The One Man by Andrew Gross

you, Nathan.”
    â€œI’ll miss you too, Doleczki.”
    She wouldn’t let him go.
    â€œWhatever you do, Leisa, you continue to play. That’s who you are. Never let them take that from you.”
    â€œI won’t,” she said, her body trembling with fear.
    â€œAnd remember, when the shit hits the fan…”
    â€œYes, Chaim.” She nodded, her head buried against him. “If you say I must.”
    Outside the barracks, Blum opened the folded sheet music he had kept with him these past three years. “Wolfgang Ama—” his side read at the top. “Concerto ein—”
    Then the opening bars.
    He closed his eyes and imagined that Leisa was clutching hers when the bullets came. At least, he knew in her heart she was.
    A couple of enlisted men hurried past and he stood up. The two saluted. “Sir.”
    Blum saluted them back.
    I’m sure that reassignment you put in to the Ritchie boys will be coming through at any time, Donovan had said, if that’s how you’d like it to go.
    He remembered at his bar mitzvah in Krakow, he had spoken of aliyah. Like all Jews, he had made a promise to go to the Holy Land one day. A promise most would never keep. So maybe in a way this would be his aliyah . To honor his parents and their deaths. His heritage. Not to Jerusalem, to the Holy Land, but to a camp in the woods of southern Poland where terrible things took place.
    His promised land.
    To find this one man.
    With no return ticket.
    He folded Leisa’s music sheet back into a square and placed it inside his wallet, next to the small photo of her he kept there. Crushing his cigarette out, he picked up his cap and went to go in. He stopped a second. Thinking of her, which he tried not to do much these days, had brought a tear.
    Months after he’d found out her fate, he’d also gotten word: Chaim Weissman had died in a fall off a rooftop onto Limanowa Street while fleeing the Germans the very morning Blum’s family was murdered.
    When that troop truck pulled up in front of their building, the Germans ordering everyone to get outside, “Schnell! ” she probably waited, just like Blum had made her promise. Hid in the stairwell, hoping. Maybe until the moment they barged in and dragged her, screaming, down the stairs.
    He’ll be here, he’ll be here, she probably told herself. Nathan promised.
    Even as they were lined up against the wall and the bullets came.

 
    FOURTEEN
    Before his work shift the following morning, Blum went back to the Main Hall and asked for Captain Strauss’s office, which turned out to be a small, poorly lit cubby on the third floor at the end of a long hallway. He stood in front of it for a few seconds, put his cap in his hand, and then knocked on the door.
    The captain looked up from maps and reports and seemed pleased to see him. “Lieutenant.”
    Strauss’s office was a world away from his boss’s. The only light was a bright lamp on the metal desk, other than what came through a shuttered window. One wall of shelves was stacked with heavy books and binders. A map of Poland and another of Europe were tacked to the other wall. On the desk, Blum saw two framed pictures. A pretty dark-haired woman, likely the captain’s wife, and two young kids, and another of an older couple, the man dressed in a dark suit with a short beard, his wife in a white dress and hat.
    Strauss pushed back from the desk, waiting.
    All Blum said was, “So when do I have to leave?”
    The captain edged into a smile. He stood up and put out his hand. “Day after tomorrow. At least, for Britain. The actual mission date is set for the end of May. That gives us two weeks there to prepare. Familiarization with the local terrain and the camp. What you can expect inside. You’ll need to lose a few more pounds. Shouldn’t be so hard, on what they feed us these days.”
    Blum grinned.
    â€œThe Boss will be