Morgenstern frowned. “The Chancellor is unwilling to approach you to ask for assistance,” he said, after a moment. “He does not want Germany to wind up like Argentina.”
Andrew frowned. Argentina had run into colossal problems paying her debts to America, to Britain and even to the Reich. Her government had launched the Falklands War in a desperate attempt to keep their people from noticing their empty bellies, only to lose the war and – very quickly – their heads. Argentina had yet to recover fully from her economic collapse, a problem made worse by American refusal to forgive their debts. He couldn’t really blame the provisional government for refusing to fall into the same trap.
“I understand,” he said. “What do you think he might agree to?”
“Very little,” Morgenstern said. “He does not want to appear your patsy.”
He frowned as he peered out of the window. “Hilde appears to be showing your escort our gardens.”
“It will keep them both out of trouble,” Andrew said. He shrugged. “Can you arrange a contact for me with the Chancellor?”
Morgenstern looked down at the floor for a long chilling moment. “Direct contact between his office and your embassy will be used against him,” he said. “But covertly… a meeting could be arranged.”
“Then tell him that we can offer assistance, all under the table,” Andrew said. “And there are no strings attached to it.”
“Indeed?” Morgenstern asked. “That will be a first.”
“My government would infinitively prefer to do business with you, rather than the SS,” Andrew said, truthfully. He opened his briefcase and removed a folder, which he placed on the table. “And even if you are unwilling to ask for direct help, there are quite a few things we can do to assist you.”
He smiled to himself as Morgenstern opened the folder and began to study the pages, one by one. God, he loved playing at spies. The risk of being arrested, interrogated and perhaps killed only added to the thrill. He might be playing Morgenstern or Morgenstern might be playing him… not knowing precisely where everyone stood was part of the fun. Penelope didn’t understand, he knew… he wondered, inwardly, if Morgenstern did. People became spies because they liked the game, when they didn’t want to spy on their fellows. He had a nasty feeling that far too many of the SS’s agents were really nothing more than voyeurs.
“I shall discuss it with him,” Morgenstern said, finally. “And you are sure there is no price tag?”
“Just win the war,” Andrew said. “Like I said, we would prefer to do business with you.”
Herman watched, dispassionately, as the buses drove through the growing defence line and straight into the courtyard. They were crammed; older men, women and children, all pulled from the towns and villages along the defence line and dispatched straight to Berlin, where they would be allocated to trains and buses heading further west. It would have made more sense, he was sure, just to send them directly to Hamburg, but no one – not even Gudrun – had asked his opinion.
Maybe it does make a kind of sense, he conceded, reluctantly. They need to know how many they’re sending before they can decide where to send them.
“All right,” someone shouted. “Come out, collect your luggage, then move straight into the barracks!”
Herman braced himself – there had been a number of fights amongst the refugees – but this lot seemed surprisingly quiet. The children looked nervous, picking up on the concern and fear on adult faces; their mothers – and a handful of fathers – looked worried. Herman didn’t really blame them, either. They had been uprooted from their homes and dispatched westward, suddenly at the mercy of a bureaucratic system that was on the verge of breaking down completely. The older children and teenagers – ranging from ten-year-old boys to twenty-year-old girls – didn’t look any better. For some of them, it was perhaps the first true awareness that their parents were not all-powerful.
We exist to keep these people safe, Herman thought, as he saw a blonde-haired girl holding her mother’s hand as they walked towards the reception point. She couldn’t be any older than twelve; hell, she might still be in classes with the boys instead of being segregated when she entered the older school. They don’t deserve to have their lives torn apart.
He shook his head, morbidly. He’d still been a child when Britain signed an armistice, bringing the war to an end, but he still remembered the shortages and privations his family had endured. They’d been nothing special, either. Everyone had faced the same problems, ranging from minor but irritating shortages to having to move house after the British bombers scattered high explosives over various cities at random. Having to share his house with several other families, all of whom were related to him in some way, had taught him more than a few lessons. But he’d thought those days were long gone.
I’m sorry, he thought. But they’re coming back.
He sucked in his breath as he saw a teenage boy, almost certainly only a month or two away from adulthood, running away from a tired-looking woman who had to be his mother. It was easy to read her story, just from her posture; her husband dead, a growing teenage lout without a strong male role model… and probably no real hope of finding another husband either. There was a reason, after all, that it was rare to have a female teacher tutoring male students after they entered their teenage years. Boys needed a male role model.
They clearly missed this one, Herman thought. One of the policeman caught the boy and dragged him back over to his mother. And when he’s conscripted into the military, he’ll probably get himself beaten to death by his first sergeant.
He looked away, then frowned as he saw a blonde woman stepping out of the bus. There was something about her that puzzled him, something that nagged at the back of his mind. What was she…?
And then the teenage boy started to shout, distracting him.
“Get him cuffed up,” Herman snapped, leaving the odd woman behind. “And give him a good kicking if he causes more trouble.”
He shook his head as the boy started to shout out words he shouldn’t have known, not at his age. It was going to be a very long day.
Chapter Eleven
Near Warsaw, Germany Prime
12 September 1985
Oberstgruppenfuehrer Alfred Ruengeler allowed himself a moment of relief as the helicopter dropped to the ground, then grabbed his knapsack and ran, keeping his head down, towards the building he’d turned into a makeshift Command Post. The CP wasn’t much, compared to the installations he’d used in Germany East and South Africa, but it would have to do. No one had seriously expected having to fight a civil war, not in the middle of Germany. Behind him, the helicopter rose back into the darkening sky, heading away from the CP. It would be refuelled at the nearest airbase, twenty miles east.
“Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Sturmbannfuehrer Friedemann Weineck said, as Alfred strode into the command room. “I trust you had a pleasant tour?”
“Things are as well as can be expected,” Alfred said, bluntly. “The Panzers are finally ready to march.”
He kept his face impassive as he gazed down at the map, ignoring the handful of operators in the chamber. He trusted Weineck as far as he trusted anyone, which wasn’t very far in the Waffen-SS. True, the Waffen-SS wasn’t the Gestapo or the Einsatzgruppen, but no one could be considered truly reliable these days. The merest hint of disloyalty would have him hanging from a meat hook in the heart of Germanica, like countless others who had been purged in the aftermath of the uprising. It bothered him – there was a difference between reasonable doubt and open disloyalty – but there was nothing he could do about it.