Greg Iles - Black Cross

Schörner cleared his throat. “I understood that they had sent us three suits, Herr Doktor.”

“They did. But I will not soil my own suit with the sweat of a Jew. Would you, Schörner?”

Schörner studied the commandant’s face several moments before answering. “ Nein , Herr Doktor.”

“Of course not. Now, Sturmbannführer, we have a decision to make. One of these prisoners must function as the control. Do you have a preference?”

Rachel saw then that Brandt was toying with Schörner. Somehow, the doctor knew exactly what his security chief had been up to. Giving Schörner this choice was merely one more perverse experiment designed for Brandt’s enjoyment. Before Schörner could answer, Rachel heard the shoemaker whisper softly behind her:

“ He cannot save you. You must volunteer. Think of your children —”

“I have no preference,” Schörner said in an emotionless voice, his eye never leaving Brandt’s face.

A faint smile touched Brandt’s lips. “I am very glad to hear it, Sturmbannführer. In that case—”

“I volunteer to wear a suit!” Rachel cried, stepping forward.

Brandt studied her with interest. “As would I, were I in your place,” he said. He let his eyes play over her body, then looked pointedly at Schörner. “Well, Sturmbannführer? Give the young lady what she wants. By all means, a suit.”

Schörner snapped his fingers at Ariel Weitz, who immediately carried one of the suits to Rachel and began unzipping it.

“I too volunteer!”

Rachel turned. Her father-in-law had followed her example. She watched Brandt’s eyes examine the old tailor with clinical detachment.

“I think not,” Brandt said. “Give the other suit to the shoemaker. Let’s see if his luck holds, eh, Schörner? He survived one of these tests already, you know. Although that was an early version of Sarin, as I recall. Not nearly so toxic as Soman Four.”

As Benjamin Jansen absorbed these words, Brandt said, “Bind the control hand and foot. We can’t risk him tearing the suits in his death throes.”

The old tailor began to struggle, but Rachel remembered little else until she found herself sitting in a floodlit corner of the E-Block, her head and body encased in rubber, breathing parched air that tasted like metal. The shoemaker sat motionless beside her. Just beyond him, lying against the wall, she saw a small metal gas cylinder. Was that where the Soman would come from? She decided not. The small tank looked almost casually left behind, its pale green paint blending perfectly with the paint inside the E-Block.

She looked over at Ben Jansen, who lay writhing in the opposite corner just three meters away. The old man had been spared the indignity of being stripped naked, but only to better approximate the effect of Soman Four on uniformed Allied soldiers. As Rachel watched him fighting the ropes, she wondered at the wild impulse to survive that had made her step away from him and grasp at the only choice that offered a chance at life. Had concern for her children driven her to it? Of course. But was it only them? Was there anything she would not do to survive one more day? As the hissing of the opened gas valves penetrated the rubber mask, she knew that there was not. She closed her eyes, knowing that her father-in-law would be dead when she opened them again.

She prayed only that she would live to open them.

Anna Kaas watched the steel hatch of the E-Block from an open window on the second floor of the hospital. By her watch, eight minutes had passed since the three prisoners were sealed inside. The gassing had not lasted more than a minute, she knew. She had seen SS men turning off the valves behind the E-Block. The rest of the time would have been spent cleaning the Soman from the chamber with neutralizing chemicals and detergents. The usual cleaning method — scalding steam and corrosive bleach — could not be used in a suit test, because Brandt always interviewed the survivors afterwards. She thanked God that no one had discovered the portable oxygen cylinder.

Not yet, at least.

Two men wearing gas masks and rubber gloves moved cautiously down the concrete steps and opened the E-Block’s hatch, then dashed back up to ground level.

No one emerged.

As Klaus Brandt knelt beside one of the porthole windows and rapped on it, Anna looked down at her left hand. In it were the keys to Greta Müller’s Volkswagen. She turned her arm to read her watch: 3:30 P.M. Four and one-half hours until the attack. If there was an attack. With Sturm already organizing Schörner’s house-to-house search, she had to get back to the cottage and warn Stern and McConnell. They could make the decision: stay and try to carry off the attack, or run. She felt a powerful urge to run right now. But she would not go until she knew whether Stern’s father had survived. Every moment she stood there felt like a dare to fate, but if Rachel Jansen had the courage to walk into the E-Block under her own power, Anna could stand to watch for two more minutes.

She started at a shout from below. A black figure was moving slowly up the E-Block steps, a bubbly white substance flowing off of the suit as it moved. It was soap, Anna realized, the detergent solution Brandt used to spray away gas residue after suit tests. When the black-suited figure straightened, she knew it could only be Avram Stern. He stood nearly a head taller than Brandt, and in his arms he carried a limp figure which also wore a dripping suit.

Rachel Jansen.

Anna stayed long enough to see the tall figure lay down its burden and pull off its mask, revealing the prominent nose and gray moustache of the man called Shoemaker. Major Schörner was hurrying toward the prostrate figure at the shoemaker’s feet when Anna turned from the window and ran toward the stairs.

“How are we supposed to move in these things?” Stern yelled, trying to be heard through his vinyl gas mask.

He was standing in the kitchen of the cottage, wearing one of the oilskin anti-gas suits McConnell had brought from Oxford. He had gone up and down the cellar stairs three times wearing the suit, mask, and air tank, and he was already pouring sweat.

“You don’t have to shout,” McConnell told him. “The diaphragm set into the vinyl transmits your voice. You sound like an insect version of yourself.”

He pulled up the oilskin shoulders of the suit so that Stern could lift the clear vinyl mask off his head. “It will be a little tougher when we’re both wearing our masks,” said McConnell, “but we’ll manage.”

“It’s like wearing five sets of clothes,” Stern complained, wiping sweat from his face. “How do we fight in them?”

“I wouldn’t suggest hand to hand combat. One small rip and the whole thing is useless. If active nerve gas gets inside, you’re dead.”

“Why isn’t air escaping from your hose now?”

McConnell held up the corrugated rubber hose of his air tank, which sat on the kitchen table. There was a bulbous device at the point where the hose met the cylinder. “This is called a regulator,” he said. “It’s sensitive enough so that the force of your breath opens and closes it. There’s going to be a revolution in underwater diving after the war because of this gadget. A man named Cousteau developed—”

McConnell gaped at Stern, who had dropped into a crouch on the kitchen floor.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“A car just pulled up outside.”

McConnell knelt beside him. “SS?”

Stern picked up his Schmeisser from a chair. “If it is, we don’t have a chance in these suits.”

McConnell heard the angry clicking of a key in the front door. Someone jerked the door handle up and down, but the lock held fast.

“ Scheisse !” cursed a muffled voice.