Greg Iles - Black Cross

“Did you see that!” he cried, looking to his right.

No one was there. Only the empty stone bridge, and the lane leading back into the mossy tunnel of the Dark Mile. The Laird of Achnacarry had vanished. As crazy as he felt doing it, McConnell reached into his pocket to make sure the swatch of tartan was still there, to make sure he hadn’t hallucinated the whole damned thing.

He hadn’t. The cloth felt reassuringly coarse against his fingers. He started back toward the castle, thinking of what Lochiel had told him. Pick your battles . He hadn’t picked this one. Duff Smith had picked it for him. It was odd. In war you ended up taking orders from men like Smith, pragmatic generals who assessed casualty projections with all the detachment of actuaries at Lloyd’s. Why couldn’t it be a man like Sir Donald Cameron who sent you in harm’s way? A man of flesh and blood and compassion. A leader who didn’t manipulate, but inspired?

McConnell slung his book bag over his shoulder and broke into a run, feeling his temples throb with frustration. He’d had it up to the neck with training. It was time to get on with it.

While McConnell ate alone in the solitary hut behind the castle, Jonas Stern sat in Colonel Vaughan’s office, still half expecting to be raked over the coals by the colonel for stealing the bicycle. It was not Charles Vaughan who appeared at the door, however, but Brigadier Smith. The SOE chief wore a heavy raincoat and his stalker’s cap, but tonight he carried no map case. He sat down heavily in Vaughan’s chair, pulled a bottle of single-malt whiskey and two glasses from a file cabinet, and poured two fingers into each glass.

“Drink that,” he ordered Stern.

Stern sat motionless. “What’s wrong? You haven’t scrubbed the mission?”

“Scrubbed it? I should say not. McShane and his men are flying toward Germany as I speak.”

“What is it then?”

Smith’s voice carried a note Stern had never heard from him before. Almost . . . compassion. “I drove over from the takeoff point just to see you,” he said. “We’ve had some news out of Germany. It may concern you.”

“How?”

The brigadier pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his inside coat pocket. “Three days ago, SOE scraped a Pole off a Baltic ice floe. He’d worked wonders for us, but he was blown. He managed to bring out one last haul. Among his papers were several lists of names. People who’d died at certain camps. One of those camps was Totenhausen.”

Stern nodded slowly. “And?”

Smith handed the sheet across the desk. Scanning it quickly, Stern saw about fifty names, some obviously Jewish, others not. There were numbers beside each name. He found it near the bottom of the page, a name that stood out like letters of fire among the others: Avram Stern (87052) .

Stern cleared his throat. “How old is this list?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“We don’t know. Could be months, could be as recent as a week. Is it your father, lad?”

“How the hell do I know?” Stern exploded. “There could be a hundred Avram Sterns inside concentration camps!”

“In the Rostock area?” Smith asked softly.

Stern raised his right hand, pleading for silence. “I told him,” he said, staring at the floor. “I begged him. But he wouldn’t leave. I was fourteen and I could see it. But he’d fought for the Kaiser in the Great War. Said Hitler would never betray the veterans. What shit. What shit !” He stood up and moved to leave.

“Hold on a minute,” Smith said. “I know this is a hard blow. I debated whether or not to show you that list. But it’s a man’s right to know. You may not come back from Germany yourself.”

Stern nodded dully.

“You’re going in tomorrow night. Almost the dark of the moon.” Smith seemed hesitant to proceed. “I’ve got to say this. You know you can’t bring anyone out with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Jews,” Smith said firmly. “No one is coming out of Germany but you and McConnell. If you do bring anyone out, the sub won’t take them aboard. Clear? No one can ever know about this mission, Stern. Ever . Especially the Americans.”

“To hell with the Americans. How can I bring anyone out if I’m not going inside the camp until after the attack?”

“That’s exactly my point. See that you don’t.”

Smith examined his fingernails. “Is the good doctor still trying to talk you out of going?”

“What? Oh. No. He talks. Doesn’t mean anything. Talking never adds up to anything.”

“So you’re ready, then? Even if McConnell loses his nerve, balks, whatever. You’ll carry it through?”

Stern looked up in exasperation, his burning black eyes answer enough.

“And the prisoners?”

“I know what has to be done.”

“There’s a good lad.” Smith gave a satisfied grunt, then poured himself another whiskey and took a measured sip. “There’s one last bit of business we have to discuss. It’s rough, but necessary. And you’re the man for it, I can see.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’ve been in hostile territory before. You know how it works. There can be no question of either of you being captured alive. Especially McConnell, with all he knows. It simply wouldn’t do.”

Stern reached into his shirt and brought out a small round medal with the Star of David engraved on it. Smith had never noticed the chain before. Stern worked the dull silver between his fingers, then opened his hand. In his palm lay an oblong black pill.

“I’ve carried it ever since North Africa,” he said.

The brigadier raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Good show. Usually best for everyone, yourself included. However, I doubt whether Dr. McConnell shares your philosophy of preparedness. In fact . . . I doubt the man would take cyanide even if he had it.”

“He wouldn’t,” agreed Stern.

Duff Smith sat without speaking for nearly a minute. Finally, he said, “You understand?”

Stern’s black eyes never blinked. “If that’s the way it has to be,” he said in a toneless voice. “ Zol zayn azoy . So be it.”

When Stern had gone, Brigadier Smith folded his list of names and put it back into his pocket. Then he drank the whiskey Stern had left on the desk. He hadn’t really wanted to lie, but he had no alternative. In all his experience, he had never ordered a mission quite like this one. War always required blood to achieve victory, but never had he seen the equation so starkly laid out. BLACK CROSS did not require the sacrifice of trained soldiers at the hands of the enemy, but the murder of innocent prisoners by one of their own people. Under the cold light of a planning table, it was a simple calculus of casualties versus potential gain — enormous gain. But Smith had enough experience in the field to know that for the man on the ground, who would himself have to take those innocent lives, cold reason might not be enough. In that situation a man needed conviction that burned like lye in his belly.

He had just given Jonas Stern that conviction. SOE really had scraped a Pole off the Baltic coast three days ago. And the Pole had been carrying a list of dead Jews. But there was no Avram Stern among the names. Smith had no idea whether Avram Stern was alive or dead, and he didn’t much care. He’d gotten the name from Major Dickson in London, who had a file on Jonas Stern an inch thick, requisitioned from the military police in Palestine. The funny thing, Smith reflected, was that his lie about Stern’s father dying in Totenhausen was probably as close as anyone would ever come to knowing his true fate. And if that lie gave the son the fire he needed to carry out BLACK CROSS, then the old Jew would not have died in vain.