Greg Iles - Black Cross

Anna moved to the dented pot steaming on the stove.

“I’m starting to think you don’t really mean to attack that camp at all,” said McConnell, stepping into the kitchen.

Stern’s eyes went to the Schmeisser. “You’d do better to hold that by the barrel and use it as a club.”

“Go to hell.” McConnell took a seat at the table.

“Danke,” said Stern, accepting a hot cup from Anna. “If your Christian Hell exists, my friend, I’ve just been there. And you know what? It’s full of Jews.”

“What do you mean? You went into the camp?”

Stern raised the cup to his windburned lips, watching McConnell over the rim. “Camps are made to keep people in, not out.”

“So how did you get out?”

“Underneath a medical supply truck. A rather odd time to take deliveries, don’t you think?”

Anna said from the stove, “There are as many Christians as Jews in Totenhausen, Herr Stern.”

Stern surprised McConnell by not responding to this statement. The young Zionist seemed preoccupied, his hair-trigger temper nowhere in evidence.

“So why didn’t you attack the camp?” McConnell asked.

“Too much wind,” said Stern, his eyes fixed on the table.

“I see. Did you learn anything useful?”

“Useful how? You don’t want this mission to succeed, remember?”

Anna looked over Stern’s shoulder at McConnell. Her eyes seemed to be asking if this was still true.

“I have a proposition for you, Doctor,” Stern said in a neutral tone.

“I’m listening.”

“It’s obvious that I can’t carry out this mission as planned without your help. So, I propose a compromise.”

Anna set a cup of barley coffee in front of McConnell. He nodded thanks. “What kind of compromise?”

“If you will help me to gas the SS garrison, I will do everything in my power to save the lives of the prisoners.”

McConnell sat back hard in his chair. Had he heard correctly? Anna’s eyes were riveted on him. Obviously she had heard the same thing. “Well hell,” he said, “talk about Saul on the road to Damascus—”

Stern’s chair crashed back against the stove as he came to his feet.

“Whoa!” said McConnell, raising both hands. “Take it easy! Four hours ago you were ready to kill everybody in the place. Now you want to save them?”

Stern felt his hands trembling. When he embraced his father for the first time in eleven years, it was as if a jacket of ice had melted away from his heart. Everything he had planned to say if he ever got the chance — how stupid and stubborn Avram had been to remain in Germany, how cruel to make his wife and son strike out for Palestine without his protection — all went out of his mind the moment he saw the pathetic state his father was in.

Avram Stern had not even recognized his own son. When Jonas spoke his Hebrew name, and the name of his mother, the man known as the shoemaker had nearly fainted dead away. While Rachel Jansen kept the other women back, they spoke of many things, but Jonas had come quickly to the point. In an almost inaudible whisper he asked his father to come out of the camp with him.

Avram had refused. Jonas could not believe it. It was Rostock all over again! Only it was different. Ten years before, Avram had refused to believe that Hitler would betray the Jewish combat veterans. He no longer labored under such delusions, but he remained as stubborn as ever. Now he claimed it was impossible for him in good conscience to abandon his fellow Jews to the fate that awaited them in Totenhausen. Jonas had argued violently — and in fact came very close to revealing his true mission — but Avram had not been moved. The only concession he made was that if Jonas could somehow help the others to escape, he would go also. And so, brimming with anger and frustration, Jonas had told his father to sleep in the Jewish Women’s Block until he came again.

Trekking back across the hills, Stern had calmed himself enough to settle on a plan. Because of his father’s hardheadedness, he now had to try to accomplish something even the chief of SOE believed to be impossible: find a way to kill Totenhausen’s SS guards with poison gas while sparing its prisoners. To do that, Stern knew, he would need McConnell’s help. He hated this new dependence almost as much as he hated himself for being unable to follow through with the original plan. And he had no intention of revealing his weakness to the American.

“I am willing to try to save the prisoners,” Stern said through tight lips. “ If you will help me kill the SS men, get the photos the British need, and steal the sample of Soman. But I will still carry out the attack alone if you refuse to help me. Everyone will die then, perhaps even you and Fräulein Kaas.”

“Calm down,” McConnell told him. “Just sit down and be still for a minute. Please.”

Anna righted Stern’s chair and set it behind him, but he did not sit.

McConnell tried to penetrate the crystalline shine of Stern’s eyes, but it was like trying to read through black quartz. Stern’s reasons were his own, and for the time being at least, would remain that way.

“All right,” McConnell said after a moment. “That sounds like a fair bargain to me. You’ve got a deal. I’ll help you.”

Stern was more shocked by this reversal of position than McConnell had been by his. He reached awkwardly for a chair and sat down opposite McConnell at the table.

“Easier sell than you thought, huh?” said McConnell. “Well, don’t look so pleased with yourself. I want to know how you propose to kill a hundred and fifty SS soldiers without killing the prisoners as well.”

“You’re the one who wants to save them,” Stern said, almost too quickly. “You find a way.”

A fleeting intuition told McConnell that Stern’s words had very little connection to what was in his heart. He had no evidence of this, but because Stern almost always said exactly what he thought, his words invariably had the ring of conviction. But his last remark had sounded forced, overdone. And yet, what could he possibly be hiding?

“You’re supposed to be the genius,” Stern went on, filling the silence McConnell had left. “Let’s see you prove it.”

“I will,” said McConnell, his eyes and ears taking the measure of the new personality before him. “I’ll find a way.”

Half an hour and a second pot of coffee later, McConnell still had no answer. The three of them sat around the table like students trying to solve a complex calculus problem. Stern had suggested a couple of desperate commando-style plans to free the prisoners before gassing the camp, but each would have required at least a dozen men and split-second timing. His ideas brought McConnell no closer to a solution, but they did confirm his suspicion that Stern — for whatever reason — suddenly possessed a heartfelt desire to save the prisoners’ lives.

It was Anna who put him on track. Stern was telling them about something his guerrilla band had tried against a British fort, when she broke in and said, “ Ach ! The E-Block!”

Stern stopped talking. “What?”

“The Experimental Block. It’s the sealed chamber at the rear of the camp, where Brandt’s gas experiments are carried out.”

“What about it?” asked McConnell.

“The SS avoid it like a plague ward. I was thinking, what if we could slip the prisoners into it a few at a time, maybe half an hour before you attack? When the cylinders detonated, the prisoners would be safe inside the E-Block while the SS troops choked to death outside.”

Stern gaped at her across the table. “That’s brilliant.”

“Just a minute,” McConnell interrupted. “How big is this chamber?”