Black Cross

49

Racing southwest on the hard gravel road that followed the river, Stern had left Totenhausen far behind. But McConnell knew the Mercedes had sat inside the camp too long not to have been contaminated. He leaned back over the passenger seat and cranked down the rear window beside Anna’s still-masked head. He wanted to apply pressure to her shoulder wound, but if there was gas residue on his glove, he might kill her by doing it. He reached across the inflated vinyl bundle that held Hannah Jansen and rolled down the other window.

Cold air blasted through the car.

After a full minute, he ripped the air hose out of his mask and breathed deeply. He had never tasted air so sweet. He waited thirty seconds more, then removed Stern’s mask. Stern’s face was badly bruised and covered with dried blood, and one of his eyes nearly swollen shut.

“How far to the coast?” McConnell asked, unzipping his suit and pulling his hands out of the oilskin sleeves.

“Forty kilometers in a plane. Probably an hour by road.”

Something jabbed McConnell in the crotch. He reached into his suit for the offending object. It was Anna’s diary, soaked by river water. Churchill’s note hung out of the top like a soggy bookmark. He dropped the diary into Stern’s leather bag, then climbed into the back seat to attend to Anna. After she managed to follow his orders and unzip her own suit, he tore out a section of her blouse and stuffed it into the hole in her shoulder. Being careful to touch only the inner surfaces, he gently lifted the transparent gas mask off her head and threw it out of the window.

“We’re about to cross the river again,” Stern said over the seat. “This is Tessin. Stay down.”

McConnell leaned across Anna’s lap as they rolled through the blacked out village.

“Is the little girl alive?” Stern asked.

“She’s still moving.”

Using a British commando knife from Stern’s bag, McConnell carefully cut away the rapidly deflating vinyl sheet that held the little girl and the oxygen bottle. “I doubt this thing was completely airtight,” he said, “but the pressure of the escaping oxygen should have kept the nerve gas from getting inside.”

A high-pitched shriek announced the re-entry of two-year-old Hannah Jansen into the land of the living. McConnell dropped the sheet out of the window and hugged the dark-haired child close, trying to comfort her as best he could. It would be a long time, he knew, before she purged the horror of this night from her mind.

“You know where we’re supposed to go?” he asked.

Stern nodded, his eyes on the dark road.

“You think anybody knows what happened? I mean, do you think they’ll have troops out looking for us?”

Stern looked back across the seat, his swollen eye sockets crusted with dried blood.

“Just take care of the women, Doctor. Leave the rest to Standartenführer Stern.”

McConnell kept pressure on Anna’s wound as the Mercedes rolled through the night. Whenever they came to a village, Stern would slow down and coast through at moderate speed. McConnell remembered the names for a long time after: Tessin; Sanitz; Gresenhorst; Ribnitz. Not long after Ribnitz, he smelled sea air. Stern didn’t slow down as he expected, but instead accelerated.

“What are you doing?” McConnell asked.

Stern leaned forward and stared through the windshield. “Our inflatable dinghy is supposed to be hidden in the rocks beneath a certain jetty near Dierhagen. A two-man job. But I’m not about to take an inflatable out into a shipping channel cut by an icebreaker. Not with a wounded woman and a child. It would probably take us two hours just to find the damned thing and inflate it.”

McConnell saw they had entered another village. “What are you going to do then?”

Stern hunched over the wheel. “Be ready to move fast, Doctor. I’ll carry the child, you take the woman. No matter what happens, don’t get separated.”

McConnell had no intention of doing that. “I’m ready,” he said.

Stern drove right down the main street of the village. It looked deserted, but at the end of the street McConnell saw the faint silhouette of masts against the night sky. A light burned in a shack at the entrance to the jetty. Stern stopped long enough to wriggle out of his oilskin suit, then pulled up beside the shack and gave a loud blast on the horn.

“Are you crazy?” McConnell asked.

Stern pulled his SD cap out of his bag, set it on his head at an angle and got out of the car, leaving the engine running.

A uniformed officer of the coastal police stumbled out of the shack with a flashlight in his hand. He was about to curse to high heaven whomever had disturbed his sleep when the beam of his torch fell upon the blood-soaked uniform, the Iron Cross First Class, and the rank badge of a colonel in the SD.

“Get that light out of my face, idiot!” Stern barked. “Stand at attention!”

The policeman — a fifty-year-old veteran of World War One — snapped instantly erect, his thumbs at the seams of his trousers. “What can I do for you, Standartenführer?”

“Who are you?”

“Feldwebel Kurt Voss.”

“Well, Feldwebel, I need a boat.”

The policeman’s face was gray with fright, but he was not stupid enough to mention the blood and bruises on the face of the Nazi apparition before him. “There are many boats here, Standartenführer. What type of boat do you require?”

“A motor launch. A seaworthy vessel, the fastest on the dock.”

The policeman swallowed. “Most of the boats here are for fishing, Standartenführer. And with the ice this time of year . . . well, few go out at all.”

“There must be something.”

“There is the Kriegsmarine patrol boat. Its crew put in earlier tonight for . . . well—”

“I understand perfectly, Feldwebel.” Stern smiled coldly. “Lead the way to this craft. I will follow in my car.”

“But you must speak to the captain first, Standartenführer. He will certainly . . .”

The policeman fell silent under Stern’s withering glare.

Stern cocked his chin and enunciated each word separately in the Gestapo fashion, like whiplashes. “The captain will do what, Feldwebel? Report to Berlin that he was unavailable to assist an SD officer on Reich security business because he was lying drunk in a brothel?”

The policeman shook his head violently. “You are right, Standartenführer! Follow me. I’ll have the boat running before you get aboard.”

There was some confusion at the boat when Anna and little Hannah appeared. The wide-eyed policeman could not convince himself that a wounded woman and a child were involved in official SD business, but he was trying hard. Stern carried Hannah into the cabin and laid her in a berth. McConnell and Anna sat down opposite her.

“I’ll be on the bridge,” Stern told them. He squeezed Anna’s good arm. “We’re almost there.”

He found the policeman standing at the wheel. “How much fuel do we have, Feldwebel?”

“The tanks are full, Standartenführer. There’s also an extra can in the hold.”

“Enough to get us to Sweden?”

“Sweden!” The policeman’s terror of the SD battled with his fear of being charged in some treasonous scheme. “Standartenführer, if your business is that important, I’m sure Captain Leber would be glad to ferry you across. Let me call him for you. I know exactly where he is.”

“I’m sure you do.” Stern revved the engines of the Schnellboot and was rewarded with a powerful rumble. He motioned the policeman closer. “Feldwebel,” he said softly, “what I am about to say you will repeat on pain of death. The woman and child you just saw are the mistress and child of Reichsführer Himmler. I am their bodyguard. Two hours ago, they were nearly kidnapped by officers disloyal to the Führer. We barely escaped with our lives. The Reichsführer personally instructed me to get them to Sweden by dawn. Now — do I have enough fuel?”

The policeman nodded hopelessly.

“How far to open water?”

“Six kilometers.”

“That is all I require, Feldwebel. Return to your post.”

The policeman climbed onto the dock without a word. Running up the jetty, he heard the thunder of the patrol boat’s twin inboard engines as Stern sped north through the black channel that led through the ice sheet to the open waters of the Baltic. Once inside his hut, the feldwebel reached for his telephone, then pulled his hand back into his lap. Stern’s scandalous story was sufficient to stay his hand for several minutes. But in the end he snatched up the phone again and called a certain well-known house in Dierhagen to inform Kriegsmarine Captain Leber that a son of a whore from the SD had hijacked his patrol boat to go to Sweden.

After one hour and twenty minutes inside the E-Block, Avram Stern knew the women and children could stand no more. There was no light. Children perching on their mothers’ shoulders blocked all four porthole windows. The heat was stifling, almost unbearable; several women had already fainted, and there was nowhere for them to fall. The noise was unbearable. The ceaseless shrieks and wails of hysterical women and children hammered at the shoemaker’s eardrums, raising the specter of panic in his own mind. He’d shouted a dozen times for them to be silent, but to no avail.

He felt the dead weight of an unconscious woman sag against him. The child who had been sitting on her shoulders screamed and toppled the other way, into the clawing, shoving mass. Avram tried to take a deep, calming breath, but the air that entered his lungs tasted like acid. He took the machine pistol from the boy Jonas had given it to and began climbing over the heads of the women. Fingernails raked his face and neck, but he struck back, fighting toward the only window whose position he was sure of relative to the door: the window from which Heinrich Himmler had observed the last selection.

He saw a glimmer of moonlight.

When he finally reached the window, he had to fight the urge to immediately shoot it out. No matter how bad things were inside the gas chamber, death might wait without. He pressed his face to the double-paned glass. Bodies lay strewn across the alley as if they had fallen off a plague wagon. Bile rose into his chest. Avram knew he would recognize every dead face in the alley. What had Jonas done? And why? Where was the benefit? As he stared at the hellish scene, something moved slowly into his field of vision.

A dog.

It wasn’t one of Sturm’s German shepherds with powerful haunches and a glowing coat, but a mongrel from the hills. A scavenger that survived on the refuse of Dornow. The mongrel moved from one corpse to another with boldness driven by hunger. It lingered at the corpse of a woman, tugged at her shift, then licked her face and backed up to gauge the response. Avram counted to sixty, warding off angry blows from below.

The dog was still alive.

Avram pressed the barrel of the machine pistol to the window and pulled the trigger.

Opening the hatch of the E-Block wasn’t half as difficult as climbing through the jagged porthole had been. The moment he pulled back the steel door, limp bodies cascaded through it like corpses he’d once seen at a rail siding in eastern Germany. He backed up the cement stairs and waited for the hysterical mass of women and children to empty from the gas chamber.

When the alley was full of milling prisoners, he climbed to the top of the hospital steps and fired the machine pistol into the air. “Listen to me!” he shouted. “We have survived, but we are not yet saved. SS reinforcements are bound to arrive soon.” A ripple of fear passed through the crowd. “We must get away immediately. The best hope for all of you is the forests of Poland. I want the two largest German-speakers among you to go to the SS barracks and put on uniforms like mine. Do not try to strip the dead! Gas on their clothing could kill you. Look for spare uniforms in closets or chests. I want ten others to search the camp for the troop truck. The trucks by the factory will be badly contaminated. Touch nothing unless absolutely necessary. There could be lethal gas on any surface.”

As the frightened women spoke among themselves, Avram turned and reached through the shattered window in the hospital’s back door and pushed down the handle with the butt of the machine pistol. Walking through, he felt a tug on his belt. He turned and looked into the eyes of Rachel Jansen, who carried her three-year-old son on her left hip. The boy’s eyes were glazed with shock.

“Where are you going, Shoemaker?” Rachel asked.

“To look for money.”

“I want to come with you.”

Avram nodded and led her into the dark building.

In an office on the second floor he found a hundred Reichmarks, but it was not even a quarter of what he would need.

“Will money help us in Poland?” Rachel asked.

Still ransacking drawers, Avram did not answer.

“Do you really believe we can cross the border and contact a friendly resistance group?”

“There’s a fair chance.” Avram slammed a door shut and turned to face her. “But I don’t think it’s the best chance. You don’t have to go to Poland if you don’t want to.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you have the courage, you can come with me. I have a friend in Rostock. A Gentile. He worked ten years in my shop. He offered to help me many years ago, but I was too stupid to understand the danger. I am going to try to reach him now.”

“You mean go into the city itself?” Rachel asked fearfully.

“It will be dangerous,” he conceded. “If we had money it would be better. We could try to buy our way across to Sweden. I’ve found a little, but not enough. And we don’t have time to search the whole camp.”

Rachel was silent in the darkness. At length she said, “Do you really think Rostock is the best chance?”

“For me, yes. For you and the child, yes. But no more.”

“I have money, Shoemaker.”

“What? How much?”

“Three more diamonds. I found them the night you caught me outside. The night Marcus died.”

Avram seized her arms with joy. “I thank God you are a devious woman! Hurry, you’ll need an SS uniform. I saw one in the closet here. It belonged to one of the assistant doctors. Rauch, I think.”

They heard the bellow of the troop truck before Rachel finished dressing. When she had, Avram carried Jan down the stairs and they joined the crowd outside.

“Into the truck!” Avram said. “Everyone, hurry!”

While mothers passed children up into the bed of the truck, Avram sought out the two women he’d sent to the SS barracks to find uniforms. He found them by the cab. They’d taken it upon themselves to procure rifles as well as uniforms. Perhaps they have a chance after all, Avram thought. With their short-cropped hair they could certainly pass for SS men at a distance.

“We found it idling on the road with its headlights burning,” said the larger of the pair.

“You can drive a truck?” he asked.

She nodded curtly. “You are not coming?”

“No. Listen to me. Drive eastward by as straight a route as you can, but stick to the back roads. It shouldn’t take more than three hours. Stop for nothing. If anyone does manage to stop you, tell them you’re taking typhus-infected prisoners into the forest to shoot them, by order of SS Lieutenant-General Herr Doktor Klaus Brandt. Do you understand?”

The women nodded.

“When you get close to the border, drive the truck into the trees. Cross on foot through the forest. If you are being chased, don’t make a fight of it and don’t stop to try to save any wounded. Run for your lives. Your only hope is contacting a friendly resistance group in the forest.” He turned up his palms. “That is all I know to tell you. You’d better get moving.”

The two women climbed up into the cab and shifted the truck into gear. Avram helped lift the last of the children into the back, then signaled to the driver. As the truck trundled past the dead and out of the alley, he thought of the old woman who had compared the E-Block to a lifeboat. She was dead now, but she had been right. Now the truck was the lifeboat. He lifted Jan from Rachel’s arms and began walking out of the alley.

“Where are we going?” Rachel asked.

“They keep a Kubelwagen parked behind the gas storage tanks. That’s perfect for us. Small but official.”

Rachel had to hurry to keep up with his long strides. “Are you sure about Rostock? You’ll have to get us through checkpoints, speak to policemen.”

“I’m sure.”

“Can you fool them?”

Avram laughed softly. “Frau Jansen, I was once a German soldier. I had a medal from the Kaiser. I can convince those bastards we’re on a mission for Hitler himself if it will get us a step closer to freedom.”

Rachel took his free hand in hers and squeezed hard. “To Palestine,” she said.

One mile north of Dierhagen, Jonas Stern extinguished the running lights of the patrol boat and let it idle in the open water. At least the dangerous run through the narrow ice channel was over. He assumed the Kriegsmarine had been alerted by now, but hoped that his emphasis on reaching Sweden would cause them to establish a blockade line farther out to sea. He blinked the running lights on and off three times in quick succession, waited thirty seconds, then repeated the signal.

He saw nothing. Three hundred and sixty degrees of darkness. He wondered if there had ever been a submarine at all. Had Smith ever believed he and McConnell would get this far?

“Why have we stopped?”

McConnell had poked his head up from the cabin.

“How’s the nurse?” Stern asked.

“Okay for now. There was no morphine in the first aid kit. I gave her some schnapps I found in a bag. I need real medical supplies, Jonas.”

Stern nodded. “This is where we’re supposed to meet the submarine. But there’s no sub here.”

“But Smith knows we’re coming, right? I mean, he knows we succeeded.”

Stern rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Did you ever consider the possibility that Brigadier Smith never meant for us to get out alive, Doctor? That the attack was the only real point of all this?”

McConnell said nothing. Stern’s suggestion was more than a possibility. A man who would send bombers to wipe out all trace of their mission would not hesitate to leave them stranded in a black ocean between the SS and the German Navy.

“My God,” Stern murmured. “Look!”

Forty meters off the bow, the massive conning tower of a submarine rose out of the waves like the Biblical leviathan.

“They must have been watching us through their periscope!” Stern cried. “They were looking for a raft, not a German patrol boat. Get Anna and the girl ready.”

By the time Stem brought the patrol boat alongside the submarine, its captain, first officer, two ratings, and a man not in uniform but wearing a black turtleneck sweater were waiting for them. The first officer carried a submachine gun. Stern saw “HMS Sword” painted on the submarine’s hull. The ratings caught hold of the patrol boat with long hooks.

“Code names?” called the man in the black sweater.

“Butler and Wilkes!” Stern replied.

“Come aboard.”

Stern went below and brought Hannah Jansen out of the cabin. McConnell followed, supporting Anna. As they approached the rail, the man in the black sweater pointed at them and said something to the captain.

“Hold!” the captain shouted. “We can only take the two of you aboard! No refugees!”

McConnell saw that this order had not surprised Stern at all. “Captain, I’m a medical doctor!” he shouted. “This woman has a gunshot wound. The other is a child. They need immediate medical attention!”

The captain’s resolve seemed to waver. The man in the black turtleneck spoke angrily in his ear. The captain brushed him away and said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, but the normal rules do not apply. I have specific orders — only the two of you. You’ve got ten seconds to get aboard this ship.”

Anna pulled McConnell’s face close to hers. “Go,” she said. “I can drive the boat. I’ll point it north and try to reach Sweden. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“Not a chance in hell,” he said. “It’s a hundred miles to Sweden, straight through the German Navy.”

“We’ll scuttle her!” Stern threatened. He reached into his bag and brought out a British grenade. “Then you’ll have to rescue them. It’s the law of the sea!”

“I won’t have that!” the captain shouted. “I will not have it!” He looked from Stern to the man in the black sweater.

McConnell sensed the honor of a sea captain struggling with his sense of duty to an authority he wasn’t sure he trusted. The captain leaned over and said something to his first officer. McConnell could scarcely believe it when the first officer turned and pointed the submachine gun at the man in the sweater.

“Come aboard!” the captain called. “Quickly.”

McConnell went below to retrieve the crate containing the sample gas cylinders. He stared at the lid, thinking. He did not like what he had seen of their rescue party so far. He opened the crate quickly, then sealed it again and carried it topside.

The ratings were holding the patrol boat steady for the transfer. McConnell handed the crate up to the first officer, but the man in the sweater thrust himself forward and took it. The first officer took aboard Stern’s leather bag — and his explosives — even before he took Hannah Jansen. As Stern climbed past McConnell, he whispered, “The black sweater is Intelligence. Probably SOE.”

As they stood freezing in the darkness beside the conning tower, the captain said, “We’ll use the radio to call Sweden. I can’t disobey a direct order. Brigadier Smith must give me approval.”

McConnell felt fury rising in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I’ve no choice. There’s nowhere else I can put them off.”

“We’d better hurry, sir,” said the first officer. “The Kriegsmarine has been alerted. It won’t take them long to find us.”

The first officer escorted the SOE man up the ladder and into the sub, not exactly at gunpoint, but with a clear understanding of who was in charge. Stern carried Hannah up with ease, but both ratings had to help McConnell get Anna up the ladder and through the hatch. Her arm was stiffening, the pain and blood loss taking their toll.

The captain ordered that Anna and Hannah be held at the foot of the ladder while he used the radio. McConnell didn’t want to leave them, but Stern shoved him along a claustrophobic passage toward the radio room. A half-dozen young faces gaped at the German uniforms as they passed.

While the wireless operator raised “Atlanta” and verified the codes, the captain, a rather short man with tired eyes, said, “Don’t like irregular operations. Dirty business. Our job is sinking ships, not ferrying Joes all over the seven seas. Still—”

“Got him, sir,” said the wireless operator. “Better make it quick. We’re transmitting en clair, and the Kriegsmarine has DF gear all over the place.”

“Right.” The captain took the mike. “Tickell here. I’ve got a sticky situation. A wounded woman and a child in dire circumstances. I’ve brought them aboard for medical attention. Request permission to ferry them to you. Will you take them off there?”

The only answer was a high-pitched electronic whine and intermittent static. The captain was standing half in and half out of the wireless station. Pressed against his back, McConnell had to turn his head only two inches to look into Stern’s eyes. Stern did not look confident. At last the voice of Brigadier Smith cut through the static.

“Tickell, there’s more at stake here than you will ever know. I will only say this once. Put those refugees back into whatever craft they arrived on and make for your destination straightaway. Confirm.”

The captain leaned farther into the wireless room and said in a strained voice, “You’re condemning them to death, Smith. I won’t have that on my conscience.”

McConnell felt Stern jab him in the side. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the intelligence man standing about two yards behind Stern, with the first officer behind him. There would be no getting past them to help Anna and the child.

“Nothing’s on your precious conscience!” crackled Smith’s voice. “You saw my authority. If you won’t put them off, my man will. Confirm.”

McConnell heard a long sigh, then the voice of the captain saying, “Message received and understood. Proceeding with all speed.”

Captain Tickell looked back over his shoulder. “Put them back in the patrol boat, Deevers!” he called to his first officer. “Show the woman how to work the throttle and compass, then point her towards Sweden.” He turned and shouted toward the other end of the corridor. “Prepare to dive!”

McConnell couldn’t believe the man would really put off a wounded woman and a child. He laid a hand on Tickell’s shoulder. “Captain—”

The captain shoved roughly past him, then stopped and looked back, his face full of disgust. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” he said. “But there’s nothing I can do. It’s out of my hands.” He turned and made his way along the passage toward the control room.

McConnell slipped a hand into his pocket. Duff Smith had left him no choice, and this would be his only chance. Just as Captain Tickell reached the control room, McConnell stepped away from the door to the radio room and brought out the eight-inch metal cylinder marked Soman IV.

“Captain!” he shouted. “Your ship is in grave danger!”

Tickell turned slowly and peered back up the passage.

McConnell held up the cylinder in his left hand and clenched the valve key between his right thumb and forefinger. “This canister contains the deadliest war gas known to man. This is what we were sent into Germany to get. No one knows better than you that this submarine is nothing but a sealed tin can with a motor—”

McConnell heard the sound of running feet behind him. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see Stern shatter the nose of the SOE man with his right hand and flatten the first officer with his left elbow. The first officer tried to use his machine pistol, but he was no match for Stern in close quarters. A burst of gunfire ricocheted though the passage, ringing the steel hull like a mammoth bell. Then Stern was holding the weapon over two dazed and bleeding men.

“Did you shoot them?” McConnell asked in a shaky voice.

“No. Watch the captain!”

McConnell whirled, brandishing the cylinder. Tickell had already covered half the distance to him. “Don’t let this go any further, Captain!” he shouted. He felt his control over the situation disintegrating fast. “If I release this gas in this submarine, every man on board will be dead within five minutes. Either close the hatch and dive, or preside over the death of your ship.” His eyes bore into the British officer’s. “So help me God, Captain, I will do it.”

“He’s bluffing,” groaned the SOE man from the floor.

The captain stared wide-eyed at the cylinder.

“How long will it take us to get to Sweden, Stern?”

“Submerged . . . about six hours.”

McConnell shook the cylinder again. “Six hours, Captain! I could keep my hand on this valve for twice that long if I had to. You have two choices. You know which is right. Which will it be?”

Captain Tickell gazed into McConnell’s eyes with the cold-blooded assessment of a man accustomed to balancing lethal risks. As he did, McConnell felt a strange calm settle in his soul. He was not bluffing. That realization gave him a sense of power he had never known in his life.

Tickell’s eyes narrowed slightly, then widened like those of a hunter who has followed a wounded lion too far into the bush. “Let my first officer up,” he said. “Deevers, close the bloody hatch. Duff Smith can sort out his own mess.”

A dizzying wave of relief washed over McConnell.

“Prepare to dive!” Tickell shouted to the control room. “We’ll torpedo the patrol boat before we go.”

“Thank you, Captain,” McConnell said. “You did the right thing.”

Tickell’s jaw muscles clenched with cold fury. “I’ll see you both hanged for this,” he said.

“You’ll probably have to watch them pin medals on us first,” Stern said over McConnell’s shoulder. “Let’s get this stinking tub to Sweden.”

Six hours later, HMS Sword surfaced one mile off the southern Swedish coast. The voyage had been a test of nerves, with McConnell treating Anna’s wound while Stern stood guard with the revolver and the canister of Soman. They’d shut the door long enough for McConnell to set and splint Stern’s broken finger, but the lacerations on his chest had had to wait. Hannah Jansen had drunk some powdered milk and vomited it up immediately. By the time they crawled out of the submarine’s conning tower to be taken ashore, they were near to exhaustion.

Airman Bottomley had rented a motor launch to meet the sub. The sleek wooden craft rose and fell gently on the swell beside the sub’s sail. When Bottomley refused to take Anna and the child aboard, Captain Tickell told him he would take them or be blown out of the water.

Bottomley took them.

The SOE man remained on the Sword; apparently there was other “dirty business” still to be done in the Baltic. The launch reached the Swedish coast after a ten-minute run, homing on a blinking green signal lantern.

When Bottomley cut the engine and drifted into the small dock, McConnell spied the two silhouettes waiting for them. One was Duff Smith. The other was a little taller, but bundled in a heavy coat and muffler. For a wild moment he thought Winston Churchill himself might reach down out of the gloom to pull them onto the dock. In the event, he was even more stunned. The face at the other end of the assisting arm belonged to his brother.

McConnell froze for a moment, watched Stern hand the child up to David. Before he had time to think, Stern had helped Anna out of the launch. Like a sleepwalker he climbed out of the boat and faced them all on the jetty.

David broke into a huge grin and said, “Goddamn it, boy, you made it!”

McConnell could not speak. Despite the evidence before him, his mind tried to deny the reality. Then David passed Hannah Jansen to Stern, reached into his flight jacket and brought out a pewter flask.

“How about a shot of Kentucky’s finest, Mac?” he asked. “It’s cold as a welldigger’s ass up here.”

McConnell turned to Brigadier Smith. “Does he know . . . what I thought?”

Duff Smith shook his head very slightly, then pointed at the wooden crate. “Is that the gas sample, Doctor?”

McConnell nodded dully. “Soman Four. Fluoromethyl-pinacolyl-oxyphosphine oxide.” He gestured at Stern’s bag. “Brandt’s lab log is in there.” He brought out the cylinder he had used to blackmail the sub captain. “But I’m going to hang onto this one until we reach England, if you don’t mind. Maybe even longer. Think of it as insurance.”

“Dear boy,” Smith said, “there’s no need for histrionics. You’re the hero of the hour.”

“When are we going back to England?”

“Right now. Your brother will fly us in the Junkers. He flew you over from England four nights ago, though neither of you knew it.”

“I did?” David said. “I’ll be damned.”

“It was David who fixed the Lysander engine. Made the whole jaunt possible, I daresay.” Smith allowed himself a smile. “A credit to the Eighth Air Force, this lad. I hate to give him back. And he loves my JU-88A6.”

“That’s a fact,” David chimed in, but by now he had sensed the tension between his brother and the brigadier.

All McConnell could think of was the transatlantic call he had made to his mother three weeks before.

“I wasn’t counting on any refugees, Doctor,” Smith said tetchily. “I’m afraid you’ve caused a spot of bother there.”

McConnell looked at David again. Then he handed the cylinder to Stern and, before anyone could stop him, punched the brigadier in the belly with all his strength.

Smith doubled over, gasping for air.

Airman Bottomley leaped for McConnell, but he didn’t get past David. Seconds later he was hanging by his throat from the crook of the pilot’s elbow.

“Take it easy now, pardner,” David drawled.

Duff Smith straightened up with some difficulty. “It’s all right, Bottomley,” he croaked. “I suppose I deserved that one.”

“Damn right you did,” said McConnell. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here. All of us.”

Brigadier Smith waved his agreement.

McConnell saw Stern staring at him in astonishment. He slipped under Anna’s good arm and braced her for a walk. “Can you make it?” he asked quietly.

Her eyes were only half open, but she nodded.

As they moved along the jetty, David leaned over and said, “What did you punch that old coot for? He’s okay, once you get to know him.”

Mark hugged Anna to his side and shook his head. “Ask me in twenty years,” he said. “It’s a hell of a war story.”