Chosen of the Valkyries

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Berlin, Germany Prime

29 September 1985

Horst found it hard to keep the relief off his face as the car pulled into the underground garage and came to a stop. He’d done a number of hard things in his life, but asking Herman for his daughter’s hand in marriage had to be the hardest. And yet, perhaps, it would soon be the second-hardest. Herman might have approved the match – he certainly hadn’t said no – but asking Gudrun would be the hardest of all. She might say no, or insist that they waited until the end of the war, or…

He shook his head. It wasn’t going to be easy, but if he’d wanted an easy life he would have stayed on the farm. He could have avoided joining the military or the SS, simply by being in one of the protected categories of jobs. And yet, if he hadn’t, he knew the uprising wouldn’t have taken place. The spy who was sent in his place might not have been so inclined to listen to Gudrun, let alone decide to join her.

Herman had a point, he admitted silently as they made their way up to their office. A pair of trusted guards stood outside, with strict orders not to admit anyone unless they had been cleared by Herman personally. There was a war on… and Gudrun was almost certainly at the top of the list of people Karl Holliston intended to purge, if he won the war. And Horst himself might not be on the list now, but he certainly would be if Holliston ever found out just how badly he’d betrayed his masters. Horst knew the SS too well to imagine they would ever be satisfied with vague reassurances and evasions, not after the uprising. They would strip him down to the bedrock, then shoot whatever was left for the single greatest act of treason since Von Braun had fled the Reich for the United States.

And so we may as well live while we can, he thought, morbidly. Enjoy the war, for the peace will be terrible.

A handful of reports sat on the desk. Herman sat down and started to go through them while Horst poured two mugs of coffee. The coffee was already starting to run out, he’d heard, although the Reichstag had a huge cellar crammed with everything from fancy French wines to imported food from America. It wouldn’t have done for the Reich Council to be deprived of the good things in life, even though the rest of the Reich was slowly starting to starve as food prices went up. Volker Schulze had ordered half the food handed out to the civilians, keeping them alive… in hindsight, that might have been a mistake. They’d have done better to start rationing from the very beginning.

“Police coffee,” Herman commented, as he took a sip. “You do very good coffee.”

Horst kept his expression carefully blank, suspecting he was being needled. The coffee was as dark as Karl Holliston’s soul, with no milk nor sugar to lighten it. Gudrun had winced, the first time he’d made coffee for her, although he did have to admit she’d drunk it anyway. But then, such coffee was intended to keep the drinker awake, rather than anything else. The sour taste was a bonus.

“Over the last week, seventeen staff went out of the Reichstag,” Herman said, when Horst didn’t deign to reply. “As you can see” – he held out the papers – “fifteen of them were absent for more than three hours, two of the remainder only returning to start their shifts the following morning. And yet all seventeen of them sleep in the building!”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Horst pointed out. Indeed, he was tempted to dismiss the two who’d clearly spent the night elsewhere. The SS wouldn’t want to run the risk of having their agents dismissed, just because they’d gone to a bar or a brothel. “They may have friends or family within the city.”

“Some of them do,” Herman said. “But they’re very much in the minority.”

Horst nodded. The Reich Council had been reluctant to hire Berliners to work in the Reichstag, although he’d never been sure why. Indeed, there were nearly five hundred staffers in the building and only fifty of them had been born and raised in Berlin. But it hardly mattered now… unless, of course, the Berliners could be dismissed from consideration because they stood out like sore thumbs. Or was that what they were supposed to think?

“So we have seventeen possible suspects,” he mused. And he knew that he’d given three intelligence packets to the spy, all of which had been removed. “How many of them went out more than once?”

“Five,” Herman said. “One staffer stayed out overnight twice, according to the records; the other four went out five times in the past week.”

Horst scowled. If there was one spy, logically it had to be one of the five suspects. And he could see why a spy’s handlers would want him to stay out overnight, allowing them to be pumped for further information, even though it would raise eyebrows. But if there was more than one spy, they could be rotating courier duty… which meant that all of the original seventeen had to be considered possible suspects.

He looked at Herman. “A battlefield is far simpler, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Herman said. “But there’s also a greater chance at being blown away by a random shot.”

Horst had to smile. He doubted he would have the patience for detective work, let alone the mindset of a street policeman. Patrolling the streets in Russia was deadly dangerous, but Berlin was well on the way to turning into a nightmare in its own right. Even without the SS commando cell – or whatever – that had burned down the warehouse, the city was slowly collapsing into chaos. And with an army just outside the city, sniping at everyone who showed his face, a major riot might just be enough to give the city to the SS.

And if that happens, I grab Gudrun and run, Horst promised himself. There will be no hope of savaging the situation.

Herman cleared his throat. “I’ll have all seventeen shadowed, if they try to leave the Reichstag again,” he said. “It isn’t as if this is a dangerous place to be.”

Horst nodded. None of the shells had landed within a kilometre of the Reichstag, accounting for the growing number of refugees squeezing into the magic circle. Karl Holliston, it seemed, wanted to recover the building intact, although Horst had a private suspicion that he wanted to ensure that the provisional government could actually surrender. Killing the only people who could order a full-scale surrender would be very unwise.

But then, he thought, who would want to surrender?

He sighed as he started to pace the room. The reports were very clear, even if some of the details had been hidden from the general public. Soldiers, sailors and airmen who fell into enemy hands were being marched eastwards to an uncertain fate. Horst would not have cared to put money on their survival. The SS might not be machine-gunning surrendered prisoners, but they could easily be kept in concentration camps and starved to death. Hell, the SS had even started shipping women and girls eastwards too. Horst had a nasty feeling he knew what that meant.

They’re of good blood, he thought. It was rare for German women to be executed, although he suspected the women might wind up wishing that they had been allowed to die. And in the east, they can be turned into brood cows without anyone giving a damn.

Herman was saying something. Horst flushed. He hadn’t been listening.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Can you repeat that?”

“I said that the Reichstag is the safest place in Berlin,” Herman said, patiently. “Who would want to leave?”

“It is the safest place until they actually storm the city,” Horst replied. “And far too many of those refugees” – he nodded towards the wall – “are going to be ground up like sausage when the shit finally hits the fan.”

Gudrun had had a busy day, even though she hadn’t left the Reichstag. Her mother hadn’t been able to offer her much advice, but she had urged Gudrun to spend time talking to the older women who had taken over the Woman’s Institute. Gudrun hadn’t enjoyed the experience – the older women seemed torn between clucking in disapproval and being pleased that a female had finally climbed into a position of power – but she had to admit that Frau Morgenstern was a formidable advocate. Under her command, the Woman’s Institute had swallowed up its rivals and was plotting reform… after the war was finished, of course.

She looked down at the list of proposed legal amendments and sighed. Some of them were ones she wanted for herself, ranging from the right to refuse a suitor to guarantees for protection if a marriage broke down, while others were troublesome and contradictory. The older women might want some degree of freedom for themselves, but they were reluctant to extend such freedom to their daughters. Gudrun definitely felt sorry for Hilde, even though she’d been more than a little spoilt. Having Frau Morgenstern run her life couldn’t have been fun.

And she’s now in America, she thought. I wonder if she’ll want to come home.

There was a tap on the door. “Come in!”

She looked up, her eyes widening as she saw her father stepping into the room. He looked tired – he would have been woken at the same time as Horst – but his face was under careful control. Gudrun rose to her feet, unsure quite why he’d chosen to visit. He’d never visited her office before, not even after she’d invited him. She had a private suspicion that his mind had separated her into two people, Gudrun-The-Daughter and Gudrun-The-Politician. Maybe it was the only way he could cope with having a daughter who outranked him.

He wouldn’t be so stuffy if Kurt was promoted to Field Marshal, she thought, feeling a flicker of resentment. But then, father would still be the head of the household.

“Father,” she said, carefully.

Her father closed the door. “We need to talk,” he said, firmly. He’d used the same words, she recalled with a shiver, when he’d approached her about Konrad. Had her mother spoken to him? Or… or what? “Please, sit down.”

Gudrun sat, irked. It was her office.

Her father sat facing her, his eyes meeting hers. “Your boyfriend spoke to me today,” he said. “Did you know he was going to do it?”

“No,” Gudrun said. She found herself torn between joy and fear. On one hand, there was only one thing Horst could have said to her father that would have brought him to her office, but – on the other hand – her father might be inclined to say no. “What did he say to you?”

“He asked for your hand in marriage,” her father said. He cocked his head, slightly. “Are you pregnant?”

Gudrun flushed, angrily. “No,” she snapped. She was already feeling her body’s warning signs. Her period was due within a day, perhaps two. “And I know for sure, father.”

Her father showed no visible reaction, somewhat to her disappointment. Mentioning female issues in her house had always caused male deafness, as if they didn’t want to admit that they were real. Gudrun’s mother – and her teachers, on the other hand – had been brutally frank, but most of them had been women. The male teachers hadn’t discussed the matter at all.

“Very good,” her father said. He studied her for a long moment. “Do you want to marry him?”

“I love him,” Gudrun said.

“That isn’t an answer,” her father pointed out. “Do you want to marry him?”

Gudrun closed her eyes for a long moment. She’d often thought that having a policeman for a father wasn’t fair! He’d always been able to pick up on her lies, or half-truths, or when she’d been unwilling or unable to tell him everything. And he’d even told her, more than once, that he met more experienced liars on the streets. He’d certainly had no trouble detecting her own doubts and concerns.

“I don’t know, father,” Gudrun said, honestly. There was no point in trying to lie – or mislead. “I do love him… if things had been different, I would have agreed at once.”

“If things had been different,” her father pointed out, “you would have married Konrad.”

Gudrun winced in pain. “Konrad is dead,” she snapped. “If things had been different… yes, I would have married Konrad. And I would have done my best to be a good wife for him.”

“He would have liked that, I think,” her father said, dryly.

“But right now, I don’t know if I want to marry,” Gudrun admitted. She was too upset to care about what she was saying. “Why can’t we have a relationship without getting married?”

“Because, sooner or later, you will get pregnant,” her father retorted. His voice was surprisingly even, which worried her. “And what will you do then?”

Gudrun cringed. If she could have, she would have jumped out of the window or made herself vanish in a flash of light. Her father… her father couldn’t know what Horst and she had been doing, could he? And yet, he’d been a young man too. Gudrun – and her siblings – were living proof that their parents had slept together at least four times. She didn’t want to think about her parents being intimate, but there was no way to avoid it.

“Marriage exists to ensure that children are raised in a safe and loving home,” her father continued, when she said nothing. “If you are not married when you give birth… people will raise eyebrows.”

It would be worse than that, Gudrun knew. If there had been a strong promise to marry – which had been broken, through no fault of the woman – she might just be regarded as untainted. But if there had been no promise… she knew it would reflect badly on the woman, her parents and everyone else. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that it was always the woman who suffered for a mutual sin. A man who slept with many girls, outside marriage, would be given a slap on the back by his friends, while everyone scorned the women…

“I do want to marry him,” Gudrun said. “But at the same time, I worry about all of this.”

Her father’s lips twitched. “Your mother has started to move into politics, too.”

Gudrun met his eyes. “What do you think of that?”

“I think it would be unwise to object,” her father said, dryly. He smiled. “One thing you will learn, when you start married life, is that while your husband is always meant to be in charge, you will have a great deal of influence behind the scenes.”

“Unless you get a very bad husband,” Gudrun said.

“Unless you do,” her father agreed.

He leaned forward, resting his hands on her desk. “I approve of Horst,” he said, flatly. “He did… he did a great many things to keep you safe, before and after the uprising. He’s smart, he comes from a good family, he has prospects…”

“So do I,” Gudrun said.

“Yes, now,” her father said.

He cleared his throat. “I have discussed the matter with your mother,” he said, firmly. “We have agreed that we will approve the match, when Horst works up the nerve to ask you. It may take some time.”

Gudrun blinked. “He’s brave…”

“There are many kinds of bravery,” her father said, cutting her off. “Charging into the teeth of enemy fire is one thing, I suppose. Asking a girl to marry you… that’s a very different kind of bravery.”

“He approached you,” Gudrun said.

She shook her head. It was hard not to feel that Horst should have approached her first, even though law and custom demanded that her father be asked for his approval before the girl herself was asked. His refusal would have put an end to the whole affair, unless the happy couple ran off and married secretly… a difficult task, when the law demanded that both sets of parents needed to be present when the marriage took place. She knew girls who had only found out by accident that their parents had rejected a number of prospective suitors. Some of them had been very hurt, but what could they do? They had no recourse if their parents turned down the match.

“That isn’t quite the same,” her father said. “The fear of being rejected by a girl is so much greater.”

He paused. “Give him time to work up the nerve,” he warned. “You don’t want him to feel pressured into it, not when marriage is fraught with emotional hazards. And when he asks… well, you shouldn’t make him wait too long before you say yes.”

“If I do say yes,” Gudrun said.

Her father met her eyes. “Marriage will change your life,” he warned. “If you are not sure that you want to marry him, say so now. I will be quite happy to refuse the suit for you, if that is what you wish.”

“But I don’t want you to refuse the suit,” Gudrun said. “I just don’t know if I want to marry him now.”

“Make up your mind,” her father said. He nodded towards the window as a pair of explosions echoed out in the distance. “You may not have much time left.”

“I know,” Gudrun said. And yet… she sighed. Perhaps she should broach the topic with Horst, rather than waiting for him. “I’ll make up my mind soon.”