Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  Their problem began in Sweden. The Lysander detailed to carry them from Sweden to Germany—the plane they were in now—had developed engine trouble on its way back from a mission into Occupied France. And because the tiny black plane had but one engine, they had been forced to wait hours in a freezing shack while its pilot and the mysterious Junkers pilot repaired the problem. By the time they finished, dawn was scarcely an hour away. McConnell had suggested they wait until the next night, but Smith wouldn’t hear of it. He practically shoved them into the Lysander and ordered their pilot not to turn back for any reason.

  McConnell had expected to fly just over the wave tops to avoid German radar, but the pilot told them there was more chance of being shot down by a Kriegsmarine vessel than by a Luftwaffe night fighter. They’d crossed the Baltic at nine thousand feet. Ten minutes ago they’d flown over the coast of northern Germany.

  And then the dive.

  “Thank God,” McConnell said, feeling the plane start to level out over the lightless plain.

  “We’re going to touch down in a farmer’s field!” yelled the pilot. “The Met people say there’s been a hard freeze, so I’m not expecting problems with mud.” He looked back over his shoulder, revealing the face of a jaded twenty-year-old daredevil. “I won’t be turning off the engine. Himmler himself could be waiting down there, for all we know. I expect you to get yourselves and your gear out of the plane in less than thirty seconds.”

  “Nice to know we can count on you!” Stern shouted back.

  The pilot shook his head. “I take SOE people into France all the time. But Germany . . . you two must be daft.”

  Great, thought McConnell. Even the help knows we’re idiots. Far out on the western horizon he saw a faint orange glow. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Rostock,” answered the pilot. “We bombed it practically into rubble in forty-three, but the Heinkel aircraft factory is still operational. They must have used incendiaries tonight. The fires are still burning.”

  McConnell noticed that Stern had pressed his face to the perspex. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I grew up in Rostock,” Stern said. “I was just wondering if our apartment block was still standing.”

  “Doubtful,” the pilot said needlessly. “The center of town is pretty well smashed. Looks like a bloody Roman ruin.”

  “So that’s why Smith chose you for this,” McConnell said, forgetting his airsickness for a moment. “You know the area.”

  “That’s one reason.”

  “There’s the signal!” cried the pilot. “Get ready!”

  He pulled back on the controls and climbed, then circled around for a high-angle approach. All McConnell could see in the blackness below were three dim yellow lights in a line, with a red one off to the side, forming an inverted “L.” The red light appeared to be blinking a Morse code letter again and again.

  The Lysander fell like a hailstone on the wind. McConnell gripped his seat and watched the “L” race upward. The wheels hit hard, bounced, then settled onto the bumpy ground and quickly rolled to a stop near the red light.

  “Get out!” bellowed the pilot. “Go!”

  Stern already had the hatch open. The roar of the engine filled the cabin. McConnell saw him drop his bag out, then jump down. McConnell hefted his suitcase across the seat and handed it out, then climbed down himself.

  “You’ve left a bloody case!” the pilot yelled.

  McConnell hopped back into the plane and with a groan lifted out the suitcase containing the anti-gas suits and stolen explosives.

  “Good luck!” the pilot called. Then the black plane was off, turning quickly on the frozen earth and accelerating back in the direction it had come. Only the fading grumble of the engine told them anything was there at all.

  “You’re the athlete,” Stern said in the darkness. “You carry the air cylinders.”

  When McConnell reached down for the case, it was gone. A huge man with a black beard, heavy fur coat, and an old bolt-action rifle strapped over his shoulder stood less than a yard from him. The heavy suitcase hung from one hand as if it held only a weekend’s clothes. While McConnell stared, the flare path that had guided in the plane winked out, and two more figures quickly materialized out of the blackness. One was a tall thin man with a fisherman’s cap pulled low over his eyes, the other smaller and bundled to the eyeballs in a thick scarf and oilskin coat. The smaller man carried no weapon, but was obviously the leader.

  “Password?” he asked in muffled German.

  “Schwarzes Kreuz,” Stern replied. “Black Cross.”

  “You are . . . ?”

  “Butler and Wilkes. He’s Wilkes. You?”

  “Melanie. Follow us. Schnell! We’ve been here all night. If we’re caught in the open at dawn, we’re dead.”

  The shadowy escorts moved so quickly across the flat ground that even McConnell had trouble keeping up. Once, the leader dropped flat and motioned for everyone to do the same. McConnell thought he heard the faint rumble of an engine, but wasn’t sure. After three minutes, the leader got up and continued on.

  Hurrying across the frozen fields, McConnell realized that the cold here was of an entirely different magnitude than that in Scotland. He should have prepared himself. Did it take a genius to figure out that in northern Germany, wind blowing from the north was coming from the Arctic? They were only twenty miles from the Baltic coast. The wind blasted across this plain like the fulfillment of a Norse curse, the uniforms he and Stern wore useless against its power.

  He saw a few dim lights out to his left. A road? A rail line? To his right he saw nothing at first. Then the faintest corona of blue began to highlight the crest of a range of hills. He shivered. Beyond those hills the sun was rising.

  As they rounded the foot of one of the hills, he saw dim yellow lights close ahead. The leader stopped and spoke quietly to the two escorts, who melted away into the shadows without a word. Stern and McConnell picked up their suitcases.

  They were approaching a small village. Already they had passed two outlying farmhouses. A dog barked but apparently awakened no one. McConnell found himself recalling the advice Stern had given him about moving in hostile territory. First: never smoke in the field. Stern claimed the smell of cigarette smoke on the wind had saved his life many times. McConnell had made a joke then, but it didn’t seem funny now. As they neared the next cottage, the leader made no effort to circle around it. Instead he walked right up to the front door, unlocked it with a key and motioned them inside.

  There was hardly any light, but McConnell could see that the walls of the narrow entrance hall were adorned only by a coat rack. Stern dropped his bags and sat down on them, breathing hard.

  “Pick up those cases,” the leader ordered. “You’re going to the cellar.”

  “Give us a moment, eh?” Stern pleaded in German. “That was some hike.”

  The leader grunted in disgust and stalked out of the foyer. McConnell set down his bags and felt his way into a room that had to be a kitchen. He smelled coffee warming on the stove. It took great restraint to keep from feeling his way to it and drinking straight from the pot.

  The leader lighted two candles and placed them on a wooden table at the center of the room. McConnell took in the sparsely stocked shelves and yellow-painted walls, then said, “Mein Name ist Mark McConnell. Thank you for meeting us.”

  The leader shrugged and took off his hat. A mane of blond hair fell around his shoulders. He unwrapped the scarf from his face.

  “My God,” McConnell said in English.

  “I am Anna Kaas,” said the young woman, pulling off her heavy coat and revealing anything but a man’s figure. “Tell your lazy friend to take those suitcases down to the cellar. You’re in Germany now.”

  “Ach du lieber Hergott!” Stern said from the doorway.

  “You were expecting a man?” Anna said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  McConnell watched in amazement as the young woman poured t
he coffee. She appeared to be close to his own age, and she had deep brown eyes—unusual in a woman who otherwise fit the Aryan stereotype of the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Brunhild.

  “You’re hours late,” she said. “You are trying to kill us?”

  “Mechanical trouble,” said Stern, stepping into the kitchen. “You work in the camp?”

  “Yes. I’m a nurse. There are six of us.”

  “You enjoy your work?”

  Even by candlelight, McConnell saw the woman color at this remark. “If I did, would I be putting up two rude Englishmen for the night?” she rejoined.

  “I’m American,” McConnell told her.

  “And I’m German,” said Stern. “I was raised thirty kilometers from here, in Rostock.”

  “How wonderful for you,” Anna said. “Perhaps you can stay alive long enough to complete your mission.”

  Stern walked to the kitchen window and peered through a crack in the curtains. McConnell could see the glow of daylight even from where he stood.

  “If the wind lets up,” said Stern, “I’ll only have to survive half an hour or so to do that.”

  “What do you mean?” Anna asked.

  “I mean we’re executing the mission as soon as the wind falls off.”

  “Not if you want to succeed.”

  Stern turned from the window. “Why not? The daylight is a problem, but we’ve got the German uniforms. We’ll make it to the hill. Getting away alive afterward won’t be easy, but. . . ” He waved his hand dismissively.

  “London didn’t tell you?” Anna Kaas shook her head in astonishment. “Major Schörner discovered the body of an SS sergeant today, buried in the hills. He’d been shot by a submachine gun. The SS found four parachutes buried with him. British parachutes.”

  “Verdammt!” said Stern. “That’s what McShane meant by a ‘warm welcome.’ They killed someone during the preparatory mission. Smith must have ordered him not to tell us about it.”

  “Terrific,” McConnell said.

  “It’s a miracle we reached the cottage,” Anna told them. “Major Schörner has half the garrison out on patrol. A motorcycle unit stopped here five minutes before I left for the pickup point. If they’d returned while I was gone, we would be running for our lives now.”

  “How far are we from the power station?” Stern asked.

  “About three kilometers, uphill all the way.”

  “Heavy tree growth? Plenty of cover?”

  “Yes, but a switchback road crosses your path a dozen times between here and there.”

  Stern winced. “What about the wind? Has it been blowing this hard all night?”

  “What is so important about the wind?”

  When Stern did not reply, she said, “It gusts, but it hasn’t dropped below a hard breeze all night.”

  “Just a minute,” McConnell cut in. “What’s all this about a power station? Now that we’re finally in Germany, maybe you can tell me exactly what the plan is? How are the two of us supposed to disable this plant so that I can get a look at the machinery? Are some of Vaughan’s commandos parachuting in behind us or what?”

  “No,” said Stern.

  “I am also confused,” Anna said. “Since only two of you landed, I assumed your team must already be here, hiding in the woods. What can two men do against the garrison at Totenhausen?”

  “More than you think,” said Stern.

  “You don’t know what the mission is?” McConnell asked her.

  “No.”

  “Come on, Stern,” he pressed. “Out with it.”

  “Thank you for telling her my real name, Doctor.”

  “Code names are childish at this point,” Anna said. She looked at McConnell. “Your German is terrible.”

  “Danke.”

  “I mean your grammar is perfect, but your accent. . . ”

  “I already tried to avoid this mission on those grounds. It didn’t work.”

  “He’s not here for his language skills,” Stern said. “He’s a chemist.”

  Anna looked at McConnell with sudden understanding. “Ah. Perhaps you weren’t such a bad choice, then.”

  Stern opened a door that led onto a small bedroom, looked inside, then closed it. “You want to know how the two of us are going to disable the plant, Doctor? We’re not. We’re going to leave it exactly like we find it, except for one thing. Everybody in it will be dead.”

  “What?” McConnell felt suddenly lightheaded. “What did you say?”

  “You didn’t hear me? We’re going to gas the camp, Doctor. That’s why I asked about the wind. The ideal windspeed for the attack is zero to six miles per hour.”

  “Gas the camp? With what?”

  “With nerve gas from the Totenhausen storage tanks?” Anna guessed.

  Stern shook his head. “With our own nerve gas.”

  “We didn’t bring any,” said McConnell. “We don’t even have any. Do we?”

  Stern smiled with the satisfaction of secret knowledge.

  “But . . .” Anna trailed off, pondering Stern’s words.

  “I see,” McConnell said. But he didn’t see. He had known Smith was holding back facts about the mission. Yet of all the possibilities he had imagined, this was not one. “Is the target really a gas factory and testing facility, as I was led to believe?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . . how are you going to gas the SS without killing the prisoners?”

  “I’m not.”

  McConnell sat down at the kitchen table and tried to digest this.

  “There’s no way to warn the prisoners without risking the success of the mission,” explained Stern. “Even if we could separate them, there’s nowhere for them to go.”

  “Mein Gott,” Anna whispered.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this back at Achnacarry?” asked McConnell. “I asked you enough times.”

  “I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have come. Smith was not lying about one thing, Doctor, time is critical. There was no time to find someone else.”

  “Couldn’t you at least have given me the choice?”

  “You have a choice. Are you going to help me?”

  McConnell was tempted to refuse merely out of anger at being tricked so completely. But even underneath his anger, he knew that what Smith wanted them to do was wrong.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going to help you kill innocent prisoners.”

  Stern turned up his palms. “You see? We were right not to tell you.”

  “Christ, what did you gain by lying?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? Look, all you have to do is assist me in the final phase. Go into the factory and tell me what to take pictures of. Help me get the samples. Smith thought you’d see the necessity after thinking it through.”

  “Well, I don’t see it! I knew something like this couldn’t be done without loss of life. I prepared myself for that. But this . . . Jesus, Stern, you’re talking about murdering hundreds of innocent people! I thought we understood each other. Don’t you think you owed me a little honesty?”

  “Owed you?” Stern’s face reddened. “I only met you two weeks ago! I’ll tell you who I owe, Doctor. The Jews waiting to be murdered in fifty death camps across Germany and Poland. I owe the soldiers who are going to risk their lives to liberate Europe and free those Jews. It may not be their top priority, but they’ll get to it sooner or later. As for you, you can sit here and wait for the Second Coming or whatever you believe will finally stop Hitler. I’m going up that hill.”

  “Is that where the gas is?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you going to get it into the camp?”

  “Easily. There are ten electrical pylons connecting the power station on top of a nearby hill to the prison camp at the bottom. Last night, Sergeant McShane and his men hung eight cylinders of British nerve gas from a power line at the top pylon. My mission is to climb that pylon, release the cylinders, and send them down into Totenhausen.”

  �
��So that’s it,” Anna said, staring into one of the candle flames. “London had me out at all hours of the night sketching poles and wires and transformer boxes. All the electrical junctions at the camp. I had no idea why until now. I assumed they were planning to defeat the electrical fence before a general assault.”

  She sat down opposite McConnell and looked up at Stern. “Is that really the only way? To kill everyone?”

  “What are a few hundred lives sacrificed if it saves tens of thousands later?” Stern said.

  Anna’s eyes didn’t waver. “You say that very easily, Herr Stern. There are women and children in that camp.”

  “Jews?”

  “There are many Jews there, yes. Others too. You don’t like Jews?”

  “I am a Jew.”

  She blinked in disbelief. “My God. You are a Jew and you have the nerve to come here? You must be mad.”

  “No. But I am ready to die for my people. If other Jews must die also, so be it.”

  “Is that your choice to make?” McConnell asked.

  “Those prisoners were doomed long before we got here, Doctor. This way at least they’ll die for a reason.”

  “Count me out,” McConnell said.

  “I never counted you in.” Stern went back to the window and watched through a crack in the curtains. “I told Smith he was a fool to think you would help me. It doesn’t matter, though. I can make the attack without you.”

  McConnell wasn’t listening. He was thinking. “You say those cylinders on the hill have British nerve gas in them?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What kind of nerve gas?”

  Stern shrugged. “I don’t know. Nerve gas.”

  “Have you seen it work?”

  “Seen it? Of course not. It’s invisible, isn’t it?”