Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  The senior officer, General John Little, addressed the sunburned Englishman. “Captain Owen?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m terribly sorry we’re late. We’d have been here yesterday if it weren’t for the U-boats.”

  General Little looked down his nose at Owen. “Well, you’re here now. Let’s begin. Is this the notorious Mr. Stern?”

  “Yes, sir. Er . . . I wonder if it might be possible for me to remove his handcuffs now?”

  A florid-faced major seated to the general’s right said, “Not just yet, Captain. He is a wanted fugitive, after all.”

  Duff Smith focused on the man who had spoken, a staff intelligence major of rather modest achievements.

  “I am Major Dickson,” the man went on. “You’ve got a lot of cheek coming into this building. In case you don’t know, you’re the leading suspect in a rash of Arab house-bombings around Jerusalem, thefts of British lend-lease arms, not to mention the murder of a British military policeman in Jerusalem in 1942. The only reason we agreed to see you is that you saved Captain Owen’s life at Tobruk. You probably don’t know, but Captain Owen’s father had quite a distinguished career in the Welsh Guards.”

  Jonas Stern said nothing.

  “Captain Owen tells us you’ve got some daring plan for single-handedly winning the war in Europe. Is that right?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a bloody good thing,” Dickson snapped. “I should think Monty can handle the invasion without any help from the likes of you!”

  “Hear, hear,” chimed the other major, who was seated on General Little’s left.

  Stern took a deep breath. “I’d like to state for the record that the officers that I requested be here are not present.”

  Major Dickson’s face went completely scarlet. “If you think Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris has nothing better to do than listen to the ranting of a bloody Zionist terrorist—”

  “Clive,” General Little interrupted. “Mr. Stern, we have gathered here at some considerable inconvenience to hear what you have to say. You would do well to get on with it.”

  Brigadier Smith watched the young Jew try awkwardly to slide the package that was under his arm into his cuffed hands.

  “Bloody waste of time,” muttered Major Dickson.

  “Mr. Stern,” General Little said with seemingly paternal concern, “do you mind my asking if Moshe Shertok or Chaim Weizmann know you are in London?”

  “They don’t.”

  “I thought not. You see, Mr. Stern, there are proper channels for pursuing matters relating to European Jews. His Majesty’s Government generously maintains excellent relations with the Jewish Agency here in London. Messrs. Weizmann and Shertok are the men you should be seeing about this matter. And I think you will find, having done so, that they are doing all in their power to help the European Jewry.”

  General Little waited what he considered to be a suitable time for his wisdom to be assimilated, then said, “Have I put your mind at rest, Mr. Stern?”

  “You’ve done nothing of the kind,” Stern replied. He took a step closer to the table. “I’m well aware of the efforts of Shertok, Weizmann, and the Jewish Agency. They have the best of intentions, I’m sure. But I have not come here to plead for Palestinian entry certificates for trapped Jews, or to ask you to declare them protected British persons, or to beg you to buy their freedom with war materiel. I don’t believe any of that will be done. General, I have come here to speak to you, to military men, about a purely military solution.”

  Duff Smith pricked up his ears. As the tall young man gathered himself to deliver his appeal, Smith noted a certain self-possession, a centeredness that was remarkable in one so young. It was the mark of the natural soldier—or agent.

  Stern gestured with the package in his shackled hands. “The depositions in this file contain eyewitness accounts of a program of mass extermination being carried out by the Nazis at four concentration camps in Germany and occupied Poland. I have precise tallies of the dead and detailed descriptions of the killing methods employed by the Nazis, from mass shootings and electrocutions to the most widely practiced method: death by poison gas and subsequent cremation of the corpses.”

  General Little glanced uncomfortably at Major Dickson. “May I see those reports, Mr. Stern?”

  Stern took a step forward, but Little raised his hand. “Please do not approach the table,” he said coolly. “Sergeant Gilchrist?”

  A military policeman took the folder and carried it to the general. Little opened it and briefly scanned the papers inside. “Mr. Stern,” he said, “do you have any evidence that this information is accurate? Other than the testimony of other Jews, I mean.”

  “General, reports of Jewish deaths in the hundreds of thousands have appeared in the London Times and Manchester Guardian, sometimes quoting the exact names and locations of death camps. I believe one such story even appeared in the New York Times. What I do not understand is why the Allies still refuse to do anything about them.”

  General Little brushed the edge of his neat gray mustache with his left forefinger. “I believe,” he said with cold precision, “that you have accomplished what you set out to do here. I can assure you that these reports will be given all the attention they deserve.”

  Jonas Stern snorted in contempt. “General, I have not begun to accomplish what I came here to do. I’ve given you those reports merely to justify the desperate action I am about to ask you to undertake on behalf of the Jewish people.”

  “I’ve had about all I can stand from this whelp,” Major Dickson said. “Let’s stop this charade.”

  “Just a moment, Clive,” said the officer on General Little’s left, a Guards major. “Let’s hear him out. I suspect he’s a member of the ‘bomb the railways’ school. That’s it, isn’t it, Mr. Stern? You want the RAF to bomb the railways leading to the concentration camps?”

  “No, Major.”

  “Ah. Then you must be one of the advocates for forming a Jewish Brigade to take part in the invasion. I should have known. You saw some action in North Africa, didn’t you?”

  “That is not why I’ve come.”

  General Little slapped his palm down on Stern’s file. “Then why the devil have you come? Put an end to the bloody suspense, will you?”

  “General Little,” Stern said, “I understand politics. I know that a Jewish Brigade would contain the seeds of a Jewish army, which could return to Palestine after the war and fight the British and the Arabs. I do not ask for that. I know it’s been suggested that the Polish Resistance try to destroy the Nazi gas chambers. But the Poles are too weak to do this, and even if they weren’t, they would not risk their lives to save Jews.”

  “Too bloody right,” Major Dickson muttered.

  Stern ignored him. “I do have a certain amount of military experience, and I realize that bombing the railways leading to the camps is impractical. Rail tracks are relatively easy to repair, and the Nazis could always substitute trucks for rolling stock.”

  Brigadier Smith could see that the young man’s realistic assessments had gotten the attention of General Little and the Guards officer, if not Major Dickson.

  “General,” Stern concluded, “my request is simple. I am asking you for four heavy-bomber sorties over Germany and Poland. I have the names and exact locations of four concentration camps at which Jews are being gassed and shot to death at a conservatively estimated rate of over five thousand per day. That’s five thousand per day in each camp. In the name of humanity—in the name of God—I ask that those four charnel houses be wiped from the face of the earth.”

  The silence in the room was total. Major Dickson sat up and stared wide-eyed at Stern. After the initial shock dissipated, General Little cleared his throat. “Do you mean, Mr. Stern, that you want these camps bombed with the Jewish prisoners inside them?”

  “That is exactly what I mean, General.”

  Duff Smith felt a thrill of satisfaction.

  “He’s mad,” said Maj
or Dickson. “Absolutely barking.”

  “I’m quite sane, Major,” Stern said. “And quite serious.”

  “And I am quite sure,” General Little said, “that Messrs. Shertok and Weizmann, in all their desperate pleadings, have suggested nothing so drastic as this. You claim to speak for the Jewish people in asking for this madness?”

  Stern spoke calmly and clearly. “General, Weizmann and Shertok are political men—distant from the truth of what is happening in Europe. The idea of bombing the camps was first suggested by members of the Jewish Underground in Poland and Germany. I have talked to some who escaped. General, I have looked into the eyes of women who had their infants snatched away by the heels and crushed against walls by SS officers. I have listened to fathers who watched their sons bayoneted as they stood weeping not a meter away—”

  “That’s enough,” Little said sharply. “I don’t need a lecture on the horrors of war from you.”

  “But these people are not at war, General! They are civilian noncombatants. Innocent women and children.”

  General Little gazed down at the papers Stern had brought, then looked up and began speaking in a soft voice. “Lad, I can’t help but admire the courage it takes to make a request like that. But your request simply cannot be considered seriously. Not even from a purely military standpoint. Our bombers don’t have the range to reach these camps. Their fighter escorts can’t fly that far—”

  “That’s no longer true, General,” Stern interrupted. “The new American P-51 Mustangs have a range of 850 miles. That puts the camps within striking distance from Italy.”

  “You’re surprisingly well informed,” Little rejoined. “But even so, there’s the question of diverting military resources for nonmilitary missions—”

  “But those Jews are being used as slave labor for the war industries!”

  Little raised his hand. “The sole objective of the Allied air forces is to wipe out the war-making capacity of the Reich. That means oil production, ball-bearing plants, synthetic rubber—not civilian detention camps. If we were to bomb these camps, our raids would give Hitler the perfect opportunity to claim that we killed all the Jews who have died in captivity. And there remains the issue of our acting specifically for Jewish civilians. If we redress the grievances of the Jews by reprisal bombings, every other wronged group will line up for the same service.”

  “And don’t forget,” Major Dickson added, “these Jews are legally German citizens. Hitler has said from the beginning that the Jewish question is an internal German problem, and he is technically right.”

  General Little frowned at Dickson. “What we cannot ignore is the fact that the Nazis have close to a million Allied prisoners in their hands. Forty thousand British taken at Dunkirk alone. We have relatively few German prisoners. We can’t afford to start playing the reprisal game, especially with prison camps. Hitler could resort to even more unpleasantness than he has already.”

  “Unpleasantness?”

  “Look here, Stern,” Little went on, “Captain Owen wrote to me about your father being trapped in Germany. That’s a hard thing, I know. We’ve all lost loved ones in this war. But that’s the nature of the game. I lost a brother in France in 1940. Bloody senseless. A British girls’ school could have put up more of a fight than the Frogs did. But in times like these . . .”

  Duff Smith nearly groaned aloud. Here was the fatuous, patronizing Englishman at his worst. I lost a relative, so why should you raise a wind about yours? Much less a million of them, eh? So hard to get one’s mind round numbers of that size, what?

  “It seems to me,” Little said, examining a page from Stern’s file, “that these numbers are exaggerated. In all honesty, I’ve found that to be a Jewish trait. Don’t blame you at all, really. Best way to get attention in a crowd. Two million Jews murdered? Why, in the bloodiest battle of the Great War only six hundred thousand lives were lost. Let’s be rational, Stern. Let’s face facts. It’s my guess someone’s fiddled these figures. With the best of intentions, perhaps, but fiddled them just the same. Someone with political motives, as you said before.”

  Brigadier Smith saw the young man’s shoulders sag as he began to absorb the futility of his mission. “I don’t know why I expected you to believe what is happening,” he said. “Most Jews in Palestine don’t even believe it.”

  General Little motioned for a sergeant to escort Stern out.

  “But let me say this!” Stern cried as the British soldier took his arm. “My father is somewhere inside Germany at this very moment. Alive or dead, I don’t know. But if he is alive, he would beg you to do exactly as I have asked. General, to refuse to bomb these death camps on the grounds that it would kill innocent prisoners is merely misplaced sentiment. Destroying the gas chambers and crematoria is the only way to slow down Hitler’s extermination program. By killing a few thousand innocents, you could save millions! Isn’t that the most fundamental idea of warfare? Sacrificing the few for the many?”

  Duff Smith clenched his hands; Stern’s words had electrified him.

  General Little looked hard at the young Zionist. “You’ve made an eloquent case, Mr. Stern. This board will take your comments under advisement. Sergeant Gilchrist?”

  Stern stared at the general with alarm. “Could I have one more moment, General?”

  Major Dickson groaned in exasperation.

  “Be quick,” Little said.

  “If you won’t bomb the camps, will you allow me to take a small commando force into Poland and attempt to liberate one concentration camp? I know the British Army is training a few Jews to parachute into Hungary to try to warn the Jews there to resist. General, I’m not asking you to risk a single British life. If I fail, what would you have lost? A dozen Jews. I’m an experienced guerrilla fighter—”

  “I’ll bloody bet you are!” Major Dickson bellowed with sudden savagery. “Experienced at murdering British soldiers!”

  The red-faced major was on his feet. Stern made no move toward or away from him. Instead, he raised his cuffed hands to the zipper of his jacket and pulled it down. From the left breast of his khaki shirt flashed the glint of silver and blue. It was the George Medal, the second-highest British decoration that could be awarded to a civilian.

  “Major Dickson,” said Stern, “this medal was pinned on me by General Bernard Law Montgomery for reconnaissance actions at El Alamein. The second award I received for aiding the British Army at Tobruk. Auchinleck pinned that one on. Both those officers are better men than you, and if you had any brains or heart whatever you might have understood at least part of what I’ve said here today. I’ve stood here as a soldier asking only for the chance to fight. To show Hitler something he has never seen—something he needs to see—a Jew who can fight, who will fight. Myself and twenty Haganah guerrillas, properly equipped, could destroy a concentration camp, I am sure of it.”

  “Now we’ve got to it!” Dickson roared. “The bloody Haganah!”

  Duff Smith felt like boxing Dickson’s ears for him. Thankfully, General Little waved the major down. “Such a raid is out of the question, Mr. Stern, for more reasons than I can name. Take a bit of advice. The best thing you can do is go back to Palestine and help your own people.”

  “My people are dying in Germany,” Stern said.

  “Yes . . . well. There are a lot of people dying all over the world just now.”

  Duff Smith watched the shackled hands rise up and point accusingly at Little. “General!” Stern said in a voice booming with prophetic power. “One day soon the world is going to ask England a very embarrassing question. Why did you refuse to grant sanctuary to the Jews who were being slaughtered by the millions in Europe? Why did you throw the lucky handful who managed to reach Palestine into British concentration camps? And most of all—”

  “Enough!” shouted Little. His cultivated British reserve had finally cracked. “You dare march in here and preach to us? You insubordinate upstart! You’re not a soldier. You’re a bloody terrorist! It
takes a lot more than a gun to make a soldier, Stern. Why, if it weren’t for us standing alone against Hitler in 1940, your people would have been wiped out years ago!”

  Major Dickson pointed at Stern. “The only reason you were allowed to come to England was to answer our questions about terrorism in Palestine.” Dickson’s eyes glowed with a cruel light. “And I’m happy to say that, as a major of intelligence, your interrogation will fall to me!”

  Stern flexed his fists in rage and frustration. Duff Smith saw Captain Owen edging closer in case his friend’s self-restraint snapped. General Little gathered up the papers from Stern’s file and dropped them into a satchel at his feet.

  “Place him under arrest, Sergeant Gilchrist,” he said calmly.

  Captain Owen shouted, “Wait!” but he was too late. As the sergeant approached, Stern swung his cuffed hands straight up from his waist with animal quickness. Gilchrist was grabbing for his truncheon when the steel cuffs caught him on the point of the chin. He hit the floor with the deadened thud of an unconscious boxer.

  Major Dickson groped for his sidearm, then remembered he had left it with an aide for cleaning.

  “Stop this nonsense!” cried General Little.

  “Jonas!” Peter Owen yelled. “For God’s sake!”

  But it was all for naught. As the second guard charged, Stern swept up Gilchrist’s truncheon from the floor and jabbed him in the belly, then spun to the wall beside the door as the man went down. Almost on cue, a sentry burst into the room with his revolver drawn. Stern’s stolen truncheon crashed down, snapping the man’s wrist and sending the pistol clattering to the floor. Stern lunged for the door, but the sentry caught him by the collar with his good hand and jerked backward.

  There was a sound of ripping cloth. Stern’s jacket came off, and his khaki shirt fell around his waist. He whirled.

  “Bloody hell!” gasped the guard. “Look at that!”

  The sight of Stern’s exposed torso stunned even Brigadier Smith. The young Zionist’s back, shoulders, and abdomen were transected by a netting of livid purple scars, some made by blades, others obviously by fire. The scars on the abdomen ran straight down past the waistband of his trousers. The moment of stillness lasted several seconds. Then Stern knocked down the sentry, snatched up his shirt and bolted through the door.