Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  “Ach!” he cried, staring at Stern’s naked torso. “Look at this!”

  The two SS privates leaned down and gaped at the livid scars that covered Stern’s chest and abdomen. It was Sturm who first noticed that the scars extended down into the trousers.

  “Stand him up,” he said.

  When Stern was on his feet, Sturm cut his belt in half and jerked the SD trousers down to his knees.

  “He’s missing his last inch!” Sturm crowed. “I’ll be damned! He’s a Jew! A stinking Jew in an SD uniform!”

  Stern stopped breathing when the sergeant lifted his scrotum with the cold dagger blade.

  “Look at him,” Sturm said, laughing. “Shrinking like a wilted radish! How long do you think it will take me to make this one sing, Felix?”

  One of the privates looked appraisingly at Stern’s scarred chest. “Twenty marks says he holds out for two hours.”

  “That’s a good bet,” Jonas said in a soft voice. He looked straight into Gunther Sturm’s eyes. “I hope you’re a patient man.”

  If the two privates had not been holding him up, Sturm’s fist would have doubled him over on the floor. As it was, he could not draw breath for nearly ten seconds.

  “Put him back in the chair,” Sturm said. “In an hour he’ll be begging us to kill him.”

  43

  Ariel Weitz stood motionless at the window of Klaus Brandt’s office door. Brandt’s back was to the door. He was reading some medical charts, but Weitz knew he was actually waiting for a telephone call. An hour earlier, the commandant had placed a long-distance call to Reichsführer Himmler in Berlin. Even the mighty waited like servants on the whim of the former chicken farmer who ruled the SS.

  Weitz’s hands tingled as he stared at Brandt’s white-jacketed back. Every gray hair sprouting from the thick Prussian neck made him want to scream with hatred and disgust. He saw the shining dome of Brandt’s balding head as a perfect spot in which to drive a dozen roofing nails. A hundred times he had thought of slamming the famous hands in the steel door of the isolation ward. A thousand times of injecting the meningococcus bacillus into his spine, as Brandt had done so many times to “his children.” But tonight. . .

  Tonight would pay for all.

  At the sound of boots in the main corridor, Weitz moved away from the door. Two SS men hurried past him and took up station on either side of Brandt’s door.

  A complication.

  Weitz walked up the hall to a small examining room off the main corridor. Here he had cached the remainder of his weapons, and also his prize. Hanging in a narrow closet was one of the Raubhammer gas suits tested in the afternoon, now thoroughly decontaminated. Weighing less than half of what previous models did, it utilized a filter canister and a breathing bag which contained a small cylinder of pure oxygen. One of the other Raubhammer suits was hanging in Brandt’s office, but Weitz didn’t care about that. He would only need the one.

  He wondered what the two SS guards would think when they saw Brandt’s pet Jew rounding the corner with a submachine gun in his hand. Whatever it was would be the last thoughts they ever had. But why had they so suddenly appeared? Had Schörner finally comprehended the danger facing the camp? A minute ago Weitz had noticed Sergeant Sturm rushing a long line of factory technicians across the Appellplatz toward the cinema, but he saw no real problem in that. No matter what Schörner might have learned, he was way behind the game at this point. Too far behind to catch up.

  Weitz was reaching for the Raubhammer suit when he heard the roar of a troop truck.

  Avram Stern had taken three steps toward Totenhausen’s back gate when shouted orders and the rumble of motors stopped him in his tracks. He turned to see Major Schörner’s gray field car speeding out of Totenhausen’s front gate, followed closely by an open truck full of SS troops, all armed to the teeth.

  Avram felt his last hope wither away.

  He closed his hand around the Schmeisser and started back toward the sentry, only to be stopped again by the sound of a slamming door. Ariel Weitz was standing on the front steps of the hospital, staring after the disappearing vehicles with a puzzled look on his face. Weitz cocked his head back, almost as if he sensed a human gaze upon him. When he finally looked toward the inmate blocks, the shoemaker made the fastest and riskiest decision of his life. He would never know why he did it. If someone had asked him at the time, he might have said something about the tears he had seen on Weitz’s face on the night of the big selection. He had thought about Weitz many times since that night. How the hated informer had free run of the camp. How he was so trusted by the SS that they occasionally let him go into Dornow alone to run errands for them. And how to mount an operation like the one Jonas was involved in, the British would need a good source of information inside Totenhausen. And the conclusion Avram had come to was that no Jew could be so thoroughly corrupted by the Nazis as Ariel Weitz seemed to be. And so, when Weitz looked from the hospital steps toward the blocks, Avram motioned for him to come over to the block gate.

  Weitz hesitated when he saw the sentry beckoning from the inmate blocks. He did not want to cross the Appellplatz. But the man signaling to him was SS; even so close to his moment of triumph, he could not very well refuse. He hurried across the snow and stopped before the sentry, looking up with his usual obsequious mask.

  “You!” he blurted. “What are you doing in that uniform?”

  Avram reached out and closed his left hand around the back of Weitz’s neck. With his right he drew the SS dagger from his belt and held its point under Weitz’s chin. “If you cry out,” he whispered, “I’ll cut your throat like a piece of scrap leather.”

  Weitz shook his head violently. “No! You don’t understand!” He stared at the SS uniform. “I don’t understand either.”

  Avram pricked the knifepoint into Weitz’s skin. “Tell me one thing. Are you involved in what is about to happen?”

  The little man’s eyes grew wide. “I know what is going to happen. But I have my own plans.”

  “I knew it! You little bootlicker! You’ve been pretending all the time. Listen to me. My son has been taken by the SS. Unless he is freed, the attack will not take place.”

  “Your son . . .? Your son is the Jewish Standartenführer?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God. Where is he now? In the cinema with the workers?”

  “I don’t know. They’re probably interrogating him somewhere.” Avram shook Weitz’s neck. “You must free him! You know everything about this camp.”

  Weitz looked furious at this interruption of his plans, but he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. What are you going to do? Stand here and wait to die?”

  Avram let go. “You just free my son.”

  The moment Weitz turned back toward the hospital, Rachel Jansen stepped out of the shadows behind Avram. “Why were you talking to him?” she whispered. “He works for the SS.”

  “Never mind. Are all the women in the children’s block?”

  “Yes.” She held up the bundle in her arms. “And here is Hannah. Where is your son?”

  Avram shook his head. “Taken. You’ll have to carry Hannah to the E-Block with you.”

  Rachel moaned softly. Avram heard a tiny frightened voice in the bundled blanket. Rachel comforted the child in Dutch, then switched back to German. “What are we to do, Shoemaker? I cannot move the children with that sentry at the back gate. He will surely see us and raise the alarm.”

  “Go back inside.”

  “But the gas is coming!”

  “Be ready to move quickly. I’ll be back here in one minute to get you. If I’m not, you’re on your own. Do what you think is best.”

  Rachel grabbed his arm through the gateposts. “If you see your son anywhere, tell him to come and get Hannah. I beg you, Herr Stern!”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Avram jerked back the bolt on the Schmeisser and started toward the back gate.

  Jonas Stern tried to keep himself conscious as Serg
eant Sturm worked on him. The man showed an aptitude for his job. He had enthusiasm, which was important. Physical torture was tiring work. The blows to the side of the head were the worst. Stern’s ears were ringing so loudly he could hardly think. He wanted to let go, to give in to unconsciousness. But he forced himself to keep awake. Because he had one advantage over his tormentor. He knew exactly what was about to happen to Totenhausen Camp. And perhaps — just perhaps — when the plastic explosive he had molded around the heads of the buried cylinders detonated, he would still be physically able to make a run for the main gate. But to do that he would have to be conscious. Not an easy thing when someone was trying to pound your brain into jelly. When Sergeant Sturm switched to the knife, he was almost grateful.

  Avram Stern had not killed a human being since 1918, but he did not pause to debate the issue with himself. As he moved across the snow toward the sentry, he wondered how loud the report of the silenced Schmeisser would be. As a veteran of World War One, he found it difficult to believe anything could completely silence the report of a machine gun.

  He decided to use the dagger.

  He tried to walk confidently, arrogantly, swaggering the way the SS guards did. He concentrated on the sentry’s back. The man was standing just inside the gate, facing the trees. Avram thought of calling out softly so as not to startle him, but the man seemed oblivious. Avram looked down at the silver dagger in his hand. It would take a powerful stroke to penetrate a greatcoat and winter tunic. Jonas had made a great point of cutting the other sentry’s throat, but Avram had no training in such things. He fleetingly wished for a bayonet like the one he had carried in the Great War, or better yet a trusty sharpened spade, the weapon of choice for trench combat.

  But this was a different war.

  “Kamerad?” he called in a surprisingly natural voice. “Do you have a match?”

  The sentry was startled, but when he saw the brown uniform he relaxed and reached into his greatcoat. “I could use a smoke myself,” he said with a nervous laugh. “That SD bastard scared the life out of me.”

  As the match flared, the young sentry’s eyes played over Avram’s face. There was an instant of shared recognition. Avram Stern saw a boy for whom he had crafted a pair of soft slippers as a gift for a girlfriend; the sentry saw the middle-aged face of the shoemaker.

  Avram’s arm seemed alive with rage as he drove the dagger straight up into the soft skin beneath the sentry’s chin. He felt a sudden shock in his wrist. The dagger point had driven cleanly through palate, sinuses, and brain and hit the roof of the sentry’s skull, stopping his thrust with the dagger’s hilt still three centimeters below the jaw. Looking straight into the wide blue eyes, Avram yanked the haft of the dagger once to the left, then let the body fall onto the snow.

  He tried to dislodge the blade from the sentry’s head, but it was beyond his power. He sat the boy up against the fence, as if he had fallen asleep on guard duty. The haft of the dagger kept the head in a semi-upright position. Avram wiped his bloody hands on the sentry’s coat and started back toward the inmate blocks.

  His watch read 7:48.

  He almost fired his Schmeisser in panic when a group of silent shadows brushed past him in the darkness. Then he realized what was happening.

  Rachel Jansen had started the migration to the E-Block.

  44

  The Cameron tartan flew like a bright flag from the strap of McConnell’s air tank harness as he carried it through the cottage door, Anna close on his heels.

  “Wait!” he said. “It’s Stern!”

  A half mile away a pair of headlights was moving across the flat stretch of road that led from the hills to Dornow. A second pair appeared out of the darkness at the foot of the hills, following the first.

  “Are they chasing him?” McConnell asked anxiously.

  “It’s not Stern,” Anna said in a flat voice. “It’s ten till eight now. If he was free, he’d be on the pylon. Look at the difference in those lights. That’s a field car out front with a troop truck behind. My God. They’re coming. Schörner must have caught Stern and broken him.”

  She jerked the air cylinder off of McConnell’s shoulder and pulled him toward Greta’s Volkswagen. There, she dropped the cylinder in the rear seat and took four grenades from Stern’s leather bag.

  “Get into the car!” she cried. “Get down on the floor! Hurry!”

  “What the hell are you going to do?” McConnell asked.

  “There’s only one road to the power station, and they’re on it. We can’t drive past them. I’m going to have to stand in the cottage door so that when they get here they’ll come straight for me. When they do, you—”

  He grabbed her arms and shook her. “I’m not leaving you here to be killed!”

  “Then we’ll both die for nothing.”

  He could feel the rumble of the approaching vehicles. “There’s got to be another way!”

  Anna glanced back at the oncoming headlights. “All right,” she said. She dropped the grenades back into the front seat. “Follow me!”

  She raced into the cottage and switched on every light, then pulled open the cellar door and shouted, “Keep quiet, Sabine! There’s going to be shooting! You could be killed by mistake!”

  While McConnell stared in bewilderment, she slammed the cellar door and pulled open a kitchen drawer, from which she took a revolver he had never seen.

  “Stan Wojik gave it to me,” she said, pulling him into the bedroom.

  A small door led onto the empty field behind the cottage. Anna went first, racing around the side of the building and dropping to her knees at the corner. McConnell followed more slowly under the weight of his suit and the Mauser rifle. As he reached the corner, she made a dash for the Volkswagen. He went after her, and was surprised to see her go for the driver’s seat.

  Before she could open the door, he pushed her aside, smashed the window with his rifle butt and shattered the interior light. Then he opened the door and shoved her all the way across the front seat.

  “Get down!” he said. “All the way on the floor!”

  Anna obeyed. McConnell stretched flat on his back on the seat, his head just beneath the passenger window, inches from her face, his feet angled down beneath the steering wheel. He held the rifle tight along his body, right forefinger on the trigger.

  “Why the lights?” he asked.

  “They’ll assume anyone breaking blackout regulations so flagrantly must be inside. But if they do check the cars first . . .” She held up her revolver.

  The squeal of automobile brakes mingled with the groan of a heavy truck gearing down. McConnell tensed and tried to decipher the sounds. The truck stopped between the car and the cottage, but kept its engine idling. Four doors opened and closed. Heavy boots crunched on the snow. McConnell raised his head to peek out, but his and Anna’s breath had already fogged the window glass. He heard a loud rapping on the cottage door.

  “Fräulein Kaas!” shouted a male voice. “Fräulein Kaas, open the door!”

  “Schörner,” Anna hissed.

  The sound of the submachine gun hit McConnell like an electric shock. Schörner had shot the lock off the door.

  A muffled female voice shouted: “Help me! In the name of the Führer help me!”

  “Christ, Sabine got loose!” McConnell heard boots clattering on the floorboards of the cottage.

  Anna gripped his arm. “What can you see?” she asked.

  He sat up slowly and rubbed a small clear circle in the fogged window on the driver’s side. “A half dozen soldiers by the cottage door. Maybe a dozen more in the troop truck.”

  “Get ready. When you hear me shout, start the car.”

  McConnell had barely got his feet on the pedals when he saw Anna pull the pins out of two grenades. She opened the Volkswagen’s door and stepped out as casually as if she were getting out at a restaurant, then turned toward the troop truck and tossed the grenades. She was firing her pistol into the knot of soldiers by the doo
r even before the grenades exploded.

  “For God’s sake move!” she screamed, with only one foot in the car.

  The Volkswagen’s engine roared to life. McConnell floored the accelerator, but the tires spun in vain on the ice.

  Two grenades detonated a split second apart in blinding white flashes. Anna kept shooting. McConnell saw an SS man charge through the cottage door, then fly backward like a dog jerked on a leash. Anna dove back into the car and pulled the door shut, and he eased up on the gas and the tires caught.

  The Volkswagen fishtailed onto the road. He thanked God for the winters he had spent in England; most Georgia natives couldn’t drive a car half a mile on ice like this. Anna reloaded her pistol and aimed it back over the seat toward the cottage as they sped away.

  “They’re not following,” she cried. “What are they doing?”

  “Questioning your sister!” McConnell kept his eyes focused on the road. “Put on Stern’s gas suit. Put it on!”

  Wolfgang Schörner picked himself up off the cottage floor and walked calmly to the door. He watched the taillights of the Volkswagen racing back up the hill road. The SS corporal who had been driving the troop truck stumbled up to him, his face white with horror.

  “Five men dead, Sturmbannführer! Eight wounded! What do we do?”

  “First you calm down.” Schörner took a deep, satisfied breath. “The war has finally come to Totenhausen, Rottenführer. People die in wars.”

  “Do we go after them?”

  “Not yet. The fools are running straight toward the camp.” He turned and looked back into the kitchen. Sabine Hoffman was being helped off of the floor by an SS private. “I apologize for the interruption, Madam. As I was saying, I met you several months ago in Berlin. Your husband is Gauleiter Hoffman?”

  “Yes, Sturmbannführer!”

  “Can you tell me who left in that car?”