Black Cross

“A secret weapon.”

“That’s what I said. It’s something that would have little to guide it. It would kill indiscriminately. Men, women, children, animals — no distinction. They’d die by the thousands.”

“And the British want you to spearhead this project?”

“Right.”

David’s mouth split into an amazed smile. “Boy, did they ever pick the wrong guy.”

Mark nodded. “Well, they think I’m the right guy.”

“What kind of weapon is this? I don’t see how it could be much more destructive or less discriminating than a thousand-bomber air raid.”

Mark looked slowly around the pub. “It is, though. It’s not a bomb. It’s not even one of the super-bombs you’ve probably heard rumors about. It’s something . . . something like what wounded Dad.”

David recoiled, the cynicism instantly gone from his face. “You mean gas? Poison gas?”

Mark nodded.

“Shit, neither side has used gas yet in this war. Even the Nazis still remember the trenches from the last one. There are treaties prohibiting it, right?”

“The Geneva Protocol. But nobody cares about that. The U.S. didn’t even sign it.”

“Jesus. What kind of gas is it? Mustard?”

Mark’s laugh had an almost hysterical undertone. “David, nobody knows the horrific effects of mustard gas better than you or I. But this gas I’m talking about is a thousand times worse. A thousand times worse. You can’t see it, you don’t even have to breathe it. But brother it will kill you. It’s the equivalent of a cobra strike to the brain.”

David had gone still. “I assume you’re not supposed to be telling me any of this?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well . . . I guess you’d better start at the beginning.”

3

Mark let his eyes wander over the thinning crowd. Of those who remained, he knew half by sight. Two were professors working on weapons programs. He kept his voice very low.

“One month ago,” he said, “a small sample of colorless liquid labeled Sarin was delivered to my lab for testing. I usually get my samples from anonymous civilians, but this was different. Sarin was delivered by a Scottish brigadier general named Duff Smith. He’s a one-armed old warhorse who’s been pressuring me on and off for years to work on offensive chemical weapons. Brigadier Smith said he wanted an immediate opinion on the lethality of Sarin. As soon as I had that, I was to start trying to develop an effective mask filter against it. Only in the case of Sarin, a mask won’t do it. You need protection over your entire body.”

David looked thoughtful. “Is this a German gas? Or Allied stuff?”

“Smith wouldn’t tell me. But he did warn me to take extra precautions. Christ, was he ever right. Sarin was like nothing I’d ever seen. It kills by short-circuiting the central nervous system. According to my experiments, it exceeds the lethality of phosgene by a factor of thirty.”

David seemed unimpressed.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, David? Phosgene was the most lethal gas used in World War One. But compared to Sarin it’s like . . . nothing. One-tenth of one milligram of Sarin — one speck the size of a grain of sand — will kill you in less than a minute. It’s invisible in lethal concentration, and it will pass through human skin. Right through your skin.”

David’s mouth was working silently. “I’ve got the picture. Go on.”

“Last week, Brigadier Smith paid me another visit. This time he asked how I would feel if he told me Sarin was a German gas, and had no counterpart in the Allied arsenal. He wanted to know what I would do to protect Allied cities. And my honest answer was nothing. To protect the inhabitants of a city from Sarin would be impossible. It’s not like a heavy-bomber raid. As bad as those are, people can come out from the shelters when they’re over. Depending on weather conditions, Sarin could lie in the streets for days, coating sidewalks, windows, grass, food, anything.”

“Okay,” David said. “What happened next?”

“Smith tells me Sarin is a German gas. Stolen from the heart of the Reich, he says. Then he tells me I’m wrong — there is something I can do to protect our cities.”

“What’s that?”

“Develop an equally lethal gas, so that Hitler won’t dare use Sarin himself.”

David nodded slowly. “If he’s telling the truth about Sarin, that sounds like the only thing to do. I don’t see the problem.”

Mark’s face fell. “You don’t? Christ, you of all people should understand.”

“Look . . . I don’t want to get into this pacifist thing again. I thought you’d come to terms with that. Hell, you’ve been working for the British since 1940.”

“But only in a defensive capacity, you know that.”

David expelled air from his cheeks. “To tell you the truth, I never really saw the difference. You’re either working in the war effort or you’re not.”

“There’s a big difference, David, believe me. Even in liberal Oxford, I’m an official leper.”

“Be glad you’re in Oxford. They’d beat the crap out of you at my air base.”

Mark rubbed his forehead with his palms. “Look, I understand the logic of deterrence. But there has never been a weapon like this before. Never.” He watched with relief as the two professors left the pub. “David, I’m going to tell you something that most people don’t know, and we’ve never discussed. Until one month ago, poison gas was the most humane weapon in the world.”

“What?”

“It’s the truth. Despite the agony of burns and the horror of chemical weapons, ninety-four percent of the men gassed in World War One were fit for duty again in nine weeks. Nine weeks, David. The mortality figure for poison gas is somewhere around two percent. Mortality from guns and shells is twenty-five percent — ten times higher. The painful fact is that our father was an exception.”

David’s confusion was evident in his bunched eyebrows. “What are you telling me, Mark?”

“I’m trying to explain that, until Sarin was invented, my aversion to gas warfare was based primarily on the paralyzing terror it held for soldiers, and the psychological aftermath of being wounded by gas. Figures don’t tell the whole truth, especially about human pain. But with Sarin, chemical warfare has entered an entirely new phase. We’re talking about a weapon that has four times the mortality rate of shot and shell. Sarin is one hundred percent lethal. It will kill every living thing it touches. I would rather carry a rifle at the front than be responsible for developing something that destructive.”

David’s whole posture conveyed the reluctance he felt to stray onto this territory. “Listen, I swore I’d never argue with you about this again. It’s the same argument I always had with Dad. The Sermon on the Mount versus machine guns. Gandhi versus Hitler. Passive resistance can’t work against Germany, Mark. The Nazis just don’t give a damn. You turn the other cheek, those bastards’ll slice it off for you. Hell, it was the Germans who gassed Dad in the first place!”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Yeah, yeah. Jeez, I don’t like where this conversation’s ended up.” The young pilot scratched his stubbled chin, deep in thought. “Okay . . . okay, just listen to me for a minute. Everybody back home calls you Mac, right? They always have.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just listen. Everybody calls me David, right? Or Dave, or Slick. Why do you think everybody calls you Mac?”

Mark shrugged. “I was the oldest.”

“Wrong. It was because you acted just like Dad did when he was a kid.”

Mark shifted in his seat. “Maybe.”