“I don’t blame her,” the man said. He sighed, then pointed to a chair. “Please, sit. We have a job for you.”
He waited until Herman had sat, carefully not relaxing, then went on. “I read your report about the murder at the transit barracks,” he added, slowly. “Do you stand by your conclusions?”
“Yes, Mein Herr,” Herman said. Was this it? Was he about to be rebuked for writing an absurd suggestion into his reports? But surely his immediate superiors would have handled it, wouldn’t they? “I believe they fit the facts.”
The man frowned. “Why?”
Herman took a breath. “As I stated in my report, Mein Herr, an experienced police officer would not allow a male refugee so close to him without preparing himself for the possibility of a fight,” he said. “The refuges have not been happy about being uprooted from their homes and there have been a number of violent incidents. A female refugee, on the other hand, would have seemed harmless until it was too late.”
“And less worrying in general terms,” the man agreed. He turned towards Gudrun’s friend. “Horst?”
Horst stepped forward. Herman studied him, feeling the odd twinge of disquiet he’d felt when Konrad had asked his little girl out for the first time. Gudrun had been seventeen when she’d started to date Konrad, but Herman had found it hard to forget that she was no longer a child. He’d even had a stern discussion with Konrad, promising blood and pain if he hurt Gudrun in any way. And he’d liked Konrad. He wasn’t quite so sure about Horst.
And he’s been too close to Gudrun, he thought, darkly. Adelinde might not have noticed, but Herman had. The two youngsters had been standing far too close together, even in public, to be just friends. Is he planning to marry her one day?
“We have a problem,” Horst said, bluntly. “There’s an SS stay-behind cell somewhere within Berlin.”
Herman’s eyes narrowed. “A stay-behind cell?”
Horst nodded. “Their normal mission is to wait until the advancing spearheads have moved onwards to new targets, then come out of the shadows and engage the enemy,” he said. “I suspect this cell intends to cause chaos within the city when the SS attacks from the outside.”
“A reasonable suspicion,” Herman said, carefully. Horst spoke with authority, but he was just a university student… wasn’t he? No, there was something fishy about Horst’s background. “How do you intend to track them down?”
“The uprising caught the SS by surprise,” Horst said. “I… have reason to believe that their command network within Berlin was badly disrupted, perhaps fatally. They didn’t have any contingency plans for actually losing control of the city, let alone the RSHA. The person responsible for the murder, the person who vanished into the city, may well be a commando sent to assist what remains of their network.”
Herman eyed him for a long moment. “You have reason to believe…?”
Horst hesitated, then made a very visible decision. “I used to work for them,” he said. “And they think – I hope – I still do.”
The whole story spilled out, piece by piece. Herman stared. He was no stranger to crazy stories – he still smiled whenever he remembered the man who’d accidentally driven his car into the painting of a tunnel someone had placed on a wall – but this one was particularly absurd. Horst had been working for the SS all along? Except… he’d switched sides? Did Gudrun know?
“I told her,” Horst said, when he asked. “It was right after I got her out of prison.”
Herman scowled, torn between gratitude and a deep simmering anger. “And you didn’t think to warn her that she could get into very real trouble?”
“She knew,” Horst said, flatly.
He went on before Herman could muster a response. “We don’t know how many people we can trust,” he added. “The counterintelligence networks have also been shattered. I’ve done my best to go through the files, but an SS observer wouldn’t be easily noticeable… we have to isolate and destroy the cell before it is too late.”
“I understand,” Herman said. “What do you want me to do?”
“I think we can trust you,” Horst said. “Help us find the cell.”
Herman nodded, although he knew the task would be far from easy. Berlin was hardly Paris or London, somewhere where a group of Germans would stand out like sore thumbs. An SS commando, even one from Germany East, would pass unnoticed in Berlin. Hell, the commando might even be a Berliner. As long as they were careful, they might just be impossible to locate.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Who can I call upon for help?”
“There’s a handful of people who have been cleared,” Horst said. “And if there’s anyone you trust from the police, feel free to ask for them to be vetted.”
Herman scowled. “How do you know you can trust me?”
“I imagine Gudrun would be dead by now or shipped off to Germany East, if you were working for the SS,” Horst said. There was an airy tone to his voice that made Herman’s temper flare. “And we’re short of people we can trust.”
“Only people who could have betrayed us are trusted now,” the man warned.
“I see,” Herman said. He scowled at Horst, daring the young man to look back at him. “Do you really think I would have betrayed my daughter?”
“You would not be the first, if you had,” Horst commented. “A number of the women I knew in Germany East were exiled, after taking part in the feminist movement.”
Herman scowled. He’d been a teenager at the time, but he remembered it all too well. The feminists had sought to change the eternal relationship between men and women, without realising just how far the Reich was prepared to go to maintain its power. Their cells had been broken, a handful had been executed for plotting against the state and most of the remainder dispatched to Germany East to become good little housewives. His mother had been on the fringes of the movement and its failure had made her very bitter…
“I would not have betrayed my daughter,” Herman said.
“And there are some who would say you have betrayed the Reich,” Horst countered. “And that’s why I think we can trust you.”
“Yes, you can,” Herman said. “You can trust me on this. If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
“Good,” Horst said. He sounded oddly relieved, rather than amused or fearful. “What self-respecting father could do more?”
Chapter Twenty
Germanica (Moscow), Germany East
17 September 1985
“They made a deal with the Americans?”
“So it would seem, Mein Fuhrer,” Reimer Wermter said. The intelligence officer leaned forward. “We only got the word now.”
Karl growled, deep in his throat. He had grown far too used to modern communications, far too used to being able to get messages from Berlin to Germanica instantly. Now, with normal communications badly disrupted, it had taken several days for the warning to reach his intelligence staff. The traitors were in covert discussions with the Americans.
“The Americans will tear us apart and the traitors will let them,” he snarled. “And that will be the end of us!”