Greg Iles - Black Cross

Rachel saw immediately that Sturm and his men approached sport with all the brutality they brought to their normal duties. Two players on the opposing team were already limping from injuries received at their hands.

“That’s Willi Gauss leading the team against Sturm,” Frau Hagan said as they moved into a press of ragged spectators. “He’s a technical sergeant — inferior to Sturm in rank. Gave me a piece of cardboard once to mend my shoe.”

Frau Hagan’s comment made Rachel think of the shoemaker. Scanning the crowd, she spied him by the block fence, a wiry dark-skinned man standing a head taller than the other prisoners. “Who runs the Jewish Men’s Block?” she asked in an offhand tone.

Frau Hagan gave her a guarded look. “After the last selection, the shoemaker has the lowest number. The survivors will probably elect him. There are only a handful left. He has been at this camp even longer than me.”

“You don’t like him.”

“He helps the SS.”

“By making shoes for them?”

“And boots. And slippers for them to send home to their slutty wives. Why are you so curious, Dutch girl?”

Rachel was spared having to answer by the unmistakable crack of bone echoing across the yard. On the field, one of Sturm’s men stood laughing and pointing over a prostrate figure. As the fallen man was carried off the field, Sergeant Gauss called out to a lone figure leaning against the headquarters building.

“Please, Sturmbannführer! My goalie’s out of action. Give us a hand!”

Rachel had not noticed Schörner beneath the overhang of the roof. The major waved away the sergeant’s entreaty, but more players joined in, pleading that they would have to stop the game unless someone made up the deficiency in numbers. Schörner finally stripped off his gray tunic and the bright Knight’s Cross that hung around his neck, then folded both and laid them carefully on an electrical junction box.

“Well,” Frau Hagan mused. “This might be interesting.”

“Why?”

“Schörner against Sturm. Ever since he got here last September, Schörner has been riding Sturm and his men about security. When he’s not drunk, that is. He can’t get them to care. We’re in the middle of Germany. They can’t see any danger.”

“ Is there any danger?”

Frau Hagan shrugged. “Schörner’s afraid of old ghosts. Russian ghosts, I expect.” She chuckled. “For him the danger might be out on that field.”

After conferring with Schörner, Sergeant Gauss took over as goalie and allowed the major to take a forward position. Within two minutes it became apparent that Schörner was no amateur. He stole the ball twice and moved it upfield alone, only to be brought to a sudden stop by the rough tactics of Sturm’s men, who were expert at “accidentally” overshooting the ball and smashing head-on into their opponents. To the delight of both teams, however, Schörner did not call a penalty, which he could have used his superior rank to enforce. Instead, he played all the harder.

“Kick it down their throats, Sturmbannführer!” Sergeant Gauss shouted gleefully from the goal.

Schörner succeeded in stealing the ball a third time. He moved across the parade ground with deceptive ease, sidestepping Sturm’s brown-uniformed men and keeping the ball dancing on the toe of his boot. He passed off once, only to find the ball coming right back at him. Obviously his team believed he represented their best chance of scoring.

He picked up speed as he neared the goal. Only one man — a brawny corporal — blocked his path, but several were racing up from behind. With only one eye, Schörner’s peripheral vision was seriously impaired. He counted himself lucky that the two men pursuing him — one of whom was Sergeant Sturm — were closing from his left side. The right side would just have to take care of itself.

He neatly bypassed the corporal, leaving him befuddled in the center of the field and drawing some laughter from the sidelines, but Sergeant Sturm and a thickset private angled in from his left. The goalie crouched and spread his arms wide in anticipation. Schörner drew back his foot and let fly, but at the last minute pulled the force behind his kick.

The ball rolled forward two meters and stopped.

He planted both feet, ducked, and threw his left shoulder backward, catching Sturm full force just above the groin. The explosion of air from the sergeant’s lungs silenced the field, so that when he flipped over the major’s back and hit the ground the thud was audible to all. The other pursuer stood dumbfounded while Schörner darted back to the ball, drove it past the goalie and into the ammunition crate with a bang.

A shout went up from Gauss’s team, though even they were stunned by the major’s willingness to give Sturm a dose of his own medicine. Grinning as though he had never felt better, Schörner walked over to Sturm, who lay gasping on the ground, and offered him a hand. Sturm did not so much bat the hand away as refuse it, but his rage was plain. Schörner turned, waved to Sergeant Gauss, then walked back over to the headquarters building and collected his clothes.

Frau Hagan was shaking her head. “Schörner will pay for that one day,” she said.

“But he’s a major,” Rachel pointed out. “Sturm is only a sergeant.”

“That doesn’t matter. Nearly every man here is loyal to Sturm. You see the brown uniforms. They’re all Death’s Head troops. Schörner’s from a different division, the Das Reich . They fought everybody from the French to the Russians. Sturm and his men never shot anything but unarmed prisoners in rear areas. Schörner despises them, and they hate his guts.”

“Maybe they’ll kill each other,” Rachel said, “and we can go home.”

When the bell rang for the midday ration, Rachel took Jan and Hannah with her to the soup pot, where a Russian “green” dispensed watery soup and a little bread. She also took Frau Hagan’s bowl, to save the Block Leader the trouble of the queue. She had already learned to position herself in line so that her family’s ration was dipped from the bottom of the pot, where the cabbage leaves had settled. Still, the food was not enough to keep Jan and Hannah healthy. Frau Hagan chastised her for it, but Rachel divided half her ration between the children.

When Jan and Hannah were asleep, Rachel followed the Block Leader back outside. She had just caught up with her when a shadow darted out from behind the Punishment Tree and blocked their way. Before Rachel even recognized the man, Frau Hagan spat at him.

“Back, worm!”

Ariel Weitz flinched before the Block Leader’s anger. “You’d better listen,” he warned. “Or you’ll be on the Tree.”

“State your business,” Frau Hagan growled, “then piss off.”

Weitz pointed at Rachel. “The major wants to see her.”

“Schörner?” Frau Hagan’s brows drew together. “What does Schörner want with this girl?”

“Why don’t you ask him, my fat Blockführer ?”

“She’ll be at his office in a moment.” Frau Hagan glowered at the informer. “Leave us, worm.”

The informer scowled, then hurried off.

Frau Hagan spat again. “Weitz is a tick growing fat on the Nazi wolf. One day I will squeeze him until he bursts with hot blood.”

“What can Major Schörner want with me?” Rachel asked. “Not Jan? Not my little boy!”

“No, no,” Frau Hagan said reassuringly. “Weitz would simply snatch the boy and take him to Brandt’s quarters. With Schörner it could be anything. He may want you to clean his quarters. He may want to ask you something about Holland. Then again . . . it could be you he wants.”

“Me?”

Frau Hagan gave her a knowing gaze. “The night after Himmler was here, women were brought into the camp. As a reward to Sturm and his men. That was the screaming you heard the night you became door guard. The screaming I refused to hear. Don’t look that way. There was nothing I could do for them. Anyway, the women were from Ravensbrück. The main women’s camp. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Schörner didn’t take part in it. He doesn’t mix with Sturm and his thugs. Considers himself a German gentleman. Still, Sturm’s little party may have excited him. He is a man, after all. Usually he buries his anger in a bottle. But who knows? Be careful, Dutch girl.”