by Greg Iles
“Yes. Westchester. Her name is Anna Hastings now.”
“She got married?”
“Of course. She wasn’t one to pine away the rest of her life. Her husband died some years ago, though.”
“Well . . . it’s an hour later in New York. I guess I could call her in a couple of hours.”
Leibovitz looked shocked. “You don’t handle something like that over the phone, boy.”
“You mean I should go to New York?”
“Is it so difficult? Would it take so much time out of your life? There and back in a day. Drive to Atlanta, get on a plane, you’re there.”
I tried to remember my hospital schedule, then realized with some embarrassment that I had taken the next three days off. After all, the man and woman who raised me had just died. I knew I’d need some time to clear up any final legal business, make arrangements about the estate and so on. But the simple fact was that all of that could wait a few days, if not months.
“What the hell?” I said. “Okay. I’d like to hear what she’s been doing all these years. Maybe get her side of this story.”
Leibovitz smiled. “I think you’ll be glad you did.”
In the end, I was glad. I flew into Newark on Monday, rented a car, and after a one-handed wrestling match with a cheap service-station map, navigated the rented Ford Tempo up to Westchester.
The house was smaller than I’d expected. Anna was supposedly a physician, after all, and she’d had the good fortune to practice medicine before the advent of so-called healthcare reform. Hell, she’d probably started practicing before they even established Medicaid.
I parked the Ford and walked up a flower-lined sidewalk right out of Fairplay, Georgia, to the modest suburban house. I felt a little overdressed. I’d worn a nice suit in case the former Anna Kaas turned out to own the biggest palace in suburban New York. I pushed the bell twice, assuming — as I had learned to do in medical practice — that anyone over the age of sixty had some degree of hearing loss. I wondered if Anna would have a strong German accent.
When the door opened, I was struck dumb. I stood face to face with a mirror image of the woman from the photograph in my grandfather’s box. There was only one difference. Anna’s eyes had been dark. This woman’s eyes were blue. She looked at me strangely, as if trying to decide whether or not I was dangerous. The Armani suit and gold Montblanc fountain pen finally tipped the scales in my favor.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a perfectly American voice.
I fished a Day-Timer notebook out of my inside coat pocket and took out the weathered photograph from my grandfather’s box. I handed it to the woman. She looked at it for what seemed like a long time. Then she took my hand and pulled me inside.
She led me to a carpeted living room that held a sofa, two Queen Anne chairs, and a set of tall glass-fronted bookcases, which displayed a menagerie of porcelain figurines and heavy ornamental picture frames. The figurines looked like Hummels.
“Wait here,” she instructed. “I’ll only be a moment.”
I walked over to the window and looked out at the well-kept lawn. Had Nurse Anna Kaas ever dreamed she would wind up here? I was still standing like that when I heard someone catch a breath.
“My God,” said a deeper, almost rasping voice.
I turned. Standing in the foyer outside the living room was a woman of at least seventy-five, with silver hair and dark brown eyes. She leaned on the younger woman’s arm for support. She stared at me for some moments, then said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Are you Doctor Anna Hastings?” I asked, though I knew she had to be. “Formerly Anna Kaas?”
“Is Mac dead?”
“Yes, ma’am. He died three days ago. It was an accident. A helicopter crash. My grandmother died with him.”
The old woman nodded slowly, then stepped away from her support and walked across the carpet in measured steps. She stopped in front of me. I wanted to be polite, but my gaze kept wandering to the eyes of the younger woman, who was staring at me with a strange intensity.
Anna Hastings reached out and laid her hand against my cheek. “You could be him,” she said softly. “I almost can’t bear to look at you.”
“She could be you,” I said, nodding toward the young woman. Although, now that I had had time to study her, I saw subtle differences. The younger woman was more slender than Anna had ever been, and her cheekbones a bit higher.
“Katarina,” said Anna Hastings. “My granddaughter.”
I smiled at her. “I’m Mark McConnell. The third,” I added quickly. “That never really seemed relevant, but now—”
“You would have finished your training by now, of course,” Anna said. “You are a doctor?”
I nodded. “Emergency medicine.”
She laughed softly at that. “Fighter-pilot mentality.”
Her German accent was hardly noticeable. In fact, she probably spoke better English than I did.
“Sit down, sit down,” the old woman insisted. “Katarina will make some coffee.”
“Well, I really just came to . . . to give you the news.”
“All the way from the back of beyond and already you want to leave? Sit down, Doctor.”
It was on my way to the sofa that I noticed the picture. When I first looked at the shelves, I’d lost it among the others. Now it stood out like a beacon. It was black-and-white, with almost the same tint as the photo I had brought with me. It showed a man in his early thirties standing against a dark wooden beam. His intense countenance and lanky body could have been my own.
It was all so clear now. In the dark of that last night in the cottage, they had taken turns standing against the beam and taking each other’s picture, probably thinking that their images on film would be all that survived. I felt a hard lump in my throat.
“I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Are you married, Doctor?” the old woman asked.
“What? Married? No.”
“People wait too long nowadays. Katarina is the same.”
“Oma,” her granddaughter said with embarrassment.
Anna Hastings laughed. “Too picky, too shy. No one is good enough. Go make us some coffee, girl.”
Anna used one age-spotted hand to shoo me away from the shelves. “You go too, Doctor. Help her find the sugar. NutraSweet for her, of course. Go on, both of you.”
“But I really do have some questions—”
The former Anna Kaas put her hand over her mouth. It was then that I saw the great effort it was taking to maintain her composure. “Your grandfather was a great man,” she said. “A brave and a loyal man. What else does anyone need to know? There’s plenty of time to talk about the past. Go make the coffee. Please.”
Katarina took my hand and pulled me out of the room.
She led me into a spotless white kitchen, opened the refrigerator and took out a can of coffee. For some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I told myself it was some kind of transference. That after hearing the story of the brave German nurse — who was actually the elderly lady in the next room — I had invested her granddaughter with her personality. But there was no denying the young woman’s beauty, or the intelligence behind her bright eyes.
“I’ve never seen her that upset,” Katarina said as she poured bottled water into the coffeemaker. “I think it might help her to talk to you. Even though she tries to pretend the past is dead, it haunts her. Were you planning to stay the night in New York? You have a hotel?”
“No. I’d really planned to fly back tonight.”
“Tonight? But that’s crazy. You can stay here with us—”
Suddenly she blushed, as if realizing she had overstepped some invisible line. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know how it is in medicine. I’m sure you’ve got to get back right away.”
“Katarina,” I said softly. “I’m not really sure why I came up here. I really don’t have any plans at all.”
She lo
oked at me very openly then, directly into my eyes. “Call me Kat,” she said. “That’s what everyone calls me.”
“Kat,” I said, testing the name on my tongue. “Kat, I would really love to stay. If you have room, of course.”
She smiled.
AFTERWORD
Black Cross is a novel of historical fiction. In certain instances, I have taken small liberties with facts or time frames for dramatic purposes, but not in such a way as to distort essential historical truths.
There was no concentration camp called Totenhausen in Mecklenburg. However, there were far too many camps like it throughout Germany and Poland. The medical experiments described in the book involving Dr. Clauberg are documented facts. Those involving meningitis are fictional, but do not approach in horror and effect some of the actual experiments carried out by the Nazis.
The Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military award, has been awarded to only one non-British citizen: an “unknown American warrior.” So far as I know, there is no “secret list” as described in Chapter One. The actual medal that would have been received by a non-British civilian for the type of mission described in the book would be the George Cross, which is relatively unknown to most Americans.
Achnacarry Castle is a real place, and during the Second World War produced some of the greatest unsung heroes in history. Colonel Charles Vaughan was the real C.O. of the Commando Depot there, and much of the credit for the exploits of its graduates — including the U.S. Army Rangers — goes to him. Sir Donald Walter Cameron was the real Laird of Achnacarry during the war, and also the father of the present laird, Sir Donald Hamish Cameron, who served with distinction with the Lovat Scouts during WWII. I fictionalized both Colonel Vaughan and the elder Sir Donald with the utmost respect and admiration.
The nerve gases described in Black Cross were and are real. Tabun was discovered by the Germans in 1936; Sarin in 1938; and Soman in 1944. Sarin and Soman are still the most feared war gases in the world. The Nazis produced over 7,000 tons of Sarin by the end of the war. According to official accounts, Soman never reached the mass production stage; however, as a curtain of secrecy descended over all these captured compounds after the Nazi surrender, we cannot be certain that all facts are known.
I believe that Adolf Hitler, a man willing to destroy Germany rather than surrender, would have required powerful reasons to stay his hand from a weapon as potentially decisive as Sarin. I like to think that the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, possessed the nerve and the guts to order a mission like the one described in Black Cross. A similar “suicide mission” was carried out by Norwegians — with the assistance of SOE — against a heavy water plant in Norway in 1943. This costly raid ensured that Adolf Hitler was denied nuclear weapons.
The Allied reaction — or lack thereof — to the news of what was occurring in the Nazi concentration camps remains one of the darkest chapters of WWII. It is expertly detailed in Auschwitz and the Allies, by Martin Gilbert.
All of us owe our freedom to men and women we shall never know. Some of their stories are told in: Skis Against the Atom, by Knut Haukelid; The Holocaust and Churchill, by Martin Gilbert; Castle Commando, by Donald Gilchrist; Moon Squadron, by Jerrard Tickell; A Man Called Intrepid, by William Stevenson; and The Glory and the Dream, by William Manchester.
Finally, I would ask young readers to realize that fifty years is not a long time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Natasha Kern, a superagent in the true sense of the word.
Many thanks to Elaine Koster, a publisher with the guts to let her authors break the rules.
Special thanks to John Grisham.
To Edward Stackler, fine editor and master of POV!
For research assistance: Scotland, Colin Maclean and Beryl Austin; London, Folly Marland, Stuart Hamilton, and at the Imperial War Museum, Peter Simkins; Washington, D.C., David Kasmier; Portland, OR, Oriana Green; Novato, CA, Dale Wilson
Medical advisors: Jerry Iles, M.D., Michael Bourland, M.D., Noah Archer, M.D., Barry Tillman, M.D., David Steckler, M.D.
Electrical engineering: Marlon Copeland, Howard Wooten
Languages: Toos S. Nooijen, Jean-Claude Coulerez, Susan Callon, Christof Schauwecker, Gloria Glickstein Brame
8th Air Force: Austin Ingels, Donald Toye
Judaica: Jerry Gross, Louis DeVries, Ronald E. Stackler
Matters Scottish: Diana Gabaldon
Special thanks to Jeff Walker for devious plot insights.
Special thanks to Geoff Iles for brotherly advice.
Kudos to all the pros at Dutton/Signet.
Readers: Betty Iles, Courtney Aldridge, Mary Lou England
Putting Up With My Obsession Committee: Carrie and Madeline.
All mistakes are mine.
Books by Greg Iles
Spandau Phoenix (1992)
Black Cross (1995)
Mortal Fear (1996)
The Quiet Game (1999)
24 Hours (2000) aka Trapped
Dead Sleep (2001)
Sleep No More (2002)
The Footprints of God (2003) aka Dark Matter
Blood Memory (2005)
Turning Angel (2005)
True Evil (2006)
Third Degree (2007)
The Devil's Punchbowl (2008)
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Greg Iles
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