Storm Front

Chapter Thirty-Six

Berlin, Germany

21 August 1985

“This just popped up on the network,” Sven said.

Horst glanced up, interested. He’d taken to spending more time with Sven over the last week, although the orders he’d received – after he’d made a carefully non-committal report to his handlers – had told him to stick close to Gudrun. Gudrun herself had claimed to be unconcerned, but Horst was fairly sure that was nothing more than bravado. She’d set herself up as a student leader, the student leader, and she couldn’t really allow herself to show fear.

And she keeps nagging me to teach her how to fight, he thought. But where can we do it without attracting attention?

He pushed the thought aside. “What is it?”

“It’s a note from a friend in the Finance Ministry,” Sven said. “Apparently, they’re going to cut the Mutterkreuz support payments completely.”

Horst leaned forward. “Are you sure?”

“The source has proven reliable before,” Sven said. “He was the one who provided us with the comparative price data.”

Horst frowned. The upside of all the students involved in protest movements, on one level or another, was hundreds of minds studying the government’s official statistics and comparing them with reality. It hadn’t taken long to realise that the real prices for everything from food to clothing were slowly creeping upwards, forcing families to spend more and more on basic necessities. Horst was no economist – it was a closed field to him – but he’d been taught the basics of budgeting at his stepfather’s knee. A person – or a family – simply couldn’t spend more than they earned.

Or at least not for very long, Horst thought sardonically. A bank would be happy to give a loan to a farmer, if the farmers used their farm as collateral.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought – and it would be worse, he knew, in Berlin, where civilians couldn’t live off the land. Growing one’s own foodstuffs, let alone rearing meat animals, was strictly forbidden within the city. A family of six, with the husband away in the military, would find it very hard to survive if the Mutterkreuz payments were halted. Indeed, there was no way the current system was sustainable without the payments. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if it was a trick of some kind. But what sort of person would want the population to believe their throats were about to be cut?

“It says here that the Reichstag will be meeting later today to discuss the cuts,” Sven said, breaking into his thoughts. He looked up, sharply. “They’ll… they’ll just approve it, won’t they?”

“They will,” Horst confirmed. The government might have conceded free elections to the Reichstag, but none of those elections had been held – yet. He couldn’t decide if someone was playing games or if they genuinely believed the Reichstag’s blessing would stop the backlash. “All the Reichstag does is approve what the government wants it to approve.”

He looked down at his hands, thinking hard. Word would already be spreading, thanks to the hundreds of computer users – and experts – who were joining the protest movement. He wouldn’t be surprised if the unionists weren’t already being informed – their families would be threatened by the cuts – and it wouldn’t be long before Hilde’s mother found out. She might not need any support payments from the state, but she’d hardly underestimate the threat to the rest of the city’s women. They’d be out on the streets within an hour…

“I’m going to find Gudrun,” he said, rising. “Start spreading the word as far as you can.”

“Jawohl,” Sven said.

Volker Schulze had been expecting the government to do something – anything – about the unions, ever since the government had been forced into a humiliating retreat. He had no illusions. The only way to rise into power – civilian, military or SS – was to have a ruthless drive for power combined with a slavish loyalty to one’s branch. And even if the government had been prepared to let bygones be bygones, the corporate managers wouldn’t let them. The thought of their workers actually standing up to them, resisting their demands and even shutting down the factories, would be too much.

But he’d never expected the government to threaten to cut support payments.

They had to be out of their minds, he thought. The government had been encouraging Germans to have large families since 1944, since the official end of the war. They’d been helping to fund the families too, awarding payments to women who had more than three children. How many families were completely dependent on those payments? Their husbands didn’t bring in enough money to make up the shortfall. They had to be mad…

…Unless they’re deliberately planning to punish the women, he thought. The state had rarely seen women as anything other than mothers, daughters and wives. Indeed, there were only a handful of professions routinely open to women. They must have been horrified when the women went out onto the streets.

“We can’t let them get away with it,” Joachim said. “I have a wife and four appetites to feed.”

Volker nodded in agreement. “Start calling everyone,” he said. “We’re leaving our work and going to the Reichstag.”

Gudrun couldn’t help a flicker of fear as she led the tidal wave of students out of the university. There was strength in numbers, strength in the certainty that hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people were behind her, yet there was also a sickening nervousness that made her want to throw up. Horst – and her father – had told her, in great detail, what would happen if the SS decided, truly decided, to crush the students. Machine gun bullets, her father had said, would go through flesh like hot knives through butter. Part of Gudrun almost wished she’d let her father beat her into submission, but then she looked at the students and knew she couldn’t let them down. It might have been a mistake to stand up and declare herself their leader, it might have painted a target on her backside, but now she’d done it she was committed.

“The Reichstag believes we will accept its judgement,” she’d said, when she’d assembled the students. Most of the tutors had made themselves scarce; the SS spies – the known spies, at least – had been isolated. “We have to show them that we will not tamely accept their rulings any longer.”

She kept walking forward, feeling her heartbeat starting to pound as she led the way towards Victory Square. They’d spread the leaflets there – it felt as through she’d done that years ago – but now, now she was going there openly, with thousands of others at her back. Whatever happened, she promised herself silently, there would be no more hiding. The state would no longer be able to hide its crimes under a facade of respectability.

“No cuts,” she shouted. “No cuts!”

The students took up the chant. More and more people – workers, women, even ordinary civilians – were flowing out of their homes and joining the march. Gudrun wished she’d thought of producing a handful of banners, but it hadn’t occurred to her before the march had begun. Horst had advised her not to plan a march and she’d listened to him. She caught sight of a handful of policemen, staring in horror, and winced inwardly. Was her father watching her as she marched towards Victory Square?

We need some better organisation, she thought, as the crowd swelled still further. She’d wanted to set up a network of student leaders, and march stewards, but Horst had warned her that the regime would have no trouble targeting them. Better to avoid having many known leaders, he’d said. We have to put women and children to the front.

She glanced to the left as Horst appeared beside her. He had to shout to be heard over the din. “What do we do when we reach the Reichstag?”

“March in circles,” Gudrun shouted back. There were armed SS guards defending the colossal building. They’d shoot, she was sure, if the marchers tried to break into the Reichstag itself. “March and shout ourselves hoarse.”

Horst didn’t look happy, but he held his tongue.

“There are thousands of people on the streets,” a frantic messenger reported. “They’re advancing on the Reichstag!”

“Call for police reinforcements,” Voss suggested. “And the Berlin Guard!”

Karl smirked inwardly as the Reich Council started to panic, hastily issuing orders and countermanding them seconds later. By his calculations, the marchers would be at the Reichstag within twenty minutes at most, although the growing stream of newcomers would slow them down. No one had any real experience with unplanned protests in the Reich, not when the only permitted mass movements were parades and ceremonial marches. Some of the students would probably trip, fall and be crushed below the marching feet before they had a chance to escape.

He took one last look at the council, currently issuing more orders to the Berlin Guard, and slipped out of the chamber. Sturmbannfuehrer Viktor Harden was on alert – the police unit had been ready to move ever since the first rumours had been allowed to leak – and his men would be on their way within minutes. And then the protesters were in for a nasty surprise.

And the Berlin Guard can keep its hands clean, he thought, nastily. The Guard would be purged when he was Fuhrer. They can walk straight into the concentration camps after they help us clear up the mess.

“They want us where?”

“There’s a crowd of marchers heading towards the Reichstag, the CO bellowed, as soldiers hastily grabbed weapons and equipment. “The Reich Council wants us in place to turn them away from the building, if necessary!”

Kurt shuddered as he checked his rifle while heading down to the vans. They’d anticipated deployment onto the streets, but now the call had come chaos reigned supreme. He couldn’t help noticing that many of the soldiers under his command were exchanging nervous glances, clearly unsure of themselves. They’d been preparing to fight barbarian terrorists in South Africa, where it was kill or be killed, not German civilians on the streets of Berlin. They all came from Berlin, Kurt knew; their friends and families might be their targets, not Untermenschen.

And Gudrun will be out there somewhere, he thought. He’d taken a great deal of ribbing from his fellow officers about his sister’s role in the university protests, although – thankfully – his superiors had either not made the connection between him and Gudrun or chosen to ignore it. They had too many incidents of mutinous chatter to worry about a junior officer with an unfortunate relative. What do I do if they order us to open fire?

He sucked in his breath as he looked at the men. The younger ones looked eager – this would be their first taste of action, although it couldn’t compare to a battlefield – but the older ones were clearly concerned. Many of them had wives and children… how could they bear the thought of firing into a crowd of protesters? German protesters. As God was his witness, Kurt honestly didn’t know which way to jump. If the CO ordered him to open fire on the crowds, what should he do?

“Into the vans,” he ordered, curtly.

He wasn’t the senior officer on the scene, not by a very long way. The CO would take personal command, unless one of the really high-ranking officers from the Reich Council decided to come out into the streets. Kurt doubted it, even though he was sure the Field Marshals were brave men. They wouldn’t want blood on their hands.

The thought chilled him to the bone as he followed his men into the van, then inspected his rifle as the engine roared to life. Do I want blood on my hands?

Sturmbannfuehrer Viktor Harden had always seen people as not quite real. He had no idea why he’d never been able to make an emotional connection with another person, even the men under his command, but it wasn’t something he wanted to change. At nine years old, he’d killed his baby sister, just for distracting his parents from tending to his needs; at thirteen, he’d poisoned a teacher who’d dared to punish him in front of the class; at fifteen, he’d raped and murdered one of his classmates merely to see what it was like to combine sex and murder. He’d never had anything resembling a conscience…

…And, when he’d been arrested after a moment of carelessness with his seventh victim, he’d been given a choice between joining the SS and being unceremoniously executed. It hadn’t been a hard decision.

Viktor didn’t understand – honestly didn’t understand – why so many of his fellow officers had qualms about carrying out anti-terrorism procedures. He didn’t give a damn how many Untermenschen died, let alone how they died. Slaughtering entire villages was perfectly acceptable, as far as Viktor was concerned; using their deaths to intimidate thousands of others into submission was a bonus. The men under his command, too, used their impulses in the service of the SS. Others might sneer, others might look away, but Viktor gloried in the nightmares he unleashed. Let the Untermenschen hate, as long as they feared; let them stare in horror at what he did to their men, women and children, before bowing the knee to the Reich.

He had no qualms about unleashing hell onto the streets of Berlin. He had, after all, no emotional connection to the marchers at all. They were common people, just like his parents; they weren’t quite real. Viktor had always snorted at SS officers who said, as if they were paragons of morality, that they would never rape an Untermensch woman, that they would never sully themselves by fucking a subhuman animal. To him, it mattered little if his targets were Untermenschen – or Germans. All that mattered was that his superiors allowed him to indulge himself, in exchange for unquestioning service.

“Take aim,” he ordered, as the marchers slowly came into view. “Prepare to fire.”

His lips curved into a cruel smile of anticipation. Some of the girls advancing towards him were young, young enough to be innocent, young enough to be untouched by the world… and yet, old enough to understand what he would do to them. Manipulating them like putty was a pleasure – and, when one was burned out, he slit her throat and moved on to the next girl. There was never any shortage of Untermenschen women for his games.

Horst hadn’t been sure just what to expect as the marchers closed in on the Reichstag. The SS guards in front of the building were nowhere to be seen – perhaps they’d retreated inwards and shut the gates – while a line of Berlin Guardsmen were jumping out of vans at the far edge of Victory Square. Judging from their frantic movements, mixed with confusion, they weren’t sure what they should be doing. Their training hadn’t covered peaceful protest marches in Germany itself.

He turned his gaze past the Reichstag and froze. Men, black-clad men, were forming a rifle line, pointing weapons towards the marchers. He’d seen it before, in Germany East; men standing ready to repel a charge of Untermenschen. Except, in Germany, their targets weren’t Untermenschen, but Germans…

“Get down,” he barked, hurling himself at Gudrun. “Get down…”

She fell under his weight and hit the ground, Horst landing on top of her, just as the riflemen opened fire.

Gudrun thought, just for a second, that Horst was attacking her. He’d knocked her down hard enough to hurt, pinning her so soundly that she could barely move. Panic flared in her mind as she tried to struggle, even though it was useless. Horst was just too heavy for her to budge until he wanted to let her go. And then she heard the sounds of shooting…

The crowd recoiled in shock. She twisted her head, just in time to see a young girl fall to the ground, blood leaking from what remained of her head. Others were falling too, some dropping to the ground to avoid the bullets, others wounded – or dead. Horst pushed her down hard, shielding her with his body. She couldn’t even move her head any longer.

“The SS are shooting,” Horst whispered. He was still holding her down. “Lie still and play dead.”

Kurt had barely had any time to deploy his men before the CO arrived, just as the marchers came into the square. They looked… harmless; there were girls in the lead who looked no older than Gudrun herself, followed by middle-aged women who could easily have been his mother, if things had been different. He forced himself to relax, despite the chant; the crowd might be loud, but it didn’t sound threatening.

And then the SS opened fire.

For a long chilling moment, Karl just stared. Girls were falling to the streets, their blood staining the roads. He’d thought himself used to horror and yet, watching innocent Germans gunned down was more than he could stand. His sister could be there, either in the midst of the students or on the ground, slowly bleeding to death.

“Do not fire,” the CO bellowed. He sounded shaken, but resolute. “Do not fire!”

Kurt lifted his rifle in one smooth motion and shot the CO in the head. His men – and the other units – just stared as his body dropped to the ground. Grumbling was one thing – soldiers always grumbled – but actually shooting the CO…? It didn’t happen. Kurt turned his weapon, pointing towards the SS, and opened fire.

Seconds later, his men joined him.