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.
Avram Stern had not killed a human being since 1918, but he did not pause to debate the issue with himself. As he moved across the snow toward the sentry, he wondered how loud the report of the silenced Schmeisser would be. As a veteran of World War One, he found it difficult to believe anything could completely silence the report of a machine gun.
He decided to use the dagger.
He tried to walk confidently, arrogantly, swaggering the way the SS guards did. He concentrated on the sentry’s back. The man was standing just inside the gate, facing the trees. Avram thought of calling out softly so as not to startle him, but the man seemed oblivious. Avram looked down at the silver dagger in his hand. It would take a powerful stroke to penetrate a greatcoat and winter tunic. Jonas had made a great point of cutting the other sentry’s throat, but Avram had no training in such things. He fleetingly wished for a bayonet like the one he had carried in the Great War, or better yet a trusty sharpened spade, the weapon of choice for trench combat.
But this was a different war.
The sentry was startled, but when he saw the brown uniform he relaxed and reached into his greatcoat. “I could use a smoke myself,” he said with a nervous laugh. “That SD bastard scared the life out of me.”
As the match flared, the young sentry’s eyes played over Avram’s face. There was an instant of shared recognition. Avram Stern saw a boy for whom he had crafted a pair of soft slippers as a gift for a girlfriend; the sentry saw the middle-aged face of the shoemaker.
Avram’s arm seemed alive with rage as he drove the dagger straight up into the soft skin beneath the sentry’s chin. He felt a sudden shock in his wrist. The dagger point had driven cleanly through palate, sinuses, and brain and hit the roof of the sentry’s skull, stopping his thrust with the dagger’s hilt still three centimeters below the jaw. Looking straight into the wide blue eyes, Avram yanked the haft of the dagger once to the left, then let the body fall onto the snow.
He tried to dislodge the blade from the sentry’s head, but it was beyond his power. He sat the boy up against the fence, as if he had fallen asleep on guard duty. The haft of the dagger kept the head in a semi-upright position. Avram wiped his bloody hands on the sentry’s coat and started back toward the inmate blocks.
His watch read 7:48.
He almost fired his Schmeisser in panic when a group of silent shadows brushed past him in the darkness. Then he realized what was happening.
Rachel Jansen had started the migration to the E-Block.
44
The Cameron tartan flew like a bright flag from the strap of McConnell’s air tank harness as he carried it through the cottage door, Anna close on his heels.
“Wait!” he said. “It’s Stern!”
A half mile away a pair of headlights was moving across the flat stretch of road that led from the hills to Dornow. A second pair appeared out of the darkness at the foot of the hills, following the first.
“Are they chasing him?” McConnell asked anxiously.
“It’s not Stern,” Anna said in a flat voice. “It’s ten till eight now. If he was free, he’d be on the pylon. Look at the difference in those lights. That’s a field car out front with a troop truck behind. My God. They’re coming. Schorner must have caught Stern and broken him.”
She jerked the air cylinder off of McConnell’s shoulder and pulled him toward Greta’s Volkswagen. There, she dropped the cylinder in the rear seat and took four grenades from Stern’s leather bag.
“Get into the car!” she cried. “Get down on the floor! Hurry!”
“What the hell are you going to do?” McConnell asked.
“There’s only one road to the power station, and they’re on it. We can’t drive past them. I’m going to have to stand in the cottage door so that when they get here they’ll come straight for me. When they do, you—”
He grabbed her arms and shook her. “I’m not leaving you here to be killed!”
“Then we’ll both die for nothing.”
He could feel the rumble of the approaching vehicles. “There’s got to be another way!”
Anna glanced back at the oncoming headlights. “All right,” she said. She dropped the grenades back into the front seat. “Follow me!”
She raced into the cottage and switched on every light, then pulled open the cellar door and shouted, “Keep quiet, Sabine! There’s going to be shooting! You could be killed by mistake!”
While McConnell stared in bewilderment, she slammed the cellar door and pulled open a kitchen drawer, from which she took a revolver he had never seen.
“Stan Wojik gave it to me,” she said, pulling him into the bedroom.
A small door led onto the empty field behind the cottage. Anna went first, racing around the side of the building and dropping to her knees at the corner. McConnell followed more slowly under the weight of his suit and the Mauser rifle. As he reached the corner, she made a dash for the Volkswagen. He went after her, and was surprised to see her go for the driver’s seat.
Before she could open the door, he pushed her aside, smashed the window with his rifle butt and shattered the interior light. Then he opened the door and shoved her all the way across the front seat.
“Get down!” he said. “All the way on the floor!”
Anna obeyed. McConnell stretched flat on his back on the seat, his head just beneath the passenger window, inches from her face, his feet angled down beneath the steering wheel. He held the rifle tight along his body, right forefinger on the trigger.
“Why the lights?” he asked.
“They’ll assume anyone breaking blackout regulations so flagrantly must be inside. But if they do check the cars first . . .” She held up her revolver.
The squeal of automobile brakes mingled with the groan of a heavy truck gearing down. McConnell tensed and tried to decipher the sounds. The truck stopped between the car and the cottage, but kept its engine idling. Four doors opened and closed. Heavy boots crunched on the snow. McConnell raised his head to peek out, but his and Anna’s breath had already fogged the window glass. He heard a loud rapping on the cottage door.
“Fraulein Kaas!” shouted a male voice. “Fraulein Kaas, open the door!”
The sound of the submachine gun hit McConnell like an electric shock. Schorner had shot the lock off the door.
A muffled female voice shouted: “Help me! In the name of the Fuhrer help me!”
“Christ, Sabine got loose!” McConnell heard boots clattering on the floorboards of the cottage.
Anna gripped his arm. “What can you see?” she asked.
He sat up slowly and rubbed a small clear circle in the fogged window on the driver’s side. “A half dozen soldiers by the cottage door. Maybe a dozen more in the troop truck.”
“Get ready. When you hear me shout, start the car.”
McConnell had barely got his feet on the pedals when he saw Anna pull the pins out of two grenades. She opened the Volkswagen’s door and stepped out as casually as if she were getting out at a restaurant, then turned toward the troop truck and tossed the grenades. She was firing her pistol into the knot of soldiers by the door even before the grenades exploded.
The Volkswagen’s engine roared to life. McConnell floored the accelerator, but the tires spun in vain on the ice.
Two grenades detonated a split second apart in blinding white flashes. Anna kept shooting. McConnell saw an SS man charge through the cottage door, then fly backward like a dog jerked on a leash. Anna dove back into the car and pulled the door shut, and he eased up on the gas and the tires caught.
