“That girl looks very photogenic,” Marshall agreed. A young girl – she couldn’t have been older than eighteen – was perched on top of a burly worker, waving her shirt in the air, her breasts wobbling dangerously in her bra. “What keeps that bra on, do you think?”
“The eyes of every young man in the vicinity,” Andrew said. “But she isn’t the most important person here.”
He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of sympathy for the girl. It was unlikely she’d be molested, at least by the workers and her fellow students, but she might well be expelled from the university. The Reich had yet to embrace topless protests. Indeed, there were laws against revealing too much flesh in public. Even men were expected to wear knee-length shorts during the hotter months.
He frowned, inwardly, as they made their way down the street. It had been sheer luck – and a tip-off from a contact within the Ministry of Industry – that had got them into the factory complex before the police arrived and started to seal the whole area off. Andrew honestly wasn’t sure what the authorities would do next, particularly if the strikers refused to back down… and he suspected they couldn’t back down. Strikes were illegal, after all; the workers were expected to accept whatever their corporate masters saw fit to hand out. And then…
“Don’t start taking notes,” he warned, as he caught sight of Marshall reaching for his notebook. “They’ll just be taken away if we get arrested.”
Marshall paled. “I should have volunteered to go to South Africa instead,” he said. “This place is shit.”
“Just be glad you don’t live here,” Andrew muttered.
And that the Reich hasn’t yet realised the power of digital cameras, he added, silently. They may arrest us, they may smash the camera, but the photographs will get out. And then…?
Gudrun had never enjoyed marching in unison, not in school and not in the BDM. It was so… rigid, so controlled; children were punished for stepping out of line, for speeding up, for slowing down, for doing anything other than obeying orders without question. By the time she’d turned eighteen, she’d been so indoctrinated that it had taken her months to stop walking like a schoolgirl or jumping to attention whenever someone spoke to her in the voice of authority. Individuality was not encouraged.
But the protest march outside the factory gates was different. People – workers, students, civilians – milled around, chatting happily as they wandered backwards and forwards. A handful of men were trying to make speeches and protesters were listening or not as they chose. There was no compulsion, there was no threat of force… the crowd was brimming with a strange energy, a sense that they were free, that they could do anything. Gudrun knew she should be trying to speak herself, even though it would be far too revealing, but instead all she wanted to do was enjoy the sensation of acting out as part of a crowd. There were just too many of them to be arrested.
And if we’d all stood up to the matrons, she thought, perhaps the BDM would have been more fun.
It was a galling thought. She could see, with the advantage of hindsight, just how carefully they’d been indoctrinated into the organisation, which had been preparing them to be good little housewives and civilians. Those who had been different – the fat, the questioners, the dissidents – had been separated from the herd, then publicly punished and shamed in front of their peers. No one had wanted to stand up for them and take the risk of being punished too, even though the matrons would have had problems handling a mass rebellion.
Or they would just have sent us home with notes, she thought, sourly. Her parents would have been furious – and afraid – if she’d stood up to the matrons. Who knew what sort of attention it would muster? And our parents would have punished us for them.
She smiled as someone produced a jukebox and plugged it into the factory’s power supply, producing an American jazz song that was technically banned. The crowd looked shocked, then laughed; the sense of freedom was almost intoxicating. A dozen students began to dance, some of the girls pulling the male workers onto the streets and into the dance. Gudrun felt a flicker of bitter guilt – she’d only ever danced with Konrad, outside the stiffly formal dances they’d been forced to endure at school – and then pushed it away as a young worker held out a hand, inviting her to dance. Grinning, she took his hand and allowed him to lead her into the swing. It felt as though she was casting off a pair of invisible shackles.
And I am, she thought. Together, we can do anything.
Herman winced as a line of black vans appeared, driving down the road towards the barricades. The military policemen stopped just outside the roadblocks and scrambled out, brandishing their clubs and shields as they formed up into lines. A trio of armoured vehicles followed them, bristling with water cannons. He hoped desperately that the set of tubes on top of the vehicles were designed to launch gas canisters, rather than mortars. The crowds within the sealed zone were seemingly unarmed.
“Open the barricades,” their CO ordered. He was a grim-faced man who looked ready to do anything to restore order. “And stand ready to receive prisoners.”
Herman nodded and hurried to obey. It was hard to see their faces, under the black helmets they wore, but it didn’t look as though the military policemen were worried about what they were going to do. They looked … enthusiastic. It struck him, suddenly, that they would normally handle captured POWs and their families. German civilians would be a great deal safer than prisoners who knew they were going to the camps.
“This is going to be messy,” Caius predicted, as the military policemen marched through the barricade and down towards the factories. “Very messy.”
“I know,” Herman said. He had no sympathy for the strikers, but there were hundreds of innocents caught in the sealed zone. “God help them.”
Gudrun came to an embarrassed halt as the jukebox simply died, followed by the factory lights. She stared at her partner in shock for a long moment, then realised – as murmurs ran through the crowd – that someone must have turned off the electricity. She’d heard her father moaning about the cost of power often enough to know that the mains could be cut off in a power station, rather than at home, but she hadn’t realised it could happen to a factory too…
And then she heard a rattling sound echoing from the police barricades.
“Get into the gates,” someone shouted. “Get into the gates!”
It was too late. The striking workers were already closing the gates, readying themselves – she saw now – for an assault. She turned, realising in horror that the sense of freedom had vanished as the crowd started to scatter. The sound of armoured vehicles – and the steady rattling – was growing louder, bearing down on them from all directions. She heard a popping sound in the distance, followed by screams… what the hell were they doing? They weren’t shooting, she was sure… or were they? Maybe the government had just decided to gun down the strikers rather than try to negotiate.
She gritted her teeth, then turned and ran, pushing her way through the crowd towards the brick walls. She’d be safer there, she thought, but the sound was growing louder. The crowd recoiled around her; she saw, as she broke free, a line of black-clad men advancing towards them, banging their clubs against riot shields. They’d been paying attention in the Hitler Youth, her mind frantically noted; they might have been walking towards a panicking mob of civilians, but they were banging their shields in perfect unison. White mist surrounded them, blowing towards the crowd. Her eyes started to water as the mist surrounded her.