Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  “No, I mean actually dropping the bombs. How does it feel to drop stick after stick of five-hundred-pound bombs on a city you know is full of women and children?”

  “Hell, I don’t drop ’em. The bombardier does that. I just fly the plane.”

  “So that’s how you do it. You distance yourself from the act. Mentally, I mean.”

  David squinted at his brother. “Jesus, let’s don’t start, okay? It’s not enough I had to listen to all that crap from Dad when I enlisted? Now that he’s gone, you’re going to take over?” He swung a heavy forearm to take in the pub and the snowy alley visible through a frosted window. “You sit up here in your little land of Oz, playing paper games with the other eggheads. You lose touch real quick. You start forgetting why we got into this war in the first place.”

  Mark held up his hand. “I know we have to stop the Nazis, David. But we’re destroying so much more than that.”

  “Wake up, Mac. It’s 1944. We’re talking Hitler here. The fucking Führer.”

  “I realize that. But do you notice how Hitler is used to justify any Allied act, any Allied sacrifice? Area bombing. Suicide missions. The politicians act as if Hitler sprang fully formed from the brow of Jupiter. Men of conscience could have stopped that madman ten years ago.”

  “Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” David muttered. “Welcome to the real world. Hitler asked for it, and now he’s gonna get it.”

  “Yes, he did, and he is. But must we destroy an entire culture to destroy one man? Do we wipe out a whole country to cure one epidemic?”

  David suddenly looked very angry indeed. “The Germans, you mean? Let me tell you about those people of yours. I had a buddy, name of Chuckie Wilson, okay? His B-17 went down near Würzburg, after the second Schweinfurt raid. The pilot was killed in flight, but Chuckie and two other guys got out of the plane. One guy was captured, another was smuggled out of France by the Resistance. But Chuckie was captured by some German civilians.” David downed a double shot of whiskey, then lapsed into a sullen silence.

  “And?”

  “And they lynched him.”

  Mark felt the hairs on his neck rise. “They what?”

  “Strung him up to the nearest tree, goddamn it.”

  “I thought the Germans treated captured flyers well. At least on the Western Front.”

  “Regular Kraut soldiers do. But the SS ain’t regular, and the German civilians hate our guts.”

  “How do you know about the lynching?”

  “The guy who made it out saw the whole thing. You want to know the worst part? While these civilians were stringing Chuckie up, a company of Waffen SS drove up in a truck. They sat there laughing and smoking while the bastards killed him, then drove away. Made me think of that colored guy that got lynched on the Bascombe farm back home. The lynchers claimed he raped a white girl, remember? But there wasn’t any evidence, and there damn sure wasn’t any trial. Remember what Uncle Marty said? The sheriff and his deputies stood there and watched the whole thing.”

  David slowly opened and closed his left fist while he knocked back a swig of bourbon with his right. “The guy who saw Chuckie lynched said there were just as many women there as men. He said one woman jumped up and hung on his feet while he swung.”

  “I see your point.” Mark leaned back and took a deep breath. “Down here we lose sight of how personal war can be. We don’t see the hatred.”

  “Damn right you don’t, buddy. You oughta fly a raid with us sometime. Just once. Freezing your balls off, trying to remember to breathe from your mask, knowing ten seconds of exposed flesh could mean frostbite surgery. The whole ride you’re cursing yourself for every time you ever skipped Sunday school.”

  Mark was thinking of an offer he had recently made to a Scottish brigadier general. In a fit of anger he’d threatened to leave his laboratory and volunteer to carry a rifle at the front. “Maybe I should get closer to the real war,” he said quietly. “What are my convictions worth if I don’t know what war really is? I could request a transfer to a forward surgical unit in Italy—”

  David slammed his whiskey glass down, reached across the table and pinned his brother’s arm to the scarred wood. Several patrons looked in their direction, but one glare from David was enough to blunt their curiosity. “You try that, and I’ll break your friggin’ legs,” he said. “And if you try to do it without me knowing, I’ll find out.”

  Mark was stunned by his brother’s vehemence.

  “I’m dead serious, Mac. You don’t want to go anywhere near a real battlefield. Even from five miles up, I can tell you those places are hell on earth. You read me?”

  “Loud and clear, ace,” Mark said. But he was troubled by a feeling that for the first time he was seeing his brother as he really was. The David he remembered as a brash, irrepressible young athlete had been transformed by the war into a haggard boy-man with the eyes of a neurosurgeon.

  “David,” Mark whispered with sudden urgency, feeling his face grow hot with the prospect of confession. “I’ve got to talk to you.” He couldn’t stop himself. The words that became illegal the moment he uttered them came tumbling out in a flood. “The British are after me to work on a special project for them. They want me to spearhead it. It’s a type of weapon that hasn’t been used before—well, that’s not strictly true, it has been used before but not in this way and not with this much potential for wholesale slaughter—”

  David caught hold of his arm. “Whoa! Slow down. What are you babbling about?”

  Mark looked furtively around the pub. The background hum of voices seemed sufficient to cover quiet conversation. He leaned across the table. “A secret weapon, David. I’m not kidding. It’s just like the movies. It’s a goddamn nightmare.”

  “A secret weapon.”

  “That’s what I said. It’s something that would have little to guide it. It would kill indiscriminately. Men, women, children, animals—no distinction. They’d die by the thousands.”

  “And the British want you to spearhead this project?”

  “Right.”

  David’s mouth split into an amazed smile. “Boy, did they ever pick the wrong guy.”

  Mark nodded. “Well, they think I’m the right guy.”

  “What kind of weapon is this? I don’t see how it could be much more destructive or less discriminating than a thousand-bomber air raid.”

  Mark looked slowly around the pub. “It is, though. It’s not a bomb. It’s not even one of the super-bombs you’ve probably heard rumors about. It’s something . . . something like what wounded Dad.”

  David recoiled, the cynicism instantly gone from his face. “You mean gas? Poison gas?”

  Mark nodded.

  “Shit, neither side has used gas yet in this war. Even the Nazis still remember the trenches from the last one. There are treaties prohibiting it, right?”

  “The Geneva Protocol. But nobody cares about that. The U.S. didn’t even sign it.”

  “Jesus. What kind of gas is it? Mustard?”

  Mark’s laugh had an almost hysterical undertone. “David, nobody knows the horrific effects of mustard gas better than you or I. But this gas I’m talking about is a thousand times worse. A thousand times worse. You can’t see it, you don’t even have to breathe it. But brother it will kill you. It’s the equivalent of a cobra strike to the brain.”

  David had gone still. “I assume you’re not supposed to be telling me any of this?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Well . . . I guess you’d better start at the beginning.”

  3

  Mark let his eyes wander over the thinning crowd. Of those who remained, he knew half by sight. Two were professors working on weapons programs. He kept his voice very low.

  “One month ago,” he said, “a small sample of colorless liquid labeled Sarin was delivered to my lab for testing. I usually get my samples from anonymous civilians, but this was different. Sarin was delivered by a Scottish brigadier general named Duff Smith. He’s a on
e-armed old warhorse who’s been pressuring me on and off for years to work on offensive chemical weapons. Brigadier Smith said he wanted an immediate opinion on the lethality of Sarin. As soon as I had that, I was to start trying to develop an effective mask filter against it. Only in the case of Sarin, a mask won’t do it. You need protection over your entire body.”

  David looked thoughtful. “Is this a German gas? Or Allied stuff?”

  “Smith wouldn’t tell me. But he did warn me to take extra precautions. Christ, was he ever right. Sarin was like nothing I’d ever seen. It kills by short-circuiting the central nervous system. According to my experiments, it exceeds the lethality of phosgene by a factor of thirty.”

  David seemed unimpressed.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, David? Phosgene was the most lethal gas used in World War One. But compared to Sarin it’s like . . . nothing. One-tenth of one milligram of Sarin—one speck the size of a grain of sand—will kill you in less than a minute. It’s invisible in lethal concentration, and it will pass through human skin. Right through your skin.”

  David’s mouth was working silently. “I’ve got the picture. Go on.”

  “Last week, Brigadier Smith paid me another visit. This time he asked how I would feel if he told me Sarin was a German gas, and had no counterpart in the Allied arsenal. He wanted to know what I would do to protect Allied cities. And my honest answer was nothing. To protect the inhabitants of a city from Sarin would be impossible. It’s not like a heavy-bomber raid. As bad as those are, people can come out from the shelters when they’re over. Depending on weather conditions, Sarin could lie in the streets for days, coating sidewalks, windows, grass, food, anything.”

  “Okay,” David said. “What happened next?”

  “Smith tells me Sarin is a German gas. Stolen from the heart of the Reich, he says. Then he tells me I’m wrong—there is something I can do to protect our cities.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Develop an equally lethal gas, so that Hitler won’t dare use Sarin himself.”

  David nodded slowly. “If he’s telling the truth about Sarin, that sounds like the only thing to do. I don’t see the problem.”

  Mark’s face fell. “You don’t? Christ, you of all people should understand.”

  “Look . . . I don’t want to get into this pacifist thing again. I thought you’d come to terms with that. Hell, you’ve been working for the British since 1940.”

  “But only in a defensive capacity, you know that.”

  David expelled air from his cheeks. “To tell you the truth, I never really saw the difference. You’re either working in the war effort or you’re not.”

  “There’s a big difference, David, believe me. Even in liberal Oxford, I’m an official leper.”

  “Be glad you’re in Oxford. They’d beat the crap out of you at my air base.”

  Mark rubbed his forehead with his palms. “Look, I understand the logic of deterrence. But there has never been a weapon like this before. Never.” He watched with relief as the two professors left the pub. “David, I’m going to tell you something that most people don’t know, and we’ve never discussed. Until one month ago, poison gas was the most humane weapon in the world.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the truth. Despite the agony of burns and the horror of chemical weapons, ninety-four percent of the men gassed in World War One were fit for duty again in nine weeks. Nine weeks, David. The mortality figure for poison gas is somewhere around two percent. Mortality from guns and shells is twenty-five percent—ten times higher. The painful fact is that our father was an exception.”

  David’s confusion was evident in his bunched eyebrows. “What are you telling me, Mark?”

  “I’m trying to explain that, until Sarin was invented, my aversion to gas warfare was based primarily on the paralyzing terror it held for soldiers, and the psychological aftermath of being wounded by gas. Figures don’t tell the whole truth, especially about human pain. But with Sarin, chemical warfare has entered an entirely new phase. We’re talking about a weapon that has four times the mortality rate of shot and shell. Sarin is one hundred percent lethal. It will kill every living thing it touches. I would rather carry a rifle at the front than be responsible for developing something that destructive.”

  David’s whole posture conveyed the reluctance he felt to stray onto this territory. “Listen, I swore I’d never argue with you about this again. It’s the same argument I always had with Dad. The Sermon on the Mount versus machine guns. Gandhi versus Hitler. Passive resistance can’t work against Germany, Mark. The Nazis just don’t give a damn. You turn the other cheek, those bastards’ll slice it off for you. Hell, it was the Germans who gassed Dad in the first place!”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Jeez, I don’t like where this conversation’s ended up.” The young pilot scratched his stubbled chin, deep in thought. “Okay . . . okay, just listen to me for a minute. Everybody back home calls you Mac, right? They always have.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just listen. Everybody calls me David, right? Or Dave, or Slick. Why do you think everybody calls you Mac?”

  Mark shrugged. “I was the oldest.”

  “Wrong. It was because you acted just like Dad did when he was a kid.”

  Mark shifted in his seat. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, hell. You know I’m right. But what you don’t know, or don’t want to know, is that you still act just like him.”

  Mark stiffened.

  “Our father—the great physician—spent most of his life inside our house. Hiding.”

  “He was blind, for God’s sake!”

  “No, he wasn’t,” David said forcefully. “His eyes were damaged, but he could see when he wanted to.”

  Mark looked away, but didn’t argue.

  “God knows his face looked bad, but he didn’t have to hide it. When I was a kid I thought he did. But he didn’t. People could’ve gotten used to him. To the scars.”

  Mark closed his eyes, but the image in his mind only grew clearer. He saw a broken man lying on a sofa, much of his face and neck mutilated by blistering poisons that had splashed over half his body and entered his lungs. As a young boy Mark had watched his mother press cotton pads against that man’s eyes, to soak up the tears that ran uncontrollably from the damaged membranes. She would retreat to the kitchen to weep softly when she was sure his father slept.

  “Mom never got used to them,” he said quietly.

  “You’re right,” said David. “But it wasn’t his face. It was the scars inside she couldn’t handle. Do you hear what I’m saying? Dad was a certified war hero. He could’ve walked tall anywhere in America. But he didn’t. And do you know why, Doctor McConnell? Because he brooded too goddamn much. Just like you. He tried to carry the weight of the fucking world on his shoulders. When I enlisted in the air corps, he threatened to disown me. And that was from his deathbed. But long before that, he’d made you so scared and disgusted with the idea of war that he charted your whole life for you.” David wiped his brow. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do. You’re the genius in this family.”

  “Come on, David.”

  “Goddamn it, drop the phony bullshit! I was eight years behind you in school, and all the teachers still called me by your name, okay? I’m a flyer, not a philosopher. But I can tell you this. When Ike’s invasion finally jumps off, and our guys hit those French beaches, it’s gonna be bad. Real bad. Guys younger than me are gonna be charging fortified machine-gun nests. Concrete bunkers. They’re gonna be dying like flies over there. Now you’re telling me they might have to face this Sarin stuff. If you’re the guy who can stop Hitler from using it, or invent a defense against it, or at least give us the ability to hit back just as hard. . . . Well, you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince those guys it’s right to do nothing at all. They’d call you a traitor for that.”

  Mark winced. “I kno
w that. But what you don’t understand is that there is no defense. The clothing required to protect a man from Sarin is airtight, and it’s heavy. A soldier could fight in it for maybe an hour, two at the most. GIs won’t even wear their standard gas masks in combat now, just because of a little discomfort. They could never take a defended beach in full body suits.”

  “So what are you saying? We’re whipped, let’s lie down and wait until we’re all eating Wiener Schnitzel?”

  “No. Look, if Sarin is a German gas, Hitler has yet to use it. Maybe he won’t. I’m saying I won’t be the man that makes Armageddon possible. Someone else can have that job.”

  David blinked his eyes several times, trying to focus on his watch. “Look,” he said, “I think I’m going to drive back up to Deenethorpe tonight.”

  Mark reached across the table and squeezed his brother’s arm. “Don’t do that, David. I should never have brought this up.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . I’m so tired of the whole goddamn thing. All the guys I knew that never came back from raids. I stopped making friends two months ago, Mac. It isn’t worth it.”

  Mark saw then that the bourbon had finally taken effect.

  “I think about you a lot, you know,” David said softly. “When I feel those bombs drop out of Shady Lady’s belly, when the flak’s hammering the walls, I think, at least my brother doesn’t have to see this. At least he’s gonna make it back home. He deserves it. Always trying to do the right thing, to be the good son, faithful to the wife. Now I find out you’re dealing with this stuff . . .” David looked down, as if trying to perceive something very small at the center of the table. “I try not to think about Dad too much. But you really are just like him. In the good ways too, I mean. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he was right, too. I just don’t want to think about it anymore tonight. And if I’m here, there’s no way not to think about it.”

  “I understand.”

  Mark tipped the bartender as they left the pub, an act that always brought a wry smile from a man unused to the custom. David carefully tucked his nearly-empty bourbon bottle inside his leather jacket, then paused on the corner of George Street. “You’ll do the right thing in the end,” he said. “You always do. But I don’t want to hear another word about any forward surgical unit. You’re a real asshole sometimes. You must be the only guy in this war trying to think of ways to get closer to the fighting instead of away from it.”