“That’s not the point,” Kurt said. “The point is that I got her number.”
He didn’t say anything else until they walked through the doors and escaped into the streets, heading towards a flat belonging to a friend. Their father would have asked far too many questions if Gudrun had returned home wearing a nurse’s uniform – and, being a cop, was far too practiced at sniffing out lies. He would demand the whole story, then explode with fury at the risk they’d taken.
“You need to keep this to yourself,” he warned. “If someone is trying to keep this a secret…”
“I know the dangers,” Gudrun said. She had a vague plan forming in her mind, but nothing solid, not yet. And she couldn’t share her thoughts with her brother. “And I know the risks.”
Chapter Three
Reichstag, Berlin
17 July 1985 (Victory Day)
There were times, Hans Krueger thought as he walked into the meeting room, that it would probably be easier to handle decisions if the Big Three met in private, hammered out a set of compromises and then presented it to the rest of the Reich Council as a fait accompli. It would certainly take less time, with less outraged shouting. But it was impossible. The different branches of the military would certainly want their say, the different government ministries would have their own opinions about matters and even the SS, for all it tried to present a monolithic face to the world, had its dissidents. There was no way to accommodate them all, save for inviting all the principles to the meetings.
And that tends to mean that nothing gets done, he reminded himself sourly. The only consolation was that formal protocol was practically non-existent. By the time we’re finished arguing, it’s time for dinner and then we resume arguing after dinner.
He sighed, inwardly, as he sat down and accepted a cup of coffee from the attendants. The remainder of the seats were filling up fast; the uniformed heads of the military, the ministers wearing fancy suits and the SS, clumped together at one end of the table. Hitler might have been a great man – Hans knew better than to think otherwise, even in the privacy of his own mind – but he’d never established a formal governmental structure to handle the vastly expanding Reich. Instead of an organised system, where power and responsibility were roughly equal, he’d presided over a hundred different fiefdoms, keeping them at loggerheads so his rule remained unchallenged. And when Hitler died, the wheels had threatened to come off the whole ramshackle structure.
And it was sheer luck that Himmler was convinced not to try to seize power for himself, Hans thought, glancing down towards Karl Holliston. The Reichsführer-SS would happily seize supreme power, if he thought he could get away with it. Then, the military would have opposed the SS, purely out of instinct. Now… who knows which way everyone will jump.
The attendants finished pouring coffee and withdrew, closing the doors behind them with a loud thump. Hans allowed himself a grim smile. They were in the most secure room in the Reich – the security team protecting the complex was the most capable in Germany – and yet, the true threat lay within. Just how many of the men at the table would make a bid for power if they thought they could succeed? Hans wouldn’t – he knew how hard it would be to rule the Reich alone – but he had a feeling he was the only one. Everyone else? The lure of supreme power was very alluring.
He kept his face impassive as the Fuhrer rose to his feet. “This meeting is now called to order,” Adolf Bormann said, turning to face the giant portrait hanging from the wall. Hans had to admit Bormann could give pretty speeches, but little else. “Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler,” Hans echoed.
And everywhere else, it would be Heil Bormann, he thought, as Bormann sat back down. But not here, not where we can’t risk allowing his head to swell.
“I move we address the war in South Africa,” Holliston said, quickly. “Victory Day has, as always, given us a boost. We must take advantage of it before it is gone.”
Hans exchanged glances with Field Marshal Justus Stoffregen, Head of OKW, who nodded once. The military, therefore, wanted to discuss the war too. Hans had a whole folder of economic issues that had to be addressed, but there was no point fighting an unwinnable battle against both the military and the SS. Besides, it would give him an opportunity to let Holliston make his points and then undermine the bastard. The SS man simply didn’t understand the cold economic realities that were steadily undermining the Reich.
Holliston leaned forward. “The South African War is approaching a climax,” he said, as if he hadn’t said the same thing at the last four meetings of the Reich Council. “We have taken losses, but we are pressing the rebel insurgents hard and persistently weakening their grip on their fellow blacks. They are steadily being worn down.”
He paused, waiting to see if anyone would object. Hans, who had quite a few private agents reporting to him from South Africa, could have disputed that rosy picture, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Better to let the SS man store up trouble for himself. Besides, he knew all too well what lurked behind the cold figures. Men and women killed, children rounded up and herded into concentration camps, towns and villages burned to the ground for daring to hide insurgents… no wonder the blacks were fighting desperately. They were caught between freedom and total extermination.
And thousands of our own men are dead, he thought, coldly. The general public doesn’t have the slightest idea just how many soldiers have been killed – or wounded – in South Africa.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought, he reflected. The Reich had no elections, no way for the civilians to express their feelings about the war. No one had quite realised just how badly public opinion, such as it was, would be shocked about the Balkan War. The public hadn’t given a damn about slaughtered Jews or Muslims, of course, but telling them just how many Germans had been killed in the fighting had been a mistake. It wasn’t one the SS intended to repeat.
“However, we have a major problem,” Holliston continued. “Pretoria is not as enthusiastic about the war as we would prefer.”
“Unsurprising,” Hans commented, dryly. “We are, after all, fighting a savage war of peace on their territory.”
Holliston gave him a sharp look. “We have gathered evidence that suggests the South Africans are on the verge of betraying us,” he snapped. “Pretoria has been in private communications with Oliver Tambo and, apparently, attempting to come to some sort of agreement. Furthermore, Tambo and his bunch of terrorists would not have escaped if Pretoria had acted swiftly to reinforce the parachutists who attacked the bastard’s territory. I believe they hesitated in the hopes that Tambo would escape.”
“And succeeded, if that were the case,” Field Marshal Gunter Voss commented.
“They would presumably not have wished to restart negotiations with a new leader,” Hans mused. “Tambo is hardly the worst they could have had to deal with.”
He scowled, inwardly. Pretoria’s apartheid system had a great deal in common with the Third Reich, but the white population of South Africa made up only a tenth of the population, even though Pretoria had been working hard to lure immigrants from Spain, Italy, France and even Greece. The whites were, quite simply, badly outnumbered and every year they failed to crush the rebels, every little rebel success that helped to bleed Pretoria white, worsened their position. It was hard to blame Pretoria for looking for a way out of the war that allowed them to salvage something.