Greg Iles - Black Cross

“You think that’s funny?” she said.

“Put that thing down,” Stern snapped. “Get up and get dressed. It’s light outside.”

Her face went white. “Morning? What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. The cylinders are armed and buried by the dog kennels. They will detonate automatically at eight tonight.”

Anna threw off the covers and began pulling on her clothes. McConnell noticed that Stern didn’t look away while she did it.

“Wait,” he said.

She had her blouse on and was buttoning her skirt. “I can’t. I’m late already.”

“Anna . . . Christ, you can’t go back there.”

“She’s got to,” Stern said. “We settled this last night.”

“Bullshit.” McConnell stood up and pulled on his shorts, then took hold of Anna’s arm. “Schörner might be sitting there waiting for you. What the hell did he tell that Gestapo man last night when he arrived to question Wojik?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said, fastening a belt around her waist. “But if I don’t go, they’ll come for me here and you’ll both be killed. Besides, I’ve got to put the oxygen bottle in the E-Block.”

“Anna, that bottle won’t make enough difference to—”

“Please stop.” She took his hand. “Unless the worst has already happened, I’ll be back long before eight.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. “I’ll be all right. Keep your head down today. You too, Herr Stern. I’m counting on you to get me out of this country.”

Stern looked from her to McConnell. “What is she talking about?”

Anna smiled at him, then hurried up the cellar stairs. She didn’t look back when she went through the door.

“What the hell was she talking about?” Stern asked again.

McConnell pulled on the gray trousers of his SS uniform. “I’m taking her out with me. You have a problem with that?”

Stern shrugged. “That’s between you and the Royal Navy, Doctor. Your wife might have something to say about it, though.”

“Go to hell.”

38

Anna knew something was wrong as soon as her bicycle coasted out of the heavy trees and onto the drive leading to Totenhausen’s main gate. Not only had the gate guard been doubled, but even with the pale winter sun lighting the hillside and the river, the men in the watchtowers were probing the shadows beneath the trees on the perimeter with their spotlights. When Anna stopped at the gate, the guards exchanged odd glances but did not detain her. Why should they? She was riding straight into the lion’s jaws.

She’d decided that if Major Schörner confronted her, her first line of defense would be that she had merely followed orders. He had asked her to clean the patient, not sit by him all night, and she had done that. She’d left the patient sleeping and in reasonably good shape. If pressed further, she would allow some anger to come through. After all, she was a civilian nurse, not an SS auxiliary. Medical research was one thing, torture another. Was it a crime to possess a weak stomach?

She turned left to pedal around the cinema annex. Activity in the camp seemed normal enough, except for the extra guards and the lights. She saw no sign of SS vehicles from Peenemünde. Perhaps Colonel Beck and his Gestapo torturer had already come and gone. Perhaps all was well after all. She held that thought until she rounded the corner of the cinema.

A naked woman was hanging from the Punishment Tree. Hanging by her hands, which had been tied behind her back so that when she was hoisted up her shoulders would be dislocated. The woman’s torso was bloody, her legs dark purple. For a moment Anna thought Sergeant Sturm had finally managed to kill Rachel Jansen, but as she pedaled on toward the hospital she saw that it was not Rachel. This woman had blond hair. It only appeared dark because of the matted blood.

“Please God, no,” Anna whispered, as she stopped at the hospital steps.

The dead woman was Greta Müller.

The young nurse’s hands were tied behind her back, and she swayed gently from the rope that held her to the bar. Anna knew she should not look too closely, but she could not look away. Someone had hung a large paper circle around Greta’s neck. A target. A target for a firing party. Most of the circle, and Greta’s chest, had been shot away.

Every instinct told Anna to run, to turn around and pedal out of the camp as fast as she could. But where could she run to? Schörner might be watching her at this very moment. She knew she should enter the hospital, but her legs had stopped moving. Greta’s body told a long and terrible story. The bruises showed where the questions had started. A series of burns traversed the length of her left arm. More serious queries. Ragged wounds on her thighs revealed that Sturm and his dogs had taken a turn before the end.

“Why Greta?” Anna asked, her voice almost a child’s whimper.

She looked across the Appellplatz. She knew that if she saw Schörner or Sturm or Brandt then, she would scream, Why her, you stupid animals? I am the traitor! I am the spy ! She was actually speaking aloud when someone opened the hospital door and snarled, “Get inside, you stupid cow!”

Ariel Weitz stood in the hospital doorway, his ratlike face white with fear. “Stop gaping at her! Get to work!”

When Anna did not obey, Weitz reached out and jerked her into the building. He pulled her down the right-hand corridor and into an empty examining room. “Get hold of yourself!” he said, shaking her by the shoulders. “You’re signing your death warrant if you can’t act normally. Mine too.”

“I don’t under stand ,” Anna wailed. “What happened?”

“What do you think? They tortured her all night, then shot her.”

“But why ? She didn’t do anything.”

Weitz’s face twisted in savage anger. “What did you think would happen after you ran out of here last night? You left your post and that stupid Pole died! Schörner wanted blood. I thought Sturm was bad. My God, when Schörner loses control—”

“But why Greta?”

Weitz threw up his hands. “Why? Because Schörner was raving about security and treason and God knows what. He didn’t believe Miklos died naturally.”

“But why didn’t he come for me?”

“It would have been you!” Weitz ground his teeth. “Schörner was ready to send Sturm after you. I knew if they interrogated you all would be lost. I didn’t have any choice. I had to give them someone else.”

Anna stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I told Schörner I saw little Greta slip into the morgue before you got there. I suggested that she might have done something to kill him.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did!” Weitz’s eyes danced with maniacal light. “I told him I’d seen her before in Dornow, too, talking to suspicious characters. Poles, probably. I told him a dozen lies — all to save you!”

“But Greta didn’t know anything! Why did they kill her?”

“You’re such a little fool ! They thought she did know something. They tortured her until she was useless and then shot her as an example.”

Anna felt her legs go out from under her. Weitz managed to shove her backward so that she collapsed onto a doctor’s stool. “I can’t do it anymore,” she moaned. “Nothing is worth this.”

“I’m just glad Miklos died,” Weitz said. “He would have told them everything. I would have killed him myself if I’d had the chance. Tell me, what time are they attacking the camp?”

Anna raised her hands to her face. Tears of hysteria welled in her eyes and a scream gathered in her throat. Only hours ago she had glimpsed a chance at a life beyond this place, some light of sanity beyond madness. But it had been an illusion. By leaving last night she had doomed her friend to unspeakable torture—