Doktor Brandt’s abilities is true. He is a pioneering chemist, a man of genius. His war gases are Germany’s only hope of throwing the Allied invasion army back into the sea. Believe me when I tell you that Soman can stop literally an infinite number of troops. It is what we call a ‘denial’ weapon. No one can occupy the same area it does. And if we deny the Allies a foothold in France this year, we can stop the Russians in the East.”
“But can you
Schorner bristled. “We might. If not, we can negotiate an end to the war with respectable territorial gains. That would be satisfactory. The alternative is the destruction of Germany.” Schorner leaned forward. “
Rachel wondered where she fit in Schorner’s “different” mathematics. There he sat, a scion of the “master race,” having a parlor chat with a member of the tribe he was pledged to eradicate from the face of the earth.
“Sturmbannfuhrer,” she said quietly, “are you not in danger, sitting here with a Jew in this fashion? Doing what we have done?”
Schorner cocked his head slightly to the side. Then he chuckled softly. “I suppose so. But in this crazy camp, I would say that what I did tonight hardly qualifies as a misdemeanor.”
Rachel would not be put off. “I am a Jew,” she said again. “What does that mean to you?”
Schorner turned up his palms. “To me you are a woman,” he said. “I don’t really care about religion. I never did. Brandt doesn’t care either, to tell you the truth. To him we are all guinea pigs.”
“If I was old and ugly,” Rachel said, “would you still not care about my religion?”
Schorner laughed. “You are not old and ugly. Even nearly bald you are quite beautiful. But please, do not push me on this. There are paradoxes in all societies, Frau Jansen. You did not grow up as I did, so you cannot possibly understand what led me to the position in which I now find myself. Nor can I really understand yours.”
“No,” Rachel said under her breath.
Schorner stood, not hurriedly, but with enough emphasis to indicate that the conversation was over. “I have absolutely no doubt that these things I’ve said tonight will not leave this room. You understand, of course.”
Rachel felt as if an electrical switch had been thrown in her chest. What she had taken as a strange intimacy was merely Schorner speaking freely in the certainty that she would eventually die like all the other prisoners. She could scarcely believe she had dared speak to him, much less pressed him about personal matters.
“I understand completely, Sturmbannfuhrer,” she said submissively. “Should I go now?”
“You may go. I look forward to your next visit.”
Rachel turned to the door.
“Just a moment. Take the brandy with you.”
Schorner was holding out the glass she had left untouched on the table. Rachel considered taking the brandy to Frau Hagan. The old Pole would have no scruples about drinking Nazi booty. But Rachel could not touch the glass. Somehow, she felt, if she accepted anything material from Schorner, she would be lost. That she might never find herself again, even if she did someday manage to escape this place.
It was only a small victory, but she clung to it.
Outside Schorner’s quarters, Rachel saw a man standing in the shadow of the administrative building, smoking a cigarette. She cringed, thinking it might be Sergeant Sturm.
As she drew closer she realized it was only one of Sturm’s dog handlers. He did not challenge her, but he smiled in a way that made her rush past as quickly as she could.
24
“The money’s as good as in my pocket!” Sergeant McShane shouted.
Jonas Stern stood at the foot of one support leg of a sixty-foot power pylon, his eyes glued to those of Ian McShane, who stood twenty feet away beneath the pole’s twin. The huge supports were joined at the top by a twenty-foot crossarm, forming an approximate mockup of the pylon Stern would have to scale in Germany. Three electrical wires stretched from the crossarm to a second pylon one hundred yards down the hill, then on again to a third on the banks of Loch Lochy. McShane had bet Stern five pounds that he could beat the younger man to the top of the pylon and release one of the cylinders hanging from the wires.
“Ready?” he prodded.
Stern glanced down at his boots. The iron climbing spikes were strapped securely to his calves, leaving two razor points jutting inward from the arches of his feet. He would have discarded the safety belt that held his waist loosely to the pole, but McShane had insisted he wear it as part of the wager. Stern raised his left foot three feet above the wet ground and dug a spike into the pole. Then he slid the belt up high enough so as not to restrict him when he leaped.
“Ready,” he said.
“See you at the top!” cried McShane.
Stern began climbing with a herky-jerky motion, moving quickly up the pole but fighting the safety belt all the way. With every step he vowed that he would abandon it as soon as he got to Germany. He glanced to his left and marveled at how smoothly Sergeant McShane climbed. The man outweighed him by twenty kilograms, yet he scampered up the pylon with the natural grace of a jungle ape. Stern focused on the crossarm high above his head and redoubled his efforts, scraping both cheeks and inner forearms as he struggled upward.
His right hand had just caught hold of the rough-edged crossbeam when McShane shouted: “That’s five pounds you owe me, mate!”
Stern looked up. The huge Highlander was already sitting above him on the crossarm, his bare legs hanging beneath his old kilt, his face laughing beneath his green beret. Stern heard a soft whirring sound and looked down the hill. Thirty meters along the wire that began beneath McShane’s kilt, a dark green gas cylinder trundled smoothly downhill toward the second pylon.
Stern reached out and jerked the rubber rope hanging from the pulley roller nearest him, yanking out the cotter pin that held the cylinder beneath it in place. Powered only by gravity, the green cylinder began to move away from the pylon and gather speed. The whole contraption looked something like a large oxygen bottle tied by its neck to a runaway ski-lift chair, but this did not stop it from working with absolute precision.
“I don’t have five pounds,” Stern grumbled, settling into an uncomfortable perch on his end of the crossarm.
McShane waved his hand. “You can stand me a pint in Fort William. Beats money anytime.”
Stern nodded, still trying to catch his breath.
“There’s Ben Nevis,” McShane said. “See it? I call her the crouching lion. Tallest mountain in Scotland.”
Stern raised his eyes and looked out over the glen. Far to the south he saw the wooded hump of the mountain shrouded in mist. Loch Lochy shimmered like polished slate in the pale sun.
“I think you’ve about got the knack of it,” McShane said above the rising wind. “’Course it’d take you another month to get up to my level.”
Stern nodded with resignation. “You’re damned good,” he admitted. “But why in God’s name do you work so hard at it? You’re not the one who’s going into—”
Stern stared hard into the Highlander’s blue eyes.
McShane winked. “Finally figured it out, have you? Christ, it only took you a week.”
“You close-mouthed bastard. You’re going in to hang the cylinders!”
McShane made an indignant face. “
“Who else is going with you?”
McShane looked around cautiously, which appeared ridiculous sixty feet off the ground. “Three other instructors,” he said. “We get a little tired of wet-nursing pups like you. This is probably going to be the last real commando raid of the war, you know. In the classic sense, I mean. Hit and run. Shoot ’n scoot, as we used to say.”
“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?” Stern said in an accusatory tone. “The war, I mean.”
