Don’t pity the bastards, he told himself, as they walked past a gaggle of teenage girls wearing knee-length skirts and giggling loudly. They would probably have been marched home by the police, before the uprising; their parents would have beaten them for acting in such a lewd manner, if they weren’t too relieved that their daughters had returned at all. Pity instead their victims.
The sound of shooting grew louder as they approached the front lines, passing a handful of men in police uniforms manning a barricade. His escort took him through the lines, then nodded towards a man standing in a CP. Andrew recognised him instantly, even though he’d exchanged his normal uniform for a field tunic and cap. But then, the SS had hundreds of snipers prowling the battlefield. A man wearing the grand uniforms the Wehrmacht designed for its senior officers would make a very tempting target. Andrew had attended exercises, conducted at Fort Hood, where a couple of snipers had snarled up a military advance for days, just by taking out a handful of officers. The Wehrmacht would be foolish if it didn’t realise the danger too.
“Field Marshal,” he said, as Voss dismissed the escort with a wave of his hand. “Thank you for allowing me to come.”
“It’s nothing,” Voss said. Andrew didn’t know him as well as he knew his predecessor, but it was easy enough to see the irritation under the affable exterior. And yet, was it real? Voss had learned his trade in a political snake pit. He might well know how to conceal his innermost feelings, then project a false front. “The Chancellor wanted you to see what was happening.”
Andrew nodded, looking past Voss to the map mounted on the wall. A pair of operators, their ears permanently pressed to phones, were constantly updating it, adding red arrows as the Waffen-SS pushed further and further into Berlin. Andrew was no expert, but General Knox had told him that the Battle of Berlin was turning into an absolute nightmare. A building could be declared secure, only to become very insecure indeed as the defenders sneaked back into it and opened fire on the SS from the rear. And, as the SS kept moving, they were smashing more and more buildings. Andrew couldn’t help wondering if they were doing their best to make sure that no one could survive in the wreckage.
We had to destroy the village in order to save it, he thought. An American officer had said that, back during the Mexican War. The communists had been too deeply entrenched, he’d argued, for the limited American forces on hand to clear the village. And so he’d ordered it firebombed to ashes. And now the SS is doing the same to an entire city.
He looked at Voss, sensing – for the first time – the growing concern beneath the facade. The German was a Junker, heir to an established military tradition that long predated the United States of America, a tradition that even Hitler and Himmler hadn’t been able to destroy completely. And yet, the man was on the brink of despair. He had more than enough firepower to halt the offensive, if only he had the time to bring it to bear on his foes…
And he might not have the time, Andrew thought. Whoever takes Berlin takes the Reich.
“It’s bad,” he said, finally. “But it’s always darkest before the dawn.”
Voss snorted, rudely. “You Americans,” he said, as he turned to walk towards the door. “So sentimental.”
Hauptsturmfuehrer Katharine Milch kept her expression carefully blank as she listened to the dozy cows manning the soup kitchen, silently grateful for the intensive training she was forced to undertake before she was cleared for duty. The SS might have a role for female agents, but it was no more inclined to take the average woman and turn her into an operative than the Wehrmacht. A seductress was one thing, a woman willing and able to use her natural charms to seduce someone into saying something incriminating; an operative was quite another. Katharine had had to work hard from the day she’d determined what she wanted to do with her life, while the women surrounding her had been given their freedom on a platter.
And not much of that, she thought, as a woman in fine clothing started ladling out the pork and leek soup. They may be upper-class bitches, but their husbands are the ones with real power. There’s no true freedom here and they know it.
She watched the refugees carefully as they trudged in and out of the kitchen, each one taking a bowl of soup, a piece of bread and a glass of pure water. They looked broken, perhaps pushed beyond endurance by having to leave their homes… Katharine snorted at the sheer foolishness of believing that was the worst that could happen. She’d endured worse, even before joining the SS. The refugees still had their lives, they still had their beauty… they could rebuild, if they wished. But instead they were moaning about how unfair it was that they only got a small portion of food.
“I heard that the policemen and their families get more food,” she said, when an opportunity arose. The silly women were twittering away, repeating and embellishing rumours as though they were facts. Such foolishness would never be tolerated in Germany East. Stupid women – or men – didn’t last long out there. “And that some of them are selling ration cards to their friends.”
“Of course not,” one of the older woman said, indignantly. “My husband is a policeman and he would never do such a thing!”
Katharine concealed her amusement as two of the other woman started wittering, questioning the first woman closely. They were fools, but such foolishness had its uses. No matter how much the first woman might deny it, the seeds of doubt were planted and would grow rapidly into more and more rumours. By the time they reached the ears of someone in authority, the entire city would have heard the rumours…
…And a certain percentage would believe them.
She shrugged and returned to her work, content to allow the women to carry on the conversation alone. She’d leave as planned, knowing that the rumours would spread – and, like all rumours, grow in the telling. And no one would be able to trace them back to her.
It isn’t quite the same as direct action, she thought, as she finished up. But it may be just as effective in the long run.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Berlin, Germany Prime
14 October 1985
Kurt leaned against the stone wall, feeling tired and worn.
The fighting had lasted for eleven days, he knew, but it felt as though it had been longer, much longer. Endless attacks and counterattacks, losing and recapturing buildings, only to lose them again when the enemy launched yet another thrust against the weakening defences and punched through. Berlin, the city of his birth, was being steadily destroyed and he could do nothing. His unit had been so badly weakened that his superiors were slotting in troops from other units that had come off even worse.
He struggled to catch his breath, half-tempted just to put a gun to his temple and pull the trigger. Several soldiers had already done just that, unable to endure the constant fighting combined with the near-complete lack of sleep. Others had wounded themselves, either unaware or uncaring that there was no hope of medical evacuation. The system that had prided itself on airlifting wounded soldiers to a field hospital had broken down, if it had ever worked at all, in the flames consuming Berlin. None of the men could expect anything more than a mattress, if they were lucky. Rumour had it that every last hospital in Berlin was running short of just about everything, to the point that the doctors had to use alcohol to disinfect wounds. He honestly had no idea just how long the city could continue to hold out.