Black Cross wwi-1

by Greg Iles

  The policeman nodded hopelessly.

  “How far to open water?”

  “Six kilometers.”

  “That is all I require, Feldwebel. Return to your post.”

  The policeman climbed onto the dock without a word. Running up the jetty, he heard the thunder of the patrol boat’s twin inboard engines as Stern sped north through the black channel that led through the ice sheet to the open waters of the Baltic. Once inside his hut, the feldwebel reached for his telephone, then pulled his hand back into his lap. Stern’s scandalous story was sufficient to stay his hand for several minutes. But in the end he snatched up the phone again and called a certain well-known house in Dierhagen to inform Kriegsmarine Captain Leber that a son of a whore from the SD had hijacked his patrol boat to go to Sweden.

  After one hour and twenty minutes inside the E-Block, Avram Stern knew the women and children could stand no more. There was no light. Children perching on their mothers’ shoulders blocked all four porthole windows. The heat was stifling, almost unbearable; several women had already fainted, and there was nowhere for them to fall. The noise was unbearable. The ceaseless shrieks and wails of hysterical women and children hammered at the shoemaker’s eardrums, raising the specter of panic in his own mind. He’d shouted a dozen times for them to be silent, but to no avail.

  He felt the dead weight of an unconscious woman sag against him. The child who had been sitting on her shoulders screamed and toppled the other way, into the clawing, shoving mass. Avram tried to take a deep, calming breath, but the air that entered his lungs tasted like acid. He took the machine pistol from the boy Jonas had given it to and began climbing over the heads of the women. Fingernails raked his face and neck, but he struck back, fighting toward the only window whose position he was sure of relative to the door: the window from which Heinrich Himmler had observed the last selection.

  He saw a glimmer of moonlight.

  When he finally reached the window, he had to fight the urge to immediately shoot it out. No matter how bad things were inside the gas chamber, death might wait without. He pressed his face to the double-paned glass. Bodies lay strewn across the alley as if they had fallen off a plague wagon. Bile rose into his chest. Avram knew he would recognize every dead face in the alley. What had Jonas done? And why? Where was the benefit? As he stared at the hellish scene, something moved slowly into his field of vision.

  A dog.

  It wasn’t one of Sturm’s German shepherds with powerful haunches and a glowing coat, but a mongrel from the hills. A scavenger that survived on the refuse of Dornow. The mongrel moved from one corpse to another with boldness driven by hunger. It lingered at the corpse of a woman, tugged at her shift, then licked her face and backed up to gauge the response. Avram counted to sixty, warding off angry blows from below.

  The dog was still alive.

  Avram pressed the barrel of the machine pistol to the window and pulled the trigger.

  Opening the hatch of the E-Block wasn’t half as difficult as climbing through the jagged porthole had been. The moment he pulled back the steel door, limp bodies cascaded through it like corpses he’d once seen at a rail siding in eastern Germany. He backed up the cement stairs and waited for the hysterical mass of women and children to empty from the gas chamber.

  When the alley was full of milling prisoners, he climbed to the top of the hospital steps and fired the machine pistol into the air. “Listen to me!” he shouted. “We have survived, but we are not yet saved. SS reinforcements are bound to arrive soon.” A ripple of fear passed through the crowd. “We must get away immediately. The best hope for all of you is the forests of Poland. I want the two largest German-speakers among you to go to the SS barracks and put on uniforms like mine. Do not try to strip the dead! Gas on their clothing could kill you. Look for spare uniforms in closets or chests. I want ten others to search the camp for the troop truck. The trucks by the factory will be badly contaminated. Touch nothing unless absolutely necessary. There could be lethal gas on any surface.”

  As the frightened women spoke among themselves, Avram turned and reached through the shattered window in the hospital’s back door and pushed down the handle with the butt of the machine pistol. Walking through, he felt a tug on his belt. He turned and looked into the eyes of Rachel Jansen, who carried her three-year-old son on her left hip. The boy’s eyes were glazed with shock.

  “Where are you going, Shoemaker?” Rachel asked.

  “To look for money.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  Avram nodded and led her into the dark building.

  In an office on the second floor he found a hundred Reichmarks, but it was not even a quarter of what he would need.

  “Will money help us in Poland?” Rachel asked.

  Still ransacking drawers, Avram did not answer.

  “Do you really believe we can cross the border and contact a friendly resistance group?”

  “There’s a fair chance.” Avram slammed a door shut and turned to face her. “But I don’t think it’s the best chance. You don’t have to go to Poland if you don’t want to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you have the courage, you can come with me. I have a friend in Rostock. A Gentile. He worked ten years in my shop. He offered to help me many years ago, but I was too stupid to understand the danger. I am going to try to reach him now.”

  “You mean go into the city itself?” Rachel asked fearfully.

  “It will be dangerous,” he conceded. “If we had money it would be better. We could try to buy our way across to Sweden. I’ve found a little, but not enough. And we don’t have time to search the whole camp.”

  Rachel was silent in the darkness. At length she said, “Do you really think Rostock is the best chance?”

  “For me, yes. For you and the child, yes. But no more.”

  “I have money, Shoemaker.”

  “What? How much?”

  “Three more diamonds. I found them the night you caught me outside. The night Marcus died.”

  Avram seized her arms with joy. “I thank God you are a devious woman! Hurry, you’ll need an SS uniform. I saw one in the closet here. It belonged to one of the assistant doctors. Rauch, I think.”

  They heard the bellow of the troop truck before Rachel finished dressing. When she had, Avram carried Jan down the stairs and they joined the crowd outside.

  “Into the truck!” Avram said. “Everyone, hurry!”

  While mothers passed children up into the bed of the truck, Avram sought out the two women he’d sent to the SS barracks to find uniforms. He found them by the cab. They’d taken it upon themselves to procure rifles as well as uniforms. Perhaps they have a chance after all, Avram thought. With their short-cropped hair they could certainly pass for SS men at a distance.

  “We found it idling on the road with its headlights burning,” said the larger of the pair.

  “You can drive a truck?” he asked.

  She nodded curtly. “You are not coming?”

  “No. Listen to me. Drive eastward by as straight a route as you can, but stick to the back roads. It shouldn’t take more than three hours. Stop for nothing. If anyone does manage to stop you, tell them you’re taking typhus-infected prisoners into the forest to shoot them, by order of SS Lieutenant-General Herr Doktor Klaus Brandt. Do you understand?”

  The women nodded.

  “When you get close to the border, drive the truck into the trees. Cross on foot through the forest. If you are being chased, don’t make a fight of it and don’t stop to try to save any wounded. Run for your lives. Your only hope is contacting a friendly resistance group in the forest.” He turned up his palms. “That is all I know to tell you. You’d better get moving.”

  The two women climbed up into the cab and shifted the truck into gear. Avram helped lift the last of the children into the back, then signaled to the driver. As the truck trundled past the dead and out of the alley, he thought of the old woman who had compared t
he E-Block to a lifeboat. She was dead now, but she had been right. Now the truck was the lifeboat. He lifted Jan from Rachel’s arms and began walking out of the alley.

  “Where are we going?” Rachel asked.

  “They keep a Kubelwagen parked behind the gas storage tanks. That’s perfect for us. Small but official.”

  Rachel had to hurry to keep up with his long strides. “Are you sure about Rostock? You’ll have to get us through checkpoints, speak to policemen.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Can you fool them?”

  Avram laughed softly. “Frau Jansen, I was once a German soldier. I had a medal from the Kaiser. I can convince those bastards we’re on a mission for Hitler himself if it will get us a step closer to freedom.”

  Rachel took his free hand in hers and squeezed hard. “To Palestine,” she said.

  One mile north of Dierhagen, Jonas Stern extinguished the running lights of the patrol boat and let it idle in the open water. At least the dangerous run through the narrow ice channel was over. He assumed the Kriegsmarine had been alerted by now, but hoped that his emphasis on reaching Sweden would cause them to establish a blockade line farther out to sea. He blinked the running lights on and off three times in quick succession, waited thirty seconds, then repeated the signal.

  He saw nothing. Three hundred and sixty degrees of darkness. He wondered if there had ever been a submarine at all. Had Smith ever believed he and McConnell would get this far?

  “Why have we stopped?”

  McConnell had poked his head up from the cabin.

  “How’s the nurse?” Stern asked.

  “Okay for now. There was no morphine in the first aid kit. I gave her some schnapps I found in a bag. I need real medical supplies, Jonas.”

  Stern nodded. “This is where we’re supposed to meet the submarine. But there’s no sub here.”

  “But Smith knows we’re coming, right? I mean, he knows we succeeded.”

  Stern rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Did you ever consider the possibility that Brigadier Smith never meant for us to get out alive, Doctor? That the attack was the only real point of all this?”

  McConnell said nothing. Stern’s suggestion was more than a possibility. A man who would send bombers to wipe out all trace of their mission would not hesitate to leave them stranded in a black ocean between the SS and the German Navy.

  “My God,” Stern murmured. “Look!”

  Forty meters off the bow, the massive conning tower of a submarine rose out of the waves like the Biblical leviathan.

  “They must have been watching us through their periscope!” Stern cried. “They were looking for a raft, not a German patrol boat. Get Anna and the girl ready.”

  By the time Stem brought the patrol boat alongside the submarine, its captain, first officer, two ratings, and a man not in uniform but wearing a black turtleneck sweater were waiting for them. The first officer carried a submachine gun. Stern saw “HMS Sword” painted on the submarine’s hull. The ratings caught hold of the patrol boat with long hooks.

  “Code names?” called the man in the black sweater.

  “Butler and Wilkes!” Stern replied.

  “Come aboard.”

  Stern went below and brought Hannah Jansen out of the cabin. McConnell followed, supporting Anna. As they approached the rail, the man in the black sweater pointed at them and said something to the captain.

  “Hold!” the captain shouted. “We can only take the two of you aboard! No refugees!”

  McConnell saw that this order had not surprised Stern at all. “Captain, I’m a medical doctor!” he shouted. “This woman has a gunshot wound. The other is a child. They need immediate medical attention!”

  The captain’s resolve seemed to waver. The man in the black turtleneck spoke angrily in his ear. The captain brushed him away and said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, but the normal rules do not apply. I have specific orders — only the two of you. You’ve got ten seconds to get aboard this ship.”

  Anna pulled McConnell’s face close to hers. “Go,” she said. “I can drive the boat. I’ll point it north and try to reach Sweden. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  “Not a chance in hell,” he said. “It’s a hundred miles to Sweden, straight through the German Navy.”

  “We’ll scuttle her!” Stern threatened. He reached into his bag and brought out a British grenade. “Then you’ll have to rescue them. It’s the law of the sea!”

  “I won’t have that!” the captain shouted. “I will not have it!” He looked from Stern to the man in the black sweater.

  McConnell sensed the honor of a sea captain struggling with his sense of duty to an authority he wasn’t sure he trusted. The captain leaned over and said something to his first officer. McConnell could scarcely believe it when the first officer turned and pointed the submachine gun at the man in the sweater.

  “Come aboard!” the captain called. “Quickly.”

  McConnell went below to retrieve the crate containing the sample gas cylinders. He stared at the lid, thinking. He did not like what he had seen of their rescue party so far. He opened the crate quickly, then sealed it again and carried it topside.

  The ratings were holding the patrol boat steady for the transfer. McConnell handed the crate up to the first officer, but the man in the sweater thrust himself forward and took it. The first officer took aboard Stern’s leather bag — and his explosives — even before he took Hannah Jansen. As Stern climbed past McConnell, he whispered, “The black sweater is Intelligence. Probably SOE.”

  As they stood freezing in the darkness beside the conning tower, the captain said, “We’ll use the radio to call Sweden. I can’t disobey a direct order. Brigadier Smith must give me approval.”

  McConnell felt fury rising in his chest.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I’ve no choice. There’s nowhere else I can put them off.”

  “We’d better hurry, sir,” said the first officer. “The Kriegsmarine has been alerted. It won’t take them long to find us.”

  The first officer escorted the SOE man up the ladder and into the sub, not exactly at gunpoint, but with a clear understanding of who was in charge. Stern carried Hannah up with ease, but both ratings had to help McConnell get Anna up the ladder and through the hatch. Her arm was stiffening, the pain and blood loss taking their toll.

  The captain ordered that Anna and Hannah be held at the foot of the ladder while he used the radio. McConnell didn’t want to leave them, but Stern shoved him along a claustrophobic passage toward the radio room. A half-dozen young faces gaped at the German uniforms as they passed.

  While the wireless operator raised “Atlanta” and verified the codes, the captain, a rather short man with tired eyes, said, “Don’t like irregular operations. Dirty business. Our job is sinking ships, not ferrying Joes all over the seven seas. Still—”

  “Got him, sir,” said the wireless operator. “Better make it quick. We’re transmitting en clair, and the Kriegsmarine has DF gear all over the place.”

  “Right.” The captain took the mike. “Tickell here. I’ve got a sticky situation. A wounded woman and a child in dire circumstances. I’ve brought them aboard for medical attention. Request permission to ferry them to you. Will you take them off there?”

  The only answer was a high-pitched electronic whine and intermittent static. The captain was standing half in and half out of the wireless station. Pressed against his back, McConnell had to turn his head only two inches to look into Stern’s eyes. Stern did not look confident. At last the voice of Brigadier Smith cut through the static.

  “Tickell, there’s more at stake here than you will ever know. I will only say this once. Put those refugees back into whatever craft they arrived on and make for your destination straightaway. Confirm.”

  The captain leaned farther into the wireless room and said in a strained voice, “You’re condemning them to death, Smith. I won’t have that on my conscience.”

  McConnell felt St
ern jab him in the side. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the intelligence man standing about two yards behind Stern, with the first officer behind him. There would be no getting past them to help Anna and the child.

  “Nothing’s on your precious conscience!” crackled Smith’s voice. “You saw my authority. If you won’t put them off, my man will. Confirm.”

  McConnell heard a long sigh, then the voice of the captain saying, “Message received and understood. Proceeding with all speed.”

  Captain Tickell looked back over his shoulder. “Put them back in the patrol boat, Deevers!” he called to his first officer. “Show the woman how to work the throttle and compass, then point her towards Sweden.” He turned and shouted toward the other end of the corridor. “Prepare to dive!”

  McConnell couldn’t believe the man would really put off a wounded woman and a child. He laid a hand on Tickell’s shoulder. “Captain—”

  The captain shoved roughly past him, then stopped and looked back, his face full of disgust. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do. It’s out of my hands.” He turned and made his way along the passage toward the control room.

  McConnell slipped a hand into his pocket. Duff Smith had left him no choice, and this would be his only chance. Just as Captain Tickell reached the control room, McConnell stepped away from the door to the radio room and brought out the eight-inch metal cylinder marked Soman IV.

  “Captain!” he shouted. “Your ship is in grave danger!”

  Tickell turned slowly and peered back up the passage.

  McConnell held up the cylinder in his left hand and clenched the valve key between his right thumb and forefinger. “This canister contains the deadliest war gas known to man. This is what we were sent into Germany to get. No one knows better than you that this submarine is nothing but a sealed tin can with a motor—”