Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  As he neared the castle, something else caught his eye. It was a row of graves. The graves followed the line of the drive. Each was marked by a white cross and a board which bore a name, rank, and brief epitaph. The first one McConnell stooped over read: He showed himself on a ridge line. The second read: Failed to take appropriate cover under mortar barrage.

  As he stood puzzling over the inscriptions, he heard a slow creak. Then a familiar voice called out of the darkness: “The dead dinna mind the rain, Mr. Wilkes!”

  Sergeant McShane.

  “But I’d advise the livin’ to get indoors!”

  McConnell jogged up to the great wooden door, wiped his muddy shoes, and squeezed past McShane’s broad body. He found himself in a spacious entrance hall which had been stripped of all furniture.

  “Where’s your friend, then?” McShane asked. “Mr. Butler.”

  McConnell shrugged. “Back out there somewhere, I guess.”

  The Highlander eyed him with new interest. “I’m not surprised. You must have set a cracking pace to make it that quickly.”

  “I’ve done a little running.”

  “Have you now? Well. That’s a handy thing to have done if you’re required to spend any time at Achnacarry, Mr. Wilkes. There’s many a man who wished he’d done more of it. I’ve seen university distance runners fall flat in these hills.” The Scot’s lips cracked into a tight smile. “’Course, eighty pounds of gear on their backs doesna help much.”

  Suddenly the front door was shoved open from outside. McConnell turned and saw Jonas Stern standing in the doorway with a satisfied smile on his face. He was wet to the skin, but didn’t look at all winded.

  Before McConnell or Sergeant McShane could speak, he said, “Butler reporting for duty, Sergeant.”

  McConnell looked at the sergeant with bewilderment, but the dour Scot was an old hand at appearing unflappable. “You made good time, Mr. Butler,” he said. “I was about to lock the door.”

  “Go ahead.”

  McShane did, then led them through a hall dark with wainscoting and turned up a wide staircase. “You’ll stay in the castle until further notice,” he said. “You’ll see hundreds of men coming and going in all manner of kit, speaking several languages. They’re commando trainees. You leave them be, they’ll do the same. Some will be instructors. They’re not marked as such, but you won’t have any trouble tellin’ who they are.”

  Not if they all look like you, McConnell thought. Sergeant McShane looked like a Highland clan chief who’d stepped straight out of the eighteenth century.

  “Remember,” the Scotsman said, “you’re Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Butler. Dinna be givin’ those names unless you’re asked. The C.O. of the depot is Colonel Vaughan. You two may not be military, but you’d better snap to if he comes near. The MacVaughan doesna suffer fools gladly.”

  They stopped in a dim passage with heavy wooden doors on either side. McShane pointed to the second door on the right. Stern pushed it open. Inside the small, square room were two cots, a paraffin lamp which had been burning for some time, and a bare clothes rack.

  “Bath’s up the passage,” McShane said. “No hot water in this part of the castle.” He put his forefinger between Stern’s shoulder blades and shoved him into the room.

  McConnell quickly followed, so as to stop any overreaction on Stern’s part.

  “You two must be important,” the sergeant mused. “You’re the first civilians I know of to pass through Achnacarry.”

  McConnell bent over one of the cots and picked up a horsehair rope about four feet long, with a permanent loop at one end and a straight wooden handle about six inches long attached to the other. An identical rope lay on the other cot.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Toggle rope,” McShane said. “Every commando carries one at all times. You’ll soon see why. I dinna want to see you without it. That’s it then. I’ll see you at breakfast. Six a.m.”

  He turned and started back toward the staircase.

  McConnell went after him and called, “Is a Brigadier Duff Smith staying in the castle tonight, Sergeant?”

  McShane didn’t break stride. “I canna charge my memory about that just now, Mr. Wilkes.”

  Realizing he would learn nothing else until morning, McConnell went back to the room and began taking off his wet clothes. He stripped to the skin, as his shorts were soaked through, then climbed into bed. Stern paced the hall for a few moments, then did the same. McConnell thought it odd that Stern turned off the lamp before removing his clothes. It was almost as if he were trying to hide his body.

  McConnell lay silent in the dark for some time. But he could not go to sleep without asking one question. “How’d you make it up here so fast?” he said finally. “You found someone to give you a ride?”

  Stern answered in English, giving a fair rendition of McConnell’s Georgia drawl. “None of your business, is it, Mr. Wilkes?”

  McConnell took the barb in silence. He wondered if Stern realized that their code names had been taken from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. It had been the biggest picture of 1939, but God only knew what corner of the desert Jonas Stern had been living in then. Duff Smith had obviously selected the code names, knowing that McConnell would realize the significance of being named after the milquetoast Ashley Wilkes.

  He was nearly asleep when Stern’s disembodied voice said: “Did you see those grave markers?”

  McConnell blinked in the chilly darkness. “I saw them.”

  “Nothing but dirt under those crosses.”

  “What do you mean? The graves are empty?”

  “Right.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know the British Army. Fought with them in Africa. On their side, if you can believe it. Those graves are typical of their crap. They put those crosses there to scare recruits. ‘Showed himself on a ridge line.’ What rot. The British Army’s just like those graves.”

  McConnell saw nothing to be gained by arguing with Stern about the British. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” he said.

  Stern grunted contemptuously in the darkness. “Sweet dreams, Mr. Wilkes,” he said in German. “Come morning, I’ll show those limey bastards commando training.”

  17

  McConnell kicked Stern out of bed at nine a.m. After a quick trip to the toilet at the end of the hall, he dressed in the clothes McShane had provided: army denims, gaiters, and a heavy green cotton smock. Last, he put on the “toggle” rope, with its loop at one end and short handle at the other. He coiled it around his hand, then clipped the coil to the web belt he found in the clothes bag.

  Stern was already dressed and standing by the door.

  “You don’t have your toggle rope,” McConnell reminded him.

  “I don’t need it.”

  McConnell shrugged and led the way to the first floor of the castle. They met Sergeant McShane in the entrance hall. The Highlander wore his green beret, but he had forgone his kilt in favor of denims, a khaki shirt, and camouflaged rain smock.

  “I was about to come lookin’ for you,” he said. “You missed breakfast.”

  “We’re ready,” said Stern.

  “Ready?” McShane stared at him in amazement. “I dinna see your toggle rope.”

  “I don’t need the damned thing.”

  “Oh, you’ll be needin’ it, Mr. Butler. Now, go back and get it. Move.”

  When Stern returned with the rope, McShane led them outside into a gray Highland dawn. The smell of wood and peat smoke mingled with the scent of coffee and pine, bringing McConnell fully awake. At last he could see the place to which Brigadier Smith had sent them. Achnacarry itself was built of gray stone, with crenelated parapets and mock turrets at the corners. The gurgle of water from behind it announced a river he could not see, but beyond the castle roof rose wooded hills shrouded in mist like that in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in northern Georgia.

  A majestic tree-lined drive led down from the
castle to the glen below, where a great loch with a surface like burnished silver lay in the growing light. But the pastoral scene ended there. Achnacarry’s expansive lawns were dotted with corrugated steel Nissen huts and canvas bell tents, a metropolis of instant housing. In the center of a field McConnell saw a tent as big as an aircraft hangar, and just across the drive the long row of graves Stern claimed were empty.

  Not far from the graves, a powerfully built soldier of about fifty was speaking to a tall, bearded farmer twenty years his senior. The soldier’s voice modulated quickly between apology and indignation, his accent the furthest thing imaginable from Highland Scots.

  “That’s the colonel,” Sergeant McShane said.

  McConnell was perplexed. “That’s Colonel Vaughan?”

  “Aye.”

  “But that’s a London accent. I thought he was a Highlander, like yourself. I thought he was lord of the castle.”

  McShane laughed. “The laird, you mean? No, no. The real laird, Cameron of Lochiel, moved two miles up the loch to Clunes for the duration. But he keeps an eye on his place, make no mistake. It’s his duty to all Camerons around the world.”

  McConnell regarded the heavy-jowled colonel. Vaughan seemed a bit on the bulky side for a commando, though he certainly looked as tough as an old army boot. “Vaughan’s a commando himself?”

  McShane shook his head. “Ex-Regimental Sergeant Major in the Guards.”

  “I don’t see any commandos,” Stern observed.

  “They’re on their thirty-six-hour scheme. Should be in any time, though.”

  “What’s a thirty-six-hour scheme?” McConnell asked.

  “Exactly what it sounds like. Thirty-six hours of running up and down the Lochaber hills in full kit under live fire. Be glad you missed it.”

  “They were out in that storm last night?”

  “Aye. And it’s a good thing they didna run across you two—”

  A cacophony of wild, primitive screams rose out of the trees from behind the castle. “What the hell’s that?” McConnell asked.

  “Mock assault on the Arkaig bridge. Climax of the scheme.”

  McConnell watched in amazement as over a hundred commandos wearing strange cloth caps charged out from behind the castle with bayonets fixed. “What’s that they’re yelling, Sergeant?”

  “Who knows? They’re Free French blokes.”

  By the time the French commandos reached the Nissen huts, their enthusiasm had vanished. As they collapsed around their tents, Colonel Vaughan marched up the drive, cursing under his breath.

  “What is it, sir?” Sergeant McShane asked.

  Vaughan’s face glowed red with anger. “Some fool pinched a bicycle from a crofter’s hut down the hill. Bloody beggar’s accusing one of our lads.”

  “One of ours, sir?”

  “Right. Claims no one local would have pinched it. Says everyone knows it’s his only transport other than his cart-horse.”

  McConnell looked Stern in the eye but saw no reaction.

  “If he turns out to be right,” Vaughan bellowed, “I’ll flay the man who did it. We can’t afford to offend the locals. And God forbid Lochiel should hear of it!” He glanced suspiciously down the hill at the exhausted Frenchmen. “Suppose one of the Frogs could have pinched it,” he mused. “Seems unlikely, though.”

  At last Vaughan’s eyes focused on Stern and McConnell. “What’s this lot, then? Dummies for the bayonet course?”

  “They’re our special guests, sir.”

  Vaughan stuck out his lower lip and gave them a measuring look. “Duff’s boys, eh? Very well. Carry on as we discussed, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you look into that bicycle.”

  “Aye.”

  Colonel Vaughan started to go, then paused, tucked his chin into his chest and squinted at Stern. McConnell wondered what had caught his interest. The desert tan? Stern’s languid posture? The insolent curve of his mouth? The colonel leaned his massive head in toward Stern’s chest and spoke with paternal familiarity.

  “You’d best get that chip off your shoulder, lad. Before somebody knocks it off.” Vaughan cut his eyes at McShane. “Happens quite often round here, eh, Sergeant?”

  “Seems to,” McShane confirmed. “Now that you mention it.”

  Colonel Vaughan nodded once at McConnell, then disappeared into his castle.

  Sergeant McShane stared pointedly at Stern. “Know anything about a missing bicycle?”

  Stern silently returned the stare.

  “Right,” McShane said. “Let’s get to business. Not much daylight in winter.”

  As the sergeant led them across the grounds, McConnell leaned toward Stern and whispered, “Where’d you hide the bicycle?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Stern.

  Sergeant McShane eventually stopped on top of a small hillock. On the other side, a stocky man of about forty sat on a camp stool, smoking a cigarette with obvious enjoyment. A clipboard and a pen lay on the ground beside him.

  “My orders,” said McShane, “are to see where you two stand as far as taking care of yourselves. We’re going to check your God-given ability first. Weapons come later. Let’s see how you’d do if you were caught without one.”

  The instructor on the stool grinned up at McShane. “Funny how often that very thing tends to happen, isn’t it, Ian?”

  “True enough, John. Are you busy? These two will only be with us for a few days.”

  “Not at all. Just put a few Poles through their paces.”

  “You’re the unarmed combat instructor?” Stern asked.

  The man on the stool frowned at the sound of Stern’s voice. German accents were seldom heard in the Lochaber hills.

  McShane said, “All of us are qualified to teach any part of the course. But Sergeant Lewis does specialize a bit. This part of the course is actually called Silent Killing.”

  Sergeant Lewis stood up and grinned again, though this time his eyes stayed sober. “Step into my parlor, lad.”

  “I’ll let my friend warm you up,” Stern said.

  McConnell turned to McShane. “Is this really necessary?”

  “Get on with it, Mr. Wilkes.”

  McConnell eased cautiously down the bank. He felt his pulse quickening. His entire pugilistic experience consisted of one round of boxing in a makeshift ring in the Fairplay High School gymnasium. It was the week after Tunney hammered Jack Dempsey for the title in Philadelphia. The high school boys had caught a seven-day boxing fever. His opponent had been a head shorter and fifteen pounds lighter than himself. He remembered because in less than three minutes the smaller boy had hit him harder, faster, and more times than he had ever been hit in his life. Those three minutes had been an education. He suspected he was in for a similar experience now.

  “Don’t be shy,” Sergeant Lewis said. “Come right in.”

  McConnell held up his fists in a classic boxing stance, right arm bent slightly at the elbow, left fist brushing his tucked chin. Sensing his hesitation, Lewis stepped forward and smiled, offering his head as a target.

  McConnell tried the only ruse he knew. He let his eyes drop to his opponent’s belly, feinted at the body with a left jab, then drove his right fist straight at Sergeant Lewis’s chin.

  When he ceased his forward motion he was sitting on his butt four feet beyond the spot where Lewis had been standing. The instructor had apparently converted the momentum of his punch into some kind of judo throw.

  “You’re no’ a fighter, Mr. Wilkes,” Lewis said. “That’s plain enough. I won’t even try to explain what I did then, because we don’t have time for you to learn.” He turned to McShane. “I’ll do what I can, Ian. But I say fit him up with a pistol and pray he doesn’t get caught without it.”

  McShane nodded in agreement, then motioned to McConnell, who climbed gratefully back up the bank.

  “Your turn, Mr. Butler,” Sergeant Lewis said. His voice had a rather unpleasant edge to it
.

  Stern walked easily down the bank, his long arms swinging lightly.

  Sergeant Lewis took a step toward him. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready enough.”

  The instructor shook his head. “Do you hear his accent, Ian? I pegged him for a Jew when I saw him, but he’s a bloody German to boot.” He turned back to Stern. “Say something else.”

  Stern straightened up to his full height. “All right, Sergeant. Shut your fucking mouth.”

  Lewis’s face lit up with pleasure. “Blow me, he curses like an English sergeant!”

  “He saw some action in North Africa,” said McShane.

  “Did he now?” Lewis began to slowly circle Stern.

  Stern stood with his knees slightly bent, hands hanging loose at his sides. McConnell thought he looked birdlike, a thin statue of brown sinew and bone, with only his eyes tracking the British sergeant. Lewis kept his hands high, open, and in front as he moved. His body gave off a frightening intensity, like a ball of knotted muscle and adrenaline, but Stern gave no indication that he planned to move for the remainder of the morning. Finally Sergeant Lewis took a step forward, daring him to strike.

  Stern did nothing.

  Tired of this game, Lewis feinted with a curled right hand, then fired his left foot at Stern’s head. Stern’s response baffled both his opponent and his audience. He stepped back in a motion that appeared almost leisurely, at the same time driving his left hand sharply upward at a speed barely visible. The sergeant’s whole body followed his kick skyward. He turned a half somersault and crashed onto his back at Stern’s feet.

  Lewis scrambled up, his face nearly purple with embarrassment and anger. “You’re the clever-dick, aren’t you!”

  “John,” Sergeant McShane cut in. “I think that’s enough.”

  “Bloody hell it is! Ask Mr. Butler if it’s enough. Or is it Mr. Birnbaum? Or Rubenstein?” He shook his finger in Stern’s expressionless face. “You are a bloody four-by-two, aren’t you?”

  Stern replied in a perfect British accent. “Got something against Jews, have you, mate?”

  “I knew it, Ian! Knew it the second I saw his desert tan.” Lewis’s face quivered. “This is one of the bastards that crippled my brother Wally in Palestine!”