Black Cross

27

“What? What?”

McConnell came awake in the dark the way he once had as an intern in Atlanta, eyes wide open but full of sleep, shaking his head to jar his brain into action.

Someone was shaking him by the arm.

“Get up, Mr. Wilkes! Wake up, sir!”

McConnell’s eyes focused. Where he expected the face of a nurse, he saw the young face of one of Colonel Vaughan’s orderlies. The orderly pulled him to his feet.

“Is that your only bag, sir?”

“What the hell’s going on?” McConnell demanded.

“Is this all your gear, sir?”

“No, damn it, I have suitcases at the castle. Just wait a minute. Jesus . . . is this it? Tonight?”

“Leave everything in the hut behind, sir. You won’t be needing it. Follow me.”

The orderly marched out. McConnell groped in the dark for his shoes, pulled them on and went after him. It was raining outside, no surprise at Achnacarry. The orderly waited on the path to the castle, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

McConnell walked rapidly but did not run, another habit he had developed as an intern. It gave him time to get his thoughts together. Where the hell was Stern? Just after supper they had both lain down in the hut. Now Stern was gone. The day had been a washout, the first time Sergeant McShane had not shown up at dawn to work them to death. He had not appeared during the remainder of the day either, and Stern — quite out of character — had shown no curiosity about the matter.

McConnell sidestepped the rear corner of the castle and moved quickly along the wall. When he rounded the front, he saw only the dim yellow bulb over the castle door, burning through the rain. A stiff hand bumped him in the chest.

“Hold here, Mr. Wilkes,” said the orderly.

“What the hell—?”

“Shut up, Doctor,” snapped a familiar voice.

McConnell’s eyes focused slowly on the figure crouched against the castle wall. There was a leather bag beside him.

Stern.

McConnell squatted down. “Is this it?”

“I heard Smith’s plane land a little while ago,” Stern said.

McConnell felt his heartbeat quicken. He realized he was clutching the swatch of Cameron tartan in his hand. As the cold rain ran down into his collar, he noticed that the hut village in the meadow across the drive looked empty. No campfires, no singing.

“Where is everybody?”

“Night Assault,” Stern replied.

“What’s that?”

“The colonel’s graduation exercise,” said the orderly. “Closest thing in the world to real combat. The Frenchies are rowing across the loch now.”

McConnell heard a low rumble in the dark. An engine. A canvas-backed army truck slowly ground its way up the drive and stopped by the main entrance of the castle. Over its tailgate climbed three men who looked as if they could barely walk. McConnell caught his breath when they stepped into the glow of the bulb over the door.

One of the men was Sergeant Ian McShane.

Stern jumped up and ran toward the truck. McConnell followed, but before they reached it the castle door opened and Brigadier Smith stepped out into the rain. No tweed coat and stalker’s cap tonight — he was wearing his army uniform. Two orderlies behind him carried McConnell’s heavy suitcases and two large duffel bags.

“Load them into the lorry,” Smith barked. He caught sight of Stern and McConnell. “Into the truck, you two. You’ll find new clothes in those bags. Put them on.”

In the shuffle at the tailgate, McConnell looked into the eyes of Sergeant McShane. What he saw stunned him: fatigue, anger, the remnants of shock. When he touched the sergeant’s arm, McShane jerked suddenly, as if in pain. McConnell saw then that his inner arms had been scraped raw and scabbed over, as if he had skidded fifty yards on cement.

“Where the hell have you been, Sergeant?” he asked.

“Where you’re going, Doctor.”

Suddenly Brigadier Smith was between them. “Into the castle, Sergeant. Whisky and fire. You’ve earned it.”

McShane, flanked by John Lewis and Alick Cochrane, said nothing. Glancing over Smith’s shoulder, McConnell saw that Lewis and Cochrane looked worse than McShane. McShane started to say something, but before he could Brigadier Smith said:

“Carry on, Sergeant.”

Cochrane and Lewis moved toward the door, but McShane stepped around the brigadier and laid a finger on Stern’s chest.

“You mind how you go, over there,” he said. “Look after the doctor here, right? You might be findin’ a warmer welcome than you’ve been led to expect.”

The Highlander looked Brigadier Smith dead in the eye, then turned and trudged into the castle.

“What’s he talking about?” Stern asked.

“They lost a man,” the brigadier said. “That’s all. You’ve lost a few yourself, haven’t you? It was Colin Munro, the weapons instructor. They hauled his body fifteen miles overland to the pickup point. Now, get on with it, eh? We’ve got to be in Sweden by three A.M. Germany by dawn.”

Stern pulled McConnell toward the truck. “Nothing we can do,” he said.

Inside his duffel bag McConnell found not only dry civilian clothes — with proper German tags inside them — but also a neatly pressed and folded military uniform of field gray winter wool. He saw the silver SS runes and the Death’s Head badge on his captain’s cap and felt a chill. Stern’s uniform was gray-green, with the feared green piping and sleeve patch of the SD. On the breast was an Iron Cross First Class and a Wound Badge. The left collar patch indicated that its wearer was a colonel — Standartenführer.

“The civvies or the uniforms?” McConnell asked.

“The uniforms,” said Stern.

McConnell was still dressing when the truck began to roll. Stern bent over the suitcase that contained McConnell’s anti-gas suits and began rummaging beneath them.

“What are you doing?” McConnell asked.

“That bicycle’s not the only thing I stole at the castle,” Stern said over the rumble of the truck. “Smith is crazy if he thinks I’m going into Nazi Germany with nothing but a Schmeisser and a pistol.”

McConnell knelt down and looked into the case. He saw several hand grenades, a small box, and a package wrapped in brown paper.

“What is all that stuff?”

“Plastic explosive. Time pencil detonators. Grenades.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Vaughan’s private arsenal. Thank God those orderlies didn’t search your suitcases.”

“They still might.”

“No. From now on, you and I carry these bags every step of the way.”

Three minutes later the truck stopped. Brigadier Smith appeared at the tailgate.

“At the double,” he said. “No time to lose.”

McConnell dropped to the ground. They had stopped beside an airplane, but no ordinary airplane. It was a high-wing monoplane painted matte black. From fifty yards away it would be totally invisible. Smith’s pilot had put the ominous-looking craft down in a wet field that didn’t look long enough for a flock of geese to land in. Stern bumped past McConnell with the suitcases. Then suddenly the night was shattered by a thunder of guns like a summer storm sweeping across Georgia.

“Christ!” McConnell yelled. “What the hell is that?”

“Into the plane!” the brigadier shouted. “If we hurry we’ll see the best of it!”

McConnell squeezed the duffel bags into the plane, and before he could even catch his breath the grumbling Lysander was climbing the crest of a hill with scant yards to spare. On Smith’s order, the pilot banked over Loch Lochy for a sightseeing run. McConnell had never seen anything like the spectacle below him. Tracer fire arced through the night like something from an H. G. Wells novel. Flares exploded around the plane, illuminating a dozen or so dinghies on the loch below like ducks in a shooting gallery.

“Those Frogs are scared out of their wits right now!” Smith shouted. “Charles’s lads are firing real bullets inches from their arses!”

Smith told the pilot to swing around and head for “checkers,” whatever that meant. As the Lysander swept along the beach, just a hundred feet above exploding mortar shells, McConnell saw an ambulance parked with its headlights on high. Standing in the wet glow of the twin beams was a barrel-chested figure with his hands clasped behind his back. He raised his right arm in farewell as the Lysander buzzed past him, waggling its wings.

“Look at him!” Brigadier Smith shouted. “Standing there like C. B. DeMille himself. What a show! The War Office says Charlie Vaughan uses more ordnance for his Night Assault than Monty used at Alamein!”

The pilot banked into the worst of the storm. It was all McConnell could manage to hold down the contents of his stomach. He tried to take his mind off the nausea by questioning Smith, but the brigadier ignored him. Rain slapped steadily against the perspex windows. The pilot was only the back of a leather cap, Stern a silhouette in the darkness close beside him.

For the first time since David’s death, he realized how irrevocable it all was. He was adrift in a black airplane under a starless sky, droning over an island that had shown no lights to heaven since 1939. The idea that there was a worldwide war going on, perhaps for the soul of mankind, had never seemed more real than it did now.

Were these the smells David had known? The duck-blind smell of rainsoaked wool and leather? The bite of aviation fuel and oil? The scent of anticipation emanating from Stern, a sweaty tang of the hunter at first light? And of course the metallic odor McConnell fancied he smelled on himself—

The smell of fear.

For the first time, the reality of his destination entered into him. Nazi Germany. There was a square yard of the glorious Reich waiting for his two feet to touch down on, maybe waiting for his corpse. He tried to banish this thought while the Lysander plowed doggedly southward against the storm, and by the time the plane began to descend, he had been asleep for over an hour.

The impact of the wheels on earth knocked him awake. “Is this Sweden?” he asked woozily.

“Not quite, lad.”

Brigadier Smith’s voice. The plane turned and taxied back the way it had come. Outside, McConnell saw only darkness. Then a pair of auto headlights blinked three times.

The pilot rolled up to the car and stopped.

“Out,” Smith ordered.

They trundled out of the plane and into the car, a polished Humber. The pilot stayed in the Lysander. The driver of the Humber wore a chauffer’s black uniform and drove like a man late for his daughter’s wedding. The German uniforms drew several glances in the rearview mirror, but very shortly the car drew up beside a large, trimmed hedge. Smith got out and led them through a formal English garden. McConnell saw a faint reflection of moonlight on mullioned windows, then he was standing with Smith and Stern beside an oak door.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Stern.

“Clean up your language,” the brigadier said tersely.

Smith opened the door and led them into a dim corridor. McConnell smelled leather bookbindings and old chintz, oiled wood and tea. As they moved through the dark house, he saw the gleam of brass and crystal. For a moment he thought they’d entered the rooms of his tutor at Oxford. But that was impossible.

Brigadier Smith turned suddenly into another corridor lit by an electric wall lamp. He stopped before a door. The paneling beside it looked four hundred years old. Smith put his hand on the doorknob, then looked back at Stern.

“Look sharp,” he said. “Speak only when spoken to, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”

McConnell noticed with some uneasiness that the brigadier’s usual informality was nowhere in evidence. Every word and gesture was distinctly military. When Smith opened the door, he realized why.

The first thing he saw was the bald top of a round head. The head was leaning over a huge map that, even upside down, McConnell recognized as the Pas de Calais. The portly body was encased in a navy pea jacket, which seemed odd until McConnell noticed that the interior of the house was barely warmer than the frigid air outside. He smelled the long cigar in the ashtray before he saw it, then the aromatic brandy in the crystal glass.

Winston Churchill looked up from the map and blinked.

“By thunder!” he cried, standing straight. “Himmler’s hooligans have come for me at last!”

McConnell laughed, a little hysterically perhaps, but the prime minister had found exactly the right gambit to put them at ease. It couldn’t be too often that Winston Churchill found himself face to face with jackbooted SS officers. His grin as he looked them up and down seemed to indicate that he was enjoying it. McConnell marveled at the vitality radiating from the man. Churchill was seventy years old, but his watery blue eyes shone with humor and almost unnerving intelligence. When he stuck the cigar between his lips and spoke directly to McConnell, Mark felt a sudden magnifying of his own importance, like a subtle shift in the earth’s gravitational field.

“So, how did you like Scotland, Doctor?” he asked, his voice far richer than his radio broadcasts. “Quite a tough little course, eh?”

The forward thrust of Churchill’s prodigious head seemed an implicit challenge. “Pretty tough,” McConnell agreed.

“Duff tells me you passed with flying colors.”

McConnell was aware that the prime minister exploited every facet of his daunting charisma to sway others to his cause, yet despite this awareness he could not but be affected by it. He felt almost defensive when he heard Stern mutter behind him:

“Games.”

“What’s that?” Churchill asked, cocking his chin and puffing on the cigar. “Stern, isn’t it?”

“I said games. That’s what they play up there.”

McConnell had no doubt Brigadier Smith was on the verge of knifing Stern in the kidneys.

“Mr. Stern,” said Churchill, “they play games at Achnacarry because war is a game. It is a game you play with a smile. If you can’t smile, you grin. And if you can’t grin, you get out of the way until you can!”

He set his cigar in the ashtray and leaned across the desk, his hands splayed on its polished surface. “I asked to see you men for two reasons. Because you are civilians, and because you are not British subjects. You are undertaking a mission of the most hazardous nature. I want to impress upon you the supreme importance of this mission. This mission, gentlemen, must not fail.”

He hiked both trouser legs and sat behind the desk. “I wanted to speak especially to you, Doctor McConnell. I understand you’re a follower of Mr. Gandhi?”

McConnell found himself surprisingly willing to answer. “To a degree, yes.”

“I hope not to the degree that some of your scientific colleagues are. Do you know Professor Bohr?”

“Niels Bohr? The Danish physicist?”

“That’s the man.”

“I know of him.”

“That utopist has the most muddleheaded perspective on war I’ve ever heard. He’s like a bloody child. He sat in front of me and rambled for three quarters of an hour and I still had no idea what he was talking about. I think it all boiled down to resisting violence with humility. At least Gandhi says it in one tenth the time.”

Churchill’s eyes narrowed with incisive curiosity. “What about you, Doctor? Do you believe humility is the best weapon to use against Herr Hitler’s armies?”

McConnell did not answer immediately. The mention of Niels Bohr had distracted him. The renowned physicist was supposed to be in Sweden. How had he “sat in front of” Winston Churchill? This strange revelation dovetailed with the whispered rumors he had heard at Oxford about accelerated research into atomic physics.

“Doctor?” Churchill prompted.

“I think events have gone beyond that now, Mr. Prime Minister. But I also think Hitler could have been stopped with little or no violence years ago.”

“I quite agree. But we live in the present.” His voice rose a semitone. “Duff tells me your father won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Great War. At the St. Mihiel salient.”

“That’s right,” said McConnell, wondering why Churchill’s knowledge of his past should take him by surprise. “Also the Silver Star. Of course, he threw them both into the Potomac River in 1932.”

Churchill tucked his chin into his chest and gave McConnell a froglike stare. “Why the devil did he do that?”

McConnell wasn’t sure the prime minister would like the answer, but he told him. “Remember the Bonus Army Riot in Washington? During the Depression?”

“Veteran’s pensions or something?” rumbled Churchill.

“Exactly. Some men from my father’s old unit had gone up with the vets who were trying to get relief from the government. There were about twenty-five thousand of them, with their families. They called and asked my dad if he would go up and try to give them some medical help. He went. The D.C. police were feeding the vets and their families, but President Hoover had no sympathy. After three months of peaceful demonstration, he called in the army. The army attacked the unarmed crowds with tear gas, bayonets, cavalry, and tanks. Several vets were shot, some infants gassed to death.” McConnell paused. “My father was in that crowd.”

Churchill watched with unblinking eyes. “Do I sense some deeper moral to this story?”

“A footnote. I have since learned the names of some of the officers who attacked that crowd. The troops were led by a man named Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur disobeyed Hoover and went far beyond his original orders. MacArthur’s aide was a Major Dwight Eisenhower. The saber-wielding cavalry were led by Captain George Patton. So, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you understand why my devotion to the military is less than blind.”

“I do indeed. Politics can be a difficult business, Doctor. I must sadly admit that I have made similar mistakes. But none of that affects the current situation. I don’t have to explain to a man of your gifts the threat facing Christian civilization.”

McConnell had no doubt that Stern had noted the omission of Jews from that formulation.

“For your own reasons, whatever they are, you have agreed to go on this mission. For that I thank you. I am not exaggerating when I say that the liberation of Europe may hang upon it.”

Churchill’s eyes played over McConnell’s face for some moments. Then he took a sheet of notepaper from his desk and lifted a pen from its well. “There is bound to be loss of life during this mission,” he said, writing quickly. “I want you to know that final responsibility rests with me.”

Churchill tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to McConnell, who read it with astonishment.

On my head be these deaths.

W

“I’m half-American myself, you know,” said Churchill. “And I reckon you’re at least half-English, Doctor.”

“What?” McConnell mumbled, still looking at the remarkable note. “What do you mean?”

Churchill clamped his teeth down on his cigar and grinned. “Any man who has survived both Oxford University and Achnacarry Castle has earned his citizenship!”

McConnell heard Brigadier Smith’s feet shifting impatiently on the floor behind him. Then Stern’s German-accented voice cut the air of the study.

“What about my people?” he asked in an accusatory tone. “Is there a place for Jews in your Anglo-American paradise?”

“Hold your tongue!” bellowed Brigadier Smith.

“Let him speak, Duff,” Churchill said. “He has a right to be angry.”

Stern took a step forward. The SD uniform and German accent gave his words a chilling intensity. “I want to know if you will really support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine after the war.”

Churchill punctuated his words with his cigar, using it like a pointer. “I most certainly will, Mr. Stern. But the key phrase in your question was ‘after the war.’ There’s a damned great lot of fighting to be done yet.”

“And I’m ready to do it,” Stern said.

“Are you? Well then. When you get back from this mission, I shall personally see to it that you get a commission in the Jewish Brigade.” He smiled. “You’ll need a different uniform, of course. They wouldn’t like that swastika.”

“There is no Jewish Brigade! It’s been buried in paperwork for years.”

“Not any longer,” said Churchill. “I’ve unburied it. The Jewish Brigade will fight in the liberation. So, are you interested?”

Stern actually snapped to attention.

Churchill beamed. “This is my sort of fellow, Duff. You’ve chosen well, I think.”

“He’ll do,” Smith said grudgingly. “But I’m afraid we really must go. The schedule, you know.”

“H-Hour,” Churchill said with relish. “And right into Germany! What I wouldn’t give to go with you.” He stood up and vigorously shook both McConnell’s and Stern’s hands.

McConnell thought of something else he wanted to ask, but by then the brigadier had whisked them out of the room and along the dim corridor.

The driver of the Humber met them at the outside door.

“Follow him,” Smith said. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

As they passed outside, McConnell looked back. They were exiting from a different door, and above it he saw the words: Pro Patria Omnia. Now he realized what Duff Smith had said to his pilot over Loch Lochy. He had not said to head for “checkers” but Chequers, which was the country residence of the British prime minister. As he followed Stern back to the Lysander, McConnell wondered if Adolf Hitler knew what words were engraved above the door of that house, and what they meant.

All for the Fatherland.

Churchill was studiously smoking his cigar when Brigadier Smith returned. Smith took a chair opposite the desk and waited for the inevitable grilling the PM always gave before important operations. Churchill exhaled a great cloud of blue smoke, sniffed, then rested his cigar on the rim of the ashtray.

“This is the only operation I have ever sanctioned that goes directly against the wishes of the Americans,” he said soberly. “I’m still not sure I fancy using an American to do it. Even if he is the right man from a technical standpoint. It could cause problems later.”

“There won’t be any problems, Winston. If this mission succeeds, it succeeds in producing a negative: the nonuse of nerve gas by the Nazis. And if it fails, both Stern and McConnell will in all likelihood be dead.”

“What if it succeeds, but the good doctor decides to unburden himself afterwards? For reasons of conscience.”

Smith peered into the blue eyes, trying to read the subtext of the conversation. At length he said, “This is a dangerous mission. Even if it succeeds, it’s quite possible that McConnell and Stern might not get back alive.”

Churchill steepled his fingers and focused his eyes somewhere in the shadows beyond Smith. “Does anyone know McConnell is going on this mission? Anyone at all?”

“He left two letters with an Oxford don. For his wife and mother. The usual stuff. I confiscated them.”

Churchill sighed heavily. “If Eisenhower or Marshall learn I’ve bypassed them to make a strike of this magnitude—”

“They’ve left you no alternative, Winston! If Eisenhower’s armies fall dead after thirty seconds on the French beaches, Roosevelt and Marshall will scream to high heaven about what should have been done, and Ike will resign, but by then it will be too late.”

Churchill was nodding. “I agree, Duff. The question is, will the mission succeed? Is there a real chance?”

“Absolutely.”

“What about our gas? How long will it remain stable now?”

“It varies from lot to lot. The last two batches from Porton remained stable for ninety-seven hours.”

“What’s that? Four days?”

“Just over that.”

“And it was lethal?”

“Oh, quite, yes. Dispatched two large primates rather handily.”

Churchill winced. “Don’t tell me where you got your test subjects. I don’t want the Royal Society beating down my door. How old is the gas your Achnacarry men took in?”

Smith looked at his watch. “Twenty-six hours and counting.”

“Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?”

“The Raubhammer demonstration is in four days,” said Smith. “If we don’t pull it off by then, we’re probably too late anyway. If the wind is under seven miles per hour when they arrive, Stern will release the gas tonight. If not tonight, then tomorrow.”

Churchill picked up his pen and began doodling on a notepad. “That’s why you want the submarine to stand by for four days. The weather must be right for the attack?”

“That, and the exhibition for Hitler. I want to give them every possible chance to make the attack. As for weather, four miles an hour is optimal wind speed for a gas attack of this type, preferably without rain.”

“Does Stern or McConnell know the gas may not work?”

“Of course not.”

Churchill pulled the heavy pea jacket around his neck. “Duff, if you had to give me a percentage chance of success, what would you say?”

Smith ruminated. “Fifty-fifty for the attack itself. But if the attack is successful, I think there’s a ninety percent chance the bluff will work. Winston, I’m absolutely positive that this nerve gas initiative is an all-Himmler show. Everything points to it. When we hit him discreetly with his own personal ‘miracle weapon,’ we’ll knock his legs right out from under him. As far as he’ll know, we’ve got ten thousand tons of British Sarin ready to drop on Berlin. He’ll have to call off his show.”

“Will he be able to prove we were behind the attack?”

“No. We’re using German cylinders, World War One vintage. But he’ll know who was responsible. I’ll see to that.”

“And if our Sarin doesn’t work?”

Smith shrugged. “Then the bombers go in.”

Churchill made a growling noise in the back of his throat. “What will happen if we have to bomb that camp?”

“That depends on several factors. Again, the weather. How much gas is stored on-site. Our planes will be carrying incendiary bombs, to try to incinerate as much of the gas as possible before it leaves the area. Still, there’s a chance that the nearby villages could be wiped out. We just don’t know enough to predict. If they are wiped out, I’m sure Himmler will simply announce a regrettable industrial accident. Whatever happens, all traces of our mission will be destroyed.”

“What if you don’t hear anything from Stern and McConnell?”

“If I don’t have positive confirmation of success three nights from now, the bombers will go in, no matter what.”

“Do Stern and McConnell know about the bombers?”

“Good God, no.”

Churchill rubbed his forehead with both hands. He had looked vital to McConnell, but Duff Smith knew the prime minister had only just recovered from pneumonia in December, and that after surviving two heart attacks in the same month. The pressures on him were enormous. Yet he insisted on shouldering moral responsibility for every mission.

“They’re civilians, Duff,” Churchill pointed out.

“They’ll sign releases before they leave.”

“That’s not what I meant. You don’t think that with his brother murdered by the SS, you could entrust McConnell with the real purpose of the mission?”

Smith shook his head. “I don’t think Doctor McConnell would kill a human being even to save his own life.”

The telephone on Churchill’s desk rang, but he ignored it. “There is one flaw that could bring disaster, Duff. What if they’re captured and tortured before they can carry out the attack? You gave them L-pills?”

“Stern carries one at all times, if you can believe it. But I wouldn’t trust McConnell to take cyanide even if he had it.” The brigadier felt in his pocket for his pipe. “No need to worry on that score, though. If capture appears imminent, Stern is under orders to shoot the good doctor where he stands.”

Churchill’s phone finally stopped ringing.

“That’s a hard order, Duff. It wouldn’t sit well with a lot of people, on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Smith had anticipated this last spasm of conscience. “There is a precedent, Winston. At Dieppe, when we sent our radar experts to reconnoiter the German radar station, we sent gunmen in behind them — disguised as bodyguards — just in case the Jerries closed in.”

“I don’t see how that makes this situation any better.”

Smith smiled. “One of those bodyguards was an American FBI agent. If the Yanks had no qualms about an FBI man shooting our scientists, I don’t see how they could object to us doing the same.”

Brendan Bracken opened the study door and said, “Hayes Lodge. General Eisenhower is standing by for you.”

Churchill nodded and waved his aide out of the room. “It’s a moot point, Duff, but if any of this ever gets out, who shot whom will be irrelevant. All that matters is secrecy and results. But tell me . . . do you think Stern would really shoot McConnell down in cold blood?”

Duff Smith stood up and patted his khakis flat. “Winston, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind.”