“You can just tell them that you’re worried about him,” she said. “I think they’d appreciate that, you know.”
“I doubt it,” Hilde said. She looked downcast for a long moment. “They were trying to set him up with some brainless bitch who came top of the class in basic housewifery.”
“My mother is hardly brainless,” Gudrun said. “And I don’t think anyone else has a brainless mother either.”
“That’s not very helpful,” Hilde said.
Gudrun shrugged. “Are we all agreed on our first step?”
“Yeah,” Sven said. “But tell me, Gudrun; what are we going to do if we discover there are more soldiers who’ve lost contact with their families?”
“Then we decide what to do,” Gudrun said. She had half a plan already, but she needed them to understand what was going on before she could push them to commit to anything more than private discussions. “You can all think about it while we’re gathering data and then we can decide what to do.”
“Escape to America,” Horst said, quietly. “My brother says he isn’t planning to come back after his period in America comes to an end.”
Gudrun sucked in her breath. She’d applied for the chance to become an exchange student, but she wasn’t particularly hopeful. Even if she won one of the coveted slots, her parents would probably refuse to allow her to leave the country. But if she was allowed to leave… would she return? There was no shortage of whispered stories about students who tasted life in America, home of blue jeans, country music and freedom, and refused to come back to Germany.
“I don’t know,” she said. Without one of the slots, it was unlikely she could get to Vichy France, let alone Britain. She wouldn’t have a travel permit, for one thing, and an unaccompanied teenage girl would raise eyebrows. “We are supposed to be the smartest people in Germany. I’m sure we can figure something out.”
“There were stories of student protests in America,” Isla said.
“Those students weren’t at risk of being gunned down like rampaging Gastarbeiters,” Horst snapped. “If we do anything with this information, we run a terrible risk.”
“Yes, we do,” Gudrun said. She took a breath. “Konrad was – is – an SS trooper – I know, some of you detested him for wearing the Sigrunen lightning bolts. But he is a brave and decent man and he has been betrayed by the men he serves. A dead war hero is meant to be given a hero’s funeral, a wounded war hero is meant to lack for nothing. And yet, what does he have? A hospital bed in a crowded ward and no hope of recovery, while his family thinks he’s still in South Africa! What will they tell his family when he is due to return from the war?”
She took a breath, looking from face to face. None of them had really known what they were getting into, not really. They certainly hadn’t realised what she intended to tell them.
“I’m not going to sit on my backside and do nothing,” she concluded. “We are going to find out the truth and then we’re going to work out what to do with it. It is our duty to our country. That is what we are going to do.”
Chapter Seven
Schulze Residence/SS Safehouse, Berlin
20 July 1985
“Gudrun,” Liana Schulze called, as she opened the door. “Have you heard anything from my brother?”
Gudrun felt a stab of guilt as she looked at the younger girl. Liana was sixteen, on the verge of adulthood; hell, she could marry with her parents’ permission, if she didn’t want to finish her final year of schooling. And she’d always looked up to Gudrun, chatting happily to her about nothing in particular; Gudrun had always thought she’d make a good sister-in-law. But she didn’t dare tell the younger girl the truth. She’d speak to her father and he’d report Gudrun to the authorities.
“I haven’t heard anything from your brother,” she said. It was true enough. “I actually came to speak to your father.”
Liana’s face fell. Gudrun understood. She was the only child left in the house, now that Konrad had gone to war; she’d have no one to talk to, merely chores to perform for her mother. And she had to have known, at some deep level, that Gudrun hadn’t come to talk to her. Gudrun was eighteen and a university student to boot. Socially, they had very little in common. They’d hardly spend time together when Konrad wasn’t around.
“I understand,” she said. “Are you…”
Pregnant, Gudrun thought. She hadn’t gone all the way with Konrad. And it would have obvious that I was pregnant four months ago, if I was pregnant.
“No, but I do need to speak to him,” she said. “Is he in his study?”
“I think so,” Liana said.
She held the door open long enough for Gudrun to step inside and then closed it before leading the way through the living room and up to the door of Volker Schulze’s study. It was firmly shut, perhaps locked; Liana tapped on the door and waited for her father to invite her in before opening the door. Gudrun stepped past her and into the study.
“Gudrun,” Volker Schulze said. He lifted an eyebrow as he turned to face her. “What brings you to my house?”
Gudrun hesitated, bracing herself. Volker Schulze had always made her a little nervous, even though she had the feeling that her father was meant to make Konrad nervous. He looked like an older version of his son, his face marred by scars from a long career in the SS before he’d retired and found work as a factory foreman. His study was covered with mementos of his career, from a spiked helmet he’d salvaged from somewhere to a pistol he claimed to have taken from a British commando team in North Africa. A large chart hung on the far wall, showing the spread of the Reich.
And just how much of that chart, Gudrun asked herself, is a lie?
She pushed the question to one side. “Since we last spoke, I haven’t heard anything from Konrad,” she said, simply. “I was wondering if you’d heard anything from him yourself.”
Volker Schulze looked pensive. “I haven’t heard anything, no,” he said. Gudrun trusted he wouldn’t have kept anything from her, if he had heard something. “Do you have reason to worry?”
“I miss him,” Gudrun said.
“Young men have always gone to war,” Volker Schulze said, as reassuringly as he could. “I believe that young women like you have always waited for their heroes to come home.”
Gudrun winced before she could catch herself. One thing that had been hammered into her head at school was the importance of remaining faithful. A girl who dumped a boy while he was on deployment could expect to be a social pariah, even if the boy had been abusive and beaten her while they were together. Even if there had been someone else, she knew, it would have been cruel to dump Konrad while he was away. She would have waited for him to come home before telling him the bad news.
“But I’ve heard nothing,” she said, plaintively. Perhaps it would cover her lapse. “Where is he?”
“On deployment,” Volker Schulze said. He stood and patted her shoulder, awkwardly. “I was often out of touch for months at a time, Gudrun. Konrad may well be in the same position.”