He sighed, inwardly. Gudrun didn’t realise just how ruthless they needed to be, but Horst did. He had no illusions about how quickly the police would react. It wouldn’t take them long to realise who was spreading the leaflets, then start rounding up all the BDM girls on the streets. Perhaps a few of the matrons would be in deep trouble – it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch, if half of what Gudrun and Hilde had said was true – but the police wouldn’t take long to realise that they were dealing with imposters. Something else would have to be done to distribute more leaflets.
And I will have to do it, he thought. He didn’t dare trust Sven or any of the others. The only proof he had that none of them were spies was that he hadn’t been arrested yet. There’s no other way to spread the word before the police catch on.
“I meant to ask,” Sven said, as they wiped the computer’s memory and shut it down for the night. “Were you serious about what it’s like in the east?”
“Yes,” Horst grunted. “There are some parts of the region that are relatively safe, but most places can be quite dangerous. I learned to shoot when I was five years old.”
Sven swallowed. “And your auntie… is she still living there?”
“Yeah,” Horst said. He’d lied; he’d dug up the details of a genuine case and presented them as something that had happened to his relatives. But it was real. If he’d had doubts about helping Gudrun, they’d died when he’d looked at the files. “She used to be quite a loyalist.”
“I heard that most people in the east are loyalists,” Sven said. “Is that true?”
“Mostly,” Horst said.
“Then tell me,” Sven said. “How can we trust you?”
“I could have betrayed you by now,” Horst pointed out. Thankfully, he’d had time to think about what he would say, if anyone chose to raise the issue. “As it happens, my brother left me with a great deal to think about even before I came to Berlin to study. We’ve been lied to constantly.”
“You could be lying to me now,” Sven said.
Horst kept his expression blank, thinking hard. And why didn’t you show this sort of talent in the Hitler Youth?
He suspected he knew the answer to that, although he could never ask. Sven and the boys like him resented being forced into the Hitler Youth, resented being sent to camps where they learned how to march in unison. And, because they resented it, they were never very good at it. And, because they were never very good at it, everyone else picked on them. Horst knew the score at the camps, even though it had been minimised in Germany East. The strong bullied the weak, those who couldn’t keep up.
Maybe it would have been better if Sven had been allowed to carry weapons, he thought, ruefully. He might have dealt with a bully or two by shooting the asshole in the head.
He gathered himself. “If I wanted to betray you, Sven,” he said, “I would have done it by now. None of you are particularly important. You know how it works. A single report is quite enough to get you all in hot water. Instead, I’m doing my best to help keep you all alive long enough to do something effective, just as you are using your skills to help us. Is that not good enough for you?”
Sven looked rebellious, but subsided under Horst’s stare. Horst wondered, absently, if Sven was another spy, trying to divert suspicion, yet he knew it was unlikely. The logic that kept him from being declared a spy worked for Sven too. Spy-Sven should have reported the group at once, incidentally landing Horst in trouble too. Unless Sven had decided to switch sides as well…
And that way lies madness, Horst thought. The entire group cannot be made up of agents who decided to switch sides.
He scowled as he picked up the bag and led the way to the door. He’d tried looking up the names of other SS agents within the computer files, but they had been classed as well above his security clearance. Sven could probably hack into the files, given the access codes, yet that would be far too revealing. All he could do was keep an eye out for suspicious behaviour, particularly when the computer messages started making their way through the network. Sven claimed to have rigged the system to keep the messages going, even when the first set were wiped from the nodes. Horst believed him. Sven was an odd duck, someone who would probably be happier in America, but he knew computers.
Maybe I should give him my access codes after all, he thought. I could always threaten him into silence… or try to steal someone else’s codes.
“I got the van parked outside,” he said, as they left the building. “We’ll be ready to get into place on Sunday morning.”
“I’ll have the radio ready by then,” Sven said. “Just make sure no one sees the leaflets.”
“Of course not,” Horst said. “No one will see them until Sunday.”
It had taken months of arguing before Gudrun’s parents had agreed to let her put a lock on her door. Gudrun had pointed out that she was a growing girl, that she didn’t want her brothers walking in on her while she was changing and that she deserved some privacy. Her parents had finally agreed, then imposed so many rules – most notably, that she couldn’t close or lock the door when Konrad was visiting – that she sometimes wondered if there had been any point in trying to get the lock in the first place. Her mother, after all, had one of the spare keys. But, right now, her mother was shopping and her brothers were out of the house. She had time to prepare for Sunday.
She opened the bag Isla had given her and carefully placed the BDM uniform on the bed. No one had to pay for their uniforms, which was a relief; it was hard enough scrabbling with her mother over what clothes she was allowed to buy for herself without having to endure her mother’s outrage over buying the uniforms too. A white shirt, loose enough to conceal the shape of her body, a long black skirt that stopped barely a centimetre above the ground, a long brown coat and a pair of ugly black shoes that made it impossible to run. It was, she had to admit, an improvement on the BDM sports uniform, but not much of one. And to think she’d hoped to throw the whole thing out when she’d finally been allowed to quit the BDM.
Gritting her teeth, listening carefully for signs of life from Grandpa Frank, she stripped down to her underwear, donned a pair of jeans and a tight American t-shirt, then pulled the uniform over it. Thankfully, Isla had loosened the skirt so it was no longer so tight around her rear end; she studied herself in the mirror and decided, after a little adjustment, that no one could tell she was wearing a whole additional layer of clothing underneath the uniform. Bracing herself, she tore the uniform off as quickly as she could without tearing it and checked, again, in the mirror. She might just get told off by a policeman for wearing revealing clothes in public – her mother’s reaction would be downright murderous – but she certainly didn’t look like a BDM girl. And that was all that mattered.
She dressed again, then tried on the wig. She’d never worn a wig before; it took her several tries at fiddling with it before it looked convincing, the long dark hair tied into two ponytails that made her look several years younger. If nothing else, she reflected ruefully, it was one thing to thank the BDM matrons for; they’d been so insistent that the young girls in their care had to have their hair in ponytails that it would be easy enough to hide, just by tearing them down or removing the wig. Finally, she opened her shirt and stuffed her bra, trying hard to make it look convincing. She honestly didn’t know where Horst had found the nerve to suggest that she and the other girls use padding to make their breasts look bigger, although she had to admit it was a good idea. The policemen wouldn’t know where to look if they caught her.