…And she wasn’t sure how long she could continue to hold out.
She gazed around the cell, finally understanding why her father had insisted that his prisoners preferred to go to the work camps rather than go to jail. There was something to do in the work camps, even if the stories she’d heard ranged from horrible to truly horrific. Here, all she could do was sit on the bed and wait to be tortured — or worse. There was simply nothing else to do. And, for someone who had always enjoyed doing something, it was agony.
Boredom is a worse threat than anything else, she thought, crossly. It was frustrating as hell just to sit in the cell, even though she knew it could be worse. By the time they come for me, I’ll have driven myself mad.
She shook her head as she rose to her feet, pushing her aching body through a series of exercises she’d been taught in the BDM. Her matrons would probably have laughed at her, but it kept her body healthy and her mind off dwelling on what could happen to her. And yet, her body was no longer hers. Part of her had accepted, she realised, that she was naked, that she would always be naked… and the fact she wasn’t horrified about that worried her more than she cared to admit. Slowly — but surely — she was breaking.
And there’s nothing I can do about it, she thought, sourly.
She ground her teeth in frustration as she finished the exercises. What did Holliston want with her? Did he seriously imagine she could convince the Provisional Government to surrender? She hadn’t really been in control of events from the moment everything had started to move — and a good thing too or her arrest might have blown the whole movement out of the water. He had nothing to gain by keeping her prisoner, save satisfaction. And even that had to have its limits.
The door rattled. Gudrun straightened up as it opened, allowing Katherine to step into the room. She was carrying a pair of handcuffs, suggesting that Gudrun was going to get a chance to walk out of the cell. Gudrun sighed inwardly as Katherine motioned for her to turn around, but submitted quietly. Oddly, the simple fact that she was always handcuffed or chained when she was out of the cell gave her heart. It suggested her captors were surprisingly nervous about her.
She met Katherine’s eyes as the older woman opened the inner door. “Where are we going?”
“The Führer wants to see you,” Katherine said. Unlike some of the other guards, she didn’t bother to search Gudrun’s body before helping her out of the cell. “I suggest that you put on your best behaviour.”
Gudrun frowned. Katherine sounded normal, but there was a… hint… in her tone that she was preoccupied with an infinitely greater thought. She was tempted to pry as she was marched down the corridors and through a series of security checkpoints, yet she didn’t dare risk the uneasy rapport she’d developed with the older woman. Instead, she concentrated on memorising the layout of the Germanica Reichstag as much as possible. It was surprisingly deserted, even on the upper levels. The handful of men she saw — no women — barely glanced at her before scurrying away.
Something’s gone wrong, she thought, worried. But what?
A nasty thought occurred to her and she froze. If Holliston had used nuclear weapons — and Doctor Müller had practically admitted as much, during the beating — the Provisional Government might have retaliated. No, it would have retaliated. She knew little about nuclear weapons, but she did know that not retaliating would merely have encouraged the first user to do it again. There would have been retaliation…
…But against what?
Germanica is still standing, she thought, although it occurred to her that that might not be true. The engineers in Berlin had bragged that their bunkers could survive direct nuclear hits and ride out nuclear wars. She couldn’t imagine the SS accepting anything lesser for Germanica, a city that was practically a second capital. Might the city have been nuked? She found it hard to imagine that she wouldn’t have felt something… but it was impossible to be sure. I might be trapped under a nuclear wasteland.
It was a relief, two minutes later, to step out of the elevator into an antechamber. A giant window dominated the near wall, allowing her to peer out over Germanica. She couldn’t help thinking that it looked like Berlin, only bigger, but it was definitely intact. The city hadn’t been blasted to rubble by a nuclear weapon.
Two guards poked and prodded at her for a long moment before allowing her to enter Holliston’s office. She tensed, half-expecting to be on public display again, but the giant room was empty, save for Holliston himself. The would-be Führer was sitting behind a desk large enough to pass for a dining table, larger than the one she remembered from her last headmaster’s office. He’d had an immense ego too.
“Gudrun,” Holliston said. He sounded surprisingly normal. “Please. Come forward.”
Gudrun felt her skin crawl as Katherine walked her forward until she was standing in front of the desk. There was something about the way he was looking at her that creeped her out, even though it didn’t seem overtly sexual. She wasn’t a pretty girl to him, she realised; she wasn’t even an attractive piece of meat. To him, she was something he could use; no more, no less. It was a chilling thought.
Holliston smiled at her. “Have you no words of greeting?”
“Guten Morgen, Herr Holliston,” Gudrun said. She was damned if she was calling him ‘Mein Führer’. He was certainly not her Führer. “How are you?”
His expression darkened. “You will address me as Mein Führer.”
Gudrun hesitated. If she refused… what would he do? But she already knew the answer. A beating, perhaps, or worse. She was in no state to defend herself. She’d loathed her last headmaster — she didn’t know anyone who’d liked the brute — but she’d known better than to deny him the respect he’d thought he was due.
“As you wish, Mein Führer,” she said.
Holliston seemed amused by her submission. “I believe that fool Müller told you that nuclear weapons have been deployed?”
“Yes, Mein Führer,” Gudrun said. It felt odd to call anyone by that title. She’d never actually met the previous Führer, even after he’d lost his position and been exiled to the countryside. He’d been a figurehead, nothing more. No one had thought him worth the bother of executing. “He was very definite about it.”
“A third has now been used,” Holliston said. “A minor training base at Kursk was destroyed.”
Gudrun didn’t believe him, not completely. Why would anyone drop a nuclear warhead on a minor training base? If the nuclear budget had been a major drain on the Reich’s economy — and she knew it had been — why would an expensive weapon be wasted on a minor target? It made no sense. Logically, Kursk had to have been a far bigger target — and Holliston was trying to minimise the impact. But she found it hard to care.