“But that is what has allowed you to do what you have done.”
“Yes, but . . . I just . . . it can’t go on. I must explain. Make them see how it really is.”
Anna walked back and laid a hand on his bony shoulder. She tried not to recoil from the feverish skin. “Herr Weitz,” she said softly, “God sees how it really is.”
The bloodshot eyes opened wider.
“The Wojiks will be there tomorrow?” she said again. “Mid-afternoon? With the radio?”
Weitz closed his clammy hands around hers and squeezed. “They’ll be there.”
34
Jonas Stern leaned out of the back window of Greta Müller’s black Volkswagen and saluted a Wehrmacht private as they passed through Dettmannsdorf.
“Don’t press your luck,” McConnell snapped from behind the wheel.
Stern laughed and leaned back inside. He made a striking figure in the gray-green SD uniform and cap, and he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. Anna had planned to meet the Polish partisans alone, after feigning illness near the end of the day’s work shift. But when Stern heard that she intended to borrow Greta Müller’s car for the journey, he had insisted on going along.
“I believe,” he had said in an arrogant voice, “that a young woman escorted by Standartenführer of the SD will be much safer than a woman out driving alone.”
Anna had been unimpressed. Ultimately he’d had to threaten to abandon the idea of saving the prisoners before she submitted.
While waiting in the cottage for her to get off from work, McConnell had decided to accompany them as well. He saw no point in waiting for the SS to arrive at the cottage and inform him that his fellow spies had been caught and he was under arrest. You’re the big cheese, he’d told Stern. I can be your driver or something.
So that was how they played it. McConnell drove the car, while Anna and Stern sat in back like privileged passengers. The rendezvous was only ten miles from Anna’s cottage, in a small wood northeast of Bad Sülze. As the VW rolled past the hamlet of Kneese Hof, she told them they were halfway there. They bypassed Bad Sülze proper by swinging south and crossing a small bridge over the Recknitz River. Two kilometers of gravel road carried them onto a moor and to the edge of the wood.
“Pull into the trees,” Anna instructed. “Off the road.”
McConnell obeyed. Stern got out and looked around the car, his Schmeisser at the ready. McConnell followed, carrying a bag containing bread, cheese, and his own Schmeisser.
“I’ll go ahead,” said Anna. “Stan is very careful. I’ll talk to him first, explain things before you come out. In those uniforms, he’d shoot you down without a second thought.”
But when they arrived at the meeting place, no one was there. Stern and McConnell crouched in the snow while Anna walked into the middle of the clearing. A half hour later, a thin, nervous young man walked out of the trees and began speaking to her. He was unarmed, and looked strangely familiar to McConnell. They spoke a full five minutes before Anna motioned for Stern and McConnell to come out.
“Say something in English,” she told McConnell. “Hurry.”
“Well . . . fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty—”
“Good enough?” she asked the thin Pole.
The young man mulled it over.
“Stan already saw both of you,” she told Stern. “He could have killed you any time. I’m glad he’s in a good mood today. Put your gun on the ground.”
Stern reluctantly obeyed.
“They don’t have their radio.”
“
What
?”
“They share it among three resistance groups. But they can get to it by midnight tonight.”
“That gives Brigadier Smith less than twenty-four hours to set up the bombing raid,” Stern said. “It’s going to be close.”
McConnell started as a giant of a man stepped from the trees less than twenty meters away. He had a thick black beard and carried a World War One vintage bolt-action rifle — probably a Mauser — which he pointed right at Stern’s chest. McConnell didn’t blame him. Stern looked every inch an officer of the SD.
“
Co slychac
?” Stern said in a friendly voice.
The big man’s face brightened. “
Pan mòwi po polsku
?”
Stern switched to German. “A little. I was born in Rostock. I knew some Polish seamen.”
The bearded man held out a meaty hand. “Stanislaus Wojik,” he said, vigorously shaking Stern’s entire arm. “That’s my brother, Miklos.”
Stan Wojik looked like a man who had lived by his hands before becoming an amateur soldier, but his brother Miklos was almost a caricature of a starving artist — a second-chair violinist in an orchestra of modest reputation. Hollow cheeks, and large eyes as sincere as a child’s. McConnell suddenly realized where he had seen the brothers before. They were the two other members of the “reception party” that had met the Moon plane on the night he and Stern landed in Germany. He reached into his sack and took out a block of English cheese. Stan nodded thanks and tossed it to his brother.
“Stan speaks fair German,” Anna said.
“Good,” said Stern, squarely facing the big Pole. “I think I should hold my gun on you while we talk. If someone comes up on us, I’ll say you’re both our prisoners. We stopped to eat.”
Stan Wojik shrugged and laid down his rifle. Stern picked up his Schmeisser. McConnell noticed that Stan Wojik had a heavy meat cleaver hanging from a leather thong on his belt. The big man patted it and laughed.
“I used to be a butcher,” he said. “I still cut meat occasionally.” He grinned. “Nazi sausage, when I can get it.”
Stern laughed appreciatively, then in a mixture of Polish and German began explaining what they wanted. Stan Wojik listened intently, nodding during each pause. McConnell only followed about half of the exchange. Stern and the elder Wojik ate cheese while they talked, but Miklos sat quietly beside Anna, his eyes hardly leaving her face.
When the conversation was finished, Stan turned to McConnell and said in German: “You are American?”
“Yes.”
“Tell Roosevelt we need more guns. We need guns in Warsaw, but Stalin won’t give us any. Tell Roosevelt with guns we can beat the Nazis ourselves. We aren’t afraid to fight.”
McConnell saw no point in trying to explain that the odds of him ever talking to FDR were slim to none. “I’ll tell him,” he said.
He was surprised when Stern took a sheet of notepaper from an inside pocket and handed it to Stan Wojik. The Pole seemed surprised too. McConnell walked over to read it. Stern had hand-printed a message in English, followed by Polish and German translations:
CODE: ATLANTA Freq: 3140 Request diversionary air raid very near but not on TARA on 15/2/44 at precisely 2000 hours. Raid absolutely essential to success. BUTLER and WILKES.
“Is this smart?” McConnell asked. “What if he’s caught?”
Stern shrugged. “If he’s caught, that note will be the least of our problems. Without that air raid — in the right place and at the right time — our plan won’t work. You said that yourself. It’s worth the risk of him carrying the note to get the message right.”
Stan Wojik nodded.
“Where do these men live?” McConnell asked, unable to curb his curiosity.
Miklos laughed. “We are from a place called Warsow, on the Polish border.”
“Warsaw?”
“War
sow
,” Stern corrected. “It’s a small village near the island of Usedom. That’s where the Peenemünde rocket complex was until the big bombing raid last August.”
Stan Wojik understood enough of this to add, “Much experiments still go on. Rockets fly all across Poland. Airplanes without pilots. Very dangerous weapons.”
“Is there still an SS garrison at Peenemünde?” Stern asked.
“Some SS, yes.”
“They forced you out of Warsow?” McConnell inquired.
Stan shrugged. “Hard to fight the Germans in towns.”
“You live in the forests now?”
“We live wherever London needs us. Move all the time.”
The meeting was over. Anna gave the Poles the rest of the food from McConnell’s bag. Miklos thanked her effusively, while Stan greedily eyed Stern’s Schmeisser. On impulse, McConnell reached into his bag and took out his own Schmeisser, which he held out to Stan and indicated through hand motions that he was willing to trade for the bolt-action Mauser and a box of cartridges. Stern started to object, but then apparently thought better of it.
They made the trade.
As they were leaving, Stan Wojik gestured at Stern with his new submachine gun and said, “Can you fool the Germans in that uniform?”
In a transformation that stunned McConnell and Anna more than the Poles, Stern planted both feet wide apart on the ground, squared his shoulders, put his hands on his hips and barked several lightning commands at the Wojiks in harsh German.
The big Pole took a step back and laid his hand on the meat cleaver. Then he looked at McConnell and laughed nervously. “I think maybe he does that too well! Careful he doesn’t get to liking it.”
Stern relaxed and shook Stan Wojik’s hand again. “Your radio set has adequate range?”
“Sweden is only a hundred and sixty kilometers across the water.” The Pole grinned and thumped his broad chest. “If we don’t get confirmation, I’ll steal a boat and sail across myself! You’ll get your bombs, my friend. Farewell.”
“
Dowidzenia
,” said Stern.
As they drove back along the Dettmannsdorf road, Stern said, “That’s the kind of brave son of a bitch who won’t survive this war. He’ll never win a medal, and he’ll die blindfolded and alone against some dirty brick wall.”
“Shut up,” Anna said from the backseat. “Even if that’s true, there’s no point in talking about it.”
McConnell had to agree.
They had no trouble getting back to Anna’s cottage. The trouble started after nightfall, when McConnell and Stern tried to slip up into the hills to retrieve the two gas cylinders they needed to booby-trap the SS bomb shelter. Three times they had to drop to their bellies in the snow to avoid SS patrols with dogs. The soldiers were working in pairs, mostly on foot, though one motorcycle with a sidecar had roared past on the narrow switchback road, spewing a rooster tail of snow behind it.
Before leaving the cottage, Stern had told McConnell that their German uniforms would be enough to prevent anyone taking a close interest in them. So far, he had shown no inclination to test his theory.
When they finally reached the pylon where the cylinders hung, McConnell caught his breath in astonishment. The two wooden support poles were as thick as oak trees, and joined at the top by a heavy crossarm. He could faintly see the outline of something hanging from one of the power lines, but in the confusion of the treetops he couldn’t be sure what. He did not see how they could climb to that crossarm in the dark, but Stern lost no time proving the boasts he had made at Achnacarry. He quickly donned his climbing spikes, then the gas mask McConnell had persuaded him to wear (though without the full body suit it was practically useless), tied a long coil of rope to his belt, and went up the pole like a chimpanzee. Forty seconds after he put metal to wood, he was straddling the crossarm sixty feet above the ground.
McConnell heard a few metallic clinks above him, but nothing else. After about fifteen minutes, the first gas cylinder materialized out of the darkness above his head. The camouflaged tank descended silently, swinging in a gentle arc as Stern lowered it with the heavy rope. When McConnell tried to stop the swinging, to keep the protruding pressure triggers from striking the snow, the cylinder knocked him to the ground.
Seeing this, Stern tied off the rope at the crossarm and descended. He had wisely disarmed the triggers before lowering the cylinder, and the two of them let the tank down without serious incident. By the time Stern climbed the pole and repeated the process, his muscles were cramping from overexertion.
“You’ve got a big stain on your uniform,” McConnell told him when he reached the ground the second time.
“Tar,” said Stern, pulling off his sweat-soaked gas mask. “The nurse will have to get it off. Are you ready?”
“I don’t suppose we can drag these things?”
“Not if you want to live until morning. The tracks would lead the SS right to us. What is it, Doctor? What are you thinking?”
McConnell crouched beside one of the cylinders. “I was thinking . . . we might be able to test the gas before the raid, to see if it works or not. Then we’d know whether the attack was even worth trying.”
“Can we do that?”
McConnell lightly touched one of the pressure triggers, then examined the cylinder head. “I don’t think so. Not without losing the entire contents of a cylinder. We’d have to trip a trigger to get the cap off, and after the cap is blown, there’s no stopping the gas.”
“What the hell?” said Stern. “Let’s try it. One cylinder should be enough to kill everybody in that bomb shelter.”
“You’re missing the point. If we empty one of these things, and the gas works, it could kill every living creature for a hundred yards around. How long do you think it would take Schörner’s patrols to discover that? Also, the SS would hear the detonator go off. And even wearing a suit, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere close when it blew. It’s just too goddamn dangerous.”
McConnell stood up. “No dress rehearsal. Let’s move.”
“McShane said something about using carrying poles to move the cylinders,” Stern said. “We can tie our toggle ropes between two long branches and cradle the tank like a body on a litter.”
“Sounds good. It’ll take two trips, but it’ll be worth it.”
It took a few minutes to find dead branches strong enough to take the weight, but once they did, the rest went quickly. They moved with silent purpose through the trees, each knowing that poor concentration could mean death for them both. Their spirits rose when new snow began to fall, mercifully covering their tracks.
They buried the two cylinders in a copse near the winding hill road. It would be a simple matter for Anna to stop Greta’s VW there tomorrow night, just long enough for Stern and McConnell to chain the tanks under the car.