Black Cross (23 page)

The sergeant marched until they reached the river Arkaig, which was in flood from the recent rains, then worked his way along its bank. The cold gray water tumbled over rocks and tore through thickets with a high-pitched rushing sound. McConnell saw a huge limb slide past like a boat broken free of its moorings.

“Here we are,” McShane said.

“Where?” Stern asked.

McShane pointed skyward. “The Death Ride, gentlemen.”

Fifty feet above their heads, McConnell could just make out a black cable stretched taut from a treetop to the base of another tree across the river. The angle looked to be about fifty degrees. There was no safety net. Sergeant McShane laid his hand on a plank step nailed to the tree beside them. It was one of several dozen that led up to a tiny platform in the topmost branches, like the crow’s nest of a ship.

“Death Ride,” Stern said mockingly. “I don’t see how this child’s game can possibly help our mission.”

McShane sighed with forbearance. “When you get where you’re going, Mr. Butler, I think you’ll find this exercise was a great help.”

“You know where we’re going?” Stern asked.

“I know you’d better be gettin’ your backside up this tree.”

McShane took Stern’s toggle rope and threaded the wooden handle through the loop at the other end, creating a flexible hoop. “Throw the loop over the cable,” he said. “Then twist your wrists into each end and jump. Gravity does the rest.”

With a last scornful look, Stern scaled the ladder like a fireman. McConnell followed more slowly. Once on the platform, Stern tossed the looped toggle rope over the wire as McShane had instructed. Then, without any hesitation, he seized an end in each hand and threw himself out into space.

McConnell watched him sliding across the river like a runaway cable car. Stern’s face remained confident until he reached a point halfway down the rope. At that moment someone on the opposite bank began firing a semiautomatic rifle. When McConnell saw Stern jerk his knees close up into his body, he knew something was wrong. A few blank gunshots added for show shouldn’t worry a combat veteran like Stern. Then McConnell realized what was happening.

Stern was dodging real bullets.

Sergeant McShane was signaling for McConnell to go. His conscious mind screamed that he should climb back down to the ground, but something pushed him on. He tossed his toggle rope over the cable, twisted his wrists into loops on either side of it, and leaped off the platform. He felt the wind in his face, saw the river flashing up to meet him, heard the shriek of rifle bullets passing within inches of his body. Then the river bank knocked his knees up into his chin.

Stern pulled him to his feet. “Come on! I’m going to get that bastard!”

Two bullets slammed into a tree less than a meter away. Stern dove to the ground and screamed, “
Arschloch
!”

“All right, gents!” McShane shouted across the river. “You’ve seen one use for the toggle rope. Plenty more to come. Back on this side, now.”

Stern beat the bushes for five minutes, but the sniper had vanished. He was still seething when they finally managed to ford the river and rejoin Sergeant McShane.

After lunch — a brief affair of beans and cabbage soup — Sergeant McShane led Stern off to receive some special instruction that apparently he alone needed. McConnell was handed a sealed box which he soon discovered held a textbook and a notebook. The textbook was a volume on colloquial German, prepared by some branch or other of British intelligence. Into it someone had inserted a loose sheet headed “Common SS Commands and Responses.” The notebook contained some very interesting handwritten information on organic phosphates — the building blocks of nerve gases — and also some schematic drawings of apparatus that would likely be involved in the production of such gases. He wondered if this information had originated in Britain or Germany.

At the bottom of the box, he found a note from Brigadier Smith. It read:
This should keep you busy while Stern capers about in the forest, Doctor. Don’t let a misplaced “du” trip you up, eh? I’ll see you soon. Duff
.

McConnell spent the afternoon studying in the shadow of an old stone Episcopal church. He was grateful for the books. They allowed him to focus his mind on facts, rather than giving free rein to the guilt and grief that had troubled him for the past few days. By the time Sergeant McShane rounded him up for dinner, darkness had fallen and he was starving.

Near the center of the Nissen hut village, several long mess tables had been set up. They were long wooden affairs, scarred by years of use. He was reminded of “dinner on the ground” at some Baptist churches he’d visited as a boy, but the impression did not last long.

Sergeant McShane had made the mistake of seating him and Stern with the French commandos. Stern had not spoken more than three sentences before an ex-legionnaire noticed his German accent. McConnell tried to explain in high school French that Stern was a German Jewish refugee, but the situation deteriorated much too quickly for reason to play a part. True to form, Stern did nothing to defuse the situation. When the ex-legionnaire emptied a glass of ale in his face, Stern launched himself across the table like a man diving from a cliff.

Before the astonished Frenchman could react, Stern’s thumbs were attempting to punch a hole in his windpipe. Within seconds a half-dozen French commandos had come to their comrade’s rescue, but Stern refused to let go. McConnell saw elbows thrashing as the Frenchmen mercilessly pummeled him.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the brawl was over. The conclusive force was Sergeant Ian McShane. The huge Highlander waded into the mob and snatched out bodies like a man yanking roots from the earth. One well-placed blow dislodged the last of the Frenchmen, and a mighty heave brought Stern to his feet, dazed and bloody. The ex-legionnaire was lying on the floor, his face white, his neck red and swollen.

“What the bloody ’ell happened here?”
roared a voice McConnell recognized as Colonel Vaughan’s. “The milling isn’t for a week yet!”

The red-faced C.O. of Achnacarry sorted out the melee in a matter of seconds, his last order banishing Stern from the mess area. Without speaking, Sergeant McShane hustled both Stern and McConnell between the trainees’ huts and across the drive, then onto a dark path behind the castle. As they approached the river, the silhouette of a small Nissen hut appeared directly in the path. McShane shoved Stern up against its steel wall.

“Listen, you,” he said in a controlled voice. “That’s never happened at our mess before, and it never will again. If it does, I’ll wring your bloody neck myself.” He poked a thick finger into Stern’s chest. “And I can do it, laddie, fancy fighting or no.”

McConnell had no doubt of it.

“You’ve got a problem, Mr. Butler,” McShane said, still holding Stern to the wall. “And like the colonel said, you’ve come to the right place if you want it cured. From now on, this is where you’ll eat and sleep. I’ll have your gear sent out tonight.”

The Scot shook his head and glared at them. “I dinna ken who decided to send you two here for training, but he must be short of a full shilling. You’re about the least likely candidates for an important mission I can possibly imagine.”

Just as Stern seemed about to reply (and McConnell was praying he wouldn’t) they heard the muted thump of feet running up the path. A uniformed orderly appeared and saluted Sergeant McShane.

“What is it, Jennings?”

“Mr. Butler’s wanted at the castle, Sergeant! At the double. Colonel Vaughan’s office.”

McShane sighed. “I tried to warn you,” he told Stern. “I’ll have your bags waitin’ by the door.”

“It’s not the colonel, sir,” the orderly said. “It’s an officer from London. A Brigadier Smith.”

“About bloody time,” Stern muttered. He shouldered past McShane and headed back toward the castle.

McConnell shrugged at the Highlander and the astonished orderly, then walked into the Nissen hut and closed the door. There were two cots inside, but no blankets. A small paraffin lamp sat in one corner, but he saw no matches. He lay down on the bare cot and tucked his face into his forearms. On balance, the day’s events had disturbed him. Brigadier Smith might believe Stern’s propensity for violence was an asset, but McConnell did not. The calculated use of force to achieve an objective was one thing, explosive reflex aggression another. For whatever reason — past trauma or simply a bellicose temperament — Jonas Stern was unstable. And an unstable man was a poor leader. Wherever they were really going, McConnell decided, he would follow no orders but his own.

18

Stern found Brigadier Smith seated behind Colonel Vaughan’s desk, wearing a tweed coat and stalker’s cap. Smith waved Stern to a chair against the opposite wall.

“You started quite a stramash out there, I’m told,” he said. “This morning, too.”

“A what?”

“
Stramash
. Brawl. Fisticuffs.”

Stern shrugged.

“I told you before, lad, I’m a flexible sort of fellow. But Charlie Vaughan isn’t. In case you don’t know, former Guards RSMs get extremely annoyed by a lack of discipline. And they go absolutely purple over the flouting of authority or tradition. Do you see what I’m getting at, Stern?”

“His instructors are anti-Semitic! One of them tried to kill me. And that French bastard was begging for it.”

Smith sighed wearily. “You’re not getting my point at all. No one knows you’re up here but myself, the good doctor and these commandos. If you happened to disappear while visiting these lovely Scottish hills, well, there wouldn’t be much that I or anyone else could do about it. You see? In fact, I doubt anyone would ever find you. So let’s just concentrate on the business at hand.” The brigadier gave Stern his most engaging smile.

Stern drummed his fingers soundlessly on his knees. “So?”

Smith opened a map case and spread it across Colonel Vaughan’s desk. “Totenhausen Experimental Concentration Camp,” he said. “In Mecklenburg. Your old stamping grounds.”

Stern sat up, his anger forgotten.

“The camp is fairly isolated. The nearest large city is Rostock, twenty miles to the west. What used to be Poland is sixty miles to the east. Berlin is a hundred miles south.”

Stern nodded impatiently. He’d known all this since he was a child.

“The camp’s support village is Dornow, three miles north,” Smith went on, pointing at a spot on the map. “There are German troops in the area, but no elite formations. Except at Totenhausen, of course.”

“What’s at Totenhausen?”

“A hundred and fifty Death’s Head SS troops.”

“Totenkopfverbände,”
Stern murmured.

“Right. And a particularly nasty bunch, according to the reports. The commandant is a physician named Brandt, an SS Lieutenant-General and chemical genius. You don’t find many scholars in the ranks of the SS, but Brandt is one. The senior security officer is Sturmbannführer Wolfgang Schörner. Interestingly enough, he’s not a Nazi.” Noticing Stern’s puzzled expression, Smith said, “That’s not as uncommon as you might think. At one time the SS was considered by some to be a potential enemy of the Party in internal Nazi power struggles. Schörner is what’s known as
nur Soldaten
among the old SS fighters. Only a soldier. It means he’s not a superloyal party fanatic. He fought in Russia under Paul Hausser, one of the few SS officers with a real military background. Lost an eye at Kursk.”

Surprised by the depth of Smith’s knowledge, Stern gave him an inquisitive look.

“The curious thing is why Schörner’s there at all,” Smith continued. “The rest of the troops are former Einsatzgruppen butchers or career concentration camp guards. I rather think Schörner was stationed there as a spy for the Wehrmacht. The Army High Command doesn’t like Himmler having a monopoly on weapons as powerful as Sarin and Soman. I think they wanted an SS officer at Totenhausen who would keep them informed. Schörner’s older brother is a big cheese on Kesselring’s staff in Italy. Wolfgang had just been invalided out of the Russian theater because of his eye, and he needed a job. Getting the picture?”

“Simple enough,” Stern said. “Schörner spies on the SS for the Wehrmacht. What’s the inmate population of Totenhausen?”

“Very low. Fluctuates between two and three hundred, depending on the pace of the gas tests.”

“So we’re going to sacrifice three hundred innocent people to kill half as many SS men?”

“No, we’re going to sacrifice three hundred doomed prisoners to save tens of thousands of Allied invasion troops.”

“A matter of perspective?”

“Everything is in war, Stern. To Major Dickson you’re a bloodthirsty terrorist. To your own people you’re a hero.”

“And what am I to you, Brigadier?”

Smith smiled thinly. “Useful. Let’s get back to business. Totenhausen is separated from Dornow by a small group of forested hills. The only hills anywhere thereabouts, actually. The camp is nestled against the east side of them, on the north bank of the Recknitz River. The trees grow right up to the electrical fence. They’re meant to conceal the camp from aerial surveillance.”

Smith pulled another map from his case. It showed a close-up view of the hills, the village of Dornow to the north of them, and a detailed diagram of Totenhausen Camp itself, abutting the southernmost hill.

“What’s that on the central hill?” Stern asked.

“Electrical transformer station. It’s the key to the whole mission.”

“Do we have to blow it up? I’ve had experience with that.”

“No, we want the lights burning right up until the last second. Look here.” Smith used his pipe stem to indicate six parallel lines that connected the power station to Totenhausen. “These are the overhead electrical transmission lines that power the camp and factory. They run straight down the hills from the power station into the camp. The total line distance is two thousand feet on a twenty-nine degree slope. One night before you go in, a British commando team will suspend eight cylinders of British nerve gas from a wire on the pylon nearest the power station. The cylinders will be hanging from roller mechanisms rather like those used on cable cars.”