“The bastard is still alive,” Hans grunted, as he caught up with her. “I don’t think he’s mortally wounded.”
Katherine shrugged. Horst Albrecht hadn’t been trustworthy, no matter what his handler had said. Either he was an incompetent buffoon, which was unlikely, or he was an outright traitor. He’d had the perfect opportunity to stop the traitors before they became more than a gaggle of students and missed it completely. No, he was a traitor himself. If he hadn’t been one when he’d started, he was definitely one now.
She scowled at the thought. Men could never be trusted completely when sex was involved, she knew from painful experience, and Horst Albrecht had been fucking the girl she was carrying. And he’d even married her. Katherine was no stranger to doing unpleasant things for the Reich, but marriage? No, Horst Albrecht could not be trusted. And if he survived the next few days, he would either be executed by the SS or his fellow traitors. They’d assume he was responsible for Gudrun’s capture and take it out on him.
“They’ll blame him for this,” she said. “And no matter what he says, they’ll never believe him.”
Horst staggered to his feet, feeling oddly unsure of just what had happened. He’d been attacked by a pair of commandos… they’d been commandos. He was sure of that, if nothing else. Their basic training and fighting style was identical to his, although they’d been far more practiced them himself. He’d shot one, he thought – there was definitely a body in front of him – but the other had started to pound on him before Horst had finally managed to bury a knife in his heart. Or was that nothing more than a hazy memory of something else? His head felt as if he’d been drinking heavily the night before…
Gudrun!
The thought snapped him out of his daze. Turning, he looked towards where the car had been and recoiled in shock as he realised it was nothing more than a burning wreck. The flames were so intense that he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if Gudrun was still in the car she was dead. And yet, they’d wanted her alive… he stumbled forward and noted, to his relief, that the rear door was open. Gudrun had had a chance to get out…
He cursed as he nearly tripped over the body and stumbled, then glared down at the remains of the driver. Someone had shot him in the chest, three or four times; the damage was far less extensive than Horst had anticipated. Gudrun had to have killed him, he realised. The pistol he’d given her was far lighter than the one he carried himself. But three bullets to the heart would be enough to stop anyone.
Should have worn body armour, he thought, as he kicked the driver’s body. He’d never suspected the driver, not even once. And yet… in hindsight, he should have been a prime suspect. No one paid attention to drivers. You swinehund traitor…
He gathered himself, somehow. There had been a quick-response team on alert, but it had failed to show. The outriders were dead. Explosions were echoing over the city…
…And Gudrun was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Berlin, Germany Prime
25 October 1985
Hauptmann Kurt Wieland wasn’t sure if he was being rewarded for good service or being punished for some unspecified offense. His unit had been recalled, shortly after Gudrun’s wedding, and deployed to defend the Reichstag, relieving a mixed unit of policemen, security troops and military forces belonging to the various political factions. He had strict orders, from Volker Schulze himself, to make sure that no one entered the complex without both clearance and a thorough search, but just about everyone who wanted to get in seemed to believe they could browbeat his troopers. He’d come far too close to ordering a complete strip and cavity search on one bureaucrat before the man had hastily backed down and stopped issuing threats to have the entire unit reassigned to Siberia.
Although how he expected to get us to Siberia is an open question, Kurt thought. I…
He jerked up as he heard the sound of an explosion, followed by several more in quick succession. Those hadn’t been shellfire! And they’d been well within the safe zone surrounding the Reichstag. He dreaded to think how many people had hurried into the safe zone, believing that the SS would leave it untouched, only to be caught now by bomb attacks on a scale unseen since the Arab Rebellions. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were dead or wounded…
“Incoming fire,” Loeb snapped.
Kurt ducked behind shelter as the first antitank missile slammed into the defences, followed by a hail of RPGs. The first explosion shattered the guardhouse, but the Reichstag itself was largely unharmed. Kurt allowed himself a moment of relief – the designers had planned on the assumption that there would be a nuclear war – then started to bark orders as commandos opened fire, pouring gunfire into the Reichstag.
“Lock down the building,” he bawled. One of the explosions, unless he missed his guess, had been far too close to the barracks. The soldiers on duty would have problems getting to the Reichstag, even though they were bare minutes away if they sprinted. And if the bomb had been in the barracks, hundreds of good men would be dead now. “Send a warning up the chain. Tell them we need help…”
He swore again as he heard the sound of shellfire, shells crashing down all over the city. The SS had mounted a coordinated attack, hitting the Reichstag at the same time as they thrust forward and into the defence lines. Command and control networks were probably disrupted badly, if they weren’t down altogether. The defenders knew to hold the line – he’d had similar orders before his men had been pulled out – but it was going to be harder to send reinforcements to plug the holes before the SS rammed an infantry division through them.
“Aircraft,” Loeb barked. “Watch the skies.”
Kurt nodded, grimly. The SS air attacks had dropped down to almost nothing over the last few days, but now they were back with a vengeance. A missile rose up to blow one of the planes out of the sky, yet the others kept coming, targeting defence lines, garrisons and power plants right across the city. Berlin might survive the offensive, but life in the city would never be the same again.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought, as the shooting outside grew louder. It didn’t matter, not now. All that mattered was holding the line…
…And praying, desperately, that help arrived in time.
“The main offensive has begun, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Weineck said. “Resistance is still strong.”
Alfred nodded impatiently. Taking out the enemy command and control network was a core facet of modern war, but it hardly mattered in Berlin. The defenders had nowhere to run and no reason to expect to be treated well if they surrendered. His forces had taken a handful of prisoners, but almost all of them had been badly wounded before they’d finally stopped fighting and two of them had died shortly after being captured. The basic interrogation – the POWs had been shipped east, on the Fuhrer’s direct orders – had made it clear that no one dared surrender, simply out of fear of being shot as soon as they were captured.