Black Cross

19

Rachel’s plan to gain Frau Hagan’s confidence had worked. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the fanatical vigilance with which she guarded the door each night during the Circle. Or perhaps the detailed answers she gave when Frau Hagan asked about war news she’d heard on the BBC in Amsterdam before being captured. Once she had even sensed a vague sexual interest on the Block Leader’s part. In the end she did not care why Frau Hagan had taken her under her wing — only that she had.

For the last two days, the big Pole had invited Rachel to come on what she called her “morning patrol” of the camp. Rachel felt terribly nervous without Jan and Hannah beside her, but Frau Hagan assured her that the children were safe. The “patrol” was really more of a morning constitutional, though the Block Leader did notice many things Rachel missed. She noted which sentries were posted where, which of the three SS doctors under Brandt had slept late, the volume of black market traffic in clothing and utensils and sexual favors exchanged behind the showers, and a dozen other things.

Rachel noticed the prisoners more than the guards. They traveled in small groups, most often with those who shared the same badge color. Asocial with asocial, political with political, criminal with criminal, Jew with Jew. Above all she watched the children. Many clung to their mothers’ shifts, as Jan and Hannah did whenever possible, but others seemed to have free run of the camp. Like a grimy-faced army of midget partisans, they darted in and out of alleys, crouched under steps, squabbled in the barracks, spied on everyone and stole anything that wasn’t guarded or nailed down, including food from those too old or weak to protect themselves.

Rachel found it all bewildering. For four years she had heard that the camps in the East were labor camps. Totenhausen was more like a sanitarium, except that its staff was homicidally insane and armed to the teeth. There was little to do but idly pass the time and hope to avoid random death — unless of course you counted Frau Hagan as your friend.

This morning the Block Leader had ordered Rachel to memorize the layout of the camp, pointing out which buildings were to be avoided and which areas were safe from the view of the tower gunners. The task did not take long. Totenhausen was surprisingly small, and laid out with the usual German precision. In a perfect square of electrified barbed wire, the inmate blocks occupied the west side and the SS barracks the east, these alternate universes separated by the Appellplatz, where roll was taken twice each day, once in the morning and once at night. The administration building and officers’ quarters stood at the front of the camp and faced south, towards the river, which flowed less than forty meters from the main gate. And backed against the wooded hills at the rear of the camp was Brandt’s “hospital,” with the half-buried E-Block squatting in its shadow like a vicious dog in uneasy sleep. The only building which compared to the hospital in size was a large wooden barn which occupied the entire northeast corner of the camp, and was surrounded by a ten-foot wire fence.

“That is where they make the gas?” Rachel asked, pointing to the tops of two brick smokestacks that jutted from openings in the high barn roof.

Frau Hagan quickly crossed herself. “The furnace of the devil,” she said softly. “Don’t point.”

“I thought you were a Communist,” said Rachel. “Communists don’t believe in God, do they?”

Frau Hagan pulled her gray coat around her. “God may be dead, Dutch girl, but the devil is alive and well. I’m getting cold. Let’s walk.”

They skirted the factory fence until they reached the SS barracks, then cut between the barracks and the dog kennels. Rachel felt a prickle on her skin as she passed the watchful shepherds.

A sudden wild shouting from the direction of the Appellplatz made her cringe.

“Football,” Frau Hagan said without breaking stride.

Rachel squeezed her nails into her palms and walked on. “What happened early this morning?” she asked. “I heard screaming and shouting in the yard.”

Frau Hagan sighed wearily and kicked a mound of snow. “The Gypsy woman tried to run to the wire. Someone stopped her. They should have let her go.”

Rachel was horrified. “To the electric fence?”

“Of course. It happened all the time at Auschwitz. It’s the most popular method of suicide there. The wire could have ended it for the Gypsy. Now something worse will happen. Maybe for all of us.”

“What do you mean?”

Hagan turned her flat face to Rachel as she walked. “If they took your child from you, Dutch girl, what would you do?”

“I would go mad.”

“Just so. And a madwoman is capable of anything. Very dangerous for the rest of us.”

Hagan stopped, stretched her thick arms, then methodically bent and touched her toes several times. “Exercise,” she puffed. “I know how shocking it is. You heard the talk. Yes, the distinguished Doctor Brandt is the pederast. There are some among the prisoners too, but Brandt is the worst. That mongrel Weitz brings them to him. One, sometimes two little boys in a month since the family camp ruse started. So, you see? The world is turned upside down. It would have been better for the Gypsy and her son to have been gassed at Chelmno than to have been saved and brought here.”

“Can’t we do anything to help the boy?” Rachel asked, thinking of her hidden diamonds. “Couldn’t we bribe someone?”

Frau Hagan looked puzzled. “Bribe them to do what? Kill the boy? That is his only escape from here. And if something happens to that boy, Brandt will merely send Weitz for another. Perhaps your Jan.”

Rachel shuddered. “What about that nurse? Anna Kaas. Can’t she do something?”

Frau Hagan grabbed Rachel by the shoulders and shook her violently. “Are you a fool after all? Never again mention that name in the yard! Never! Do you understand?”

“I — yes. I mean, I won’t.”

“Since this whole insanity began, she is the only German I have seen do anything to help prisoners. The only one.” The Pole shook Rachel again. “Her life cannot be risked in a useless attempt to save a doomed child. Put that out of your stupid head!”

Rachel jerked away, but before she had gone five steps Frau Hagan caught her by the arm. “Not so fast, Dutch girl. You talk of bribes. What have you got to bribe with?”

“Nothing.” Rachel’s face grew hot. “Only my food, like everyone else.”

“Sergeant Sturm has been questioning people, you know. He’s asking about some diamonds he says were lost in the yard the night of the last selection.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Rachel immediately regretted her lie. Frau Hagan could order her searched anytime, and she knew every trick of concealment. She would search Rachel’s inner body first.

“Someone said it was your idiot father-in-law who had the diamonds. You still don’t know about it?”

“No. I mean I didn’t know he had the diamonds, not until that night. Major Schörner made Sturm throw them into the yard.”

Frau Hagan considered this. “That night, after the selection . . . you went to the toilet. You stayed a long time.”

“My children were sick.”

Frau Hagan’s gaze didn’t waver.

“The diamonds were in the Appellplatz!” Rachel blurted. “On the other side of the fence!”

“You could have climbed the fence.”

“And left my children behind?” Rachel recalled the wild moment of madness it had taken to let go of Jan and Hannah’s little hands and climb the cold wire. “If I were caught doing that I would never have seen them again!”

Frau Hagan nodded. “That is true, Dutch girl. I wonder if you have that much courage?”

“I assure you I don’t.”

“So if I searched you now I would find no diamonds?”

“No.”

The Block Leader cocked her square head to one side. “Did you see anyone else that night, when you went to the toilet?”

Rachel felt cornered. She hesitated, but then, feeling like a traitor, she said, “The shoemaker. I saw him outside the block fence that night.”

Frau Hagan’s eyes flashed with satisfaction. “I should have known.”

“You won’t tell Sturm?”

More yells sounded from the direction of the main gate.

“Come on, Dutch girl.” Frau Hagan pulled her along.

Emerging from behind the headquarters building, Rachel saw a dozen SS men stripped to their brown undershirts charging wildly around the parade ground in their knee boots. Sergeant Sturm was leading one team in a game of soccer in which a couple of large ammunition crates served as goals. A fairly large audience of both prisoners and SS men had gathered to watch the game, as there was no physical barrier separating the SS parade ground from the Appellplatz.

Rachel saw immediately that Sturm and his men approached sport with all the brutality they brought to their normal duties. Two players on the opposing team were already limping from injuries received at their hands.

“That’s Willi Gauss leading the team against Sturm,” Frau Hagan said as they moved into a press of ragged spectators. “He’s a technical sergeant — inferior to Sturm in rank. Gave me a piece of cardboard once to mend my shoe.”

Frau Hagan’s comment made Rachel think of the shoemaker. Scanning the crowd, she spied him by the block fence, a wiry dark-skinned man standing a head taller than the other prisoners. “Who runs the Jewish Men’s Block?” she asked in an offhand tone.

Frau Hagan gave her a guarded look. “After the last selection, the shoemaker has the lowest number. The survivors will probably elect him. There are only a handful left. He has been at this camp even longer than me.”

“You don’t like him.”

“He helps the SS.”

“By making shoes for them?”

“And boots. And slippers for them to send home to their slutty wives. Why are you so curious, Dutch girl?”

Rachel was spared having to answer by the unmistakable crack of bone echoing across the yard. On the field, one of Sturm’s men stood laughing and pointing over a prostrate figure. As the fallen man was carried off the field, Sergeant Gauss called out to a lone figure leaning against the headquarters building.

“Please, Sturmbannführer! My goalie’s out of action. Give us a hand!”

Rachel had not noticed Schörner beneath the overhang of the roof. The major waved away the sergeant’s entreaty, but more players joined in, pleading that they would have to stop the game unless someone made up the deficiency in numbers. Schörner finally stripped off his gray tunic and the bright Knight’s Cross that hung around his neck, then folded both and laid them carefully on an electrical junction box.

“Well,” Frau Hagan mused. “This might be interesting.”

“Why?”

“Schörner against Sturm. Ever since he got here last September, Schörner has been riding Sturm and his men about security. When he’s not drunk, that is. He can’t get them to care. We’re in the middle of Germany. They can’t see any danger.”

“Is there any danger?”

Frau Hagan shrugged. “Schörner’s afraid of old ghosts. Russian ghosts, I expect.” She chuckled. “For him the danger might be out on that field.”

After conferring with Schörner, Sergeant Gauss took over as goalie and allowed the major to take a forward position. Within two minutes it became apparent that Schörner was no amateur. He stole the ball twice and moved it upfield alone, only to be brought to a sudden stop by the rough tactics of Sturm’s men, who were expert at “accidentally” overshooting the ball and smashing head-on into their opponents. To the delight of both teams, however, Schörner did not call a penalty, which he could have used his superior rank to enforce. Instead, he played all the harder.

“Kick it down their throats, Sturmbannführer!” Sergeant Gauss shouted gleefully from the goal.

Schörner succeeded in stealing the ball a third time. He moved across the parade ground with deceptive ease, sidestepping Sturm’s brown-uniformed men and keeping the ball dancing on the toe of his boot. He passed off once, only to find the ball coming right back at him. Obviously his team believed he represented their best chance of scoring.

He picked up speed as he neared the goal. Only one man — a brawny corporal — blocked his path, but several were racing up from behind. With only one eye, Schörner’s peripheral vision was seriously impaired. He counted himself lucky that the two men pursuing him — one of whom was Sergeant Sturm — were closing from his left side. The right side would just have to take care of itself.

He neatly bypassed the corporal, leaving him befuddled in the center of the field and drawing some laughter from the sidelines, but Sergeant Sturm and a thickset private angled in from his left. The goalie crouched and spread his arms wide in anticipation. Schörner drew back his foot and let fly, but at the last minute pulled the force behind his kick.

The ball rolled forward two meters and stopped.

He planted both feet, ducked, and threw his left shoulder backward, catching Sturm full force just above the groin. The explosion of air from the sergeant’s lungs silenced the field, so that when he flipped over the major’s back and hit the ground the thud was audible to all. The other pursuer stood dumbfounded while Schörner darted back to the ball, drove it past the goalie and into the ammunition crate with a bang.

A shout went up from Gauss’s team, though even they were stunned by the major’s willingness to give Sturm a dose of his own medicine. Grinning as though he had never felt better, Schörner walked over to Sturm, who lay gasping on the ground, and offered him a hand. Sturm did not so much bat the hand away as refuse it, but his rage was plain. Schörner turned, waved to Sergeant Gauss, then walked back over to the headquarters building and collected his clothes.

Frau Hagan was shaking her head. “Schörner will pay for that one day,” she said.

“But he’s a major,” Rachel pointed out. “Sturm is only a sergeant.”

“That doesn’t matter. Nearly every man here is loyal to Sturm. You see the brown uniforms. They’re all Death’s Head troops. Schörner’s from a different division, the Das Reich. They fought everybody from the French to the Russians. Sturm and his men never shot anything but unarmed prisoners in rear areas. Schörner despises them, and they hate his guts.”

“Maybe they’ll kill each other,” Rachel said, “and we can go home.”

When the bell rang for the midday ration, Rachel took Jan and Hannah with her to the soup pot, where a Russian “green” dispensed watery soup and a little bread. She also took Frau Hagan’s bowl, to save the Block Leader the trouble of the queue. She had already learned to position herself in line so that her family’s ration was dipped from the bottom of the pot, where the cabbage leaves had settled. Still, the food was not enough to keep Jan and Hannah healthy. Frau Hagan chastised her for it, but Rachel divided half her ration between the children.

When Jan and Hannah were asleep, Rachel followed the Block Leader back outside. She had just caught up with her when a shadow darted out from behind the Punishment Tree and blocked their way. Before Rachel even recognized the man, Frau Hagan spat at him.

“Back, worm!”

Ariel Weitz flinched before the Block Leader’s anger. “You’d better listen,” he warned. “Or you’ll be on the Tree.”

“State your business,” Frau Hagan growled, “then piss off.”

Weitz pointed at Rachel. “The major wants to see her.”

“Schörner?” Frau Hagan’s brows drew together. “What does Schörner want with this girl?”

“Why don’t you ask him, my fat Blockführer?”

“She’ll be at his office in a moment.” Frau Hagan glowered at the informer. “Leave us, worm.”

The informer scowled, then hurried off.

Frau Hagan spat again. “Weitz is a tick growing fat on the Nazi wolf. One day I will squeeze him until he bursts with hot blood.”

“What can Major Schörner want with me?” Rachel asked. “Not Jan? Not my little boy!”

“No, no,” Frau Hagan said reassuringly. “Weitz would simply snatch the boy and take him to Brandt’s quarters. With Schörner it could be anything. He may want you to clean his quarters. He may want to ask you something about Holland. Then again . . . it could be you he wants.”

“Me?”

Frau Hagan gave her a knowing gaze. “The night after Himmler was here, women were brought into the camp. As a reward to Sturm and his men. That was the screaming you heard the night you became door guard. The screaming I refused to hear. Don’t look that way. There was nothing I could do for them. Anyway, the women were from Ravensbrück. The main women’s camp. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Schörner didn’t take part in it. He doesn’t mix with Sturm and his thugs. Considers himself a German gentleman. Still, Sturm’s little party may have excited him. He is a man, after all. Usually he buries his anger in a bottle. But who knows? Be careful, Dutch girl.”

Rachel tried to control her rapid breathing. She felt lightheaded. “Should I resist?”

“This isn’t Amsterdam. Choice doesn’t exist here. Remember your children. I’ll make sure they’re watched until you return.”

“Please . . . thank you.” Rachel squeezed her arm. “Oh, what am I to do?”

The older woman looked uncomfortable. “Go now. If you’re late, he will be harder on you.”