“An hour,” Schwarzkopf mused.
He cleared his throat. “I have a number of questions for you, then we will set up contact procedures,” he said. “You will be expected to play your part in the triumphant restoration of the Third Reich. If you serve well, your previous mistakes will be forgiven; if you blunder again, you will be executed. Heil Holliston!”
“Heil Holliston,” Horst echoed. He would have to be very careful when he answered, but he had no choice. “I will not fail you.”
“Very good,” Schwarzkopf said. “And now we begin.”
Chapter Nine
Berlin, Germany
3 September 1985
Gudrun had wondered, from time to time, why her father hadn’t actively sought promotion in the police. Given his career – he’d been a military officer – and some of his connections, he should have been kicked up a level or two long before the uprising. But when she’d asked, as a younger girl, he’d told her that he hated being trapped behind a desk, having to deal with bureaucratic meetings. She’d thought he was just making excuses, but now – after three hours of largely pointless blether – she was starting to see his point.
She sighed, inwardly, as she walked slowly back to her bedroom. Volker Schulze was eminently practical, thankfully, but both Finance Minister Hans Krueger and Admiral Wilhelm Riess were experienced bureaucratic infighters who seemed to be prepared to argue for hours rather than concede anything to their rivals. She’d hoped for better from Arthur Morgenstern – Hilde’s father – but he seemed unwilling to do anything apart from sit in his chair and drink coffee. Gudrun had only met him a couple of times, before the uprising, yet she’d never realised just how much of a milksop he was. Promoting him to the Reich Council might have been a mistake.
A pair of serving girls jumped to one side as she passed, their eyes going wide. Gudrun smiled at them both, unable to keep from feeling sorry for them. She’d talked to a few, back when she’d moved into her bedroom, only to discover that they’d been treated badly by the old council. They’d even been expected to provide sexual services to the councillors! And to think they were good German girls.
She pushed the thought aside and stepped into her bedroom. Horst was sitting on the bed, as she’d expected, but his face was grim rather than welcoming. Gudrun felt a chill running down her spine as she closed and locked the door, then swore inwardly as she saw the device in Horst’s hand. Portable bug detectors were vanishingly rare in the Reich, almost unknown outside the intelligence services. And if Horst had been searching the room for bugs…
“We have to talk,” Horst said. He rose from the bed and sat down in the comfortable chair, a sign that he wasn’t interested in making love. The world had to be coming to an end. “There have been… developments.”
Gudrun sat down on the bed, feeling cold. “What happened?”
“My old… associates contacted me,” Horst said. He ran through a brief explanation, then leaned forward. “They managed to get a message into my bedroom.”
It took Gudrun a moment to realise the implications. “They have a spy in the Reichstag?”
“Perhaps more than one,” Horst warned. “If they can get access to my bedroom, then nowhere is safe.
He rubbed his forehead. “If they have two spies, neither one will know about the other. The SS was quite fond of placing observers in the government and military, reporting back to their superiors.”
“Observers like you,” Gudrun said.
She still shivered in horror when she remembered Horst telling her, rather apologetically, that he was an SS officer. He could have betrayed her at any moment, if he’d remained true to his oaths. She’d never suspected, even with the benefit of hindsight. And she’d invited him to the very first meeting! They could have been quietly arrested and dispatched to a concentration camp at any moment, along with their families. Horst… she knew, all too well, that she owed him her very life.
“Yes,” Horst said. “I doubt they will be easy to catch.”
“We have the files,” Gudrun said. “Don’t we?”
“I would be surprised if the files we recovered from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt include anyone who works in such a role,” Horst said. “There were no files relating to me or any of the others I knew. As far as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt was concerned, I was just another student with a pure-perfect record.”
Gudrun nodded, shortly. The university had prided itself on selecting the best and brightest young Germans to be its students, but none of them would have been allowed to pass through the doors if their families and bloodlines hadn’t been pure. Horst had been qualified, as well as an SS officer; he’d certainly blended in perfectly. The same couldn’t be said for the other spies. They’d been so obvious that Gudrun doubted that anyone had been fooled.
“So the files will say they were just… ordinary people,” she mused. “How do we catch them?”
“I don’t think we can,” Horst said, after a moment. “A full-scale hunt for a spy will tip them off, I think. And that will prove to the bastards that I can’t be trusted.”
Gudrun swallowed. If Horst hadn’t spoken up for her, she doubted she would have been allowed to return to Berlin. Her father had been furious, but she would sooner endure her father’s anger than a concentration camp. The files had made it very clear – all too clear – just what the camp inmates had had to endure, before they died.
“I see,” she said. She took a long breath, calming herself. “What do they want from you?”
“Right now, they just want me to keep an eye on you and the rest of the councillors,” Horst said. “But I expect that will change in short order.”
“They’ll want you to kill us,” Gudrun said, flatly.
“Probably,” Horst agreed. “The defences around the Reichstag are good, even if they are a little crude. Inside help will make it easier for them to get a second kill-team into the building.”
“We’re not going to be staying here for long, anyway,” Gudrun reminded him.
“No,” Horst agreed. “And the confusion caused by the move, I think, will make it much easier for them to accomplish their goals.”
Gudrun swallowed, hard. “Can we track down the stay-behind team?”
“I don’t think it will be easy,” Horst said. “Standard procedure is to hold meetings with untrustworthy assets well away from the base of operations. Even if we capture my contact, he’s unlikely to break in time to allow us to capture the remaining commandos. They’ll have procedures in place to deal with a sudden upset.”
Gudrun cursed. “So all we can do is wait to be hit?”
“We make some very quiet precautions,” Horst said. “But otherwise… we have to wait for them to move first.”
He paused. “And they know about us.”
Gudrun coloured. “Everything?”
“I think so,” Horst said. He looked embarrassed. “We could get married, you know.”
“I’m not pregnant,” Gudrun said, automatically. She did love Horst, but she wanted to be something more than a wife. If she was married, everyone would assume that Horst was pulling her strings. “And wouldn’t that be a little too revealing to your superiors?”
Horst smirked. “There was a spy in America who was married to an American girl and, as far as anyone could tell, he was the perfect American,” he said. “It didn’t stop him from stealing a bunch of secrets one day and fleeing back to the Reich, leaving the poor girl and his family behind.”