"Uris, Leon - QBVII" - читать интересную книгу автора (Uris Leon M)

In the name of British fair play, Sanctuary International pleads for the unconditional release of this blameless man.
Yours faithfully,
Robert Highsmith
Hobbins, Newton, & Smiddy
Solicitors
32B Chancery Lane
London WC 2
The Under-Secretary of State Home Office Aliens Department 10 Old Bailey London EC 4
Re: Dr. Adam Kelno Dear Mr. Clayton-Hill,
Further to the matter of Dr. Adam Kelno. I have the pleasure of enclosing twenty more statements from former inmates of the Jadwiga Concentration Camp on behalf of our client.
We are appreciative of your granting a delay which has allowed us to bring forth over a hundred affidavits. However, Dr. Kelno has been in prison for nearly six months without a prima facie case against him.
We shall be obliged if you will inform us whether you are now satisfied on the evidence we have produced and can arrange to release Dr. Kelno or if we are to go to further expense and labour.
May I call your attention to an honorary tribunal consisting of representatives of all the Free Polish organizations which has not only exonerated him but cites him as a hero.
Faithfully yours,
Hobbins, Newton & Smiddy
In the House of Commons, Robert Highsmith gained support from his fellow-members and exerted growing pressure for the release of Kelno. A rash of opinion was growing against the obvious injustice.
Yet, equally insistent was a feeling of anger from Poland that a beastly war criminal was at large and being protected by the British. From their point of view it was a Polish matter and England was bound by treaty to return him for trial.
Just as it seemed that Sanctuary International was turning the corner, Nathan Goldmark, the Polish investigator who was in England pressing for the extradition, found an unexpected witness.
FOUR
The skyline of Oxford was punctured by a hundred spires and towers. Nathan Goldmark of the Polish Secret Police nibbled on his knuckles and pressed close to the train window as fellow-passengers pulled their luggage down from the overhead rack.
Oxford, he had read on the ride up from London, dated back to the twelfth century and had grown to its present conglomerate of thirty-one colleges with assorted churches,
hospitals, institutions, all joggled about in winding ways, a terribly romantic stream, Gothic richness, fluted ceilings, ancient quadrangles, and the chancellors, and masters, and readers, and students, and choirs. Colleges such as the Magdalens and Pembrokes and All Souls counted their history and their heroes in hundreds of years. The Nuffields and St. Catherines in mere decades. All of it was filled with the roll call of immortals that was the greatness of England itself.
Nathan Goldmark found the taxi stand and handed the driver a slip of paper that read, Radcliffe Medical Centre. He lowered his window despite the chill drizzle as they drove toward a flood of bicycles and jaunty students. On an ancient wall in paint in red letters were the words, jesus WAS A FAIRY.
In the sterile sanctuary of the medical centre he was taken down a long corridor, past a dozen laboratories to the tiny, dishevelled office of Dr. Mark Tesslar, who had been expecting him.
'We will go to my place,' Tesslar said. 'It is better to speak there.'
Tesslar's apartment was a few miles from the centre of Oxford in the countryside, in a converted monastery at Wytham Abbey. It took only a moment or so for Dr. Mark Tesslar and Nathan Goldmark to size each other up, for they were both members of the same unique club, the few and far between Polish Jews to survive Hitler's holocaust. Tesslar had matriculated through the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek and Jadwiga Concentration Camps. Goldmark was a graduate of Dachau and Auschwitz. The rivulets of deep furrows and sunken eyes betrayed the past of one to the other.
'How did you find me, Goldmark?' Tesslar asked.
'Through Dr. Maria Viskova. She told me you were in Oxford working on special research.'
The mention of Maria brought a smile to an otherwise rigid, bony face. 'Maria ... when did you see her last?'
'A week ago.'
'How is she?'
'Well, in a favourable position but, like all of us, trying to find out where life is again. Trying to understand what happened.'
'I begged her, when we were liberated and returned to Warsaw, to leave Poland. It is no place for a Jew. It's a graveyard. A vast, hollow place filled with the smell of death.'
'But you are still a Polish citizen, Dr. Tesslar.'
'No. I have no intentions of going back. Never.'
'It will be a great loss for the Jewish community.'
'What Jewish community? A smattering of ghosts sifting through the ashes.'
'It will be different now.'
'Will it, Goldmark? Then why do they have a separate branch of the Communist Party for Jews. I'll tell you. Because the Poles won't admit to their guilt and they have to keep what is left of the Jews locked in Poland. See! We have Jews here. They like it here. We are good Poles. And people like you do their dirty work. You have to keep a Jewish community in Poland to justify your own existence. You're being used. But in the end you'll find out the Communists are no better for us than the Nationalists before the war. Inside that country we are pigs.'
'And Maria Viskova ... a lifelong Communist?'
'She will be disenchanted too, before it's over.'
Goldmark wished to disengage the conversation. His face pinched nervously as he sucked at one cigarette after the other. As Tesslar made his attack, Goldmark became more restless.
Mark Tesslar limped slightly as he took the tray of tea from his housekeeper. He prepared it and poured.
'The reason of my visit to Oxford,' Goldmark said, 'concerns Adam Kelno.'
The mention of Kelno's name brought an instant visible reaction. 'What about Kelno?'
Goldmark smirked a little, chomping with the sudden importance of his revelation. 'You've known him a long time?'
'Since we were students in 1930.'
'When was the last you saw of him?'
'Leaving the Jadwiga Concentration Camp. I heard he came to Warsaw after the war, then fled.'
'What would you say if I told you he was in England?'