“But you ignored them? You were noble?”
“Trying to be, I guess.”
“But you are not feeling noble now.”
He sighed wearily. “Look, is this a test or what? I certainly don’t feel noble about this. I feel like I’ve been dropped straight into hell or the closest thing to it. A week ago I was a pacifist and a loyal husband. Tonight I’m planning mass murder and contemplating adultery.” He laughed then, rather strangely. “Maybe I’m working my way up in stages. First adultery, then a little assault and battery to get warmed up . . . then I’ll go for the really big time. Poison gas.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“Look, let’s just forget it.” He stood up. “Maybe we should go up the hill.”
“What is your wife’s name, Doctor?”
“What?”
“What is your wife’s name?”
“Susan.”
“You have children with her?”
“No. None yet.”
Anna stood up slowly. Her left hand went to the button at her throat. She unfastened it and moved to the next button. “Then,” she said deliberately, “with all humility I ask Susan’s forgiveness for what I am about to do.”
He watched the white blouse open, revealing scalloped collarbones, then her breasts. “Why are you saying that?”
She dropped the blouse from her shoulders. “Because she is your wife. Because she is here with us now, and there’s no use pretending she isn’t.” Anna unfastened her skirt. It brushed the floor with a soft rustle. She took a step forward.
He could see the pulse at the base of her throat.
“I won’t be ashamed for this later,” she said, her voice trembling. “In spite of what we are about to do. This is what it is, but I
He held his hands in front of him, as if to stop her. “Are you sure you want this?”
“Yes.”
“Because you might die tomorrow?”
“Partly.”
He winced. In spite of the impossibility of it all, he had hoped for something more. “Is it because of Franz Perlman? The man you loved?”
A faint smile touched her lips. “No. That’s past.”
She reached out and laid a finger on McConnell’s lips.
He pulled her to him and kissed her mouth. He felt a sudden heat across the back of his neck, and his heart beat in quick, irregular bursts. She molded her body against his, withholding nothing. “Hurry,” she said. “Schorner could come at any moment.”
He backed toward her bedroom, kissing her and pulling her with him while she worked at the buttons of his shirt. After four years of self-denial, the mere touch of her skin, the pressure of her breasts as she drew breath against him made him flush with heat. At the edge of the bed Anna reached down, still kissing him, and pulled back the heavy duvet.
“
As she opened to him, he had a sense of collapsing into her, of leaving behind more than the terror and uncertainty of the past three days.
So he did. Yet even deep within her, in the sweat and the groans and the moments of oblivion, he could not escape the feeling that they were making love in the shadow of a great darkness, pressing toward each other with the desperation of the condemned.
Jonas Stern lay facedown in the snow on the east side of Totenhausen, just ten meters from the electric fence. His leather bag lay beside him. The darkness and the trees gave him cover from the watchtowers, but the dog kennels stood just on the other side of the fence. He held his breath while an SS man led a muzzled shepherd along the inside of the wire.
He had already buried the two gas cylinders in the snow, in shallow trenches dug at an upward angle perpendicular to the fence, leaving only the cylinder heads exposed. He’d molded the plastic explosive around the seams where the cylinder heads joined the tanks. All that remained was to prime and arm the plastic with time pencil fuses. If he did it right, at the instant of detonation the steel heads would be blown away from the tanks, allowing the pressurized nerve gas to spurt through the fence and saturate the area of the dog kennels and the SS barracks.
The cylinders weren’t the problem. The problem was the patrols. Crossing the hills from the cottage to the camp, Stern had felt as if an entire SS division had descended on the area. It had taken him over two hours to get from the cottage to the camp fence, and he had twice nearly stumbled into patrols. The two missing SS men had generated even more of a response than he’d expected. Lying in the snow beside the buried cylinders, he tried to decide what to do next.
In his experience, military patrols, no matter what army they served, reached their lowest effectiveness in the hour before dawn. Sometimes it was better to wait them out. He had done it before, and it looked like the best course of action tonight. He would not let Schorner catch him because of impatience. The case he’d stolen from Achnacarry held a selection of time pencil fuses, giving him great flexibility in delay times. Even if he waited here until dawn, he could still set the cylinders to blow at eight tomorrow night. Thinking of Colonel Vaughan discovering the missing ordnance at Achnacarry made him want to laugh. But he didn’t.
He heard the crunch of boot heels and the panting of another dog.
Klaus Brandt sat alone in his office in the hospital, the dim bulb of his desk lamp providing the only light.
“Absolutely, Reichsfuhrer,” he said into the black telephone. “And the sooner the better. The Raubhammer gas suits were my only worry, and they have arrived. I shall test them tomorrow.”
“I have a surprise for you, Brandt,” Himmler replied. “You must have wondered why I have always demanded schematic plans of all your equipment, as well as detailed updates on your new processes.”
Brandt rolled his eyes. “I must confess some curiosity, Reichsfuhrer.”
“You will be gratified to learn that for the past year, I have had teams of Russian laborers carving a massive factory out of the rock beneath the Harz Mountains. If the Raubhammer test goes as planned — as I have no doubt it will — you will begin directing mass production of Soman Four at that factory in five days’ time.”
Brandt drummed his fingers on his desk. If Himmler had offered anything less he would have been insulted. “Reichsfuhrer, I do not know what to say.”
“Say nothing. The only thanks I require will be the maximum possible output of Soman from that day until the day the Allies invade France. We’ll show Speer what the SS can accomplish!”
“You have my word, Reichsfuhrer. But what of my work here? My laboratory equipment and staff, my hospital?”
Himmler made a clucking sound over the phone. “Forget that little workshop, Brandt. At the Harz factory you will have everything you need, but with twenty times the capacity. You will of course bring your technicians with you. I have already arranged to have Totenhausen converted into a poultry processing plant.”
“I see.” Brandt was taken aback by this. “And my test subjects?”
“You mean your prisoners? If your work is done, liquidate them. We must have absolute secrecy.”
Brandt lifted a pen and doodled on the notepad on his desk. “Perhaps I should wait until the Raubhammer demonstration is completed, just to be sure.”
There was a chilly silence from Berlin. “You have doubts about the demonstration, Herr Doktor?”
Brandt cleared his throat, cursing himself mentally for his overcautiousness. “None whatever, Reichsfuhrer. I shall begin dismantling the laboratory tomorrow.”
“And your prisoners?”
