And no one pays any attention to us, he thought, while the goons make their way through the university.
It was clear, astonishingly clear, that none of the new students had any real experience with academic life, let alone passed the exams necessary to attend the university as new students. No one could possibly mistake them for real students – and, if that wasn’t bad enough, they were crashing through the classrooms, asking so many dumb questions that Horst was tempted to report them as potential dissidents. He couldn’t help wondering if some of the other spies, the ones who weren’t charged with supervising the assholes, had already reported them. It wouldn’t be the first time that an intelligence operation had been ruined by two different people working at cross-purposes.
At least they know not to bother me on campus, he thought, as he left the lecture hall and headed up to the meeting room. That would have blown their cover as well as my own.
He caught sight of one of the spies, looming over a young girl and sighed inwardly. Of all the people they had to send, did they really have to send someone so… so entitled that he thought he could press his attentions on a student? Horst had met his kind before, the men who thought that being in the SS gave them licence to harass any woman they liked; he had no doubt that the idiot would blow his cover sooner rather than later. After all, the poor girl would probably report him to the university authorities, who wouldn’t be able to expel him because of his connections…
Idiot, he thought. He briefly considered reporting that to his handlers, then dismissed the thought. A corps of visible spies was more useful than a handful of agents who genuinely blended into their surroundings. Unless, of course, the visible spies were meant to distract attention from the invisible spies. And if the game was that easy, anyone could play.
He pushed the thought out of his mind as he walked up the stairs and stepped into the meeting room. Half of the group – it struck him, suddenly, that they still didn’t have a proper name – was missing, unable to get away from classes or practical work to attend. Horst understood; there were just too many outsiders tramping through the university for them to risk doing anything out of the ordinary, even though the meetings were important. Sven sat at one end of the table, next to Hilde; Gudrun sat at the other end, looking tired and wan. Horst couldn’t help feeling a flicker of concern. Unlike him, she hadn’t been trained for long periods of stress, with the risk of capture permanently looming over her shoulder.
“We should be safe now,” he said, once he’d closed the door and turned the jukebox on, deafening the bug with American music. He had no idea if someone – anyone – was actually listening through the bug, but better safe than sorry. “There are at least nine new spies within the student body.”
“I noticed,” Gudrun said. She sounded vaguely amused. “That Rudolf has never touched a computer in his life. He sat next to me in the lab and stared at it before the professor showed him how to turn it on.”
Horst smiled. “That isn’t uncommon in the east,” he said. “Computers? What can you do with a computer that you can’t do with a gun, farming tools and a great deal of grit, spunk and determination?”
“Play computer games,” Sven said, wryly. “Send messages across the entire continent in the blink of an eye. Access files everywhere and change them, if necessary.”
“True,” Horst agreed. German bureaucracy was famed across the entire world for sheer bloody-minded thoroughness. There were copies of SS files right across the Reich; he knew, if he walked into an office in Germany South, the officers on duty would be able to access a copy of his file and confirm his identity with ease. “But they rarely see anything more advanced than a tank or a CAS aircraft.”
He shrugged as he sat down. “There have been other developments,” he added. “Have you heard about the unions?”
Sven smiled. “My father’s a member at the plant,” he said. “He’s been bitching for months about having to work longer hours for less pay; now, he’s banding together with most of his fellows to demand higher pay and shorter work hours.”
“I’m not sure he’ll get anywhere if he demands more money for less work,” Hilde said, quietly. “My mother has been organising protests through her network of female organisations. She’s even been gathering information from the Sisters of Mercy. The crisis is far worse than we assumed.”
“Things are moving faster,” Gudrun said. She didn’t sound as enthusiastic as Horst would have expected. “How do we make them slow down?”
“We don’t,” Horst said. “The government isn’t going to slow its response to suit us.”
Hilde leaned forward. “Are we doing the right thing?”
“Yes,” Gudrun snapped.
“My father said that we were weakening the Reich,” Hilde said, after a moment. “That we were fools who were threatening order and stability…”
“That’s an interesting argument,” Horst said. He’d actually expected the government to use a similar line to dismiss the leaflets, even though it would have been a de facto confession that the leaflets actually existed. “But tell me… will anything change if we do nothing?”
He took a breath. “The government got us into a war that seems to be unwinnable, the government is lying to us and the government has no reason to change,” he added, after a moment. “We have to force them to change before the whole edifice breaks apart and shatters.”
“So what do we do,” Hilde asked, “if we win?”
“We worry about it when we win,” Horst said, dryly. The leaflets might have upset the government, but they hadn’t really threatened its grip on power. “You do realise the odds of us ending up hanging from meat hooks are alarmingly high?”
“True,” Gudrun said. She sounded more cheerful, although it was apparent that something was bothering her. “So… what do we do about the unions?”
“I can use the computer network to spread the word,” Sven offered. “The corporations are quite dependent on computers, these days, and their security is terrible. Blinking messages through the network shouldn’t be that hard.”
“Then do it,” Gudrun said.
“Do more than that,” Horst said. He smiled, rather coldly. “Put out rumours as well, rumours that will be believed. The corporations are about to cut wages, again; the demand for production is about to skyrocket… rumours that will be believed by the people at risk.”
“Perhaps even add a suggestion that hundreds of workers are going to be fired,” Gudrun offered. “Maybe even replaced with Untermenschen.”
Sven looked doubtful. “They wouldn’t believe that, would they?”
Horst snorted. “What makes you think the corporations wouldn’t replace their labour force with Untermenschen if they thought they could get away with it?”
“Write out a list of rumours and start spreading them,” Gudrun said.
“We need more than that,” Horst said. “People will only move if they believe that they will not move alone, Gudrun. We need to create a legend. We need something people will believe in, an organisation that unites all the disparate interest groups against the government.”