The Invasion of 1950

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “That one wanted it rough,” Janine said, as she pushed him away and fingered her wound. He was suddenly, devastatingly, aware of her – not of her nakedness, but of her vulnerability. She was nothing to him, or certainly she was supposed to be nothing to him, but he cared about her. He would have extracted her from the brothel if he could have done so, but where could he take her where she would be safe? Her hands touched her breasts and he saw more bruises against her pale flesh. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  The pain in her voice betrayed her words, but there was nothing that Davall could do. “You wanted to see me?” he asked softly. He didn’t want to talk business, but maybe she would take comfort in finding a way to hurt the Germans. “Did you find out a date for the attack?”

  “I found someone who might know, as you requested,” Janine said. Davall felt his blood run cold; he had proposed it, when he had had the idea, half in jest. “There’s an SS officer, one of a group assigned to oversee this port, charged with providing security to the convoys that transport supplies from here to the port. He came here a week ago, chose me and…”

  She smirked. “Very unimaginative man, for which I should be grateful,” she admitted. “He didn’t want much more than for me to lean back and think of Germany at first, but then…well, let’s just say I didn’t know SS men were allowed to be lazy.”

  Davall felt his face blush red and half-covered his face with his hand. “I see,” he said, drawing his own conclusions. “How does this allow us to get him alone?”

  Janine flashed a grin that would have done credit to a tiger. “The bastard likes his times with me so much that he’s actually hired me for the coming weekend,” she said. “He’s taken over a cottage just outside of town and has staffed it with a cook, but no one else as far as I could determine; he wants me there for a private party.”

  Her breasts shook as she giggled. “I don’t know why he bothers,” she said, through quiet chuckles. “He never wants anything he couldn’t get right here.”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t like the thought of sloppy seconds,” Davall said, shook at the thought. It, more than the fading memory of Kate, reminded him that he didn’t really want Janine as anything more than an ally and a fellow Grey Wolf. “Did he ask you to bring anything with you?”

  “No,” Janine said. She leaned closer. “You’re going to have to act like you’re not with me, so remember; you’re going to have to treat me as a possible enemy, understand?”

  “Yes,” Davall said slowly. He leaned forwards and gave Janine a hug. “I understand.”

  “Good,” Janine said, her hands gently touching his crotch, “Could I tempt you…?”

  Davall understood the underlying message – she didn’t want to be alone or go back to customers who didn’t really think that whores had feelings – but he couldn’t stay with her much longer. If a German soldier decided that he had taken long enough and burst in on them, how could they explain him being fully clothed? The risk was just too great.

  He kissed her on the forehead, but shook his head. “No,” he said, softly. “I’ll see you afterwards, when all this is over.”

  The outside felt hotter than ever when he left the brothel and walked back towards his house. Life was returning to something like normality now that someone had cut down the bodies of the two hung men and buried them in the graveyard, but the permanent presence of the Germans was a constant niggling reminder of their position in the Reich. Davall was stopped and asked for his papers twice on his way home. The sight of five men and three women who had forgotten their papers, clearing rubble under German supervision, reminded him of the fate of anyone who showed the slightest hint of defiance. They were the lucky ones; they, at least, were still in Britain. He’d heard from other Grey Wolves that a line of British prisoners, taken in the war, had been driven in from the front lines one night, loaded on-board a German ship, and sent over to the continent. God alone knew what was happening to them there.

  His real place of employment had been closed down for the moment. The Germans had visited with an SS squad, interrogated the owner – they’d found something really suspicious about the fact that it was a communal ownership – and ordered it closed down, along with the local newspaper and several other businesses. It had puzzled Davall at first, and in fact it had been Kate who pointed out that the supply shop for electronics could be quite useful if someone wanted to build a radio or a bomb.

  He guessed that they were lucky that the Germans hadn’t rounded up everyone who worked there on suspicion, but for the moment they had inadvertently given him an excuse to go walking in the daytime. If he had no place of work, he’d argued, when the Germans had asked pointed questions, his wife wouldn’t want him around the house all day, would she? So far, it was working, provided he didn’t try to go out into the countryside. That was still off-limits.

  The Bramble Cottages were right on the edge of town, a set of five cottages that had been built by a developer keen on hiring them out to families for a week, each one the very model of what a countryside house should be like. As far as Davall knew, they had all been empty when the invasion began, and therefore they had all been marked down as commandeered by the Germans. They hadn’t even won the war yet, he saw, and they had already begun to distribute the spoils of victory, including giving each of the cottages to a particular SS officer. Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl didn’t seem to merit a cottage, or maybe he hadn’t bothered to try to claim one for himself, but Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger, logistics officer, certainly had. It was convenient, perhaps too convenient, and Davall was seriously tempted just to pass up on the chance to interrogate the SS officer.

  He grimaced to himself. The Germans had relaxed slightly after they'd shot the Davidson family and a handful of others, but unless they were fools, they probably knew that the Davidson family hadn’t really been involved with the Grey Wolves. They had shot the wrong people and heads would roll in Berlin – if Berlin cared – and the Grey Wolves remained intact…and the Germans would know that. Had they decided to create a fake Brigadefuhrer – a Brigadier General – and dangle him in front of their noses, in hopes of taking a Grey Wolf prisoner? That would mean that…

  His mind ticked over the possibilities as he walked away from the cottages. The behaviours of people under occupation, he’d been warned, could be unpredictable; some of them might even betray their fellows just for a crust of bread, or some favour from their occupiers, or maybe even for revenge. The British Intelligence Service had studied, carefully, the behaviour of Frenchmen and Danes under German rule and had noticed some strange trends. Those who the Germans considered to be Aryan and treated better than the non-Aryans tended to respond well to their treatment, sometimes even falling completely into the German orbit. That was unsurprising…

  But it didn’t stop there. Ordinary Frenchmen, people with little to look forward to but permanent subordination to the New Order, collaborated at will. Not just at gunpoint, which would have been understandable, but seemingly without any compulsion at all. Their world-view had been altered to the point where German supremacy seemed to be permanent. Those Frenchmen who disagreed either spent their lives in futile acts of rebellion or left for Algeria. Davall wondered, as he passed yet another German patrol, if that would be Grey Wolves' fate as well. Would James, one day, betray his own father? Had one of the Grey Wolves already broken and betrayed them?

  He saw a line of children emerging from one of the houses and felt his insides clench. If the Grey Wolves failed, if the Germans completed their conquest, if resistance was broken…those children would grow up in the knowledge that they would be permanently subordinated to Germany. The Germans hadn’t altered the school curriculum much - apart from an insistence that they all learn German – but that too would change; soon, the children would be saying Heil Hitler and informing on their parents. The Grey Wolves were fighting for the children’s future, even though they would never know the Grey Wolves' names.

  German so
ldiers appeared around the corner, marched through the children as though they weren’t there, and continued on past Davall. There was an entire line of German infantrymen marching into the distance; he turned his head to see them walking out of the town and up towards Ipswich. They acted like conquering troops, he saw, and wished that he had had the time to mine the roads before the Germans had marched over it and headed out. They would be going to the defence line…and he still had no idea when the attack would take place.

  No, he thought, coldly. They needed that information, and there was only one way to get it. He pushed down all of his feelings and concerns. The Germans had moved beyond the pale when they had executed his friends for the actions of the Grey Wolves. If they refused to play according to the rules, such as they were, he refused to play as well. He would find out what he needed to know, whatever the cost, and ensure that the information was transmitted to the people who needed it.

  With renewed purpose, he strode back to his home. There was much to be done before nightfall and then he must convince the others that he was right. That wouldn’t be easy.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Felixstowe, England

  Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger ignored the acid-like disapproving look of his driver, not quite concealed enough for the perfection the SS demanded of its newer recruits, and helped the French girl out of the car. Janine – such a lovely name – had been a surprising discovery in Felixstowe; he'd sampled almost all of the whores in the brothel and most of them, like most English girls, were ugly. The girls who had attached themselves to members of the invasion force weren't that bad, but they required care and attention on their terms, and Deininger just wasn’t the sort of man to give it. He wanted much more from his girls and none of them would be suitable. It was much easier to go with a suitable whore.

  He relaxed as his driver departed, taking the car with him, and smiled. He’d done everything he could to ensure that the SS’s part in the forthcoming operation would succeed, and now it was time for a little rest and relaxation. The driver might disapprove, but then, he had been a child during the last war and a person who had grown up never knowing anything but Hitler and the Brotherhood of the Death’s Head. The SS was his mother, his father, his brothers…and like all of his kind, he had little tolerance or understanding for those who had been born in the dark years before Hitler. He was a good soldier in an organisation where strict adherence to orders, however insane, was commendable, but his very lack of imagination would condemn him to remain at a low rank for the rest of his life.

  Deininger suspected that that was an inevitable effect of SS training. Deininger himself had joined because he’d liked Himmler’s young confidante and had heard that the SS was a quick route to promotion, assuming that one survived the early years. He had no real liking for fighting, nor did he have the eternal hatred for the Jew, the Communist and the Slav that Himmler demanded, but he had a talent for organisation and creative thinking that had earned him his rank and position within the SS. He’d organised the slave labour camps, the creation of an entire private SS economy, and much more besides, all without really believing in Himmler. The little schoolmaster, as some of the older men called him behind his back, could have his dream of an Aryan elite, but there was no need for them to share it. They were too important and they knew it.

  “So, what do you think?” He asked as the whore looked around. “I had it secured for my person and it is my pleasure to share it with you.”

  Janine looked doubtful. “But it doesn’t belong to you,” she protested, after a moment. Deininger almost smiled at the thought of a whore having any concept of property rights, not when she belonged to any man who could make her price, but felt the urge to indulge her. “It belongs to the person who owns it.”

  Deininger laughed as he opened the door. “That person fled and left it here, and to the victors go the spoils,” he boomed cheerfully. It was almost night, but under the blackout curtains, the cottage glowed with light. The British had withdrawn too quickly to sabotage most of the area’s infrastructure, much to his private relief, but he had limited most of it for the citizens. He hadn’t done anything of the sort with his people. “Shall we have dinner?”

  Her face lit up as she saw the table. His cook, who knew his tastes, had set it up well with a small cold salad and a pile of bread, which smelt wonderful. Janine wouldn’t have eaten so well in her life, certainly not since the invasion had begun. The English population were on low rations for a reason. He’d ensured that the brothel got a small amount of additional food – they would need to keep their strength up for the soldiers, sailors and dockyard workers – but the madam had sold most of it onwards on the black market. If she had been anyone else, she would have been enjoying life in a penal camp, but for the moment, Deininger could only watch her. She was performing an essential service, after all.

  She ate carefully, her puzzlement showing on her face as she ate; her mind was conceiving all kinds of nightmarish scenarios for her weekend with him. She didn’t know why he was in the mood to celebrate, or why he had even been allowed a weekend’s leave; she didn’t understand what he had in mind. Deininger could guess at her thoughts and was tempted to reassure her; if he had had the darker tastes of many SS men, they could have been satisfied in one of the secured camps. He wanted a weekend with a pretty girl, almost a wife, something that he had never really been able to obtain on his own. He had never married – despite an SS rule that all senior officers were to be married and have at least four children – and he wanted to enjoy the good parts of married life, without the bad parts. How could he have explained that to her?

  He kept up a constant stream of chatter about nothing as they ate, telling her about some places in Berlin and Albert Speer’s latest project for a city built on the ruins of a Russian city. The slave labourers had already been assembled to clear the remains of the city; all that mattered now was finalising the plans and starting work before the dreaded Russian winter interfered with the construction. Hitler had added his own touch to the city – Deininger allowed himself the private thought that Hitler wasn't a designer any more than he was a painter – and so it would be built exactly as he had specified, working millions of Russians to death in the process.

  “They say that once this invasion is over, the panzers will roll east and put an end to Beria,” he said, cheerfully. She showed little reaction. If he believed her story, she was the daughter of a wealthy French family that was pushed to escape France and sell her into prostitution. He didn’t believe her, but as that was part of the magic, he hadn’t poked at it too closely. “What do you think of that?”

  She considered. “Doesn’t the Fuhrer have enough land?”

  “That’s not the point,” Deininger explained dryly. He took another sip of his wine; Janine had barely touched hers at all. That was understandable; she didn’t really understand what he wanted and didn’t want to render herself helpless, although she was in no real danger. “National Socialism is a jealous god and demands that all rivals are to be crushed. In the next few years, the new lands in the east, already almost completely free of churches, will become the breeding ground for a new religion, designed by the Reichsfuhrer himself. The Panzers will roll into Italy and burn the Vatican to the ground, taking it and building a new temple to the superman on the rubble. There will be many more changes in the face of Europe in the years to come.”

  He smiled. Perhaps the wine was going to his head, but it hardly mattered; he wanted a chance to boast to his ‘wife.’ “And much of that will be organised by me,” he said, shaking his head. “In forty years, perhaps, no one will remember that there was such a man as Jesus Christ or that the Vatican stood at all. Himmler’s religion will dominate the world.”

  It made him wink at her. He’d seen enough of Himmler’s religion to know that it hearkened back to the old days, before Christianity had appeared in Europe or Islam in the Middle East; it called upon the old gods and the concept of the superman in a h
aze that bemused anyone who had the background knowledge to understand what was actually happening. That kind of knowledge would be sparse in Himmler’s Europe; the SS would be the new Knights Templar, with their own rituals, sacrifices, holidays as well as punishments for infidels. He’d seen them sacrifice a Jewess once, deep below the ground on a spot that a charlatan had claimed was an ancient place of power, but then…Himmler had always been credulous when such tales came to his ears. He had even dispatched entire missions to Tibet looking for ancient lore…

  “And everything will be very different,” he said and stood up, pulling her to him. Her clothes came off at his touch and he gazed on her beauty. Someone had marked her and that man would be flogged when he found out his name, but she probably wouldn’t know; whores rarely knew the names of the men they serviced. His hands ran down her back and stroked her gently. “I think that…”

  He saw the shadow and froze just before a man stepped into the room, a pistol pointed directly at Deininger’s head. He opened his mouth as Janine turned and stiffened in his arms, her mouth going very wide as she was motioned away from him and over to the sofa where she crossed her legs, covered her breasts with her arms, and looked terrified. Deininger watched the newcomer carefully, noting the mask and the black clothes, almost German in their design, and wondered; who was he, really? Three other men arrived and one of them went over to Janine, pointing a gun at her. He forced her to turn over, before tying her hands and legs, gagging her, and carrying her off into the bedroom. It was all-too-easy to imagine her fate.