more than a minute, she knew. She had seen SS men turning off the valves behind the E-Block. The rest of the time would have been spent cleaning the Soman from the chamber with neutralizing chemicals and detergents. The usual cleaning method — scalding steam and corrosive bleach — could not be used in a suit test, because Brandt always interviewed the survivors afterwards. She thanked God that no one had discovered the portable oxygen cylinder.
Not yet, at least.
Two men wearing gas masks and rubber gloves moved cautiously down the concrete steps and opened the E-Block’s hatch, then dashed back up to ground level.
No one emerged.
As Klaus Brandt knelt beside one of the porthole windows and rapped on it, Anna looked down at her left hand. In it were the keys to Greta Muller’s Volkswagen. She turned her arm to read her watch: 3:30 P.M. Four and one-half hours until the attack. If there was an attack. With Sturm already organizing Schorner’s house-to-house search, she had to get back to the cottage and warn Stern and McConnell. They could make the decision: stay and try to carry off the attack, or run. She felt a powerful urge to run right now. But she would not go until she knew whether Stern’s father had survived. Every moment she stood there felt like a dare to fate, but if Rachel Jansen had the courage to walk into the E-Block under her own power, Anna could stand to watch for two more minutes.
She started at a shout from below. A black figure was moving slowly up the E-Block steps, a bubbly white substance flowing off of the suit as it moved. It was soap, Anna realized, the detergent solution Brandt used to spray away gas residue after suit tests. When the black-suited figure straightened, she knew it could only be Avram Stern. He stood nearly a head taller than Brandt, and in his arms he carried a limp figure which also wore a dripping suit.
Rachel Jansen.
Anna stayed long enough to see the tall figure lay down its burden and pull off its mask, revealing the prominent nose and gray moustache of the man called Shoemaker. Major Schorner was hurrying toward the prostrate figure at the shoemaker’s feet when Anna turned from the window and ran toward the stairs.
“How are we supposed to move in these things?” Stern yelled, trying to be heard through his vinyl gas mask.
He was standing in the kitchen of the cottage, wearing one of the oilskin anti-gas suits McConnell had brought from Oxford. He had gone up and down the cellar stairs three times wearing the suit, mask, and air tank, and he was already pouring sweat.
“You don’t have to shout,” McConnell told him. “The diaphragm set into the vinyl transmits your voice. You sound like an insect version of yourself.”
He pulled up the oilskin shoulders of the suit so that Stern could lift the clear vinyl mask off his head. “It will be a little tougher when we’re both wearing our masks,” said McConnell, “but we’ll manage.”
“It’s like wearing five sets of clothes,” Stern complained, wiping sweat from his face. “How do we fight in them?”
“I wouldn’t suggest hand to hand combat. One small rip and the whole thing is useless. If active nerve gas gets inside, you’re dead.”
“Why isn’t air escaping from your hose now?”
McConnell held up the corrugated rubber hose of his air tank, which sat on the kitchen table. There was a bulbous device at the point where the hose met the cylinder. “This is called a regulator,” he said. “It’s sensitive enough so that the force of your breath opens and closes it. There’s going to be a revolution in underwater diving after the war because of this gadget. A man named Cousteau developed—”
McConnell gaped at Stern, who had dropped into a crouch on the kitchen floor.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“A car just pulled up outside.”
McConnell knelt beside him. “SS?”
Stern picked up his Schmeisser from a chair. “If it is, we don’t have a chance in these suits.”
McConnell heard the angry clicking of a key in the front door. Someone jerked the door handle up and down, but the lock held fast.
“
“A woman?” McConnell asked softly.
Stern tiptoed to the kitchen window and peeked through a small crack between the curtains. “It
“Maybe it’s one of the other nurses. She’ll go away eventually.”
Stern shook his head. “She’s not going away. She’s getting a suitcase out of the boot. It’s a nice car, too. A Mercedes. Too expensive for a nurse. Wait . . . she’s coming back to the door.”
“Anna!” the woman shouted. She jerked the door handle up and down again. “Why have you changed your locks?”
“What’s she doing now?”
“Sitting down on her suitcase. She’s opening a book! She’s not going anywhere.”
“We’d better get down to the cellar.”
Stern shook his head. “She might hear us moving in these suits.”
“Jesus,” McConnell murmured. “We should have hit the camp last night.”
“Everything’s fine,” Stern said quietly. “If she doesn’t leave soon, I’ll drag her in here and kill her.”
Anna was driving too fast when she came down out of the wooded hills south of Dornow. She forced herself to slow down as the car passed the first outbuildings of the village.
She knew it was insane to have taken Greta’s Volkswagen, but she had to beat Sturm’s men to the cottage. The gate guards had seen her driving the VW often enough to let her leave the camp unmolested. She’d nearly killed herself several times on the hairpin turns in the hills, but tempting death had calmed her a little. Then she turned down the lane that led to her cottage.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Not today.”
She rolled to a stop behind the Mercedes. Her sister Sabine was standing beside the front door, looking just as she always did: the perfect Gauleiter’s wife. Too much makeup and too many jewels. Even her casual dresses were shipped from Paris.
“I’ve been waiting here for two hours!” Sabine complained.
Anna smoothed her hair and tried to look composed. “And
Sabine Hoffman’s mouth puckered into a shrewish scowl. “How could I go inside? You’ve changed your locks!”
“Oh . . . yes. Someone tried to break in while I was at work. I didn’t feel safe.”
“You should fly a Party flag outside. No one would have the nerve to break in. I’ll have Walter’s office send you one.”
Anna noticed the leather suitcase by the door. She felt almost too disoriented to hold a conversation. “Sabine, what are you doing here? I had no idea you were coming.”
“I’ve come to stay the night. Walter went to Berlin again, to kiss up to the Party hacks. Goebbels is having some kind of function for the Hitler Jugend. They never ask the wives anymore. Not that I’d want to go. Magda’s such a bore.” She looked past her Mercedes at Greta’s car. “Is that yours, dear? It doesn’t look bad at all, for a Volkswagen.”
Anna tried to focus her thoughts. “No, it . . . belongs to one of the other nurses. A friend of mine. She lends it to me sometimes.”
“Too bad.” Sabine picked up her suitcase. “Let’s get inside. It’s freezing out here.”
Anna prayed that McConnell and Stern were in the cellar. Her pulse raced as she unlocked the door.
Not a chair was out of place.
Sabine set her suitcase in Anna’s bedroom and installed herself at the kitchen table. “I’m positively starving,” she said. “What do you have?”
Anna realized she was wringing her hands. “Not much, I’m afraid. I often eat at the camp.” She felt a sudden
