Black Cross

Stern shrugged. “I don’t know. Nerve gas.”

“Have you seen it work?”

“Seen it? Of course not. It’s invisible, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes. Do you know where it came from?”

“What is your point, Doctor?”

McConnell didn’t answer. His silence obviously infuriated Stern, who glared angrily from the window. Anna looked from one man to the other, stunned by the hostility displayed between them.

Stern suddenly turned back to the window curtains, as if he had heard something. “I see a bus!” he said, picking up his Schmeisser. “A gray bus full of men. They’re driving from the village toward us. Who are they?”

“The factory technicians,” Anna said. “They’re quartered in Dornow. The bus takes them back and forth to work every day.”

When McConnell began to laugh, Anna and Stern stared at each other like funeral goers who have stumbled into the wrong parade. The laugh began as a few short barks, then settled into the dry chuckle of a man who realizes that he is the butt of a joke of cosmic proportions.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stern asked. “What are you laughing at?”

“You,” said McConnell. “Us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stern, we’re both so goddamn stupid it’s pathetic. What did I tell you back at Achnacarry? That this mission as explained to me didn’t make sense. But since you knew Smith was lying to me, it didn’t bother you too much that I couldn’t make sense of it. But don’t you see? The mission as told to you doesn’t make any sense either.”

“Explain, damn you!”

“Are you blind? If the British really have developed their own nerve gas, where is the logic in wiping out the people in this camp?”

Stern tried to recall his first conversation with Brigadier Smith, that night in the Bentley. “The British only have a limited amount of gas,” he said slowly. “One-point six tons, something like that. The Nazis have thousands of tons stockpiled around Germany. Smith said the Allies could never catch up before the invasion, that their only chance was to bluff the Nazis into believing they not only have their own nerve gas, but also the will to use it. Plus the sample, remember? The Soman sample.”

McConnell watched him like a teacher willing a student toward an answer. “Think, Stern. They got a sample of Sarin out without our help, remember? They don’t need us for that. They’ve got Anna here. No, the point of this mission is killing the people. To kill everyone inside that camp and leave the machinery intact. That is the plan, right?”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t see it because I had accepted the idea that we were coming to disable the plant. But assuming Smith told you truth — at least about the objective — what does that tell us? If you wipe out this camp with nerve gas, you will have committed the first offensive chemical weapons strike of the Second World War. The risks are incalculable. And if I know one thing about Duff Smith, he’s a pragmatic bastard. The same for Churchill. Neither would take such a risk unless they had no choice.”

“They don’t have a choice,” Stern told him. “In four days Heinrich Himmler is going to demonstrate Soman to the Fuhrer, in the hope of convincing him to use nerve gas against the Allied invasion troops. Hitler believes the Allies have their own nerve gases. Himmler doesn’t, and for once he is close to being right. Churchill and Smith believe this attack — this bluff — is the only chance to convince Himmler he’s wrong, and embarrass him into calling off his demonstration.”

McConnell remained unconvinced. “Even if all that is true,” he said, “you’re missing the point. If the British possess even one liter of their own nerve gas, all Churchill would have to do is get one vial of it into the right hands in Germany. Even leaking the written formula would be enough. By doing that, they would show Hitler they have strategic parity, but without risking massive retaliation. Because the Nazis would have no way of knowing whether the British had only one vial or ten thousand tons!”

McConnell drummed his fingers on the table. “No, Stern, only one possible scenario justifies a risk like this. The British have developed some form of nerve gas, but there’s a problem with it. Maybe multiple problems.”

“What do you mean? What kind of problems?”

McConnell shrugged. “Could be anything. It usually takes three to six months to copy a war gas, and that’s with conventional variants. Sarin is a revolutionary toxin, and as far as I know, the British have had it for less than sixty days. With Churchill breathing down their necks, the scientists at Porton might just have been able to crack it. But even then their problems would only have begun. War gases are extremely difficult to mass produce for battlefield use. They must be heavier than air, resistant to moisture, non-corrosive to standard steel. They must be stable enough to retain toxicity during long periods of storage and transport, also to survive the detonation of the artillery shells that carry them. A nerve gas should ideally be odorless and colorless, insofar as is possible. If you see a gas cloud coming — or smell it in low concentration — its effectiveness as a weapon is greatly inhibited—”

“Get to the point!” Stern shouted.

“Sorry. My point is that the British team at Porton has probably developed a facsimile of Sarin that has one or more of those flaws. They can’t send a sample to the Germans, because they know their gas can’t withstand close analysis, i.e., it’s not in the same league with Sarin.”

Stern moved away from the window and planted a boot on one of the kitchen chairs. “Why couldn’t they send Hitler a vial from the stolen sample? Send the Nazis their own gas and claim it’s British?”

McConnell considered this. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. I’ll bet Smith thought of that. But German chemists are very good. An exact chemical copy of German Sarin would be greeted with extreme suspicion. They’d probably figure out that bluff.”

He drank some of his coffee, which had grown cold. “No, I think Smith and Churchill looked at the situation and decided they had only one option. To gamble that whatever problems exist with the British Sarin, the stuff will kill. That’s why there are only the two of us, Stern. If the copycat Sarin kills effectively, it may well convince the Nazis that they would be foolish to risk attacking the Allies with nerve gas. But if it doesn’t work, what have the British lost? You and me. Two expendable civilians. Whether the British Sarin works or not, it will be gone on the wind in a few hours. And I’ll bet you fifty bucks that the cylinders hanging from your pylon are of German manufacture.”

“They are.”

McConnell shook his head, awed by the boldness of Smith’s plan. “We’re sacrificial lambs, Stern. You may fancy that role. I don’t.”

Stern had gone very still. Anna was watching McConnell with a strange mixture of respect and fear.

“It stings, doesn’t it?” McConnell laughed softly. “The great Haganah terrorist, fooled by a British general.”

Stern slung his Schmeisser over his shoulder. “The gas might work,” he said. “You admitted that yourself. If it does, the mission will succeed regardless of all this. I guess I’ll just have to find out the hard way, as you Americans say.”

He turned and started for the foyer.

“Wait!” Anna pleaded. “It’s daylight. You’ll never reach that pylon without being caught. Major Schorner has doubled the guard on the transformer station.”

Stern lifted his hand from the door handle. “What?”

“I told you, there are patrols everywhere because of the dead sergeant. Even if you managed to attack the camp, half the SS men wouldn’t be there. I’ve made a place for you in the cellar. You can hide there today and decide what to do. It will be dark by six tonight. Where is the harm in waiting until then?”

Stern came back into the kitchen. “I want to speak to someone higher up in your group.”

“There is no one higher,” Anna said.

“You are the senior person?”

“There’s no one else.”

“I don’t believe you. Who were those men who helped us at the plane?”