“That was stupid,” he hissed, as soon as they were alone. The walls were meant to be soundproofed, but he wouldn’t have bet money on them. A spy didn’t need an expensive bug to listen to a conversation, something he felt many in the Reich had forgotten. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I had to make sure the entire student body was moving in the same direction,” Gudrun said, defiantly. “Don’t I have reason to speak now?”
Horst was tempted to point out that the BDM also made sure the girls moved in the same direction, but bit down on the thought. Gudrun meant well, yet… she could have put him in terrible danger. And if he were to come under intense suspicion, he wouldn’t be able to do anything other than make a run for Switzerland and hope he got there ahead of the manhunt.
“Your father didn’t thrash you hard enough,” he said, instead. “What do I tell my superiors?”
Gudrun reddened. “My father has nothing to do with this!”
“My superiors do,” Horst snapped. “What do I tell them?”
“Just that you watched me give a speech,” Gudrun said. She paused, her face paling. “Or you could claim you weren’t there.”
“And if there was someone in the crowd I don’t know,” Horst said, “I would be exposed as a liar. They’d know I was lying to them and they’d start to wonder why.”
Gudrun looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I… I just got carried away.”
“Yes, you did,” Horst said. Was it worth a gamble? Was it worth pretending he wasn’t there when she made the speech? The risk would be appalling. Or… he took a breath. “Your speech isn’t exactly illegal, now.”
“No,” Gudrun said. She still looked pale. “They were kind enough to concede freedom of speech.”
“And you’re hardly the only one shooting her mouth off,” Horst added. “Maybe you can hide in the crowd.”
“There were others talking when I left,” Gudrun said. “They can’t arrest us all.”
Horst was tempted, very tempted, just to shake her. “No, they can’t,” he agreed. “But they know you already. They won’t hesitate to haul you in for the second time.”
“Then we have to keep running,” Gudrun said. Her voice was low, but grimly determined to carry on. “I might die – you might die – but the ideas we’re spreading will live on.”
“I hope you’re right,” Horst said. Gudrun was brave, he had to admit; he’d always thought that insane bravery was a male trait. “Because if you’re wrong, we’ll be hanging from meat hooks by the end of the day.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Berlin, Germany
20 August 1985
“We need to make budget cuts,” Hans said, flatly. “Now.”
“And there I was under the impression that making concessions would save us from having to make budget cuts,” Holliston sneered. “Haven’t we already tolerated far too much?”
Hans eyed him dubiously. The Reichsführer-SS sounded oddly unfocused, as if he was concentrating on some greater thought. Watching the spread of political activity across the Reich, from student debate clubs to industrial unions, hadn’t been easy for any of them, but the SS had been surprisingly muted about the whole affair. Hans had wondered if Holliston’s position was under threat, yet his sources within the RSHA hadn’t heard the slightest hint of dissent within the SS. He couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t a good sign.
“The problem is that the bills are finally coming due,” he said, pushing the thought aside for later consideration. The civilians and the military were, for the moment, united. It would take the SS weeks, perhaps months, to break the alliance and reassert their power. “The Americans are not helping. Their newspapers have been covering the protest movements in the Reich with great interest.”
“It isn’t as if they haven’t had riots of their own,” Voss pointed out. “What does their displeasure mean for us?”
“It means we can no longer buy anything on credit, if we can find anyone in America willing to sell to us,” Engelhard Rubarth said. The Foreign Minister looked tired. He’d been talking to his American and British counterparts non-stop over the last week. “Their corporations have to listen to their customers – and the American population. We’ve been told that several corporations will not be selling anything to us, even if we do pay up front.”
“They have agreements,” Holliston said. Oddly, it sounded more as though he was protesting because he thought he was supposed to protest. “Americans worship money. They signed contracts!”
“They may be willing to pay the penalties, if – of course – we can get an American court to rule in our favour,” Rubarth said. “Politically, Herr Reichsführer, their business with us is only a small fraction of their total sales. They cannot afford a boycott from their other customers.”
Hans tapped the table. “The Americans are not the only problem,” he said. “Thanks to the French, thanks to the protest movements, thanks to the strikes, we’re looking at a major cash shortage over the next month. There is no way the cracks can be papered over any longer.”
“Seize cash from the major corporations,” Holliston suggested. “They have reserves, do they not?”
“That would destroy our economy,” Hans said. It didn’t help that many corporations kept their money in Swiss banks, rather than the Reich. “Their reserves are simply not great enough to cover the holes in our budget. We have to stop the cash outflow.”
“The military budget cannot be cut while we have a war on,” Voss insisted. “We need new equipment and weapons for South Africa.”
“And we shouldn’t stop paying our fighting men now,” Holliston added, darkly. “Who knows which way they’ll jump?”
Hans silently cursed his predecessors under his breath. The Reich’s economy had been a hodgepodge of competing factions ever since Adolf Hitler had risen to power, so weak that a single military defeat would probably have started a cascade reaction of failures that brought the entire system down. Even after the war had been won, even after the Reich had settled down to stripping Europe bare of everything from manpower to raw materials, the system was a mess. Cutting the budget in one place would have nasty effects in another.
And if we cancel the new aircraft carrier, he thought, we’ll put thousands of trained workers out of work.
It wasn’t the only problem, of course. He had never anticipated – none of them had ever anticipated – dissent within the military, the police and perhaps even the SS itself. The rot had spread far – endless anticorruption campaigns had produced no solid results – but he’d always believed that corruption was manageable. He’d never suspected the police would be reluctant to do their jobs, just because their wives and children were on the streets. In hindsight, it had been a major oversight. And cutting the wages of the men who kept the Reich in order would be cutting their throats.