Greg Iles - Black Cross

When the last prisoner had been beaten through the door, it was levered shut and the wheel cranked into its closed position. Major Schörner signaled to a man who stood by the corner of the E-Block. This man — who wore a striped prison shirt — flipped a switch, causing the double-paned porthole observation windows set in the low walls to come alight.

Acid flooded the shoemaker’s stomach. The man who had thrown the light switch was named Ariel Weitz, and he was a Jew. The wiry little homosexual had worked as a male nurse in Hamburg before the war, and after being sent to Totenhausen, had wheedled his way into the job of Brandt’s assistant. His behavior in this job quickly made him the most hated man in camp. Were it not for the terror of reprisals, Weitz would have had his throat cut long ago. The shoemaker watched him hover at the corner of the E-Block, eagerly awaiting his next order.

Brandt led Himmler to the side of the E-Block, with Major Schörner following at a discreet distance. They stopped beside an odd machine that stood man-high on a pallet in the snow. The shoemaker had never seen this machine before, but it looked like a sophisticated pump of some kind. Brandt removed something from his pocket and held it up for Himmler’s scrutiny. No bigger than a rifle cartridge, it flashed in the light. Glass , the shoemaker thought. Himmler nodded and smiled at Brandt, seeming to express good-natured skepticism. Then Brandt turned to the machine and inserted the piece of glass into a compartment in its face. At that moment the shoemaker noticed a small-gauge rubber hose connecting the machine to a fitting on the side of the E-Block.

Major Schörner assisted the Reichsführer onto a stool beside one of the E-Block’s observation portholes. He turned back to Brandt, who moved his left hand to a switch on his machine, then raised his right and said:

“I begin the action . . . now.”

There was a quick, low-pitched hum from the machine, then silence. Faint screams emanated from the soundproofed E-Block. The shoemaker saw Himmler jerk backward and nearly fall off the stool, then right himself.

Ten seconds later the screaming stopped.

Himmler got up from the stool and backed away from the window. He wobbled on his feet, but when Major Schörner rushed to steady him he jerked away as if he had been burned. Very slowly, he seemed to come back to himself.

“ Danke , Sturmbannführer,” he said. “Herr Doktor?”

As Brandt scampered across the snow to Himmler’s side, the shoemaker edged as far as he dared along the side of the truck.

“Yes, Reichsführer?” said Brandt.

“You have surpassed yourself. Are you positive those men were killed by the gas in that phial you showed me? Nothing else?”

“Absolutely, Reichsführer. Soman Four. The aerosol form is particularly fast-acting.”

“Remarkable. I saw nothing in that room but dying men.”

“That is what you ordered, Reichsführer.”

“Brandt, you are a genius. You will be lionized for a thousand years. You and von Braun.”

Klaus Brandt snapped his arm skyward. “ Heil Hitler !”

“Will this gas kill as efficiently in the open air?”

“It will work exactly as you have seen tonight.”

“Astounding. Will any further testing be required?”

“Not on the gas. However, beyond aerosols vecteurs , we are working on hand-held gas grenades and several other delivery systems. Our problem is protective equipment, Reichsführer. Weeks ago I was promised new lightweight impermeable suits from Raubhammer Proving Ground, but they have yet to arrive. Before we can deploy Soman on the battlefield, we must be sure that our own troops are safe.”

“You shall have your suits, Herr Doktor. After what I have seen tonight, I intend to schedule a full-scale demonstration of Soman for the Führer. Let us say in . . . a fortnight.” Himmler gave Brandt a reptilian smile. “The test will take place at Raubhammer Proving Ground. If those swine do not have their suits ready, I shall place them naked in the area to be saturated by Soman!”

Brandt laughed obligingly. “Reichsführer, if you can assure me a steady flow of test subjects, the perfection of ancillary delivery systems would be hastened. I’ve recently had trouble replenishing my stocks. I need healthy males now, and Speer is taking them all for the munitions factories.”

“You will have your specimens, Herr Doktor. I’m afraid that even in 1944, Jews are something we still have a surplus of.”

Himmler raised an arm and took in Sergeant Sturm’s assembled SS troops. “ Kameraden !” he shouted, his breath steaming in the cold. “I know that your work here is difficult. Yes! It takes a strong constitution to witness what I have just seen and yet remain good and decent men. You men are our finest flower, the seeds of the Reich’s future. You alone have the strength to do what must be done. That is why we will win this war. The Englishman — and, yes, the American too — merely does his best in all contests. The German does what is necessary! Kameraden, Sieg heil! Heil Hitler !”

During the answering salvo of Sieg heils , the shoemaker lay prone in the narrow space between the truck and the hospital wall with the snow soaking through his burlap clothes. He saw Brandt escort Himmler back to the waiting vehicles and join him in his field car. As they sped away, joined soon after by the troop truck, Major Schörner signaled to two SS men standing behind the E-Block. Within seconds, scalding jets of high-pressure steam and detergent chemicals blasted into the chamber to flush the corpses, walls, ceiling, and floor clean of nerve gas. The remaining mixture of air and toxic liquid was sucked out by powerful vacuum pumps. Finally, two small steel vents were opened in the roof, and scorching dry air treated with decontaminants removed all traces of Soman from the chamber.

Major Schörner looked around expectantly. Ariel Weitz scurried up to him like an obedient terrier.

“The usual, Weitz.”

“ Jawohl , Sturmbannführer!”

Schörner seemed entranced by the sight of the little Jew hurrying down the steps that no other man would tread without a stutter in his heartbeat. When Weitz disappeared, the major hastened back toward the front of the camp.

The alley was empty.

The shoemaker listened to the fading engines. Impelled by morbid curiosity, he darted across the alley to the far side of the E-Block, crouched in the snow, and pressed his face to an observation porthole.

The sterility of the scene stunned him. There was no blood or feces, not even a speck of dirt. The steam had taken care of that. But the position of the dead revealed the madness of what had gone before. The twenty-eight Jewish men who died tonight had been packed inside the E-Block like tinned herrings. Most had died standing up. Their corpses were tangled in a general riot of limbs, their dead skin blistered pink by the high-pressure steam, their open eyes glazed and protruding horribly. One man’s head was jammed against the window from which Himmler had watched.

The shoemaker almost screamed when the corpses near the door began to move. Then he saw Ariel Weitz pushing his way in among the dead like a grave robber. The man was not even wearing a gas mask! Perhaps his guilty conscience had spawned a death wish. Weitz turned up his nose and sniffed the air like a Hausfrau checking her bathroom. Apparently satisfied, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of precision pliers. Then he leaned over one of the fallen corpses. The shoemaker saw the face clearly, its pink mouth frozen in a rictus of pain and horror. It was the young Dutch lawyer, Jansen.

Weitz pulled a small torch from his back pocket and shined it into the oral cavity. His grisly effort was rewarded by the glint of gold. Carefully, he inserted the pliers into the corpse’s mouth, fitted the tongs around the tooth and yanked it free of the bone. Weitz brushed away skin that had sloughed onto his hand, then pocketed his prize and put the pliers back into the lawyer’s mouth.