But he knew better than to disobey orders.
“Sound the retreat,” he ordered, as a new wave of shellfire crashed down on the enemy positions. Hopefully, the enemy would keep their heads down long enough to keep them from realising that their opponents were falling back. “Deploy two sections to act as a rearguard; we’ll leapfrog back to our lines.”
He took one last bitter glance towards Berlin, wondering just why they were pulling back now. They’d come so close! The thousands of dead stormtroopers would not have died in vain, if Berlin had been stormed, but instead their rotting bodies were being left for the enemy. Victory had been in their grasp, only to be snatched away by… by what? An order to retreat? What was going on?
His thoughts mocked him. Was it all pointless? Did all those men die for nothing?
Turning, keeping his expression under tight control, he led his men away from Berlin.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Berlin, Germany Prime
25 October 1985
“It’s confirmed,” Voss said, quietly. “The enemy is falling back all along the line.”
Volker nodded in relief. The SS didn’t know it – he assumed they didn’t know it – but they had come terrifyingly close to victory. Berlin’s defenders had been on the verge of running out of rifle and pistol ammunition, let alone mortar rounds, antiaircraft weapons and everything else they needed to hold the line. Mounting a push from the city, in hopes of overrunning the retreating stormtroopers before they could set up new defence lines of their own, was impossible. It would take weeks, at best, before the defenders could be rearmed…
“Gath is altering his deployments slightly in hopes of enveloping the enemy before they make it out of the bag,” Voss added. “But they really reacted too quickly for us to catch most of them.”
“True,” Volker said. “Someone on the other side must have decided to cut his losses.”
“It is the smart choice,” Voss agreed. He paused. “We still have a security situation in Berlin itself, though.”
“Deploy troops to hunt down the remaining commandos once we are sure we can hold the line,” Volker ordered. The attack on the Reichstag itself had been beaten off, thankfully, but the commandos had hit a number of other targets and gunfire was still being reported across the city. “And keep warning the population to stay indoors.”
He rubbed his eyes, tiredly. Berlin would never be the same, that was sure. The city had been devastated, large parts shelled into rubble… he had no idea if they could even afford to rebuild, once the fighting came to an end. And the destroyed factories, power plants and even a hospital would cost millions of Reichmarks to replace. The Reich might survive the war, only to collapse under its own weight shortly afterwards.
And untold thousands of men, women and children were dead.
“We won,” Voss said, quietly.
“I know,” Volker said. “But why does it feel like a defeat?”
“She doesn’t look like much,” Hans said.
Katherine snorted as she finished binding Gudrun’s hands and legs together. Gudrun was in good health, she’d noted during the brief examination, but hardly stronger than the average schoolgirl. She might be the very picture of Germanic perfection – blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin – yet she was no soldier. But then, a girl so pretty would have no trouble finding men to fight for her. If she’d seduced a trained SS observer – and Katherine was sure that she had – she could seduce anyone.
Cow, she thought, nastily.
“We’ll keep her drugged for the moment,” she said. She didn’t bother to respond to Hans’s remark. The Fuhrer and his interrogators could take Gudrun apart at leisure, digging everything she knew out of her mind before hanging whatever was left for treason on an utterly unprecedented scale. “We don’t want her waking up too soon.”
“If she wakes up at all,” Hans warned. “That bump on the head was nasty.”
Katherine shrugged. The original plan had been to hole up in the apartment and wait for the fighting to come to an end, but it was clear – now – that the stormtroopers had failed to break into the city. She had no doubt that the traitors would search the city thoroughly, once they were sure they’d won the war. They didn’t dare stay in Berlin. Someone would have seen something suspicious, she was sure, something that would lead the police straight to them.
“We’ll just have to hope,” she said, tartly. Hans was right – the sedatives sometimes had unfortunate effects – but the last thing they needed was Gudrun waking up before they were safely out of the city. “Get into your uniform.”
She smiled to herself, grimly, as she donned her own uniform, then smirked rudely at the sleeping prisoner. Gudrun would never know the freedom of wearing male clothes, would never know how easy it could be to pass for a man. But then, her breasts were too large to be easily concealed by a uniform, while Katherine’s were thankfully small. She could pass for a uniformed man with ease.
And everyone in the Reich is conditioned not to question men in uniform, she thought, as she checked her appearance in the mirror. And no one will question us either.
She looked faintly effeminate, she decided, but most soldiers who looked at her would dismiss her as a staff officer. They were expected to be effeminate, she’d been told. Real soldiers knew that staff officers were the ones who couldn’t hack it, using their connections to be assigned to the rear. They wouldn’t see anything other than a young man who confirmed their preconceptions. And by the time they realised the truth, it would be far too late.
“Get the box,” she ordered, as Hans returned. “Hurry.”
“We’ll have to head to the west,” Hans said. They carefully lowered Gudrun into the box, then locked it securely. “Too many people moving to the east, I think.”
Katherine nodded, crossly. A dozen cells had been expended in the battle for Berlin, but it seemed that their sacrifice had been wasted. She’d sent her remaining team members off to cause havoc across the city, yet in hindsight that might have been a mistake. No, it had been a mistake. They could do a great deal of damage before they were hunted down – they would do a great deal of damage before they were hunted down – but they would die for nothing.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Do you have the papers?”
“Here,” Hans said. “And if they’re not enough…?”
“We fight,” Katherine said.
She scowled. The attack had failed, which could only mean that the traitors had launched their own counterattack. And that meant that the roads around Berlin were likely to be consumed by savage fighting. Getting out of the city was one thing, but sneaking eastwards was going to be harder. About the only advantage they had was that there would be so much confusion that it would be hard for the traitors to throw out a search cordon…
“Come on,” she said. A new hail of gunfire echoed over the city as she opened the door for the final time. “Let’s move.”
Horst wasn’t too surprised to discover, as the bar came into view, that it managed to live down to expectations. There were strict public health rules across the Reich, but the bartender had clearly decided to ignore them. Even when closed, he could smell alcohol and too many unwashed men in close proximity as he walked towards the building. He was surprised that the bar was closed, even though the provisional government’s emergency broadcasts had ordered all businesses to close. The bartender must have had other things to do with his time than serve alcohol.