Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  The boy was of short stature, barely old enough to be called a man – perhaps sixteen or seventeen by Schiller’s reckoning – and looked to be perhaps a little better fed than most of the others that he could see on the other side of the fence, the extra food presumably a small benefit of holding a position of menial labour… if anything might be considered a ‘benefit’ under such circumstances.

  Still carefully staring at the ground near Schiller’s feet, the young fellow slipped on a small patch of ice on the second step and fell backward, landing heavily on his backside as the bucket and cleaning accoutrements went flying in all directions.

  “Jüdischer Dummkopf…!” The exclamation of angry scorn came from behind Schiller as he made a move to assist the fallen man, the unexpected voice halting him instantly. He turned to see an SS NCO approaching, a small leather satchel beneath one arm. “Pick all that up this instant… and make sure you get all of it: you know what they’ll do to you if Herr Hackmann sees even a cigarette butt lying about out here…!”

  Hauptsturmführer Hermann Hackmann’s reputation for compulsive tidiness when it came to the camp was infamous. On more than one occasion, prisoners caught spitting on the ground had been forced to lick it up as punishment, and among his numerous acts of wanton brutality against the inmates, one report told of an incident in which a birch tree had been bent to the ground and a Jewish inmate forced to hold onto the very top. Upon release, the tree had snapped upright once more and tossed the poor fellow through the air into a nearby stone quarry.

  It was at that point that the newly-arrived NCO realised the man standing behind was a high-ranking Wehrmacht officer.

  “Mein Herr… Sieg Heil…!” He snapped quickly, snapping to attention with a Nazi salute as he finally noted the rank tabs at the collar of the man’s greatcoat.

  “At ease, sergeant, at ease….” Schiller replied with a faint smile, barely managing to come to attention himself with his cigarette dangling casually from his bottom lip.

  “Forgive me, Mein Herr… I didn’t see your rank at first…” the hauptscharführer chuckled softly, as if his next thought might be ridiculous. “For a moment there, I thought you were actually going to help that clumsy piece of filth pick this shit up… pardon my language, sir…”

  “Very funny, sergeant,” Schiller grinned broadly in return, feigning amusement as the trustee scrabbled desperately to collect his equipment. “Very funny indeed…”

  “Hauptscharführer Martin Sommer, Mein Herr,” the NCO ventured, snapping to attention once more as he introduced himself, “…you’d be Generaloberst Schiller, sir, if I might be so bold?”

  “You’re well informed, Herr Hauptscharführer,” Schiller nodded in return, simultaneously impressed and vaguely revolted that the Nazi knew who he was.

  “We like to keep well abreast of things here at the camp, Mein Herr,” Sommer advised cheerfully, turning momentarily to deliver a kick to the pants of the bending trustee and sending him sprawling once more. “Helps to keep these useless bastards in line…”

  “No doubt,” Schiller mused with all the feigned enthusiasm he could muster, struggling to keep a grimace from his stony expression. “You have business here with the Reichsmarschall …?”

  “Been called over to help with a ‘reluctant’ prisoner, I’d guess, sir…” Sommer beamed with pride. “Convincing inmates to ‘share’ their information’s one of my specialties, you might say…” he patted the satchel under his arm with his free hand. “Brought all my ‘tools of the trade’ with me…”

  Twenty-seven-year-old Master-Sergeant Walter Gerhard Martin Sommer was well-known to camp staff and prisoners alike, the latter having christened him with the nickname ‘Hangman of Buchenwald’. A renown sadist, his ‘exploits’ had included ordering the upside-down crucifixion of two imprisoned Austrian priests, and it was rumoured that he’d on occasion tortured prison inmates purely for the fun of it, killing them afterward through injections of carbolic acid or even simply of air into their veins, resulting in fatal embolisms.

  The door to the Gestapo building opened at that moment, with another senior SS NCO sticking his head out and instantly spotting Sommer standing there.

  “Walter…!” He hissed sharply, beckoning quickly to the man. “Hackmann want’s you immediately…! Come on…!”

  “Must fly, Mein Herr…” Sommer shrugged cheerfully in response, saluting Schiller once more. “Never a dull moment around here… Heil Hitler…!” And with that he trotted up the steps and left Schiller alone once more with the inmate, who was again frantically collecting his fallen gear.

  Glancing carefully around to make sure no one was nearby, the generaloberst reached into his pocket and withdrew his cigarettes, holding the pack out toward the prisoner, who leaped backward in fright at the act.

  “It’s all right…” Schiller assured softly, trying to give as friendly a smile as he could manage under the circumstances. “It’s just a smoke… take it… it’s okay…”

  Reluctant at first, the young inmate was also conscious that offending a German officer through refusal was never a good idea either, and he tentatively, eventually reached out and lightly plucked a cigarette from the crumpled packet, leaning forward carefully as Schiller held out a lighter in his other hand and lit it for him.

  “Cold night…” the general ventured, attempting small talk as the prisoner moved back into the shadows on the other side of the doorway and took a long, luxurious drag.

  “Always cold here…” he shrugged in reply, blowing a plume of exhaled smoke high into the air with a sigh of enjoyment.

  “Good, eh…?” Schiller asked, indicating the cigarette and well aware of the awkward nature of the conversation, not knowing what he could possibly have in common with this poor man to talk about in the first place.

  “Gut…?” The trustee repeated as a soft question, relaxing just long enough to forget himself as he took another long drag before adding casually: “Sie sind der meinung, das war...?”

  “Spitze…!” Schiller answered automatically in reaction to a suddenly recognisable voice and phrase, the reaction so instinctive that it caught him completely by surprise.

  The prisoner knew instantly that something was wrong as Schiller stook a step back in shock, fixing him with a wide-eyed, incredulous stare. Thinking he’d somehow offended the man and not really caring how, he instantly flicked the smoke to the ground and crushed it beneath the hardened skin of his bare heel, unable to meet the other man’s eyes and giving just the barest hint of an apologetic nod as he moved to gather his equipment once more.

  “Rosenthal…!” Schiller burst out in surprise, barely able to contain an outright laugh of disbelief. “Hans Rosenthal…! I’d recognise those words anywhere…!” That stopped the prisoner dead in his tracks, and for the first time a moment of suspicious curiosity supplanted his fear.

  “My name…!” He frowned, turning back toward Schiller and daring to take a step forward. “How do you know my name?”

  “‘Know you…?” Schiller declared, laughing openly now in disbelief and quite dangerously forgetting where and when he was. “I grew up watching you…! Dalli, Dalli with Hänschen Rosenthal, Mein Gott…!”

  Imprisoned as he currently was in a Nazi concentration camp, the concept that in a far away, Realtime future he might become a household name of German television was something far beyond the ability of seventeen-year-old Hans Rosenthal to comprehend. That he might’ve encountered a German officer who’d lost his mind however was well within the bounds of possibility: he’d already encountered plenty of them in his life so far after all.

  Recognising it was time to cut his losses, Rosenthal grabbed up the last of his accoutrements and made off in the opposite direction, hoping he could get far enough to be out of sight before the crazy officer’s good humour ran out. Shame about the cigarette though… he’d really been enjoying that…!

  Albert Schiller leaned back against the wall of the building and stared blankly into
space, almost unable to comprehend what he’d just experienced. In Realtime that young man had become a beloved face on German television of the ‘70s and ‘80s and had been as reassuring a part of his happy childhood as even the presence of his own friends and family. He shook his head in disbelief, wondering at the odds of such an encounter as he took another drag on his cigarette.

  The smile on his face darkened almost immediately as the horrid realisation of the circumstances of said encounter slammed down on his consciousness with full force. As famous a German television personality as Hans Rosenthal might’ve become in another world, the only reason Schiller had met him right now was as a result of his current incarceration at Buchenwald.

  In Realtime, Rosenthal had died of stomach cancer in 1987 at the relatively early age of just sixty-one. Schiller grimaced as he thought of it, remembering the headlines of what at the time had been quite rightly called a great tragedy for German television.

  What kind of ‘tragedy is this then…? He asked himself darkly, not wanting to consider the man’s chances now of even seeing out the year, let alone another four decades. Tragedy… or travesty…? He tried another drag on his smoke but the taste soured on his lips and he angrily flicked it away into the darkness by the side of the building, staring long and hard at the rows of barracks beyond the barbed wire.

  There was no way he could possibly prevent memories of Rachael flooding into his mind at that moment, as they always did when depression found him. Rachael Weinberg, the young woman he’d fallen in love with just months before their departure from Realtime. He’d come close to backing away from Reuters and the New Eagles right then and there, until the night Rachael had found the old-style leather suitcase he’d kept under his bed… one that had been packed in preparation for the journey back through time.

  For a young Jewish woman proud of her own heritage and granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors, there’d been no acceptable explanation for the existence of the tailor-made Wehrmacht uniforms inside. The relationship had ended in that moment, leaving the older but no less devastated Albert Schiller with no obvious future. As much because of heartbreak as anything else, he’d ultimately gone along with the mission as planned, pushing the ramifications of it all far into his subconscious.

  He suddenly felt very alone and exposed as he stood there outside the admin building on that dark, chilly pre-dawn morning and immediately retreated to the inside of their Mercedes, still parked on the road directly in front of him. Slamming the rear passenger door he cracked the window just enough to allow a modicum of fresh air and shakily lit another cigarette to calm his nerves.

  What have we done… he thought with more than a little anguish and self-loathing as he stared bleakly out through the window and tried to avoid focussing on the prison barracks beyond the wire. What have I done…? . It wasn’t the first time he’d considered such sentiments, but they were somehow magnified now as he stood there inside that camp that – with many others like it – would become such a defining symbol of Nazi atrocities…of German atrocities…

  What have we done…?

  Direktor Wilhelm Hegel was barely recognisable, lying slumped in one corner of a concrete room with a pile of rags against one wall – presumably a bed – and a bucket in the opposite corner. It was ice cold inside with no heating whatsoever and what was left of his torn and tattered clothing had to be woefully inadequate as clouds of exhaled breath whirled about his lowered head.

  As the man shakily lifted his face to stare at the new arrival, Reuters could see that he’d been heavily beaten about the head and neck, with one eye bruised and purple, the eyelid split, swollen and bloody. Dried blood was caked about the man’s mouth and chin, and as he smiled wanly at the sight of the Reichsmarschall, it was clear he was missing at least two front teeth.

  “Kurt, thank God…!” He croaked softly, speech thick and difficult between lips as swollen and bloody as his eye.

  “The Kormoran, Wilhelm…” Reuters demanded coldly. “Why the Kormoran…?”

  “The… the what, Kurt…? The – the Kormoran…? I don’t…” Hegel was weak and almost certainly badly injured, no doubt with untold injuries beneath his ruined clothes to match the damage done to his face, but even so, Reuters picked up the split-second flash of guilt in the man’s good eye before the façade of uncomprehending innocence slammed down.

  “For more than a year we’ve been pouring refined U-238 into the RFR facility at Oranienburg and for all that time, you’ve only been able to produce enough fissionable material for one bloody device?” Reuters snarled, his anger building. “And we believed you…! I don’t know who the greater fool is here!”

  “Kurt… I – I don’t…”

  “You’ve given the bloody Japanese two fucking nuclear bombs…!” The Reichsmarschall bellowed in rage, making Hegel flinch in fear. “Are you completely insane…? What do you think they’ll use them for…? Purely for ‘research’ purposes, like that bullshit they used to give the world about their whaling? ‘Research’ in New York, or Washington, or Los Angeles perhaps…? And how do you think the Americans will react… particularly when they work out those devices came from us…?

  “There’s no evidence linking us to any of this,” Hegel stated with a cold shrug, finally abandoning any pretence of innocence. “Any proof will be vaporised when the devices are detonated… they’ll never know Germany was involved…”

  “Of course they’ll know…!” Reuters screamed, hand instinctively reaching in rage for the empty holster at his belt. “No one else on the entire planet is even close to building an atomic bomb… who do you think they’ll blame, you moron…?” He threw his hands into the air in fury and frustration. “Surely you’re old enough to remember what they did to our country…? The devastation they left us with?”

  “Of course I remember!” Hegel spat in return, spittle tinged with pink from wounds still fresh inside his injured mouth. “I grew up in Schöneberg… grew up surrounded by those Yankee bastards with their money and their black market and their Goddamned arrogance! One of those feige hunde raped my mother when I was ten years old… beat her and raped her right in front of me and left her to die on our living room floor….“ A sneer flickered across his face. “…And you bend your knee and fawn at the feet of their fucking Ambassador every time they rattle their sabres about anything we do that they don’t like…”

  Those words brought shock and a faint moment of empathy to Reuters as he stood there, never having guessed at the terrible secret the man must’ve carried with him his whole life.

  “The Americans destroyed my family, Kurt,” Hegel continued bitterly, “…and they did their part to destroy the Fatherland too, the first time ‘round…” He gave an evil, bloody smile “…but people like me will make damned sure they pay dearly for it…! You saw the motto on the gate on your way in, didn’t you? Jedem das seine, Kurt… ‘To each his own…’, but we all know what it really means… ‘Everyone gets what they deserve’, Kurt… everyone... and that goes for the fucking Americans the same as everyone else…!”

  “Wilhelm, we will deal with the Americans… once we’ve secured Europe and dealt with the bloody Bolsheviks… but now is not the time… not now when we still have so much to do and desperately need security in the West with which to do it.” He paused for a breath, hoping there might still be a chance to reason with Hegel before it was too late. “We’ve tried contacting the Kormoran, Wilhelm, but they’re not responding. We have every Kriegsmarine asset we can spare putting to sea to search for them, but it will take time we just don’t have. I know there must be coded messages or frequencies we can use, Wilhelm, and I need you to tell me what they are.”

  “Listen to yourself, Kurt…” Hegel implored in frustration, moving as if to rise to his feet but finding the pain of his injuries too great. “You’re still so scared of them! Rejoice in what we’re doing! Rejoice in the blow our ‘allies’ will strike at the heart of those degenerate bastards! Get me out of here, Kurt, and
we can do this together…!”

  “I need those codes, Wilhelm,” Reuters repeated, more insistent this time, but he’d already lost Hegel as the man slipped back into a semi-stupor of agonized self-pity.

  “Get me out of here…” He breathed softly, his voice pleading as the memories of what they’d done to him returned and terror flickered across his features. “You can’t leave me in this place, Kurt… Look what they’ve done to me… to me…! Locked me up and beaten me – a Direktor – like some common, filthy bloody Jew…!”

  Reuters’ eyes narrowed and his words turned to ice once more as any possible hint of sympathy he might’ve felt for the man or his shattered childhood instantly vanished with that last statement.

  “I’ve spent most of the last twenty years making Grossdeutschland the power it has become,” Reuters hissed darkly, his body rigid as rage built within him. “While you and your ‘Direktors’ invested your wealth and set up your comfortable little empires, I have toiled ceaselessly to protect the Fatherland against every threat, from outside and from within. Since ‘Nine-Eleven’ I have done everything I could to make sure the Americans stayed out of this ‘European’ war…” he snarled with venom, raising an accusatory finger to point directly at Hegel as he finished his sentence “…and I will not have all that time and that effort wasted by fools like you...! Give me the fucking codes…!”

  “There are no codes…” Hegel replied coldly, staring off into space at the far wall as if he couldn’t care less for his circumstances. “I’m not stupid, Kurt: do you think I didn’t anticipate something like this happening? They have their orders, and their orders are crystal clear… there are no codes… no frequencies… nothing that will make that ship turn around…”

  “I will ask you once more, please…”

  “Ask as many times as you like,” Hegel muttered with a dismissive wave of one hand, completely missing that last, faint, pleading undercurrent beneath the other man’s words. “The answer will be the same… now, stop all this foolishness and get me out of here, and perhaps I shan’t mention any of this to The Führer…”