“We should have time to run through two of the drills before nightfall,” Loeb said, as he joined Kurt outside the CP. “Once we know what we’re doing, it should be easier to fall back to the next set of defences.”
He leaned forward. “Morale is high, Herr Leutnant,” he added. “But there’s plenty of concern about the SS.”
Kurt nodded. The men had reason to be concerned. Apart from the old hands, like Loeb, they had very little actual experience. Sure, their training had been savage – it wasn’t uncommon for a handful of recruits to die in training accidents – but no amount of training could compensate for actual experience. The Berlin Guard had been earmarked for deployment to South Africa, yet the uprising had taken place before they’d been redeployed…
…But the SS had no shortage of experience.
It was a sobering thought. The men in black, the men on the far side of the border, were combat veterans. They would have been in almost continuous combat against insurgents in Germany East, when they hadn’t been deployed to South Africa. They’d know tricks his men had never had a chance to master; they’d know what worked and what didn’t work. And they would feel it in their bones. They wouldn’t be dependent on textbooks to tell them what to do.
“They have to be stopped,” he said. “We did beat off an attack on the Reichstag.”
“True,” Loeb agreed. “But that was pretty much a gamble on their part. Victory would have brought them everything; defeat… didn’t really harm them, one way or the other. Here… they will be bringing to bear everything they can against us.”
“I know,” Kurt said. “And we will defeat them.”
He frowned as he heard the helicopters clattering through the sky, a single transport escorted by a trio of armed attack helicopters. Generalmajor Gath wasn’t taking any chances, Kurt saw; the SS wouldn’t hesitate to try to assassinate him if it could. There were too many holes in the command network for Generalmajor Gath to be replaced quickly, if something happened to him. No doubt Gath was right on top of the list of officers to be killed…
Right below Gudrun and her allies, Kurt thought. He still found it hard to believe that his sister – his sister – had managed to crack the Reich in two, but it was undeniable. And what happens to her if we lose?
“I hope you’re right,” Loeb said. He shook his head. “Too many men are about to die either way.”
“I know,” Kurt said. The lead helicopter settled to the ground, its escorts swinging around the town as they watched for trouble. “But defeat means the end of the world.”
Chapter Seven
Berlin, Germany
3 September 1985
“I trust you had a pleasant flight?”
“It was smooth,” Gudrun said. She’d never flown before the uprising, but she’d discovered she enjoyed it. “If there hadn’t been so many delays, we would have made it back to Berlin before nightfall.”
“I dare say it doesn’t matter,” Volker Schulze said. “What did the French have to say?”
Gudrun hesitated. She wasn’t sure how to react to Schulze, these days. He would have been her father-in-law if she’d married Konrad, a glowering presence at family meals… she thought she could have endured it. Some of her friends hated their in-laws, but Schulze wasn’t a bad man. But now… he was Chancellor of Germany, ruler of the western half of the Third Reich and it had been Gudrun who’d started the chain of events that had put him in the big chair. She wondered, sometimes, if he blamed her for Konrad’s death… or if he still thought of her as a little girl. He’d known her since she was in diapers.
“They’re willing to keep sending supplies as long as we grant them political and economic independence,” she said, flatly. “They also want the occupied territories back, but I did my best to dissuade them.”
“I doubt they will accept it indefinitely,” Schulze said, gravely. He turned his chair, slightly, so he could peer out of the window into the distance. “No requests for military or technological support?”
“No,” Gudrun said. “All they want is the Gastarbeiters back.”
“That may cause some problems, in the short term,” Schulze mused. “But we will have to learn how to handle it.”
He turned back to look at her. “How long do you think Jacquinot can hang on to power?”
“I’m not sure,” Gudrun said. She looked up at Horst. “Do you have an opinion?”
“It depends,” Horst said. “If the SS retakes power, I imagine Jacquinot will get down on his knees for them and stay there until he dies. Ouvrard and his friends will be quietly removed, along with every other nationalist they can find. There will be no hope of resistance.”
He shrugged. “But if we win, or if the civil war bogs down, it will become a great deal harder to make predictions,” he added, after a moment. “They may offer troops to us in exchange for more concessions.”
“Or make use of the time to build up their own armies,” Schulze said.
“I imagine they are already working on expanding their forces,” Horst said. “But they’ll be very careful about picking a fight with us.”
“So they probably won’t try to go for Alsace-Lorraine,” Schulze said.
“I don’t think so,” Horst agreed. “We wouldn’t let that pass – and they know it.”
“So they know we are weakened, but not too weakened,” Schulze mused. “As long as they stay quiet for the moment… we’ll honour our side of the bargain.”
Gudrun nodded. “Has there been any news from the east?”
“The flood of refugees has been slowing down sharply,” Schulze said. “I don’t know if that means they’re clamping down on population movements or if everyone who wanted to flee the SS has managed to leave already. We may never know for sure.”
“True,” Horst agreed. “The SS has always been pretty popular in the east.”
“So you keep saying,” Gudrun said. Hardly anyone knew that Horst had once been an SS agent, a spy who’d switched sides. “I think I got the message.”
“You have to remember it,” Horst warned. “You may think that Holliston is a lunatic and his followers madmen, but there are plenty of people in the east who will see him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler. I don’t think they’ll crack under the economic crisis any time soon.”
“Of course not,” Schulze agreed. “The east can feed itself.”
He took a breath. “Right now, all we can do is muster our forces and prepare to fight – to the bitter end, if necessary,” he added. “I’d like you to visit the recruit training camps just outside the city, if you don’t mind. Let them see what they’re fighting for.”
“Of course,” Gudrun said. She rather suspected that Schulze didn’t quite know where to put her, but she understood. “Has there been any word from the Americans?”
“They’re making approaches to us, but it’s very quiet,” Schulze said. “It would not do for anyone to get wind of them.”