Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  “My sister! She’s gone mad! There were two men with her most of the day. One American, the other a Jew. He was dressed as an SD officer!”

  “We have that man in custody,” Schörner said in a reassuring voice. “Do you know what your sister and this American planned to do tonight?”

  “I heard the Jew saying something about an electrical station.”

  Schörner felt a prick of anxiety. “Anything else?”

  “Anna was asking the American something about poison gas. He seemed to know quite a lot about it.”

  The color drained from Schörner’s face. “Is there a telephone here?”

  Sabine shook her head.

  “Rottenführer, I want four men in my car! The rest follow in the truck.”

  “What about the wounded, Sturmbannführer? Some of them can’t walk.”

  “Leave them in the road!”

  Twenty-two miles north of Totenhausen, the navigator in the lead bomber of GENERAL SHERMAN sighted the mouth of the Recknitz River below him.

  “That’s it, sir. Time to turn.”

  Squadron Leader Harry Sumner banked the Mosquito to the south. “Everyone with us, Jacobs?”

  “Right on our tail.”

  Sumner checked his fuel gauge. A headwind had put them slightly behind schedule, but they would benefit by the same wind on the ride home. They had lost one plane already, forced to turn back due to mechanical failure. That was the way of it. But they still had more than enough bombload and Target Indicators to carry out the mission.

  “Think you can find this place, Jacobs? It’s supposed to be almost covered with trees.”

  The navigator was holding a pen-sized torch in his teeth and studying a map. “Just stay over the river,” he said in a garbled voice. “The H2S will show me the bends. If this map is accurate, we can use Dornow village and the river as brackets. Flares will give us a visual on the power station and the camp.”

  Sumner peered through the dark windscreen. The silver line of the river led them southward like a magic road. A rum mission, this, even by Special Duties Squadron standards. All the way into Germany to bomb a tiny prison camp for SOE? The Air Marshals constantly fought Duff Smith tooth and nail to keep their precious planes out of his clutches. How had he managed to divert a Mosquito squadron for this? Sumner had mentioned it to his superior at Wick, but all he’d got in reply was a sour look and a mumbled, “If we want to fight this one, we’ll have to go all the way to Downing Street.”

  He hadn’t known what to make of that. But he did know one thing. From one thousand feet without ack-ack, his squadron could hit an outdoor privy dead center and leave nothing but a crater for a square mile around.

  “Eight minutes out,” the navigator said.

  “They’re still not following!” McConnell said, keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror and pushing the Volkswagen as fast as he dared.

  “They will.” Anna thrust her arms into the sleeves of the oilskin jumpsuit and started to zip up its front.

  He caught her hand. “You have to put on the mask first, then zip the suit over the part that drapes over your shoulders. It’s the only way to get an airtight seal.”

  Anna reached back for both masks.

  “Put yours on now,” he said. “I’ll be able to hear you if you need to talk.”

  The road climbed sharply. McConnell reduced speed. Just ahead he saw the first curve of the switchback road that wound across the hills. As he took the turn, he caught sight of lights in the distance behind them.

  “There they are,” he said. “You know anything about compressed air bottles?”

  “I’ve administered oxygen a hundred times.”

  “Same principle. Open the valve, attach the air hose to your mask and breathe normally.” He wrenched the wheel to avoid colliding with a bank of birch trees. “Jesus! This is like a logging road!”

  Anna had her mask on now. It blurred her facial features and dulled her eyes. She looked like an extra in a Flash Gordon feature. “The boots are too big,” she said, her voice buzzing through the speech transmission diaphragm near her mouthpiece.

  “Put them on anyway. And zip the legs down around them.” He braked for another curve. “How far to the power station?”

  “Not far.”

  “I’ll drive the car into the trees. Schörner and his men should drive right past us.”

  Anna nodded and pointed to the left. “Slow down.”

  He let the VW drift past the transformer station. He saw a wooden watchman’s hut inside the dark jungle of metal struts, a faint light glowing in its window. Thirty meters past the station, he turned off the road and rolled forward until tree trunks forced him to stop.

  He pulled on his mask and zipped his suit, then climbed out. The silence was eerie after the frantic skirmish at the cottage. Anna helped him strap on his air tank. He felt like a draft horse wearing blinders. Before he attached his air hose, he leaned forward and said, “I guess we’d better take the guns with us.”

  She shook her head and handed him the Mauser rifle.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m staying here,” she said. “Schörner may stop at the power station. He might even turn in here. We can’t take the chance.”

  “But you couldn’t stop them if they did.”

  “I’ve got Stern’s grenades,” she said. “And my pistol. You keep your rifle as a last resort.”

  “Anna—”

  “Go!”

  He started to say something else, but she slung the Mauser over his shoulder and pushed him farther into the trees. He turned back and looked at her. She was standing motionless in the dark beside the car, a fine-figured woman wrapped in heavy black oilskin and wearing a clear vinyl bag over her head. Ludicrous. Tragic. He thought of the diary she had labored over so long, that was now wedged into the left leg of his gas suit. He hoped she would be alive to make a final entry when this night was over.

  He raised his hand, then turned and trudged across the snow toward the pylon.

  Major Schörner raced up the hills at nearly twice the speed McConnell had. The excitable corporal occupied the field car’s passenger seat, while three more SS men were scrunched into the back, each armed with a submachine gun. Somehow the troop truck was managing to keep up, probably because its driver was as angry and bent on revenge as the storm troopers in back. Schörner issued a quick volley of orders to the corporal.

  “We’ll split at the transformer station. You take two men and go back to Totenhausen in the car. Tell Sturm to expect a commando attack. The electricity may go off at any time. That means the electric fences will be off. Thank God I ordered those mines laid. Tell Sturm to put half his men around the gas storage tanks and the other half around the factory. Tell him” — the field car nearly skated off the road as Schörner took a dogleg curve, but he held it under control — “tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll use the men from the truck to surround the power station. The American must be trying to detonate explosives laid earlier in the week. The detonator will probably be somewhere in the trees outside the station. Ach, what I would give for Sturm’s dogs.”

  The corporal’s face lit up. “But we have a dog, Sturmbannführer! In the cab of the truck!”

  “At last, a little luck.” Schörner slung the car around another curve and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. The strange thing, he thought, gripping the wheel like a Grand Prix champion, was that as bad as the situation was, he felt better than he had in months.

  McConnell stumbled the last few meters to the pylon, his throat stinging from the dry air in the cylinder on his back. The climbing spikes and harness lay at the foot of the nearest support pole, as Stern had promised. He’d never worn anything like them before, but the principle was simple enough: one sharp iron spike for the instep of each foot, affixed to fishhook-shaped pieces of iron that fit beneath the feet and rose along the inner calves, with leather straps to hold them on. The safety harness was basically a broad, heavy be
lt with a steel ring in front, which clipped to a second belt sized to fit around the pole. McConnell dropped his rifle, sat down and strapped on the spikes.

  That done, he slung the Mauser over his shoulder, fastened his safety belt around the support pole and drove his right spike into the wood. He expected it to break loose when he put his weight on it, but the spike held. He bear-hugged the pole and raised himself on the spike, then he slid the belt up, leaned back to steady himself, and drove his left spike into the pole two feet up. In this manner he began to ascend the pole at a surprising speed, although he seemed to be circling it as he went up, like a snake climbing a tree.

  He couldn’t see much in the darkness, but he knew from Stern’s quick briefing that the double pylons marched down a narrow swath that had been cleared through the forested hills, their crossarms taller than all but the largest trees. A straight run of two thousand feet descending at a thirty degree angle — or so Stern had told him.

  He cried out as his right spike broke free. He slid four feet down the icy pole before managing to hug it tightly enough to stop. The safety belt had done almost nothing to retard his fall. He prayed that no splinters had torn holes in his gas suit.

  Three quarters of the way to the top, he saw the lights of the pursuing vehicles racing up the winding hill road. They seemed to flicker on and off as he stared down through the trees. He dug his spikes into the wood and forced himself higher, thinking of Anna waiting in the trees below. He had almost reached the crossarm when he heard an engine roar to life.

  At first he thought the watchman from the power station had started a vehicle. But the sound had come from almost directly beneath the pylon. When he realized what was actually happening, he almost started back down the pole.

  But of course he would be too late. Anna had planned it that way. There was nothing he could do.

  She had decided to die for the mission.

  45

  Ariel Weitz stepped out of the front door of the hospital and hurried down the steps wearing Herr Doktor Brandt’s SS greatcoat, which he had pilfered from a closet. Brandt’s bulky coat was the only garment that minimized the odd hump at the small of Weitz’s back caused by the breathing bag of the Raubhammer gas suit. In his left hand he carried the accompanying gas mask, in his right a machine pistol.

  He moved across the Appellplatz at a fast walk, his eyes on the headquarters building. Personally, he didn’t care much what happened to the shoemaker’s son. But the shoemaker had said that without him the gas attack would not take place. And having met the young commando, Weitz believed this might be true. He brought out a key to the back door of the headquarters, unlocked it, and walked inside.

  He heard muffled screaming from the front of the building. Mentally he ran through the possibilities. Quartermaster’s office. Wireless officer’s room. Brandt’s administrative office. Schörner’s office. Down the corridor to his right — from the direction of the cinema — he heard a low buzz of voices. The factory technicians and their guards. He pulled the greatcoat close around him and moved quickly up the hallway.

  He saw the brown-jacketed back of the wireless operator at his console. The quartermaster’s office was empty. He kept moving. Brandt’s administrative office. Empty. The screams grew louder now. He heard the sound of a blow. Men laughing. He heard Gunther Sturm’s voice braying something about losing a bet.

  He laid the Raubhammer gas mask on the floor and held the machine pistol in both hands.

  Jonas Stern strained against the ropes that held him to the chair, his eyes bulging from pain. His face and torso were covered with blood. Sergeant Sturm had opened several long, shallow cuts on his chest. One of Sturm’s assistants had brought salt from the mess and the sergeant had rubbed it into the wounds. He had also broken one of the fingers on Stern’s left hand, not by bending it backward, but by snapping it at a right angle like a dry twig. For a man of Sturm’s strength, the effort expended was minimal compared to the expected return.

  Yet he’d gotten no return. The Jew masquerading as an SD officer had done nothing but scream, and he’d done damn little of that, considering. Sturm was beginning to worry that he might indeed lose his twenty marks.

  For Stern’s part, the searing fire of the dagger blade and the caustic burning of the salt had finally merged into a general agony. His head and neck throbbed mightily from the blows, and his left eye was swollen almost shut.

  But he was conscious.

  It would all be over soon. They had taken away his watch, but he’d stolen a glance at the sergeant’s only a moment ago. It read 7:59. He hoped he would survive the gas long enough to see Sturm shitting his pants as he danced across the floor like a spastic and choked on his own vomit. He thought he could hold his breath long enough to see that.

  “What are you thinking, you smug bastard?” Sturm bellowed. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.” He glanced at his two comrades, who leaned against the wall smoking cigarettes. “I’m thinking it’s time to boil some water. It’s not a pretty sight, seeing a man scalded. A little splash from the soup pot is enough to make a man yell. I wonder how you’ll sound when we dump a steaming kettlefull down the front of your pants?”

  One of the SS men dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out with his boot. “I’ll get it from the mess.”

  Stern craned his neck to see if the private was really going to get the water.

  What he saw was the brown back of the man’s tunic explode into scarlet and he was lifted off his feet to the accompaniment of gunfire. A smallish man wearing an SS greatcoat walked through the doorway. A second later Stern recognized the man from Anna’s cottage. It was Brigadier Smith’s agent: Scarlett.

  Things seemed to happen very slowly after that. The other SS private fumbled for his gun. Sergeant Sturm shouted, “Put down that gun, Weitz! Have you gone mad?” But the little man just kept walking forward until the barrel of his machine pistol touched the private’s belly and he pulled the trigger. The muffled burst eviscerated the private and chewed a hole in the wall behind him.

  Sergeant Sturm reached for the latch on Schörner’s office window, but Weitz fired a burst into the wall beside him. Sturm looked up, his face white with panic and confusion.

  “Weitz!” he screamed. “What madness is this?”

  The little man began to laugh. Switching the gun from hand to hand, he slipped off the greatcoat and let it fall to the floor. Stern saw then that he was wearing a rubber suit very much like the ones McConnell had brought from Oxford.

  “What the hell is that?” Sturm asked. “Why are you wearing that?”

  A brief flash lit the window, followed instantly by a muffled explosion that rattled the window in its frame.

  “What?” Sturm grunted.

  A second explosion followed the first.

  Now Weitz looked puzzled as well.

  “That’s the gas!” Stern shouted from the chair. “British Sarin! I buried two cylinders by the dog kennels!”

  Weitz smiled with sudden understanding. “You wanted to go outside, Hauptscharführer? Go ahead. Right through the window, where I can watch you.”

  Sergeant Sturm conjured a conspiratorial smile. “How about a deal, Weitz? We’ve done business before, eh? What do you want?”

  “I want to see your eyes popping out of your head while you breathe Sarin.”

  Men were yelling in another part of the building. Sturm bent over and flipped the latch and jerked up the window. When he hesitated, Weitz shot out the panes over his head.

  “Wait!” Stern shouted from the chair. “He has my keys!”

  Sergeant Sturm cut his eyes at Jonas, then turned and jumped through the window.

  “Stop him!” Stern shouted. “Hurry!”

  Weitz went to the window. Sturm was running toward the hospital, and he didn’t seem to be suffering the effects of any gas. Weitz knelt and fired at the retreating figure until the chamber of his gun clicked empty. He saw Sturm fall, but the sergeant picked himself up and continued
on toward the hospital.

  “There’s no gas out there,” Weitz said. “Not Sarin, anyway.”

  “Untie me!” Stern screamed. “Did you hit him?”

  “Yes.” Weitz picked up the SS dagger and slashed the ropes binding Stern to the chair. “Can you walk?”

  Stern jumped to his feet. “We’ve got to get away from here! I have a car but no keys!”

  Weitz picked up the Raubhammer gas mask from the hall floor and put it on. Just before he snapped the air hose into place, he shouted through the hole in his face mask: “There’s another suit in the hospital! In Brandt’s office. Follow me!”

  Stern had tried to shape the plastic explosive so that it would blow the cylinder heads straight off of the buried tanks. When the first pencil fuse fired, the charge blasted the cylinder head outward like an artillery shell, straight through the wall of one of the SS barracks. The six-pound piece of metal decapitated Private Otto Huth, and before his stunned friends could even take in what had happened, the second cylinder head tore through the wall, shattered the hip of a lance corporal and lodged in the opposite wall.

  Fifty SS men at once scrambled for their weapons and charged the barracks door. The bottleneck created there forced them to regain some semblance of discipline. Twenty seconds later, three dozen nervous storm troopers were crouching outside, trying to pinpoint a threat that seemed to have vanished.

  “Look!” said one, pointing past the dog kennels toward the woods. “Smoke. They’re bombing us from the air!”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said a strapping soldier named Heinrich Krebs. “The snow must have detonated some of the mines we laid around the perimeter today.”

  “I don’t remember putting any mines on this side.”

  But Krebs was already walking around the kennels toward the fence.

  “What’s wrong with the dogs?” asked a puzzled voice.

  “Maybe they were killed by shrapnel,” someone suggested.

  Several men stepped up to the kennel fence. “They’re not all down,” said one. “Look.”