“True,” Rommel said. He gazed down at the paperwork. “I have a new task for you,” he said. “I expect that the British won’t want us hanging around here for much longer.”
“Indeed, and some of the men are getting restless as well,” Muhlenkampf agreed.
Rommel nodded. It had amazed him how eager many of the recruits from America had been to kill Germans. He supposed that many of them had fled Germany as young men, or had been born in America and didn’t entirely think of themselves as German.
“I suspect that we’ll be sent east, to oppose the invasion of the Middle East,” Rommel said. “Draw up a movement plan; I want 1st Panzer and 1st and 2nd Armoured Infantry to be prepared for a move to the Middle East at a day’s notice. The Bundeswehr needs to be ready for war.”
“Jawohl,” Muhlenkampf said. He saluted, and left the room. Behind him, Rommel looked down again at the map… and knew that he would have to kill some of his former comrades before the year was out.
Gunter Jagar stared down at the camp as the aircraft dropped neatly out of the sky and landed at the small airstrip. A handful of the helicopters, armed and dangerous, were parked on the tarmac, but there were no other aircraft. The small airplane taxied to a halt and the pilot opened the hatch.
“This is your stop, kid,” the burly Sergeant Kettle said cheerfully. “Time to meet your destiny.”
Jagar hesitated nervously. The man he was going to meet was a legend; one that had been proclaimed dead before he’d begun regular broadcasts to Germany. Erwin Rommel, famous tank commander, favourite of the Fuhrer and arch-traitor.
“You’re not coming?” He asked finally. He’d hoped that Sergeant Kettle would come with him. “You don’t want to see him again?”
Sergeant Kettle laughed at him. “Oh, you’re a special case kid,” he said cheerfully. “You’re the first SS officer who have who wants to join Rommel; the other two we captured refused to have anything to do with him. He wants to see you in person, you see.”
Jagar gulped. “Don’t worry, I’ll walk you to the door,” Sergeant Kettle assured him,
Jagar flushed red. “That building over there, right?” He asked, waving a hand at a building flying a striped flag. “I’ll walk, thank you.”
The tarmac felt hard against his feet, the air was hot and dry. It was a relief to pass though the main door into the air-conditioned room; the cold air slapped into his face and he sighed with relief.
“Papers, please,” the guard said. Jagar looked around; it was like a bunker or blockhouse. He had the odd feeling that if a bomb went off in the room, it wouldn’t damage it at all.
“Here, sir,” he said, passing over the folder. “I’m here to see General Rommel?”
“But does he want to see you?” The guard asked, laughing at his own wit. Jagar bit down any number of comments as the guard made him press his fingers to a warm pad, and then checked the results on the computer. “Well, you’re you, Günter,” he said.
“I could have told you that,” Jagar said, the part of his mind that had once been an engineering student wondering how the device worked. It had clearly scanned his fingerprints, but how?
“Ah, but could I have trusted you?” The guard asked. The sealed door unlocked itself slowly; nuts, bolts, strange instruments that Jagar couldn’t recognise, and the guard waved him in. “Walk up to the last door on the left,” he ordered.
“Thank you,” Jagar said, and walked though the door. It was amazingly complex; far more complex than a safe, and he stared at it until the guard coughed meaningfully. He passed along a lighted corridor until he finally reached a door marked GENERAL ROMMEL. He tapped once.
“Come in,” a voice said. Jagar opened the door and peered inside; there was a man sitting at a desk. The man was older than he had expected, but there was no mistaking the famous profile that had been publicised across the Reich… until it turned out that he was alive after all.
“General Rommel?” He asked, in German. “I’m Günter Jagar.”
“Ah, the SS man,” Rommel said. Jagar started to salute, and then stopped himself; what sort of salute would Rommel want? “Have a seat.”
Jagar sat, wonderingly. “I confess that you are the first SS man to show a genuine willingness to join us,” Rommel said. “You held to this story even under the truth drugs, and Sergeant Kettle vouches for you. Tell me, why did you join the SS?”
Jagar was certain that Rommel would notice a lie. “My father insisted that I take up a military career,” he said. “This was during the Battle of France, and I wasn’t too keen on it, but he talked to a friend of his in the SS and they accepted me. And then I was assigned to one of the long-range groups and…”
He broke off, taking a moment to compose himself. “They were awful,” he said, feeling his helpless rage boiling to the front. “They took villages and towns and slaughtered them, putting the men to work and the women to…”
“I know,” Rommel said. “We were blind to them until it was too late.”
“And then the British attacked and slaughtered all of the men, except me,” Jagar concluded. He refused to discuss his own forced participation; it was too painful. “They took me prisoner and brought me here.”
“There was only one survivor from that Arab village, apart from you,” Rommel said. “A woman; she testified that you hadn’t raped her.”
“They made me take one,” Jagar confessed, feeling it burst out of him. “The leader made me do it, and they laughed and laughed and…”
“You will have to work hard here,” Rommel said, as if Jagar hadn’t spoken. “For the moment, you will be considered on probation. Tell me, what did you do in Germany?”
“I was an engineering student and part-time teacher,” Jagar said. “It was the only way to earn money with the call-up taking many of the older male teachers.”
“The veterans,” Rommel said. “Tell me, can you handle clerical work?”
“Yes, sir,” Jagar said. Rommel deserved a ‘sir,’ he was certain. “I used to keep my father’s books until…”
Rommel nodded thoughtfully. “I think that we’ll give you a quick course on this junk” – he waved a hand at the equipment on the table – “and start you off as a secretary and general assistant for me.”
Jagar felt his mouth fall open. He was speechless; he had expected to be assigned to a fighting unit, or something, not as a glorified assistant. “Sir, I…”
“Will not be trusted by the rank and file,” Rommel said. “I’m sorry, Günter, but your… history as part of the SS will not inspire confidence. As my assistant, you will have time to build up confidence and your understanding of the future technology. Eventually, we’ll find you a fighting billet, if you still want it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jagar said.
“Sergeant,” Rommel called. A second passed, and then a man stepped into the room. Jagar studied his uniform with interest; it was neither Wehrmacht nor SS, but something different entirely. “This is Sergeant Brasche,” Rommel introduced him. “He will make all of the arrangements.”
He looked into Jagar’s eyes. “This is your last chance to back out and go into a POW camp,” he said. “If you stay here, you will go into danger and you will be expected to honour the commitment you’ll make to us.”
Jagar took a breath. “I’m staying,” he said.
“Right this way then,” Sergeant Brasche said. “Follow me.”
“Was that wise?” Ambassador Ernst Schulze asked. He smiled grimly at Rommel, who was pacing the room. The five other members of the Free German Government, two businessmen who had been in Britain and three intellectuals who had been in America, nodded in unison. They all had different ideas for Germany’s post-Nazi future, and Schulze found it hard to keep them all going on the same course.