Black Cross. Greg Iles
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But it wasn’t.
“He graduated medical school in thirty-eight, somehow squeezing in a masters in chemical engineering during his internship. By then it was 1940. He entered general practice with a friend of his father’s, but he’d hardly settled in when a phone call came from Oxford. His old tutor told him that one of Churchill’s scientific advisers had been impressed by some monographs he’d done on chemical warfare in World War One. They wanted him to join a British team working on poison gases. America wasn’t in the war yet, but Mac understood what was at stake. England was hanging by a thread.”
“I do remember that much,” I said. “He agreed to go on the condition that he would only work in a defensive capacity. Right?”
“Yes. Rather naively, if I may say so. Anyway, he took your grandmother with him to England, just in time for the Battle of Britain. It took some doing, but he talked Susan into going back to the States. Hitler never did invade England, but by then it was too late. They were separated for the duration.
“Fifty years,” Leibovitz said softly. He paused as though he had lost his train of thought. “I suppose that seems an age to you, but try to picture the time. Dead of winter, January, 1944. The whole world—including the Germans—knew the Allies would invade Europe in the spring. The only question was where the blow would fall. Eisenhower had just been named Supreme Commander of OVERLORD. Churchill—”
“Excuse me, Rabbi,” I interrupted. “No disrespect intended, but I get the feeling you’re giving me the long version of this story.”
He smiled with a forbearance learned at the sides of impatient children. “You have somewhere to go?”
“No. But I’m curious about my grandfather, not Churchill and Eisenhower.”
“Mark, if I simply told you the end of this story, you would not believe me. I mean that. You cannot absorb what I am going to say unless you know what led to it. Do you understand?”
I nodded, trying to mask my impatience.
“No,” Leibovitz said forcefully. “You don’t. The worst thing you have ever seen in your life, all the worst things put together—child abuse, rape, even murder—these are as nothing compared to what I am about to tell you. It is a tale of cruelty beyond imagining, of men and women whose heroism has never been equaled.” He raised a crooked finger and his voice went very low. “After hearing this story, your life will never be the same.”
“That’s a lot of buildup, Rabbi.”
He took a gulp of brandy. “I have no children, Doctor. Do you know why?”
“Well … I assume you never wanted any. Or that you or your wife were sterile.”
“I am sterile,” Leibovitz confirmed. “When I was sixteen, I was invited by some German doctors to sit in a booth and fill out a form that would take fifteen minutes to complete. During those fifteen minutes, high-intensity X-rays were passed through my testicles from three sides. Two weeks later, a Jewish surgeon and his wife saved my life by castrating me in their kitchen.”
My hands felt suddenly cold. “Were you … in the camps?”
“No. I escaped to Sweden, along with the surgeon and his wife. But you see, I left my unborn children behind.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever told that to a Christian,” Leibovitz said.
“I’m not a Christian, Rabbi.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you know something I don’t? You’re not Jewish.”
“I’m not anything. An agnostic, I guess. A professional doubter.”
Leibovitz studied me for a long time, his face lined by emotions I could not interpret. “You say that so easily for one who has lived through so little.”
“I’ve seen my share of suffering. And alleviated some, too.”
He waved his hand in a European gesture that seemed to say many things at once. “Doctor, you have not even peered over the edge of the abyss.”
Laying his hand across his eyes, Leibovitz sat motionless for nearly a minute. He seemed to be deciding if he had the strength to tell his story after all. Just as I was about to speak, he removed his hand and said, “Now are you ready to listen, Mark? Or would you prefer to leave things as they are?”
I looked down at the Victoria Cross, the faded note, the Scottish tartan and the photograph of the woman. “You’ve hooked me,” I said. “But wait here a minute.”
I went back to my grandfather’s bedroom and got the small tape recorder he had used for dictating medical charts, and a thin box of Sony microcassettes. “Do you mind if I tape this?” I asked, setting up the recorder. “If the story is that important, perhaps it should be documented.”
“It should have been told years ago,” Leibovitz said. “But Mac would have none of it. He said knowing or not knowing about it wouldn’t change human history by one whit. I dis-agreed with him. It’s long past time to bring this story into the light.”
I glanced at the window. “The light’s almost gone, Rabbi.”
He sighed indifferently. “Then we’ll make a night of it.”
“Can I give you a bit of advice? Editorially speaking?”
“Ah. You’re an editor now?”
I shrugged. “I’ve written a few journal articles. Actually, I’ve been toying with writing a novel on my off weekends. A medical thriller. But perhaps I’ve found a new story to tell. Anyway, here’s my advice—you can take it or leave it. That ‘picture the scene’ and ‘I suppose’ business? Drop all that. Just tell the story like you think it happened. Like you were a fly on the wall.”
After a few moments, Leibovitz nodded. “I think I can do that,” he said. He poured himself another brandy, then settled back into the leather wing chair and held up his glass in a toast.
“To the bravest man I ever knew.”
Oxford University, England, 1944
Mark McConnell quietly lifted the long steering pole out of the Cherwell River and slapped it back down. A spray of water and ice drenched the leather-jacketed back of his brother, who perched on the forward seat of the narrow wooden punt.
“You goddamn shitbird!” David whirled around, almost upsetting the boat in the process. He dug his gloved right hand into the river and shot back a volley of water and ice.
“Hold it!” Mark cried. “You’ll sink us!”
“You surrendering?” David dipped his hand into the water again.
“Declaring a temporary cease-fire. For medical reasons.”
“Chickenshit.”
Mark wiggled the pole. “I’ve got the firepower.”
“Okay, truce.” David lifted his hand and turned back to the prow of the flat-bottomed punt as it crunched slowly around the next bend in the icy river. He was the shorter of the two brothers and built like a halfback, with sprinter’s legs, a narrow waist, and thickly muscled shoulders. His sandy blond hair, strong jaw, and clear blue eyes completed the picture of Norman Rockwell charm. While Mark watched warily, he slid down onto the cross slats of the punt, leaned back, cradled his head in his hands and shut his eyes.
Mark scanned the river ahead. The bare trees on both banks hung so heavily with icicles that some branches nearly touched the snow carpeting the meadows beneath them. “This is insane,” he said, flicking a final salvo of drops onto David’s face. But he didn’t mean it. If his younger brother hadn’t driven down