Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter Eight

Berlin, Germany

3 September 1985

Horst kept his opinion to himself as Oberfeldwebel August Sattler introduced Gudrun to a dozen trainees, reassuring her – in a manner Horst found quite irritating – that the new recruits would keep the Reich safe. Privately, Horst was much less impressed. The recruits might have been in the Hitler Youth, but it was alarmingly clear that their tutors hadn’t prepared them for the rigours of war. The training forced upon children born in the east – who knew they were in a war zone from the moment they were old enough to walk – was rarely given to their western counterparts. To them, the Hitler Youth was just another imposition from their ultimate superiors. It was an attitude that could not be tolerated in the east.

Gudrun had grown better at politics, he thought, as he followed her around the training field and listened as she chatted briefly to some of the trainees. Most of them eyed her with open awe, although a handful appeared doubtful that she’d managed to play a leading role in overthrowing the previous government. That was an attitude that wouldn’t have lasted long in the east, either. Women on farms could be just as tough as their male counterparts and often had to drop tools and pick up weapons to fight for their lives. They might be barred from front-line combat units, but that didn’t keep them from having to fight. Horst’s own mother had had to fight to defend herself several times.

But it’s a great deal safer here, Horst thought, ruefully. The Westerners have forgotten that their stability comes with a price.

He kept his face expressionless as Gudrun finally finished speaking to the recruits, then went on a walking tour of the growing defence lines. Berlin was huge, easily the largest city on Earth; Horst wouldn’t have cared to be the general who had to capture it against even minimal opposition. But at the same time, the population was so vast that starving the citizens out was a very real possibility. The SS might not have the time to wait for Berlin to surrender, yet if they did Horst doubted they would try an offensive at all. Why expend thousands – perhaps tens of thousands – of lives if they could get the city for minimal expense?

They can’t leave us alone indefinitely, he reminded himself. We’re a direct challenge to their view of the universe.

He had no illusions about just how ruthless the SS was prepared to be. He’d worked for them, after all. Starving out the population – forcing them to bend the knee – would work wonders, particularly given the growing contempt for the soft westerners among the easterners. Horst had heard, more than once, mutterings that the westerners should be brought to heel, a long time before the uprising had begun. The easterners could not allow themselves to go soft, knowing it would mean their destruction. But the westerners had forgotten that the world was red in tooth and claw. Those who had the strength and the will made the rules, while those who lacked one or both were doomed.

Gudrun nodded to him as the walking tour finally came to an end. “Shall we go back home?”

“If you wish,” Horst said, pensively. Most of the recruits were enthusiastic, he had to admit, but Sattler had been right. It would take months, months they didn’t have, to smooth out their rough edges and turn them into soldiers. He couldn’t help wondering just how many of them were going to die in the next month. “Your meeting is tonight, right?”

Gudrun nodded as they walked back to the car, the driver starting the engine at once and taking them back onto the roads. Horst eyed the traffic in grim disapproval, unable to keep from wondering just how many of the drivers truly needed to drive. They were wasting fuel, he knew, fuel that needed to be stockpiled for the military. And yet, the provisional government’s ability to coerce the population was very limited. They’d set the precedent for defying and overthrowing the government themselves. Horst knew Gudrun had been right – the previous government had been dragging the Reich into an early grave – but he couldn’t help fearing for the future. A government that was weak was just as bad, in many ways, as a government that was too strong.

“You’re very quiet,” Gudrun observed. “What are you thinking?”

“Far too many people are about to die,” Horst said.

He shook his head, grimly. He had no illusions about the Waffen-SS either. They drew most of their recruiting base from the easterners. There was no way they’d be gentle as they sliced into the defence lines, even when dealing with unarmed civilians. Anyone who didn’t take up arms against the provisional government, as soon as it was announced, would be a traitor as far as the stormtroopers were concerned. The Waffen-SS would unleash a nightmare of blood, rape and slaughter on Germany Prime. Holliston might seek to prevent atrocities – although Horst doubted that very much – but he would probably find it impossible. His servants wouldn’t see any profit in covering the iron fist with the velvet glove.

And they’ll be worried about their settlements too, he thought, as the car parked below the Reichstag and they walked up to their bedrooms. That will only make them more determined to smash us into a pulp.

“I wish we had more time,” Gudrun said, once they were in her room. “But…”

Horst nodded, ruefully. Sex was definitely one of the best ways to keep from thinking about the future, but they didn’t have time. Gudrun needed to shower and change before she went to the meeting or the old goats would refuse to take her seriously. Horst would have cheerfully strangled any of the bastards who insulted her to her face, but there was nothing he could do about hidden or not-so-hidden contempt. He gave her a kiss on the lips, then hurried out of the room before his passion could overwhelm him. They’d shared so much together that he knew there was nothing that could drive them apart.

He sighed to himself as he entered his room, shaking his head at how some of the social mores had remained firmly in place. Gudrun was a Councillor, yet she could not be seen to share her bedroom with a young man. Horst would have been surprised if the staff didn’t know, but so far most of the Councillors appeared to be unaware. And Gudrun’s father didn’t know either – or did he? He was a policeman, after all. Gudrun had once admitted that neither she nor any of her siblings had ever been able to lie to their father.

And he probably doesn’t know how to handle her any longer, Horst thought, closing the door firmly behind him. Getting pregnant is one thing, but living in sin…

He stopped, dead, as he saw the note on his bed. He’d made it clear to the staff – very clear – that they were not to enter his rooms. The small collection of weaponry he’d stockpiled under the bed, along with a handful of very useful tools, would only have upset them. And some of the other pieces of equipment would have raised questions he would have preferred not to answer. But the note had definitely not been there when he’d left the bedroom in the morning…

Cursing under his breath, he donned a glove and picked up the note. The SS had been known to use contact poisons, some of which had no known cure. He might have had to slice off his own hand, if he’d touched the paper with his bare skin…. if, of course, he realised he’d been poisoned before it was too late. His instructors had admitted, after discussing several interesting ways to booby-trap a desk drawer, that poisons spread very rapidly through the body. And the most dangerous of them had no antidote.

There was nothing on the paper, save for a handful of code phrases. Horst recognised them instantly; they looked innocuous, but only a handful of people could have written them, let alone known to send the note to him. His blood ran cold as he realised the implications. An SS stay-behind unit was operating in Berlin… and at least one of the people in the Reichstag was a traitor. Probably a servant, he thought numbly, as his heart began to race. No one would have questioned a servant coming in or out of a bedroom suite. It wasn’t as if the important people would be expected to do their own housework.

He smiled, rather wanly, at the thought, then sat down to have a think. The note specified a time and a place, a bare thirty minutes away. Had that been deliberate? Or was it merely a coincidence? There was certainly no time to contact Gudrun and tell her where he was going… if he went at all. He’d pretended to have been duped, the last time he’d been questioned by his former superiors, but that excuse would probably no longer hold water. There was no disputing – now – that Gudrun was deeply involved in the provisional government. And that the SS had had her in its claws, only to let her go.

And that was my fault, he thought. If I go to this meeting, I may walk right into a trap.

Gritting his teeth, he ran through the possibilities as he donned his greatcoat and checked his holstered pistol. There was no denying that there was a stay-behind cell in place, a cell that could do a great deal of damage if allowed to operate unmolested. He could not let the chance to locate the cell pass, whatever the risk. And if they wanted to kill him… he added a handful of other weapons, burying them within the greatcoat, then scribbled out a quick note for Gudrun he could put in her room. She, at least, would know that something had happened to him.

Horst walked out of the building, passing the guards at the gates without trouble, then removed and folded the greatcoat as soon as he was in the nearest alleyway. It was pathetic, compared to some of the disguises he’d used during his training, but it was amazing how many people missed the obvious. He looked like another trainee, heading home after a hard day prancing around the sports field, rather than an SS officer or a policeman. No one would pay much, if any, attention to him.

He kept a wary eye on his surroundings as he walked further into the residential part of the city. The apartment blocks were massive, intended to house young men and women who had travelled to Berlin in hopes of a better life. Some of them looked like nice places to live, others looked like homes he would have preferred not to visit without armed backup. A handful of older men were sitting by the roadside, drowning their sorrows in cheap booze and shouting obscenities at passing cars. They’d have been arrested by now, a year ago, but the provisional government had other problems than the growing number of homeless on the streets. There just wasn’t the manpower to deal with it.

The landlords started kicking them out, Horst thought. There had been laws, once upon a time, about kicking veterans out of their homes, regardless of who actually owned the building. Landlords had hated the laws because it left them stuck with tenants who could neither pay nor be evicted, tenants who lowered the tone so much it made it impossible for them to attract tenants who could pay. And no one gives enough of a damn to take them in.

He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of sympathy as he reached the safehouse and paused outside the door. Gudrun’s grandfather had been a disgusting old drunkard, but his family had never given in to the temptation to dump him onto the streets. But not everyone was so patient, not everyone was willing to give their parents a home. It was depressing, really, to think that he might end up like that, had things gone differently. And yet, if he treated his family like servants, how could he really blame them?

The door opened. A hand beckoned him inside.

Horst braced himself, keeping his hand in position to draw his pistol if necessary and stepped through the door into the darkened building. Someone had taken the advice offered by the provisional government literally and covered the windows in newspapers and tape to keep even a chink of light from shining out into the darkness. And yet, the only source of light in the building was an open door at the end of the corridor. He kept his face expressionless as he walked into the room, only to be caught by strong hands that frisked him expertly and removed the weapons before letting him go.

“He’s clean,” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Good,” a very familiar voice said. “Horst, my boy, perhaps you have an explanation?”

Horst kept his face under tight control as Standartenfuehrer Erdmann Schwarzkopf stepped into the light. He’d lost track of Schwarzkopf after the uprising had begun, although a handful of Schwarzkopf’s spies – his laughably ill-prepared spies – had been brutally beaten to death. Horst had hoped that Schwarzkopf had gone the same way, but the damned Standartenfuehrer had clearly managed to go underground before his first safehouse could be torn apart by the mob. Schwarzkopf had always been good at covering his ass.

“At last,” Horst said. He pushed as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Schwarzkopf lifted his eyebrows. “You have?”

“Of course,” Horst told him. “I put myself close to the traitors and waited.”

“You have been very close to one of the traitors,” Schwarzkopf said. “I hear you have been in bed with her.”

His voice hardened. “A traitor you told us was not a traitor.”

“I do not believe she was, at the time of her arrest,” Horst said, carefully. If they realised he’d lied to them, back before the uprising, he’d never leave the building alive. “She was pushed into treason by the way she was handled, after her arrest.”

“She is hardly the first person to have been arrested and then released,” Schwarzkopf observed.

“That is correct,” Horst said. “She was merely the right person at the right time.”

He paused, then went on. “When I realised she had become entangled with the traitors, it was far too late to do anything about it,” he added. “Therefore, I attached myself to her and waited for you to make contact. I knew you would have someone within the Reichstag.”

“You could have used one of the dead-drops to make contact,” Schwarzkopf pointed out, darkly. “Why didn’t you?”

“A number of files were captured by the traitors,” Horst said. “I knew they were watching for signs of treason. There was no way I dared trust any of the dead-drops.”

He held himself immobile, meeting Schwarzkopf’s eyes without flinching. If Schwarzkopf bought it… he knew the man well enough to know that telling him what he wanted to hear was never a waste of time. And yet, Schwarzkopf had probably had a truckload of shit dumped on him by his superiors after Gudrun had become the public face of the student movement. It wouldn’t be out of character for him to suspect that Horst was either an idiot or a traitor himself. God knew he had good reason to be furious.

“And you spent your time having your knob sucked,” Schwarzkopf said. “I do trust you enjoyed it?”

Horst had to fight to keep his face expressionless. No true German youth would allow such a sally to go unpunished, not if he had genuine feelings for the girl. Insulting a girlfriend was the easiest way to start a fight, even better than a suggestion that a young man’s mother might have been an Untermensch. And yet, he knew Schwarzkopf was probing. If he suspected that Horst did have feelings for Gudrun…

And he has someone watching us, he thought, grimly. They’d thought they were being discreet, but someone who kept their head down and merely watched might have a very good idea of what they did together. How much does he know?

“I know my duty, Herr Standartenfuehrer,” he said, stiffly. He couldn’t allow himself to get angry, not now. “It is my job to do whatever is necessary to insert myself into their innermost councils.”

“I’m sure you hated every last minute of it,” Schwarzkopf said. His face twisted into an ugly smile. “How long can you remain here?”

Horst checked his watch, wondering just what sort of answer he could give. Schwarzkopf had a source within the Reichstag. Horst wouldn’t have bet a single forged Reichmark that he didn’t have a good idea of Horst’s schedule already. Getting caught in a lie would be very dangerous.

“At least an hour, perhaps two,” he said, finally. He forced himself to leer. “I normally seduce her after the council meetings, so we can discuss matters in a pleasant haze. She might be suspicious if I am not available as soon as she leaves the council chambers.”

“An hour,” Schwarzkopf mused.

He cleared his throat. “I have a number of questions for you, then we will set up contact procedures,” he said. “You will be expected to play your part in the triumphant restoration of the Third Reich. If you serve well, your previous mistakes will be forgiven; if you blunder again, you will be executed. Heil Holliston!”

“Heil Holliston,” Horst echoed. He would have to be very careful when he answered, but he had no choice. “I will not fail you.”

“Very good,” Schwarzkopf said. “And now we begin.”