And they might trigger another civil war if they tried, he thought, numbly. They wouldn’t want to risk tearing themselves apart.
“I think it will be a long time before they try to come to terms with what was done in their name,” he said. Even now, there were Americans who believed that the Native Americans had deserved to die. The strong dominated or destroyed the weak, they said; it was the way of the world. They would have made good Nazis. “And they’ll have to do it in their own time.”
He sighed, again. “And we escaped the danger of a nuclear holocaust,” he added. “That’s something to celebrate, Mr. Ambassador.”
“It doesn’t end,” Turtledove said. “History is an endlessly repetitive story. It never has a happy ending.”
“No,” Andrew agreed. “But if history teaches us one thing, it teaches us to take what you can get.”
“Horst,” Uncle Emil said. He looked surprisingly cheerful for a man who knew he was walking on thin ice. “Can I borrow you?”
Horst glanced at Gudrun, who nodded. He wondered, suddenly, if he should leave her, even if she was with her brother. She’d been oddly depressed over the last two weeks, ever since their reunion. Being a prisoner had left its scars.
“Of course, uncle,” he said.
He followed his uncle through a side door and into a small conference room. It would have been swept for bugs repeatedly, but there were so many people — and so many factions — within the building that security couldn’t be guaranteed. He shrugged, then sat down on the nearest chair and motioned for his uncle to take the other one. Uncle Emil closed and bolted the door before taking his seat.
“Horst,” he said. “How are you coping with Germany Prime?”
“It has its moments,” Horst said. Not everyone had taken the fact that he had powerful relations on the other side very well. If he hadn’t been married to Gudrun — and taken the lead in a desperate rescue mission that had ended the war — he had a feeling it would have been a great deal worse. “And it can be very exciting.”
His uncle nodded. “Have you thought about returning?”
Horst hesitated. There was — or there had been — a beautiful simplicity about life in Germany East. Buying a farm and raising a family would be easy, particularly now. But Gudrun wouldn’t want to live there and, really, how could he blame her? Her memories of Germany East were far from pleasant.
“No,” he said, finally. It wasn’t entirely truthful, but it would have to do. “I’m staying here.”
His uncle smiled. “I would urge you to reconsider,” he said. “Germany East needs good men.”
“Men who are related to you,” Horst pointed out. “How stable is your Reich Council?”
“Unstable,” his uncle admitted. “Not all of the Gauleiters are in agreement over how we should proceed.”
“And they’re planning a civil war,” Horst finished.
“They might be planning a civil war,” his uncle corrected. “There are plenty of other problems for us to tackle.”
Horst snorted. He’d met a couple of the Gauleiters after the war, during the early scramble to put together a working government. Neither of them had struck him as being out for anything other than their own power, although that was true of his uncle too. The well-being of the Reich could go hang, he was sure, as long as the Gauleiters had their power. His uncle might be planning a civil war too.
Another civil war, he thought.
“I’m a married man,” he said, flatly. “I need to stay with my wife.”
“Bring her with you,” his uncle suggested.
“I don’t think you know Gudrun very well,” Horst said. His uncle had admitted he’d spoken to Gudrun in private, but they hadn’t had a chance to really get to know one another. “She wouldn’t let me drag her off to the east.”
He wondered, absently, if his uncle would suggest that he simply drag Gudrun eastwards with him. Last year, it would have been perfectly legal. But now… he shook his head, dismissing the thought. Gudrun would slit his throat while he slept if he tried to force her to accompany him. And he certainly didn’t want to go alone.
His uncle lifted his eyebrows. Horst felt an odd shiver of remembered guilt — it was the same expression his uncle showed whenever Horst had tried to lie to him in the past.
“I intend to stay with her,” he said, flatly. “And if she wants to stay here, I want to stay here too.”
“It isn’t normal for a husband to follow the wife,” his uncle observed.
Horst smiled. “Ah, but my wife is special,” he said. “And besides, protecting her is a challenge.”
His uncle nodded, ruefully. “There will be times when I will contact you with messages that you can pass on to others,” he said. “A private line of communications, perhaps. I trust that will be acceptable?”
“I can pass messages,” Horst said. “But nothing else.”
“You’re a good man, Horst,” his uncle said. “I’m proud I had a hand in raising you.”
Horst shrugged. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be particularly welcome in Germany East, whatever his uncle said. He’d betrayed the SS, after all. And while Holliston’s particular branch of the SS was in disarray, the Waffen-SS was still strong. God alone knew what would happen in the future.
“Thank you,” he said, instead. “And if you hadn’t helped us, we would be dead now.”
“And so would countless others,” his uncle said. “But now they have a future.”
He rose and left the room. Horst watched him go, pensively. So much had changed in the past few months that he no longer knew where he belonged…
No, he thought, as he rose himself. I belong with her.
Chapter Forty
Berlin, Germany Prime
29 November 1985
It was bitterly cold in the cemetery.
Gudrun wrapped her arms around herself as she looked down at the grave, silently grateful that Horst had agreed to wait by the gate. The funeral had been too large for her to relax and say goodbye properly, not when everyone who was anyone — or thought they were anyone — had insisted on attending. Herman Wieland — paratrooper, policeman, father — had been given a funeral fit for a king.
She felt a bitter stab of guilt as she looked down at the grave. Her father had insisted, in his will, on nothing more than a simple headstone, even though sculptors from all over Berlin had offered to craft elegant memorials for him. They’d been disappointed, she thought, after their services had been rejected, but it wasn’t what her father had wanted. He’d insisted on the simple grave and he’d got it.
And he’d died in her defence.
She dropped to her knees, feeling tears brimming in her eyes. Her father was hardly the first or last to die, but he was the one whose death had hit her the hardest. He’d been part of her life since the very moment she’d been born, a firm but fair figure looming over her as she grew up. Konrad had been her boyfriend, but he’d represented the future — a future. Perhaps she would have been happy as his wife, perhaps not… she knew she wouldn’t have been happy without her father.