“Impossible to tell,” Kruger said. “The only real case study we have comes from Leningrad, where the city practically starved itself to death before the defences finally collapsed. I have no idea just how long the public will remain calm, particularly since we don’t have enough manpower to squash any riot before it gets out of hand. Right now, with the population already aware that governments can be overthrown…”
Gudrun had no trouble filling in the blanks. A starving population, desperate for succour, rising up against the provisional government. Soldiers, forced to choose between shooting their families and turning on the government, attacking the Reichstag. And the SS watching the chaos from a safe distance, then stepping in to restore order and impose its own peace once the infighting came to an end. It had happened before, after all, when Kurt and his men turned their weapons on the SS stormtroopers before the Reichstag. And if they were unlucky, it would happen again.
It isn’t fair, she told herself, sharply. We wanted to change the world.
And you did, her own thoughts replied.
“We will lower rations for those who can handle it,” Schulze said. His voice was very flat, betraying no emotion. “And we will go on short rations too.”
Voss leaned forward. “Do you think the public will believe us if we say we’re on short rations?”
“We have to try,” Schulze said. “And we are not going to be holding banquets when people are starving in the streets.”
Gudrun wondered, darkly, just how many other politicians were going to follow his example and go hungry. The black market had been a feature of Berlin life for decades, run – she hadn’t been surprised to discover, after the uprising – by a number of high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats. It wouldn’t be long before someone started trying to sell off government supplies, even if there was a war on. Hell, she wouldn’t be surprised to discover that someone was already doing it.
There will be families trading everything they own, just for a can of preserved meat, she thought, bitterly. And girls forced to prostitute themselves for a bite to eat.
“Warn your people,” Schulze added, addressing the whole room. His voice was firm, warning them that there were limits. “I will not tolerate anyone breaking the united front in any way. The only thing keeping the people from turning on us is the awareness that we are suffering too.”
Except we are down in the bunker and the people upstairs are not, Gudrun thought. And the snipers are still looking for targets.
“The people of Berlin haven’t known privation in a very long time,” Voss pointed out. Horst had raised the same concerns, Gudrun recalled. “Do they have the drive to hold out?”
“Let us hope so,” Schulze said. He smiled, rather dryly. “Because if they don’t, we are all about to die.”
Chapter Thirty
Berlin, Germany Prime
8 October 1985
Gudrun felt a stab of guilt, despite the gnawing pain in her stomach, as she walked towards the car, Horst following her. The hospital was crammed with casualties, soldiers wounded in the ongoing battle for Berlin. Their words haunted her, leaving her wondering if she had done the right thing after all. How many young men were dead – or crippled – because of her? And how many wives and girlfriends were never going to see their menfolk again – or would wish, afterwards, that their menfolk had died rather than returned as cripples?
She shuddered, bitterly. Some of the men had cursed her, others had been so lost in their pain that it was hard to tell who – if anyone – they were talking to. She’d heard a young man – younger than her, she thought – screaming for his mother as the doctors fought to save his life, watched helplessly as an older man begged to be killed rather than be forced to live without his legs. And the nurses – and the young girls who had volunteered to assist in the hospital – slowly giving into despair as more and more wounded flowed into the hospital.
I thought it was bad when Konrad was in hospital, Gudrun thought, fighting down the urge to start crying. But this is far worse.
“It isn’t your fault,” Horst said, quietly. The car lurched to life, the driver steering them onto the road. Civilian traffic had been banned the day the SS finally surrounded Berlin, leaving the streets clear. “It wasn’t you who decided to invade Germany Prime.”
Gudrun shook her head slowly, blinking away tears. Kurt was on the front lines; Kurt, her bigger brother who had alternatively tormented her and protected her. Kurt, who had helped her sneak into the hospital… had it really only been a few scant months ago? It felt like an eternity had passed between the girl she’d been and the woman she had become. And if Kurt was wounded or killed, she didn’t know what she’d do. The thought of being responsible for her brother’s death was horrifying.
“I know,” she breathed. Horst wrapped a warm arm around her, heedless of the driver’s presence. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”
She leaned into his arm, but said nothing as the car finally reached the Reichstag and passed through two checkpoints before driving into the garage. Security had been tightened, again, as the fighting wore on. The SS commando cell hadn’t launched any big attacks, thankfully, but a handful of policemen had been killed on the streets and a pair of soldiers badly wounded by a makeshift bomb. Gudrun’s father had said that the attacks might not be the work of trained professionals – there was an amateurish feel about the incidents that suggested inexperience – but there was no way to be sure. Either way, the original group of commandos hadn’t gone away. They would be planning something.
And Horst hasn’t heard anything since the fighting began, she thought. Who knows what that means?
She tossed possibilities around in her mind as they walked up to her bedroom. They might assume that Horst couldn’t sneak out of the Reichstag without being noticed… or they might have finally realised that Horst had turned against them. If the latter… Gudrun wouldn’t have bet on his survival, if he fell into their hands. The SS regarded betrayal as the worst of all sins. Horst would be executed, once they knew he was guilty. And who knew if anyone would be told what had happened to him?
It was hard to care, in her state, just who saw Horst following her into the room. The staff had probably noticed something, by now; they knew she’d shared both the upper bedroom and the bunker suite with him. Her father would be furious if rumours got out, she knew, but she was too tired to worry about it. And besides, her parents approved of her prospective marriage. That, at least, was a weight off her mind.
“It isn’t your fault,” Horst said, as Gudrun sat down heavily. “The SS made its own choices.”
He moved behind Gudrun and began to massage her neck. “None of this is your fault.”
“I don’t feel that way,” Gudrun said. She felt too hungry to do anything, but sit. She’d noticed how the price of food was slowly rising, long before the uprising, yet she’d never really been hungry. Little flickers of hunger, caused by turning down school food, were nothing compared to the gnawing pain in her chest. “How many people are going to die because of me?”