Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  Also, the usual procedure was for Brandt to walk along just behind the sergeant, approving the selections or, in rare cases, granting an on-the-spot dispensation. The Lord of Life and Death at Totenhausen savored his divine authority. But tonight Sturm was snatching men from the ranks with hardly a glance. Already thirteen stood under guard apart from the main group. With a chill of foreboding the shoemaker realized that all thirteen were Jews. Had his turn finally arrived?

  His hands trembled. None of the Jews looked over fifty, but who knew? He saw the Jansen woman lean out of the line to try and see what was happening. An SS private stepped forward and shoved her back. Five storm troopers converged as Sergeant Sturm waded into the ranks to collar a reluctant prisoner. A hysterical wail echoed up the line, forcing the dog handlers to restrain the German shepherds.

  The shoemaker began to pray. Nothing else would do any good. He had made his mistake years before, when he refused to flee from Germany with his wife and son. At least they were safe now, he thought—he hoped—safe in the Promised Land. Palestine. He was certainly luckier than the Jansen family on his right. Tonight the old grandfather would lose his son, the young wife her husband, and the children their father. He saw panic in the woman’s eyes as she sought some means of protecting her husband. There was nothing. This was Nazi Germany, and Sergeant Sturm was getting closer.

  “You!” Sturm snapped, pointing his finger. “Out of the line!”

  The shoemaker watched a forty-year-old clerk from Warsaw shuffle out of the line and join the doomed men huddling in the center of the frozen camp yard. Rosen was his name, but no stone would ever mark his remains—

  “You!” Sturm bellowed. “Out of the line!”

  From the corner of his eye the shoemaker saw the young Dutch father turn and look into his wife’s face. His eyes showed no fear for himself, only a withering guilt at leaving his family to suffer without his protection, however meager it might be. Their two children, a tiny boy and girl, clung to the hem of their mother’s gray shift and stared up in mute terror.

  “Austreten!” Sergeant Sturm barked, reaching for the Dutchman.

  The young man raised one hand and tenderly touched his wife’s cheek. “Ik heb er geen woorden meer voor, Rachel,” he said. “Take care of Jan and Hannah.”

  The shoemaker was German, but he knew enough Dutch to translate: I have no more words, Rachel.

  As Sergeant Sturm’s hand closed on the young Dutchman’s sleeve, a white-haired man bolted from the ranks and threw himself at Sturm’s feet. The shoemaker cut his eyes up the line. Forty meters away Major Schörner was engaged in conversation with Dr. Brandt. Neither had seen the movement.

  “Spare my son!” the old man begged in a whisper. “Spare my son! Benjamin Jansen begs you on his knees for mercy!”

  Sergeant Sturm waved away a storm trooper who was hurrying over with a dog. He drew his pistol, a well-oiled Luger. “Get back in line,” he growled. “Or we’ll take you instead.”

  “Yes!” said the old man. “That is what I want!” He rose to his feet and capered like a madman. “I will serve just as well!”

  Sturm shoved him back a step. “You’re not what we need.” He pointed his pistol at the son. “Move!”

  The elder Jansen’s right hand burrowed inside his coat pocket. Sergeant Sturm pressed his Luger to the Dutchman’s forehead, but the wrinkled hand emerged from the pocket holding something that flashed like stars under the arclights. The shoemaker heard Sturm catch his breath.

  The Dutchman’s palm was full of diamonds.

  “Take them,” Ben Jansen whispered. “For my son’s life.”

  The shoemaker watched Sergeant Sturm’s face go through several changes of expression. He could hear the thoughts turning in the sergeant’s brain. Who else had seen the diamonds? What were they worth? A small fortune, by the look of them. How long would he have to carry them before he could hide them in his quarters?

  “They’re yours,” the old man whispered, pressing the gems toward Sturm’s pocket.

  The sergeant’s left hand closed over the diamonds.

  The shoemaker cringed. He knew what would happen now. He saw Sturm’s finger tighten on the Luger’s trigger—

  “What is the delay here?” asked a sharp voice.

  Sergeant Sturm froze as Major Schörner leaned over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” said Doctor Brandt, who had walked up beside Schörner. “What is the problem, Hauptschärführer?”

  Sturm cleared his throat. “This old Jew wants to take his son’s place.”

  “Impossible,” Brandt said in a bored voice. He turned and stared impatiently at the front gate.

  “I beg you, Herr Doktor!” Jansen implored. The old man had been astute enough to pick up on Brandt’s preferred title. “My son has young children who need him. Herr Doktor, Marcus is a lawyer! I am but a tired old tailor. Useless! Take me instead!”

  Klaus Brandt pivoted on his heel and regarded the old man with a sardonic smile. “But a good tailor is infinitely more valuable here than a lawyer,” he said. He pointed to a nearby prisoner’s tattered shift. The skin beneath it looked blue. “What need has he of a lawyer?”

  With that, Brandt turned and moved a few steps up the line.

  Benjamin Jansen stared after him with wild eyes. “But Herr Doktor—”

  “Quiet!” Sturm roared, reaching for Marcus Jansen, who had knelt beside his children.

  The old man shook as if from palsy. He reached out and caught the back of Major Schörner’s gray tunic. “Sturmbannführer, take half the diamonds! Take all of them!”

  Schörner turned back with narrowed eyes. “Diamonds?”

  “I’m ready,” said Marcus Jansen. The young Dutchman stepped resolutely from the line. His wife crouched and hugged her children, hiding their eyes.

  Sergeant Sturm grabbed the lawyer and jerked him away.

  With a wild shriek Ben Jansen clenched both hands into fists, took an uncertain step toward Major Schörner, then lunged to his right in the direction of Dr. Brandt.

  The shoemaker felt something inside him snap. Despite the risk to himself, he threw his right fist and caught Ben Jansen on the side of the jaw. The old Dutchman dropped flat on his back in the snow in the same moment that the shoemaker whipped back into line and stood rigidly at attention.

  It happened so fast that no one knew quite what to do. Sergeant Sturm had been a fraction of a second from shooting the old man. Now he looked uncertainly from the shoemaker to Schörner, then to Brandt, who had turned to see what was happening. Marcus Jansen stared in horror as Sturm’s pistol hovered above his father’s head.

  The sudden blast of a car horn saved Benjamin Jansen’s life. Its blaring echo reverberated over the snow like a royal clarion.

  “It’s the Reichsführer!” shouted Sergeant Sturm, hoping to turn all attention toward the front gate.

  For the most part he succeeded. But while Klaus Brandt hurried toward the gate with an honor guard of SS troops, and the shoemaker wondered if he had actually heard the word Reichsführer, Major Wolfgang Schörner said in a soft voice: “Open your left hand, Hauptscharführer.”

  “But the selection!” Sturm protested. “I must finish!”

  Schörner’s hand closed around Sturm’s thick wrist. “Hauptscharführer, I order you to open your hand.”

  “Zu befehl, Sturmbannführer!” Sturm’s voice was tight with fear and anger. As the roar of engines drew nearer, he opened his hand.

  It was empty.

  Major Schörner stared into the hand for a moment, then said, “Remain at attention, Hauptscharführer.”

  Without hesitation Schörner reached into Sturm’s trouser pocket. A pained expression came over his face. He dug in the pocket, then removed his hand and opened it inches from the sergeant’s face.

  The diamonds glittered like blue fire.

  “I thought we had settled this issue,” Schörner said quietly.

  Sturm lowered his eyes. “We did, Sturmbannführer
.”

  “Then would you like to explain these diamonds to the Reichsführer?”

  Sturm paled. Himmler’s edict against looting Jews for personal gain was quite explicit: the penalty was death. “Nein, Sturmbannführer,” he said.

  Schörner grabbed Sturm’s left hand and forced the diamonds into it. “Then get rid of them.”

  “Get rid of them? How?”

  “Schnell!”

  The shoemaker watched in amazement as Sergeant Sturm flung the diamonds across the snow like a man feeding chickens.

  “Now,” Schörner said in an even voice. “Finish the selection.”

  He turned and marched off toward the front gate, his knee boots gleaming under the lights.

  Sturm stared down at Ben Jansen in silent rage. Then he holstered his Luger and kicked Marcus Jansen toward the condemned men. “All male Jews aged sixteen to fifty step out of the ranks!” he shouted. “If anyone in that category is left in line one minute from now, every second woman in line will be shot!”

  The shoemaker felt the terrible, wonderful flood of relief he experienced every time he survived a selection. Out of a total of thirty-nine adult male Jews, twenty-eight had fallen into the condemned category. As the remainder of these stepped from the line, a convoy of gray field cars and one heavy troop transport truck roared across the Appellplatz toward the rear of the camp. A square flag showing two triangles and a Nazi eagle flew from the left mudwing of the longest car.

  So it’s true, thought the shoemaker. Heinrich Himmler has finally come to observe his handiwork.

  12

  Sergeant Sturm’s troops clubbed the condemned men toward the rear of the camp with rifle butts and truncheons, while the balance of the prisoners remained standing in the snow. Rachel Jansen remained on her knees, hugging her children. Her father-in-law had not yet regained his senses. The shoemaker swept his eyes over the decimated Jewish section, looking for his few remaining friends. Nothing but gray heads now.

  “All prisoners return to blocks!”

  The shoemaker drifted to the edge of the pack as the dazed crowd broke into small groups and moved toward the six inmate barracks. He knew he should follow, but something held him back. The emotions surging through him were so powerful that he hesitated to face them. Not for a year had he visited the rearmost area of the camp, and for good reason. Behind the hospital, half-buried in the earth, stood a small airtight chamber designated the Experimental Block, but called simply the “E-Block” by the camp population—when it was mentioned at all.

  Only once had the shoemaker observed one of the “special actions” that occurred at the E-Block—and he had observed it from the inside. He had been wearing a heavy rubber body suit at the time, with a sealed gas mask connected to a cylinder of oxygen. The other man in the chamber—a Russian POW chained to the steel wall and designated a “control” by Klaus Brandt—had been stark naked. What the shoemaker saw happen to the Russian when the invisible gas hissed into the chamber had driven him nearly to suicide. And tonight, Heinrich Himmler had come to see a similar spectacle for himself.

  Without further reflection the shoemaker broke away from the crowd of survivors and walked purposefully toward the rear of the camp. The risk was great, but less for him than for other inmates. His leatherworking skills were legendary in Totenhausen, and all SS knew him by sight. He had done at least one repair job for every soldier in camp. A boot here, a shoulder strap there. A pair of slippers for a mistress somewhere. Such was the currency of his survival. If someone stopped him, he would claim he had been called to examine a pair of shoes in the hospital.

  Ignoring the searchlights, he entered the shadow of the hospital, hurried forward and peered around the corner of the three-story structure. The troop transport truck had been parked in the mouth of the alley, so that it blocked his vision. He squeezed between the truck and the hospital wall and edged forward until he could see.

  Sergeant Sturm had halted the prisoners halfway up the alley. At the other end stood the gray field cars of the convoy, motors running. Two dozen SS soldiers of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler had already surrounded the autos. Several doors opened as one. Men wearing pale gray uniforms stepped into the icy night. The shoemaker’s eyes settled on a smallish officer who had just removed a pair of pince-nez glasses. The glasses must have fogged as he stepped from the heated car, for he passed them to an adjutant, who wiped them clear with a handkerchief and then returned them. When the man put the pince-nez glasses back on, the shoemaker felt his hands begin to shake. He was standing less then forty meters away from SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

  Himmler listened patiently while Doctor Brandt explained some arcane detail of the presentation he was about to witness. As they moved toward the E-Block, the shoemaker saw that one side of the alley was lined with thirty or so technicians and chemists from Totenhausen’s poison gas plant. In their white lab coats they had been almost invisible in the snow. Himmler nodded affably as he passed them. Brandt motioned toward the E-Block, then turned to speak and saw that the Reichsführer was no longer beside him.

  Himmler had stopped to address one of Totenhausen’s six civilian nurses. Four of the women were old battle-wagons, but two—Greta Müller and Anna Kaas—were blond and single and barely thirty. The shoemaker had mistaken them for lab technicians. Himmler seemed quite taken with Fraulein Kaas, and no wonder: he was middle-aged, pudgy, and chinless, while she could have posed for one of Goebbels’ posters celebrating the Aryan female ideal. Brandt stood by impatiently; he’d intended for the nurses to be scenery, not full-scale diversions. At last Himmler gave a little bow and moved away from Anna Kaas. Brandt led him quickly to the hospital’s rear steps, from whence he could observe the entrance to the E-Block, just across the alley.

  Two camp spotlights had been pressed into service to focus on the chamber’s sunken entrance. Himmler’s guards craned their necks in curiosity. A muffled bang startled several of them, causing a ripple of suppressed laughter among the Totenhausen SS. It was only a corpse, they knew, swelling and bursting as it settled into the shallow grave pit beyond the electrified rear fence.

  The condemned men crowded together like a herd of antelope sensing predators drawing around. The shoemaker could clearly see the young Dutch lawyer who had so stoically accepted his fate. Sergeant Sturm barked an order for the men to strip. Sharp blows from rifle butts convinced those who responded too slowly. The shoemaker put a hand over his mouth. Was there a more pathetic sight than a group of adult men stripped naked by force? In the biting cold their genitals shrank beyond any sexual recognition. One of Himmler’s men brayed something about circumcised Jews and their lack of manhood. The shoemaker had to admit that from where he stood, only the lack of breasts marked the prisoners as men.

  When the clothes and wooden-soled shoes lay piled in the snow, the first of their owners were herded down the four concrete steps that led to the entrance of the sunken chamber. The steel door had a great wheel set in its face, like a watertight hatch inside a U-boat. The shoemaker shivered when he heard the hermetic pfft that signaled the opening of the door. What went on in this alley day after day was horrible, but what he was seeing now was completely beyond his experience. The E-Block had been designed to accommodate ten men in standing positions. Tonight nearly thirty were being forced into the steel chamber. He could imagine the nightmarish scene that must be taking place as Sturm’s troops forced the naked men in on top of one another.

  When the last prisoner had been beaten through the door, it was levered shut and the wheel cranked into its closed position. Major Schörner signaled to a man who stood by the corner of the E-Block. This man—who wore a striped prison shirt—flipped a switch, causing the double-paned porthole observation windows set in the low walls to come alight.

  Acid flooded the shoemaker’s stomach. The man who had thrown the light switch was named Ariel Weitz, and he was a Jew. The wiry little homosexual had worked as a male nurse in Hamburg before the war, and after bein
g sent to Totenhausen, had wheedled his way into the job of Brandt’s assistant. His behavior in this job quickly made him the most hated man in camp. Were it not for the terror of reprisals, Weitz would have had his throat cut long ago. The shoemaker watched him hover at the corner of the E-Block, eagerly awaiting his next order.

  Brandt led Himmler to the side of the E-Block, with Major Schörner following at a discreet distance. They stopped beside an odd machine that stood man-high on a pallet in the snow. The shoemaker had never seen this machine before, but it looked like a sophisticated pump of some kind. Brandt removed something from his pocket and held it up for Himmler’s scrutiny. No bigger than a rifle cartridge, it flashed in the light. Glass, the shoemaker thought. Himmler nodded and smiled at Brandt, seeming to express good-natured skepticism. Then Brandt turned to the machine and inserted the piece of glass into a compartment in its face. At that moment the shoemaker noticed a small-gauge rubber hose connecting the machine to a fitting on the side of the E-Block.

  Major Schörner assisted the Reichsführer onto a stool beside one of the E-Block’s observation portholes. He turned back to Brandt, who moved his left hand to a switch on his machine, then raised his right and said:

  “I begin the action . . . now.”

  There was a quick, low-pitched hum from the machine, then silence. Faint screams emanated from the soundproofed E-Block. The shoemaker saw Himmler jerk backward and nearly fall off the stool, then right himself.

  Ten seconds later the screaming stopped.

  Himmler got up from the stool and backed away from the window. He wobbled on his feet, but when Major Schörner rushed to steady him he jerked away as if he had been burned. Very slowly, he seemed to come back to himself.

  “Danke, Sturmbannführer,” he said. “Herr Doktor?”

  As Brandt scampered across the snow to Himmler’s side, the shoemaker edged as far as he dared along the side of the truck.

  “Yes, Reichsführer?” said Brandt.

  “You have surpassed yourself. Are you positive those men were killed by the gas in that phial you showed me? Nothing else?”