Storm Front

Chapter Seventeen

Berlin

29 July 1985

“Do you all understand your objectives?”

Leutnant der Polizei Herman Wieland nodded hastily. He’d gone into the station after the acrimonious family dinner, only to be told to bed down in the barracks and wait for orders, along with the rest of his squad. By the time they’d been awoken and told to shower, shave and get into fresh uniforms, it was the following morning; oddly, he was almost relieved that he wouldn’t be going home until he’d had a chance to find out what was actually going on and, perhaps, find out if he should hand over the cursed leaflet to his superiors. But the briefing hadn’t been very detailed and, according to rumour, the one policeman who’d made the mistake of admitting receipt of one of the leaflets had been hauled out of the station and interrogated by the SS. Herman had quietly promised himself that he’d dump the leaflet he’d left at home as soon as he returned from work.

“Get into your vans,” the captain ordered, curtly. “Go.”

Herman hurried out of the station and clambered into the van, followed by a dozen other Order Policemen who were checking their pistols, truncheons, handcuffs and radios as they readied themselves for the operation. There was no talking in the rear of the vehicle as the engine roared to life; they knew, all too well, that they might be running straight into an ambush. Herman was old enough to remember the Gastarbeiter riots and the last gasps of the French Resistance, when thousands of people – the innocent along with the guilty – had been rounded up and marched to the camps. The leaflet-writers knew they couldn’t expect mercy from the Reich. They’d be more likely to try to kill as many policemen as possible before being gunned down themselves.

He shuddered, inwardly, as he checked his own weapons. The briefing had asserted that the leaflets had been spread by Gastarbeiters, men and women who had come to Germany to work. It was unlikely a Gastarbeiter had actually written the leaflet – for once, Herman was inclined to agree with the SS officer who’d briefed them – but that didn’t absolve the Gastarbeiters of their role in the scheme. They should know better than to cross the authorities, he reminded himself; they had no rights, no legal protections, if a pureblood German swore out a complaint against them. A Gastarbeiter who ran into trouble with the law would be lucky if he was only dispatched to the east and put to work building the giant autobahns that were slowly opening up eastern Russia to German settlements.

The vehicle lurched violently as the driver turned on the siren, clearing civilian traffic out of their way as they drove into the suburbs. Herman gritted his teeth – he preferred driving to sitting in the back of the van – and tried not to think about what might be lying in wait for them. But his thoughts kept straying to Gudrun, to the beautiful and clever daughter he didn’t really understand. Marlene and Hanne – his sisters – had been content to marry well and become housewives, tending the house and bringing up a small flock of children, but Gudrun? She wanted to be something more, something masculine. Herman would have forbidden her from attending the university, he knew now, if he’d realised just what it would do to her. She was trying to slip away from becoming a wife and mother and…

…And what? It would only bring her heartbreak.

Herman winced, inwardly. There were few jobs for women in the Reich, particularly young and fertile women who could have married and had children instead of trying to compete with the men. Gudrun’s only real hope lay in computers – the strange devices imported from the United States – and, even then, the big companies would be reluctant to hire a young girl who wasn’t married. The only fields completely open to women were nursing and the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned BDM. He tried to imagine Gudrun as a BDM matron and shuddered at the thought. His daughter was too sweet, too caring, too compassionate to develop the sadism required of a matron. Gudrun would never bully young girls, he was sure; she’d never force overweight girls to stand in the centre of the room and hold back tears as they were mocked by their fellows. The very thought was absurd.

And if she graduated, he asked himself, who would want to marry her?

It was an odd thought, but true. What sort of man would want to marry a woman who had more qualifications than himself? Gudrun might be doomed to permanent spinsterhood merely by having a useless scrap of paper, a qualification she couldn’t use because she was a woman. Herman had approved of Konrad – he didn’t have the arrogance that typified SS stormtroopers – but would he still want Gudrun after she graduated? And what would she have done if Konrad had refused to allow her to work? It was his right, as her husband, to decide if his wife could work. What would Gudrun have done if he’d told her to stay at home and have his babies?

I shouldn’t have let her go to the university, he thought, as the vehicle lurched again. She will only think she can be more than a housewife…

Caius tapped his shoulder. “We’re going to be there in two minutes,” he said. “Wake up!”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Herman muttered, as he sat upright. The other policemen looked as tired and wary as he felt. “Are you ready?”

“They should have sent in the stormtroopers,” Caius said. “God knows what we might encounter.”

“Politics,” Fritz said. He had relatives in high places, Herman had heard, although they clearly couldn’t be bothered to boost Fritz’s career. “They don’t want to put the SS in complete control of the investigation.”

Herman fought down the urge to roll his eyes like a child. It was flatly illegal for a Gastarbeiter to own a gun – and gun control within the Reich was strict – but there had been a thriving trade in weapons shipped in from France and Russia for decades. They might just run into a terrorist cell with rifles and machine guns… and, as the terrorists would have nothing to lose, they’d sell their lives dearly. Putting the thought aside, he checked his pistol as the vehicle came to a halt, then followed Fritz and Caius though the metal doors and into the cold morning air. The Gastarbeiter barracks were right in front of them, a pair of armed guards at the gatehouse staring at the policemen in surprise.

“Arrest them too,” the Captain ordered. “And then get the Gastarbeiters under control.”

“Here we go,” Caius commented.

Herman gave him a sharp look as the armed policemen hurried through the gates and down towards the barracks. It was a solid building, reminding him of his military service; indeed, the only real difference between the army barracks and the Gastarbeiter barracks was that there was only one set of doors, right at the front of the concrete building. The Gastarbeiters would have problems getting out, if there was a fire, but no one really gave a damn about their safety. They were hired for grunt labour, nothing more; there was an infinite supply of Frenchmen and women who would come to work in the Reich, even though the pay was poor and the conditions were dreadful. Herman wouldn’t have given two rusty Reichmarks for their future. Vichy France wasn’t about to complain if a few hundred Gastarbeiters were unceremoniously shipped east so they could be worked to death.

They passed through a small office – the corporation that controlled the Gastarbeiters had a habit of hiring them out for private commissions – and opened the metal door that led into the barracks itself. Herman wrinkled his nose at the smell of too many men in close proximity – the Gastarbeiters didn’t have regular showers, unlike the men in his former unit – and then cocked his pistol as the Gastarbeiters jumped up, some of them cracking their heads on the upper bunks. Their eyes were wide with fear.

Untermenschen, Herman thought. He couldn’t help noticing that some of the men were so poor they had to sleep in their work clothes – or in the nude, despite the cold. Many of them were scarred, suggesting they’d been whipped at some point in the non-too-distant past. He relaxed, slightly, as he realised there wouldn’t be a fight. Men without the spirit to try to resist.

“GET UP,” the Captain bellowed, as the policemen spread out. “HANDS IN THE AIR; HANDS IN THE AIR!”

Herman watched, feeling his hands grow sweaty around his pistol. If there was going to be any resistance, it was going to be now… but the Frenchmen showed no signs of being willing to fight. He smirked, remembering his father’s stories of how the Wehrmacht had marched through France, sowing their oats in the wombs of French maidens as they passed. His father had told him that Frenchmen were always cowards and Herman hadn’t seen much, in his military and police career, to suggest differently.

The Captain barked more orders. Herman, Caius and Fritz got the job of stripping, handcuffing and searching the Gastarbeiters one by one, while other policemen searched the barracks or headed off to find the corporate officials responsible for supervising the Gastarbeiters. There was no resistance, even when Herman used a knife to remove clothes and pushed the prisoners out into the cold morning air, where they squatted on the ground and awaited their fate passively. The only moment of excitement came when a policeman found a small packet of German chocolates hidden within a bedroll, probably stolen from a German shop. Herman was almost disappointed with the lack of action by the time the prisoner vans arrived from the station. The Gastarbeiters were herded into the vans, their hands still cuffed, and told to sit down. No one would care if they suffocated inside the vehicles before they reached the station.

“You’ll be escorting them to the processing camp,” the Captain said. “The SS will take them from there.”

“Understood,” Herman said.

He nodded to Caius and led the way to the nearest van, where they clambered up beside the driver. The stench of unwashed bodies was strong, despite the air conditioning; he forced himself to breathe through his mouth as the driver started the engine and drove back onto the streets. So early in the morning, there was almost no traffic in the suburbs. He smiled to himself as they drove past another set of barracks – they’d be having their own visits from the police soon enough – and then past one of the brothels. A handful of bleary-looking soldiers were staggering out of the door, clearly somewhat the worse for wear. The sight brought back happy memories of his own premarital days.

“They’ll be in deep shit when they get back to the barracks,” Caius predicted. “I bet you ten Reichmarks they overslept in the arms of a whore or two.”

“No bet,” Herman said.

His lips curved into a smile. Soldiers were allowed to slack off for a few weeks after Victory Day – it was why Kurt was still at home, rather than in the barracks with his unit – but there were limits. He suspected that some Oberfeldwebel would make them regret they’d ever been born after they staggered back through the barracks, if they were lucky. Being officially charged with desertion would probably get them sent to a punishment battalion somewhere in the east.

“Approaching the camp,” the driver said. “You want to get out first and check the prisoners?”

Herman nodded as they passed through two sets of gates and came to a halt beside the entry building. A handful of SS stormtroopers were already waiting, one of them eying the police vehicles with barely-concealed contempt. Herman shook his head – there was little room for elegance in police transports – and clambered out of the cab, jumping down neatly to the hard concrete ground. The SS stormtrooper threw a sharp salute and nodded to the rear of the transport.

“These the Untermenschen?”

“Yes,” Herman said. As if regular prisoners were ever brought to the SS camps. “They’re cuffed and naked.”

The driver flicked a switch in the cab, unlocking the rear of the van. The SS troops threw open the doors, then recoiled at the stench. Several of the prisoners had fouled themselves, clearly convinced they were going to die. Others were lying on the floor, seemingly unconscious or dead. Herman sighed inwardly – dead prisoners would mean more paperwork when he got back to the station – and watched as the stormtroopers ordered the living prisoners to climb out of the van, one by one. Naked, bound; they were prodded through the gates by rifle barrels and into the building, where they would be processed and then made to wait until their fates were decided.

Untermenschen, he thought, again. None of the prisoners seemed capable of offering even the slightest resistance – and a handful were crying. There isn’t a real man amongst them.

Caius elbowed him as another van passed through the gates and came to a halt. “You think we can slip back to the station once the prisoners are handed over?”

“We might have to wash out the van first,” Herman muttered, resentfully. Prisoners fouling themselves was not unusual – and no one really cared if a couple died on the way to the jail – but it wasn’t as if they had to clean up the mess. “You just know who’ll inspect the vehicles this evening.”

Caius opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and stared as the second van was opened and the prisoners marched into the camp. They were all women, as naked as the day they were born, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Herman stared, despite himself; they looked to be maids, young women hired to assist German housewives after they turned out their fourth child and earned the Mutterkreuz. Adelinde had flatly refused to allow one in her house, even though she was technically qualified to have one; Herman didn’t know if his wife feared he might fancy the girl or if Adelinde’s father would play games with her…

And what sort of message would it send to the children, he asked himself, if I played around with the maid right in front of their mother?

“Untermenschen,” the SS stormtrooper said. “Such whores can never be good Germans.”

Herman nodded. It wasn’t safe to disagree. Besides, back when he’d been in the military, there had been strict regulations banning relationships with Untermenschen women. He’d regarded them as a killjoy – far too many other soldiers had felt the same way – but the Race Classification Bureau had made it clear that good German genes were not to be introduced to the Slavs. There were so many Slavs that even a small handful of German-Slav hybrids might allow them to fight and win a war against the Reich.

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind as he scrambled back into the van – once the last of the girls was through the gates and into the processing centre – and they were driven back to the station. He’d hoped for a break, but instead he was ordered to supervise a handful of German prisoners – the corporate officials who owned the Untermenschen – and watch as they were interrogated by the SS. Herman couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for them, even though they were unwilling participants in treason. They might be released, if they weren’t guilty of actually writing the damn leaflets themselves, but it would cast a long shadow over the rest of their lives. They would probably find themselves exiled to the east.

“Get a bite to eat,” the Captain said, when the last of the prisoners was finally escorted down to the cells and locked in. “And then report to my office in thirty minutes.”

Herman and Caius exchanged looks, then hurried down to the canteen and hastily ate a quick snack before heading back up to the Captain’s office. There were hardly any policemen in the corridors as they walked up the stairs. It looked, very much, as though most of the policemen attached to the station were out on the streets or supervising prisoners. Herman shuddered inwardly at the thought of one of them searching his house – he reminded himself, again, to destroy the leaflet as soon as he returned home – and knocked on the Captain’s open door. The Captain was sitting behind his desk, examining a set of folders, while Fritz was sitting in front of him.

“Come in,” the Captain said. “I have a specific job for you.”

Herman nodded and took the proffered seat. Caius sat next to him.

“We have not learned much,” the Captain said, shortly. “The Gastarbeiters were apparently hired to hand out the leaflets by a person who remains unidentified. There are no pictures available of this individual and the descriptions we have are so imprecise that it is impossible to narrow down the field. Most of the fingerprints on the leaflets belong to the Gastarbeiters or the Germans who handed them in. However, we may have had one lucky break. One of the fingerprints matched an individual on file.”

Herman leaned forward, feeling his heart starting to race. Fingerprints were not altogether reliable, but if they’d matched one fingerprint to the files… they might just have caught the ringleader. And that would mean promotion…

“Herr Doctor Professor Claus Murken,” the Captain said. He picked up one of the files and passed it to Herman. “Professor of Computer Studies at Albert Speer University.”

Caius smiled. “And you want this man arrested, Herr Hauptmann?”

“I do,” the Captain confirmed. “Arrest him and bring him to the station, now.”