noticed or they didn’t. If they come, it’s a fight we’ll be givin’ them. If not, we’ll finish the job. Give me your rope.”
Lewis handed over a long coil.
“I’m going to cut Colin’s toggle rope free. Then we’ll use this rope to tow the cylinder back up and pin it beside the others.”
Alick Cochrane stared. It was something to witness the kind of determination that could block out a dead comrade and push on with an impossible mission. But he knew his friend wasn’t thinking clearly. “Ian,” he said gently, “if we try to tow the thing, we’ll be electrocuted ourselves.”
“I dinna think the auxiliary wires are live anymore,” McShane said. “Whatever shorted the main lines was temporary, because Colin shorted the auxiliaries and the lights are back on below.”
Cochrane considered this. “Colin’s body may only have faulted the backups for a second, Ian. They could still be live.”
“Well then . . . I’ll just jump clear out onto the cylinder, like Colin did, and pin the bastard right where it is. I’ll use something easily breakable, like a heavy twig. The momentum of the other cylinders will knock it free when the time comes.”
Cochrane began scouring the snow for a suitable stick.
“What about Colin?” Lewis asked. “You want me to bury him while you’re up there?”
McShane had already driven both spikes into the pole and started climbing, but he stopped and looked down, finding Lewis’s eye. “By God, if we can break our backs to haul gas cylinders, John, we can haul Colin to the beach. He’ll be buried in Scotland or I’ll die gettin’ him there.”
Cochrane handed two twigs up to McShane. “It’s sixteen miles to the beach, Ian.”
The big Highlander’s eyes narrowed. “Then we’ve no time to waste, have we?”
26
Sergeant Gunther Sturm strode with great satisfaction through Totenhausen Camp. It was a fine morning with fine prospects. The arrogant bastard who had been riding him since September had finally made a mistake. He had taken a fancy to the bald Jewess who strutted around the camp like a princess. And that made him vulnerable.
Schorner had been tolerable up until the night Himmler came, allowing Sturm to run the camp as he had before the major’s arrival from Russia. There had been some misunderstandings in the beginning, but once Sturm realized it was a matter of principle with Schorner not to profit from the prisoners’ bad luck — and not simply a matter of greasing his palm — Sturm had kept a low profile and limited his looting to easily concealable and highly profitable items. Like diamonds. The two men had never gotten along personally, but who ever said officers and noncoms had to be friends?
It was all the old Dutch Jew’s fault. He had shoved the diamonds into Sturm’s hand just as Schorner blundered up to see it. And of course the major had reminded him of their previous misunderstanding, holding his past mistakes over his head just like every officer loved to do. The bastard wanted Sturm to know he could be cashiered for looting anytime Schorner chose.
But the major had made his own mistake now. Sleeping with a Jewess! Raping one in the heat of action was one thing, but this was something different. Three times already Sturm’s men had reported seeing the Jansen woman leaving Schorner’s quarters late at night. The only question had been how best to respond.
The normal procedure would be to report Schorner to the Herr Doktor. But denouncing an officer for violations of the Nuremberg racial laws was a tricky business when the man you had to denounce him to was guilty of the same crime, and to an even more disgusting degree. Sturm had considered going outside the chain of command and reporting Schorner to a higher SS authority — perhaps Colonel Beck at Peenemunde — but breaking the chain of command was practically a crime in itself. On top of that, Schorner came from a wealthy family. There was no telling how much influence his father might be able to bring to bear in Berlin — not to mention his stinking Knight’s Cross.
No, there was only one way. Private satisfaction. And Sturm had come up with the perfect answer. He would provoke the Jansen woman into some desperate act. Then he would be fully within his rights when he shot her. Brandt would have no complaint, and Schorner could do nothing without admitting he’d become romantically entangled with a Jewess. It rankled Sturm to no end that he had to plan this way. At any other camp he could simply walk up to Rachel Jansen and shoot her. Here, he had to have a good reason to damage one of Brandt’s guinea pigs. And that was where the diamonds came in. It would cost him the stones to get the bitch, but it would be worth it.
The spot Sturm had chosen for his ambush was a narrow alley between the SS barracks and the dog kennels. He had picked his day and his hour well too. Brandt was gone to Ravensbruck to witness some experiment or other, and Schorner was in Dornow, questioning the locals about the missing sergeant, Willi Gauss. Finally, it was the time of morning when the Jansen woman usually walked a circuit of the camp with the Block Leader, Hagan. Sturm’s plan for luring the Jewess to the alley was simple. All he needed was one of her children.
He chose the son.
“You’re digging your own grave,” Frau Hagan said. “Nothing good can come of it.”
Rachel kept her eyes fixed on the snow as she walked. “My children eat well. They are gaining weight.”
“But for how long? How long will Schorner stay interested? You don’t know how their minds work. Schorner was lonely enough to come to you, but soon he’ll hate himself for it. You’ll be the one to pay for his disgust with himself.”
“I have no choice. He can protect Jan and Hannah.”
“You believe that? If Brandt selected Jan tomorrow, what could Schorner do? If he disobeyed an order, Brandt would put him in front of a firing squad. He just tells you what will keep him between your legs. Like all men.”
“He chose me, remember? Let’s don’t talk about it.”
Frau Hagan raised her hands in a gesture of futility. “Always you listen to my advice. But not about this. You think I’ve never seen this before? How do you think I’ve survived so long?”
Rachel looked up at her. “I would like to know that.”
“Not by doing what you are doing. Or what the shoemaker does. Listen, in 1940 I and seven hundred other Poles from Tarnow were transported to Oscweicim — what the Germans call Auschwitz — in Upper Silesia. We built that camp. Digging all the time, no food or water. Only the strong survived.
“It was there that I became a Communist. We built a synthetic rubber plant at Buna. They called it Auschwitz Three, but that place was Hell on earth. There was a man there named Spivack, a Pole from Warsaw. Small, but wiry like a monkey. I worked with him, hauling bricks and cement. After a week, I knew he was the toughest man I had ever seen. At the end of the day when the big oxes had fallen down, he was still working. It was his
Frau Hagan waggled a finger at Rachel. “It was the German Communists who tried to stop Hitler in the beginning. But the German people were afraid of Marxism. Even the German Jews. Cowards. Afraid to let go of their bourgeois comforts.” The big Pole laughed bitterly. “Where did all their comforts get them, eh? Up the chimney, that’s where.”
“What happened to Spivack?”
Frau Hagan shrugged. “I was transferred here. But I’ll tell you this. He didn’t let the SS treat him like a dog. Even some of those bastards respected him, all the punishment he could take. That’s what I’ve done, and I’m still here. Still alive. But you, Dutch girl, you’re riding on the back of a tiger.”
“Not everyone is as strong as you,” Rachel said. “I judge no one here.”
“
An older woman raced into the alley between the hospital and the E-Block. Frau Hagan shouted for her to slow down, but she ran right up to them and grabbed Rachel’s shift.
“They took Jan! Hurry!”
