“I see,” he said, carefully. He kept his face carefully blank. At least Horst was doing it properly, seeking his approval before formally popping the question. There were no shortage of horror stories about young couples, fancying themselves in love, who ran away when their parents rejected the match. “Is she pregnant?”
Horst flushed bright red. “Not… not to the best of my knowledge.”
Herman allowed himself a moment of relief. Everyone joked that a blushing bride could deliver a baby in six months, rather than nine, yet it wasn’t something he would have wanted for Gudrun. Most people would politely ignore the proof that a happy couple had been sleeping together before exchanging vows, but Gudrun was a politician. She had enemies, he suspected – and if she didn’t have them already, she’d have them soon enough. One of them would be happy, no doubt, to call her out for sleeping with her husband before the actual marriage.
And then he frowned. If Horst and Gudrun had been sleeping together, she might already be pregnant and not know it.
He met the younger man’s eyes. “And how do you plan to support her?”
Horst looked back at him, evenly. “Right now, I am drawing a salary from the Reichstag,” he said, simply. “If I lose that position, for whatever reason, I am a trained commando and covert operative. I should have no difficulty volunteering my services to the Wehrmacht.”
He smiled. “Technically, I am also entitled to an SS stipend, but I suspect that won’t be paid.”
Herman had to smile, despite his concern. “And how will you treat her as a wife?”
“I recognise that she has a career,” Horst said. “And I will do nothing to interfere with it.”
“Really,” Herman said. “And will you be a house-husband?”
“If necessary,” Horst said.
Herman frowned, inwardly. House-husbands were vanishingly rare in the Reich, more common in dramas about the horrors of living in America than in the real world. A man was expected to work to support his family, leaving the wife to take care of the home and raise the children. Indeed, the only house-husband he’d ever met had been a cripple, whose wife worked as a secretary to pay the bills. And no one could have denied he was unable to work.
But for a young man, barely out of school, the humiliation would be unbearable.
He put that thought aside for later consideration, then glanced out of the window and nodded towards a destroyed building. “One would argue that this is hardly the time to get married,” he pointed out. “You might both be dead tomorrow.”
“We are aware of the dangers,” Horst said, stiffly.
Herman nodded, considering it. He had no reason to dislike Horst personally, even though the young man had been in the SS. At least he’d done the right thing at the right time, saving Gudrun’s life before she’d ever realised it had been in danger. And he’d been willing to approve Konrad as a prospective husband…
“I must discuss the matter with my wife,” he said, finally. Adelinde would kill him, perhaps not metaphorically, if he made the decision without consulting her. “But then you will have to convince Gudrun to marry you.”
“I know,” Horst said. He looked relieved. If Herman had said no, it would have made his life very awkward. “But I wanted your approval first.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Berlin, Germany Prime
29 September 1985
Horst found it hard to keep the relief off his face as the car pulled into the underground garage and came to a stop. He’d done a number of hard things in his life, but asking Herman for his daughter’s hand in marriage had to be the hardest. And yet, perhaps, it would soon be the second-hardest. Herman might have approved the match – he certainly hadn’t said no – but asking Gudrun would be the hardest of all. She might say no, or insist that they waited until the end of the war, or…
He shook his head. It wasn’t going to be easy, but if he’d wanted an easy life he would have stayed on the farm. He could have avoided joining the military or the SS, simply by being in one of the protected categories of jobs. And yet, if he hadn’t, he knew the uprising wouldn’t have taken place. The spy who was sent in his place might not have been so inclined to listen to Gudrun, let alone decide to join her.
Herman had a point, he admitted silently as they made their way up to their office. A pair of trusted guards stood outside, with strict orders not to admit anyone unless they had been cleared by Herman personally. There was a war on… and Gudrun was almost certainly at the top of the list of people Karl Holliston intended to purge, if he won the war. And Horst himself might not be on the list now, but he certainly would be if Holliston ever found out just how badly he’d betrayed his masters. Horst knew the SS too well to imagine they would ever be satisfied with vague reassurances and evasions, not after the uprising. They would strip him down to the bedrock, then shoot whatever was left for the single greatest act of treason since Von Braun had fled the Reich for the United States.
And so we may as well live while we can, he thought, morbidly. Enjoy the war, for the peace will be terrible.
A handful of reports sat on the desk. Herman sat down and started to go through them while Horst poured two mugs of coffee. The coffee was already starting to run out, he’d heard, although the Reichstag had a huge cellar crammed with everything from fancy French wines to imported food from America. It wouldn’t have done for the Reich Council to be deprived of the good things in life, even though the rest of the Reich was slowly starting to starve as food prices went up. Volker Schulze had ordered half the food handed out to the civilians, keeping them alive… in hindsight, that might have been a mistake. They’d have done better to start rationing from the very beginning.
“Police coffee,” Herman commented, as he took a sip. “You do very good coffee.”
Horst kept his expression carefully blank, suspecting he was being needled. The coffee was as dark as Karl Holliston’s soul, with no milk nor sugar to lighten it. Gudrun had winced, the first time he’d made coffee for her, although he did have to admit she’d drunk it anyway. But then, such coffee was intended to keep the drinker awake, rather than anything else. The sour taste was a bonus.
“Over the last week, seventeen staff went out of the Reichstag,” Herman said, when Horst didn’t deign to reply. “As you can see” – he held out the papers – “fifteen of them were absent for more than three hours, two of the remainder only returning to start their shifts the following morning. And yet all seventeen of them sleep in the building!”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Horst pointed out. Indeed, he was tempted to dismiss the two who’d clearly spent the night elsewhere. The SS wouldn’t want to run the risk of having their agents dismissed, just because they’d gone to a bar or a brothel. “They may have friends or family within the city.”
“Some of them do,” Herman said. “But they’re very much in the minority.”
Horst nodded. The Reich Council had been reluctant to hire Berliners to work in the Reichstag, although he’d never been sure why. Indeed, there were nearly five hundred staffers in the building and only fifty of them had been born and raised in Berlin. But it hardly mattered now… unless, of course, the Berliners could be dismissed from consideration because they stood out like sore thumbs. Or was that what they were supposed to think?