Black Cross

Himmler.

Himmler listened patiently while Doctor Brandt explained some arcane detail of the presentation he was about to witness. As they moved toward the E-Block, the shoemaker saw that one side of the alley was lined with thirty or so technicians and chemists from Totenhausen’s poison gas plant. In their white lab coats they had been almost invisible in the snow. Himmler nodded affably as he passed them. Brandt motioned toward the E-Block, then turned to speak and saw that the Reichsfuhrer was no longer beside him.

Himmler had stopped to address one of Totenhausen’s six civilian nurses. Four of the women were old battle-wagons, but two — Greta Muller and Anna Kaas — were blond and single and barely thirty. The shoemaker had mistaken them for lab technicians. Himmler seemed quite taken with Fraulein Kaas, and no wonder: he was middle-aged, pudgy, and chinless, while she could have posed for one of Goebbels’ posters celebrating the Aryan female ideal. Brandt stood by impatiently; he’d intended for the nurses to be scenery, not full-scale diversions. At last Himmler gave a little bow and moved away from Anna Kaas. Brandt led him quickly to the hospital’s rear steps, from whence he could observe the entrance to the E-Block, just across the alley.

Two camp spotlights had been pressed into service to focus on the chamber’s sunken entrance. Himmler’s guards craned their necks in curiosity. A muffled bang startled several of them, causing a ripple of suppressed laughter among the Totenhausen SS. It was only a corpse, they knew, swelling and bursting as it settled into the shallow grave pit beyond the electrified rear fence.

The condemned men crowded together like a herd of antelope sensing predators drawing around. The shoemaker could clearly see the young Dutch lawyer who had so stoically accepted his fate. Sergeant Sturm barked an order for the men to strip. Sharp blows from rifle butts convinced those who responded too slowly. The shoemaker put a hand over his mouth. Was there a more pathetic sight than a group of adult men stripped naked by force? In the biting cold their genitals shrank beyond any sexual recognition. One of Himmler’s men brayed something about circumcised Jews and their lack of manhood. The shoemaker had to admit that from where he stood, only the lack of breasts marked the prisoners as men.

When the clothes and wooden-soled shoes lay piled in the snow, the first of their owners were herded down the four concrete steps that led to the entrance of the sunken chamber. The steel door had a great wheel set in its face, like a watertight hatch inside a U-boat. The shoemaker shivered when he heard the hermetic pfft that signaled the opening of the door. What went on in this alley day after day was horrible, but what he was seeing now was completely beyond his experience. The E-Block had been designed to accommodate ten men in standing positions. Tonight nearly thirty were being forced into the steel chamber. He could imagine the nightmarish scene that must be taking place as Sturm’s troops forced the naked men in on top of one another.

When the last prisoner had been beaten through the door, it was levered shut and the wheel cranked into its closed position. Major Schorner signaled to a man who stood by the corner of the E-Block. This man — who wore a striped prison shirt — flipped a switch, causing the double-paned porthole observation windows set in the low walls to come alight.

Acid flooded the shoemaker’s stomach. The man who had thrown the light switch was named Ariel Weitz, and he was a Jew. The wiry little homosexual had worked as a male nurse in Hamburg before the war, and after being sent to Totenhausen, had wheedled his way into the job of Brandt’s assistant. His behavior in this job quickly made him the most hated man in camp. Were it not for the terror of reprisals, Weitz would have had his throat cut long ago. The shoemaker watched him hover at the corner of the E-Block, eagerly awaiting his next order.

Brandt led Himmler to the side of the E-Block, with Major Schorner following at a discreet distance. They stopped beside an odd machine that stood man-high on a pallet in the snow. The shoemaker had never seen this machine before, but it looked like a sophisticated pump of some kind. Brandt removed something from his pocket and held it up for Himmler’s scrutiny. No bigger than a rifle cartridge, it flashed in the light. Glass, the shoemaker thought. Himmler nodded and smiled at Brandt, seeming to express good-natured skepticism. Then Brandt turned to the machine and inserted the piece of glass into a compartment in its face. At that moment the shoemaker noticed a small-gauge rubber hose connecting the machine to a fitting on the side of the E-Block.

Major Schorner assisted the Reichsfuhrer onto a stool beside one of the E-Block’s observation portholes. He turned back to Brandt, who moved his left hand to a switch on his machine, then raised his right and said:

“I begin the action . . . now.”

There was a quick, low-pitched hum from the machine, then silence. Faint screams emanated from the soundproofed E-Block. The shoemaker saw Himmler jerk backward and nearly fall off the stool, then right himself.

Ten seconds later the screaming stopped.

Himmler got up from the stool and backed away from the window. He wobbled on his feet, but when Major Schorner rushed to steady him he jerked away as if he had been burned. Very slowly, he seemed to come back to himself.

“Danke, Sturmbannfuhrer,” he said. “Herr Doktor?”

As Brandt scampered across the snow to Himmler’s side, the shoemaker edged as far as he dared along the side of the truck.

“Yes, Reichsfuhrer?” said Brandt.

“You have surpassed yourself. Are you positive those men were killed by the gas in that phial you showed me? Nothing else?”

“Absolutely, Reichsfuhrer. Soman Four. The aerosol form is particularly fast-acting.”

“Remarkable. I saw nothing in that room but dying men.”

“That is what you ordered, Reichsfuhrer.”

“Brandt, you are a genius. You will be lionized for a thousand years. You and von Braun.”

Klaus Brandt snapped his arm skyward. “Heil Hitler!”

“Will this gas kill as efficiently in the open air?”

“It will work exactly as you have seen tonight.”

“Astounding. Will any further testing be required?”

“Not on the gas. However, beyond aerosols vecteurs, we are working on hand-held gas grenades and several other delivery systems. Our problem is protective equipment, Reichsfuhrer. Weeks ago I was promised new lightweight impermeable suits from Raubhammer Proving Ground, but they have yet to arrive. Before we can deploy Soman on the battlefield, we must be sure that our own troops are safe.”

“You shall have your suits, Herr Doktor. After what I have seen tonight, I intend to schedule a full-scale demonstration of Soman for the Fuhrer. Let us say in . . . a fortnight.” Himmler gave Brandt a reptilian smile. “The test will take place at Raubhammer Proving Ground. If those swine do not have their suits ready, I shall place them naked in the area to be saturated by Soman!”

Brandt laughed obligingly. “Reichsfuhrer, if you can assure me a steady flow of test subjects, the perfection of ancillary delivery systems would be hastened. I’ve recently had trouble replenishing my stocks. I need healthy males now, and Speer is taking them all for the munitions factories.”

“You will have your specimens, Herr Doktor. I’m afraid that even in 1944, Jews are something we still have a surplus of.”

Himmler raised an arm and took in Sergeant Sturm’s assembled SS troops. “Kameraden!” he shouted, his breath steaming in the cold. “I know that your work here is difficult. Yes! It takes a strong constitution to witness what I have just seen and yet remain good and decent men. You men are our finest flower, the seeds of the Reich’s future. You alone have the strength to do what must be done. That is why we will win this war. The Englishman — and, yes, the American too — merely does his best in all contests. The German does what is necessary! Kameraden, Sieg heil! Heil Hitler!”

During the answering salvo of Sieg heils, the shoemaker lay prone in the narrow space between the truck and the hospital wall with the snow soaking through his burlap clothes. He saw Brandt escort Himmler back to the waiting vehicles and join him in his field car. As they sped away, joined soon after by the troop truck, Major Schorner signaled to two SS men standing behind the E-Block. Within seconds, scalding jets of high-pressure steam and detergent chemicals blasted into the chamber to flush the corpses, walls, ceiling, and floor clean of nerve gas. The remaining mixture of air and toxic liquid was sucked out by powerful vacuum pumps. Finally, two small steel vents were opened in the roof, and scorching dry air treated with decontaminants removed