Black Cross

them to spend when the time came.

14

Jonas Stern lay on a threadbare mattress and stared sullenly at the stained ceiling of his jail cell. It had been five days since he and Brigadier Duff Smith drove to Oxford to speak with the American doctor, and Stern had spent four of those in a cell. Where the hell was Smith? After McConnell refused the brigadier’s request, Smith had driven Stern back to London and dropped him at a rooming house run by “some good friends of mine.” Stern soon realized that Smith’s “good friends” were off-duty London policemen. But evading British police had become second nature to him in Palestine, and the London variety proved no more adept at surveillance than their Middle Eastern cousins.

Stern had passed most of that first day in various London pubs, where he ran into more than his share of American soldiers. With Allied troops massing for the invasion, GIs were thick on the ground. It wasn’t long before Stern began trying to take out his anger at McConnell on the nearest Americans to hand. He survived one brawl in Shoreditch without serious damage. Then he ran into a squad of marines outside the entrance to the Strand Palace Hotel bar. The liquored-up gyrenes did not take kindly to being called pacifistic dilettantes, especially by a suntanned civilian with a German accent. The military police found Stern lying flat on his back with two glowing shiners and the fragments of a chair scattered around him.

He had awakened in jail with ribs so bruised he could barely breathe, and a new American slang term added to his growing list. Shitbird. He railed at his jailers to call Brigadier Smith — and they claimed they had — but the Scotsman never showed up. Either the police were lying, Stern decided, or else he was precisely where the brigadier wanted him. Yesterday he had used Peter Owen’s handcuff key to unlock his manacles and attempt an escape, but the coppers had been ready. That escapade had caused his transfer to his current accommodations.

His body jerked at the harsh clang of metal against metal.

“Shove yer bucket through the bars and make it quick!” barked a jailer. “If you spill any, you’ll clean it up wiv your shirt!”

Stern rolled over and faced the stone wall. He couldn’t decide whom he hated more, Brigadier Smith or Doctor Mark McConnell.

At that moment McConnell was going over some notes in his laboratory in Oxford. When the telephone rang, he tried to ignore it, but the caller was persistent. McConnell glanced at his watch. Ten P.M. Perhaps it was Mrs. Craig, the woman of the house he billeted in, offering him a late supper. He picked up the phone.

“Yes?”

“Yeah, hey,” said a male voice with a Brooklyn accent. “Is this Dr. McConnell?”

“Yes.”

“I need to see you, Doc. I got a problem.”

“Excuse me, I think you have the wrong number. I’m a medical doctor, but I don’t see patients. I’m associated with the university.”

“Right,” said the caller. “You’re the one I want. I been patched up pretty good already. It’s something else. I really need to see you.”

McConnell wondered who in God’s name had recommended him to a man with mental problems. “I’m afraid I’m not a psychiatrist either. I can recommend a good man in London, though.”

The voice on the phone grew agitated. “You got it all wrong, Doc. It’s you I need to see. Not a sawbones or a head-shrinker.”

“Who is this?” McConnell asked, bewildered. “Do I know you?”

“Nah. But I knew your brother.”

“You knew David?” McConnell felt his heart thump. “What’s your name?”

“Captain Pascal Randazzo. Dave just called me Wop, though. I was his copilot on Shady Lady.”

McConnell’s heart rate was still rising. A member of David’s crew had survived? “Where are you, Captain?” he asked excitedly.

“Right here. Oxford.”

“My God. How did you get out of Germany? Do you have word of David?”

A long pause. “That’s what I need to talk to you about, Doc. Do you think we could meet tonight?”

“Hell yes, Captain. You can come to my lab, or I could buy you supper somewhere. Have you eaten yet?”

“Yeah. I’ll come to you, if you don’t mind. Sooner the better.”

“My lab’s sort of tucked away in the university. Do you think you can find it?”

“I’m from New York, Doc. Long as it’s streets and buildings, I can find it. It’s trees and woods that screw me up.”

McConnell couldn’t help but smile. What a strange pair Randazzo the Wop and David the Georgia redneck must have made. “Where are you now, Captain?”

“The Mitre Inn.”

He gave Randazzo detailed directions, then hung up. What the hell was going on? If there was word of David’s crew, why hadn’t the Air Force called him? Five days ago he had made the most difficult telephone call of his life, to tell his mother that her youngest son was presumed dead. Had that status changed? He paced the floor while he waited for Randazzo to arrive. What could the copilot’s survival mean? No chutes had been sighted by the other bomber crews on the raid, but that didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t any. In the last four years he had heard stories of miraculous survival that defied all explanation. Perhaps David had managed to crash- land his bomber, instead of just crashing. He was a fantastic pilot. He had the medals to prove it.

McConnell jumped the first time he heard the sound: thump-thump-bump. It was irregular in tempo but continued to grow louder. He decided it must be a janitor pushing something heavy up the three flights of stairs. Probably a mop and a bucket of water. Then he heard a knock on his lab door.

“Doc?” said a muffled voice. “Hey, Doc!”

He hurried over and opened the door. Before him stood a short young man with dark eyes, curly black hair and a thick five-o’clock shadow. He leaned heavily on crutches, and his left leg was encased from ankle to hip in heavy plaster. The air force uniform was soaked with sweat.

“Captain Randazzo?”

“The Wop in person.”

“I had no idea you were wounded. I’m sorry.”

“No problem, Doc.”

Randazzo thump-bumped his way across the floor and collapsed into a chair beside the very window Mark had dropped the telegram from just a week before. “Still ain’t used to these fuckin’ things,” he said.

“What happened to your leg?”

“Broke it in two places.”

“In the crash?”

“Bad parachute landing. Never had much practice.”

Mark could hardly contain his excitement. “You mean you got out of the plane? Did David get out?”

“Sure did.”

“But the air force said no chutes were sighted!”

Randazzo snorted. “I ain’t surprised. We’re flying in coffin corner to start with. And we were so goddamn low by the time we jumped that the squadron had already left us behind.” The Italian thumped his plaster cast with the tip of a crutch. “That’s how I got this fuckin’ thing. We jumped too late. Still, it’s better than dying, I guess.”

McConnell studied the olive-skinned face and bleary eyes. Randazzo had been drinking. Probably for several days. “Maybe you should just tell me what happened, Captain.”