Black Cross. Greg Iles
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trigger—
“What is the delay here?” asked a sharp voice.
Sergeant Sturm froze as Major Schörner leaned over his shoulder.
“Yes,” said Doctor Brandt, who had walked up beside Schörner. “What is the problem, Hauptschärführer?”
Sturm cleared his throat. “This old Jew wants to take his son’s place.”
“Impossible,” Brandt said in a bored voice. He turned and stared impatiently at the front gate.
“I beg you, Herr Doktor!” Jansen implored. The old man had been astute enough to pick up on Brandt’s preferred title. “My son has young children who need him. Herr Doktor, Marcus is a lawyer! I am but a tired old tailor. Useless! Take me instead!”
Klaus Brandt pivoted on his heel and regarded the old man with a sardonic smile. “But a good tailor is infinitely more valuable here than a lawyer,” he said. He pointed to a nearby prisoner’s tattered shift. The skin beneath it looked blue. “What need has he of a lawyer?”
With that, Brandt turned and moved a few steps up the line.
Benjamin Jansen stared after him with wild eyes. “But Herr Doktor—”
“Quiet!” Sturm roared, reaching for Marcus Jansen, who had knelt beside his children.
The old man shook as if from palsy. He reached out and caught the back of Major Schörner’s gray tunic. “Sturmbannführer, take half the diamonds! Take all of them!”
Schörner turned back with narrowed eyes. “Diamonds?”
“I’m ready,” said Marcus Jansen. The young Dutchman stepped resolutely from the line. His wife crouched and hugged her children, hiding their eyes.
Sergeant Sturm grabbed the lawyer and jerked him away.
With a wild shriek Ben Jansen clenched both hands into fists, took an uncertain step toward Major Schörner, then lunged to his right in the direction of Dr. Brandt.
The shoemaker felt something inside him snap. Despite the risk to himself, he threw his right fist and caught Ben Jansen on the side of the jaw. The old Dutchman dropped flat on his back in the snow in the same moment that the shoemaker whipped back into line and stood rigidly at attention.
It happened so fast that no one knew quite what to do. Sergeant Sturm had been a fraction of a second from shooting the old man. Now he looked uncertainly from the shoemaker to Schörner, then to Brandt, who had turned to see what was happening. Marcus Jansen stared in horror as Sturm’s pistol hovered above his father’s head.
The sudden blast of a car horn saved Benjamin Jansen’s life. Its blaring echo reverberated over the snow like a royal clarion.
“It’s the Reichsführer!” shouted Sergeant Sturm, hoping to turn all attention toward the front gate.
For the most part he succeeded. But while Klaus Brandt hurried toward the gate with an honor guard of SS troops, and the shoemaker wondered if he had actually heard the word Reichsführer, Major Wolfgang Schörner said in a soft voice: “Open your left hand, Hauptscharführer.”
“But the selection!” Sturm protested. “I must finish!”
Schörner’s hand closed around Sturm’s thick wrist. “Hauptscharführer, I order you to open your hand.”
“Zu befehl, Sturmbannführer!” Sturm’s voice was tight with fear and anger. As the roar of engines drew nearer, he opened his hand.
It was empty.
Major Schörner stared into the hand for a moment, then said, “Remain at attention, Hauptscharführer.”
Without hesitation Schörner reached into Sturm’s trouser pocket. A pained expression came over his face. He dug in the pocket, then removed his hand and opened it inches from the sergeant’s face.
The diamonds glittered like blue fire.
“I thought we had settled this issue,” Schörner said quietly.
Sturm lowered his eyes. “We did, Sturmbannführer.”
“Then would you like to explain these diamonds to the Reichsführer?”
Sturm paled. Himmler’s edict against looting Jews for personal gain was quite explicit: the penalty was death. “Nein, Sturmbannführer.”
Schörner grabbed Sturm’s left hand and forced the diamonds into it. “Then get rid of them.”
“Get rid of them? How?”
“Schnell!”
The shoemaker watched in amazement as Sergeant Sturm flung the diamonds across the snow like a man feeding chickens.
“Now,” Schörner said in an even voice. “Finish the selection.”
He turned and marched off toward the front gate, his knee boots gleaming under the lights.
Sturm stared down at Ben Jansen in silent rage. Then he holstered his Luger and kicked Marcus Jansen toward the condemned men. “All male Jews aged sixteen to fifty step out of the ranks!” he shouted. “If anyone in that category is left in line one minute from now, every second woman in line will be shot!”
The shoemaker felt the terrible, wonderful flood of relief he experienced every time he survived a selection. Out of a total of thirty-nine adult male Jews, twenty-eight had fallen into the condemned category. As the remainder of these stepped from the line, a convoy of gray field cars and one heavy troop transport truck roared across the Appellplatz toward the rear of the camp. A square flag showing two triangles and a Nazi eagle flew from the left mudwing of the longest car.
So it’s true, thought the shoemaker. Heinrich Himmler has finally come to observe his handiwork.
Sergeant Sturm’s troops clubbed the condemned men toward the rear of the camp with rifle butts and truncheons, while the balance of the prisoners remained standing in the snow. Rachel Jansen remained on her knees, hugging her children. Her father-in-law had not yet regained his senses. The shoemaker swept his eyes over the decimated Jewish section, looking for his few remaining friends. Nothing but gray heads now.
“All prisoners return to blocks!”
The shoemaker drifted to the edge of the pack as the dazed crowd broke into small groups and moved toward the six inmate barracks. He knew he should follow, but something held him back. The emotions surging through him were so powerful that he hesitated to face them. Not for a year had he visited the rearmost area of the camp, and for good reason. Behind the hospital, half-buried in the earth, stood a small airtight chamber designated the Experimental Block, but called simply the “E-Block” by the camp population—when it was mentioned at all.
Only once had the shoemaker observed one of the “special actions” that occurred at the E-Block—and he had observed it from the inside. He had been wearing a heavy rubber body suit at the time, with a sealed gas mask connected to a cylinder of oxygen. The other man in the chamber—a Russian POW chained to the steel wall and designated a “control” by Klaus Brandt—had been stark naked. What the shoemaker saw happen to the Russian when the invisible gas hissed into the chamber had driven him nearly to suicide. And tonight, Heinrich Himmler had come to see a similar spectacle for himself.
Without further reflection the shoemaker broke away from the crowd of survivors and walked purposefully toward the rear of the camp. The risk was great, but less for him than for other inmates. His leatherworking skills were legendary in Totenhausen, and all SS knew him by sight. He had done at least one repair job for every soldier in camp. A boot here, a shoulder strap there. A pair of slippers for a mistress somewhere. Such was the currency of his survival. If someone stopped him, he would claim he had