by Greg Iles
McConnell glared down at him. “You don’t know anything. Schörner and Brandt could be planning to torture every nurse in that camp right now. You don’t know what those bastards are capable of.”
“And you do? What do you know about it, Doctor? You’ve spent the whole war hiding in England.”
McConnell descended the stairs and walked to the broken bookshelf near the far wall. He pulled Anna’s diary from behind the old account books and tossed it to Stern. “That’s what I know. You ought to read it sometime. It might even turn your stomach, though you want everyone to believe that’s impossible.”
Stern looked down at the diary. “Oh, it’s possible. And I know exactly what those bastards are capable of. They’ve been doing their worst to my people for ten years, remember?”
McConnell squatted on his haunches and stared at the floor. “Do you think they found the bodies? Or maybe the cylinders?”
“Not the bodies. Not that quickly.”
“Maybe we should wait on top of the hill,” McConnell said. “If it looks like the game’s up, you could still send the cylinders down into the camp.”
Stern opened his mouth, but did not speak. McConnell’s suggestion hung in the air like a challenge.
“I mean, if Schörner is onto us,” McConnell went on, “that would be our only chance to execute the mission.”
“Are you telling me that you’re willing to kill the prisoners now?” Stern asked.
“What else can we do?”
“Forget it, Doctor. We’re going to wait here.”
“And if they come for us?”
“If they come, I’ll hold them off as long as I can. You try to get around them and up the hill. The climbing spikes and harness are in my bag. You can send the gas down yourself.”
Stern looked as if he believed what he was saying, but McConnell knew better. If the SS came for them here, he would never reach the gas cylinders. He probably wouldn’t even make it out of the cottage. Stern had to know that. So what was keeping him from going up the hill to be in position to release the gas if it became necessary?
Something in his eyes kept McConnell from voicing the question.
The front gate of Totenhausen was wide open and waiting when the motorcycle carrying Anna Kaas reached the camp. The lance corporal raced across the parade ground and the Appellplatz and skidded to a stop before the hospital.
“They’re waiting in the basement,” he said. “The morgue.”
Anna climbed out of the sidecar and walked up the hospital steps. Inside and to the left was the stairwell. Two flights led up, one down. She walked through the door and went down.
In designing Totenhausen’s hospital, Klaus Brandt had given special attention to the morgue. For it was in this room that he did much of his work, analyzing the pathologic effects of his gases, and also of the meningococcus bacteria. Four autopsy tables stood in the center of the room, which was dominated by a mirrorlike wall that housed a set of stainless steel drawers, each of which could accommodate two adult male corpses, or four children.
Anna had a strong stomach, but she nearly fainted when she reached the bottom of the stairs. The autopsy table nearest her was bare, but the second was occupied by a naked man that, even from a distance, she instantly recognized as Stan Wojik. The Pole’s black beard was matted with blood, his battered head swollen, his massive body covered with cuts and bruises. Jonas Stern’s prediction had already come true—Anna had seen enough corpses to know—Stan Wojik was dead.
“Come in, Nurse,” called a voice from across the room.
Major Wolfgang Schörner stepped out from behind a rack of metal shelves. He was carrying a telephone in his left hand and speaking into the mouthpiece, which he held in his right. He waved Anna farther into the room.
“That is correct, Herr Doktor,” he said. “Two of Sturm’s men are missing. They never returned from patrol. Of course, they could be lying drunk in one of the local villages, but this time I don’t think so.”
Anna knew she should try to listen to the conversation, but it was difficult. Her eyes were drawn inexorably to the third autopsy table. Don’t look yet, said a voice in her head. You can’t stand it yet. She forced herself to watch Schörner. He was pacing now, carrying the phone with him on a long line.
“Beck still thinks the target is Peenemünde,” he was saying, “but I am not so sure anymore. I’m beginning to think the Allies may know about our facility after all. The Poles were caught between here and Peenemünde, but that tells us nothing about their activities or their target. Only questioning will do that. Standartenführer Beck is on his way down from Peenemünde with a Gestapo interrogator.”
Schörner listened for a while, his face intense. “Herr Doktor, I don’t think you should bother yourself. You know the Gestapo. Yes, I absolutely agree. I’ll see that I’m present when they interrogate him. I’ve brought in one of the nurses to make the man presentable. Yes, Gute Nacht.”
Schörner put down the phone and signaled Anna over. She kept her eyes locked on his face. She did not want to meet the eyes of the man lying on the third table.
“I want this man cleaned up,” Schörner said. “He’s bruised a bit, but do what you can.”
There was no way to avoid it. Anna looked down.
Miklos Wojik stared up at her with the eyes of an animal caught in a steel trap. When he recognized her, he began to cry.
God forgive me, Anna thought desperately, but don’t let him say my name.
“How bad is he?” Schörner asked.
Anna pulled back the sheet that covered the young Pole’s body. It wasn’t nearly so bad as his brother’s. His emaciated chest was bruised, and one wrist looked like it might be fractured, but there were no cuts or burns. She cleared her throat.
“What happened to him, Sturmbannführer?”
Schörner looked down at Miklos Wojik with clinical detachment. “He is a Polish partisan. I would have preferred to question the other man myself, but Hauptscharführer Sturm and his men apprehended them both. Sturm decided to question them on the spot. As you can see, he allowed his zeal to override his professionalism.”
Anna looked back at the body of Stan Wojik. From this angle, she noticed that his genital area was particularly bruised—probably the result of repeated kicking. It was easy to imagine Sturm taking great pleasure in that. She wondered how the Hauptscharführer would have fared against Stan Wojik without armed storm troopers to back him up.
“A Gestapo agent will arrive shortly to interrogate this man,” Schörner told her. “He is very annoyed that we have allowed one prisoner to expire prematurely. I trust you will have this one looking decent by the time he arrives.”
Anna nodded. “I’ll do what I can, Sturmbannführer.”
“Bitte.” Schörner was staring into her eyes with almost priestlike intensity when the unmistakable crack of rifle fire echoed down the stairwell.
“Sturmbannführer!” Anna cried. “What was that?”
Schörner had not moved a muscle. “Another reprisal,” he said quietly. “Hauptscharführer Sturm believes there is more to the mystery of his lost patrol than whisky or easy women. He has convinced Brandt that shooting prisoners is the way to find out what. They’re being shot against the hospital wall.” Schörner made a disparaging sound. “As if a spy network could be run by the wretches in this camp.”
“Whom did they kill this time?” Anna asked.
Schörner’s eyes narrowed. “You have an interest in particular prisoners?”
“No, Sturmbannführer. I was merely curious.”
“I see. I believe they shot five Jewish women and five Polish men. He means to shoot ten prisoners every twenty-four hours.”
Anna knew by Schörner’s calmness that Rachel Jansen had not been among the condemned. But then she wondered. Perhaps that would be the easiest way to extricate himself from any future difficulties—
“You are Fraulein Kaas?” Schörner asked.
Anna felt a sudden fl
ush of panic. “Yes, Sturmbannführer.”
“Your sister is the wife of Gauleiter Hoffman?”
“Yes, Sturmbannführer.”
“Listen to me. Obviously any nurse could clean this prisoner. I specifically called you here because I needed to speak with someone reliable. Someone at the center of things here, but . . . still outside. You understand?”
“I’m not sure, Sturmbannführer.”
“Let me be clear, then. If you had to pick someone from the camp staff who might be capable of treason, who would it be?”
Anna’s voice was a whisper. “Treason, Sturmbannführer?”
“Yes. Someone in this camp is leaking information to either the Polish Resistance or the Allies, perhaps both. And it’s certainly not a prisoner. I’ve known for some time that there is an illegal radio transmitter operating in the area.”
Anna knew then that the whole thing was a wicked charade. Schörner was about to place her under arrest. The Gestapo man was on his way to interrogate her, not Miklos Wojik.
“Do you know any of the lab technicians well?” Schörner asked.
“Technicians? No, Sturmbannführer.”
“See them in Dornow? In the tavern?”
“I do not socialize, Sturmbannführer.”
“A pity. You are a beautiful woman. What about your fellow nurses? Do you feel confident of their political loyalties?”
Anna could make no sense of her frantic thoughts. What would be the clever thing to say? What would Jonas Stern say?
Schörner tapped the autopsy table. He seemed wholly oblivious to Miklos Wojik. “Are we the target?” he murmured. “The radio, Gauss, the stolen car . . . and now these Poles.” He gave the table a final slap. “I must go to Brandt’s office for a while, Nurse. While I’m gone, I want you to think about what I asked you.”
I can’t stand it anymore, she thought. I’ve got to get out of here. “Sturmbannführer, may I retrieve a medical bag from the surgery upstairs?”
“I’ll send a man for it. Please attend to this man immediately.”
He hurried up the stairs.
Anna went to the sink and wet a cloth, then returned to Miklos’s side and laved his brow with warm water. The young Pole was crying again.
“I’m sorry, Miklos,” she whispered. “What happened?”
He shook his head hopelessly. “They killed Stanislaus,” he croaked. “They . . . hurt him first. Oh, God damn them!”
Anna shut out her pity. “Miklos, did you send the message to Sweden? Did you get to your radio?”
“No. I’m sorry. We didn’t get more than ten miles. The woods were full of SS. They were everywhere, as if they were looking for us.”
“They weren’t. They were looking for someone else.”
“Your friends. The sergeant who killed Stan kept asking about parachutes. Did they catch your friends?”
“Not yet. Miklos, what about the paper? The paper the Jew gave you.”
“Stan got rid of it in time. They didn’t find it.”
Anna felt a flutter of hope. “Are you positive?”
“He burned it just before they closed in.” Miklos was breathing too fast. “Stan fought them. He kept on fighting so they shot him in the legs so they could beat him without him fighting and—”
Anna pressed her hand over his mouth. “Don’t think about it, Miklos. Breathe through your nose. You’re hyperventilating.”
The Pole caught her wrist in a desperate grip and pulled her hand away. “Help me, Anna,” he begged. “You must help me.”
She fought back tears. It seemed that her fate was to stand at the side of the doomed and be unable to help them. “There’s nothing I can do for you,” she said.
“There is, Anna. You must.”
She heard heavy boots pounding down the stairs. An SS private rushed into the room carrying a black medical bag. He handed it to her, then took up station at the foot of the stairs.
She leaned over Miklos’s face and began to wash his chest with the rag. “What can I do?” she whispered.
“Kill me,” said the Pole, in a voice no louder than a breath.
The color drained from Anna’s face.
“You must. Stan told them nothing, but he was strong.” More tears rolled down Miklos’s cheeks. “I am not strong, Anna. I am afraid. I always was. If they do to me what they did to Stan, I will talk. I know it.”
“I cannot do what you ask.”
“What’s he saying there?” called the SS guard.
Anna straightened up. “He’s out of his head. I think he may have a concussion.”
She leaned down again, as if examining Miklos’s eyes.
“The Gestapo is coming,” said the Pole. “They’re worse than the SS. They use electricity.”
“I cannot do it.”
Suddenly Miklos Wojik’s eyes focused with an intensity of pleading Anna had never seen in her life, not even in the eyes of the victims of Brandt’s experiments. “I am a dead man,” he whispered. “Nothing can change that. But if you don’t do what I ask, you and your friends will be dead too.”
An electric tingle raced across Anna’s scalp and shoulders. What Miklos said was true. If he talked, they would all die. She would be tortured. How long could she hold her silence if Sturm were allowed to do whatever he wished to her? And if she somehow survived the ordeal, there was always the Ravensbrück camp for women—
She opened the black medical bag and scanned the neat rows of ampules and glass syringes lying in their fitted slots beneath elastic bands. Antiseptics, local anesthetics, sulfa drugs, insulin—Was that the answer? No, it would take a massive overdose to kill, and as his blood sugar plummeted Miklos would experience cramps that would panic the guard. There—
She reached into the bottom of the bag and palmed a vial of morphia, then leaned down and put her head on Miklos Wojik’s chest as if listening carefully.
“Guard!” she cried. “This man is having heart palpitations!”
“I’ll call a doctor!” the SS man volunteered, starting toward the telephone Schörner had been using.
“No, I need adrenaline immediately! Run to the pharmacy room and get some!”
The guard shifted on his feet. “I’m not supposed to leave my post.”
“He’ll die without it!”
The SS man nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
Anna selected a 10cc syringe and drew six cubic centimeters of morphia into the barrel. She could not afford the time to tie a tourniquet to make a vein stand up, nor could she use a superficial vein that might leave clear traces of a puncture. Her eyes searched Miklos’s naked body. The Pole’s groin area was badly bruised, just as his brother’s had been. Beneath one of those bruises, inferior to the inguinal ligament, ran the femoral vein. It took experience to hit a deep vein blindly, but Anna had been forced to use the femoral dozens of times when unable to locate superficial veins on emaciated prisoners. She pressed two fingers of her left hand hard into the flesh between Miklos’s penis and his right hip bone. He groaned as she compressed the bruise, but Anna instantly felt a powerful pulse beating beneath her fingertips.
She glanced at the stairs, then angled the needle just beyond her fingers and punctured the bruised skin and tissue. When she drew back the plunger, dark blood swirled in the barrel of the syringe. With a silent prayer she closed her eyes and injected the entire contents of the syringe into the vein.
Miklos lifted his head as she drew out the needle. “Did you . . .?”
Anna had not met his eyes since making her decision. Now she did.
They were closed. “Boze,” he murmured. “God bless you, Anna. How long?”
“Soon. May God forgive me for this terrible thing.”
Miklos opened his eyes again. They were brown and very large. “I forgive you,” he said forcefully. “I forgive you now, myself! God sent you to me, Anna. You are his angel and you don’t even know it. I suppose that’s how it always is.”
There was a clattering of boot
s as the private rushed back in and handed Anna the adrenaline. “Is he still alive?”
“Yes. Danke. I think perhaps it was merely a panic attack. His heart is weak, though.”
“He has reason to panic,” the guard muttered.
Miklos closed his eyes so he would not to have to look at the SS man. Anna stood rigidly beside him as his breathing slowed. After the guard returned to his post, she walked around the table and held the young Pole’s hand. Miklos squeezed back weakly. After two minutes he lapsed into a coma. She held his hand for another minute to be sure, then let it go. She had reached her limit.
“He’s sleeping,” she said to the guard. “I’ve done all I can for him. He is presentable for interrogation.” She summoned her last reserve of courage. “Tell Wolfgang I will come again if he needs me, but I need sleep now. I am on duty tomorrow.”
She pocketed the original ampule of adrenaline from the medical kit so at least that part of her story would hold up, then moved toward the door. She knew she should wait for Schörner to return; it would be madness to leave. She should wait and calmly play the part of dumbfounded nurse while Schörner apologized for the prisoner’s death to the Gestapo man from Peenemünde. But she simply could not do it.
The private stepped into Anna’s path as she neared the stairs, but her professional manner—and her use of Schörner’s Christian name—intimidated him enough not to challenge her. She marched past him, up the stairs, and out of the hospital. With every step she felt as if she were condemning herself, but she kept walking. She kept walking until she had walked right out of Totenhausen’s main gate.
Seventeen minutes later, Miklos Wojik died.
36
While Anna was gone, McConnell and Stern had sat in the cellar for an hour, then had grown so anxious they came up to the kitchen and ate some moldy cheese in the darkness. Every minute or so Stern would go to the front window to check the road for approaching vehicles. They heard a motorcycle once, but it turned out to be only an SS man headed into Dornow. When Anna finally did arrive, they never heard her coming. She simply opened the door and stepped inside the dark foyer.
Stern switched on the kitchen light.
