoyed acting, Commander," he replied. "It's a hobby." They were heading toward an alley where they could safely transport back to the ship.
"Well?" Thomas asked.
Novak stopped and stared at her. "Well what?"
Dax put on her most gracious, parental smile. "The file, the one we just spent the last three hours trying to obtain."
"Oh, that!" Novak seemed genuinely surprised. He handed Dax the notepad. She shared it with Thomas. Written in large letters there was a date, 11 February, and one word: Bialystok. "That's all I got."
Thomas was disappointed. "Not even a transport number? Or a destination?"
Novak's answer was delayed by the transport. He answered, though, as soon as they rematerialized on the transporter pad. "No. There wasn't anything else in the file. Just that."
"Just what?" Captain Sisko asked. It was only then that Thomas realized they had an audience. Major Kira was there as well.
Dax handed him the pad of paper and then tried to report. "It took a while, but Mr. Novak got the director to cooperate. Actually he went out of his way to be helpful."
"This is the date they found the badge?" Sisko was reading the pad. He handed it to Kira.
"What's Bialystok?" she asked, looking to Thomas for the answer.
Thomas shrugged. She had to look to the computer for the answer. "It's a city in northern Poland," she answered finally. "There was a ghetto there for Jews."
"No, sir," Novak said in reply to the captain's question. "It's the date the badge arrived at the Economic Administration Headquarters. It's nearly a week after his arrest."
"Well, I suppose that can be a good sign, too," the captain stated. He didn't look encouraged though. His jaw was still set hard, and there was a puffiness around his eyes. "Well, Ensign, do you think a change in costume is in order?"
Thomas looked at him for a moment before she realized what he was saying. "For Bialystok? We'll need to see the Judenrat, I would think. SS?"
Sisko nodded. "How long until we're in transporter range, Chief?"
Heiler was back to his—her—usual self. She'd found excuses three times to beat him already this morning. Bashir was glad then when the midday meal came, and he would at least be able to sit down. But Heiler stared at him as he ate, never moving or passing his attention to any of the other prisoners. There was a look of pure hatred burning in his false eyes that Bashir could see from twenty meters away. It scared him. He wasn't sure why exactly. She had done nearly everything she could to him short of killing him outright. He lived in pain now, to one degree or another. She could only cause that to continue. She couldn't really make it worse.
There was a commotion at the other end of the undressing room. One of the prisoners there had been caught by the other SS, though Bashir didn't know why. The dog barked incessantly and ferociously. He strained and struggled against the leash that held him so that the SS man with him was nearly pulled off his feet. Heiler stopped staring and actually smiled at Bashir before he went over to offer his assistance.
There were orders shouted in German. The kapo joined in, exhorting the prisoners to obey with his club. The meal was over. They had to pour out their watery soup. Bashir's back and shoulders hurt from the beatings he'd received, but neither compared to the feeling of hunger he constantly had. It was perhaps the hardest thing he had ever done to turn over his bowl and watch the vile liquid fall to the snow.
"Aufstellen in Fünferreihen! SOFORT!" the kapo shouted. He pulled men up from their seats and pushed them into a line.
"Something bad," Szymon whispered in his ear. But Bashir already knew that. Nothing good ever came out of a change in the daily routine.
The line was made. Sixty men, five abreast, minus the one being punished, all turned to face the SS and the kapo. Bashir was in the second row, with Piotr and Szymon to his left. The subject of the punishment was already laid out over a pile of bricks, poised for a lashing. He was crying. His shoulders shook violently with his sobs.
The SS dog-handler gave the kapo his whip. But just as the kapo raised it to begin the flogging, Heiler stopped him. "Ihr Fünf!" he shouted, pointing right at Bashir. "Ab nach hinten. Sofort! Der Rest schließt nach vorne auf."
Bashir didn't understand, but the man just in front of him, and the two to either side of that man, moved quickly back through the lines. "Aufschließen!" the kapo screamed. Bashir followed the others and moved up. They now had a clear view of the sobbing victim.
"Jetzt." the dog-handler said, clearly impatient with the whole proceeding. The kapo raised the whip.
"Noch nicht," Heiler stopped him again. "Und du nicht." The kapo looked at him in confusion, as did the dog-handler. But Heiler was calm, he was even smiling. "Herr Engländer, won't you join us?"
Bashir froze. He didn't know what she was after, but he was sure now that he had been wrong. It could be worse. She could always make it worse. He didn't know why she would want to have him flogged as well, but he also knew she didn't need an excuse, not while she wore that uniform. "Please," Heiler said, becoming impatient. He was pointing to the spot where the kapo still stood.
Bashir obeyed automatically. He wanted to stop his legs from moving forward, but he didn't know how.
"Gib ihm die Peitsche," Heiler told the kapo, still smiling, only now the smile was broader.
The kapo held the whip out to Bashir. As he did, he met his eyes. There was pain there, and sadness and helplessness. One can only obey, they said.
Bashir found he couldn't breathe. "I can't," he whispered, shaking his head. His hand didn't move.
Heiler moved in quickly, snatching the whip and pushing the kapo away. He grabbed Bashir's hand and thrust the handle of the whip in it. His smile was gone, and the evil was back in his eyes. "You will," he snarled.
Julian looked to the poor man on the bricks. Even now the kapo was pulling his pants down, revealing his buttocks and back. He looked away, to the trees that lay beyond the barbed wire. And somewhere there, Julian found his spirit. He turned back and stood up to his full height. He looked Heiler directly in the eyes. "No," he said, with a force that spoke of freedom. He let the whip fall to the ground.
Heiler's arm snapped out, connecting with his face and sending him sprawling to the ground. "It wasn't a question," he spat. He yanked Bashir back up by the collar and again placed the whip in his hand. Then he pulled out his sidearm, placing the barrel at Bashir's temple. "You will strike him until we tell you to stop. Or I will shoot."
Bashir stood straight again. So this was it. Now he would die. It was over.
"Oh, it's not that easy, Herr Engländer." The gun moved from his temple. It now faced behind him to where the other prisoners were waiting. "I will shoot one of them."
Bashir felt his breath stop up in his chest again. He closed his eyes. He couldn't. How could he? To beat a man, probably to death. It was impossible. But he didn't doubt she would shoot. He glanced over his shoulder. His hand shook. He didn't know what to do. He looked at Heiler, the changeling, and pleaded with her silently. She had won.
The sound was deafening so close to his ear. He looked to the line as Piotr fell, a flood of red spilling onto the gray-white snow. Bashir fell himself; his knees buckled. He braced himself, sobbing tearlessly. He saw Heiler from the corner of his eye raise the gun to point at another. Life had become an absurdity he didn't want anymore. But the choice was not his. The gun was pointed at another man. Heiler's finger contracted against the trigger, and all was lost.
©copyright 1998 Gabrielle Lawson
Chapter Ten
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