Greg Iles - Black Cross

“But I am a Jew, Sturmbannführer.”

“Stop saying that! Papers are easily enough had, especially in the current situation. Do you want to survive or don’t you?”

Rachel stared at him in wonder. It was a measure of the gulf between them that Schörner could sit there and offer what he thought was salvation, while she saw only grief and pain. “Sturmbannführer, I do not consider life without my children worth living.”

Exasperation flared in Schörner’s voice. “They would be given the best of care in a Lebensborn home!”

“Until they were adopted by an SS family.”

“Of course!” He forced himself to calm down. “Listen . . . who knows? Perhaps after the war we — you — could locate the adopting parents and convince them to. . . ” Even Schörner fell silent at this ridiculous fantasy. “Rachel,” he said firmly, “my ability to protect your children at this point is negligible. You must decide soon. The alternative is—”

“What?”

“Must I say it? Brandt’s work here is nearly done. After that . . . I cannot tell you more.”

“I cannot decide this! I must have time to think.”

“But your children would survive . Isn’t that what you want?”

Yes! cried a voice in her mind. The war will be over before long, and the Nazis will lose. You could find them! You could tell every woman in the Circle what you are doing, so that after the war people would know you were telling the truth. Perhaps you could even mark the children in some way, give them a small scar to help prove they were yours after the war. They would probably have forgotten you, of course, and they might have changed a bit under the influence of SS parents, but —

Rachel leapt to her feet. She was too torn even to make sense of her own thoughts. “Do you require anything further of me, Sturmbannführer?”

Schörner moved toward her, then stopped himself. “No. You may go. But think about what I told you. These are desperate times, Rachel. We must not close our minds to radical solutions.”

She stared at him for a long time. Then she turned, walked to the door, and knocked for Ariel Weitz.

Anna swept back her hair from the dampness at her neck. She was lying naked beneath the duvet she had brought to the cellar from upstairs. Two pale candles on the floor gave the only light. McConnell lay on his back, with her head in the crook of his arm.

“It will be dawn soon,” she said. “Maybe we should go up the hill. If Schörner catches Stern, we won’t get another chance to carry out the attack.”

McConnell pulled her closer. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“Because even if those bastards caught Stern — which they won’t — they couldn’t make him talk. Not in a week. That nut would slash his own throat with a broken bottle before he’d talk, just to spite them.”

She laughed softly in the darkness.

“Why don’t you try to sleep?” he said. “I’ll watch over you.”

“I cannot sleep,” she said. “The way this has all happened . . . you and me . . . the Wojiks being caught . . . what we must do tomorrow — I can’t force it out of my mind long enough to sleep. And it will all be over soon enough, in any case.”

McConnell turned and looked into her eyes. “Do you think Stern came here with orders to kill me?” he asked, giving voice to his suspicion for the first time. “If I was captured, I mean.”

Anna’s face grew somber. “I think he did, yes.”

“The cyanide capsule, right?”

“Yes. They always give one. Especially to someone like you, who is valuable because of what they know. I guess they were afraid you wouldn’t take the capsule if you were captured.”

He rose up on one elbow. “But I was captured, Anna. Last night. Stern told me not to tell you. The point is, he didn’t kill me. He could have — easily — but he didn’t. He killed two SS men instead.”

She stiffened. “The missing patrol? Stern killed them?”

“Yes.”

“ Ach , where are the bodies?”

“The sewer in Dornow.”

“My God. Schörner is bound to find them before tomorrow night.”

McConnell took a deep breath. “Maybe. But it’s odd, isn’t it? About Stern disobeying his orders, I mean.”

“No. He likes you.”

McConnell laughed. “He doesn’t like me.”

“Perhaps ‘like’ is the wrong word. He respects you. You are something he can never be.”

“What’s that?”

“Innocent. Naive. Full of hope.” She pulled the duvet up to her chin. “American.”

“I don’t feel very naive. And I’ve got damn little hope, if you want to know the truth.”

Anna turned under the covers and pulled him close. “It’s mad anyway, you know. Why didn’t the Allies just bomb Totenhausen to rubble?”

“Because bombing it flat wouldn’t change anything in Himmler’s head.” Feeling the moist heat of her skin, he turned and rolled her on top of him. She shifted only slightly and he was inside again, looking up into her eyes.

“Who thought up this mission?” she asked, refusing to move.

“One of Churchill’s men.” McConnell put his hands on her thighs and tried to gently rock her.

She used her weight to stop him. “Churchill is behind this plan?”

“Ultimately, yes. I saw him. He gave me a note absolving me of guilt for the people who would die on this mission. Like he was the pope or something. Anna—”

She sat up and flattened her palms on his chest. He watched her abdominal muscles contract as she slid slowly forward and back, her eyes never leaving his face. “Do you know what I’m going to do if I get out?” she said.

“You are going to get out.”

“Well . . . if I do, I’m going to become a doctor. A children’s doctor. It’s the only way I could ever live with the things I have seen Brandt do to them.”

McConnell didn’t want to think about any of it. He pressed harder and watched her eyes as she moved above him. She seemed about to speak, but instead she leaned down and pushed her arms beneath his back, crushing her breasts between them. She buried her face in the hollow of his neck. She was physically very strong, he realized, strong enough that her arms around his back almost stopped his breathing as she clung fiercely to him. And as badly as he’d wanted her, he sensed an intensity in her that dwarfed his own. How had she survived this long? Living on a knife-edge between the mundane and madness, pretending to be unmoved by things that would sicken a coroner, holding her silence, praying for the day when she could somehow strike back?

Anna caught her breath and rose above him again, her nails digging into his arms. She had held back a great deal of herself upstairs. She had opened just enough to allow him in, offering herself as a refuge. And he had taken her. But now she had forgotten him — or at least the surface of him. What did she feel? he wondered. What did she see with her eyes shut tight and her face suffused with hot blood? The shade of Franz Perlman, the Jewish doctor murdered in Berlin? Or was she like some desperate swimmer in a dark ocean, glimpsing a faint and distant light that promised hope and life if only she could reach it? McConnell made himself believe that. That he was that light. That he could get her out of Germany alive. That he could get them both out. But when she cried out, her fingers tangled in his hair, her hips thrashing against his own, he heard only the anguished sound of someone whose light has disappeared.

“Raus!” shouted a male voice. “Raus! Get up!”

McConnell jerked awake and grabbed for his pistol. Anna had beaten him to it. She was sitting up with her breasts uncovered and the gun pointed straight at Jonas Stern’s chest.