Ragnarok

Chapter Twelve

Germanica (Moscow), Germany East

1 November 1985

Gudrun, Katherine noted dispassionately as she stepped back into the security room, was bearing up well under the interrogation.

It wasn’t something she’d expected to admire in her captive. Gudrun had always seemed like a weakling to her, a foolish female who’d seduced many men from their duty. She certainly was not the kind of woman who would openly defy her male relatives, let alone force the men to accept her on her own terms. And yet, there was a hard core of strength in her that Katherine was forced to admire.

Soft, yet unyielding, Katherine thought. She will bend, but she will not break.

She kept her expression blank as she stood in the room, watching Gudrun through the security cameras. She’d known far too many women — even women born in Germany East — who would have been humiliated by being forced to remain naked, but Gudrun was neither breaking down nor demanding clothing. And she was keeping herself busy by walking around her tiny cell, even though she had to know it was futile. Escape was impossible without outside help, Katherine knew; the Reichstag was so heavily defended that nothing short of an armoured assault would be enough to break through the defences and gain access to the inner chambers.

Katherine hadn’t had an easy life, even before she’d joined the SS. Her mother had died when she was very young; she’d grown up with her brothers and a number of male cousins, all of whom had treated her as one of the boys. She’d had endless clashes with her teachers over the proper place for a young woman, enduring punishment after punishment for refusing to stay in the space they’d put aside for her. Her brothers had admired her defiance, even after they’d grown old enough to understand the difference between boys and girls. But Gudrun? She’d had an easy life.

In many ways, Gudrun was precisely the sort of girl Katherine despised. She would have married a handsome young man in a black uniform, abandoning her studies and all hope of a genuine career to bear and raise a legion of screaming brats. Her schooling suggested promise — she wouldn’t have got into the university without genuine talent — but it would all have been wasted when she got married. And yet, when her boyfriend had been crippled, Gudrun had literally overthrown the regime.

Or, at least, she started the avalanche rolling, Katherine thought, dryly. No one could hope to overthrow an entire government without help, save perhaps for the legendary Otto Skorzeny. And she didn’t even stop after taking her revenge.

It was odd. Gudrun was a mixture of admirable and detestable traits. A grim determination that Katherine admired, mixed with a willingness to bend and seek compromises that Katherine detested. Gudrun would not have stood up to her father, Katherine was sure; she’d have found a way to work around him instead. And she would probably do the same with her husband, if she managed to return to his arms. Horst — oathbreaker, traitor — might not understand the woman he’d married. Gudrun would not be content to be a simple housewife any longer.

I always stood up to the men, Katherine thought. She had stood up to her relatives; her strict father, her bully of an older brother, her teachers who had tried to force her to wear dresses and act like a meek little child. But Gudrun did nothing of the sort.

It galled her, in some ways, to realise just how much Gudrun had accomplished. And yet, how much of that had been through her personally? Katherine had shot and killed the enemies of the Reich; Gudrun had manipulated countless Berliners to rise up against the Reich, eventually overthrowing the Reich Council itself. Katherine had strangled an insurgent with her bare hands; Gudrun had won the loyalty of some very dangerous men — and done it on her own terms. Katherine couldn’t help wondering if the Provisional Government understood Gudrun any better than her husband. If she’d been born a man, she would have been running the Reich by now.

But if she’d been born a man, there would have been no need for the uprising, Katherine thought.

Just for a moment, she felt an odd flicker of kinship with the girl in the cell. They were both intelligent and capable women, yet they’d both had to fight to gain even a fragment of respect from the men. Katherine wasn’t just a good shot, she was a great shot; she’d beaten the Hitler Youth’s reigning champion, only to have her record dismissed because she hadn’t been in the Hitler Youth herself. She needed to be better than the men to win respect… and Gudrun, she suspected, had had the same problem.

She turned as she heard the door open, just in time to see Doctor Müller walk into the compartment. Katherine felt her lips thinning with disapproval. Doctor Müller — and she had grave doubts about his doctorate — was a monster. Worse, he was a pervert. He made her feel naked and unclean every time he looked at her, although he was smart enough not to do anything stupid. No one would have complained if she’d drawn her knife and sliced off his balls.

“Katherine,” he said. He never addressed her by rank. “Our prisoner is doing well.”

Katherine scowled at him, leaning forward and meeting his eyes. She had no doubt that Müller enjoyed the perks of his job. Fondling helpless girls — girls he’d drugged into comas — was definitely one of them, as far as he was concerned. And she’d heard whispered rumours about the experiments Müller liked to perform on Untermensch women. Katherine held no love for the Untermenschen, but there were limits. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty was simply absurd.

“How well?”

“The first dose of the drug should be working its way out of her system now,” Müller informed her. “She will already have lost track of the days. The next dose will weaken her resistance to some of our… other techniques and then…”

“Just remember that the Führer wants her alive and intact,” Katherine reminded him. She was due a reward for her service in Berlin. Perhaps she could convince Holliston to let her be the one to finally execute Müller. “Play your games with someone else.”

Müller flinched. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know,” Katherine said. She took a step forward, deliberately forcing her way into his personal space. “And the Führer knows what I mean.”

She watched, feeling nothing but disgust, as Müller stepped backwards. The man had no fire in him, no bravery… he loathed women, he saw women as his helpless prey, yet he couldn’t even stand up to her. The boys at school had been braver when they’d told her she couldn’t play with them because she was a girl.

“I’ll go start the next set of treatments,” Müller stammered, finally. “I…”

“Go,” Katherine said.

She forced herself to watch as he scurried out of the room, then turned her gaze back to the security cameras. Müller wouldn’t try to restrain Gudrun himself, of course; he was far too much of a coward to take the risk. He’d have his orderlies do the job before he dared go anywhere near his prisoner. Gudrun would castrate him if he did anything else.

And her mere existence would emasculate him, Katherine thought with a flicker of dark humour, if he’d been masculine in the first place.

She cursed under her breath as she watched the orderlies enter the prison cell. Most of the records from Germany Prime had been sealed, after the uprising, but she did have a few contacts in low places. Gudrun had been engaged to a young stormtrooper — she was listed as his prospective bride in his file, a standard procedure for a young man going to war — and that stormtrooper had been badly wounded in South Africa. The medical report had made it clear that he wasn’t going to recover, even before he was shipped back to Berlin. His parents had never been informed of their son’s injury.

And if that is true, Katherine asked herself, how many of Gudrun’s other charges are true too?

It wasn’t something she’d ever expected to have to consider. She had nothing but contempt for the weaklings of Germany Prime. Life was safe there, life was soft… she had no doubt that their weakness had bred weakness. They certainly didn’t face the risk of constant attack from Untermensch bandits…

And yet, was Gudrun right?

She gritted her teeth as Müller walked into the cell, his face twisted into a leer that made Katherine want to hit him. He would enjoy himself playing with a helpless girl, steadily wearing down her resistance… except Katherine had the very strong feeling that Gudrun couldn’t be broken. It wasn’t in Katherine’s nature to submit — she would have sooner died than let a man play with her — but Gudrun might just surprise the doctor. And then… what?

And if she’s right about her boyfriend, Katherine asked herself again, what else is she right about?

They were all plotting against him.

Karl Holliston was no fool. He’d known that declaring himself the Führer would invite challenges, particularly from those who didn’t owe their positions to him. Victory in Berlin would have buried all doubts, leaving him secure long enough to make his position impregnable. But now…

It was a delicate balancing act, he had to admit. The more men he conscripted into the army and sent west, the weaker the defences in the east. He had no doubt that they could recover any lost territory, in time, but many of the Gauleiters disagreed. Their wealth and power depended on them remaining firmly in power, which would be put at risk if he weakened the eastern defences. It gave them ample reason to drag their feet, to refuse to send men west, to plot against him. And there were limits to how many of his subjects he could purge.

He cursed under his breath as he studied the map. Germany East was a competing network of fiefdoms, each one operating with considerable autonomy. Himmler himself had set the system up, back when the SS had been granted unrestricted control over the vast swathes of Occupied Russia; he’d parcelled great estates and plantations out to his supporters and the men willing to turn the desolate steppes into genuine farmland. It hadn’t seemed a mistake at the time, but now the chickens had come home to roost. Karl couldn’t help wondering if his former master had made a deadly mistake.

But we wanted to expand the farms, he thought, sourly. There was no choice.

He rubbed his forehead, feeling his head start to pound. Hitler had never faced a civil war, not since the Night of the Long Knives; Himmler had narrowly escaped a civil war by coming to terms with his opponents. But he had to face a civil war, as well as an internal threat from the Gauleiters who didn’t support him. And he couldn’t even move against them without triggering a major crisis. All he could do was wait and pray that the coming offensive was defeated.

Pushing the thought aside, he rose and strode over to the giant window. Night was falling over Germanica, but the city was still brightly lit. The towering buildings, each one designed in the gothic style that had been so popular after the Third Reich had taken control of Europe, were a stunning testament to the city’s power. Even the centre of Berlin, designed by Albert Speer and Hitler himself, couldn’t match the sheer grandeur of Germanica.

But it will, he told himself. When we take the city, we will reshape it until all traces of the uprising are gone.

He smiled at the thought. Victory would bring more than mere power; victory would bring the opportunity to truly make a mark on the Reich. Berlin would be purged, everyone who had served in the rebel government marched out of the city and shot, along with everyone related to them. The Heer, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine would be folded into the Waffen-SS, with loyalty to the New Order being placed ahead of everything else. And France, Italy and the other subject nations would be squeezed to the bone to rebuild the Reich. They’d been allowed too much independence over the past decade, even before the rebels started trying to dicker with them. They would learn that what little freedom they had was granted by the Reich.

And they will lose it if they defy us, he thought.

It wouldn’t stop there, he promised himself. The damned university would be shut down, the student traitors marched east and put to work in forced labour camps. Women would be pushed out of the workforce altogether and forced to bear children, with marriages arranged by the state if the parents were unwilling to do it for their daughters. The population of the Reich would start to rise again, allowing the remainder of Germany East to finally be brought into the Reich. And the war in South Africa would be rejuvenated, with more and more troops sent to Africa until the blacks were finally — ruthlessly — crushed.

The phone rang. He turned, feeling a hot flicker of anger. Who dared interrupt him so late at night?

“Holliston,” he said, picking up the phone.

“Mein Führer,” Maria said. “Minister Kuhnert requests an urgent meeting.”

“Oh,” Karl said. Territories Minister Philipp Kuhnert was an ally, of sorts. He certainly had nowhere else to go, after the uprising. Holliston trusted him marginally more than he trusted any of the Gauleiters. “Send him in, along with some coffee.”

He kept his face blank as Kuhnert was escorted into the room. A serving girl, carrying a tray of hot coffee, appeared a moment later, placing the coffee on the table before bowing and retreating in haste. She was the daughter of one of the grandees, Holliston recalled; she’d been placed in the Reichstag, he suspected, in the hopes she’d catch a senior official’s eye and marry him. There were no Untermensch servants in the Reichstag itself.

I should organise a match for her, he thought, as Kuhnert saluted. Hitler used to do it all the time.

“Minister,” he said, stiffly. “I trust this is urgent?”

“There was a report from the Urals, Mein Führer,” Kuhnert said, bluntly. “A couple of outlying farms have been overrun and burned to the ground. The men on the spot say that all of the registered weapons have been stolen. They don’t know what else might have been taken.”

Karl sucked in his breath. “And the farmers?”

“Dead, Mein Führer,” Kuhnert said. “It was not pleasant.”

“It wouldn’t have been,” Karl said. Slavs were savages. Given a chance, they’d loot, rape and murder from one end of the Reich to the other. “Were all the bodies recovered?”

“We think so,” Kuhnert said. “Unless there was someone there who wasn’t on the registry…”

Karl dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. The Westerners might complain about having permanent files from birth to death, but Easterners were sensible enough to understand their value. Anyone staying at the farm would have had his presence noted and logged. No, there was no one unaccounted for.

“I’ve heard a great deal of anger,” Kuhnert added. “The mobile reinforcements that should have responded to their cry for help were sent west two weeks ago.”

“And so we lost a farm,” Karl mused. Losing one farm was annoying, but hardly fatal; losing more, particularly in the east, was a serious problem. Giving the bandits a victory — even an easy victory — would encourage them. “Can you calm the locals down?”

“I doubt it, Mein Führer,” Kuhnert said. “They are insistent that forces should be pulled back from the front to confront a more serious threat.”

Karl slapped the table. “The rebels are a serious threat!”

He glared down at his hands. Germany East was just too damned big. If he detached anything less than a full-sized infantry division… he scowled. It would need something bigger than an infantry division to make a real impact on the bandits. And he couldn’t even spare a single division. There was just too much to do in the west.

“If this continues,” Kuhnert said, “I don’t know what they’ll do.”

“Something stupid, perhaps,” Karl said. He had to do something, but what? “Tell them we’ll send reinforcements eastwards as soon as we can.”

“I don’t think they will accept that, Mein Fuehrer,” Kuhnert warned. “They have good reason to be sceptical of our promises.”

“Then make sure they accept it,” Karl snarled. His head was definitely starting to pound. He was trying to save the Reich from those who would destroy it, from those who would give the land back to the Slavs… and he was being badgered by petty details. “We will send them reinforcements as soon as we can.”

He drank his coffee, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to keep him awake. He needed sleep, not… not late nights. And yet, there was just too much to do.

“Tell them that we will do what we can, when we can,” he added, firmly. Himmler had been lucky. He’d never had to cope with a civil war. “And make it clear that we don’t need the distraction.”

“Jawohl, Mein Führer,” Kuhnert said.

Karl watched him go, cursing under his breath. There was far too much he had to do, far too many issues that required his personal attention. And yet, he simply didn’t have the time to handle it all. He had no idea how Hitler or Himmler had coped…

I imagine it was easy, he thought, bitterly. They could trust their subordinates.