Greg Iles - Black Cross

Sturm had made sure Grot had a clear field for his attack. Schörner was meeting with Colonel Beck at Peenemünde about the parachutes, and Brandt had driven down to Berlin again to meet with Reichsführer Himmler. As Sturm walked his favorite shepherd — an enormous male called Rudi — down to the vantage point he had chosen from which to observe the ambush, he saw Grot lounging in front of the SS enlisted barracks. He gave the corporal a smug grin and reflected on how good a choice he had made.

During their time in Einsatzkommando 8, clearing Jews from Latvia, Ludwig Grot had frequently complained of boredom. He also lamented the great waste of ammunition expended in the disposal of Jews. One day he discovered a way to simultaneously assuage his two pet peeves. He ordered several Jewish prisoners to stand in a line, each man pressing his chest to the back of the man in front of him. He then took bets on how many Jews he could kill with a single bullet. In eastern Poland he had won thirty marks by killing three fully grown males with a single shot from his Luger. Near Poznan he had killed five women this way, but the last in line had taken several hours to die, so she didn’t really count.

Sturm affectionately scratched Rudi’s coat behind the powerful neck. He almost wished Schörner could be around to see the show.

Rachel was crossing the Appellplatz with Hannah and Jan when a guttural German voice brought her up short.

“What was that you said, Jew?”

She stopped and looked up into the perpetually angry face of Corporal Ludwig Grot.

“What did you call me, Judenlaus ?” he barked.

Rachel noticed that the corporal was speaking very loudly, as if for the benefit of an audience. She clenched Jan and Hannah’s hands. “I said nothing, Herr Rottenführer. But if I offended, I apologize.”

“You did offend, you stinking slut.”

Rachel crumpled to the ground under the force of the first blow. She wasn’t sure what had happened. It felt like she had walked blindly into an iron lamppost. When Grot kicked her in the stomach she nearly blacked out, but she forced one string of words from her throat. “Run! Children, run to Frau Hagan!”

Jan caught little Hannah’s hand and began pulling her toward the inmate blocks.

Grot dragged Rachel to her feet and slapped her twice — very hard and very quickly — like a man for whom violence is an old habit. The right side of her face stung as if it had been scalded. The left side felt numb. An image of a silver Death’s Head ring hung before her eyes. For an instant she thought of Wolfgang Schörner, then in the next remembered he was eighty kilometers away in Peenemünde. There would be no rescue today. She closed her eyes and prayed that Frau Hagan would look after her children.

Grot balled his right fist and punched the side of her head, dropping her onto the snow, then kicked her savagely in the ribs with his hobnailed boot. Rachel heard something crack as her left side collapsed inward. Grot’s boot stopped in its path toward her head as a woman’s voice shouted at him in a foreign language.

He looked up.

Frau Hagan was striding across the yard with all the confidence she had displayed digging peat at Auschwitz or hauling bricks at Buna. When she was ten meters from the corporal she began berating him in German, waving her hands and shouting that Major Schörner had unexpectedly returned to the camp and wanted Grot in his office immediately.

Confronted by this disconcerting spectacle, Grot stood up straight. The kapo of the Jewish Women’s Block, though a prisoner, had an official position and she was screaming about Major Schörner. He turned and sought out Sergeant Sturm, who stood beneath a watchtower forty meters across the yard.

While Corporal Grot looked to Sturm for guidance, Frau Hagan covered the last few meters to him. Rachel gasped when she saw the gardening spade appear from beneath her gray shift.

Grot whirled just in time to see the flash of metal as Frau Hagan buried the spade up to the hilt in his neck. She jerked the spade back out, allowing a fountain of blood to spurt from Grot’s carotid artery. Both hands flew to his throat.

“Dosyç!” Frau Hagan bellowed. “Enough! To hell with you, SS!” The big Pole nodded at Grot, defiance in her eyes.

The SS man, his eyes bulging in dumb incomprehension, fell to the ground in a spreading puddle of blood.

Frau Hagan knelt over Rachel. “Are you all right, Dutch girl?”

Rachel could barely breathe, much less speak. Tears of gratitude stung her cheeks. She heard cries of rage and confusion reverberating through the camp. No one could quite believe what had happened.

“Run,” she croaked. “Get away . . . while you can.”

A savage barking chilled Rachel’s blood. But instead of cowering before the fearsome noise, Frau Hagan rose into a crouch, turned, and braced herself for an attack. Rachel saw her face contort into a mask of fury — an anger that had been building for years, perhaps for a lifetime.

Rudi, Sturm’s favorite shepherd, was charging across the yard with his teeth bared. He tore over the frozen ground faster than a racing hound and leaped at Frau Hagan while he was still four meters away.

The Block Leader shouted something in Polish and held up her left forearm. Rudi’s jaws snapped shut on unprotected flesh as he landed, flailing his head from side to side and fighting to push the woman off her feet.

With all the power in her thick body Frau Hagan slashed upward and plunged the spade into the animal’s throat. An explosive squeal echoed across the snow. The dog kept thrashing its head, teeth ripping flesh, but its motions seemed mechanical, confused. Frau Hagan yanked out the spade and struck lower, ripping open its belly from groin to breastbone.

Rudi let go. Frau Hagan threw herself upon the beast like a madwoman, mauling it with maniacal strength. Steam rose from the dog’s open belly.

Rachel tensed when she heard the first shot, but she saw no immediate effect. The second bullet thudded into flesh, but Frau Hagan continued to slash away. Rachel realized then that an excited guard had shot the dog — either by mistake or to put it out of its misery.

Frau Hagan looked back over her shoulder. “ Get up !” she shouted. “ Run! You’ll be shot !”

Rachel struggled to move but her limbs would not obey. “No!” she yelled back. “Come with me!”

Another rifle bullet slammed into the dog. One of the tower-gunners fired a short burst to take his range. Frau Hagan looked at Rachel one last time, her eyes shining with a strange elation, then gathered up her shift and dashed toward the base of the guard tower where Sergeant Sturm stood watching in disbelief.

The enraged Pole was running at full speed with the spade held high when the tower gunner cut her down. The bullets blew her over onto her back, where she lay without moving.

Totenhausen lay perfectly silent. From the ground Rachel searched the faces of the women prisoners that had formed a loose perimeter around her. For the first time since her arrival, she sensed a real potential for violence among them. Frau Hagan was known to them all. Dozens in the crowd owed her favors, some owed her their lives. She was a symbol of survival in the face of the worst the Nazis could do. For some seconds Rachel was seized by the feeling that the women might actually follow Frau Hagan’s example and charge the guards.

She heard an SS man shout an order to return to barracks. No one moved. Across the yard, in the shadow of the hospital, Rachel spied Anna Kaas. The blond nurse was standing beside the concrete steps, looking directly at her. In her white uniform she looked strangely like an angel. When she had caught Rachel’s eye, Anna raised both hands sharply toward the sky. Rachel stared back. The nurse signaled again, more violently.