“I have to take the risk,” Gudrun said, stiffly. “There’s no choice.”
Horst gave her a sharp look. Didn't she know the danger? But then, Gudrun had always been brave, sometimes to the point of recklessness. Her family connections wouldn't have saved her, if she’d been fingered as an underground leader, any more than they would save her now from a bullet through the head. A single sniper, perched on a nearby rooftop, could pick her off before anyone realised he was there. But hiding in the bunker would only undermine her connection to the rest of the city.
He said nothing as the car pulled into the underground garage and they made their way down to the bunker. The guards checked their names and faces, then waved them through without comment. Horst had hoped there would be a chance to pick up a briefing from one of the military officers, but the note waiting for them in their suite made it clear that there wouldn't be another formal meeting until later in the day.
“I know you worry about me,” Gudrun said, once the door was closed. “But I owe it to myself to take some risks.”
“You don’t have to,” Horst snorted.
“That’s the point,” Gudrun said. “I don’t have to, but I’m going to take them anyway.”
She did have a point, Horst conceded, reluctantly. He wouldn't have wanted to be a woman, not when a woman’s opinions could be easily dismissed - and her life ruled by the men in her life - but there were some advantages. No one in the west expected women to actually fight, to stand and die in defence of the Reich. Gudrun might stand up and tell men to fight, yet she would never be asked to fight herself. And while a man would be called a coward if he shirked duty on the front line, a woman would be spared that particular insult.
But she needs to prove herself to the men, he admitted, silently. Or they won’t take her seriously.
He gave her a quick kiss, then walked out of the bunker, up the stairs and into his bedroom, hoping his habit of checking the room each day hadn't gone unnoticed. The spy - whoever he or she might be - had to be keeping an eye on him. He worried, constantly, about finding the bastard, but a covert check of everyone in the building had turned up nothing. And yet, it wouldn’t. The SS would hardly have failed to make sure that their observers had genuine covers. Horst himself was proof of that!
His blood ran cold as he saw the note, positioned provocatively on top of his bed. He sucked his breath in, sharply, as he picked it up, unsure if he should be damning the spy for sheer lack of tradecraft or not. Putting the message in such a blatant position was stupid, but it was also a warning that he was under observation. He’d already known that, of course, yet the message rubbed it in. He wondered grimly just what the observer - and his handler - was thinking, then opened the message. It gave a location, a date and a time, two days in the future. That struck him as more than a little odd.
He retrieved the street map of Berlin he’d obtained from the library and checked the location, hoping his memory had failed him. But it hadn't. The location the cell had selected was quite some distance from the Reichstag, a place where it would be easy for them to make sure that Horst was alone before he met them. Bringing a small army with him would be impossible, Horst conceded reluctantly. Even getting a pair of covert observers into position to watch proceedings would be fraught with difficulty.
Damn it, he thought. Schwarzkopf - or whoever had taken over, if Schwarzkopf wasn't in charge - had picked a very good spot. And if I don’t show, all hell is going to break loose.
He sighed. It was time to talk to the Chancellor. Again.
***
Herman wasn't entirely sure why he had been called off duty and told to report directly to the Reichstag. Ordinary policemen were never invited into the Reichstag, even when they were in very deep shit indeed. Gudrun was the only person who might have called him, but he found it hard to imagine his daughter summoning him as though he was her minion. She would know better, surely. And yet, who else would call him?
It has to be something to do with the missing refugee, he thought, as he passed through security. Someone has taken my concerns seriously.
He watched the security guards, gauging their performance. The security procedures were admirably tight, although they were more concerned with removing his pistol than anything else he could use as a weapon. Given just how innovative some suspects could become, when it became clear they were going to spend the rest of their lives in a work camp - if they were lucky - he rather suspected the guards needed a crash course. But that, thankfully, wasn't his concern.
“Leutnant Wieland,” a man said, when he was shown into a small room. Another man - it took Herman a moment to recognise him as one of Gudrun’s friends - was standing by the window, watching Herman through bright blue eyes. “Thank you for coming.”
“I wasn't aware I had a choice, Mein Herr,” Herman said, tartly. Even now, with soldiers and reservists joining the police on the streets, Berlin remained uneasy. “Why did you call me off the streets?”
“You have an interesting record, Leutnant Wieland,” the man said. He hadn't bothered to introduce himself, which in Herman’s experience probably meant he was either SS or an intelligence officer. Hopefully, the latter. “You’ve moved from being a street cop to a detective and then back to being a street cop ... may I ask why?”
“It’s in my file, Mein Herr,” Herman said.
“But I am asking you,” the man said. “Why did you choose to return to the streets?”
Herman took a moment to formulate his answer. “I grew frustrated with being a detective, Mein Herr,” he said, finally. “It was rare, very rare, to solve a case - and there were quite a few times when the perpetrator enjoyed political cover. There was no hope of bringing the guilty man to justice. I requested a transfer back to the streets and it was accepted without comment.”
The man lifted his eyebrows. “Why?”
“Policemen, as they grow older, often try to get off the streets,” Herman said. “An experienced officer who volunteers to return to the streets is a blessing.”
“For his superiors, I imagine,” the man said. “What did your wife say about it?”
Herman shrugged. “Kurt had joined the military by that point, so we didn't need so much income,” he said. “But she wasn't too pleased about it.”
He sighed, inwardly. That was an understatement. Adelinde had thrown a colossal fit, shouting and screaming in rage when she’d heard he was going back to the streets. A street policeman had a significantly higher chance of being injured or killed on duty than a detective, meaning that she would fear for his life every time he went on patrol. But he couldn't remain as a detective. The work had crushed his soul.
“I don’t blame her,” the man said. He sighed, then pointed to a chair. “Please, sit. We have a job for you.”
He waited until Herman had sat, carefully not relaxing, then went on. “I read your report about the murder at the transit barracks,” he added, slowly. “Do you stand by your conclusions?”
“Yes, Mein Herr,” Herman said. Was this it? Was he about to be rebuked for writing an absurd suggestion into his reports? But surely his immediate superiors would have handled it, wouldn’t they? “I believe they fit the facts.”
The man frowned. “Why?”
Herman took a breath. “As I stated in my report, Mein Herr, an experienced police officer would not allow a male refugee so close to him without preparing himself for the possibility of a fight,” he said. “The refuges have not been happy about being uprooted from their homes and there have been a number of violent incidents. A female refugee, on the other hand, would have seemed harmless until it was too late.”
“And less worrying in general terms,” the man agreed. He turned towards Gudrun’s friend. “Horst?”
Horst stepped forward. Herman studied him, feeling the odd twinge of disquiet he’d felt when Konrad had asked his little girl out for the first time. Gudrun had been seventeen when she’d started to date Konrad, but Herman had found it hard to forget
that she was no longer a child. He’d even had a stern discussion with Konrad, promising blood and pain if he hurt Gudrun in any way. And he’d liked Konrad. He wasn't quite so sure about Horst.
And he’s been too close to Gudrun, he thought, darkly. Adelinde might not have noticed, but Herman had. The two youngsters had been standing far too close together, even in public, to be just friends. Is he planning to marry her one day?
“We have a problem,” Horst said, bluntly. “There's an SS stay-behind cell somewhere within Berlin.”
Herman’s eyes narrowed. “A stay-behind cell?”
Horst nodded. “Their normal mission is to wait until the advancing spearheads have moved onwards to new targets, then come out of the shadows and engage the enemy,” he said. “I suspect this cell intends to cause chaos within the city when the SS attacks from the outside.”
“A reasonable suspicion,” Herman said, carefully. Horst spoke with authority, but he was just a university student ... wasn't he? No, there was something fishy about Horst’s background. “How do you intend to track them down?”
“The uprising caught the SS by surprise,” Horst said. “I ... have reason to believe that their command network within Berlin was badly disrupted, perhaps fatally. They didn't have any contingency plans for actually losing control of the city, let alone the RSHA. The person responsible for the murder, the person who vanished into the city, may well be a commando sent to assist what remains of their network.”
Herman eyed him for a long moment. “You have reason to believe ...?”
Horst hesitated, then made a very visible decision. “I used to work for them,” he said. “And they think - I hope - I still do.”
The whole story spilled out, piece by piece. Herman stared. He was no stranger to crazy stories - he still smiled whenever he remembered the man who’d accidentally driven his car into the painting of a tunnel someone had placed on a wall - but this one was particularly absurd. Horst had been working for the SS all along? Except ... he’d switched sides? Did Gudrun know?
“I told her,” Horst said, when he asked. “It was right after I got her out of prison.”
Herman scowled, torn between gratitude and a deep simmering anger. “And you didn't think to warn her that she could get into very real trouble?”
“She knew,” Horst said, flatly.
He went on before Herman could muster a response. “We don’t know how many people we can trust,” he added. “The counterintelligence networks have also been shattered. I’ve done my best to go through the files, but an SS observer wouldn't be easily noticeable ... we have to isolate and destroy the cell before it is too late.”
“I understand,” Herman said. “What do you want me to do?”
“I think we can trust you,” Horst said. “Help us find the cell.”
Herman nodded, although he knew the task would be far from easy. Berlin was hardly Paris or London, somewhere where a group of Germans would stand out like sore thumbs. An SS commando, even one from Germany East, would pass unnoticed in Berlin. Hell, the commando might even be a Berliner. As long as they were careful, they might just be impossible to locate.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Who can I call upon for help?”
“There's a handful of people who have been cleared,” Horst said. “And if there's anyone you trust from the police, feel free to ask for them to be vetted.”
Herman scowled. “How do you know you can trust me?”
“I imagine Gudrun would be dead by now or shipped off to Germany East, if you were working for the SS,” Horst said. There was an airy tone to his voice that made Herman’s temper flare. “And we’re short of people we can trust.”
“Only people who could have betrayed us are trusted now,” the man warned.
“I see,” Herman said. He scowled at Horst, daring the young man to look back at him. “Do you really think I would have betrayed my daughter?”
“You would not be the first, if you had,” Horst commented. “A number of the women I knew in Germany East were exiled, after taking part in the feminist movement.”
Herman scowled. He’d been a teenager at the time, but he remembered it all too well. The feminists had sought to change the eternal relationship between men and women, without realising just how far the Reich was prepared to go to maintain its power. Their cells had been broken, a handful had been executed for plotting against the state and most of the remainder dispatched to Germany East to become good little housewives. His mother had been on the fringes of the movement and its failure had made her very bitter ...
“I would not have betrayed my daughter,” Herman said.
“And there are some who would say you have betrayed the Reich,” Horst countered. “And that’s why I think we can trust you.”
“Yes, you can,” Herman said. “You can trust me on this. If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
“Good,” Horst said. He sounded oddly relieved, rather than amused or fearful. “What self-respecting father could do more?”
Chapter Twenty
Germanica (Moscow), Germany East
17 September 1985
“They made a deal with the Americans?”
“So it would seem, Mein Fuhrer,” Reimer Wermter said. The intelligence officer leaned forward. “We only got the word now.”
Karl growled, deep in his throat. He had grown far too used to modern communications, far too used to being able to get messages from Berlin to Germanica instantly. Now, with normal communications badly disrupted, it had taken several days for the warning to reach his intelligence staff. The traitors were in covert discussions with the Americans.
“The Americans will tear us apart and the traitors will let them,” he snarled. “And that will be the end of us!”
He glared at the map, his eyes seeking out what had once been Japan. It was a hellish nightmare now, a territory where the races mixed freely and the once-proud martial culture had been almost completely eradicated. There were few pureblood Japanese left, he’d been told, and fewer still who cleaved to the old ways. The new generation of Japanese children were more American than the Americans. They treated democracy as though it were a god.
And that will happen to us, if the Americans win, he thought. And they will win, if the traitors give them the chance.
He could see the nightmare unfolding in his imagination. The steady collapse of authority, mirrored by the steady collapse of the family. Young girls breeding with Untermenschen, young men leaving their wives and families to support themselves; women working to earn money rather than taking care of their children, men treated as monsters by a depraved legal system. And young men running around without discipline, taking drugs and drinking heavily instead of serving their country and raising families of their own. Everything the Reich had built was in jeopardy.
The Americans don’t know what’s good for them, he thought, nastily. And yet they may import their failures here.
The thought tormented him. He’d once been reassured by the growing demographic crisis in America, although the Americans were alarmingly good at converting immigrants and Gastarbeiters - not that they used that word - into good Americans. Given time, he’d calculated, the American population would drop while the Reich’s kept rising. But now ... the civil war would tear the Reich apart before it could win the cold war by default. It had been a mistake, he knew now, to allow even a single American idea to enter the Reich. They should have closed their borders and waited, patiently, for the United States to collapse.
And now we are fighting each other instead of the Americans, he told himself. They can just walk in afterwards and take over!
He glared at Wermter. “What have they actually agreed?”
“The Americans are already sending them intelligence materials,” Wermter said. He didn't look any more pleased than Karl felt. “They’ll start shipments of MANPADS in the next few days ...”
Karl swore. He hated to admit it, but the Americans had practically invented moder
n-day military logistics. They’d drowned the Japanese under a tidal wave of production that even the Reich had been unable to match. And yet, producing so many MANPADS and slipping them to the traitors in Berlin would be tricky, even for them. They’d have to draw down the stocks in Britain, unless ...
He cursed under his breath. He’d suspected American involvement in the protests from the start. The Americans liked the idea of convincing people to change, rather than imposing change by force; they never seemed to see the downside, that the people might change in ways the United States neither expected nor wanted. If the Americans had planned to send MADPADS to the Reich from the start, could it be they’d planned the uprising and civil war all along?
Chosen of the Valkyries (Twilight Of The Gods Book 2) Page 20
