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
“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
“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, “
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
