But the man in front of him was no Untermensch…
Gritting his teeth, he pointed the pistol at the second prisoner and pulled the trigger. The man made no sound as his body tumbled to the ground.
“Come on,” Hennecke ordered, savagely. He was damned if he would show weakness in front of the men. “Let’s move!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Berlin, Germany Prime
3 October 1985
Gudrun could hear the fighting in the distance as she made her way slowly down to the bunker, the dull thunder echoing over the city. It grew quieter as she passed through the first security checkpoints, then vanished altogether once the doors were closed, but she could still feel it in her bones. Two hours of increasingly savage fighting had made it clear that, whatever else happened, there wasn’t going to be much of a city left when the war finally came to an end.
She looked up at Horst as they reached the final checkpoint. Somewhat to her disappointment, he hadn’t managed to work up the nerve to ask her to marry him – and she hadn’t had the nerve to ask him either! Part of her mind insisted that that was his job, the rest of her thought that she should be able to ask the question first. And yet, her father’s warning hung in her mind. To push a man to commit himself, before he was ready to commit himself, would only end badly.
“I’ll see you afterwards,” she said, quietly. If the guard hadn’t been standing outside the door, she would have kissed him. “Take care of yourself.”
Horst smiled, rather tiredly. “We have far too much to do to worry about taking care of ourselves,” he said. “Good luck.”
Gudrun nodded – she knew that both Horst and her father had been working hard to catch the spy, then turned and stepped through the door into the war room. Volker Schulze was sitting at the head of the table, looking grim, while the other councillors were slowly taking their seats. Gudrun looked from face to face, wondering which one of them was the spy – if there was a spy. Horst had pointed out that the SS could simply be fishing for incriminating information, if only because the Reich wouldn’t have hesitated to meddle if the Americans had had a civil war. Anything that kept the planet’s other superpower busy – and weakened it badly – would have suited the old council just fine.
Which raises the question, Gudrun thought, as she took her seat. What would happen if the Reich became too weak?
She contemplated the prospects grimly as the doors were closed and servants served coffee, then looked up as Schulze called the room to order. He looked tired, she noted; he knew, all too well, that several of the men before him were plotting to betray him. They might not be working for the SS, Gudrun knew, but they’d all risen to power through careful manipulation of the system. Reducing Schulze to a figurehead, just like Adolf Bormann – the Fuhrer who had been so unimportant that no one had bothered to kill him – would have been ideal. They could continue to master their separate power bases, while discussing matters that affected them all in committee.
Which is stupid, Gudrun thought, tartly. If he wins the war, Karl Holliston will have every last man in the room shot, if they’re lucky.
“The battle has finally begun,” Schulze said, quietly. “Field Marshal?”
Voss leaned forward. He was old enough to be Gudrun’s father, but she’d always found him a little impressive, even if she didn’t like him very much. Quite apart from a genuine military record, he’d stayed in Berlin when he could have easily taken command of the relief force and escaped the city. Schulze had stayed, of course, but he hadn’t really had a choice. Voss, on the other hand, could have left easily. Instead, he’d chosen to put his life on the line.
Not that he could have escaped anyway, Gudrun reminded herself. The reports from the east were horrifically clear. Anyone who does not support Holliston enthusiastically will be counted as an enemy.
“The Waffen-SS launched a major incursion into the city two hours ago, following a major bombing raid,” Voss said. “So far, as predicted, we have lost the outer edge of the defence lines, yet the remainder are still firmly in place. Fighting has been savage, hand-to-hand in some places, but we have more than held our own. There has been no mass collapse, nor have we had to send in the reserves.”
Kruger snorted. “So the Waffen-SS isn’t as good as they claimed?”
“They’re attacking a city,” Voss reminded him, calmly. “All of their usual advantages are weakened, perhaps lost. Their airpower isn’t as effective when they have to worry about antiaircraft missiles and their shelling isn’t as accurate as they might have hoped. And we have nowhere to run. There’s no hope of a breakthrough they can use to wrench our legs open and thrust inside.”
He nodded at Gudrun. “Begging your pardon, of course.”
Gudrun kept her face impassive. She knew when she was being needled.
Schulze didn’t look impressed. “Can we hold out long enough for the relief force to arrive?”
“It depends on a number of factors,” Voss said, flatly. “We stockpiled vast amounts of ammunition in the city prior to the invasion, but expenditure has been an order of magnitude over any pre-war predictions. Fortunately” – he smiled, rather dryly – “they probably have the same problem. I would expect them to be having problems shipping supplies to the front.”
His smile grew wider. “And they certainly will have problems once our stay-behind cells come out of hiding.”
Gudrun took a moment to put it all together. “Won’t that encourage atrocities against the civilian population?”
“Yes,” Voss said, flatly. “Would you rather lose Berlin? And, with it, any hope of preserving your revolution?”
He is not my father, Gudrun reminded herself, sharply. The tone – the voice he used to address a silly little girl – was far too close to her father when he was in a bad mood, but her father was… well, her father. It was his job to keep her from making stupid mistakes, even ones as minor as adding two and two together and getting five. And he should not be talking to me like that.
She leaned forward, speaking in an icy tone she would never have dared use to her real father. “And would you prefer to see countless civilians killed?”
“I would prefer to see the SS vanish,” Voss said. He sounded oddly amused – and, for a second, she saw a flash of respect in his eyes. “But we have to deal with the reality we have, not the reality we want. And the reality we have is that failing to make life difficult for the SS’s logistic officers is going to cost us badly. Allowing them to mass their firepower against Berlin will be disastrous.”
“I understand the costs,” Schulze said, quietly. “And we have no choice.”
The hell of it, Gudrun knew, was that they were right. Horst had taught her enough about logistics for her to understand their argument. But, at the same time, she knew what would happen to any innocent civilians caught nearby. The reports from the east were an endless liturgy of horror. They’d be tortured, raped and finally killed. If the SS had ever hoped to win hearts and minds – and she found it rather unlikely – that hope had long since faded.