Storm Front

Chapter Ten

Berlin

26 July 1985

He was committed now, of course.

Horst had no illusions. Like the rest of the little group, he’d crossed a line. In his case, he’d crossed it when he’d refrained from reporting the group’s existence to his superiors. He should have reported Gudrun and her friends at once, then let his seniors decide how best to handle the matter. Instead, he’d not only kept it to himself, he’d offered Gudrun some practical advice on how best to conceal her identity when the shit finally hit the fan. If he were caught, now, he’d be sent to one of the camps, if he wasn’t executed out of hand. His execution would probably be used to set an example to everyone else…

If the Reichsführer didn’t want to hush the whole affair up, Horst thought. A quiet execution was the most likely outcome, even though Horst had betrayed the SS. The Reichsführer wouldn’t want anyone else seduced into apostasy. My family would probably be told I died in a training accident somewhere and that would be that.

“Horst,” Sven hissed. “Take these, quickly.”

Horst shook himself and hastily dropped the leaflets into his bag. Sven had done a good job, he had to admit; the leaflets looked authentic until the reader opened them up, whereupon they would be confronted with Gudrun’s message. Horst rather suspected a number of them would be covertly dropped into trash cans, unopened and unread, but enough would be read to allow the message to spread. And who knew what would happen then? People would talk, of course, despite the omnipresent aura of fear. And then?

I wish I knew, he thought. And I wish I could talk to her openly.

Gudrun, for all her intelligence, lacked practical knowledge and experience. The BDM hadn’t taught her anything beyond being a good housewife; she’d certainly never applied for one of the rare female positions within the SS. Horst knew, without false modesty, that his experience was far more useful, but how was he to slip it to her without being exposed? If he told her the truth, she’d be horrified. And then…?

She either runs or tries to arrange an accident for me, Horst said. And that will leave her without any qualified help at all.

“Leopold is still keeping the old man busy,” Sven said, as he printed out the last set of leaflets. “We spent all night devising a particularly buggy program.”

Horst had to smile. Sven might be a wimp – he’d quit the Hitler Youth as soon as he could and worked hard to get into the university – but he did have a devious mind. The tutor – who wasn’t as capable a programmer as some of his students – could be held up indefinitely, if someone came to him with a problem. Horst had half-expected to need to grab everything and run for his life, but so far everything had gone according to plan.

“Good thinking,” Horst said. Thankfully, the computer labs were almost always deserted at this time of night, save for the tutor. He took the final set of leaflets and dropped them into his bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here,” Sven reminded him. He took a breath. “Why did you want additional leaflets?”

“Just to make sure we had plenty,” Horst said. “I’ll stick them with a friend – better you don’t know who – and distribute them later.”

He sighed, inwardly. Gudrun didn’t realise just how ruthless they needed to be, but Horst did. He had no illusions about how quickly the police would react. It wouldn’t take them long to realise who was spreading the leaflets, then start rounding up all the BDM girls on the streets. Perhaps a few of the matrons would be in deep trouble – it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch, if half of what Gudrun and Hilde had said was true – but the police wouldn’t take long to realise that they were dealing with imposters. Something else would have to be done to distribute more leaflets.

And I will have to do it, he thought. He didn’t dare trust Sven or any of the others. The only proof he had that none of them were spies was that he hadn’t been arrested yet. There’s no other way to spread the word before the police catch on.

“I meant to ask,” Sven said, as they wiped the computer’s memory and shut it down for the night. “Were you serious about what it’s like in the east?”

“Yes,” Horst grunted. “There are some parts of the region that are relatively safe, but most places can be quite dangerous. I learned to shoot when I was five years old.”

Sven swallowed. “And your auntie… is she still living there?”

“Yeah,” Horst said. He’d lied; he’d dug up the details of a genuine case and presented them as something that had happened to his relatives. But it was real. If he’d had doubts about helping Gudrun, they’d died when he’d looked at the files. “She used to be quite a loyalist.”

“I heard that most people in the east are loyalists,” Sven said. “Is that true?”

“Mostly,” Horst said.

“Then tell me,” Sven said. “How can we trust you?”

“I could have betrayed you by now,” Horst pointed out. Thankfully, he’d had time to think about what he would say, if anyone chose to raise the issue. “As it happens, my brother left me with a great deal to think about even before I came to Berlin to study. We’ve been lied to constantly.”

“You could be lying to me now,” Sven said.

Horst kept his expression blank, thinking hard. And why didn’t you show this sort of talent in the Hitler Youth?

He suspected he knew the answer to that, although he could never ask. Sven and the boys like him resented being forced into the Hitler Youth, resented being sent to camps where they learned how to march in unison. And, because they resented it, they were never very good at it. And, because they were never very good at it, everyone else picked on them. Horst knew the score at the camps, even though it had been minimised in Germany East. The strong bullied the weak, those who couldn’t keep up.

Maybe it would have been better if Sven had been allowed to carry weapons, he thought, ruefully. He might have dealt with a bully or two by shooting the asshole in the head.

He gathered himself. “If I wanted to betray you, Sven,” he said, “I would have done it by now. None of you are particularly important. You know how it works. A single report is quite enough to get you all in hot water. Instead, I’m doing my best to help keep you all alive long enough to do something effective, just as you are using your skills to help us. Is that not good enough for you?”

Sven looked rebellious, but subsided under Horst’s stare. Horst wondered, absently, if Sven was another spy, trying to divert suspicion, yet he knew it was unlikely. The logic that kept him from being declared a spy worked for Sven too. Spy-Sven should have reported the group at once, incidentally landing Horst in trouble too. Unless Sven had decided to switch sides as well…

And that way lies madness, Horst thought. The entire group cannot be made up of agents who decided to switch sides.

He scowled as he picked up the bag and led the way to the door. He’d tried looking up the names of other SS agents within the computer files, but they had been classed as well above his security clearance. Sven could probably hack into the files, given the access codes, yet that would be far too revealing. All he could do was keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour, particularly when the computer messages started making their way through the network. Sven claimed to have rigged the system to keep the messages going, even when the first set were wiped from the nodes. Horst believed him. Sven was an odd duck, someone who would probably be happier in America, but he knew computers.

Maybe I should give him my access codes after all, he thought. I could always threaten him into silence… or try to steal someone else’s codes.

“I got the van parked outside,” he said, as they left the building. “We’ll be ready to get into place on Sunday morning.”

“I’ll have the radio ready by then,” Sven said. “Just make sure no one sees the leaflets.”

“Of course not,” Horst said. “No one will see them until Sunday.”

It had taken months of arguing before Gudrun’s parents had agreed to let her put a lock on her door. Gudrun had pointed out that she was a growing girl, that she didn’t want her brothers walking in on her while she was changing and that she deserved some privacy. Her parents had finally agreed, then imposed so many rules – most notably, that she couldn’t close or lock the door when Konrad was visiting – that she sometimes wondered if there had been any point in trying to get the lock in the first place. Her mother, after all, had one of the spare keys. But, right now, her mother was shopping and her brothers were out of the house. She had time to prepare for Sunday.

She opened the bag Isla had given her and carefully placed the BDM uniform on the bed. No one had to pay for their uniforms, which was a relief; it was hard enough scrabbling with her mother over what clothes she was allowed to buy for herself without having to endure her mother’s outrage over buying the uniforms too. A white shirt, loose enough to conceal the shape of her body, a long black skirt that stopped barely a centimetre above the ground, a long brown coat and a pair of ugly black shoes that made it impossible to run. It was, she had to admit, an improvement on the BDM sports uniform, but not much of one. And to think she’d hoped to throw the whole thing out when she’d finally been allowed to quit the BDM.

Gritting her teeth, listening carefully for signs of life from Grandpa Frank, she stripped down to her underwear, donned a pair of jeans and a tight American t-shirt, then pulled the uniform over it. Thankfully, Isla had loosened the skirt so it was no longer so tight around her rear end; she studied herself in the mirror and decided, after a little adjustment, that no one could tell she was wearing a whole additional layer of clothing underneath the uniform. Bracing herself, she tore the uniform off as quickly as she could without tearing it and checked, again, in the mirror. She might just get told off by a policeman for wearing revealing clothes in public – her mother’s reaction would be downright murderous – but she certainly didn’t look like a BDM girl. And that was all that mattered.

She dressed again, then tried on the wig. She’d never worn a wig before; it took her several tries at fiddling with it before it looked convincing, the long dark hair tied into two ponytails that made her look several years younger. If nothing else, she reflected ruefully, it was one thing to thank the BDM matrons for; they’d been so insistent that the young girls in their care had to have their hair in ponytails that it would be easy enough to hide, just by tearing them down or removing the wig. Finally, she opened her shirt and stuffed her bra, trying hard to make it look convincing. She honestly didn’t know where Horst had found the nerve to suggest that she and the other girls use padding to make their breasts look bigger, although she had to admit it was a good idea. The policemen wouldn’t know where to look if they caught her.

And let’s hope father doesn’t catch me, Gudrun thought, as she slowly undressed and packed the uniform away in her bag. She doubted her mother would want to see it in the next couple of days. He’d kill me if he caught me dressed like a common tart.

She sighed, inwardly, as a slip of paper fell out of the skirt and landed on the floor. One of the matrons had made her write the lines out, time and time again, until her hands were aching, a punishment for some offense she no longer remembered. The lines of the poem urged her to forget about being anything other than a housewife and mother… she shuddered in bitter memory. How often had she been told she wouldn’t ever be anything else? And if Konrad had remained unwounded, would she have been allowed to be a computer engineer or would she be expected to be his housewife?

“Take hold of kettle, broom and pan,” she muttered. “Then you’ll surely get a man!”

She remembered, now. She’d asked one of the matrons why she was unmarried – and why she was allowed to have a job teaching girls that all they could expect to be in the future were housewives and mothers. The fat ugly woman – they’d joked that no amount of kettles, brooms or pans could win her anything other than an ugly Jew – had been furious. Gudrun

suspected, sometimes, that the only thing that had saved her life was the crone’s awareness that Gudrun’s father was a policeman. As it was, her hand had been sore for days after she’d copied the poem out a thousand times.

“And she still didn’t get a man,” she muttered, as she pulled her working clothes back on and headed for the door. The leaflets would be stored in the vans until Sunday, whereupon they’d start their act of defiance. “No one mourned for her when had she a heart attack and died.”

Gudrun groaned as she heard the sound of Grandpa Frank ringing his bell, demanding immediate attention. She considered, briefly, ignoring the sound, but it would be just like the old bastard to recall that Gudrun had been in the house and report her to her mother. Getting grounded would be bad enough at any time; now, when she needed to be with her friends on Sunday, it would be disastrous. Bracing herself, she walked down the corridor to Grandpa Frank’s room and peered inside. He was lying in his bed, looking thoroughly drunk. The stench of beer was bad enough to make her recoil in disgust.

“Fetch more beer,” he ordered. “And bread!”

“Yes, Grandpa,” Gudrun said. Who knew? Maybe there was no beer in the fridge and she’d have an excuse to refuse. “I’ll bring it for you as quickly as I can.”

She picked up a number of empty bottles, then hurried downstairs and dumped them in the bin before opening the fridge. The cranky machine – it was the best her father could buy on his salary – was unreliable, but typically it had managed to keep a few bottles of beer chilled and ready for the drunkard. Gudrun took them out of the fridge, added beer to the list of things her mother had to buy and then carried the bottles and bread back upstairs. Grandpa Frank was lying back in his bed, caterwauling a song she didn’t recognise. It certainly wasn’t one of the ones she’d learned in the BDM!

“You’re a good girl,” Grandpa Frank said, as she put the bottles beside his bed. “Just like your mother.”

My mother keeps you in this house, you disgusting old man, Gudrun thought. She knew what her mother had said, time and time again, but she still didn’t understand. And if I behave like this to my children, if I ever have them, I’ll deserve to be kicked into the streets to die.

“Thank you,” she said, instead. “And now, if you don’t mind, I have to go work on my studies.”

“Nothing good ever came of women studying,” Grandpa Frank called after her. “You need to marry a man and have his children…”

Gudrun slammed the door as she left, but his laughter followed her as she headed down the corridor into her room. She hated him. She hated him. How could her mother give such a disgusting old man a home, even if he was her father? Surely, Gudrun’s own father wouldn’t be such a nightmare if he moved in with her after he retired. And if they had to put up with him, why couldn’t her mother handle him personally?

She worked on her studies for an hour, then heard her mother opening the door downstairs and entering the house. Gudrun stood, checked her bag was out of sight, and hurried downstairs to assist her mother to unpack her bags. Not entirely to her surprise, one bag was full of new bottles of beer. Grandpa Frank could continue drinking himself to death if he wished.

He’s too disgusting to die, she thought, morbidly. Her mother was in a cheerful mood, twittering away about a warning from her friend at the shop that the price of fruit and vegetables was apparently on the rise. He’ll still be alive after we’re gone.

She looked up, sharply, as something her mother said penetrated her mind. “Prices are going up?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “The beer cost more than double what it cost last week.”

“Perhaps we should stop buying it,” Gudrun said. Her mother gave her a dark look, but said nothing. “And the meat cost more too?”

“Yes,” her mother said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do if prices keep rising, Gudrun.”

I might have to get a real job, Gudrun thought. And then…?

She pushed the thought aside as her mother ordered her into the kitchen to start chopping the vegetables. Sunday was only two days away, after all.

But it felt as though Sunday would never come.