Greg Iles - Black Cross

Anna knew then that the whole thing was a wicked charade. Schörner was about to place her under arrest. The Gestapo man was on his way to interrogate her , not Miklos Wojik.

“Do you know any of the lab technicians well?” Schörner asked.

“Technicians? No, Sturmbannführer.”

“See them in Dornow? In the tavern?”

“I do not socialize, Sturmbannführer.”

“A pity. You are a beautiful woman. What about your fellow nurses? Do you feel confident of their political loyalties?”

Anna could make no sense of her frantic thoughts. What would be the clever thing to say? What would Jonas Stern say?

Schörner tapped the autopsy table. He seemed wholly oblivious to Miklos Wojik. “Are we the target?” he murmured. “The radio, Gauss, the stolen car . . . and now these Poles.” He gave the table a final slap. “I must go to Brandt’s office for a while, Nurse. While I’m gone, I want you to think about what I asked you.”

I can’t stand it anymore, she thought. I’ve got to get out of here. “Sturmbannführer, may I retrieve a medical bag from the surgery upstairs?”

“I’ll send a man for it. Please attend to this man immediately.”

He hurried up the stairs.

Anna went to the sink and wet a cloth, then returned to Miklos’s side and laved his brow with warm water. The young Pole was crying again.

“I’m sorry, Miklos,” she whispered. “What happened?”

He shook his head hopelessly. “They killed Stanislaus,” he croaked. “They . . . hurt him first. Oh, God damn them!”

Anna shut out her pity. “Miklos, did you send the message to Sweden? Did you get to your radio?”

“No. I’m sorry. We didn’t get more than ten miles. The woods were full of SS. They were everywhere, as if they were looking for us.”

“They weren’t. They were looking for someone else.”

“Your friends. The sergeant who killed Stan kept asking about parachutes. Did they catch your friends?”

“Not yet. Miklos, what about the paper? The paper the Jew gave you.”

“Stan got rid of it in time. They didn’t find it.”

Anna felt a flutter of hope. “Are you positive?”

“He burned it just before they closed in.” Miklos was breathing too fast. “Stan fought them. He kept on fighting so they shot him in the legs so they could beat him without him fighting and—”

Anna pressed her hand over his mouth. “Don’t think about it, Miklos. Breathe through your nose. You’re hyperventilating.”

The Pole caught her wrist in a desperate grip and pulled her hand away. “Help me, Anna,” he begged. “You must help me.”

She fought back tears. It seemed that her fate was to stand at the side of the doomed and be unable to help them. “There’s nothing I can do for you,” she said.

“There is, Anna. You must.”

She heard heavy boots pounding down the stairs. An SS private rushed into the room carrying a black medical bag. He handed it to her, then took up station at the foot of the stairs.

She leaned over Miklos’s face and began to wash his chest with the rag. “What can I do?” she whispered.

“Kill me,” said the Pole, in a voice no louder than a breath.

The color drained from Anna’s face.

“You must. Stan told them nothing, but he was strong.” More tears rolled down Miklos’s cheeks. “I am not strong, Anna. I am afraid. I always was. If they do to me what they did to Stan, I will talk. I know it.”

“I cannot do what you ask.”

“What’s he saying there?” called the SS guard.

Anna straightened up. “He’s out of his head. I think he may have a concussion.”

She leaned down again, as if examining Miklos’s eyes.

“The Gestapo is coming,” said the Pole. “They’re worse than the SS. They use electricity.”

“I cannot do it.”

Suddenly Miklos Wojik’s eyes focused with an intensity of pleading Anna had never seen in her life, not even in the eyes of the victims of Brandt’s experiments. “I am a dead man,” he whispered. “Nothing can change that. But if you don’t do what I ask, you and your friends will be dead too.”

An electric tingle raced across Anna’s scalp and shoulders. What Miklos said was true. If he talked, they would all die. She would be tortured. How long could she hold her silence if Sturm were allowed to do whatever he wished to her? And if she somehow survived the ordeal, there was always the Ravensbrück camp for women—

She opened the black medical bag and scanned the neat rows of ampules and glass syringes lying in their fitted slots beneath elastic bands. Antiseptics, local anesthetics, sulfa drugs, insulin — Was that the answer? No, it would take a massive overdose to kill, and as his blood sugar plummeted Miklos would experience cramps that would panic the guard. There —

She reached into the bottom of the bag and palmed a vial of morphia, then leaned down and put her head on Miklos Wojik’s chest as if listening carefully.

“Guard!” she cried. “This man is having heart palpitations!”

“I’ll call a doctor!” the SS man volunteered, starting toward the telephone Schörner had been using.

“No, I need adrenaline immediately! Run to the pharmacy room and get some!”

The guard shifted on his feet. “I’m not supposed to leave my post.”

“He’ll die without it!”

The SS man nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

Anna selected a 10cc syringe and drew six cubic centimeters of morphia into the barrel. She could not afford the time to tie a tourniquet to make a vein stand up, nor could she use a superficial vein that might leave clear traces of a puncture. Her eyes searched Miklos’s naked body. The Pole’s groin area was badly bruised, just as his brother’s had been. Beneath one of those bruises, inferior to the inguinal ligament, ran the femoral vein. It took experience to hit a deep vein blindly, but Anna had been forced to use the femoral dozens of times when unable to locate superficial veins on emaciated prisoners. She pressed two fingers of her left hand hard into the flesh between Miklos’s penis and his right hip bone. He groaned as she compressed the bruise, but Anna instantly felt a powerful pulse beating beneath her fingertips.

She glanced at the stairs, then angled the needle just beyond her fingers and punctured the bruised skin and tissue. When she drew back the plunger, dark blood swirled in the barrel of the syringe. With a silent prayer she closed her eyes and injected the entire contents of the syringe into the vein.

Miklos lifted his head as she drew out the needle. “Did you . . .?”

Anna had not met his eyes since making her decision. Now she did.

They were closed. “ Boze ,” he murmured. “God bless you, Anna. How long?”

“Soon. May God forgive me for this terrible thing.”

Miklos opened his eyes again. They were brown and very large. “ I forgive you,” he said forcefully. “I forgive you now, myself! God sent you to me, Anna. You are his angel and you don’t even know it. I suppose that’s how it always is.”

There was a clattering of boots as the private rushed back in and handed Anna the adrenaline. “Is he still alive?”

“Yes. Danke . I think perhaps it was merely a panic attack. His heart is weak, though.”

“He has reason to panic,” the guard muttered.

Miklos closed his eyes so he would not to have to look at the SS man. Anna stood rigidly beside him as his breathing slowed. After the guard returned to his post, she walked around the table and held the young Pole’s hand. Miklos squeezed back weakly. After two minutes he lapsed into a coma. She held his hand for another minute to be sure, then let it go. She had reached her limit.