Katharine pushed her forward, gently. Gudrun braced herself, stood as firmly as the chains would allow and began to walk towards the desk. The watching men made no sound, no catcalls nor expressions of pity; they just watched as she stepped forward. Holliston’s face twisted oddly as he studied her, his expression dark and cold. Gudrun shivered, despite herself. Holliston wasn’t interested in anything, but power. He’d do anything to keep it.
She came to a halt and stared at him, forcing herself to meet his eyes. She’d met enough powerful men — her father had always seemed all-powerful to her — to know that open defiance was rarely welcomed. Neither her father nor her male teachers had been pleased when she’d talked back to them, although — in all honesty — her mother and her female teachers had been pretty much the same. Hell, it had been harder to predict what would set her mother off…
“Gudrun,” Holliston said. His voice was very cold. “Battle-maiden.”
Gudrun felt a hot flash of anger. Only Konrad had ever called her that, back when they’d been getting to know one another. He’d said it to tease her…
“You could have borne the Reich many strong sons,” Holliston continued. “Instead, you chose to bring it down.”
It was hard to keep the smirk off her face, despite the danger. Holliston and his ilk had never considered that a mere woman could be dangerous. Hell, Gudrun had been eighteen when Konrad had been wounded. Old enough to marry, old enough to bear children, but not old enough to be considered a responsible adult. She’d practically been a minor child, as far as the law was concerned; she’d certainly enjoyed no greater rights at eighteen than at eight. But then, Holliston probably needed a woman to be a grandmother before he started taking her seriously…
She threw caution to the winds. “The man I was going to marry was wounded in one of your wars,” she said. There was no point in trying to hide it. She’d told the story often enough that it had probably reached Germanica by now. “And you didn’t even have the decency to tell us what had happened to him.”
Holliston showed no visible reaction to her words. “Your boyfriend gave his life in defence of civilisation,” he said. “You betrayed him.”
Gudrun felt another surge of anger. That comment stung. Konrad would not have approved of her standing up to the Reich. He’d been a loyal SS stormtrooper. And she’d married Horst…
“He didn’t die,” she said. “You kept him alive, unable to heal him and unable to just let him go. You betrayed him.”
She forced her voice to harden. “You betrayed everyone.”
“And you betrayed the Reich,” Holliston countered. “Or have you forgotten the oath you swore every day at school? And when you joined the BDM?”
“I forgot nothing,” Gudrun said. He had a point, she had to admit. She’d been swearing loyalty long before she’d actually known what the words meant. “But the Reich betrayed its citizens first.”
She leaned forward, almost overbalancing and falling over. “Konrad was your ideal,” she said. “Brave and bold, blonde and strong; I could have been happy as his wife, bearing his children and bringing them up while he fought to defend the Reich. But instead he was killed in an unwinnable war and you didn’t even have the decency to admit what happened to him.
“And if that is what you will do to Konrad,” she added, “what will you do to everyone who does not come up to scratch? Your stormtroopers killed young men in Germany Prime, they raped and abused young women. How can you claim to be fighting for the Volk when you abuse it?”
She looked at the other men in the room. “What will happen to your sons? Or to your daughters?”
“Be silent,” Holliston said.
Gudrun ignored him. She’d been silent for too long. Eighteen years of her life had been spent accepting that her place in the world would always be subordinate to a man, even though she’d managed to win a place at university. She’d loved Konrad — she admitted it to herself — but she knew now she would never have been happy as a housewife, doing nothing more than cooking his food and bearing his children. And perhaps she would have been left alone if Konrad had gone back to the war and died there.
“You and yours ruled the Reich for forty years,” she said, turning back to him. If these were going to be her last words, they were going to be good ones. “And yet you’re scared to let the people breathe. You ran the entire country into the ground! Do you really think I could have gotten anywhere if the people hadn’t had a cause? You made your own enemies.”
She allowed her voice to harden. “You did this to us,” she added. “Your entire claim to power is based on a lie.”
“I do not expect you to understand,” Holliston said. His voice dripped contempt. “You’re only a girl.”
Gudrun bit down on her reaction, hard. He wanted her to scream at him; he wanted her to explode in feminine rage, to prove to his allies that Gudrun was just an emotional girl — a child — whose opinion was too emotional to be valid. But she’d sat on the cabinet, back in Berlin. She’d learned more, she suspected, than he’d ever realised. And keeping her temper under control was only part of it.
“I don’t think that anyone has any doubt that I am a young woman,” she said, shrugging as through her near-nakedness didn’t bother her. “But does that make me wrong?”
She looked up, her eyes moving from face to face. “Does that make me wrong?”
Holliston made no attempt to answer the question. Part of her considered that to be a good thing, a tacit confession that he had no answer. But the rest of her knew it wasn’t ideal. She could be right — or wrong — and yet it didn’t matter. She was still a prisoner, trapped hundreds of miles from her friends and comrades. And even if they knew where she was, getting to her would be almost impossible. She was doomed.
“You will be interrogated until we have drained every last scrap of information from you,” Holliston informed her, instead. “And then you will be put on trial for crimes against the Reich.”
Gudrun almost smiled. A trial? The Reich rarely bothered with trials. A criminal was guilty — if he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t be in jail. But she knew exactly what he had in mind. He could order her shot at any moment, but that would just make her a martyr. She’d be more dangerous to him in death than she’d ever been in life. He needed to break her — to discredit her — before he killed her. By then, death would probably be a relief.
“Take her back to her cell,” he ordered. “And make sure she’s held securely.”
“Jawohl, Mein Führer,” Katharine said.
Gudrun gritted her teeth as Katharine swung her around, then forced herself to walk towards the door. She was damned if she was showing weakness now, despite the humiliation. If she was a prisoner, she’d be a tough prisoner…