Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter One

Berlin, Germany

1 September 1985

Berlin felt… different.

Leutnant der Polizei Herman Wieland strode down the street, feeling oddly exposed for the first time in his long career. Nothing was the same any longer. People who had once eyed him with respect, or fear, were now meeting his gaze challengingly, while political agitators walked through the streets openly, surrounded by hordes of admiring supporters. Anyone could speak now, without fear of arrest. It seemed as if everyone in Berlin had something to say.

He sighed inwardly as he turned a corner and saw yet another speaker, a middle-aged man standing on a box, telling the crowd what needed to be done to save the revolution from itself. Apparently, all of the former servants of the state were to be herded into the concentration camps and exterminated, even though the Reich couldn’t survive without the bureaucrats and former regime officers who ran the state. There were quite a few Herman would cheerfully have watched die – he wouldn’t have crossed the road to piss on them if they were on fire – but it was hard to separate the truly dangerous ones from the bureaucrats who were necessary. And yet, the crowd was murmuring in approval.

Nothing is the same any longer, he told himself, glumly. Too many people have too many grudges to pay off.

He forced himself to look back, evenly, as some of the crowd eyed him in a distantly hostile manner. No one would have dared to look at him like that, even a year ago, but things had changed. These days, the police had strict orders to use as little force as possible, even when dealing with riots. Herman was all too aware that a number of police officers had been waylaid and killed, their bodies brutally mutilated by their murderers. There were just too many possible suspects for the police to track down even one of the killers. The police had few friends on the streets of Berlin and they knew it.

The crowd scowled at him, but made no move to attack. Herman kept his relief off his face as he strolled past, forcing himself to walk normally. He had a pistol, of course, but he couldn’t have hoped to kill more than a handful of rioters before they tore him apart. The old fear was gone, leaving a civilian population that was growing increasingly aware of its strength. And they definitely had far too many grudges to pay off.

His companion elbowed him. “So tell me,” Leutnant der Polizei Hendrik Kuls said. “What’s it like to have powerful relatives?”

Herman groaned, inwardly. Nepotism was epidemic in the Reich – he didn’t expect that to change anytime soon – but his case was unique. His daughter was a Reich Councillor, under Chancellor Volker Schulze. His teenage daughter. Herman honestly wasn’t sure what to make of the whole affair – Gudrun had defied him to his face, not something any self-respecting German father could tolerate – but she had avenged her boyfriend and forced the Reich to change. He was torn between pride and a sense of bitter horror. The youngsters might believe they’d won, yet Herman knew better. It wouldn’t be long before the SS mounted a counterattack from Germany East.

“It has its moments,” he said, finally. Gudrun hadn’t done anything for his career, as far as he knew. Certainly, his superiors hadn’t moved him to a safer post in one of the police stations, rather than allowing him to patrol the increasingly dangerous streets. “And your relatives are doing what for you?”

“Getting out of the city,” Kuls said. “They’re convinced that Berlin is going to tip into anarchy at any moment.”

“They might well be right,” Herman commented.

He frowned. Berlin was on a knife-edge these days, torn between hope and fear. The provisional government had doubled military and police patrols through the city, but it would take a far larger army to keep the entire city under control. Berlin was the largest city in the world; miles upon miles of sprawling government buildings, apartment blocks, factories and Gastarbeiter slave camps. A riot in one place might easily do some real damage before it could be crushed, now the fear was gone.

And with a quarter of the police force gone, he thought, we don’t have the manpower to keep running regular patrols through a third of the city.

“I think so,” Kuls agreed. “What happens when we run out of food?”

“We starve,” Herman said, flatly.

He pushed the thought aside as they walked down the long road, striding past a row of apartment blocks. They were new, designed more for young unmarried professionals rather than men with wives and families; now, their windows were decorated with political slogans and demands for change. Herman wondered, absently, just what would happen when the young professionals realised that change wouldn’t come as easily as they hoped, then shrugged. They’d just have to learn to cope, same as everyone else.

Some of them will have military experience, he thought. They’ll be able to join the defence force, if nothing else.

He jumped as a door banged open, a middle-aged woman running out onto the street and waved desperately to them. Herman tensed, wondering if it was a trap of some kind, then walked over to her, keeping one hand on his pistol. Up close, the woman was at least a decade older than his wife, although time seemed to have been kind to her. Her hair was going grey, but otherwise she seemed to be in good health.

“I need help,” she gasped. “One of my tenants is wounded. There’s blood under the door!”

Herman blinked. “Blood?”

“Blood,” the landlady said. “It’s coming out from under the door!”

Herman exchanged a glance with Kuls, then allowed the woman to lead the way into the apartment block. Inside, it was dark and cold, the only illumination coming from a single flickering light bulb mounted on the wall. A shiver ran down his spine as he carefully unbuttoned his holster, glancing from side to side as his eyes struggled to adapt to the dim light. It grew brighter as they walked up two flights of stairs and stopped outside a single wooden door. Blood was dribbling from under the door…

“Call it in,” Herman snapped.

“Jawohl,” Kuls said.

Herman tested the wooden door, then pulled a skeleton key from his belt and inserted it into the lock. Legally, locks had to be designed so a policeman could open them with his key, but it wasn’t uncommon to find a door that had been designed before 1945 or one put together by a crafty locksmith. He allowed himself a moment of relief as the door opened without a fuss, then swore out loud as he pushed it open. A body – horrifically mutilated – lay on the carpeted floor. Behind him, he heard a thump as the landlady fainted.

“Take care of her,” he ordered. “Did you get any reply?”

“Not as yet,” Kuls said. “The dispatcher merely logged the call.”

“Tell them we have a body,” Herman said. He frowned as he peered at the corpse, careful not to touch the remains. “And one that doesn’t look to be long dead.”

He felt his frown deepen as he silently listed the wounds. The murderer – or murderers – had been savage. They’d cut their victim’s throat, stabbed him several times in the chest and castrated him, probably after force-feeding him some kind of anticoagulant. The blood should have started to clot by now, but it was still liquid. He’d been bled like a pig. Herman shuddered – he hadn’t seen anything like this outside a brief tour in Germany East – and then glanced around, looking for clues. But there was nothing to be found.

“His penis is missing,” he said, out loud. “They must have taken it.”

Kuls looked pale as he peered through the door. “An Untermensch, perhaps?”

“It’s possible,” Herman agreed. An Untermensch would have nothing to lose, if he attacked a German. Why not mutilate the body? It wasn’t as if he could be killed twice. Hell, Untermenschen were routinely executed for the crime of looking at good Germans. “But where would an Untermensch get the drugs?”

He sighed as he heard the landlady starting to stir. “See what you can get out of her,” he said, as he rose. “Did you get anything from dispatch?”

“Still nothing,” Kuls said. “They may have no one they can spare.”

Herman nodded, shortly. “Get the landlady to her apartment, then see what you can pour into her,” he ordered. “I’ll search this place.”

He closed the door, then turned and took one final look at the body. It was impossible to be sure, but it looked as though the attack had been deeply personal. The murdered man might well have known his killer; the murderer could not have inflicted so much damage without some degree of feeling being involved. Indeed, judging by the body’s position and the way the blood had splattered, it was quite possible he’d been trying to run when the fatal blow had been struck. But there was no way to know.

Nothing appeared to be missing, he decided, as he peered into the kitchen. It looked surprisingly bare, compared to the kitchen at home, but an unmarried man would probably have eaten at work, rather than cook for himself. A bottle of milk and two cartons of juice sat in the fridge; otherwise, the fridge was empty. Herman checked the drawers and found almost nothing, save for a small selection of imported – hence rare and expensive – British teas and coffees. No doubt the murder victim hadn’t liked drinking the cheap coffee served all over the Reich.

I can hardly blame him for that, Herman thought. I don’t like drinking it either.

He smiled to himself as he walked into the bedroom, then frowned. The bed was easily large enough for two people – it was larger than the bed he shared with his wife, at home – but there was no trace of a feminine presence. He opened the drawers, feeling his frown deepen as he noted the complete lack of female clothes and products. A homosexual? The man had been in his late forties, if Herman was any judge. It was staggeringly rare for a man of that age to be unmarried, although it was possible that he’d been married and then lost his wife to an accident. But homosexuality carried a death sentence in the Reich. Even the mere suspicion of homosexuality could be enough to destroy someone’s life.

Herman shook his head slowly as he checked the bathroom. There was nothing, apart from a simple shampoo and a toilet that didn’t look to have been cleaned regularly. No, there was no woman in the apartment: no wife, girlfriend or mistress. Indeed, if there hadn’t been so many male clothes in the drawers, he would have wondered if the apartment wasn’t being used as a covert rendezvous. The upper-class prostitutes – too expensive for the average soldier – often used them for their clients, once their pimps paid out bribes to all and sundry. But it was clear that someone had lived in the apartment…

He turned his attention to the photographs hanging from the walls and scowled, darkly, as he recognised the murder victim. He was wearing an SS uniform – a Standartenfuehrer – in one picture, shaking hands with a man Herman vaguely recognised from a party propaganda broadcast. It took him a moment to recognise the Deputy Führer, a non-entity who had only been given the job because it provided a convenient place to dump him. But he’d clearly been younger then, maybe not even a politician. There was no date on any of the photographs.

He looked up as he heard the door opening. Kuls stepped into the apartment.

“The landlady says her tenant was a schoolmaster,” he said, shortly. He eyed the body darkly, then stepped around it. “Apparently, he taught at the school just down the road.”

“Oh,” Herman said.

He looked back at the body. A schoolmaster? Maybe it was just his flawed memory – he hadn’t been a schoolboy for nearly forty years – but the man didn’t look anything like intimidating enough to be a schoolmaster. They were all kicked out of the SS for extreme violence – or so the schoolboys had joked, as they lined up each day, rain or shine, to enter the building and begin their lessons. He’d believed it too, back then. School might have toughened him up, but he remembered it with little fondness.

“She said he was normally out of the door at the crack of dawn,” Kuls added, darkly. “He was rarely home until late at night, at least until the government fell. Since then, he merely stayed in his room and never left.”

Herman snorted. “Did she happen to know when he had visitors?”

“Apparently, one of the boys would occasionally come and clean the apartment for him,” Kuls said. “But he never had any other visitors.”

“I see,” Herman said. A landlady in Berlin could be relied upon to know everything about her tenants, from where they worked to how often they slept together. They were often the best sources a policeman could hope for. “Did anyone come today?”

“Not as far as she knows,” Kuls said. “But that proves nothing.”

“No,” Herman agreed.

He contemplated the possibilities, one after the other. An SS officer – a Standartenfuehrer – would have been very useful, if he’d reported to the provisional government. It wasn’t as if there weren’t other SS officers helping to rebuild the Reich. But he’d stayed where he was, hiding. A spy? A coward? No, that was unlikely. He’d disliked the SS long before it had arrested his daughter, but he had to admit that SS officers were rarely cowards. They often led their men from the front. And yet, this one had become a schoolmaster. Jokes aside, schools weren’t actually war zones…

But he would probably have impressed the brats, Herman thought, grimly. A man who has marched into the teeth of enemy fire isn’t going to be scared of a naughty teenage boy.

Herman shook his head. The victim had known his killer, he was sure; he’d let him directly into the apartment. Or killers, if there had been more than one. And yet…

He sighed. Normally, a team of experts would tear the dead man’s life apart, looking for the person who’d killed him. A murderer could not be allowed to get away with killing a Standartenfuehrer, even if the Standartenfuehrer had retired. It set a bad example. And yet, with the police force in such disarray, it was unlikely there would be a solid attempt to find the killer. Herman doubted they’d even take the time to dust for fingerprints before dumping the body into a mass grave and handing the apartment back to the landlady.

Unless we find something that leads us straight to the killer, he thought. But what?

“We search the apartment, thoroughly,” he said. “And if we find nothing, we’ll just have to make arrangements to dispose of the body.”

“Of course,” Kuls said.

Herman shot him a sharp look as they walked back into the kitchen and began to search with practiced efficiency. The landlady would be furious, when she discovered all her drawers dumped on the floor, but there was no help for it. Herman’s instructors – when he’d joined the police – had shown him just how easy it was to conceal something, particularly something small, within a kitchen or bedroom. Taking the whole edifice apart was time-consuming, but it was the only way to be sure there was nothing hiding there.

“My wife would have a heart attack,” Kuls said, when they’d finished the kitchen. “No tools at all.”

“Mine too,” Herman said.

He smirked at the thought as they walked into the bedroom and started dismantling the wardrobe, piece by piece. It was an older design, practically fixed to the wall. And yet, there was enough space behind the panel for something to be hidden… he grinned in sudden delight as he felt a concealed envelope. It refused to budge until he tugged the panelling back completely, then pulled. The envelope came free and fell into his hand.

“He was hiding something,” Kuls observed.

“Looks that way,” Herman agreed.

He led the way back into the living room and opened the envelope. A handful of photographs fell out and landed on the floor. He sighed, picked the first one up… and froze in horror as he saw the picture. It was… it was unthinkable.

“Shit,” he breathed. He’d seen horror, from burned homesteads and raped women in Germany East, but this… this was far worse. He had to swallow hard to keep his gorge from rising. “No wonder someone wanted him dead!”

“He must have taken the photographs himself,” Kuls observed. “Trying to buy this sort of shit… it would get him killed.”

Herman looked back at the body, fighting down the urge to kick it as hard as he could. A schoolmaster with connections to the SS… even if someone had suspected something, they would never have dared take their concerns to higher authority. The boys – his victims – would have been compromised for life. They would have known they were doomed, when he tired of them…

…Until now. Until the SS’s power had been broken. Until they’d found the nerve to brutally murder their tormentor. Until…

That could have been my son, he thought, numbly. Few would have dared to pick on a policeman’s child, but an SS officer – even a retired one – might have had other ideas. It could have been any of them.

He glanced at his partner. “You know what? I don’t want to find the killers.”

Kuls nodded. “I don’t think I want to find them either,” he agreed. He kicked the body savagely. “Looks like an ironclad case of suicide to me.”