Greg Iles - Black Cross

Rachel shivered in the chair.

“You are cold?” Schörner asked, his voice full of concern. “Here, Liebling , come and sit beside me.”

Rachel hesitated, then rose and walked to the couch like a woman going to the guillotine.

32

Jonas Stern stood in the shadow of a wooden barracks building and listened. At first he heard only the wind, blowing down the Recknitz River. Anna Kaas was right. It was stronger here than in the treetops on the hills.

It took time to separate the snoring from the wind. But that was the sound, he realized: snoring. He moved silently along the row of barracks buildings.

A combination of stealth and boldness had brought him this far. Just before reaching Totenhausen’s back fence, he had crossed over three long, shallow pits dug under the trees. He remembered the smell of burnt flesh from North Africa, and recognized the pits for what they were.

It was the trees that gave him his plan. Tall evergreens grew right up to the electrical fence on three sides of the camp. Since he was outside the fence, he simply slung his Schmeisser over his shoulder, climbed a fir tree, shinnied out along a branch and dropped to the snow beside the barn that concealed the gas factory.

Before his nerves had time to stop him, he straightened his back and marched toward the gate that separated the factory from the camp proper. There was one sentry there, an SS private wearing the earth-brown uniform of a concentration camp guard. Stern made ready to get out his papers, but his gray-green SD uniform and Iron Cross were apparently all the identification he needed. He rapped out a “Heil Hitler!” as he passed the respectful guard.

It was easy enough to get his bearings. Walking with obvious purpose — for the benefit of the men in the watchtowers — he moved through the alley that separated the hospital from the E-Block, turned left, then walked up to the mesh fence that bordered the inmate blocks. He strolled along the fence until he found a spot out of sight of the tower guards. One sentry stood watch at the camp’s rear gate, but he was facing the woods. Stern saw no insulators on the fence wires — no electricity here. He quickly scaled the fence and dropped to the other side.

He’d heard the snores at the first block. He heard the same thing at the next three. Only at the fifth barracks, when he bent low to listen at the crack beneath the door, did he see a faint yellow glow, as from a candle. Then he heard a voice. A whisper, really. The hairs on his neck rose like quills.

The voice was speaking Yiddish.

He took a quick breath and slipped his right forefinger into the trigger guard of his Schmeisser. Then he stood erect, walked up the three steps and into the block.

The candle went out instantly. He heard a frantic scuffling like rats in the walls — then silence. The air was warmer here, thick with the smell of soiled wool and disinfectant.

“Listen to me,” he said softly in Yiddish. “Are you all Jews here?”

No one answered.

“Listen. I am not what I appear to be. Please, are you all Jews?”

Nothing.

He wished he had stripped off the SD uniform outside. “I myself am a Jew,” he said. “I have come to Germany from Palestine. I am a spy. I have come to learn the truth of what the Nazis are doing to our people.”

Stern realized that if he had claimed he was the Messiah sent from God, he could not have stunned the prisoners more. He saw a faint reflection from eyes peering at him in terror and astonishment, like a den of rabbits surprised in the dark.

“Who is leader here?” he asked.

“Our leader is dead, SS man,” said a harsh voice from the darkness. A woman’s voice. “You know that.”

“Who spoke? Please, I have not come to harm you, but I haven’t much time.”

“You know who we are,” hissed another voice. “What do you want, SS man?”

“This is an SD uniform,” Stern said in measured tones. “But I am neither SS nor SD. I am a Jew from Rostock who fled to Palestine. I am ready to prove that to anyone who will speak to me.”

“Say kaddish then,” someone challenged him, “for all the people you have murdered.”

Stern began: “ Yis-ga-dal v’yis-ka-dash sh’may ra-bo, B’ol-mo dee-v’ro hir u-say, v’yam-leeh mal-hu-say — is that enough?”

“He knows it,” said a hesitant voice.

“That means nothing,” whispered another.

“What year is it?” someone asked.

“By the Hebrew calendar 5705.” Stern felt the pressure of time, but he was proud of the women for testing him this way.

“What are the Four Questions?”

He smiled in the darkness, remembering the Passover seders of his youth. “Why do we eat matzo? Why do we eat bitter herbs? Why do we dip our vegetables? Why do we recline?”

“He knows.”

“More lies,” said the skeptic. “No Jew would come here by choice.”

“There is only one way to tell,” said a more confident voice. “The same way the SS pick our men from the crowds.”

Stern was confused only a moment.

“Can you pass that test, SS man?” asked the skeptic.

With a flush of anger and embarrassment, Stern unfastened the trousers of the SD uniform and let them down a little.

“Light the candle,” said the confident voice.

In the uncertain light of the candle flame Stern saw five women wearing striped gray shifts. Sallow faces, dull eyes, hair cropped almost to the skulls. Beyond them others waited, watchful in the darkness.

“Come closer,” said one of the women. She was young, with a dark thatch of hair and onyx eyes.

He obeyed.

The dark-haired woman crept forward with the candle and crouched in front of him. “He speaks the truth,” she said. “He is circumcised.”

Several women gasped. Stern pulled up his pants. When the woman before him straightened up, he peered deep into her eyes. She seemed younger than the other women. Healthier, too. When he looked down, he saw not only skin over her bones, but also feminine contours.

“I am Rachel Jansen,” she said. “You must be mad.”

McConnell had been reading Anna’s diary for an hour. He did not want to go on, but he could not stop. He felt numb. Even now, he could not quite accept it. The nurse’s diary described nothing less than the systematic perversion of a renowned national medical community into the utter negation of everything medical science had sought to achieve since the time of Hippocrates.

He had expected some horror stories. For months rumor had been rife in England about the brutality of the Nazi detention camps. But Anna’s diary had little to do with brutality. Brutality was a universal flaw in the human character, commonplace in every society. This diary described atrocities committed on another scale altogether. Even outright murder seemed banal in the face of what he had read in the last hour. One of the most alarming passages had had its effect because of who was involved, as much as what was done.

1-6-43 Dr. Brandt returned from a trip to Auschwitz Main Camp in Silesia. All afternoon he complained to Rauch and Schmidt how the Reich’s money is being wasted there. He said Dr. Clauberg has allowed his professional standards to fall deplorably, that Clauberg’s experiments with mass sterilization border on quackery.

McConnell knew well the name Clauberg. But could Anna’s diary really implicate the physician who had developed the standard test for progesterone action? A test that still carried his name? If the diary could be believed, it could.

Clauberg has apparently taken to “castrating” both men and women by means of massive doses of X-rays. Brandt claims the inefficiency of this method is obvious to anyone with even rudimentary experience of gamma rays and their effects. To prove his point, Brandt requested a male prisoner, which Hauptscharführer Sturm promptly provided (17-year-old Russian POW). After the prisoner had been forcibly restrained by SS troops, Brandt pro- ceeded to perform a vasectomy, to show his protégés how rapidly the procedure could be executed by a skilled surgeon. He accomplished the procedure in four minutes. A discussion of female sterilization followed, in which Brandt again claimed surgery as the most efficient method. He said Clauberg will never regain his prewar eminence. Brandt plans to sterilize six women tomorrow morning to prove his point, before scheduled test of Sarin IV aerosol compound . . .