At best, Germany will be badly weakened, she thought, dryly. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She intended to cling to it if she was ever called upon to justify her decisions. But at worst, we’ll unleash a nuclear holocaust.
It had not been easy for her to send the Royal Navy to the Falklands or to use the police and security services to break the miners. She’d known that people would get hurt — and while she was disinclined to care about enemy soldiers and communist subversives, she did worry about her own people. It was nearly seventy years since the Great War, but the British Government still remembered just how many young men had been killed. No government could hope to survive a callous approach to British casualties…
…And with nuclear weapons involved, the prospect of millions of people being killed was terrifyingly high.
But Holliston had stepped right across the line. He hadn’t launched nuclear missiles at America or blown up a French city for defying him. He’d killed thousands of German soldiers and risked the lives of untold numbers of soldiers and civilians. Margaret had seen the projections. There was a very good chance that nuclear material would be blown over Berlin, sentencing the population to long lingering deaths. And Warsaw was even closer to the blasts…
And Warsaw was on his side, Margaret thought. He sentenced thousands of his supporters to a hellish doom.
She sighed as she stood. Something would have to be done, despite the risk. Karl Holliston had to be stopped. But what could they do? She’d already authorised the dispatch of antiaircraft missiles and other weapons to the Berlin Government, but even that was pushing the limits. Hell, what were the limits? SOE had long-since given up shipping weapons and supplies to Occupied France; now, all they could do was watch from the sidelines and hope.
We can offer help, she thought. But it won’t be enough to tip the balance. The Germans will have to do it for themselves.
Churchill would not have understood, she suspected. He had been a man of action, always looking for ways to take the fight to the enemy. But Churchill — and Hitler — had lived during the last great period of conquest. She — and Karl Holliston — lived in a world overshadowed by atomic bombs. And those bombs had kept the peace for over forty years.
But now the genie is out of the bottle, she thought. And who knows what will happen next?
Chapter Twenty
Germany East
3 November 1985
The snowstorm came out of nowhere.
Horst cursed savagely as he fought for control of the vehicle, wishing he’d thought to demand an ATV from the troops in Warsaw. But there had been no time. He wrestled with the steering wheel as the vehicle threatened to skid off the road, then somehow forced it to keep going as the temperature plummeted rapidly. By the time they finally reached the next set of settlements, he was ready to risk everything just to get his hands on a better vehicle. He’d hoped to reach Germanica before the storms hit.
“This is a bigger settlement,” he said, as they stopped outside the gates. “Try not to sleep with any of the girls.”
Kurt gave him a nasty look. Horst hadn’t been able to resist teasing him lightly about Heidi, although he had to admit that Kurt had done well to resist her. He would have had problems if she’d come onto him like that, even though he was wearing a wedding ring. Hell, for all he knew, the ring had been the only thing keeping Heidi from trying to seduce him… he pushed the thought to the back of his mind as the guards appeared, their weapons at the ready as they walked towards the car. This settlement, clearly, was far more significant than the previous two they’d visited.
And if we could find another farm, Horst thought, we would.
The guard tapped on the window, meaningfully. Horst opened it, cursing the cold under his breath as he passed the guard their papers. The guard scanned them quickly, then waved at the gatekeepers. Horst braced himself as the gates opened, knowing they might be walking into a trap. If there was something wrong with their papers — if someone had checked with Germanica — they might be about to find out.
“Welcome,” a grim-faced older man said, as they parked outside the main building. “It has been too long since we have had guests.”
Horst nodded, clambering out of the car. “We are glad to be here,” he said, truthfully. “Can you put us up for the night?”
The question was a formality. No settlement would turn away a German citizen, whatever his papers said. Trying to sleep out in the open would be a death sentence, with or without the threat of insurgent attacks. It was already bitterly cold and he knew, all too well, that it would get worse. He glanced around, taking in the guardposts and spotlights shining into the darkening sky, then hurried into the main building. Kurt followed him, already shivering helplessly. He simply wasn’t used to the eastern cold.
Inside, it was warm and welcoming. Horst took off his coat with an effort and passed it to a young boy who gazed at him with admiring eyes. Horst felt an odd pang of disquiet at the obvious hero-worship in the youngster’s eyes, remembering when he’d admired the black-clad men who’d visited his uncle. He’d wanted to wear the black uniform and the Sigrunen for himself, but he hadn’t understood the price. He had been lucky — very lucky — that Gudrun hadn’t tried to kill him, when she’d found out the truth.
And I was expected to betray her, he thought, as he followed the lady of the house into a large sitting room. My superiors would have rewarded me if I’d betrayed her the day we first met.
He felt a flicker of homesickness as he took a seat on the sofa. Germany East believed in extended families, believed in doing everything it could to encourage family ties; the sitting room was large enough to accommodate the entire adult population of the settlement, male and female alike. It was warm and comfortable and welcoming in a way Gudrun’s home in Berlin had never been, reminding him of days playing chess and singing songs with his family…
…But there was an odd tinge of something in the air.
It wasn’t suspicion, he thought, as he was passed a mug of warm chocolate. The guards didn’t seem to have the slightest doubt about Horst and Kurt’s credentials. But there was… something… hanging in the air, a tint of fear that bothered him more than he cared to admit, even to himself. This wasn’t Germany Prime. The locals knew just how harsh and cold and bitterly unpleasant life could be. They wouldn’t be scared by just anything.
He sipped his chocolate and waited, studying the handful of settlers who’d joined them. The girls looked young and pretty, yet still radiating the sense of toughness he’d missed so much in Germany Prime. Only a fool would take an Easterner girl lightly, no matter what the Reich had to say about the proper relationship between men and women. A farmwife had so much more to do than cook food and bear children. He would be surprised if the girls facing him, eying him with frank interest, were weaker than men from Germany Prime.
There were no men of military age in the room. The guards outside had clearly been of military age, but he suspected there wouldn’t be many others in the settlement. There were four men in the room, yet three of them were clearly too old for military service and the fourth too young. But then, if the settlement came under attack, they would have to take up weapons to defend themselves.