Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter Nine

Berlin, Germany

3 September 1985

Gudrun had wondered, from time to time, why her father hadn’t actively sought promotion in the police. Given his career – he’d been a military officer – and some of his connections, he should have been kicked up a level or two long before the uprising. But when she’d asked, as a younger girl, he’d told her that he hated being trapped behind a desk, having to deal with bureaucratic meetings. She’d thought he was just making excuses, but now – after three hours of largely pointless blether – she was starting to see his point.

She sighed, inwardly, as she walked slowly back to her bedroom. Volker Schulze was eminently practical, thankfully, but both Finance Minister Hans Krueger and Admiral Wilhelm Riess were experienced bureaucratic infighters who seemed to be prepared to argue for hours rather than concede anything to their rivals. She’d hoped for better from Arthur Morgenstern – Hilde’s father – but he seemed unwilling to do anything apart from sit in his chair and drink coffee. Gudrun had only met him a couple of times, before the uprising, yet she’d never realised just how much of a milksop he was. Promoting him to the Reich Council might have been a mistake.

A pair of serving girls jumped to one side as she passed, their eyes going wide. Gudrun smiled at them both, unable to keep from feeling sorry for them. She’d talked to a few, back when she’d moved into her bedroom, only to discover that they’d been treated badly by the old council. They’d even been expected to provide sexual services to the councillors! And to think they were good German girls.

She pushed the thought aside and stepped into her bedroom. Horst was sitting on the bed, as she’d expected, but his face was grim rather than welcoming. Gudrun felt a chill running down her spine as she closed and locked the door, then swore inwardly as she saw the device in Horst’s hand. Portable bug detectors were vanishingly rare in the Reich, almost unknown outside the intelligence services. And if Horst had been searching the room for bugs…

“We have to talk,” Horst said. He rose from the bed and sat down in the comfortable chair, a sign that he wasn’t interested in making love. The world had to be coming to an end. “There have been… developments.”

Gudrun sat down on the bed, feeling cold. “What happened?”

“My old… associates contacted me,” Horst said. He ran through a brief explanation, then leaned forward. “They managed to get a message into my bedroom.”

It took Gudrun a moment to realise the implications. “They have a spy in the Reichstag?”

“Perhaps more than one,” Horst warned. “If they can get access to my bedroom, then nowhere is safe.

He rubbed his forehead. “If they have two spies, neither one will know about the other. The SS was quite fond of placing observers in the government and military, reporting back to their superiors.”

“Observers like you,” Gudrun said.

She still shivered in horror when she remembered Horst telling her, rather apologetically, that he was an SS officer. He could have betrayed her at any moment, if he’d remained true to his oaths. She’d never suspected, even with the benefit of hindsight. And she’d invited him to the very first meeting! They could have been quietly arrested and dispatched to a concentration camp at any moment, along with their families. Horst… she knew, all too well, that she owed him her very life.

“Yes,” Horst said. “I doubt they will be easy to catch.”

“We have the files,” Gudrun said. “Don’t we?”

“I would be surprised if the files we recovered from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt include anyone who works in such a role,” Horst said. “There were no files relating to me or any of the others I knew. As far as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt was concerned, I was just another student with a pure-perfect record.”

Gudrun nodded, shortly. The university had prided itself on selecting the best and brightest young Germans to be its students, but none of them would have been allowed to pass through the doors if their families and bloodlines hadn’t been pure. Horst had been qualified, as well as an SS officer; he’d certainly blended in perfectly. The same couldn’t be said for the other spies. They’d been so obvious that Gudrun doubted that anyone had been fooled.

“So the files will say they were just… ordinary people,” she mused. “How do we catch them?”

“I don’t think we can,” Horst said, after a moment. “A full-scale hunt for a spy will tip them off, I think. And that will prove to the bastards that I can’t be trusted.”

Gudrun swallowed. If Horst hadn’t spoken up for her, she doubted she would have been allowed to return to Berlin. Her father had been furious, but she would sooner endure her father’s anger than a concentration camp. The files had made it very clear – all too clear – just what the camp inmates had had to endure, before they died.

“I see,” she said. She took a long breath, calming herself. “What do they want from you?”

“Right now, they just want me to keep an eye on you and the rest of the councillors,” Horst said. “But I expect that will change in short order.”

“They’ll want you to kill us,” Gudrun said, flatly.

“Probably,” Horst agreed. “The defences around the Reichstag are good, even if they are a little crude. Inside help will make it easier for them to get a second kill-team into the building.”

“We’re not going to be staying here for long, anyway,” Gudrun reminded him.

“No,” Horst agreed. “And the confusion caused by the move, I think, will make it much easier for them to accomplish their goals.”

Gudrun swallowed, hard. “Can we track down the stay-behind team?”

“I don’t think it will be easy,” Horst said. “Standard procedure is to hold meetings with untrustworthy assets well away from the base of operations. Even if we capture my contact, he’s unlikely to break in time to allow us to capture the remaining commandos. They’ll have procedures in place to deal with a sudden upset.”

Gudrun cursed. “So all we can do is wait to be hit?”

“We make some very quiet precautions,” Horst said. “But otherwise… we have to wait for them to move first.”

He paused. “And they know about us.”

Gudrun coloured. “Everything?”

“I think so,” Horst said. He looked embarrassed. “We could get married, you know.”

“I’m not pregnant,” Gudrun said, automatically. She did love Horst, but she wanted to be something more than a wife. If she was married, everyone would assume that Horst was pulling her strings. “And wouldn’t that be a little too revealing to your superiors?”

Horst smirked. “There was a spy in America who was married to an American girl and, as far as anyone could tell, he was the perfect American,” he said. “It didn’t stop him from stealing a bunch of secrets one day and fleeing back to the Reich, leaving the poor girl and his family behind.”

Gudrun shuddered. Americans, she’d been told, regarded marriage as something that could be made or broken in an instant, but Germans took a more conservative view. For a husband to betray his wife in such a manner… it was unthinkable. Even having an affair could make a husband a pariah in his community, while a wife could face criminal charges for defiling her marriage. But then, in America, women had rights. Certainly, they had more rights than any German woman would have, once she entered a marriage…

She pushed the thought aside. “I think you should tell the Chancellor,” she said. “He has to know the truth.”

Horst frowned. “Won’t that cause problems for you?”

“Probably,” Gudrun said. If things had been different, she would have been Volker Schulze’s daughter-in-law. But if things had been different, she would never have become Sigrún and he would never have become Chancellor. “I think we have worse things to worry about right now.”

“I know,” Horst said. He shook his head, slowly. “It goes against the grain to have so many people know.”

Gudrun nodded, although she thought he was wrong. Schulze – and his son – had both been in the Waffen-SS. There were some people who would question Horst’s loyalties, after hearing that he’d been in the SS too, but she doubted Volker Schulze would be one of them. Besides, Horst had had ample opportunity to nip the uprising in the bud if he’d wanted to, a point that was firmly in his favour.

“I think he will keep it to himself,” Gudrun said, as she rose. “Are there likely to be agents in the Wehrmacht too?”

“Everywhere,” Horst said. “Disloyalty can come from anywhere and anyone, as my former instructors put it.”

“Including the SS itself,” Gudrun said.

Horst shrugged, then rose and gave her a tight hug. Gudrun was tempted, just for a long moment, to pull him onto the bed, but there was no time. Instead, she kissed him once and led the way towards the door, careful to keep a distance between them. It was probably futile – there was no hope of keeping their relationship a secret now – but she wanted to keep it from her parents as long as possible. Her father would go through the roof when he discovered she was practically living with someone before marriage.

Volker Schulze, she knew from past experience, worked late. His wife and daughter – his sole remaining child – often nagged him to come home early, but Gudrun had heard that Schulze often worked until midnight. There was just so much for him to master, before the war began, so much he needed to learn to keep more experienced political movers and shakers from outmanoeuvring him. And yet, Gudrun couldn’t help wondering what sort of strain it put on his married life. Her mother hadn’t been too happy when her father had started to come home late at night, after being given unpaid overtime by his superiors.

“Councillor,” Schulze’s secretary said. He was a middle-aged man, easily old enough to be Gudrun’s father, someone who’d worked in one of the factories before Schulze had asked him to work for him personally. “The Chancellor has asked not to be disturbed.”

“Please tell him that this is urgent,” Gudrun said. She wondered, suddenly, if Schulze was taking advantage of the servants, then dismissed the thought. It was unthinkable. “We need to speak with him.”

The secretary nodded curtly, rose and hurried through the door. Gudrun rather suspected he didn’t like the idea of taking orders from a young girl – his daughter was only a year or two younger – but his dislike was the least of her concerns. She waited, as patiently as she could, until the man returned. He didn’t look pleased.

“You may enter,” he said.

Gudrun thanked him and stepped through the door, into the Reich Chancellor’s office. It was striking, she had to admit, even though Schulze had removed some of the more ornate decorations that had lined the walls. Some of the paintings on the lower levels had been stolen from France, Gudrun had been told, even though the official line stated that the French had nothing worth stealing. She wondered, absently, just what the provisional government should do with them. Return them to the French… or hide them away?

“Gudrun,” Schulze said. He stood from behind his desk, looking tired. It was a bitter reminder that he was actually seven or eight years older than her father. His eyes flickered across Horst for a long moment, then locked on her. “What can I do for you?”

“We have a problem,” Gudrun said. She glanced at Horst. “Tell him.”

Volker Schulze kept his expression blank – with an effort – as Horst Albrecht outlined his story. He hadn’t paid too much attention to the younger man, seeing him as nothing more than one of Gudrun’s fellow students. Indeed, their closeness could easily be explained by shared struggles against the world, rather than a romantic relationship that might predate Konrad’s death. But to hear that Horst Albrecht was actually an SS observer… it was maddening. It was enough to make him wonder what else had escaped his notice over the last two weeks.

He wasn’t inclined to condemn Horst merely for being an SS officer. It would be hypocritical. Volker had been a paratrooper himself before his retirement; he’d certainly seen nothing wrong with encouraging his son to follow in his footsteps. A tour or two as a stormtrooper would leave Konrad perfectly positioned to become a paratrooper or a commando himself, if he hadn’t been critically wounded on his very first tour. How could he condemn Horst for serving the SS?

But he could – and perhaps he would – condemn the younger man for being a spy.

“So they made contact with you,” he said, when Horst had finished. “Do they not doubt your loyalties?”

“I tried to convince them I was fooled,” Horst said, bluntly. “They have little reason to doubt me.”

Volker scowled. He hadn’t had much to do with the observers, back when he’d been a paratrooper, but he had the distant feeling that Horst’s superiors would be watching him with a very jaundiced eye. They had to wonder just how much Horst had known – or suspected – before the uprising took place. At the very least, they would be questioning his competence and wondering just how far he could be trusted. And, at worst, they would be stringing him along while preparing their own surprise. If they had other sources within the Reichstag, why would they need Horst at all?

He rubbed his forehead. If they had no sources, they might try to bluff Horst into thinking they had… but if they did have sources, they could try to manipulate Horst into doing something stupid… he felt his head start to pound, reminding him that he had been surviving on caffeine since six o’clock in the morning. He just couldn’t think clearly now.

“You made sure Gudrun wasn’t kept in prison,” Volker said, flatly. “They are certainly going to be doubting your competence.”

“Better that than my loyalties,” Horst said.

Volker wasn’t so sure. If the SS believed that Gudrun and Horst were lovers – and their body language betrayed them – they would wonder just who had seduced who. Would they think Horst had seduced Gudrun to remain close to the provisional government… or would they believe that Gudrun had seduced Horst to distract him from his duty. Volker was no innocent. He knew just how often sex was used to bribe or corrupt government officials, from bureaucrats handing out ration cards to policemen who caught unescorted women on the streets after dark. The SS would know it too.

“They wouldn’t have contacted you if they hadn’t felt they needed you,” he mused. He cleared his throat. “I expect to know about it the moment they make contact, again.”

“Understood, Herr Chancellor,” Horst said.

“And we clearly need to reshuffle everything when we move to the underground bunker,” Volker continued, after a moment. “Their spies can be reassigned elsewhere.”

“As long as it looks natural,” Horst said. He didn’t sound enthusiastic. If there were any major changes before the war actually began, his superiors might start thinking he’d tipped off the provisional government. “I’ll keep you informed.”

“And I’ll decide what you can give to them,” Volker added. “I don’t want any surprises.”

He rubbed his forehead, again. “Wait outside,” he said, addressing Horst. “I want a word with Gudrun in private.”

“Jawohl, Herr Chancellor,” Horst said.

Volker watched him go, then looked at Gudrun. He couldn’t help thinking that she looked alarmingly like a schoolgirl who had been unjustly sent to the headmaster, torn between the urge to protest and the certain knowledge that protests would be worse than useless. He shook his head, tiredly. Gudrun really was too young for any of this. She was still idealistic, in a world where the idealistic were always betrayed and abandoned. It wasn’t fair…

…But it was the way of the world.

“You should have told me about him,” he said, flatly. It was hard, very hard, not to snap at her. “I understand why you didn’t, but you should have done.”

Gudrun nodded, not meeting his eyes. “I…”

Volker cut her off. “I expect you to make sure that the only things his superiors hear are things we have already decided they should hear,” he added. He’d have to discuss the matter with Luther Stresemann and hope to hell that the Head of the Economic Intelligence Service was trustworthy. The Abwehr had more experience, but the Abwehr had worked too closely with the SS. “We don’t need more leaks.”

“No, sir,” Gudrun said, quietly.

“Good,” Volker said.

He studied her for a long moment. Her arrest – and near-death – hadn’t left any scars on her face, although her eyes were harder than he remembered. Gudrun had lost some of her innocence, back when she’d learned just what had happened to Konrad. She wasn’t the girl he’d met, not any longer. He couldn’t help wondering, deep inside, just what would have happened to her if Konrad had survived. The Reich could not have kept itself going indefinitely.

“Get some sleep,” he ordered, quietly. “And we’ll discuss the matter further in the morning.”

“I understand,” Gudrun said. “And thank you.”

Volker lifted his eyebrows. “For what?”

“For trusting him,” Gudrun said. “It means a lot to me.”

“Does it?” Volker said. He didn’t trust Horst that far, even though the young man had come clean as soon as he’d returned to the Reichstag. “You can’t trust anyone completely, Gudrun; you can’t even trust yourself. All you can do is hope, when the betrayal comes, that it won’t be fatal.”

“That’s a grim attitude,” Gudrun said, bluntly.

“It’s life,” Volker said. “Everyone has a price.”