Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  Rachel had assumed that when Schörner finished she would be told to go back to the women’s block. Or at least allowed to go. But after she pulled on her underpants and rose from the couch, Schörner asked if she would stay a bit. She hesitated, wondering what he could want. Had he not satisfied himself? He looked quite at ease.

  Schörner led her into his front room and bade her sit down in a wing chair. He poured some brandy, which Rachel left standing on the low table before her. Then Schörner simply looked at her. To Rachel the room seemed filled by a brittle silence. She did not feel particularly uncomfortable, or particularly comfortable either. She simply noticed that the major’s quarters, unlike the Jewish women’s block, did not stink of sweat and disinfectant and worse things. It smelled of leather and gun oil and faintly of cigars. While he sat there watching her, she wondered if she was a different person for what she had allowed him to do. She didn’t feel different. At least not any different from when she had walked in the door fifteen minutes earlier. But perhaps she was not thinking clearly, like a person who has had a limb torn off by a shell.

  While Rachel sat thinking these things, Major Schörner began to talk. It struck her as quite odd, the things he said. He began by talking about the city of Cologne, how he missed it. And then about his older brother. He talked about hunting trips they had taken together as boys. He required no response from Rachel, only that she listen. She was glad he had not done all this talking before. Somehow she knew it would have been more difficult to block him out. To erase him as a person. After some time talking like this, he fell silent again. He studied Rachel with a wistful intensity so great that she suddenly realized she knew what he was thinking. This strange certainty gave her the courage to ask a question.

  “Who is it that I remind you of, Sturmbannführer?”

  Schörner answered effusively, as if during all his silence he had been waiting for her to ask this very thing. “A young Fräulein from my hometown. Cologne, as I told you. Her name was Erika. Erika Möser. We were sweethearts from a very young age, but no one knew it. She was the daughter of a rival banking family. You’ve read Shakespeare, I’m sure. It was the Montagues and the Capulets all over again. The coming of Hitler made things even worse for us. Unlike my father, Herr Möser openly condemned the Führer and anyone who supported him. He was an arrogant man — too powerful to eliminate — but Goebbels forced him out of the country in 1939. Erika stayed behind to wait for me.” Schörner swallowed and looked at the floor. “It was a mistake. She was killed in the British thousand-bomber raid of 1942.”

  Rachel listened in amazement. It was all so unbelievable. One imagined SS officers to be monsters, sterile machines that obeyed orders to rape and massacre — not human beings who quaintly compared their childhood romances to Romeo and Juliet. Yet Schörner had killed many times, she was sure of it. At Totenhausen alone he had presided over the executions of hundreds, perhaps thousands of prisoners. And tonight he had pressured her into submitting to his will.

  “You went to university?” Schörner asked suddenly.

  “Yes. At Vrije. For two years only, though. I married before graduating.”

  “But that is excellent! Now perhaps I can converse for a while in words not prescribed in the manual of orders. I told you I was at Oxford, didn’t I?”

  Rachel could hardly believe he remembered, he had been so drunk. “Yes, Sturmbannführer. You said you were a paying student. Not a Rhodes scholar.”

  Schörner laughed. “That’s right. My father wanted me to be the German Asquith. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Strange that a man like that would let his son join the SS.”

  “Let me?” Schörner slapped his knee. “The old hypocrite made me join! It’s true! Let me tell you a funny story. Secretly, my father despised Hitler. The Führer was a bounder, an upstart, a nobody. But after 1935 or so, my father began to see which way the wind was blowing. So did a lot of aristocrats, as well. He decided Hitler might take Germany where it needed to go after all. Given that, he decided he should cover his bases. My brother Joseph was already in the Wehrmacht, as per family tradition. He’s on Kesselring’s staff now, in Italy. And so young Wolfgang was ‘encouraged’ into the SS. The National Socialist aristocracy. The Nazi elite.”

  “You swore the personal oath to Hitler?” Rachel asked quietly.

  “Yes. It didn’t seem such a difficult thing to do in 1936. Now . . . well, let us say that the SS is not the ideal organization for an educated man. Not even for a half-educated man like me. Educated men tend to ask questions, and questions are verboten in the SS.”

  Rachel’s curiosity struggled with her fear of provoking retaliation. “But even if the SS began as an elite unit, how can a man of your education ignore the things they have done over these years? What I have seen myself — the stories I’ve heard. . . ”

  Schörner’s face seemed suddenly to grow heavy. “There are excesses, certainly. There are things I do not agree with. War brings opportunities to men who in normal times suppress darker appetites. You should see what the Russians did to some of my friends.” He curled his lip in disgust. “But frankly, if we win the war, none of that will ever be brought up in polite conversation, much less in a court of law. The butchers will be heroes.”

  Rachel was too stunned to consider her words. “If you win? Surely you don’t — I mean, can you win, once the Americans and the English invade?”

  Schörner smiled with surprising confidence. “That is exactly the problem we are working on here at Totenhausen. I almost told you the other day.” He leaned back on the sofa, a man in a good humor, munificent in his superiority. “What is this power you have over me?” he asked. “You make me want to pour out my soul. What a fool I am, telling all to a woman.”

  Yet he did not stop. He seemed to enjoy the absurdity of the situation. “Frau Jansen, what I told you about Doktor Brandt’s abilities is true. He is a pioneering chemist, a man of genius. His war gases are Germany’s only hope of throwing the Allied invasion army back into the sea. Believe me when I tell you that Soman can stop literally an infinite number of troops. It is what we call a ‘denial’ weapon. No one can occupy the same area it does. And if we deny the Allies a foothold in France this year, we can stop the Russians in the East.”

  “But can you win?”

  Schörner bristled. “We might. If not, we can negotiate an end to the war with respectable territorial gains. That would be satisfactory. The alternative is the destruction of Germany.” Schörner leaned forward. “That is why I tolerate Herr Doktor Brandt’s eccentricities, Frau Jansen. It is an interesting intellectual problem, yes? Brandt’s weakness is one for which I might kill him during normal times. But we are at war. Thus his value to Germany is determined by a different equation. Perhaps by a different mathematics altogether.”

  Rachel wondered where she fit in Schörner’s “different” mathematics. There he sat, a scion of the “master race,” having a parlor chat with a member of the tribe he was pledged to eradicate from the face of the earth.

  “Sturmbannführer,” she said quietly, “are you not in danger, sitting here with a Jew in this fashion? Doing what we have done?”

  Schörner cocked his head slightly to the side. Then he chuckled softly. “I suppose so. But in this crazy camp, I would say that what I did tonight hardly qualifies as a misdemeanor.”

  Rachel would not be put off. “I am a Jew,” she said again. “What does that mean to you?”

  Schörner turned up his palms. “To me you are a woman,” he said. “I don’t really care about religion. I never did. Brandt doesn’t care either, to tell you the truth. To him we are all guinea pigs.”

  “If I was old and ugly,” Rachel said, “would you still not care about my religion?”

  Schörner laughed. “You are not old and ugly. Even nearly bald you are quite beautiful. But please, do not push me on this. There are paradoxes in all societies, Frau Jansen. You did not grow up as I did, so you cannot possibly understand wh
at led me to the position in which I now find myself. Nor can I really understand yours.”

  “No,” Rachel said under her breath.

  Schörner stood, not hurriedly, but with enough emphasis to indicate that the conversation was over. “I have absolutely no doubt that these things I’ve said tonight will not leave this room. You understand, of course.”

  Rachel felt as if an electrical switch had been thrown in her chest. What she had taken as a strange intimacy was merely Schörner speaking freely in the certainty that she would eventually die like all the other prisoners. She could scarcely believe she had dared speak to him, much less pressed him about personal matters.

  “I understand completely, Sturmbannführer,” she said submissively. “Should I go now?”

  “You may go. I look forward to your next visit.”

  Rachel turned to the door.

  “Just a moment. Take the brandy with you.”

  Schörner was holding out the glass she had left untouched on the table. Rachel considered taking the brandy to Frau Hagan. The old Pole would have no scruples about drinking Nazi booty. But Rachel could not touch the glass. Somehow, she felt, if she accepted anything material from Schörner, she would be lost. That she might never find herself again, even if she did someday manage to escape this place.

  It was only a small victory, but she clung to it.

  Outside Schörner’s quarters, Rachel saw a man standing in the shadow of the administrative building, smoking a cigarette. She cringed, thinking it might be Sergeant Sturm.

  As she drew closer she realized it was only one of Sturm’s dog handlers. He did not challenge her, but he smiled in a way that made her rush past as quickly as she could.

  24

  “The money’s as good as in my pocket!” Sergeant McShane shouted.

  Jonas Stern stood at the foot of one support leg of a sixty-foot power pylon, his eyes glued to those of Ian McShane, who stood twenty feet away beneath the pole’s twin. The huge supports were joined at the top by a twenty-foot crossarm, forming an approximate mockup of the pylon Stern would have to scale in Germany. Three electrical wires stretched from the crossarm to a second pylon one hundred yards down the hill, then on again to a third on the banks of Loch Lochy. McShane had bet Stern five pounds that he could beat the younger man to the top of the pylon and release one of the cylinders hanging from the wires.

  “Ready?” he prodded.

  Stern glanced down at his boots. The iron climbing spikes were strapped securely to his calves, leaving two razor points jutting inward from the arches of his feet. He would have discarded the safety belt that held his waist loosely to the pole, but McShane had insisted he wear it as part of the wager. Stern raised his left foot three feet above the wet ground and dug a spike into the pole. Then he slid the belt up high enough so as not to restrict him when he leaped.

  “Ready,” he said.

  “See you at the top!” cried McShane.

  Stern began climbing with a herky-jerky motion, moving quickly up the pole but fighting the safety belt all the way. With every step he vowed that he would abandon it as soon as he got to Germany. He glanced to his left and marveled at how smoothly Sergeant McShane climbed. The man outweighed him by twenty kilograms, yet he scampered up the pylon with the natural grace of a jungle ape. Stern focused on the crossarm high above his head and redoubled his efforts, scraping both cheeks and inner forearms as he struggled upward.

  His right hand had just caught hold of the rough-edged crossbeam when McShane shouted: “That’s five pounds you owe me, mate!”

  Stern looked up. The huge Highlander was already sitting above him on the crossarm, his bare legs hanging beneath his old kilt, his face laughing beneath his green beret. Stern heard a soft whirring sound and looked down the hill. Thirty meters along the wire that began beneath McShane’s kilt, a dark green gas cylinder trundled smoothly downhill toward the second pylon.

  Stern reached out and jerked the rubber rope hanging from the pulley roller nearest him, yanking out the cotter pin that held the cylinder beneath it in place. Powered only by gravity, the green cylinder began to move away from the pylon and gather speed. The whole contraption looked something like a large oxygen bottle tied by its neck to a runaway ski-lift chair, but this did not stop it from working with absolute precision.

  “I don’t have five pounds,” Stern grumbled, settling into an uncomfortable perch on his end of the crossarm.

  McShane waved his hand. “You can stand me a pint in Fort William. Beats money anytime.”

  Stern nodded, still trying to catch his breath.

  “There’s Ben Nevis,” McShane said. “See it? I call her the crouching lion. Tallest mountain in Scotland.”

  Stern raised his eyes and looked out over the glen. Far to the south he saw the wooded hump of the mountain shrouded in mist. Loch Lochy shimmered like polished slate in the pale sun.

  “I think you’ve about got the knack of it,” McShane said above the rising wind. “’Course it’d take you another month to get up to my level.”

  Stern nodded with resignation. “You’re damned good,” he admitted. “But why in God’s name do you work so hard at it? You’re not the one who’s going into—”

  Stern stared hard into the Highlander’s blue eyes.

  McShane winked. “Finally figured it out, have you? Christ, it only took you a week.”

  “You close-mouthed bastard. You’re going in to hang the cylinders!”

  McShane made an indignant face. “Goin’, you say? I’m leading the bloody mission!”

  “Who else is going with you?”

  McShane looked around cautiously, which appeared ridiculous sixty feet off the ground. “Three other instructors,” he said. “We get a little tired of wet-nursing pups like you. This is probably going to be the last real commando raid of the war, you know. In the classic sense, I mean. Hit and run. Shoot ’n scoot, as we used to say.”

  “It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?” Stern said in an accusatory tone. “The war, I mean.”

  McShane’s lips maintained their smile, but his eyes narrowed. “It’s one way of looking at it. That way, no matter how bad things get, you keep some perspective. But I’ll tell you this, man. When the Luftwaffe was pounding London into dust and the RAF lads were dying like flies over the Channel, it wasna any game. Churchill sent us across just to show Britain wasna lyin’ down for Hitler. We got chewed into little pieces. I lost many a mate those first two years. I dinna mind tellin’ you, the day of reckoning is at hand.”

  McShane reached out with his boot and rocked a third gas cylinder, which hung from the wire beneath him. “I reckon most are content to wait for the invasion. But we Highlanders are a vindictive lot. To our own detriment sometimes. Smith offered me a chance to hit the bastards where it hurts, so I took it.”

  Stern had never thought he would feel empathy for a British soldier, but in that moment he did. “How much do you know about the mission, Sergeant?”

  McShane gazed past him to the gray hills. “I know all I need to know. Same as you. Dinna look to know more.” He glanced down to check his spikes for the descent. “You ought to be glad it’s me going. You need all the help ye can get.”

  “What do you mean? I can take care of myself.”

  “Can you?” McShane chuckled softly. “I hope you can hide yourself better than you hid that bicycle. I found the bloody thing four days ago.”

  Stern’s mouth fell open.

  “Dinna be worryin’ about that. The colonel doesn’t know. I slipped it back to that crofter’s hut for you.” The Highlander reached down and took hold of the cotter pin holding the third cylinder in place. “You’ll do fine,” he said. “Smith knew what he was doing. You’re the perfect man for your job.”

  He yanked the pin from the roller wheel. “And I’m the perfect man for mine. If anyone can hang those cylinders, stow your gear and get out without the Hun any the wiser, it’s the boys from Achnacarry.”

  Stern watched
the cylinder glide smoothly down the wire. He was glad to know McShane would be preparing the way for him. He didn’t like any of the other instructors much, but after five days of training under them, he had to admit that he’d never met better or tougher soldiers in his life.

  The rolling cylinder jumped the crossarm on the second pylon, then settled into a steady run down toward the loch.

  “When are you jumping off?” Stern asked. “By my count, it’s time to go.”

  “The cylinders from Porton Down are scheduled to arrive in one hour,” McShane said calmly. “My lot shoves off then.”

  Stern felt a rush of excitement. “Tonight?”

  McShane unclipped his safety belt, slid off the crossarm and dug his spikes into the thick pole beneath it. He looked over at Stern and grinned. “I just wish I was going to be there to see those cylinders land in that camp. It’ll be some show, that. One night only, and no one leaves alive.”

  “No one but me and McConnell,” said Stern.

  “Right,” McShane added quickly. “That’s what I meant.”

  Beyond the Arkaig River where it bent north of the castle, McConnell wearily stuffed his chemistry and German books into a leather bag and started back toward the commando camp. He’d had enough studying, and his stomach was audibly begging for nourishment. To shorten his trip, he turned into a section of forest known as the Mile Dorcha, or Dark Mile. The origin of the name was plain enough. What had once been a forest lane was now a tunnel of overarching trees, with the road itself sunk between high banks covered with deep moss and lichens. It was the kind of place where one half-expected to hear the thunder of hoofbeats as a headless horseman galloped out of the trees.