Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Stern asked. “What are you laughing at?”

  “You,” said McConnell. “Us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Stern, we’re both so goddamn stupid it’s pathetic. What did I tell you back at Achnacarry? That this mission as explained to me didn’t make sense. But since you knew Smith was lying to me, it didn’t bother you too much that I couldn’t make sense of it. But don’t you see? The mission as told to you doesn’t make any sense either.”

  “Explain, damn you!”

  “Are you blind? If the British really have developed their own nerve gas, where is the logic in wiping out the people in this camp?”

  Stern tried to recall his first conversation with Brigadier Smith, that night in the Bentley. “The British only have a limited amount of gas,” he said slowly. “One-point six tons, something like that. The Nazis have thousands of tons stockpiled around Germany. Smith said the Allies could never catch up before the invasion, that their only chance was to bluff the Nazis into believing they not only have their own nerve gas, but also the will to use it. Plus the sample, remember? The Soman sample.”

  McConnell watched him like a teacher willing a student toward an answer. “Think, Stern. They got a sample of Sarin out without our help, remember? They don’t need us for that. They’ve got Anna here. No, the point of this mission is killing the people. To kill everyone inside that camp and leave the machinery intact. That is the plan, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I couldn’t see it because I had accepted the idea that we were coming to disable the plant. But assuming Smith told you truth — at least about the objective — what does that tell us? If you wipe out this camp with nerve gas, you will have committed the first offensive chemical weapons strike of the Second World War. The risks are incalculable. And if I know one thing about Duff Smith, he’s a pragmatic bastard. The same for Churchill. Neither would take such a risk unless they had no choice.”

  “They don’t have a choice,” Stern told him. “In four days Heinrich Himmler is going to demonstrate Soman to the Führer, in the hope of convincing him to use nerve gas against the Allied invasion troops. Hitler believes the Allies have their own nerve gases. Himmler doesn’t, and for once he is close to being right. Churchill and Smith believe this attack — this bluff — is the only chance to convince Himmler he’s wrong, and embarrass him into calling off his demonstration.”

  McConnell remained unconvinced. “Even if all that is true,” he said, “you’re missing the point. If the British possess even one liter of their own nerve gas, all Churchill would have to do is get one vial of it into the right hands in Germany. Even leaking the written formula would be enough. By doing that, they would show Hitler they have strategic parity, but without risking massive retaliation. Because the Nazis would have no way of knowing whether the British had only one vial or ten thousand tons!”

  McConnell drummed his fingers on the table. “No, Stern, only one possible scenario justifies a risk like this. The British have developed some form of nerve gas, but there’s a problem with it. Maybe multiple problems.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of problems?”

  McConnell shrugged. “Could be anything. It usually takes three to six months to copy a war gas, and that’s with conventional variants. Sarin is a revolutionary toxin, and as far as I know, the British have had it for less than sixty days. With Churchill breathing down their necks, the scientists at Porton might just have been able to crack it. But even then their problems would only have begun. War gases are extremely difficult to mass produce for battlefield use. They must be heavier than air, resistant to moisture, non-corrosive to standard steel. They must be stable enough to retain toxicity during long periods of storage and transport, also to survive the detonation of the artillery shells that carry them. A nerve gas should ideally be odorless and colorless, insofar as is possible. If you see a gas cloud coming — or smell it in low concentration — its effectiveness as a weapon is greatly inhibited—”

  “Get to the point!” Stern shouted.

  “Sorry. My point is that the British team at Porton has probably developed a facsimile of Sarin that has one or more of those flaws. They can’t send a sample to the Germans, because they know their gas can’t withstand close analysis, i.e., it’s not in the same league with Sarin.”

  Stern moved away from the window and planted a boot on one of the kitchen chairs. “Why couldn’t they send Hitler a vial from the stolen sample? Send the Nazis their own gas and claim it’s British?”

  McConnell considered this. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. I’ll bet Smith thought of that. But German chemists are very good. An exact chemical copy of German Sarin would be greeted with extreme suspicion. They’d probably figure out that bluff.”

  He drank some of his coffee, which had grown cold. “No, I think Smith and Churchill looked at the situation and decided they had only one option. To gamble that whatever problems exist with the British Sarin, the stuff will kill. That’s why there are only the two of us, Stern. If the copycat Sarin kills effectively, it may well convince the Nazis that they would be foolish to risk attacking the Allies with nerve gas. But if it doesn’t work, what have the British lost? You and me. Two expendable civilians. Whether the British Sarin works or not, it will be gone on the wind in a few hours. And I’ll bet you fifty bucks that the cylinders hanging from your pylon are of German manufacture.”

  “They are.”

  McConnell shook his head, awed by the boldness of Smith’s plan. “We’re sacrificial lambs, Stern. You may fancy that role. I don’t.”

  Stern had gone very still. Anna was watching McConnell with a strange mixture of respect and fear.

  “It stings, doesn’t it?” McConnell laughed softly. “The great Haganah terrorist, fooled by a British general.”

  Stern slung his Schmeisser over his shoulder. “The gas might work,” he said. “You admitted that yourself. If it does, the mission will succeed regardless of all this. I guess I’ll just have to find out the hard way, as you Americans say.”

  He turned and started for the foyer.

  “Wait!” Anna pleaded. “It’s daylight. You’ll never reach that pylon without being caught. Major Schörner has doubled the guard on the transformer station.”

  Stern lifted his hand from the door handle. “What?”

  “I told you, there are patrols everywhere because of the dead sergeant. Even if you managed to attack the camp, half the SS men wouldn’t be there. I’ve made a place for you in the cellar. You can hide there today and decide what to do. It will be dark by six tonight. Where is the harm in waiting until then?”

  Stern came back into the kitchen. “I want to speak to someone higher up in your group.”

  “There is no one higher,” Anna said.

  “You are the senior person?”

  “There’s no one else.”

  “I don’t believe you. Who were those men who helped us at the plane?”

  “Friends. They know nothing about the situation in camp.”

  “You’re Brigadier Smith’s only contact?”

  “Who is Brigadier Smith?”

  McConnell couldn’t keep from grinning. “What’s wrong with her? I like her just fine. Our own Mata Hari.”

  “Shut up, damn you!”

  McConnell stood up. “Kiss my ass, Stern. You know that idiom yet? Add it to your collection.”

  Stern gave both of them withering stares, nodding like a man who has just discovered he is surrounded by enemies. Then he turned, walked through the foyer and out the front door.

  Anna looked at McConnell with wild eyes, then jumped up, ran to the door, and shouted for Stern. He apparently did not stop, for she came back into the kitchen wearing the blank gaze of a witness to a terrible accident.

  “He is walking toward the hills,” she said. “He will kill us all.”

  “I don’t know,” said McConnell, standing up from the table. “He’s got
that SD uniform. He speaks perfect German. He might make it.”

  Anna looked around her kitchen as if it had suddenly become an alien environment. “They should have told me,” she said, her soft voice full of resentment. “It is too much to ask.” She focused on McConnell, her face now illuminated by sunlight. “Would he really do it?” she asked. “Would he really kill all those prisoners? All those children?”

  McConnell realized then that Stern’s revelation had shocked the nurse as deeply as it had him. He felt an urge to touch her, to try and comfort her, but he didn’t want her to misinterpret his action. “I’m afraid he’s perfectly capable of doing that,” he said. “If he really wants to, you could only stop him by killing him. Unless you’re ready to do that, I don’t think you’d better go in to work today.”

  “But I must!” Anna looked at him with new fear in her eyes. “If I don’t, Major Schörner will send a patrol here.”

  “Can you call in sick?”

  “I have no telephone.”

  “How do you get to work?”

  “Bicycle.”

  “Well . . . you’d better ride damn slowly.”

  29

  Only twenty-four hours had passed since Major Schörner humiliated Sergeant Sturm in the alley, but in those hours Gunther Sturm had boiled with a rage unlike any he had ever known. It consumed him. Ultimately, he would kill Schörner. But the discovery of the British parachutes had caused enough of an uproar to draw the attention of Colonel Beck at Peenemünde. Sturm knew he would be crazy to try to get rid of Schörner under the nose of that devil.

  He’d flirted with the idea of challenging Schörner to a duel. SS law entitled a man to demand satisfaction in a dispute where honor was involved. But in practice, actual duels were discouraged. Besides, even with one eye missing, Schörner was an expert fencer and a crack shot. No, the only revenge he could get immediately would be through Schörner’s Jewish whore.

  The man he had chosen to carry out his vendetta was a certain Corporal Ludwig Grot. Not only was Grot the most violent man in his unit, but he also owed the sergeant major nearly four hundred marks in gambling debts. Sturm had put the matter to him over a bottle of excellent schnapps, a treat he had been saving for a special occasion. Grot had been more than happy for the chance to erase his debts with a single favor. And so simple! One beating. A couple of well-placed blows. Where was the difficulty? If a Jew insulted the honor of the Reich as he passed, it was his duty to teach her a lesson. If she died, so what? One less Jew fouling the good German air.

  Sturm had made sure Grot had a clear field for his attack. Schörner was meeting with Colonel Beck at Peenemünde about the parachutes, and Brandt had driven down to Berlin again to meet with Reichsführer Himmler. As Sturm walked his favorite shepherd — an enormous male called Rudi — down to the vantage point he had chosen from which to observe the ambush, he saw Grot lounging in front of the SS enlisted barracks. He gave the corporal a smug grin and reflected on how good a choice he had made.

  During their time in Einsatzkommando 8, clearing Jews from Latvia, Ludwig Grot had frequently complained of boredom. He also lamented the great waste of ammunition expended in the disposal of Jews. One day he discovered a way to simultaneously assuage his two pet peeves. He ordered several Jewish prisoners to stand in a line, each man pressing his chest to the back of the man in front of him. He then took bets on how many Jews he could kill with a single bullet. In eastern Poland he had won thirty marks by killing three fully grown males with a single shot from his Luger. Near Poznan he had killed five women this way, but the last in line had taken several hours to die, so she didn’t really count.

  Sturm affectionately scratched Rudi’s coat behind the powerful neck. He almost wished Schörner could be around to see the show.

  Rachel was crossing the Appellplatz with Hannah and Jan when a guttural German voice brought her up short.

  “What was that you said, Jew?”

  She stopped and looked up into the perpetually angry face of Corporal Ludwig Grot.

  “What did you call me, Judenlaus?” he barked.

  Rachel noticed that the corporal was speaking very loudly, as if for the benefit of an audience. She clenched Jan and Hannah’s hands. “I said nothing, Herr Rottenführer. But if I offended, I apologize.”

  “You did offend, you stinking slut.”

  Rachel crumpled to the ground under the force of the first blow. She wasn’t sure what had happened. It felt like she had walked blindly into an iron lamppost. When Grot kicked her in the stomach she nearly blacked out, but she forced one string of words from her throat. “Run! Children, run to Frau Hagan!”

  Jan caught little Hannah’s hand and began pulling her toward the inmate blocks.

  Grot dragged Rachel to her feet and slapped her twice — very hard and very quickly — like a man for whom violence is an old habit. The right side of her face stung as if it had been scalded. The left side felt numb. An image of a silver Death’s Head ring hung before her eyes. For an instant she thought of Wolfgang Schörner, then in the next remembered he was eighty kilometers away in Peenemünde. There would be no rescue today. She closed her eyes and prayed that Frau Hagan would look after her children.

  Grot balled his right fist and punched the side of her head, dropping her onto the snow, then kicked her savagely in the ribs with his hobnailed boot. Rachel heard something crack as her left side collapsed inward. Grot’s boot stopped in its path toward her head as a woman’s voice shouted at him in a foreign language.

  He looked up.

  Frau Hagan was striding across the yard with all the confidence she had displayed digging peat at Auschwitz or hauling bricks at Buna. When she was ten meters from the corporal she began berating him in German, waving her hands and shouting that Major Schörner had unexpectedly returned to the camp and wanted Grot in his office immediately.

  Confronted by this disconcerting spectacle, Grot stood up straight. The kapo of the Jewish Women’s Block, though a prisoner, had an official position and she was screaming about Major Schörner. He turned and sought out Sergeant Sturm, who stood beneath a watchtower forty meters across the yard.

  While Corporal Grot looked to Sturm for guidance, Frau Hagan covered the last few meters to him. Rachel gasped when she saw the gardening spade appear from beneath her gray shift.

  Grot whirled just in time to see the flash of metal as Frau Hagan buried the spade up to the hilt in his neck. She jerked the spade back out, allowing a fountain of blood to spurt from Grot’s carotid artery. Both hands flew to his throat.

  “Dosyç!” Frau Hagan bellowed. “Enough! To hell with you, SS!” The big Pole nodded at Grot, defiance in her eyes.

  The SS man, his eyes bulging in dumb incomprehension, fell to the ground in a spreading puddle of blood.

  Frau Hagan knelt over Rachel. “Are you all right, Dutch girl?”

  Rachel could barely breathe, much less speak. Tears of gratitude stung her cheeks. She heard cries of rage and confusion reverberating through the camp. No one could quite believe what had happened.

  “Run,” she croaked. “Get away . . . while you can.”

  A savage barking chilled Rachel’s blood. But instead of cowering before the fearsome noise, Frau Hagan rose into a crouch, turned, and braced herself for an attack. Rachel saw her face contort into a mask of fury — an anger that had been building for years, perhaps for a lifetime.

  Rudi, Sturm’s favorite shepherd, was charging across the yard with his teeth bared. He tore over the frozen ground faster than a racing hound and leaped at Frau Hagan while he was still four meters away.

  The Block Leader shouted something in Polish and held up her left forearm. Rudi’s jaws snapped shut on unprotected flesh as he landed, flailing his head from side to side and fighting to push the woman off her feet.

  With all the power in her thick body Frau Hagan slashed upward and plunged the spade into the animal’s throat. An explosive squeal echoed across the snow. The dog kept thrashing its head,
teeth ripping flesh, but its motions seemed mechanical, confused. Frau Hagan yanked out the spade and struck lower, ripping open its belly from groin to breastbone.

  Rudi let go. Frau Hagan threw herself upon the beast like a madwoman, mauling it with maniacal strength. Steam rose from the dog’s open belly.

  Rachel tensed when she heard the first shot, but she saw no immediate effect. The second bullet thudded into flesh, but Frau Hagan continued to slash away. Rachel realized then that an excited guard had shot the dog — either by mistake or to put it out of its misery.

  Frau Hagan looked back over her shoulder. “Get up!” she shouted. “Run! You’ll be shot!”

  Rachel struggled to move but her limbs would not obey. “No!” she yelled back. “Come with me!”

  Another rifle bullet slammed into the dog. One of the tower-gunners fired a short burst to take his range. Frau Hagan looked at Rachel one last time, her eyes shining with a strange elation, then gathered up her shift and dashed toward the base of the guard tower where Sergeant Sturm stood watching in disbelief.

  The enraged Pole was running at full speed with the spade held high when the tower gunner cut her down. The bullets blew her over onto her back, where she lay without moving.

  Totenhausen lay perfectly silent. From the ground Rachel searched the faces of the women prisoners that had formed a loose perimeter around her. For the first time since her arrival, she sensed a real potential for violence among them. Frau Hagan was known to them all. Dozens in the crowd owed her favors, some owed her their lives. She was a symbol of survival in the face of the worst the Nazis could do. For some seconds Rachel was seized by the feeling that the women might actually follow Frau Hagan’s example and charge the guards.

  She heard an SS man shout an order to return to barracks. No one moved. Across the yard, in the shadow of the hospital, Rachel spied Anna Kaas. The blond nurse was standing beside the concrete steps, looking directly at her. In her white uniform she looked strangely like an angel. When she had caught Rachel’s eye, Anna raised both hands sharply toward the sky. Rachel stared back. The nurse signaled again, more violently.