The Children’s Train

That winter, Sloan had relented and agreed to let Peter go to Poland. Sloan told Peter he would see things he might not be able to forget, and he’d do things he might not be able to forgive.

On his first reconnaissance mission, Peter saw the Soblin Ghetto from across a park, and wondered if Sloan was right. Maybe he was too soft and not the commando type, but it was too late to back out. He was committed and in enemy territory, and Hitler was still a monster.

This would be his first act of sabotage, Operation Rakete, or skyrocket. His job was to get the explosives from a mysterious, but well-connected, man named Abraham, who had been a chemist living comfortably. Then the Nazis had taken his house, shut down his lab, and prohibited him from communicating with his counterparts in the United States, who were trying to help him emigrate to be a part of a secret military project.

Abraham now lived in a Soblin sewer with his old housekeeper, Martha, who had been displaced along with him. Although she could keep a house clean and cook a hearty stew, she was not very bright and relatively unattractive. Without Abraham, she would have succumbed to the brutality of the Nazis a long time ago.