Greg Iles - Black Cross

“Games.”

“What’s that?” Churchill asked, cocking his chin and puffing on the cigar. “Stern, isn’t it?”

“I said games . That’s what they play up there.”

McConnell had no doubt Brigadier Smith was on the verge of knifing Stern in the kidneys.

“Mr. Stern,” said Churchill, “they play games at Achnacarry because war is a game. It is a game you play with a smile. If you can’t smile, you grin. And if you can’t grin, you get out of the way until you can!”

He set his cigar in the ashtray and leaned across the desk, his hands splayed on its polished surface. “I asked to see you men for two reasons. Because you are civilians, and because you are not British subjects. You are undertaking a mission of the most hazardous nature. I want to impress upon you the supreme importance of this mission. This mission, gentlemen, must not fail .”

He hiked both trouser legs and sat behind the desk. “I wanted to speak especially to you, Doctor McConnell. I understand you’re a follower of Mr. Gandhi?”

McConnell found himself surprisingly willing to answer. “To a degree, yes.”

“I hope not to the degree that some of your scientific colleagues are. Do you know Professor Bohr?”

“Niels Bohr? The Danish physicist?”

“That’s the man.”

“I know of him.”

“That utopist has the most muddleheaded perspective on war I’ve ever heard. He’s like a bloody child. He sat in front of me and rambled for three quarters of an hour and I still had no idea what he was talking about. I think it all boiled down to resisting violence with humility. At least Gandhi says it in one tenth the time.”

Churchill’s eyes narrowed with incisive curiosity. “What about you, Doctor? Do you believe humility is the best weapon to use against Herr Hitler’s armies?”

McConnell did not answer immediately. The mention of Niels Bohr had distracted him. The renowned physicist was supposed to be in Sweden. How had he “sat in front of” Winston Churchill? This strange revelation dovetailed with the whispered rumors he had heard at Oxford about accelerated research into atomic physics.

“Doctor?” Churchill prompted.

“I think events have gone beyond that now, Mr. Prime Minister. But I also think Hitler could have been stopped with little or no violence years ago.”

“I quite agree. But we live in the present.” His voice rose a semitone. “Duff tells me your father won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Great War. At the St. Mihiel salient.”

“That’s right,” said McConnell, wondering why Churchill’s knowledge of his past should take him by surprise. “Also the Silver Star. Of course, he threw them both into the Potomac River in 1932.”

Churchill tucked his chin into his chest and gave McConnell a froglike stare. “Why the devil did he do that?”

McConnell wasn’t sure the prime minister would like the answer, but he told him. “Remember the Bonus Army Riot in Washington? During the Depression?”

“Veteran’s pensions or something?” rumbled Churchill.

“Exactly. Some men from my father’s old unit had gone up with the vets who were trying to get relief from the government. There were about twenty-five thousand of them, with their families. They called and asked my dad if he would go up and try to give them some medical help. He went. The D.C. police were feeding the vets and their families, but President Hoover had no sympathy. After three months of peaceful demonstration, he called in the army. The army attacked the unarmed crowds with tear gas, bayonets, cavalry, and tanks. Several vets were shot, some infants gassed to death.” McConnell paused. “My father was in that crowd.”

Churchill watched with unblinking eyes. “Do I sense some deeper moral to this story?”

“A footnote. I have since learned the names of some of the officers who attacked that crowd. The troops were led by a man named Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur disobeyed Hoover and went far beyond his original orders. MacArthur’s aide was a Major Dwight Eisenhower. The saber-wielding cavalry were led by Captain George Patton. So, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you understand why my devotion to the military is less than blind.”

“I do indeed. Politics can be a difficult business, Doctor. I must sadly admit that I have made similar mistakes. But none of that affects the current situation. I don’t have to explain to a man of your gifts the threat facing Christian civilization.”

McConnell had no doubt that Stern had noted the omission of Jews from that formulation.

“For your own reasons, whatever they are, you have agreed to go on this mission. For that I thank you. I am not exaggerating when I say that the liberation of Europe may hang upon it.”

Churchill’s eyes played over McConnell’s face for some moments. Then he took a sheet of notepaper from his desk and lifted a pen from its well. “There is bound to be loss of life during this mission,” he said, writing quickly. “I want you to know that final responsibility rests with me.”

Churchill tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to McConnell, who read it with astonishment.

On my head be these deaths.

W

“I’m half-American myself, you know,” said Churchill. “And I reckon you’re at least half-English, Doctor.”

“What?” McConnell mumbled, still looking at the remarkable note. “What do you mean?”

Churchill clamped his teeth down on his cigar and grinned. “Any man who has survived both Oxford University and Achnacarry Castle has earned his citizenship!”

McConnell heard Brigadier Smith’s feet shifting impatiently on the floor behind him. Then Stern’s German-accented voice cut the air of the study.

“What about my people?” he asked in an accusatory tone. “Is there a place for Jews in your Anglo-American paradise?”

“Hold your tongue!” bellowed Brigadier Smith.

“Let him speak, Duff,” Churchill said. “He has a right to be angry.”

Stern took a step forward. The SD uniform and German accent gave his words a chilling intensity. “I want to know if you will really support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine after the war.”

Churchill punctuated his words with his cigar, using it like a pointer. “I most certainly will, Mr. Stern. But the key phrase in your question was ‘ after the war.’ There’s a damned great lot of fighting to be done yet.”

“And I’m ready to do it,” Stern said.

“Are you? Well then. When you get back from this mission, I shall personally see to it that you get a commission in the Jewish Brigade.” He smiled. “You’ll need a different uniform, of course. They wouldn’t like that swastika.”

“There is no Jewish Brigade! It’s been buried in paperwork for years.”

“Not any longer,” said Churchill. “I’ve unburied it. The Jewish Brigade will fight in the liberation. So, are you interested?”

Stern actually snapped to attention.

Churchill beamed. “This is my sort of fellow, Duff. You’ve chosen well, I think.”

“He’ll do,” Smith said grudgingly. “But I’m afraid we really must go. The schedule, you know.”

“H-Hour,” Churchill said with relish. “And right into Germany! What I wouldn’t give to go with you.” He stood up and vigorously shook both McConnell’s and Stern’s hands.

McConnell thought of something else he wanted to ask, but by then the brigadier had whisked them out of the room and along the dim corridor.

The driver of the Humber met them at the outside door.

“Follow him,” Smith said. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

As they passed outside, McConnell looked back. They were exiting from a different door, and above it he saw the words: Pro Patria Omnia . Now he realized what Duff Smith had said to his pilot over Loch Lochy. He had not said to head for “checkers” but Chequers , which was the country residence of the British prime minister. As he followed Stern back to the Lysander, McConnell wondered if Adolf Hitler knew what words were engraved above the door of that house, and what they meant.