Greg Iles - Black Cross

“You’re late, Anna,” said the giant. “We already took down the antenna.”

“Then put it back up,” she said. “We almost didn’t get here at all.”

The giant grinned, then said something to his comrade in Polish. The thin man opened up the suitcase and pulled out a coil of wire. The giant tied one end to his belt and scrambled up the nearest fir tree.

The woman called Anna took a small notebook from her coat and knelt on the ground beside the suitcase. The simplicity of the concept fascinated her. Transmitter, receiver, battery, antenna — all in one battered leather suitcase. This wireless set had been hand-built by Polish partisans, but it worked almost as well as the factory-made German set where she worked. She patted the young man on the arm while he dialed in a frequency.

“Do you think we’re too late, Miklos?” she asked.

He looked up at her with hollow eyes and smiled. “My brother likes to tease you, Anna. London is always waiting.” He took a codebook from his pocket, opened it, then looked up toward the dark branches. “Ready, Stan?”

“Fire away!” called the giant. “Just keep it short.”

Miklos rubbed his hands together for warmth, then did a musical dexterity exercise to limber his fingers. The blond woman opened her notebook to a marked page and handed it to him.

“This is it?” Miklos asked, scanning the nearly blank sheet. “Can it be worth all this trouble?”

Anna shrugged. “That’s what they asked for.”

Sixty miles from London, on the site of a former Roman encampment, stood a horrid Victorian pile known as Bletchley Park. Since the beginning of the war the mansion had served as the nerve center of Britain’s covert battle against the Nazis. Radio aerials sheltered in the trees gathered hurried transmissions from across Occupied Europe, then routed them to former ships’ radio operators on duty inside the mansion, who finally passed the decoded signals to the synod of dons and scholars responsible for piecing together a picture of what was happening in the darkness that lay across the Continent.

Tonight Brigadier Duff Smith had driven his Bentley at alarming speeds to reach Bletchley. He could have phoned, but he wanted to be there when — or if — the message he awaited came in. Smith had stood at the shoulder of a young rating from Newcastle for an hour, watching a silent radio receiver until nervous tension got the better of him. He was about to give up and drive back to London when a staccato of Morse dots and dashes filled the tiny room.

“That’s him, sir,” said the rating with controlled excitement. “PLATO. I don’t even need to hear his identifying group. I know his fist like Ellington’s piano.”

Brigadier Smith watched the young man copy down the groups as they came through. They came in three short sets. When the radio fell silent, the rating looked up with a puzzled expression.

“That’s it, sir?”

“I won’t know until you decode it. How long were they on the air, Clapham?”

“I’d say about fifty-five seconds, sir. Plays that Morse key like a musician, PLATO does. A bloody artist.”

Smith looked at his watch. “I make it fifty-eight seconds. Good show. The Poles are the best at this game, bar none. Decode that lot right now.”

“Right, sir.”

One minute later, the rating tore off a sheet of notepaper and handed it to the SOE chief. Smith read what he had written:

Wrapped steel winch cable, due to copper shortage.

Diameter 1.7 cm. Ten pylons. 609 meters.

Slope 29 degrees. 6 wires. 3 live, 3 dead.

Brigadier Smith laid the notepaper on a table and pulled a different sheet from his pocket. He consulted some figures that had been scrawled there earlier in the week by a brilliant British engineer. The rating saw the brigadier’s hand stiffen, then crumple the sheet of paper in his hand.

“By God, it could work,” Smith said softly. “That woman is gold in the bank. It could work .” He carefully placed both pieces of paper in the inside pocket of his jacket, then took his cap from the table. “Good work, Clapham.”

Smith laid a hand on the rating’s shoulder and said, “From now on, all transmissions from source PLATO will be passed under the name SCARLETT. SCARLETT with two ‘T’s.”

“As in Gone With the Wind , sir?”

“Right.”

“Noted.” The young rating grinned. “Nice to know the Jerries are short of a few things too, eh?”

Duff Smith paused at the door and looked back thoughtfully. “They’ll never know what that missing copper cost them, Clapham.”

8

It was late afternoon in London when Brigadier Smith’s silver Bentley rolled onto the A-40 and headed for Oxford. Smith was driving himself today, making use of an ingenious shift mechanism designed for him by SOE engineers. Jonas Stern sat beside him, studying a topographic map of Mecklenburg, the northernmost province of Germany.

“I remember it all,” he said excitedly. “Every road, every brook. Brigadier, the target has to be Totenhausen.”

“Be patient, lad.”

“I don’t see the concentration camp marked here.”

“I told you, Totenhausen isn’t like any camp you’ve ever heard of. It’s strictly a laboratory and testing facility. Compared to a place like Buchenwald, it’s minuscule. The SS let the trees grow right up to the electric fence. You need a larger scale map. Himmler is serious about hiding that camp.”

Brigadier Smith had not worn his uniform today. He looked professorial in a tweed jacket and stalker’s cap. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind about this meeting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t want you to say anything unless I ask you to.”

“Why not?”

Smith looked away from the road long enough to let Stern know he meant what he was about to say. “Dr. McConnell is not like most men. He’s too smart to be manipulated — by you, anyway — and he’s too principled to be shamed or bribed into doing anything he doesn’t believe in. He’s also too bloody pigheaded to listen to reason.”

Stern gazed out of the car window. “What kind of man calls himself a pacifist in 1944? Is he a religious fanatic?”

“Not at all.”

“A philosopher? Head in the clouds?”

“In the sand, more like. He’s a different sort of chap. Brilliant, but down to earth. Probably a genius. The pacifism comes from his father. He was a doctor too. Gassed in the Great War, one of the worst cases. Badly scarred, blinded. That’s why the son chose the field he did. Wanted to prevent that kind of thing from ever happening again. Didn’t muck about, either. His uncle owned a dye factory in Atlanta, Georgia. When McConnell was sixteen, he used the chemicals in that plant to brew his own mustard gas. Phosgene too. Tested it on rats he trapped in the basement. Building bloody gas masks at sixteen.”

“He sounds like a dangerous sort of pacifist.”

“Oh, he could be, if he chose. He’s a riddle. He was a Rhodes scholar in 1930. Took a First at University College. Went back to America for medical school. Graduated top of his class there, then decided to go into general practice. Master’s degree in chemical engineering. Holds five or six patents in the U.S. for various industrial compounds.”

“He’s rich?”

“He didn’t grow up rich, if that’s what you mean. I’m sure he’s comfortable enough now. My point is this. He may say things that seem truly outlandish to you, or to anyone who really understands war. But don’t lose your temper, no matter what. And don’t mention his father. In fact, don’t say anything at all.”

Stern tossed the map of northern Germany onto the floor of the Bentley. “Why did you bring me along, then?”