“Check with the Warsaw CO,” he ordered. “Has the city been readied for a siege?”
“The last report said it was ready,” Weineck reported. “But that was before… before Berlin.”
Felix nodded, sourly. Warsaw had never been fortified as extensively as Germanica. No one had envisaged the city coming under attack, not when the Americans would have to fight their way through Germany Prime and the Chinese through Germany East if they wanted to reach Warsaw. But even so, taking a city was no easy task. A determined defence could tie up a hostile force for weeks, perhaps months. Stalingrad had been a nightmare; Leningrad had literally starved to death before surrendering.
“They’ll want to chew up our forces instead of taking the city,” he said. “Or, at least, they’ll want to take the city after they crush our forces.”
He nodded to himself. Ruengeler had said as much, during their last conversation; Felix saw nothing wrong with his superior’s logic. The target wasn’t Warsaw — Warsaw itself was worthless, even if it didn’t bleed the rebels white trying to take it. No, they’d want to crush the SS divisions before they could get reinforcements…
“Inform the unit commanders that we will be going with Option Seven,” he said, after a long moment. It had been Ruengeler who had drawn up the operational plan, but Felix saw no reason to change it. “We do not want to give them a chance to pocket our units.”
“Jawohl, Herr Obergruppenführer,” Weineck said.
“Very good,” Felix said. “Now, about logistics…?”
“We’ve emptied a number of supply dumps in the Gau,” Weineck informed him. “However, we have started shipping supplies west from Germany East. Our logistical situation is poor, but should improve rapidly.”
Which is what we get, Felix thought bitterly, for drawing up a plan counting on victory in a single decisive battle.
It had been a mistake. It had been a terrible mistake. Hitler wouldn’t have made such a mistake, Felix was sure; Himmler, colder and more calculating, would have avoided it altogether. But Holliston had gambled the entire Reich on one throw of the dice and lost badly. Deep inside, Felix knew they were going to pay a terrible price for his mistake.
But he knew his duty. The Reich had to be preserved, whatever the cost.
Or everything they’d built over the last forty years would be swept away in fire.
Chapter Eleven
Germanica (Moscow), Germany East
1 November 1985
Gudrun felt sick.
She struggled out of a morass of tiredness, dimly aware — on one level — that something was badly wrong. Her entire body felt wretched, as if she’d drunk herself senseless and then just kept drinking until she plunged into darkness. She coughed and retched, her stomach twisting painfully as she tried to throw up. Her eyes opened, only to snap closed again as brilliant white light sent daggers lancing into her mind. And her body felt filthy…
Her gorge rose. She twisted, remembering — somehow — that she was on a bed, only to lose her balance and fall down to the floor. The sudden shock of pain sent her head spinning, again; she retched again and again, dry-heaving violently until her throat and mouth hurt as much as her stomach. But there was nothing in her stomach to expel. She swallowed, hard, despite the bad taste in her mouth. Her entire body felt weak and frail, as if she had a head cold mixed with savage drunkenness.
I’ve been drinking, she thought, numbly.
She hadn’t felt so… so unpleasant since the night she’d drunk a stein of beer at a friend’s house two years ago. Her father had laughed at her, she recalled. He’d pointed out, rather sarcastically, that it was better she learn the lessons of drunkenness now, rather when she was older and raising children of her own. It was one of the few times she recalled her father being less angry than her mother about anything. Young women weren’t supposed to drink, her mother had said. It was a masculine art. Gudrun would have argued the point if her head hadn’t felt like a fragile eggshell…
Clarity returned with a shock. She was in a prison cell, in Germanica. And she’d been drugged.
She forced her eyes to open, despite the bright light. The cell was just as she remembered: small, cramped and very secure. No one seemed to be standing on the other side of the bars, watching her, but she knew it was just an illusion. There were, no doubt, hundreds of people watching her through the cameras. She would have been horrified at the thought of so many people watching her while she was naked, if she hadn’t felt so rotten. It was hard to care about anything when part of her just wanted to curl up and die.
Her body felt weak, but she forced herself to sit up anyway, despite the throbbing pain in her forehead. Perhaps she’d banged it when she fell… she honestly wasn’t sure. What had they given her? Horst had talked about drugs, but he hadn’t gone into any real detail. He’d seemed to believe that being captured was the end of the world — it would have been, if she’d been identified last time she’d been taken prisoner. Now… her head swam and she grabbed hold of the bed, using the hard metal framework to steady herself. She was damned if she was going to let them break her, not like this…
They can keep feeding you drugs, a little voice whispered at the back of her mind. You can’t eat without taking drugs.
She shuddered, swallowing hard to fight down the urge to be sick again. They could have jabbed her with a needle at any point, but instead they’d drugged her food. Why? To make it clear that she was helpless? It wasn’t as if they couldn’t hold her down and inject her with whatever they pleased. Or did they want to avoid damaging her? Or…
It was hard, so hard, to think clearly. The world blurred around her for a long moment, everything going so dim that she wasn’t sure if she’d fallen back into the darkness or merely hovered — for a long chilling moment — on the edge of oblivion. She tried to stand, she tried to clamber back onto the bed, but her body refused to cooperate. It crossed her mind, as she struggled, that she must be giving the unseen watchers one hell of a view. But she was too tired to care.
Damn them, she thought.
She heard the outer door opening behind her, but her head refused to turn as the inner door jangled open. Gudrun tensed as… someone… stepped into the cell, then cringed as strong hands pushed her against the bed. It was a man, she was sure. She could hear deep masculine breathing. And she was helpless, in an utterly undignified position… she had to fight to twist her head enough to see him. A man, wearing a white coat and a mask that obscured his face, was pressing a needle against her upper arm. She tried to fight, but it was pointless. The man took a blood sample, then casually turned and walked out of the cell, closing the inner door behind him. Gudrun slumped against the side of the bed, fighting back tears. It was all she could do not to fall back to the floor.
They can do that to me any time they like, she thought. A sense of helplessness and despair threatened to overwhelm her, mocking her. She’d started the movement that had overthrown an entire government, but now she was utterly helpless. Her jailers could do anything to her and there was nothing she could do to stop them. And to think I thought the worst thing that could happen to me was being exiled to Germany East.