Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  Bottomley raised an eyebrow and said with black humor, “Gone with the wind, eh sir?”

  “Have a little respect, Bottomley.”

  “Do you still want me to monitor Butler’s emergency frequency tonight? Once the Mosquitoes leave the main force, they’ll be observing strict radio silence. We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to. If you think Butler and Wilkes are done for—”

  “Of course you monitor the frequency, man! Right up to the minute the bombs fall.” Duff Smith’s voice was edged with anger. “No matter how bleak it looks, one never knows in this business. Anyway, we might learn something about why the mission failed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Smith worried at his mustache again. “I thought Stern had it in him to pull it off,” he murmured. “Blast.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Nothing, Bottomley. Let’s take the radio down to that hut by the beach. You never know who might crawl up out of the surf.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Jonas Stern wheeled Sabine Hoffman’s Mercedes up to the front gate of Totenhausen like Lucifer arriving in a black chariot. He’d seen the spotlights when he was still a mile away, like white fingers exploring the forest, and he had known then that trying to sneak back in would have been impossible.

  He had to brazen it out.

  As one of the six SS men guarding the gate approached the Mercedes, Stern prayed that Anna Kaas had given him an accurate description of the command situation at the camp. He rolled down his window and waited for the guard to arrive.

  When the brown-uniformed SS private saw the SD uniform and rank badge, he reacted exactly as Stern hoped he would. He snapped to attention with eyes as big as spent bullets.

  “Step up to the window, Schütze,” Stern said in an offhand voice.

  “Zu befehl, Standartenführer!”

  “I am Standartenführer Ritter Stern, from Berlin. I have come here to make an arrest. Possibly several arrests.”

  The private’s face lost what little color it had possessed.

  “I want no one but SD personnel to enter or leave through this gate for the next hour. That includes Sturmbannführer Wolfgang Schörner. Do you understand?”

  “Jawohl, Sturmbannführer!”

  “Stop shouting. You will tell the other guards nothing. You will tell Hauptscharführer Sturm nothing. I shall speak to Herr Doktor Brandt and no one else. Anyone who interferes with these arrests will find himself in the cellars of Prinz-Albrechtstrasse by morning. Have I made myself clear?”

  The private was too stunned to muster enough voice to answer, but he clicked his boot heels and nodded.

  “Get back to your post and open the gate.”

  The private fled back to his comrades and obeyed the order.

  Stern put the Mercedes into gear and rolled slowly forward into Totenhausen. The headquarters building looked deserted. He drove around it and onto the Appellplatz. Directly ahead of him stood the hospital, to his left the inmate blocks. Two heavy trucks were parked near the fence surrounding the large barn to his right, the barn Brigadier Smith had told him housed Brandt’s lab and gas factory. Men wearing white coats were loading boxes into the trucks.

  Stern drove straight on to the hospital and parked on the side away from the factory. His watch read 7:16 P.M. On schedule. He unscrewed the SOE-machined silencer from the Schmeisser and slipped it into his right boot, then got out of the Mercedes and walked around the hospital.

  The alley was empty.

  Halfway up it, he turned left and moved quite deliberately down the four steps that led to the half-sunken E-Block. The door worked by means of a steel wheel set in its face, like the wheel on a submarine hatch. The wheel turned under his hand; as Anna had predicted, the door was open. Warmer air ruffled his hair as he stepped inside. A faint bluish light passed through the porthole windows set high in the walls of the steel room. Only now did he realize how desperate was their plan. The E-Block felt exactly like what it was: a chamber of death. It was a supreme irony that in just over forty minutes it would be the one place in Totenhausen where life could survive.

  If the British gas worked, he reminded himself.

  He closed the door, checked to make sure the alley was empty, then climbed the icy steps and walked toward the inmate blocks. He wondered how much the gate guard had told his comrades about the man in the Mercedes. Under normal circumstances, the presence of an SD colonel would move quickly up the SS grapevine. But these were not normal circumstances. How long would it take the news to reach Wolfgang Schörner?

  There was a sentry standing before the wire gate of the fence surrounding the six inmate blocks. Approaching him, Stern realized that he was walking beneath the mutilated body of a naked woman. Greta Müller. He erased the Goyaesque image from his mind and pulled out the leather case containing his forged papers, flipping it open before he reached the sentry.

  “I need to speak to a prisoner,” he said with perfunctory courtesy. “A Jewess. It’s a matter of Reich security. I’m not expecting trouble, so you may remain at your post. If you hear women screaming, ignore it. If you hear a man shout for help, that will be me. Come running.”

  The guard barely glanced at the papers; again the SD uniform and rank were enough. Stern was through the gate in less time than it would take to light a cigarette.

  “Standartenführer?”

  Stern laid one hand on his Schmeisser as he turned.

  “You’ll need this.”

  The sentry hurried over and handed him a battery torch.

  Stern nodded a curt thank-you, then stepped up into the block.

  The room was totally dark. He switched on the flashlight, held it at arm’s length and shined it on his own face.

  “I am the shoemaker’s son,” he whispered. “I have returned. Is my father here?”

  “My son!” The answer was a joyous whisper.

  “Light the candle,” Jonas commanded. “Hurry!”

  There was a rustling of clothes in the darkness. A hooded yellow glow illuminated a circle on the floor. A shadow passed in front of the light, and Stern felt arms go around him and squeeze tightly. Raw emotion surged through him, so strong that he almost couldn’t bear it. All he could think of was his mother sitting alone in her tiny flat in Palestine.

  “How do you do it?” Avram Stern asked. “How do you get past them?”

  “Never mind. I must speak to you. Bring everyone close around me. Quickly.”

  “Rachel!” Avram said sharply. “Form the Circle.”

  Stern sensed a great many movements around him, like leaves in a night forest. As the women drew closer, he backed against the door. He tried to make the movement seem natural, but he did it to block the escape route of anyone who panicked.

  His father and Rachel Jansen stood closest to him. The other faces were a mixture of young and old, a human map of Europe.

  “Listen to me,” he said in Yiddish. “I must speak to you, and we have very little time. What I told you before was not completely true. I came here from Palestine, but not to verify reports of Nazi atrocities. I came here to help prepare for a great strike against Hitler.

  “You all know what the Nazis are making here at this camp. They have tested it on people you knew, perhaps even family members. You know how deadly this gas is. I don’t need to tell any of you how devastating it would be to the troops who will soon land in France to liberate Europe. It is for that reason that the Allies intend to kill Herr Doktor Brandt and destroy his laboratory.”

  There was a sudden wind of whispers. Stern gazed into the shocked faces. As much as he wanted to, he could not tell these women the truth. “In approximately forty minutes,” he said, “Totenhausen Camp is going be attacked from the air.”

  Several women gasped.

  “The shells that fall will be chemical shells, filled with a gas much like the one made here.” Stern took a step closer to the women. He realized that he had been silently counting them. There were forty-four,
plus his father. “Anyone unprotected from this gas will probably be killed during the attack. I have come here to suggest a way that many of you might be able to survive it.”

  “Why have you really come here?” asked a woman from the back. “The Allies don’t care if we live or die.”

  Stern turned up his palms. “I am a Jew, not an Allied soldier. I fight for Haganah in Palestine. I fight for Israel. I have risked my life to come here. Will you listen?”

  “We will listen,” Rachel said.

  “The only protection from this gas is complete isolation. The bombs will fall at eight o’clock. Ten minutes before that, you must move from here to the E-Block and lock yourselves inside. It is imperative—”

  “The E-Block?” someone said. “There are more than two hundred prisoners in this camp. The E-Block would not even hold all of us here.”

  “I realize that,” Stern said carefully.

  The women looked at each other in puzzlement.

  “What are you saying, my son?” Avram asked.

  “I am saying that not everyone can be saved.”

  There was a long silence.

  “What about the bomb shelter?” someone asked. “All prisoners could fit in there.”

  Jonas shook his head. “The SS are trained to run for the shelter during an emergency. Prisoners trying to take shelter there would be shot out of hand.” He did not say that if things were working out properly, the SS shelter was already booby-trapped.

  A middle-aged woman stood up in the center of the group. “Who claims the right that is God’s alone?” she asked. “Who would say who shall live and who shall die?”

  Stern closed his hand around the Schmeisser. This would be the mad minute, as each woman grasped exactly what he was suggesting.

  “I’m glad there are no rabbis here,” said a very old woman from the floor. “What an endless argument we would have to listen to. Sometimes one must follow the heart. And common sense.”

  “And what does common sense say here?” asked the woman who had stood.

  “It is simple,” said the old woman, speaking with calm certainty. “This camp is like a sinking ship. The E-Block is the lifeboat. There is a law for that. Unwritten perhaps, but sacred. Everyone knows it. Women and children first. And the young women before the old. The ones still able to bear children.”

  These words silenced the block.

  “You speak wisely,” Avram said to the old woman. “It is not an easy thing to do. But necessary.”

  Another woman stood up suddenly. “What are you saying?” she asked in a French accent. “That we should save ourselves but ignore the Gentile women?”

  “They’ve ignored us long enough,” said a bitter voice.

  “And the children? Do we let the Christian children die? And what of the men? They have no right to live?”

  “Of course they do,” said the old woman. “But they do not have the duty to choose. That has fallen on us. We cannot take the opinion of every prisoner in camp. The secret could not be kept. It was wise of this young man to wait until the last minute to tell us.”

  “You knew about this attack two nights ago?” asked the Frenchwoman.

  “Of course he did,” said another.

  Avram raised his hands. “Let me speak, please. With only minutes, we would only cause a general riot by telling the other blocks. The fact is that the E-Block is the only shelter, and it will only hold a few.”

  One of the women Rachel called the new widows stood hesitantly. “My daughter is in the children’s block,” she said in an almost inaudible voice. “If we are going to die, I want to be with her.”

  “We can save the children,” Jonas said. “And some of you. But we must hurry and decide the issue.”

  “Some of us?” It was the Frenchwoman again. “You can’t even save all the children! Now you’re going to condemn some of us?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Jonas said sharply.

  “How many?” asked a familiar voice. It was Rachel Jansen. “How many people can be saved in the E-Block? I have been inside it, and it is very small.”

  “The E-Block was designed to conduct tests on ten men,” Jonas said. “The number that can be saved is determined by space and oxygen. They’ll need at least two hours of air.”

  “How many?” Rachel asked again. “That’s all we need to know.”

  Stern nodded, grateful for her pragmatism. “Fifty children,” he said. “Every child in the Jewish Children’s Block.”

  “And women?”

  He hesitated. “Thirty-five.”

  In the tomblike silence that followed, he looked at his watch: 7:23. It was taking too long. He removed the British silencer from his boot and screwed it onto the Schmeisser’s barrel. “Talk among yourselves,” he said. “I must speak to my father alone. But I warn you: if anyone tries to go through that door, I will have no choice but to shoot.”

  He took his father’s hand and led him into the darkness beyond the circle of women.

  “Mother will not believe it,” he said, sitting on one of the narrow bunks. “Everyone tried to convince her that you were dead. To carry on, I told her that myself.”

  “I was dead,” Avram said, taking a seat beside him.

  “It doesn’t matter now. God has given us a second chance. No matter what the women decide, I am taking you out when I go. You will pretend to be my prisoner. In five minutes you will be outside that fence.”

  Avram Stern looked into his son’s face. “Jonas, I told you before. I cannot go out with you. Please, listen. I cannot leave women and children here to die.”

  Jonas took his father’s arm. “You’re not responsible for their deaths! It’s the Nazis! The British and the Americans!”

  “I would be responsible for one death, Jonas.”

  “One? Whose?”

  “The child you could take out in my place.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How many people can you take out with you? Out of Germany?”

  Stern heard sibilant voices rising and falling as the women argued in whispers. “I’m not supposed to bring anyone out. We’re going out by British submarine. Then from Sweden to England by plane. The plane is small. In the worst case, I’d planned to send you on from Sweden in my place and find another way back myself. Or we could both try to reach Palestine by an illegal route. I know some people.”

  Avram was shaking his head. “Stop worrying. You’re going out just as you were supposed to. I’ve lived a long life, Jonas. My old friends are dead. I am not destined to go with you. But someone else is. You can take one Jewish child.”

  Stern opened his mouth to argue, but his father clenched his arm with the iron grip of a man who has labored a lifetime with his hands. “Listen to your father! Even those who survive in the E-Block may die in reprisals. That’s how things work here, Jonas. The person that goes with you has the best chance for life. It must be a child. Small enough for you to carry in your arms, to smuggle into your submarine, to hold on your lap in the airplane. One child to live for all the thousands who have died in this insane country.” Avram held up his right hand and closed it slowly as if around some precious treasure. “One seed, Jonas. One little seed for Palestine.”

  “You expect me to leave you to die again?” Stern said, seething with frustration. “What could I say to Mother? She would hate me forever.”

  Avram shook his head. “No. Your mother is a practical woman. When I refused to leave Germany, did she stay behind to die? No. She carried you as far as she could from danger. My son, it is the fulfillment of my life to know both of you reached Palestine. I was wrong in 1935, but this time I am right. You must do as I tell you.” He looked up and motioned to someone in the darkness. Rachel Jansen appeared and knelt beside the bunk, her eyes wide with fear and hope.

  “You remember her?” Avram asked.

  Jonas nodded. The bright black eyes were not easily forgotten.

  Avram reached out and squeezed Rachel’s hand
. “Both nights since then she has smuggled her children here on the chance that you might come back. She knew you must have told me to wait here in case you returned. She is a brave girl, Jonas. She is like the daughter of Levi, who put Moses into the ark of bulrushes. And you are her ark, my son.”

  Rachel’s lips quivered as she watched Avram’s face. “Is it—?”

  “As I suspected,” Avram said firmly. “One child, Rachel. One can go. One must stay with you. You must decide.”

  Jonas saw the young woman sway slightly on her knees. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. “How long do I have?”

  Jonas looked at his watch. 7:26. “Father,” he whispered. “I beg you—”

  “My decision is made.”

  Jonas turned to Rachel. “Two minutes,” he said.

  Rachel hesitated, as if he might say something else, might somehow offer more hope. But he didn’t. She stood up slowly and walked over to the corner bunk where her children slept.

  Avram laid his hand on his son’s knee. “Come,” he said. “Let us see what the women have decided.”

  “Wait a moment,” Jonas said. “We have a problem. The women can’t move to the E-Block with that sentry at the block gate.”

  Avram squeezed his son’s knee. “I know what must be done. Let us see what they have decided.”

  41

  One hundred and fifty miles west of Rostock, the RAF Pathfinder force turned southeast toward Magdeburg. But as the last of the Lancasters of the 300-bomber Main Force moved into position behind them, the twelve Mosquitoes of the Special Duties Squadron continued eastward.

  In the cockpit of the lead Mosquito, Squadron Leader Harry Sumner spoke to his navigator, who was crowded into the seat behind his right shoulder. “Going to max speed, Jacobs. Strict radio silence from here out. Make a visual check to be sure everyone’s with us.”