Black Cross

by Greg Iles

  Rachel heard the high whine of a motorcycle on the hill road. “Herr Stern, promise me that if your son comes back you will make him take my children away.”

  “Frau Jansen, the suit—”

  “Promise me!”

  The shoemaker sighed in resignation. “I promise.”

  Ben Jansen was babbling at Rachel, but she wasn’t listening. She tried to catch sight of Jan or Hannah near the children’s block. Was there any chance now that Schörner would send them into a Lebensborn home? Of course not. She had been a fool not to accept his offer instantly.

  “To the E-Block!” Brandt commanded from the steps.

  Two storm troopers caught Rachel by the arms and carried her up the steps into the hospital, straight down the main hall to the rear door, which led onto the alley and the E-Block. They were halfway across the alley when a motorcycle roared into one end of it and raced up to the hospital steps. A man wearing the field gray of the Waffen SS leaped off the cycle and let it fall in the snow. Only when he tore off his goggles did Rachel see the eyepatch and realize who the rider was.

  “Herr Doktor!” Schörner shouted. “We must put all troops on full alert immediately!”

  Sergeant Sturm shouldered his way between Brandt and Schörner. “The Herr Doktor is conducting an experiment,” he said. “Everything else must wait.”

  Schörner did not even glance at the captives; he knew Rachel would be among them. “Herr Doktor, I must insist!”

  “Ach, you stink,” Sturm said under his breath. “Where have you been, in a sewer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just a moment, Hauptscharführer,” Brandt said in a calm voice. “Let us hear what our security chief has to say.”

  “I have located the missing patrol, Herr Doktor,” Schörner said. “Both men were shot in the back with submachine guns and hidden in the Dornow sewer.”

  Even Sturm rocked back at this news. Schörner pushed on, maximizing the sense of imminent danger. “I recommend an immediate house-to-house search of Dornow. Sturm should recall his men from the hills. Also the dogs. We will need them to sniff walls and floors.”

  Sergeant Sturm turned his back on Brandt. “That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?” he whispered. “But you’re too late this time.”

  Brandt walked halfway down the steps. Something very much like fear had crept into his bland face. “Who do you think is responsible for these deaths, Schörner?”

  “It could be anyone, Herr Doktor. Partisans, British commandos, possibly both working in concert. But with the Raubhammer demonstration so close, I don’t believe we should take any chances. Think of Rommel. Think of the Führer!”

  Brandt’s face went white. “Sturm! Round up every available man and dog to search the village. Immediately!”

  “But the test—”

  “Will continue without you!” Brandt finished. “Move! Schnell!”

  Sturm glared at Schörner, then started up the alley.

  “Start with the mayor’s house!” Schörner called after him. “That pompous ass needs a lesson in authority!”

  “Good work, Schörner,” Brandt said. “Now, let us continue the experiment. I’m testing the integrity of the Raubhammer suits today. Ah, here they are now.”

  Rachel turned and saw Ariel Weitz and three SS men backing carefully down the steps. They carried between them two shiny black suits which had some type of rubber bag and hose apparatus attached to their backs. She sought out Schörner’s eyes, but he refused to look in her direction.

  Schörner cleared his throat. “I understood that they had sent us three suits, Herr Doktor.”

  “They did. But I will not soil my own suit with the sweat of a Jew. Would you, Schörner?”

  Schörner studied the commandant’s face several moments before answering. “Nein, Herr Doktor.”

  “Of course not. Now, Sturmbannführer, we have a decision to make. One of these prisoners must function as the control. Do you have a preference?”

  Rachel saw then that Brandt was toying with Schörner. Somehow, the doctor knew exactly what his security chief had been up to. Giving Schörner this choice was merely one more perverse experiment designed for Brandt’s enjoyment. Before Schörner could answer, Rachel heard the shoemaker whisper softly behind her:

  “He cannot save you. You must volunteer. Think of your children—”

  “I have no preference,” Schörner said in an emotionless voice, his eye never leaving Brandt’s face.

  A faint smile touched Brandt’s lips. “I am very glad to hear it, Sturmbannführer. In that case—”

  “I volunteer to wear a suit!” Rachel cried, stepping forward.

  Brandt studied her with interest. “As would I, were I in your place,” he said. He let his eyes play over her body, then looked pointedly at Schörner. “Well, Sturmbannführer? Give the young lady what she wants. By all means, a suit.”

  Schörner snapped his fingers at Ariel Weitz, who immediately carried one of the suits to Rachel and began unzipping it.

  “I too volunteer!”

  Rachel turned. Her father-in-law had followed her example. She watched Brandt’s eyes examine the old tailor with clinical detachment.

  “I think not,” Brandt said. “Give the other suit to the shoemaker. Let’s see if his luck holds, eh, Schörner? He survived one of these tests already, you know. Although that was an early version of Sarin, as I recall. Not nearly so toxic as Soman Four.”

  As Benjamin Jansen absorbed these words, Brandt said, “Bind the control hand and foot. We can’t risk him tearing the suits in his death throes.”

  The old tailor began to struggle, but Rachel remembered little else until she found herself sitting in a floodlit corner of the E-Block, her head and body encased in rubber, breathing parched air that tasted like metal. The shoemaker sat motionless beside her. Just beyond him, lying against the wall, she saw a small metal gas cylinder. Was that where the Soman would come from? She decided not. The small tank looked almost casually left behind, its pale green paint blending perfectly with the paint inside the E-Block.

  She looked over at Ben Jansen, who lay writhing in the opposite corner just three meters away. The old man had been spared the indignity of being stripped naked, but only to better approximate the effect of Soman Four on uniformed Allied soldiers. As Rachel watched him fighting the ropes, she wondered at the wild impulse to survive that had made her step away from him and grasp at the only choice that offered a chance at life. Had concern for her children driven her to it? Of course. But was it only them? Was there anything she would not do to survive one more day? As the hissing of the opened gas valves penetrated the rubber mask, she knew that there was not. She closed her eyes, knowing that her father-in-law would be dead when she opened them again.

  She prayed only that she would live to open them.

  Anna Kaas watched the steel hatch of the E-Block from an open window on the second floor of the hospital. By her watch, eight minutes had passed since the three prisoners were sealed inside. The gassing had not lasted more than a minute, she knew. She had seen SS men turning off the valves behind the E-Block. The rest of the time would have been spent cleaning the Soman from the chamber with neutralizing chemicals and detergents. The usual cleaning method—scalding steam and corrosive bleach—could not be used in a suit test, because Brandt always interviewed the survivors afterwards. She thanked God that no one had discovered the portable oxygen cylinder.

  Not yet, at least.

  Two men wearing gas masks and rubber gloves moved cautiously down the concrete steps and opened the E-Block’s hatch, then dashed back up to ground level.

  No one emerged.

  As Klaus Brandt knelt beside one of the porthole windows and rapped on it, Anna looked down at her left hand. In it were the keys to Greta Müller’s Volkswagen. She turned her arm to read her watch: 3:30 P.M. Four and one-half hours until the attack. If there was an attack. With Sturm already organizing Schörner’s house-to-house search, she had to get ba
ck to the cottage and warn Stern and McConnell. They could make the decision: stay and try to carry off the attack, or run. She felt a powerful urge to run right now. But she would not go until she knew whether Stern’s father had survived. Every moment she stood there felt like a dare to fate, but if Rachel Jansen had the courage to walk into the E-Block under her own power, Anna could stand to watch for two more minutes.

  She started at a shout from below. A black figure was moving slowly up the E-Block steps, a bubbly white substance flowing off of the suit as it moved. It was soap, Anna realized, the detergent solution Brandt used to spray away gas residue after suit tests. When the black-suited figure straightened, she knew it could only be Avram Stern. He stood nearly a head taller than Brandt, and in his arms he carried a limp figure which also wore a dripping suit.

  Rachel Jansen.

  Anna stayed long enough to see the tall figure lay down its burden and pull off its mask, revealing the prominent nose and gray moustache of the man called Shoemaker. Major Schörner was hurrying toward the prostrate figure at the shoemaker’s feet when Anna turned from the window and ran toward the stairs.

  “How are we supposed to move in these things?” Stern yelled, trying to be heard through his vinyl gas mask.

  He was standing in the kitchen of the cottage, wearing one of the oilskin anti-gas suits McConnell had brought from Oxford. He had gone up and down the cellar stairs three times wearing the suit, mask, and air tank, and he was already pouring sweat.

  “You don’t have to shout,” McConnell told him. “The diaphragm set into the vinyl transmits your voice. You sound like an insect version of yourself.”

  He pulled up the oilskin shoulders of the suit so that Stern could lift the clear vinyl mask off his head. “It will be a little tougher when we’re both wearing our masks,” said McConnell, “but we’ll manage.”

  “It’s like wearing five sets of clothes,” Stern complained, wiping sweat from his face. “How do we fight in them?”

  “I wouldn’t suggest hand to hand combat. One small rip and the whole thing is useless. If active nerve gas gets inside, you’re dead.”

  “Why isn’t air escaping from your hose now?”

  McConnell held up the corrugated rubber hose of his air tank, which sat on the kitchen table. There was a bulbous device at the point where the hose met the cylinder. “This is called a regulator,” he said. “It’s sensitive enough so that the force of your breath opens and closes it. There’s going to be a revolution in underwater diving after the war because of this gadget. A man named Cousteau developed—”

  McConnell gaped at Stern, who had dropped into a crouch on the kitchen floor.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “A car just pulled up outside.”

  McConnell knelt beside him. “SS?”

  Stern picked up his Schmeisser from a chair. “If it is, we don’t have a chance in these suits.”

  McConnell heard the angry clicking of a key in the front door. Someone jerked the door handle up and down, but the lock held fast.

  “Scheisse!” cursed a muffled voice.

  “A woman?” McConnell asked softly.

  Stern tiptoed to the kitchen window and peeked through a small crack between the curtains. “It is a woman.”

  “Maybe it’s one of the other nurses. She’ll go away eventually.”

  Stern shook his head. “She’s not going away. She’s getting a suitcase out of the boot. It’s a nice car, too. A Mercedes. Too expensive for a nurse. Wait . . . she’s coming back to the door.”

  “Anna!” the woman shouted. She jerked the door handle up and down again. “Why have you changed your locks?”

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “Sitting down on her suitcase. She’s opening a book! She’s not going anywhere.”

  “We’d better get down to the cellar.”

  Stern shook his head. “She might hear us moving in these suits.”

  “Jesus,” McConnell murmured. “We should have hit the camp last night.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Stern said quietly. “If she doesn’t leave soon, I’ll drag her in here and kill her.”

  Anna was driving too fast when she came down out of the wooded hills south of Dornow. She forced herself to slow down as the car passed the first outbuildings of the village.

  She knew it was insane to have taken Greta’s Volkswagen, but she had to beat Sturm’s men to the cottage. The gate guards had seen her driving the VW often enough to let her leave the camp unmolested. She’d nearly killed herself several times on the hairpin turns in the hills, but tempting death had calmed her a little. Then she turned down the lane that led to her cottage.

  “Oh God,” she whispered. “Not today.”

  She rolled to a stop behind the Mercedes. Her sister Sabine was standing beside the front door, looking just as she always did: the perfect Gauleiter’s wife. Too much makeup and too many jewels. Even her casual dresses were shipped from Paris.

  “I’ve been waiting here for two hours!” Sabine complained.

  Anna smoothed her hair and tried to look composed. “And Guten Abend to you, Sabine. Have you been inside?”

  Sabine Hoffman’s mouth puckered into a shrewish scowl. “How could I go inside? You’ve changed your locks!”

  “Oh . . . yes. Someone tried to break in while I was at work. I didn’t feel safe.”

  “You should fly a Party flag outside. No one would have the nerve to break in. I’ll have Walter’s office send you one.”

  Anna noticed the leather suitcase by the door. She felt almost too disoriented to hold a conversation. “Sabine, what are you doing here? I had no idea you were coming.”

  “I’ve come to stay the night. Walter went to Berlin again, to kiss up to the Party hacks. Goebbels is having some kind of function for the Hitler Jügend. They never ask the wives anymore. Not that I’d want to go. Magda’s such a bore.” She looked past her Mercedes at Greta’s car. “Is that yours, dear? It doesn’t look bad at all, for a Volkswagen.”

  Anna tried to focus her thoughts. “No, it . . . belongs to one of the other nurses. A friend of mine. She lends it to me sometimes.”

  “Too bad.” Sabine picked up her suitcase. “Let’s get inside. It’s freezing out here.”

  Anna prayed that McConnell and Stern were in the cellar. Her pulse raced as she unlocked the door.

  Not a chair was out of place.

  Sabine set her suitcase in Anna’s bedroom and installed herself at the kitchen table. “I’m positively starving,” she said. “What do you have?”

  Anna realized she was wringing her hands. “Not much, I’m afraid. I often eat at the camp.” She felt a sudden hope. “We should go into the village. There’s—”

  “Nonsense,” Sabine said. “A little coffee would be fine. I live on coffee and cigarettes these days. Walter too. You can’t imagine how busy he’s become. I feel like I’m married to the Party. The few hours he is home he does nothing but write speeches. No time for the children. To them Gauleiter is a dirty word. Their father’s the biggest man in town and they never see him.”

  Anna began boiling water for coffee.

  Sabine lit a cigarette and drew deeply. She let the smoke escape in little puffs as she talked. “The social scene in Berlin is practically nonexistent now. The Führer spends all his time in Rastenburg, in East Prussia. What’s the point of being Nazi royalty if the king is never in town? Tell me, Anna, have you met any delicious officers at the camp? That Major Schörner is quite the hero, I understand. They know him in Berlin.”

  Anna shook her head distractedly. “I really have no time for that. Dr. Brandt keeps us working.”

  “Brandt,” Sabine spat. “That man gives me the chills. Locked away day and night operating on Jews and God knows what else. Still, Walter says he’s a genius, whatever that means. I suspect it means he’s impotent.” She cast her jaded eye around the kitchen, then into the bedroom. Anna was reaching for a coffee mug when her sister said, �
�Do I smell a man, dear?”

  Anna froze. “What?”

  “A man. You know the smell. Sweat and old leather. Come, Anna, are you hiding a sturdy little SS lover in your virginal bower?”

  Anna forced a laugh. “You’re mad, Sabine.”

  Sabine stood up and pointed to the counter. “Mad, am I? You little sneak. I suppose you wear that to scare the burglars away?”

  Anna felt her heart stop. In the corner beneath a cabinet lay Jonas Stern’s Sicherheitsdienst cap.

  “The SD, no less,” Sabine said, picking up the cap. She ran her finger along the green piping. “Secret police. That fits, since you’ve been keeping him secret from me. And an officer, dear. Who is he?”

  At the moment Anna realized she had no idea what to say, the cellar door crashed open and Jonas Stern burst into the kitchen wearing his SD uniform. He pointed his Schmeisser at Sabine.

  “Ach du lieber Hergott!” she cried. “There’s no need to get so excited. I don’t care if you’re married. Anna deserves all the fun she wants.”

  “Sit down!” Stern yelled. “Now! In the chair!”

  Sabine’s expression changed from mild amusement to anger. “You’d better improve your manners, Standartenführer,” she said tartly. “Or I’ll have my husband speak to Reichsführer Himmler about you.”

  “I don’t care who your husband speaks to,” he snarled. “Put your fat ass in that chair!”

  Sabine looked at Anna for an explanation, but Anna had covered her face with both hands. McConnell stepped into the room wearing his SS uniform.

  “What’s going on here?” Sabine demanded. “Someone had better explain.”

  In the silence that followed, Sabine Hoffman fully apprehended the wrongness of the situation. She had never been slow on the uptake, and she sensed lethal danger now. Like a startled cat she snatched the coffee pot off the stove and hurled the boiling water at Stern, in the same motion darting in front of McConnell to reach the foyer and freedom.

  Stunned by the water, and afraid of hitting McConnell, Stern fired late and high. The slugs from his silenced Schmeisser shattered some cabinet doors, but Sabine was already in the foyer.