Black Cross (56 page)

Perhaps they did. So much had happened in the past three days. The visit to Rostock had hit him hardest. Finding his father alive had been a miracle, and yet some part of him had not been surprised by it. Such miracles were not outside his experience of war. But the trip into Rostock, into the neighborhood where he had lived until age fourteen, had overwhelmed him. Even though he and his mother had fled Germany in fear, even though he knew as well as anyone the outrages perpetrated against the Jews who remained behind, some inaccessible part of him had clung to that small neighborhood, those few streets and buildings that had nurtured him. That part, that repository of memory, had remained German.

When he entered his street, expecting to find his old apartment building smashed to rubble, and then saw it standing as tall and proud as it ever had, hope welled in him. He climbed the stairs to the second floor with the unreasoning faith of a fool, shedding years with each step, his cynicism left at the curb with the stolen car. But when he knocked at the door he had once been unable to open because he could not reach the handle, it was answered not by his mother or father or his uncle or anyone else he remembered, but by a bespectacled man of sixty with white hair and soup stains on his shirt.

Stern stood mute, staring past the stranger. The furniture in the apartment was the furniture he had grown up with. His mother’s sofa and end tables, his father’s bookcase and wall clock. He swayed on his feet, his sense of time in free fall. The stranger asked if the Standartenführer was all right. Finally focusing on the face before him, Stern realized that the old man was trembling in fear. The SD uniform had worked its spell.

Even as he mumbled his apologies, Stern caught sight of the two blond children beyond the old man. The boy was only half-dressed, but the tunic hanging open on his shoulders, exposing his white chest, was the familiar black of the Hitler Youth. He wore it as naturally as a British boy would have worn a Boy Scout uniform.

Stern almost stumbled down the stairs in his haste to get back to the car. He would rather have found the whole street leveled by Allied bombs and his relatives dead under the wreckage. The sight of that apartment, filled by the furniture of his memory but empty of the people he had known, had punched like a stake into that hidden part of him that remained what he had been as a child, that remained German. As he turned the car out of the familiar street, he truly understood something for the first time. He was not German. He was a Jew. A man without a country, without even a home. A man who was only what he could make of himself, who could call home only that land he could take and hold by force of arms.

Anna’s voice rising in the kitchen brought Stern back to the present. He cocked the SD cap on his head, picked up his Schmeisser and walked into the kitchen. McConnell and the nurse were sitting at the table. They had spoken little to him since his attempt to shoot Sabine — who now lay trussed like a turkey in the basement — but he had no regrets. Leaving the woman alive was a mistake. If they couldn’t see that, so be it.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Just like one of them,” said Anna. “Except for the suntan. Maybe you are one of them.”

Stern ignored her. He set his Schmeisser on the table and folded his arms as he stood over them. “The whole thing is timing now,” he said. “It’s seven oh-five. I’m taking Sabine’s Mercedes to the camp, and I plan to be at the gate in ten minutes. I’m going to leave the climbing spikes at the foot of the pylon on my way. I don’t plan to be inside the camp longer than fifteen minutes.”

“What are you going to tell the prisoners?” asked McConnell. “You think you can explain the situation and get them to decide who will live or die in fifteen minutes?”

“The less time they have to think, the better. If all goes well, you will hear an explosion at seven-fifty. That will be me blowing out the transformers in the power station on the hill. You will be waiting here. When you hear the explosion, take the Volkswagen and meet me where the road comes closest to the pylon. Have the gas suits with you. We’ll go to the camp together and finish the job. If you haven’t heard the grenade by seven-fifty, I’ve failed. Then you must take the car up the hill, put on the climbing spikes as I showed you, climb the pylon and release the cylinders.”

“All in ten minutes?” McConnell asked. “Why don’t Anna and I just wait on the hill?”

“Because the only thing that can stop this attack now is someone discovering those cylinders before the attack. I don’t want either of you anywhere near that pylon until it’s absolutely necessary.”

“But that’s not enough time.”

“It is. I’ve seen you run, Doctor. I’ve seen you carry logs on your back. Even if you only climbed six feet per minute, you could climb that pole in ten minutes. You’ll climb it a lot faster than that, if it comes to it.”

Stern picked up a piece of cloth from the table. It was the swatch of tartan Sir Donald Cameron had given McConnell on the bridge. “The two buried cylinders will detonate automatically at eight,” he said, rubbing the tartan between his fingers. “If you’ve had to send down the cylinders yourself, consider the job done. I’ll be beyond help and there will probably be SS reinforcements on the way.” He dropped the tartan and tilted his head toward Anna. “She knows the area. The two of you might be able to reach the sub. She can take my place.”

“It won’t come to that,” McConnell said.

“Sure.” Stern shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Listen, if I don’t get out, and you do . . . well, my mother lives in Tel Aviv. Leah Stern.”

“It won’t come to that,” McConnell said again.

“Just promise you’ll do it. I don’t trust Smith. That lying bastard told me my father was dead.” He slung the Schmeisser over his shoulder. “Just tell my mother I was with Father at the end, okay? That I tried to get him out.”

“Smith told you your father was dead?”

Stern nodded. “He wanted me angry enough to kill anybody who stood in the way of getting this job done.”

McConnell shoved his chair back and stood up. “If the worst happens, I’ll get word to your mother. But you’re going to tell her about it yourself. It’ll be the big family story. The night Jonas saved his old man from the Nazis.”

Stern took McConnell’s hand and shook it.

“Shalom,”
McConnell said, and smiled. “What do you say?”

Stern’s mouth split into a grin. He looked unbelievably young then, too young for what he was about to do. “Kiss my ass, Doctor. Is that right?”

“Close enough.”

Anna raised her eyes to Stern. He nodded at her, then moved toward the door. As his fingers touched the handle, she said, “
Auf Wiedersehen
, Herr Stern.”

He stepped out into the night.

Anna pulled a strand of hair out of her eyes. “He looked like a boy,” she said. “At the end.”

“He is a boy,” McConnell replied. “A boy who probably won’t live the night.”

“He’s also a killer. He’s a match for Sturm or any of them, that one.”

McConnell nodded. “He has to be.”

Airman Peter Bottomley watched the small single-engine plane float down through the dark Swedish sky and onto the abandoned airstrip. It taxied right up to the Junkers bomber and stopped, engine running. The side door opened and a one-armed man climbed down to the tarmac wearing a severe black business suit. He waved to the pilot. The light plane taxied away. The passenger hurried over to where Bottomley stood waiting.

“How was Stockholm, Brigadier?”

“Same as ever,” said Smith. “Thick with intrigue, damned little of which will ever amount to anything. Any word from Butler and Wilkes?”

“None, sir. But Bletchley got an unconfirmed report that the Wojiks have gone missing.”

A shadow of concern crossed the brigadier’s face. “Missing?”

“Apparently someone from the SHEPHERD network reported that Scarlett called the Wojiks for a crash meeting. The Wojiks left for the meeting, but never returned.”

Smith tugged at one end of his gray mustache. “Schörner may have tumbled to Weitz and the Kaas woman, then used them to draw the Wojiks in. He might even have bagged Butler and Wilkes.” Smith looked down at his dour suit. “Looks like I’m dressed for the occasion.”

“Bad luck, sir.”

Smith sniffed and looked southward across the frozen Baltic. A black channel had been smashed through the coastal ice, but it was rapidly filling with small floes. “We don’t know for certain,” he said. “Still no Ultra traffic indicating anything out of the ordinary at Totenhausen? No foiled commando attack or anything like that?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, this is the fourth night. The wind must have been calm enough for the attack by now, yet Butler and Wilkes have not attacked. The gas is nearly one hundred hours old now. It looks like they’ve failed, whatever the reason.” He patted his pockets for his pipe. “Well . . . with a little luck on the navigation, GENERAL SHERMAN will wipe out all trace of the mission. Butler and Wilkes might never have been there at all. Poor bastards.”

Bottomley raised an eyebrow and said with black humor, “Gone with the wind, eh sir?”

“Have a little respect, Bottomley.”

“Do you still want me to monitor Butler’s emergency frequency tonight? Once the Mosquitoes leave the main force, they’ll be observing strict radio silence. We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to. If you think Butler and Wilkes are done for—”

“Of course you monitor the frequency, man! Right up to the minute the bombs fall.” Duff Smith’s voice was edged with anger. “No matter how bleak it looks, one never knows in this business. Anyway, we might learn something about why the mission failed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Smith worried at his mustache again. “I thought Stern had it in him to pull it off,” he murmured. “Blast.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Nothing, Bottomley. Let’s take the radio down to that hut by the beach. You never know who might crawl up out of the surf.”

“Very good, sir.”

Jonas Stern wheeled Sabine Hoffman’s Mercedes up to the front gate of Totenhausen like Lucifer arriving in a black chariot. He’d seen the spotlights when he was still a mile away, like white fingers exploring the forest, and he had known then that trying to sneak back in would have been impossible.

He had to brazen it out.

As one of the six SS men guarding the gate approached the Mercedes, Stern prayed that Anna Kaas had given him an accurate description of the command situation at the camp. He rolled down his window and waited for the guard to arrive.

When the brown-uniformed SS private saw the SD uniform and rank badge, he reacted exactly as Stern hoped he would. He snapped to attention with eyes as big as spent bullets.

“Step up to the window, Schütze,” Stern said in an offhand voice.

“
Zu befehl
, Standartenführer!”

“I am Standartenführer Ritter Stern, from Berlin. I have come here to make an arrest. Possibly several arrests.”

The private’s face lost what little color it had possessed.

“I want no one but SD personnel to enter or leave through this gate for the next hour. That includes Sturmbannführer Wolfgang Schörner. Do you understand?”

“
Jawohl
, Sturmbannführer!”

“Stop shouting. You will tell the other guards nothing. You will tell Hauptscharführer Sturm nothing. I shall speak to Herr Doktor Brandt and no one else. Anyone who interferes with these arrests will find himself in the cellars of Prinz-Albrechtstrasse by morning. Have I made myself clear?”

The private was too stunned to muster enough voice to answer, but he clicked his boot heels and nodded.

“Get back to your post and open the gate.”

The private fled back to his comrades and obeyed the order.

Stern put the Mercedes into gear and rolled slowly forward into Totenhausen. The headquarters building looked deserted. He drove around it and onto the Appellplatz. Directly ahead of him stood the hospital, to his left the inmate blocks. Two heavy trucks were parked near the fence surrounding the large barn to his right, the barn Brigadier Smith had told him housed Brandt’s lab and gas factory. Men wearing white coats were loading boxes into the trucks.

Stern drove straight on to the hospital and parked on the side away from the factory. His watch read 7:16 P.M. On schedule. He unscrewed the SOE-machined silencer from the Schmeisser and slipped it into his right boot, then got out of the Mercedes and walked around the hospital.

The alley was empty.

Halfway up it, he turned left and moved quite deliberately down the four steps that led to the half-sunken E-Block. The door worked by means of a steel wheel set in its face, like the wheel on a submarine hatch. The wheel turned under his hand; as Anna had predicted, the door was open. Warmer air ruffled his hair as he stepped inside. A faint bluish light passed through the porthole windows set high in the walls of the steel room. Only now did he realize how desperate was their plan. The E-Block felt exactly like what it was: a chamber of death. It was a supreme irony that in just over forty minutes it would be the one place in Totenhausen where life could survive.

If
the British gas worked, he reminded himself.

He closed the door, checked to make sure the alley was empty, then climbed the icy steps and walked toward the inmate blocks. He wondered how much the gate guard had told his comrades about the man in the Mercedes. Under normal circumstances, the presence of an SD colonel would move quickly up the SS grapevine. But these were not normal circumstances. How long would it take the news to reach Wolfgang Schörner?

There was a sentry standing before the wire gate of the fence surrounding the six inmate blocks. Approaching him, Stern realized that he was walking beneath the mutilated body of a naked woman. Greta Müller. He erased the Goyaesque image from his mind and pulled out the leather case containing his forged papers, flipping it open before he reached the sentry.

“I need to speak to a prisoner,” he said with perfunctory courtesy. “A Jewess. It’s a matter of Reich security. I’m not expecting trouble, so you may remain at your post. If you hear women screaming, ignore it. If you hear a man shout for help, that will be me. Come running.”