Damned bastards, he thought.
The thought gnawed at his mind. He was no stranger to the horrors of war – he’d seen more horrors than any pampered westerner – but allowing so many atrocities to be committed had been stupid. They hadn’t even had the sense to win the war outright before starting the reign of terror. And he’d wanted to stop it. It would have been so easy to hang a few of the worst offenders, just to encourage the others, but the Fuhrer had refused to allow it. Terror might weaken the defenders, he’d argued, yet it had also made them reluctant to surrender. And that gave them the determination to fight on when all seemed lost.
He looked up. “And the enemy reinforcements?”
“No movements as yet, Herr Oberstgruppenfuehrer,” Weineck said.
“They’ll move soon,” Alfred predicted.
He kept the rest of the thought to himself. The Fuhrer had shot a number of men for ‘defeatism’ and he had no intention of joining them. And yet, the military logic was beyond doubt. His force, burnt out after weeks of savage fighting, simply didn’t have the time to stand off even a single armoured thrust. And the enemy, if the latest reports were accurate, had enough panzers massing in place to launch two thrusts. His forces would wind up trapped between two advancing jaws.
We have to break through to Berlin, he thought, coldly. Whatever happens, we have to get through now. Or we lose.
The enemy were keeping their heads down, Hauptsturmfuehrer Hennecke Schwerk noted, as he led his men towards the first enemy position. It had been worked into a suburb of Berlin, a blur of housing, shops and a single large school, but twenty minutes of shellfire had left most of the once-proud suburb in ruins. The school was nothing more than a pile of rubble – he couldn’t help thinking that the children would be pleased – while most of the homes had been badly damaged. Only the shops remained intact, although their windows were smashed and several nearby vehicles were burning brightly. Hennecke’s commanders hoped to loot the shops to feed their men.
He dropped to the ground as he heard a burst of machine gun fire, then motioned four of his men into a flanking formation while the others opened fire, trying to keep the gunners from noticing that the attackers were trying to outflank them. They’d used the tactic before, time and time again, but this time it failed. Several other machine guns opened fire, picking off the flankers before they had a chance to get into position. Hennecke felt his lips curl in sharp irritation, remembering the pre-battle briefing. They’d been ordered, in no uncertain terms, to break through the enemy defences, stopping for nothing.
Tapping his radio, he called in an airstrike. There was a long pause, long enough for him to wonder if something had gone wrong, then three HE-477s roared over the battlefield, their cannons pouring explosive shells into the enemy position. The machine gun fire stopped abruptly, but the aircraft weren’t finished. Hennecke stayed low as one aircraft dropped a handful of tiny bombs on the enemy, then turned and flew eastwards. A missile rose up from the ground, behind them, only to drop to the ground and explode somewhere to the east. The pilots had escaped in time.
“Forward,” he yelled, as he rose and ran towards the smouldering remains. “For the Reich!”
There was almost no incoming fire, although he kept his head low just in case. The enemy seemed to have been wiped out, save for a couple of young men who were both badly wounded. There was little hope for them, he knew, even if they got to a field hospital in time. He shot them both – it was a mercy kill – and then swore as mortar shells started to land around them. The enemy had had plenty of time to plot out their firing positions…
…And a number of enemy soldiers were slipping forward, trying to launch a counterattack.
“Not this time,” he muttered, as he motioned for his men to get into position. “You’re not going to stop us now.”
“What happened?”
“A whole string of attacks, Mein Herr,” the operator said. He didn’t seem to know how to respond to a policeman – particularly one with powerful relatives – but at least he was trying to do his job. “One of them was on Councillor Wieland’s car…”
Herman blanched. He knew the plan – he knew what was intended to happen – and it wasn’t an attack on Gudrun’s car. Horst had told his handlers that Gudrun would be vulnerable in the afternoon, not midday… something had gone badly wrong. Had Horst betrayed Gudrun, his wife of a week? He doubted it – he was fairly good at reading people – but if he hadn’t, someone else had to have betrayed Horst. His handlers might have suspected his loyalty all along. And if that was the case…
He looked down at the map as report after report came in; bombings and shootings from inside the city, airstrikes and shellfire from outside the city. The quick-response team that had been on alert had already been deployed, racing to a commando assault on one of Berlin’s power distribution stations. Most military and government bases had their own generators, he knew, but losing power all over the rest of the city would cause panic…
“See if you can find any patrolmen free,” he ordered, finally. He doubted it would be possible. The thousands of men who made up the Ordnungspolizei – the men who had continued to serve after the uprising – would be scattered over the city, facing their own nightmares. “If you can, divert them towards the scene of the ambush.”
He groaned, inwardly, as the operators went to work. The whole plan might have been Gudrun’s idea, but he should never have agreed to it. He should have beaten sense into Gudrun and Horst when they actually tried to make the plan work, rather than risk his daughter’s life. And now he was trapped in the Reichstag, the building already under attack, unable to do anything to help either his daughter or his new son-in-law. All he could do was wait, watch and pray.
Horst slumped down next to the driver’s body, feeling oddly unable to move as he battled complete despair. He’d lost everything in less than a second, a feeling so profound that he was barely able to move. And yet, somehow, he managed to force himself to gather his thoughts. The commandos had escaped, taking Gudrun with them – he had to believe they’d taken Gudrun with them. They’d risked far too much to kill her when they could have ordered him to end her life.
Unless they doubted my loyalty even then, he thought, as he forced himself to stand. They might have feared to alert me too soon.
He picked up Gudrun’s pistol and stuck it into his belt, then hastily searched the driver’s body for anything useful. The man had been carrying a pistol himself, which Horst took, and an ID card, but very little else. Horst pocketed everything anyway and then stared into the remains of the car. There was no hint that anyone had died, as far as he could tell. He didn’t think the heat was hot enough to reduce a body to nothing but ash, but the SS had a habit of using incendiary grenades to burn down insurgent hovels in Germany East.
They will want her alive, he told himself, again and again. They will want her alive.
He shuddered at the implications. Gudrun had been a symbol of hope – the hope of a life without fear – from the moment she’d gone public and told the regime that she, a mere university student, had no fear of them. Merely killing her would never be enough, not if her body was never recovered. Karl Holliston would want to crush her beneath his heel, he would want to make it very clear that he had captured and smashed the symbol of hope, he would want to use her death to boost his cause. And yet, the cause had grown far beyond her…