Greg Iles - Black Cross

“Mein Gott,” Anna whispered.

“Why didn’t you tell me this back at Achnacarry?” asked McConnell. “I asked you enough times.”

“I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have come. Smith was not lying about one thing, Doctor, time is critical. There was no time to find someone else.”

“Couldn’t you at least have given me the choice?”

“You have a choice. Are you going to help me?”

McConnell was tempted to refuse merely out of anger at being tricked so completely. But even underneath his anger, he knew that what Smith wanted them to do was wrong.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to help you kill innocent prisoners.”

Stern turned up his palms. “You see? We were right not to tell you.”

“Christ, what did you gain by lying?”

“You’re here, aren’t you? Look, all you have to do is assist me in the final phase. Go into the factory and tell me what to take pictures of. Help me get the samples. Smith thought you’d see the necessity after thinking it through.”

“Well, I don’t see it! I knew something like this couldn’t be done without loss of life. I prepared myself for that. But this . . . Jesus, Stern, you’re talking about murdering hundreds of innocent people! I thought we understood each other. Don’t you think you owed me a little honesty?”

“ Owed you?” Stern’s face reddened. “I only met you two weeks ago! I’ll tell you who I owe, Doctor. The Jews waiting to be murdered in fifty death camps across Germany and Poland. I owe the soldiers who are going to risk their lives to liberate Europe and free those Jews. It may not be their top priority, but they’ll get to it sooner or later. As for you, you can sit here and wait for the Second Coming or whatever you believe will finally stop Hitler. I’m going up that hill.”

“Is that where the gas is?”

“Yes.”

“How are you going to get it into the camp?”

“Easily. There are ten electrical pylons connecting the power station on top of a nearby hill to the prison camp at the bottom. Last night, Sergeant McShane and his men hung eight cylinders of British nerve gas from a power line at the top pylon. My mission is to climb that pylon, release the cylinders, and send them down into Totenhausen.”

“So that’s it,” Anna said, staring into one of the candle flames. “London had me out at all hours of the night sketching poles and wires and transformer boxes. All the electrical junctions at the camp. I had no idea why until now. I assumed they were planning to defeat the electrical fence before a general assault.”

She sat down opposite McConnell and looked up at Stern. “Is that really the only way? To kill everyone ?”

“What are a few hundred lives sacrificed if it saves tens of thousands later?” Stern said.

Anna’s eyes didn’t waver. “You say that very easily, Herr Stern. There are women and children in that camp.”

“Jews?”

“There are many Jews there, yes. Others too. You don’t like Jews?”

“I am a Jew.”

She blinked in disbelief. “My God. You are a Jew and you have the nerve to come here? You must be mad.”

“No. But I am ready to die for my people. If other Jews must die also, so be it.”

“Is that your choice to make?” McConnell asked.

“Those prisoners were doomed long before we got here, Doctor. This way at least they’ll die for a reason.”

“Count me out,” McConnell said.

“I never counted you in.” Stern went back to the window and watched through a crack in the curtains. “I told Smith he was a fool to think you would help me. It doesn’t matter, though. I can make the attack without you.”

McConnell wasn’t listening. He was thinking. “You say those cylinders on the hill have British nerve gas in them?”

“That’s right.”

“What kind of nerve gas?”

Stern shrugged. “I don’t know. Nerve gas.”

“Have you seen it work?”

“Seen it? Of course not. It’s invisible, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes. Do you know where it came from?”

“What is your point, Doctor?”

McConnell didn’t answer. His silence obviously infuriated Stern, who glared angrily from the window. Anna looked from one man to the other, stunned by the hostility displayed between them.

Stern suddenly turned back to the window curtains, as if he had heard something. “I see a bus!” he said, picking up his Schmeisser. “A gray bus full of men. They’re driving from the village toward us. Who are they?”

“The factory technicians,” Anna said. “They’re quartered in Dornow. The bus takes them back and forth to work every day.”

When McConnell began to laugh, Anna and Stern stared at each other like funeral goers who have stumbled into the wrong parade. The laugh began as a few short barks, then settled into the dry chuckle of a man who realizes that he is the butt of a joke of cosmic proportions.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stern asked. “What are you laughing at?”

“You,” said McConnell. “Us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stern, we’re both so goddamn stupid it’s pathetic. What did I tell you back at Achnacarry? That this mission as explained to me didn’t make sense. But since you knew Smith was lying to me, it didn’t bother you too much that I couldn’t make sense of it. But don’t you see? The mission as told to you doesn’t make any sense either.”

“Explain, damn you!”

“Are you blind? If the British really have developed their own nerve gas, where is the logic in wiping out the people in this camp?”

Stern tried to recall his first conversation with Brigadier Smith, that night in the Bentley. “The British only have a limited amount of gas,” he said slowly. “One-point six tons, something like that. The Nazis have thousands of tons stockpiled around Germany. Smith said the Allies could never catch up before the invasion, that their only chance was to bluff the Nazis into believing they not only have their own nerve gas, but also the will to use it. Plus the sample, remember? The Soman sample.”

McConnell watched him like a teacher willing a student toward an answer. “ Think , Stern. They got a sample of Sarin out without our help, remember? They don’t need us for that. They’ve got Anna here. No, the point of this mission is killing the people . To kill everyone inside that camp and leave the machinery intact. That is the plan, right?”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t see it because I had accepted the idea that we were coming to disable the plant. But assuming Smith told you truth — at least about the objective — what does that tell us? If you wipe out this camp with nerve gas, you will have committed the first offensive chemical weapons strike of the Second World War. The risks are incalculable. And if I know one thing about Duff Smith, he’s a pragmatic bastard. The same for Churchill. Neither would take such a risk unless they had no choice.”

“They don’t have a choice,” Stern told him. “In four days Heinrich Himmler is going to demonstrate Soman to the Führer, in the hope of convincing him to use nerve gas against the Allied invasion troops. Hitler believes the Allies have their own nerve gases. Himmler doesn’t, and for once he is close to being right. Churchill and Smith believe this attack — this bluff — is the only chance to convince Himmler he’s wrong, and embarrass him into calling off his demonstration.”

McConnell remained unconvinced. “Even if all that is true,” he said, “you’re missing the point. If the British possess even one liter of their own nerve gas, all Churchill would have to do is get one vial of it into the right hands in Germany. Even leaking the written formula would be enough. By doing that, they would show Hitler they have strategic parity, but without risking massive retaliation. Because the Nazis would have no way of knowing whether the British had only one vial or ten thousand tons!”