Storm Front

Chapter Two

Josef Mengele Hospital, Berlin

17 July 1985 (Victory Day)

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Gudrun Wieland took a long breath. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was sure her older brother could hear the sound. She wanted to do it, needed to do it, but she knew they could easily get in deep trouble. Their father’s belt would be the least of their concerns.

“I’m sure,” she said.

She braced herself. It would be easy to back out, to walk away; they could be back home within twenty minutes if they walked fast. But she’d gone to a great deal of trouble to borrow a nurse’s uniform from a friend, just so she could wear it while walking into the hospital. No one would question her if she wore a uniform, she’d been told; no one, not even the senior doctors, would know every nurse in the building. There were over a thousand young women and, with the current fashion for blonde hair, it was a reasonable bet that three-quarters of them would be blonde too. She’d scrubbed her face clean of make-up, tied up her hair and removed anything that might identify her. As long as they weren’t caught in the building, it was unlikely that anyone would be able to track them down afterwards. But Kurt…

“Are you sure?” She asked. “I can go alone, if necessary…”

“I can’t let you go alone,” Kurt Wieland said. Her brother ran a hand through his short blonde hair, cut very close to the scalp. “I’m not expected back at the barracks until tomorrow morning.”

Gudrun gave him a grateful smile. She’d known, when she’d asked him, that he could have simply refused, or reported her to their father. Herman Wieland wasn’t a bad man – she knew friends who had worse fathers, mainly drunkards like Grandpa Frank – but he would have exploded with rage if Kurt had told him what his eldest daughter had in mind. Instead, Kurt had insisted on coming with her and providing support. He’d even helped her sort out what to do when she walked into the building.

“Thank you,” she said, quietly.

“Then let’s go,” Kurt said. He caught her arm as they started to walk towards the hospital. “Remember, you’re meant to be escorting me, not the other way around.”

Gudrun allowed herself a nervous smile. Kurt was wearing his uniform, marking him out as a soldier in the Berlin Guard. It was unlikely that anyone would question his presence, not when the uniform practically screamed his legitimacy to the skies. The cover story they’d devised had her escorting him to see a friend in the hospital, which wasn’t too far from the truth. And if someone thought they were lovers… well, as embarrassing as it was, it would be better than the alternative. Being caught would get them both in very hot water.

She gritted her teeth as they walked down towards the hospital and through the gates. It was a colossal building, constructed during the 1950s and staffed with the finest doctors and nurses in Germany. Her friend had told her that there were hundreds of departments; the original building was practically buried in outbuildings that were half-hidden behind other outbuildings themselves. The country had a fetish for efficiency – or so she’d been taught at school – but there was nothing efficient about Josef Mengele Hospital. It was far too obvious that the designers hadn’t anticipated just how many doctors and patients would need to use the facilities.

The guards paid no attention to them as they walked through the door and into the lobby, heading straight towards the locked doors. Gudrun allowed herself a sigh of relief as they joined a dozen nurses heading though the doors, the leaders holding the doors open for the others. If they had had to wait for someone to open the doors it would have been far too revealing, she knew. Her friend had flatly refused to hand over an ID card that would open the doors.

Inside, it was surprisingly cool. Gudrun sniffed the air, the scent of antiseptic bringing back memories of the last time she’d visited a hospital, then looked around for the wall-mounted map of the giant complex. There were hundreds of wards; some identified in medical terminology she couldn’t even begin to interpret, others merely identified by a number. She scanned the display quickly, hunting for the number she’d been given. Somehow, she wasn’t entirely surprised to discover it was on the far side of the building, well away from the entrance. Cold ice ran down her spine as she looked up at her brother. He was frowning.

“They’ve got something to hide,” he murmured. “That ward is pretty well concealed.”

Gudrun nodded in agreement, then checked the map, memorising the route. Map-reading wasn’t one of the skills she’d learned in the Hitler Youth – young women were expected to learn how to cook, clean and have babies – but she didn’t dare risk asking for directions as they walked deeper into the facility. Anyone with a legitimate reason to be there would know their way around the building – or, if they were just visiting for a day, would be assigned an escort. She glanced back at her brother, then led the way down the corridor. The hundreds of doctors and nurses, some of the latter somehow managing to make their ugly blue uniforms look fashionable, ignored them.

Kurt was right, she thought, ruefully. Just how long had she spent scrabbling with her older brother as a young girl? It had taken her far too long to realise that Kurt had grown into an adult. As long as we look as though we fit in, no one will pay any attention to us.

She concentrated on finding her way through the corridors as Kurt followed her, no doubt keeping track of their route himself. He’d have learned to read a map in the Hitler Youth; he wouldn’t have been promoted so quickly, she was sure, if he hadn’t mastered the basics at a very early age. But then, young men were taught military skills in the Hitler Youth. She’d always envied the boys when they’d gone camping, leaving school for a week of mountain-climbing, mock exercises and other exciting sports. They’d even been allowed to play with real weapons. Gudrun and the other girls had never even been allowed to see a gun in school.

They turned the corner and walked towards the ward. A pair of SS troopers were on guard, but neither of them looked particularly alert. Gudrun walked forward, keeping her face utterly expressionless as she led Kurt past the guards and into the wards. The troopers gave her an appreciative look, but made no move to stop her. This far inside the building, they probably assumed that anyone they saw had the right to be there. She fought down a smile, knowing that they’d just crossed the Rubicon, and started to look for a specific bed. They didn’t dare loiter where the troopers could see them.

Kurt poked her arm. “There,” he said, pointing to the wall. A chart was mounted on it, showing a list of names and beds. “See if you can find him there.”

Gudrun nodded and peered up at the chart. There were over two dozen names on the list, all completely unfamiliar, bar one. Unterscharfuehrer Konrad Schulze, her boyfriend; Unterscharfuehrer Konrad Schulze, who had asked her to marry him when he returned from South Africa; Unterscharfuehrer Konrad Schulze, who had returned from South Africa and vanished into Josef Mengele Hospital. She felt an odd twist in her heart as she stared at the name, realising that Konrad hadn’t left her; his family, she’d discovered, were as much in the dark as herself. Their son had gone to war and then…

She gritted her teeth as she looked for the right bed. It had been sheer dumb luck she’d heard anything. A friend of hers, the same girl who’d loaned her the nurse’s uniform, had seen Konrad’s name and SS number on a list of patients in the hospital. Gudrun hadn’t believed her at first – his family hadn’t been told he’d been wounded and sent home, let alone allowed to see him – but as weeks went by without a single letter from a normally attentive boyfriend, she’d started to have suspicions. And then it had taken two weeks of scheming to plan an unauthorised visit to the hospital. If Kurt hadn’t agreed to accompany her, it would have been impossible.

And no one had heard anything from the bureaucracy.

Gudrun scowled in bitter memory. She’d thought Konrad’s family liked her, for all that she was a university-educated student rather than a proper little housewife; they’d certainly never sought to discourage their son from courting her. Hell, it had been her friends who’d raised eyebrows at the thought of dating an SS trooper. The university students had never got along with the SS, who would happily close the university down in an instant if they thought they could get away with it. But Konrad had been different. He’d been sweet and funny and never tried to press himself on her. The thought of his kisses made her lips tingle…

…And, if they knew something had happened to him, they would have told her.

She paused, just outside the curtains enshrouding his bed. All of a sudden, she wasn’t sure she wanted to take the final step, to brush aside the curtains and see her lover. What if she was wrong? What if it wasn’t him? Or… what if something had happened…?

“Go,” Kurt urged, quietly. “We may not have long.”

Gudrun reminded herself, firmly, that she came from a brave family and pushed the curtain aside, then froze in horror at the sight that greeted her eyes. Her boyfriend was lying on his side, hooked up to a machine that bleeped worryingly every five seconds. The lower half of his body was completely gone; she had only taken basic medicine at school – it was another skill girls were required to learn – but she honestly wasn’t sure how he’d survived. His face was bruised and broken; indeed, for a long moment, she was honestly convinced that they’d made a dreadful mistake and opened the wrong set of curtains. But he had the scar on his chest she recalled from one of their love-making sessions and his SS tattoo, on the underside of his right arm, matched the one she’d memorised.

“They tattoo our ID number and blood group so we can be treated in a hurry,” Konrad had told her, once. She felt sick as she recalled the handsome young man she’d courted, the man who’d gone to war. “And it’s a badge of honour…”

“Jesus,” Kurt said, peering past her. “How the hell is he going to give mama grandchildren?”

“Shut up,” Gudrun hissed. She couldn’t help peeking at where Konrad’s genitals should have been, but they were gone. Whatever had happened to him, it had taken everything below his hips. She honestly had no idea how he was still alive. “Do you think we can wake him?”

Kurt grabbed her arm. “Don’t even think about it!”

Gudrun winced in pain, but she had to admit he was right. She didn’t have the slightest idea how to wake Konrad, if it were possible. Removing him from the machine might kill him outright. It would almost certainly set off alarms, bringing real doctors and nurses running to the bed. They’d be smoked out, caught and arrested. And after that… Gudrun wasn’t sure, but sending them back to their father would be far too lenient for the SS. They’d probably be exiled to Germany East. If half of the rumours were true, no one ever came back alive.

I should have married him, she thought, looking down at Konrad. It was far from illegal to get pregnant out of wedlock – the state would happily pay expectant mothers a small stipend for carrying another young German to term – but her mother would have been furious if Gudrun had allowed herself to get pregnant. If I had…

She swallowed, hard. Konrad wouldn’t be making love to her anytime soon, let alone returning to the war. Doctors could perform miracles these days, but she doubted they could rebuild his legs, let alone his genitals. She’d heard stories about how sperm could be mined from a male body and then inserted into a female body, impregnating the woman, yet… she shuddered at the thought. It sounded terrifyingly unnatural. Konrad would probably die in a hospital bed, if he couldn’t live without life support, or spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair like Grandpa Frank, drinking heavily and nursing his sorrows. She winced at the thought – she didn’t like Grandpa Frank, even if he was her maternal grandfather – and then stepped away from the bed. Part of her wanted to stay with him, but she knew what would happen if she tried. The SS would take her away and…

They wanted to cover this up, she thought. Konrad was from an SS family – his father had been a trooper before retiring – and yet they’d been lied to by the state. They wanted to conceal his wounds…

It didn’t make sense, she told herself. Konrad wasn’t anyone important. His family didn’t have ties to the Reichstag. But, instead of reporting his wounds to his family, the SS had tried to hide them. She tossed it over and over in her head, remembering what her father had said about his work as a policeman. If someone was trying to hide something, he’d said, it meant they had something to hide that justified the effort of hiding it. And yet, Konrad wasn’t anyone important. There was no reason to hide his wounds.

Take Konrad out of the equation, she told herself. There was nothing important about Konrad, therefore no one would waste the effort solely for him. And you get…

She looked up. There had been more than two dozen names on the list – and, in the ward, there were two dozen beds, each one hidden behind a set of curtains. If each of them held a wounded soldier, and it looked as though they did, what did it mean? The news kept claiming that German troops, bringing fraternal aid to their brothers in South Africa, were winning the war. But if someone was concealing the sheer number of wounded troops… what did that say about the progress of the war? And how many troops had wound up dead in South Africa?

They’re lying, she thought. She had always been dimly aware that the news services were run by the government, that nothing was ever broadcast without government approval, but she’d never fully understood what that meant. They’re lying about the war.

She jumped as she heard someone clearing her throat. “What are you two doing in here?”

Gudrun turned. A young nurse – a senior nurse, judging from the gaudy rank badges on her uniform – was standing behind them, hands on hips. She looked as stern as their mother when she’d caught them in the biscuit box, back when they’d been children. Gudrun couldn’t help thinking that she would have been pretty if she’d let her hair down and, perhaps, worn something a little more fitting. The uniform was just plain ugly.

“I convinced Nurse Gudrun to let me see my friend Konrad, after my own examination,” Kurt lied, smoothly. It wasn’t as if Gudrun was an uncommon name. There had been three other girls with the same name in junior school. “We served together in South Africa, don’t you know? He saved my life twice.”

He leaned forward. “If you’re charged with his care, perhaps you can tell me how he is? I’d be most grateful…”

The nurse frowned. “You shouldn’t have brought him in here without permission,” she said, addressing Gudrun. “Visitors have to be cleared through security…”

“It’s my fault, beautiful,” Kurt said. He cocked his head. “Can I take you for a drink later?”

“Perhaps,” the nurse said. She looked downcast for a long moment. “Your friend is unlikely to survive without the life support machine, sir. The brain damage was quite severe and the medical care he received in the theatre was quite poor. We dug quite a few pieces of shrapnel out of his flesh, but by then it was really too late. His body is still alive, if barely; his brain is dead.”

Gudrun swallowed the question she wanted to ask. She didn’t dare draw the nurse’s attention back to her, even as Kurt flirted and the nurse – insanely – seemed inclined to respond. Perhaps, being a nurse, she didn’t have many chances for romance… or, more likely, she thought a soldier would understand long hours and short tempers. Her father had once told her that policemen preferred to marry nurses…

“You escort him to the doors, then report to the security office,” the nurse said, finally. “I have work to do here.”

“Of course,” Gudrun said. She had no intention of doing anything but walking out the doors with Kurt, removing the uniform as soon as possible and never returning. “I’m sorry…”

“Go,” the nurse ordered.

“That was a close one,” Kurt muttered, once they were past the guards. “But at least I got her number.”

Gudrun gave him a disbelieving look. “You do realise you can’t possibly call her?”

“That’s not the point,” Kurt said. “The point is that I got her number.”

He didn’t say anything else until they walked through the doors and escaped into the streets, heading towards a flat belonging to a friend. Their father would have asked far too many questions if Gudrun had returned home wearing a nurse’s uniform – and, being a cop, was far too practiced at sniffing out lies. He would demand the whole story, then explode with fury at the risk they’d taken.

“You need to keep this to yourself,” he warned. “If someone is trying to keep this a secret…”

“I know the dangers,” Gudrun said. She had a vague plan forming in her mind, but nothing solid, not yet. And she couldn’t share her thoughts with her brother. “And I know the risks.”