Greg Iles - Black Cross

“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.

Before Stern could follow and finish her, McConnell dove through the door and leaped onto the woman’s back as she tore at the door handle. Sabine whirled, clawing and screeching like a wildcat.

“Stop it!” Anna screamed. “Sabine, be quiet!”

McConnell threw himself backward and whirled, crushing Sabine against the foyer wall and stunning her enough that she fell to the floor.

Anna threw herself over her sister to keep Stern from shooting her. “Lie still, Sabine! Don’t say anything!”

Stern was trying to push his way into the foyer, but McConnell shoved him back into the kitchen. “You don’t have to shoot her!”