Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  She stood in the kitchen door, her blond hair tangled and plastered to her cheeks, her overcoat soaked through as if she had fallen a dozen times in the snow. She shivered uncontrollably.

  McConnell jumped up and steadied her. “Put on some coffee,” he told Stern.

  Stern didn’t move. “What happened?” he asked. “What did they want you for?”

  Anna’s eyes seemed out of focus. “It’s over,” she mumbled.

  “What do you mean?” Stern grabbed his Schmeisser off the counter. “They know we’re here?”

  “I don’t know. But Schörner caught the Wojiks.”

  “Oh God,” McConnell murmured. “Did you walk back here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Schörner?” said Stern. “Schörner isn’t Scarlett?”

  Anna shook her head.

  “Well . . . did they get the message to Sweden?”

  “No.”

  “No? No message? No air raid?”

  “No.”

  “Scheisse! Have the Poles talked yet? How long has Schörner had them?”

  “They haven’t talked,” Anna said, half-turning as McConnell pulled off her wet overcoat.

  “How do you know?” Stern pressed.

  “They can’t.”

  “What do you mean? They’re dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the note? My note to Smith.”

  “Stan got rid of it before they were taken.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Miklos told me.”

  “You talked to them?”

  “Only Miklos. Stan was already dead. Tortured.”

  “Tortured? Then how do you know he didn’t talk?”

  Anna finally focused on Stern. “Because Miklos told me,” she said, her nostrils flaring in anger. “And because I knew Stan Wojik. He was tough. Tougher than you will ever be, Herr Stern. He hated the Nazis. He hated them so much he lived in the forest like an animal to fight them. You think the Jews are the only ones who have suffered in this war?”

  “What about the other one?” Stern asked, undeterred. “The thin one. He was tortured as well? He didn’t look so tough.”

  “He was, though. Tough enough to ask me to kill him.”

  McConnell and Stern looked at each other.

  Anna spoke without inflection, certain now that events were beyond her power to change. “Hauptscharführer Sturm killed Stan before they ever reached the camp. A Gestapo man from Peenemünde was on his way to Totenhausen to question Miklos. Schörner told me to clean him up for questioning. We were alone. Miklos told me he knew he would talk if they tortured him like they had Stan. He said . . . he said he knew he was weak.”

  “He asked you to kill him?” Stern said.

  “Yes.” Anna touched her cheek as if to reassure herself she was really alive. “I refused at first. But then I realized what it would mean if he talked.”

  “You did it?” said McConnell.

  She nodded listlessly. “Six cc’s of morphia in the femoral vein.”

  McConnell lifted his hand to comfort her, but she drew back.

  “Did you see him die?” Stern asked.

  “I saw him go into coma.”

  Stern turned to McConnell. “Would that kill him? Morphia?”

  “A full grain in the femoral vein would almost certainly do it. Respiratory arrest, then death.”

  “How is it you are here, then?” Stern asked, his voice harsh and relentless. “You killed a prisoner and they just let you walk out?”

  “Stop interrogating her,” said McConnell.

  “You realize they could be outside right now?” Stern moved quickly to the window. “You damn fool! She could have led Schörner right to us!”

  “See anything?” McConnell asked sarcastically.

  “It’s too dark.”

  “I know I should have stayed,” Anna said, finally pushing her hair out of her eyes. “But I couldn’t do it. I might have gone mad right in front of Schörner. I told the guard that Miklos’s heart was weak, that I’d done all I could do. I told him Schörner could send for me if he needed me again.”

  “Stupid,” Stern muttered from the window. “Blöd! Schörner is bound to send someone after you.”

  “I don’t care,” Anna whispered. “I just don’t care anymore.”

  “You’d better care. Or you’ll be dead.”

  “But I don’t. Don’t you see? I just killed a friend. A boy, really. I murdered him! No one should be asked to do that. No one!”

  “It’s war,” Stern said flatly.

  “War?” Anna started around the table toward him. “What do you know about war?” she asked.

  McConnell watched in amazement as the German nurse put both hands on Stern’s chest and shoved him backward against the sink.

  “What have you done?” she demanded. “Talk, that’s what! Talk, talk, talk. I’m sick of your talking. If you think the SS are coming, get your ass up that hill. Go on! Gas the whole camp! Kill all the prisoners, I don’t care. I dare you to do it!”

  The blood drained out of Anna’s face. When she wobbled on her feet, McConnell reached out and pulled her to him.

  She allowed it.

  “Jonas,” he said softly, “I think we’ve reached the point where we may have to consider that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What do you think I’m talking about?”

  Stern turned back to the window and made as if he were watching the road. “But we agreed to try to save the prisoners.”

  “You’d better hurry,” Anna said into McConnell’s chest. “They shot ten more while I was there.”

  “What?” Stern whirled from the window and stared at her like a man steeling himself to take a bullet. “Who did they shoot?”

  Anna raised her head. “Five Jewish women and five Polish men.”

  Stern blinked several times, his relief obvious. “But why did they shoot these people?”

  “Schörner knows something is going on at the camp. At first he thought the parachutes and the rest of it had to do with Peenemünde. But not anymore. On top of everything else, they seem to have lost an SS patrol.”

  McConnell raised his head and caught Stern’s eye.

  Anna laid her hand on his chest as if to thank him, then straightened up and went to the sideboard and lit three short candles. It was easy to forget that the electric light could draw unwanted attention. “Schörner really called me to the camp so he could question me,” she said. “He thinks someone on the camp staff is a traitor, either a nurse or a lab technician. It’s Sturm who is pressing for the execution of prisoners—his way of rooting out the leak.”

  When Anna went to the stove to brew a pot of the awful barley coffee, McConnell decided she was all right, at least for the moment. He turned one of the chairs around and sat with his forearms resting on its back, the way the old guys did on porches back home. “Listen, Stern,” he said quietly, “God knows I didn’t come here to kill innocent people. But the things I’ve learned since I’ve been here . . . I’m starting to understand why the British tried this crazy bluff. We tried to save the prisoners. We did everything we could. Hell, two good men died trying to help us. But we’ve got to face facts now. We failed. We failed, and there’s nothing to do but go back to the original plan.”

  Stern looked furtively around the kitchen. “I don’t want to do that anymore.”

  “What do you want to do? Run for the coast? Go for the sub and leave this Nazi death machine ticking along like a Swiss watch?”

  Stern actually seemed to be considering this. “You want a sample of Soman, Doctor? I can get you one tonight. I’ll walk right into that factory and draw off a canister myself. Get me one of the mini-cylinders out of your bag.”

  McConnell turned up his palms in confusion. “What the hell is going on here, Stern? You know that isn’t the main objective of this mi
ssion. We’re supposed to convince the Germans that we have our own nerve gas and the will to use it.”

  Stern dropped his Schmeisser on the counter and sat down at the table. “Do you have the will to use it, Doctor? Do you have the will to kill every man, woman, and child in that camp?”

  “God help me, I think I do,” McConnell said, thinking of Anna’s diary. “Until last night, I don’t think I really believed the Nazis would use Sarin or Soman. But now . . . there’s no doubt in my mind. You think I like admitting Smith is right? He’s a devious, manipulative son of a bitch. But given what I know now, I believe this mission—or one like it—is probably the only chance of stopping the Nazis from using Sarin and Soman.”

  “What’s turned you so bloodthirsty all of a sudden? Yesterday you were a goddamn pacifist. What’s in that diary, anyway?”

  Anna turned from the stove, her eyes on McConnell.

  “I showed it to him,” he confessed. “Stern, that diary describes something I never thought possible.”

  “What? The systematic murder of thousands of Jews?”

  “No. That’s bad enough, but it’s been done before. All through history, in fact. What’s different about what the Nazis are doing is that they’ve put the doctors in charge. They’ve succeeded in inverting human values so completely that they’ve transformed the healers into the chief killers.”

  Stern made a wry face. “You think doctors killing people is somehow different than other men doing it?”

  “Yes. A doctor is sworn to preserve life. Do no harm—that’s the first rule. A doctor who murders is worse than a priest who murders. Popes and priests have presided over some of the worst carnage in history. But intentional mass murder in the name of medicine? I’ve never heard of it before. Hitler’s propaganda machine has instilled a sort of bio-political mentality in the German people. He’s convinced them that certain races—yours, for example—are deadly bacilli that must be eradicated. There is apparently a whole generation of German doctors that actually believes it is healing the body politic by killing millions of people. You once lectured me about evil, Stern. Well, I’m convinced, okay? If there is pure evil in the world, the Nazis have achieved it.”

  Stern’s laugh held bitter irony. “Words,” he said. “You’re an intellectual, so you have to draw some grand meaning from everything. What did I tell you the first time I saw you? The Nazis understand the true nature of man. They deal with what is. They took the lust for power and turned it into a religion. And it works! It could work anywhere, Doctor, even in America. I’ll bet some of your colleagues would line up for the chance to say who should live and who should die. It’s fun playing God.”

  “No it isn’t, Stern. You know that. But I’m afraid we’ve got to do it tonight.”

  When Stern did not respond, McConnell said, “Hitler hasn’t unleashed man’s true nature. He’s taken such a huge leap into madness that even now no one has begun to grasp what’s really going on. But we know, Stern. And that obligates us to try to do something about it.”

  “But you said the British nerve gas won’t even work!”

  “It might work. We have to try.”

  Stern threw up his hands. “Go ahead then! You try!”

  “I will if I have to. Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here? You came to Germany ready to sacrifice yourself and anyone else to accomplish this mission. Now you’re balking. For the last two days you’ve been ready to believe the gas worked. Now you’re not. Something changed last night, Jonas. What was it? What are you keeping from me?”

  “You’re crazy,” snapped Stern. He got up and started pacing the kitchen, the muscles in his forearms taut as wires.

  “Maybe I am,” McConnell conceded. “But I’ll be less crazy if you just tell me why you won’t go through with the attack.”

  “Tell him,” Anna said from the stove. “Or I will.”

  Stern stopped dead and stared at her. After a moment, his eyes glazed with hatred. “You tell him and I’ll kill you.”

  “You go to hell!” she shouted, fearless in her anger. “Or act like a man! That would be better!”

  Something seemed to go out of Stern then. Hope, maybe, or the will to keep lying. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the sideboard, blocking the light from one of the candles.

  “How long have you known?” he asked.

  Anna’s voice softened. “The night you got here, you said you were from Rostock. When I heard your real name I thought of the shoemaker, just for an instant. But you were so different—”

  “Different how? What do you know about him?”

  “Well . . . he repairs boots for the SS. Makes leather goods for them.”

  “Are you saying he’s a collaborator?”

  “No. Just that you seemed so different from him. Different enough that I dismissed the idea for a while. But yesterday I saw him up close again. Then I knew.”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” McConnell asked. “You know somebody in that camp?”

  “My father,” Stern said, his voice almost inaudible. “My father is a prisoner in the camp, okay? He’s been there for three years.”

  McConnell looked at Anna and saw the confirmation in her eyes. “Jesus, why didn’t you tell me before now? All you had to do—”

  Stern held up a hand for silence. “I have discovered that I’m a coward, Doctor. Not a pleasant thing. You were right, I was ready to sacrifice them all. Then I found out my father was one of the prisoners and I couldn’t do it. It’s pathetic.”

  “It’s human, Stern.”

  “You are also right,” Stern said to Anna. “He and I are different. But it is my duty to try to save him. For my mother.”

  “For yourself, goddamn it!” said McConnell. “Why don’t you just slip in and take him out tonight? I have no doubt you could do it.”

  “He won’t come. He’s crazy. He won’t leave the others behind.”

  No one spoke for a while. McConnell stared at one of the candles, going back over the situation yet again. He blanked the people from his mind and tried to see it as a purely scientific problem, from every possible angle no matter how unlikely. Three minutes later he felt the hair on his arms rise.

  “Anna, get me a pencil and paper,” he said. “Hurry, please.”

  “What is it?” Stern asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just be quiet for a minute.” McConnell took the things from Anna and began scratching numbers and letters on the paper. Stern walked around and peered over his shoulder.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures. You want to make a contribution or you want to be quiet?”

  Stern scowled and moved away. Two minutes later, McConnell set down the pencil. “All right, listen,” he said. “If you’re willing to go back into that camp tonight, we can save your father.”

  Stern came back and stood over him. “How?”

  “By doing what Anna originally suggested. Moving the prisoners into the E-Block before the attack. It’s an insane risk for you—for all of us, really—but . . . well, it’s your decision.”

  Anna looked at him in confusion. “But all of the prisoners won’t fit into the E-Block.”

  “That’s right,” said McConnell. “All of them won’t.”

  “But half of them will,” Stern said softly.

  “It’s the only option, Stern. That or run.”

  “Playing God,” Anna said.

  “My father would never agree to be among the saved,” Stern said, almost to himself. “He would give up his place to a woman or child.”

  “I’m afraid that’s what it’s going to come down to,” McConnell told him. “Depending on who makes the final decision, of course.”

  “What do you mean? How many people can fit in there?”

  “Anna said the chamber was three meters by three, and two meters high.” He looked at her. “Right?”

  She nodded. “After we talked about it, I check
ed a test record to see if I was right. I was.”

  “That’s eighteen cubic meters of total space.” McConnell looked down at his sheet. “Six hundred and fifty cubic feet to me.”

  “You can squeeze a lot of bodies into that,” Stern said. “Especially underfed bodies.”

  McConnell nodded patiently. “If it were merely a question of space. But it’s not. It’s a question of oxygen.”

  “Eighteen cubic meters of air won’t support everyone we can fit in there?”

  “Not for long. Those movies you’ve seen, where ten men get trapped in a sealed bank vault or a gold mine and spend two days trying to figure out a way to get out?”

  “Yes?”

  “They’re so much Scheisse, okay? Think about it like this. I tie a paper bag over your head. That’s all the air you have. How long can you survive on that?”

  “Not very long.”

  “Right. And that’s all the E-Block is—a big paper bag. Only it’s made of steel. You’ve got one hundred square feet of floor space. That sounds big, but believe me, it’s not. You could probably force a hundred malnourished women and children inside. However, every single body that goes in displaces a certain amount of air from the chamber, reducing the available oxygen.”

  “Damn it, how many people can survive in there?”

  “That depends on who goes in.” McConnell picked up his pencil. “How does the inmate population break down?”

  “There are six barracks buildings,” Anna said. “Two for men, two for women, two for children. There are two for each because the Jews are separated from the other prisoners.”

  “Privileged as usual,” Stern muttered.

  “Normally there would be fifty persons in each barracks,” Anna went on, “totalling three hundred. But Brandt has had trouble replenishing the ranks. The Jewish Men’s Block has less than fifteen men in it. Both children’s barracks are nearly full, and the Jewish Women’s Block just under that. The Christian Women’s Block is under quota. After the reprisals, the total camp population is probably about two hundred and twenty.”

  “I counted forty-eight women in the Jewish Women’s Block,” Stern said. “But they’ve shot five since then.”

  McConnell picked up his pencil and began scratching again.

  “Figure for forty-five women and fifty children,” Stern said. “We could fit that many inside—physically I mean.”