Storm Front (Twilight of the Gods Book 1)

by Christopher Nuttall

  She shuddered. Grandpa Frank wasn't the only one who’d gone off to war and come back a changed man. She’d heard horror stories, filtered through the grapevine at school and then at university, about men who woke up screaming, fathers who beat their children bloody, husbands who bragged to their wives about how they’d slept with whores while at the front... she’d wondered, at the time, why anyone would want to get married to a soldier. And yet, her father was strict, but he wasn't a drunken monster - and nor was Volker Schulze.

  Mother must have had a hard time of it, she thought. She wasn't quite sure how the dates added up, but she suspected that Grandpa Frank had come back from the wars shortly before he’d married, long before his daughter had married Gudrun’s father. How did Grandpa Frank treat his wife and daughter?

  Gerde cleared her throat. Gudrun realised, suddenly, that Konrad’s mother had been speaking... and she hadn’t heard a single word.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, softly. “I was miles away.”

  “I understand,” Gerde said. “I was wondering if your brother is still unmarried.”

  “None of my brothers are married,” Gudrun said. Gerde couldn't be planning to marry her daughter to Kurt, could she? Johan would be a better fit, if only because they were the same age. “I don’t think Kurt plans to marry in a hurry.”

  “Handsome young man like him?” Gerde asked. “Doesn't he have a girlfriend?”

  “If he does, I don’t know about it,” Gudrun said. She didn't really want to think about Kurt having a girlfriend, let alone a wife. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Liana needs a man,” Gerde said. “And your brother is already an established soldier...”

  Gudrun shook her head, sadly. “I don’t know what he’d want,” she said. The thought of her brother marrying Konrad’s sister was... icky, even though it wouldn't be technically illegal or immoral. But she knew now she wasn't going to marry Konrad. He’d be lucky if they didn't turn the life support off in a few weeks, if he showed no signs of recovery. “You’d have to talk to my parents.”

  She felt a sudden flicker of envy. Kurt could refuse, if pressed; he didn't have an obligation to listen to his parents when it came to choosing a wife. He had a career, he had a life... he could marry a whore from the brothels if he wanted and no one could say no. But Gudrun herself? She had to listen to her parents when it came to getting married.

  “I will,” Gerde said, briskly. “And...”

  She looked up as her husband returned, his face very pale. Gudrun took one look and knew what he’d been told. Volker Schulze looked like a man who had been punched in the belly, repeatedly.

  “Konrad is in hospital,” he said, numbly. “He’s not expected to survive.”

  Gerde gasped. “How? Why?”

  “There was an ambush, apparently,” Volker Schulze said. He sounded shaken; Gudrun watched with growing concern as he walked over to the cabinet, produced a bottle of expensive imported whiskey from Scotland and poured himself a glass. “Konrad was badly wounded. They did what they could to keep him alive, but... but there was apparently some brain damage. He’s not expected to survive.”

  He swallowed the whiskey in one gulp and poured himself another glass. “Gerde, I...”

  “My son,” Gerde said. “Where is he?”

  “I couldn't find out,” Volker Schulze said. He downed the second glass of whiskey and refilled it once again. “My contact couldn't open the entire file. It seems that certain parts of Konrad’s dossier have been sealed. They don’t want anyone to know where he is.”

  “He may already be dead,” Gudrun said, shaken. How long had it been since she’d seen his torn and broken body. “They...”

  “They’d have listed him as dead and closed the file,” Volker Schulze said, sharply. He stared down at his glass, but didn't drink. “Konrad... they should have told us.”

  “Then the leaflets are correct,” Gudrun said. “Konrad isn't the only soldier to be wounded or killed in South Africa.”

  “They told us it would be a walkover,” Volker Schulze said. He glared at the radio as if it had personally offended him. “That only a handful of soldiers would be killed in the fighting.”

  “And if they lied about Konrad,” Gerde added, “how many others have also been killed or wounded?”

  Gudrun looked at her. “So what do we do about it?”

  “You do nothing, young lady,” Volker Schulze snapped. He swallowed the whiskey, then returned the bottle to the cabinet. “You cannot, obviously, marry my son. I wouldn't expect you to honour your commitment, such as it was, under these circumstances. I shall speak to your father and inform him that the arrangement has to be cancelled.”

  “He isn't dead,” Gudrun protested. She’d come to the same conclusion herself, but somehow, having it put so bluntly hurt. “I could still...”

  “He is a cripple with brain damage,” Volker Schulze snapped. The raw anger in his tone shocked her to the bone. She’d never seen Konrad’s father drink before, let alone lose his temper. “He is certainly no longer capable of fathering children. You would be condemning yourself to life as a permanent nursemaid, assuming he could ever be taken off the machine and go home. I would not ask you to marry him under those conditions.”

  He looked down at the empty glass in his hand. “I may have to ask them to turn the machine off and let him die,” he added, sadly. “What sort of life could he have after... after...”

  Gerde rose and embraced her husband, holding him tightly. Gudrun looked away, torn between embarrassment and guilt. She’d stripped away the lies they’d told themselves, the hopes they’d clung to... and now, Volker Schulze was drinking and his wife was crying. It was her fault.

  But they would have found out sooner or later, she thought, as she rose herself. They would have guessed the truth after Konrad remained silent...

  She could feel her own eyes tearing up. If she’d allowed herself to cry for Konrad earlier... she pushed the thought aside. She’d avenge her boyfriend if it was the last thing she did.

  “I will speak to your father,” Volker Schulze said, stiffly. “And it would not be proper for you to visit again.”

  “Volker,” Gerde snapped.

  “I understand,” Gudrun said. As Konrad’s girlfriend, she could go to his house even when he wasn't present; as an unmarried girl, it wouldn't be proper for her to visit. “Please tell Liana that I am sorry I won’t be able to speak to her again.”

  “You can talk to her outside the house,” Gerde said, sharply. She made a visible effort to calm herself. “If you want to sit here for a while, you can...”

  “I’d better go,” Gudrun said. She had no idea what she’d started. What would Konrad’s parents do, now they knew their son was a brain-damaged cripple? Volker Schulze was a stubborn man, one experienced in the ways of the SS. What would he do? “And... I'm sorry.”

  “So are we,” Gerde said. “You would have made a good daughter-in-law.”

  Perhaps, Gudrun thought. Or perhaps you would have found me a tiresome girl who wanted a career of her own.

  She pushed the thought aside as she strode out of the room and out onto the streets, silently grateful that Liana was nowhere in sight. Gudrun wasn't sure she could have faced Konrad’s sister, not now. And to think Gerde wanted to try to marry Liana to Kurt! Was there a reason they wanted to marry their daughter off at such a young age? What age had Gerde been when she’d married Volker Schulze?

  Gudrun was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she was barely aware of her surroundings until she was standing in front of her door, fumbling for the key. Her mother opened the door before she could get the key into the lock, then pulled Gudrun into a hug. Gerde must have called her, Gudrun realised, as she allowed her mother to hold her tightly. Her father probably wouldn't be home from the station until the evening, unless he came home especially for her. It didn't seem likely, somehow.

  “I’m sorry,” her mother said, as she helped Gudrun into the living room. “I k
now you loved him.”

  Gudrun shuddered, feeling tears welling up in her eyes. “He... he deserved so much better,” she said. “I loved him. We were going to marry and...”

  “I know,” her mother said, wrapping an arm around Gudrun’s shoulders. “You and he would have been good together.”

  We would have been better than good, Gudrun thought, miserably. She’d bottled up her tears, knowing she dared not cry without a reason she could tell her mother, but now she let them flow freely. Konrad wasn't dead, yet his life was effectively over. We would have lived together, built a life together and...

  “Hey, cry-baby,” Siegfried called, peering into the room. “What’s...”

  “Get up to your room and wait until your father gets home,” his mother snapped. Siegfried recoiled in shock. Their mother rarely told off her youngest child. “He’ll have more than a few words to give you.”

  She turned back to Gudrun as Siegfried fled up the stairs. “I do understand, my darling,” she whispered into Gudrun’s ear, rocking her like a baby. “Cry all you like. Let it out. There’s nothing else you can do.”

  But there is, Gudrun thought, bitterly. The leaflets were just the beginning. We can make the state pay for what it’s done.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Berlin, Germany

  4 August 1985

  My sister is playing a very dangerous game, Leutnant Kurt Wieland thought, as he stepped into the barracks. And who knows what will happen when something goes badly wrong?

  It wasn't a pleasant thought. No one else seemed to have realised that Gudrun was responsible for the leaflets, but Kurt knew all too well that Gudrun had means, motive and opportunity. She might have been a girl, yet she’d been brave enough to sneak into a secure hospital just to visit her boyfriend. Kurt couldn't have asked for more from the soldiers under his command.

  “Leutnant,” Oberfeldwebel Helmut Loeb said. “The CO has called a briefing in ten minutes.”

  “And I’m expected to attend,” Kurt said. Loeb was an NCO, old enough to be Kurt’s father; he’d forgotten more about war than Kurt had ever known. “I’ll be there.”

  He placed his knapsack in the locker, then hurried down to the briefing room. The ordinary soldiers had an additional two days of leave, while their officers and NCOs received their orders from their superiors and planned how best to carry them out. Kurt had a nasty feeling that the Berlin Guard was going to be deployed away from Berlin for the first time in quite some time, perhaps as a complete unit. Individual companies had been rotated through Germany East, Germany Arabia and Germany South to give their officers and men some valuable experience, but the Berlin Guard as a whole hadn't left Berlin for years. Their battle honours had been allowed to lapse.

  But we weren't meant to face real trouble in South Africa, Kurt thought. He remembered feeling envious of the soldiers who’d been sent to South Africa. It might not be a proper war, but at least it was some action. Now, if the rumours are accurate, the war in South Africa may blaze on for years with no end in sight.

  He pushed the thought aside as he entered the briefing room. It was pleasantly informal while the soldiers were still on leave; the CO was standing in front of a podium while his subordinates were pouring themselves mugs of black coffee and sitting down on hard metal chairs in front of him. A large map of South Africa hung from the wall, suggesting that Gudrun had been right and the Berlin Guard was going to the war. Kurt couldn't help a flicker of fear and dread as he poured himself coffee and sat down; he knew he was brave, but the thought of ending up like Konrad, his body a mangled wreck, was terrifying. He would sooner die.

  And my family might not know what happened to me, he thought, grimly. He wasn't quite sure how Gudrun had found out where Konrad was, but after the leaflets had started to appear it was unlikely her source would dare tell her anything else. They’d have a sudden end to my letters and nothing.

  It was a bitter thought. He prided himself on being faithful - he'd always been faithful, right from the moment he’d first entered the Hitler Youth. He’d enjoyed himself; singing songs, marching in unison and practicing with guns, even as some of the more sensitive souls had found the Hitler Youth a foretaste of hell. And yet, if someone as faithful as Konrad - and an SS officer, no less - could simply be discarded, it could happen to him. How could he be loyal to the Third Reich when it was clear that the Third Reich was not loyal to its fighting men?

  Kurt had no illusions. People died on military service; hell, he’d watched in horror as a boy died on the ropes, back in the Hitler Youth. The teenagers had been told that the boy had effectively been an Untermensch, that he’d deserved to die through sheer incompetence; in hindsight, Kurt wondered if it had been wise to force the poor boy to try to climb slippery ropes when his skill at climbing ropes was minimal. But even if the masters had been right, it didn't justify hiding the dead and wounded and then lying about it. Didn’t Konrad’s family deserve some closure?

  I’m sorry, Gudrun, he thought, as the CO tapped the podium for attention. I wish I was there for you.

  That too was not a pleasant thought. Kurt would happily have beaten his younger brother to a pulp for daring to make fun of Gudrun’s grief, but he had no idea how to comfort a stricken soul. Gudrun had known Konrad had been badly injured, yet she’d been able to cling to hope until Konrad’s family had formally terminated the engagement. It wouldn't reflect badly on her, Kurt was sure, but it had still been shattering. And, given what else she was doing, she really didn't need the stress.

  “Our new deployment orders have finally arrived,” the CO said, after the standard Heil Bormann. “The Berlin Guard - all 5000 of us - is going to be deployed to South Africa in the next three months, where we will be reinforcing troops already on the ground. We will commence tactical exercises as soon as the troops report back to barracks, focused around convoy protection, aggressive patrolling and counter-terrorism operations. This is an opportunity for us to be blooded as a unit, rather than as a handful of individual companies.”

  And an opportunity to wind up crippled, Kurt thought, sardonically. He wasn't fool enough to say that out loud. Who knows what will happen if one of us winds up dead or wounded?

  He listened, carefully, as the CO ran through the first set of assignments. Moving a military unit from Germany Prime to Germany South would be a logistical nightmare, even though the Kriegsmarine seemed confident it had the shipping to move thousands of troops and their equipment from Berlin to the ports in Africa. After that... it would be worse, he suspected, when he looked at the briefing notes. The news claimed that Germany South was safe, but they wouldn't have been ordered to prepare to defend their convoys if there wasn't a risk of being attacked. And afterwards...

  The population map made the problem far too clear. South Africa had fifty-seven million people within its borders, a mere five million of whom were white. It looked, very much, as though the South Africans were either refusing to breed or fleeing the country, no matter what their government had to say about it. Even if one counted the relatively small Indian and Chinese populations as white, it was still clear that the white population was staggeringly outnumbered. The CO might insist that one good German was worth ten black men, but Kurt had the uneasy feeling that the blacks could afford to trade ten of their men for one German and still come out ahead. And if there were parts of Russia that were still dangerous, even forty years after the conquest, who knew how long it would take to pacify South Africa?

  “This could take a while,” Leutnant Bernhard Schrupp muttered.

  Kurt winced inwardly, hoping desperately that the CO hadn't overheard Schrupp’s rather sarcastic comment. Schrupp wasn't a bad person, not really, but he had a tendency to grumble and ask pointed questions. Indeed, Kurt had often wondered how Schrupp had managed to win promotion in the first place. As far as he knew, Schrupp didn't have any relatives in high places.

  “A number of officers who have served in South Africa will be arriving at the barracks t
omorrow,” the CO concluded. “You will have a chance to learn from their experiences and prepare exercises for the troops. Dismissed.”

  Kurt saluted, then rose with the other officers. There were briefing papers to read, then officers to interrogate; he needed to be ready by the time the troops returned to their barracks and readied themselves for war. And yet, there was a gnawing feeling in his chest that all was not right, that going to South Africa might be the last thing he’d ever do. It just didn't seem right...

  We might not be able to win, he thought, taking a long look at the map. How do we crush a rebellion that has over ninety percent of the population on its side?

  Schrupp followed him back to the barracks, then into one of the small offices they were allowed to use for their paperwork. “I read the leaflets,” he said, once the door was firmly closed. “We might be going to our deaths.”

  “That’s always a risk,” Kurt pointed out, trying hard to keep his face impassive. One day, Schrupp would go too far and wind up hauled off by the SS for interrogation. “We’re not sailors, you know.”