Greg Iles - Black Cross

Tickell’s eyes narrowed slightly, then widened like those of a hunter who has followed a wounded lion too far into the bush. “Let my first officer up,” he said. “Deevers, close the bloody hatch. Duff Smith can sort out his own mess.”

A dizzying wave of relief washed over McConnell.

“Prepare to dive!” Tickell shouted to the control room. “We’ll torpedo the patrol boat before we go.”

“Thank you, Captain,” McConnell said. “You did the right thing.”

Tickell’s jaw muscles clenched with cold fury. “I’ll see you both hanged for this,” he said.

“You’ll probably have to watch them pin medals on us first,” Stern said over McConnell’s shoulder. “Let’s get this stinking tub to Sweden.”

Six hours later, HMS Sword surfaced one mile off the southern Swedish coast. The voyage had been a test of nerves, with McConnell treating Anna’s wound while Stern stood guard with the revolver and the canister of Soman. They’d shut the door long enough for McConnell to set and splint Stern’s broken finger, but the lacerations on his chest had had to wait. Hannah Jansen had drunk some powdered milk and vomited it up immediately. By the time they crawled out of the submarine’s conning tower to be taken ashore, they were near to exhaustion.

Airman Bottomley had rented a motor launch to meet the sub. The sleek wooden craft rose and fell gently on the swell beside the sub’s sail. When Bottomley refused to take Anna and the child aboard, Captain Tickell told him he would take them or be blown out of the water.

Bottomley took them.

The SOE man remained on the Sword; apparently there was other “dirty business” still to be done in the Baltic. The launch reached the Swedish coast after a ten-minute run, homing on a blinking green signal lantern.

When Bottomley cut the engine and drifted into the small dock, McConnell spied the two silhouettes waiting for them. One was Duff Smith. The other was a little taller, but bundled in a heavy coat and muffler. For a wild moment he thought Winston Churchill himself might reach down out of the gloom to pull them onto the dock. In the event, he was even more stunned. The face at the other end of the assisting arm belonged to his brother.

McConnell froze for a moment, watched Stern hand the child up to David. Before he had time to think, Stern had helped Anna out of the launch. Like a sleepwalker he climbed out of the boat and faced them all on the jetty.

David broke into a huge grin and said, “Goddamn it, boy, you made it!”

McConnell could not speak. Despite the evidence before him, his mind tried to deny the reality. Then David passed Hannah Jansen to Stern, reached into his flight jacket and brought out a pewter flask.

“How about a shot of Kentucky’s finest, Mac?” he asked. “It’s cold as a welldigger’s ass up here.”

McConnell turned to Brigadier Smith. “Does he know . . . what I thought?”

Duff Smith shook his head very slightly, then pointed at the wooden crate. “Is that the gas sample, Doctor?”

McConnell nodded dully. “Soman Four. Fluoromethyl-pinacolyl-oxyphosphine oxide.” He gestured at Stern’s bag. “Brandt’s lab log is in there.” He brought out the cylinder he had used to blackmail the sub captain. “But I’m going to hang onto this one until we reach England, if you don’t mind. Maybe even longer. Think of it as insurance.”

“Dear boy,” Smith said, “there’s no need for histrionics. You’re the hero of the hour.”

“When are we going back to England?”

“Right now. Your brother will fly us in the Junkers. He flew you over from England four nights ago, though neither of you knew it.”

“I did?” David said. “I’ll be damned.”

“It was David who fixed the Lysander engine. Made the whole jaunt possible, I daresay.” Smith allowed himself a smile. “A credit to the Eighth Air Force, this lad. I hate to give him back. And he loves my JU-88A6.”

“That’s a fact,” David chimed in, but by now he had sensed the tension between his brother and the brigadier.

All McConnell could think of was the transatlantic call he had made to his mother three weeks before.

“I wasn’t counting on any refugees, Doctor,” Smith said tetchily. “I’m afraid you’ve caused a spot of bother there.”

McConnell looked at David again. Then he handed the cylinder to Stern and, before anyone could stop him, punched the brigadier in the belly with all his strength.

Smith doubled over, gasping for air.

Airman Bottomley leaped for McConnell, but he didn’t get past David. Seconds later he was hanging by his throat from the crook of the pilot’s elbow.

“Take it easy now, pardner,” David drawled.

Duff Smith straightened up with some difficulty. “It’s all right, Bottomley,” he croaked. “I suppose I deserved that one.”

“Damn right you did,” said McConnell. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here. All of us.”

Brigadier Smith waved his agreement.

McConnell saw Stern staring at him in astonishment. He slipped under Anna’s good arm and braced her for a walk. “Can you make it?” he asked quietly.

Her eyes were only half open, but she nodded.

As they moved along the jetty, David leaned over and said, “What did you punch that old coot for? He’s okay, once you get to know him.”

Mark hugged Anna to his side and shook his head. “Ask me in twenty years,” he said. “It’s a hell of a war story.”

EPILOGUE

“A hell of a story?” I said. “That’s not the end of it!” Rabbi Leibovitz looked at me a little strangely. Dawn was creeping around the edges of the drapes. We’d moved into the kitchen sometime during the night, where he told his tale over a pot of coffee. Later we’d come back to the study.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

“Well . . . everything. But first my Uncle David. I thought he was killed in the war, but according to you . . .”

“He was killed, Mark. Five months after Mac’s mission he was shot down over Germany. It happened to a lot of good boys. Too many, I’m afraid. They had a little time together, though. Brigadier Smith managed to keep David four extra days before returning him to the Eighth Air Force. He’d used Churchill’s note and some valuable SOE intelligence to get David’s superiors to go along with the deception. Anyway, Mac and David spent the four days following the mission in London. Mac remembered them as some of the best days of his life.”

I shook my head. “What about the others? Who got out alive? You left me hanging at the camp. Did the shoemaker and Rachel get to Rostock with Jan? Did they reach Sweden?”

“Miraculously enough, they did. They hid in the house of Avram’s old employee for three weeks. It took that long to arrange passage on a smuggler’s boat. It cost them all three diamonds, but they reached Sweden alive. They were interned there for the duration of the war.”

“What did Rachel do after the war?”

“She went to Palestine to find her daughter.”

“Palestine? I figured Hannah wound up in some British orphanage.”

“You underestimate Jonas Stern,” said Leibovitz. “With the diamonds Rachel and his father had given him, Stern arranged to have Hannah cared for by a Jewish family in London. He fought with the British in France, then with the Jewish Brigade later. He won a hatful of medals, then went back to Palestine to drive out the British and the Arabs. He took Hannah with him.”

“I’ll be damned. And Rachel found them?”

“With Avram’s help. The two of them traveled from Sweden to Palestine in the winter of 1945. Hannah was living with Jonas and his mother in Tel Aviv.”

“My God. Were Rachel and Stern lovers, then?”