Black Cross

“Weitz?” he whispered.

A blast of gunfire poured out of a doorway.

“SCARLETT! I’m the man you just saved!”

A pause. “In here,” said a muffled voice.

Stern smelled blood when he passed through the door. Weitz shined the flashlight into his eyes, then moved it away. Stern’s eyes tracked the yellow beam until it came to rest on what once had been a human face. The skull was grossly misshapen now, a mass of gore and blood, the white coat beneath it a riot of scarlet and black. On the desk before this mess lay a short iron bar.

“Guten Abend, Standartenfuhrer,” Weitz said in a hushed tone. “This isn’t what I wanted, you know.”

“Who is that?”

Weitz clicked his heels together and gave the corpse a fascist salute. “The distinguished Herr Doktor Klaus Brandt. I wanted it to take longer.”

Stern took the torch from Weitz’s hand. The little man made no effort to resist. One sweep of the walls revealed a nauseating mural of blood and tissue. Stern shined the light on the killer’s face.

“Where is the other gas suit, Herr Weitz?”

Weitz pointed to the floor behind the desk. “He was trying to put it on. Trying to get away.”

Stern picked up the suit, mask, and the boots that lay beside them. “Is there a vinyl sheet anywhere close?” he asked.

“This is a hospital.”

“Get me one then. In the main corridor you’ll find a little girl. I want you to wrap her in the sheet. Can you do that?”

“For the gas, you mean? She’ll need oxygen.”

“Then get me a fucking bottle!”

A powerful explosion rocked the foundations of the hospital, shattering some kind of glassware in the dark office. Weitz cocked his head to one side, as if listening to a particularly fine piece of music.

“What the hell was that?” asked Stern.

“Little rats trying to leave the ship. But they went the wrong way! You told me to booby trap the bomb shelter, remember?”

Stern turned away from the grisly scene and moved toward the door. The telephone on Brandt’s desk rang. He heard Weitz pick it up and say, “Yes?”

After a short pause, Weitz began to laugh. The sound chilled Stern’s blood. “Who is that?” he asked, aiming the torch at the desk.

“Berlin.” Weitz smiled eerily. “Reichsfuhrer Himmler is holding for the Herr Doktor.”

Weitz held the phone against Klaus Brandt’s shattered skull and looked up at Stern. The flashlight reflected the whites of his eyes and the teeth of his grin.

Stern leaped forward and snatched the phone away before Weitz could say anything more. He held the receiver to his ear and heard an irritated voice: “Brandt? Brandt! Confounded telephone lines . . . the Allies have knocked them out again.”

A chill raced across Stern’s arms and shoulders.

“Brandt!” Himmler said again. “What the devil is going on up there?”

Stern touched his lips to the bloody mouthpiece. Very slowly and clearly he said, “Listen to me, chicken farmer. You lost the war tonight. Keep your cyanide pill close. We are coming back for you in the spring.”

He set the phone gently in its cradle, picked up the Raubhammer suit and walked out of the office. Weitz followed with his machine pistol. Before they reached the main hall, the telephone was ringing again.

Rachel waited in the corridor with Hannah in her arms.

“For God’s sake, woman!” yelled Stern.

Rachel shook her head and clung desperately to her daughter. Stern saw in her eyes that she was close to collapse. He had seen it happen to men in the desert, a kind of cumulative shock that could make a man lie down to sleep in the middle of a blazing battlefield. If he took the time to put on the Raubhammer suit, Rachel Jansen would not cross the alley to the E-Block alive. He dropped the suit and the flashlight on the floor, took Weitz’s machine pistol and pulled her toward the back door.

As he crashed through it he saw the rear of the camp — trees, fence, the roof of the E-Block, the alley — illuminated as if by daylight.

What was happening?

Halfway across the alley, he heard a babble of voices to his left. A tall figure wearing a brown SS uniform was running toward him, pulling two children along behind, one by each hand.

“Father?” Jonas shouted.

The figure stopped dead. “Jonas? My son?”

Stern threw his left arm around his father.

“The blood!” cried Avram. “What have they done to you?”

A pistol shot cracked at the far end of the alley. Jonas turned to his right. Just beyond the alley stood the huge barn that held the laboratory and gas factory. When the second crack sounded, he realized what he was hearing — the detonation of the trigger mechanisms on the gas cylinders.

“Into the E-Block!” he yelled. “Now! Everyone!”

He pushed the two children down the concrete steps that led to the gas chamber. Rachel and Hannah already waited by the hatchway.

“They saw me!” Avram said as they shoved the children through the hatch.

“Who saw you?”

“The men. It’s a mob! They know something is happening, Jonas. The E-Block won’t hold another soul! Every Jewish child and some of the Gentile children are inside. The women are holding them on their shoulders, squeezing them into every corner . . . it’s a nightmare!”

Stern pulled Hannah from her mother’s arms. “You are the last, Rachel! Say farewell!”

Rachel took her daughter’s face between her hands. “Remember what I told you, little one. Do whatever Herr Stern tells you. Never” — her voice cracked — “never forget me.” She kissed the terrified child hard on the forehead and then backed away.

“I am going to live,” she told Stern, her black eyes bright with tears. “One day I will come to Palestine. I will want her back. Don’t ever leave her!”

As Jonas pushed her through the hatch, Rachel reached into her shift and pressed something into his hand. It was too large to be another diamond. He looked down. A dreidl. He stuffed the little top into the trouser pocket of the SD uniform.

“She won’t remember!” Rachel cried, backing hard against the wall of bodies behind her. “So you must tell her! It is all she will have of her parents!”

With that she turned and hurled herself into the mass of bodies seeking refuge in the gas chamber.

Another crack sounded from behind the factory. Jonas wrapped the blanket around Hannah’s head and set her on a step. Then he took his father by the shoulders and shook him.

“Get your ass through that door! Now!”

Avram looked confused. “Jonas . . .” His face was working through stages of incomprehension. Things had not turned out as they were supposed to. He should have been dead before now. “I can’t be the only man left alive. Not after—”

For the first time in his life Jonas Stern struck his father. He hit him so hard that Avram doubled over and fell as surely as if he had taken a bullet in the belly. Jonas dragged him to his feet and stood him up beside the hatch. He saw only blackness inside. The heat in the chamber was already stifling. A cacophony of wailing women and children filled his ears. He called for Rachel, but she had already been swallowed by the tangle of limbs. He grabbed the nearest arm to the door and pulled.

“Can you hear me?” he asked in Yiddish.

“Yes, sir!” answered a shaky male voice.

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen, sir.”