Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  The plan centered around food.

  Her nightly trips to the alley for Major Schörner’s special rations did not escape the notice of the other inmates, but she endured the glares and epithets in silence. Because what she was doing in the alley was not what the other prisoners thought she was doing. When Ariel Weitz met her with the food each night—good vegetables and real sausage—Rachel let Jan and Hannah eat their fill, but did not touch her own portion. While Weitz stood watching from the end of the alley, she would sit hunched over with her face in her hands, seemingly despondent while her children ate. Sooner or later, the new voice told her, he will tell Schörner you are not eating. And the major wants you fat and soft for his bed, not bony and dry like the other women. In order to get what he wants from you, perhaps he will grant you what you want from him.

  It was really a small thing Schörner wanted, she told herself. It was what every man had wanted from her since she was thirteen. On the day he first spoke to her, his proposition had horrified her. But now—though Rachel would admit this to no one—the prospect no longer seemed so repugnant, especially in light of the other fates possible in Totenhausen.

  She thought also of her marriage: of how she had believed it would be, and then how it actually was. As a child she had been taught that marriage was a partnership, and to a large extent this had proved true. But in the area of sexual relations, sometimes it had not. As gentle as Marcus had been, there were times when he’d wanted her and she had not wanted to give herself. And on some of those occasions, he had not accepted her refusal. He had never actually raped her, but he had insisted until he’d got what he wanted. And that, essentially, was what Major Schörner was trying to do now. Or would do in three days’ time.

  Schörner was a straightforward sort of man, and far from ugly. And whatever inhuman crimes he might commit in the name of Germany, he seemed to possess a personal code of honor. How difficult a thing would it be for him to help her? By lifting his little finger at the right moment he could save her children’s lives.

  This thought strengthened Rachel for a while. But on the afternoon of the fourth day, she realized how deranged her thinking had become. Marcus might have occasionally demanded his way with her, but hadn’t she vowed to be his wife forever? Hadn’t she sworn her love to him a thousand times? A few nights of confusion and anger weighed against years of kindness and support were as nothing. She was a prisoner here. Wolfgang Schörner was her jailer. One of the legion that had murdered her husband and thousands, perhaps millions of her people.

  Schörner was a killer.

  Rachel was reflecting on this when the gypsy woman finally snapped. For the past few days—ever since her suicide attempt—the women in the gypsy’s block had kept her tied to her bunk except during Appell. But today, since she had lain absolutely still for seven hours, the gypsy was allowed to leave her block.

  One glimpse of Klaus Brandt pushed her over the edge.

  Rachel was standing alone near the headquarters building when she saw Brandt step out of the hospital, his white medical coat shining like a bright flag over a gray sea. Almost immediately a bundle of rags began running toward him from the block fence. It was the gypsy woman. She ran without sound, arms windmilling wildly, her eyes locked onto the oblivious doctor.

  A tower-gunner saw her first. To run in camp was to invite execution. The gunner shouted a warning toward the ground, then laid both hands to his machine gun. Rachel waited for the rattle that would end the gypsy’s life, but another German shouted to the gunner not to fire. It was one of Sturm’s dog handlers, patrolling the factory fence. She watched in horror as the guard unhooked the leash of his German shepherd, then shouted “Jüde!” and clapped his hands together.

  It was the most horrifying thing Rachel had ever seen. The dog bounded over the snow at three times the speed of the gypsy woman. The barking startled Brandt from his reverie. The corpulent doctor blinked at the fast-approaching woman, who began shouting words no one in camp could identify.

  The shepherd leaped when the gypsy was still ten meters from Brandt, knocking her facedown onto the snow. Within seconds another dog joined the attack. Like everyone else in the yard, Rachel stood rooted to the earth. Watching the dogs savage the woman, she understood for the first time the urge some men had to hunt down and kill wild animals. Somehow, it was an affirmation that this terrible thing could never happen to them, this thing that must have happened countless times to their primeval ancestors.

  When the third dog joined the melee, Rachel turned away and hurried toward her block, where Frau Hagan was watching the children. She did not want Jan or Hannah coming outside to see what the noise was about. She heard someone—possibly Brandt himself—shout an order in German to restrain the dogs, but it really didn’t matter.

  No one could survive the butchery she had just seen.

  Anna Kaas stood over the gypsy woman, working quickly against great odds. The canine teeth had torn much of the woman’s skin to shreds, but that was incidental. The real damage had been done to the blood vessels. And of course there was the shock.

  Anna risked the ire of Doctor Brandt by clamping a major artery before any physician arrived. Then she set about treating the shock. She raised the woman’s legs and covered her with a blanket. In less than a minute large patches of the blanket were soaked with blood. She was on the verge of taking further steps when Greta Müller rushed into the surgery.

  “Be careful!” said the young nurse.

  “Why?”

  “I just heard the Herr Doktor say he would be attending to this woman personally.”

  Both nurses knew what this meant. It would have been better to let the gypsy bleed to death. Anna watched Greta busy herself with trays and disinfectant, anything to take her mind off the matter at hand, and also to look busy when the Herr Doktor arrived.

  Thirty seconds later, Klaus Brandt strode through the swinging doors of the surgery. With his fringe of gray hair, white coat, and Prussian bearing, he was a perfect cinema picture of the concerned and able physician rushing to an emergency.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. He moved to an autoclave against the far wall and removed a 20cc syringe.

  “Will you be assisting me, Nurse Kaas?” he asked.

  “That is my honor, Herr Doktor,” Greta said quickly.

  Anna looked at the diminutive nurse, silently thanking her. Greta cut her eyes toward the door, meaning that she should get out while she could. From the main hallway, Anna heard Brandt’s cold voice requesting something. She wrung her hands furiously and walked outside.

  The Appellplatz was empty. Sergeant Sturm’s troops had herded everyone into the blocks. Sixty meters across the snow, she knew, eyeballs would be pressed to cracks in the block doors, watching for the slightest indication of an SS reprisal. She looked up at the guard towers. Every machine gun was trained on those doors. Four of Sturm’s dog-handlers appeared from the direction of the kennels, each holding a straining shepherd on a chain leash. None of the dogs wore muzzles.

  Anna heard the hospital door open. She felt a brush of clothing against her shoulder, saw the back of a white coat as Brandt passed her and negotiated the icy concrete steps down to the ground. She knew she should keep silent. It would be madness to speak. But she could not stop herself.

  “Herr Doktor?”

  Brandt paused, then turned and looked up, his face expressionless.

  “The patient?” Anna said.

  Brandt’s face suddenly came alive, like a still picture shocked into motion. “The patient expired, Nurse Kaas. Cardiac arrest, I’m afraid. The shock was too much for her.”

  He took a step toward her. “It was you who clamped the femoral artery?”

  Anna nodded hesitantly.

  “You know that is not within your professional competency.” Brandt gave her a mechanical smile. “Still, it was a good job. Initiative is to be encouraged. You might have saved her.”

  If you hadn’t killed her! Anna
screamed silently. But she said nothing. She simply watched him turn and walk across the Appellplatz toward his quarters.

  She went back into the hospital. Greta was cleaning the surgery. The blood-soaked blanket now covered the gypsy woman’s face. On the tray beside her corpse lay the syringe and a half-empty vial.

  Anna picked it up and read the label: PHENOL.

  Brandt had injected carbolic acid directly into the woman’s heart muscle, causing an agonizing death that had probably lasted one or two minutes. It was his favorite method of “elimination,” as he called it.

  “He murdered her,” Anna said in a monotone.

  Greta looked up and stared as if Anna were mad.

  “We’re nurses, Greta. Aren’t we?”

  Greta Müller looked away. She seemed caught between anger and compassion. Finally she said, “Politics. I don’t understand it. I’m just a country girl. The Führer says the Jews and the gypsies are an infection. You have to kill an infection to save the host. The host body is the nation. I understand that principle. Many of our greatest physicians have endorsed it. Even Sauerbruch.”

  Anna shook her head hopelessly.

  “But I don’t understand one thing,” Greta said.

  “What?”

  The little nurse pulled back the blanket and pointed at the mutilated throat. “This one. She would have died anyway.”

  “What are you saying, Greta?”

  The nurse shrugged and pulled the blanket back over the corpse’s face. “Sometimes in life it is necessary to do difficult things. But it is not necessary to like it.”

  Rachel sat rigidly in a back corner of the Jewish Women’s Block, hugging Jan and Hannah to her chest. Frau Hagan stood across the block, watching the Appellplatz through the crack in the door. Every block veteran believed a reprisal was imminent.

  Rachel knew nothing about reprisals. She had not been in camp long enough to experience one. Some women had been hissing that the SS should kill every gypsy in the camp, since it was a gypsy who had gone after Brandt. What madness. Madness when fear could pit good people against a woman whose only crime was trying to exact justice from her son’s murderer. If Brandt had violated Jan, Rachel knew, she would have done the same, and probably suffered the same fate.

  She prayed that the gypsy woman was dead. To be torn to pieces by dogs! She shuddered. She could not keep waiting for Schörner to ask why she was not eating the food he was sending her. She had hoped by her fasting to convince him that fear for her children’s safety was driving her toward starvation, and that by offering protection he could bring her willingly and in good health to his bed.

  But she could wait no longer. Brandt might decide in the next five minutes that he wanted Jan to replace the gypsy boy in his quarters. He could order a selection and take both of her children to the meningitis ward. No, she would simply have to go to Schörner’s office today and try to baldly bargain with him. He could have what he wanted. Frau Hagan could call it collaboration—she had no children to protect. To Rachel, only one thing mattered. On the day the Allied armies finally arrived—Russians, Americans, she didn’t care who—they would find Rachel Jansen at the gate of Totenhausen with her two children in her arms.

  Alive.

  23

  As it happened, Rachel did not have to steel herself to walk into Major Schörner’s office and ask to speak to him. Fifteen minutes after the gypsy woman died, Schörner sent Weitz to the block with orders to bring Rachel to him.

  Her first response was panic. Had Schörner grown tired of waiting and decided to punish her?

  “The Pole will take care of your brats,” Weitz muttered as he pulled Rachel across the Appellplatz. “I think that bitch is in love with you.”

  At Schörner’s office, they walked right past the clerk and into the major’s presence. Schörner sat behind his desk, his face clean-shaven today, his tunic buttoned to the throat. He dismissed Weitz and opened his mouth to speak, but Rachel started first.

  “A moment please, Sturmbannführer! May I ask you a question?”

  Schörner looked discomfited by her directness. “Go ahead, then.”

  “It is a difficult question, Herr Sturmbannführer.”

  “I’m not squeamish.”

  Rachel concentrated on speaking perfect German. “Are you a man of your word, Sturmbannführer? A man of honor?”

  Rather than explode with indignation as Rachel had feared, Schörner leaned back in his chair and regarded her with interest. He chose to answer her question with a question of his own.

  “Do you know what honor is, Frau Jansen? I will tell you. When our armies marched into Athens, a German officer ordered a Greek soldier to strike the Greek flag from the Acropolis. The Greek took down the flag, wrapped himself in it and stepped off the parapet. He plunged to his death. That is honor.”

  Schörner sniffed and looked toward his office window. “Do you think Sturm and his men know anything of honor?”

  Always Sergeant Sturm, Rachel thought. Why do they hate each other so much? Why does a major trouble himself about a sergeant?

  “If the Russians overran this camp tomorrow,” Schörner said, “Sturm would kiss the ass of the first private through the gate and offer to sell him a watch.”

  “And you, Sturmbannführer?”

  Schörner steepled his fingers and gazed into Rachel’s eyes. “Only the day of action can answer that question. But I can tell you this. My word is my life.”

  “I am glad to know that, Sturmbannführer. Because I have a favor to ask of you.”

  Schörner’s eyelids lowered a little. “A favor?”

  “You have asked something of me. I wonder if I might ask something from you?”

  “I see. What is it?”

  Rachel felt her words slipping away. She had rehearsed them all the way across the Appellplatz, but to stand here like a beggar and offer to trade herself . . . it was too difficult.

  “Speak!” Schörner demanded, coming to his feet. “What is the matter with you? Weitz tells me you refuse to eat any of your food. I go to great trouble to send that to you! The other prisoners endure the same hardships as you, yet they have no trouble eating. In fact they gobble their food like swine.”

  Rachel felt the floodgates burst. “It is my children, Sturmbannführer! My son! I’m worried that—” Her throat closed involuntarily. If Schörner perceived Jan as an obstacle to sexual congress with her, might not he simply order the boy taken to the E-Block and—

  “Out with it, woman!” Schörner shouted.

  Rachel could think of nothing but the truth. “Sometimes . . . sometimes children disappear here, Sturmbannführer.”

  This statement took Schörner completely aback. He stood motionless for a few seconds. Then he walked to the door and made sure it was completely closed. “You’re speaking of Herr Doktor Brandt, of course,” he said in a low voice.

  Rachel nodded quickly.

  Schörner sighed. “The commandant has . . . a problem, it is true,” he said softly. “A weakness. As a man and a German officer, I despise him. However, I tolerate him. Not because he is my superior, but for one very simple reason. He is competent. In fact, he is probably a genius. Can you understand? Brandt is not like Mengele and the other quacks they call doctors at Auschwitz. Brandt was educated at Heidelberg, and then at Kiel as a medical doctor. He was a senior chemist with Farben for a while, after which he moved into pure research. He worked with Gebhardt Schräder himself.” Schörner rubbed his chin, as if mulling over how much to reveal. “Research is what he is doing here. Farben provides him with equipment and materials. And what he is working on, Frau Jansen, well . . . never mind. I have forgotten myself in the presence of a beautiful woman.” He looked Rachel from head to toe. “You have some sort of accommodation in mind, I take it.”

  “Yes, Sturmbannführer.”

  “That would be fair, of course. But I must be honest. The simple fact is that I cannot protect your son. As commandant, Brandt has absolute authority
over everyone here, including me.”

  “But you are second only to him! And I have heard some people say that—well, that Brandt is afraid of you.”

  Schörner laughed. “I can assure you that rumor is false.”

  “Sturmbannführer, I think that a small gesture from you at the right moment might save my son, even my daughter.”

  Schörner made a sound indicating great weariness. “Frau Jansen, I can only give you advice. Keep the boy out of the Appellplatz except during roll call. Make him look sick. Rub his skin with something to give him a rash. Give him lice. It won’t kill him, and it might save him. Make his skin look yellow, jaundiced.”

  “But what about medical inspections? I’ve heard that they periodically remove the sick and . . .” She faltered.

  “Eliminate them,” Schörner finished. “Sometimes they do, yes. SS doctors are bloodthirsty, even when working on their own brothers-in-arms. They would rather hack off a leg than try to save it for you.” Schörner’s right hand went to his eyepatch. “You would come to me tonight?”

  “Sturmbannführer, please. Promise me you will try. For that . . . for that I could come.”

  As Schörner’s eyes bore into hers, Rachel felt wretched and ridiculous. What was she offering? To have her body, the major had only to lock the door and bend her over his desk. She could not afford to scream, much less fight him. Yet that did not seem to be how he wanted things to happen.

  “Perhaps,” Schörner said carefully, “I could help about the medical inspections. I could send word to you just beforehand. You could clean your boy up a bit, so that he wouldn’t be eliminated for sickness.”

  Rachel put her hand over her mouth. “But then Dr. Brandt would see him up close and clean. He might decide he wants him for the medical experiments. Or for—you know what.”