Finally, one after the other, the underground leaders came to their senses. Wordlessly, they got to their feet. They stood at attention. The Red Army commando had not left for the mansion. There he stood.

Lipiczany spoke. “Not Operation Ural Mountains.”

Taradash, only an ink blot, a shape, said nothing.

“Szypper.”

“Szypper?”

One dozen voices: “Operation Szypper!”

Which is how the daring plan got its new name.

II

When the sun rose that morning, the Others blew up one of the Dolna River bridges. Krystal and Lifshits saw this, from the top of the Mosk Works chimney, near Jakuba Street. There was a flash, a geyser, a bang; planks, like tiny splinters, spurted into the air. Then the two halves of the bridge writhed on the water, like a cut worm. That left two bridges remaining—the so-called Tower Bridge, which, because it was high above the water and had a turret at either end, reminded people of the famous structure in London, and the King Ladislaus Bridge, three lanes wide. Across both of these, throughout the day, Warriors came streaming, their faces as dark as Moors’. Behind them, stretching into the sky, turning it brown, was a great column of dust. It threw a shadow over the town. Those in the Balut, seeing this, became excited. Here was the wrath of the Red Army! How they marched! Pulverizing the earth!

On the next day the cloud was even thicker. The sun behind it was red and glowing, like the heating element of a stove. At two in the afternoon one end of the Tower Bridge crumpled, the other end rose; then the whole thing fell into the river. The King Ladislaus Bridge still stood, however; even when the first people’s soldiers, and then the first people’s tanks, appeared on the horizon, it did not explode. From the chimney top Krystal and Lifshits could see that the Others meant to defend it. Guns were brought up to the approaches, and a squad of Death’s-Headers took positions along the nearby embankment.

Such forces could not halt the advancing soldiers. The reason the Red Army stopped, then fanned out along the far bank of the Dolna, was that at the first sign of a crossing the bridge would surely be destroyed. That the Warriors had not already done this could only mean that they hoped to save the bridge to mount their counterattack. Thus the two armies stared at each other across the river. Then the sun went down and the Edmund Trilling Brigade prepared an attack of its own.

Since the war started not a single Man of Valor had been killed by a citizen of the Balut. Rievesaltes shot Grundtripp, but that had been bad luck, sheer chance. The bullet had been meant for a Jew. So it was an occasion when Kleiderman plunged his knife into the chest of a sentry, and gave it a twist. Down dropped the Blond One; the finisher stood there, looking stunned. The rest of the brigade slipped through the rip in the fence and gathered in Zgierska, the Aryan boulevard. They could hear the footsteps of the next guard down the block. The presser, with his forearm, knocked him cold. Hersh Einhorn then sliced his throat. Kleiderman still had not moved. Miss Bibelnieks went to him.