“We couldn’t,” Voss said.
“We could at least try to break their morale,” Holliston said. “If they resist… we’re no worse off than we already are.”
“We’d have allowed them to see their strength,” Hans said, exasperated. “And that will undermine us more than the financial crisis.”
He gave Holliston a long considering look. “It may be time to start considering other ways to save money and put the Reich on a firmer footing,” he added. “Perhaps it is time to bring the war in South Africa to an end.”
“Out of the question,” Holliston thundered. “If we leave, Pretoria will go under and the niggers will rule South Africa. And then Germany South will fall. And then the French, Italian and Spanish empires will fall. And then there will be a black tide washing at the southern coastline of Europe!”
“It’s rather more likely that they’ll have a civil war,” Stresemann said. “The blacks are split into multiple different factions. Several of them are centred around tribes that are only working together because they see the Afrikaners as a worse threat. If the war comes to an end, if they win their freedom, they might start killing each other instead of threatening our borders.”
“The black population of Germany South will take heart from our surrender,” Holliston insisted. “And it will be a surrender! Adolf Hitler himself insisted that not one jot of German land was to be surrendered to the barbarians.”
“Hitler did understand the value of a tactical withdrawal,” Stoffregen reminded him. “It isn’t as if the land won’t be recaptured one day.”
“This isn’t a limited tactical withdrawal to buy time,” Holliston said, coldly. He held up a hand before any of the military officers could correct him. “I know; we often fell back when the Russians lunged at us during the war, just to allow their advance time to stall before we counterattacked and retook the territory, destroying their forces as we advanced. But here, we would be abandoning a government that shares our ideals. Our enemies will not hesitate to take notice.
“Vichy France is already under pressure from its own people. If we abandon South Africa, the French will assume that we will abandon the Vichy Government and rise up against it, forcing us to intervene. The war in South Africa may be bad, but it will be far worse if we have to fight an insurgency in the south of France. Fighting will spill over into our territories and the results will be disastrous. And Spain, Italy and Greece will go the same way. To surrender South Africa risks surrendering the entire Reich.
“And the Americans will not hesitate to take advantage of our weakness. They will ship weapons into France, allowing the French to shoot down our aircraft and destroy our tanks; they may even slip weapons into Germany itself, passing them on to the Gastarbeiters in their camps. We cannot give up now or we will lose everything!”
So we go in a circle, Hans thought. We cannot arrest the rebels, nor can we grant their demands. What the hell do we do?
“We use pressure to convince the trade unionists to give up,” Holliston said. “And we pull out all the stops in searching for this… this Sigrún! We launch a full-scale propaganda campaign to convince the population that the Valkyries will eventually lead Germany to its doom. We make it damn clear that the war in South Africa is necessary!”
“That would force us to admit that we underestimated the situation,” Hans pointed out, smoothly.
“Then let us make that admission,” Holliston snapped. “Let us admit to the mistake, let us put our justification in front of the people and let the true Germans see what has to be done.”
Hans frowned. “And if they reject the arguments?”
“We control the mass media,” Holliston said. “The Valkyries have to sneak around the computer network and leave their damnable leaflets in libraries or hidden under seats on the trains. We’ve even arrested a couple of idiots carting them around the city. They cannot compete with us when it comes to speaking to the people.”
“And yet the people are more likely to believe them,” Hans said. “We were caught lying, Karl. It’s hard to regain trust when you lose it so roughly.”
“Then we tell them why we lied,” Holliston said. “Because there’s no other way to tackle the problem.”
Hans sighed, inwardly, as the councillors started to vote. Holliston, damn the man, had offered them an alternative to either making massive budget cuts or surrendering some of their power. They believed him because they wanted to believe him, because they hoped there was a way out of the crisis without tearing the Reich apart. And nothing he could say would make a difference.
He cursed under his breath as Holliston flashed him a look of triumph, once the voting was over. Who knew? Maybe Holliston was right. But the figures didn’t lie. No matter how he looked at it, there was no way to avoid a major budgetary crisis forever. Indeed, he suspected the crisis would be impossible to hide in less than a month…
…And who knew what would happen then?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Berlin, Germany
12 August 1985
“The manager wants to see you,” the secretary said curtly, as Volker Schulze entered the factory. “You’re to go straight to him. No detours along the way.”
Volker Schulze nodded. He’d expected to be hauled up in front of the factory’s manager sooner rather than later. Indeed, he was surprised it hadn’t already happened. There was always some ass-licking bastard willing to rat out his fellows for money or a chance at promotion. But, given the sheer number of workers in the new union and the rumours spreading through the grapevine, he suspected that management was passing the buck higher and higher up the chain. The manager of the factory couldn’t even muster the initiative to wipe his own ass without orders in triplicate from his superiors.
“I’ll be along in a moment,” he said. His eyes found Joachim as he entered the factory and gave him a significant look. They’d had a week to come up with contingency plans for when management finally decided to do something about the union and they were, he suspected, about to find out just how good they were. “I’ll have to leave my coat in the cloakroom…”
“Now,” the secretary said. Someone must have bawled him out for his role in helping to arrange the first union meeting, even though he hadn’t had the slightest idea what had actually been going on. Volker Schulze would have felt sorry for him if the secretary hadn’t been such a pissy little man. “The manager wants to see you at once.”
Volker Schulze mouthed orders at Joachim, then turned and allowed the secretary to lead him up the stairs to the management offices. He’d only entered them twice before, back when he’d been a loyal foreman; he’d had to defend two workers who had been on the verge of being fired for problems beyond their control. He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of doubt as he passed through a solid wooden door that was normally locked, even though he’d made his plans and discussed them with his wife. If he’d misjudged the situation – and he knew all too well just how ruthless the government could be – he was in deep trouble.
They can’t afford to punish all of us, he reassured himself. A week had given him time to spread the idea of independent unions far and wide. His was still the best-organised, but others were growing in size and power. They need us to man the factories and produce their guns and butter.