But none of them truly comprehended that Gudrun was a menace. In all honesty, Karl himself hadn’t appreciated it until the Reich Council came apart at the seams. Gudrun was not a physical threat — she certainly wasn’t a trained combatant — but that didn’t make her any less dangerous. It was the ideals she represented, the truths she told, that threatened the integrity of the Reich. And her ability to talk otherwise sensible men into rebellion was truly dangerous. Karl dreaded to think what would happen if the Gauleiters managed to talk to her.
“She’s going to be pushed right to the edge with the next one, Mein Führer,” Müller said, breaking into Karl’s thoughts. “And then we’ll pull her out and start asking questions.”
Karl gave him a sharp look. Müller enjoyed his job too much. Karl wouldn’t have been too concerned if Müller wanted to play games with Untermensch prisoners, but Gudrun had to be left alive and reasonably unmarked. She needed to be mentally broken, not physically broken…
“Make sure she is physically unharmed,” he growled. “Or else you will be the next one in the drowning room.”
Müller flinched. Karl wasn’t too surprised. Like most interrogators, Müller was a coward at heart, fearful of the day he’d be put inside his own cells. And he knew precisely how Müller liked to entertain himself. How strange it was that a man would be so scared of his own entertainments… if he was on the wrong side. But it was what made Müller so useful to the SS.
And people like him have advanced our knowledge considerably, Karl thought, as Müller headed off to start the next step in his plan. Where would we be without the knowledge that has come out of the camps?
He smiled at the thought. Adolf Hitler had wanted to exterminate the Untermenschen from the Third Reich, but it had been Himmler who had seen the value in doing more than simply killing them. Countless Untermenschen had been tested to destruction, their lives contributing to a growing archive of knowledge about the human body. Some of it had been futile — the search for a homosexual gene had turned up nothing — but much of the research had actually proven useful. There had even been talk of impregnating Untermenschen women with Aryan babies, using them as host mothers to bring the babies to term. Only fears about what might get into the babies had dissuaded the Reich from trying the experiment.
Can’t have them weakened by their hosts, he thought, darkly. They might be useless to us.
His lips thinned as he watched Gudrun being dragged out of the drowning room by her long blonde hair. Too many of the Gauleiters would definitely disapprove of such treatment, even for a treacherous bitch. Gudrun seemed too tired to fight back, even though she wasn’t chained or otherwise bound. And yet, she was holding herself together remarkably well, even after being pushed right to the brink of her endurance. Karl had seen hardened insurgents break after spending a few hours in the drowning room, breaking down and begging for mercy, but Gudrun hadn’t broken. She was badly shaken, clearly weakened, yet still holding herself together.
Too weak to strike a blow, Karl told himself, as he watched them drag Gudrun into the next room and shove her into a hard metal chair. Or is she merely biding her time?
He shrugged, dismissing the thought. No one short of Otto Skorzeny himself could possibly hope to escape from the cells, let alone break out onto the streets. The Reichstag was the single most heavily-defended building in Germanica; hell, the prison complex had only two exits, both sealed from the outside. Gudrun might be able to escape from Müller — Karl rather doubted Müller could handle someone who actually wanted to fight back — but where could she go?
Nowhere, he thought.
He glanced up as a nervous-looking guardsman entered the room. “Mein Führer,” he said, snapping out a perfect salute. “Oberstgruppenführer Ruengeler requests your presence in the War Room.”
“Understood,” Karl said. “Dismissed.”
The guardsman didn’t quite flee, but it looked very much as though he wanted to. Karl knew, even as he started the long walk back to the War Room, that it was bad news. No one wanted to be remembered as the person who brought bad news… Himmler, for all of his many virtues, had a terrible habit of shooting the messenger. Karl still winced at the thought of a promising young officer who’d been exiled to Germany Arabia for bringing the Reichsführer some very bad news. He wasn’t like that…
…Was he?
“Mein Führer,” Ruengeler said, as Karl walked into the War Room. “The enemy have begun their offensive.”
He sounded surprised. Karl allowed himself a tight smile, despite the situation. Ruengeler, a professional military man if ever there was one, had doubted that the rebels would attack so soon. But Karl, who was more used to politics than war, knew the rebels had little choice but to attack. Chewing up the remaining SS divisions before they could reform was their only hope of a quick victory.
And so they fall right into my trap, he thought.
“Very good,” he said, calmly. There was no hope of directing the battle from Germanica — no doubt Ruengeler was worried about him trying to do precisely that — but he could keep abreast of the situation. “Do we have an axis of advance yet?”
“No, Mein Führer,” Ruengeler said. “But it won’t be long now.”
“Of course not,” Karl agreed. He put Gudrun out of his mind. If the battle were lost, breaking her would no longer matter. She could be killed — or exiled, if too many people made a fuss — and then forgotten. “Let’s wait and see what they do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Front Lines, Germany Prime
3 November 1985
“Incoming!”
Hennecke Schwerk dived into the foxhole, praying silently that he would be one of the lucky ones as shells crashed down on the position. The rebels seemed to have an unlimited amount of ammunition and, judging where some of the shells were landing, an excellent idea of where the Waffen-SS had taken up position. Loud explosions shook the ground, sending pieces of dirt falling into the foxhole; he told himself, firmly, that unless a shell actually landed on top of him there was little chance of being killed. But as the bombardment grew louder, he couldn’t help feeling that the earth would cave in on him at any moment.
He risked a glance out of the foxhole as the bombardment lessened, the shells flying over their heads and striking targets further to the east. The town — he’d never learned the place’s name — was in ruins, every building that had survived the SS’s advance westwards smashed flat by the rebel bombardment as they prepared to move east. He had no idea what had happened to the population, but as their homes burned or collapsed into rubble he found himself hoping that they’d made it out of the danger zone in time.