Black Cross (60 page)

The three men walked around the cinema and disappeared. Could Jonas be trying to reach the main gate? It was fifty meters away, and difficult to see clearly in the darkness, but Avram would know if a man passed through it.

No one did.

Two minutes after Jonas disappeared, Avram saw Sergeant Sturm burst from the rear door of the headquarters and sprint toward the factory with five SS men behind him. Had Jonas made a break for freedom? Had he concocted some diversion to draw the SS away from the E-Block? Avram felt a flash of fear as white-coated lab technicians began streaming out of the factory gate with Sergeant Sturm’s men prodding them along.

The soft crunch of footsteps on the snow behind him told him Rachel and the other chosen women were slipping into the Jewish Children’s Block in preparation for the move to the E-Block. He looked down at his wristwatch — an illegal item he had accepted as payment for a repair job on a pair of SS knee boots — the wristwatch of a dead Jew.

7:41.

Jonas had planned to short out the electricity prior to the attack. That would not happen now. Without the cover of absolute darkness, the women and children would have to cross open ground in plain view of the sentry standing at the back gate.

They would never make it.

With quivering hands the shoemaker unslung the silenced Schmeisser and started for the back gate.

“Berlin never heard of you.”

Major Schörner put down the telephone and smiled.

Stern stared impassively into the black barrel of his own Walther.

“I talked to Kaltenbrunner himself,” Schörner said. “He wants me to send you to Berlin for questioning. But — I have a few questions of my own for you first.”

A door banged open behind Stern. He did not turn, but the clatter of boots told him at least three men had entered the office.

“Sturmbannführer, the technicians are locked in the cinema!” said Sergeant Sturm. “The factory is sealed!”

“And the nurses?” Schörner asked.

“The three who were on duty are in the cinema with the technicians. Greta Müller is dead, of course. I sent a rider for Frau Jaspers.”

“That’s five. And the sixth?”

“Fraulein Kaas, Sturmbannführer. It seems she left the hospital early today.”

Schörner sighed impatiently. “
And
?”

“I just found out she was driving Greta Müller’s car! In the confusion after finding the bodies in the sewer—”

“In the confusion no one noticed,” Schörner finished. “In fact I did notice that. But because Fraulein Kaas is the sister of a Gauleiter’s wife, I did not consider her a likely candidate for treason. How foolish of me. Now that I think of it, she was quite a friend of the Müller girl.”

Stern stole a glance at his watch: 7:43. He prayed McConnell would leave the cottage on schedule.

Schörner tapped his right hand on his desk. “Do you know what I think, Hauptscharführer? I think our ersatz Standartenführer looks much too clean to have been hiding in the forest for the past few days. He looks like he’s been enjoying local hospitality. Eating well, by the look of him. Where does Fraulein Kaas live, Sturm?”

“A old farmer’s cottage on the southern edge of Dornow.”

Schörner nodded. “I know that cottage.” He stood up suddenly and pocketed Stern’s Walther. “I’m going to take a detachment of men and search it.”

“But Herr Doktor Brandt ordered the camp sealed.”

Schörner’s jaw tightened. “I am in charge of security here, not Brandt. This man is no longer a threat. His comrades are. The Allies might well be planning to kidnap Brandt. I want you to place the Herr Doktor under guard.”

Schörner took an extra clip of ammunition from his desk drawer and retrieved his Luger from Sergeant Sturm. “If there’s any trouble while I’m gone, Hauptscharführer, do whatever you must to prevent the Herr Doktor from falling into enemy hands.” He looked up pointedly. “Do you understand?”

Sturm cleared his throat. “Does the Sturmbannführer mean that I should kill him?”

“Precisely.”

Sturm nodded soberly. Schörner’s sudden transformation from altar boy to ruthless commander had stunned him. “What about this one?” he asked, pointing at Stern.

“I need to know everything he knows. Who sent him, how many men in his unit, what their plans are, everything. I believe you’re up to the task, Hauptscharführer?”

Gunther Sturm knew he was up to the task, but after killing the Polish giant by mistake, he was a little hesitant to take on another important interrogation. “Exactly how far may I go, Sturmbannführer?”

Schörner pulled on a greatcoat and marched to the door of the office. “Don’t kill him. Is that clear enough?”

Sturm saluted. “
Zu befehl
, Sturmbannführer! Good hunting.”

Schörner went out.

Sturm lifted the phone and said, “Karl? Tell Glaub and Becker to guard the Herr Doktor until they hear otherwise from me.”

He hung up and motioned to two SS privates standing at the back of the office. “Hold him in the chair,” he said.

Stern tensed as four hands took him by the upper arms and squeezed tight enough to close off his circulation.

Sergeant Sturm quickly searched the SD uniform, laughing at the cyanide capsule and pocketing the keys to Sabine’s Mercedes. Then he smiled and drew his SS dagger from the black sheath at his belt. It was identical to the one Stern had used to slash the throat of the sentry, the one he had in his ignorance given to Rachel Jansen. Sergeant Sturm casually cut the buttons off of the SD tunic, then sliced the undershirt beneath it down the middle.

“Ach!”
he cried, staring at Stern’s naked torso. “Look at this!”

The two SS privates leaned down and gaped at the livid scars that covered Stern’s chest and abdomen. It was Sturm who first noticed that the scars extended down into the trousers.

“Stand him up,” he said.

When Stern was on his feet, Sturm cut his belt in half and jerked the SD trousers down to his knees.

“He’s missing his last inch!” Sturm crowed. “I’ll be damned! He’s a Jew! A stinking Jew in an SD uniform!”

Stern stopped breathing when the sergeant lifted his scrotum with the cold dagger blade.

“Look at him,” Sturm said, laughing. “Shrinking like a wilted radish! How long do you think it will take me to make this one sing, Felix?”

One of the privates looked appraisingly at Stern’s scarred chest. “Twenty marks says he holds out for two hours.”

“That’s a good bet,” Jonas said in a soft voice. He looked straight into Gunther Sturm’s eyes. “I hope you’re a patient man.”

If the two privates had not been holding him up, Sturm’s fist would have doubled him over on the floor. As it was, he could not draw breath for nearly ten seconds.

“Put him back in the chair,” Sturm said. “In an hour he’ll be begging us to kill him.”

43

Ariel Weitz stood motionless at the window of Klaus Brandt’s office door. Brandt’s back was to the door. He was reading some medical charts, but Weitz knew he was actually waiting for a telephone call. An hour earlier, the commandant had placed a long-distance call to Reichsführer Himmler in Berlin. Even the mighty waited like servants on the whim of the former chicken farmer who ruled the SS.

Weitz’s hands tingled as he stared at Brandt’s white-jacketed back. Every gray hair sprouting from the thick Prussian neck made him want to scream with hatred and disgust. He saw the shining dome of Brandt’s balding head as a perfect spot in which to drive a dozen roofing nails. A hundred times he had thought of slamming the famous hands in the steel door of the isolation ward. A thousand times of injecting the meningococcus bacillus into his spine, as Brandt had done so many times to “his children.” But tonight. . . 

Tonight would pay for all.

At the sound of boots in the main corridor, Weitz moved away from the door. Two SS men hurried past him and took up station on either side of Brandt’s door.

A complication.

Weitz walked up the hall to a small examining room off the main corridor. Here he had cached the remainder of his weapons, and also his prize. Hanging in a narrow closet was one of the Raubhammer gas suits tested in the afternoon, now thoroughly decontaminated. Weighing less than half of what previous models did, it utilized a filter canister and a breathing bag which contained a small cylinder of pure oxygen. One of the other Raubhammer suits was hanging in Brandt’s office, but Weitz didn’t care about that. He would only need the one.

He wondered what the two SS guards would think when they saw Brandt’s pet Jew rounding the corner with a submachine gun in his hand. Whatever it was would be the last thoughts they ever had. But why had they so suddenly appeared? Had Schörner finally comprehended the danger facing the camp? A minute ago Weitz had noticed Sergeant Sturm rushing a long line of factory technicians across the Appellplatz toward the cinema, but he saw no real problem in that. No matter what Schörner might have learned, he was way behind the game at this point. Too far behind to catch up.

Weitz was reaching for the Raubhammer suit when he heard the roar of a troop truck.

Avram Stern had taken three steps toward Totenhausen’s back gate when shouted orders and the rumble of motors stopped him in his tracks. He turned to see Major Schörner’s gray field car speeding out of Totenhausen’s front gate, followed closely by an open truck full of SS troops, all armed to the teeth.

Avram felt his last hope wither away.

He closed his hand around the Schmeisser and started back toward the sentry, only to be stopped again by the sound of a slamming door. Ariel Weitz was standing on the front steps of the hospital, staring after the disappearing vehicles with a puzzled look on his face. Weitz cocked his head back, almost as if he sensed a human gaze upon him. When he finally looked toward the inmate blocks, the shoemaker made the fastest and riskiest decision of his life. He would never know why he did it. If someone had asked him at the time, he might have said something about the tears he had seen on Weitz’s face on the night of the big selection. He had thought about Weitz many times since that night. How the hated informer had free run of the camp. How he was so trusted by the SS that they occasionally let him go into Dornow alone to run errands for them. And how to mount an operation like the one Jonas was involved in, the British would need a good source of information inside Totenhausen. And the conclusion Avram had come to was that no Jew could be so thoroughly corrupted by the Nazis as Ariel Weitz seemed to be. And so, when Weitz looked from the hospital steps toward the blocks, Avram motioned for him to come over to the block gate.

Weitz hesitated when he saw the sentry beckoning from the inmate blocks. He did not want to cross the Appellplatz. But the man signaling to him was SS; even so close to his moment of triumph, he could not very well refuse. He hurried across the snow and stopped before the sentry, looking up with his usual obsequious mask.

“You!”
he blurted. “What are you doing in that uniform?”

Avram reached out and closed his left hand around the back of Weitz’s neck. With his right he drew the SS dagger from his belt and held its point under Weitz’s chin. “If you cry out,” he whispered, “I’ll cut your throat like a piece of scrap leather.”

Weitz shook his head violently. “No! You don’t understand!” He stared at the SS uniform. “I don’t understand either.”

Avram pricked the knifepoint into Weitz’s skin. “Tell me one thing. Are you involved in what is about to happen?”

The little man’s eyes grew wide. “I know what is going to happen. But I have my own plans.”

“I knew it! You little bootlicker! You’ve been pretending all the time. Listen to me. My son has been taken by the SS. Unless he is freed, the attack will not take place.”

“Your son . . .? Your
son
is the Jewish Standartenführer?”

“Yes.”

“My God. Where is he now? In the cinema with the workers?”

“I don’t know. They’re probably interrogating him somewhere.” Avram shook Weitz’s neck. “You must free him! You know everything about this camp.”

Weitz looked furious at this interruption of his plans, but he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. What are you going to do? Stand here and wait to die?”

Avram let go. “You just free my son.”

The moment Weitz turned back toward the hospital, Rachel Jansen stepped out of the shadows behind Avram. “Why were you talking to him?” she whispered. “He works for the SS.”

“Never mind. Are all the women in the children’s block?”

“Yes.” She held up the bundle in her arms. “And here is Hannah. Where is your son?”

Avram shook his head. “Taken. You’ll have to carry Hannah to the E-Block with you.”

Rachel moaned softly. Avram heard a tiny frightened voice in the bundled blanket. Rachel comforted the child in Dutch, then switched back to German. “What are we to do, Shoemaker? I cannot move the children with that sentry at the back gate. He will surely see us and raise the alarm.”

“Go back inside.”

“But the gas is coming!”

“Be ready to move quickly. I’ll be back here in one minute to get you. If I’m not, you’re on your own. Do what you think is best.”

Rachel grabbed his arm through the gateposts. “If you see your son anywhere, tell him to come and get Hannah. I
beg
you, Herr Stern!”

“I’ll tell him.”

Avram jerked back the bolt on the Schmeisser and started toward the back gate.

Jonas Stern tried to keep himself conscious as Sergeant Sturm worked on him. The man showed an aptitude for his job. He had enthusiasm, which was important. Physical torture was tiring work. The blows to the side of the head were the worst. Stern’s ears were ringing so loudly he could hardly think. He wanted to let go, to give in to unconsciousness. But he forced himself to keep awake. Because he had one advantage over his tormentor. He knew exactly what was about to happen to Totenhausen Camp. And perhaps — just perhaps — when the plastic explosive he had molded around the heads of the buried cylinders detonated, he would still be physically able to make a run for the main gate. But to do that he would have to be conscious. Not an easy thing when someone was trying to pound your brain into jelly. When Sergeant Sturm switched to the knife, he was almost grateful.