He glanced at Adolf Bormann, sitting silently at the head of the table. Who knew what he was thinking? Karl would never have accepted such a title without the power that went with it, even though the Reich was determined to prevent another Hitler, another lone man wielding supreme power over Germany. But the civilians and the military would no longer be able to stand in his way, after the protest was brutally crushed. He would be Fuhrer, in fact as well as name, and he would lead Germany back to greatness…
…And the civilians, who had drained the Reich of the vitality it needed to survive, would be ruthlessly wiped from existence.
“So tell me,” Caius said, as they completed their shift and left the station. “How does it feel to have important relatives?”
Herman clenched his fists in rage – and helplessness. It was bad enough that everyone at the station knew his wife was one of the protesters – he wasn’t the only policeman whose wife had gone out onto the streets – but to have his daughter leading a student protest movement was unique. He didn’t know what to do about it. None of his sons had ever caused this much trouble. He’d remonstrated with her, pointing out the dangers of being arrested (again) or simply being expelled, then he’d beaten her and then he’d finally threatened to withdraw her from the university for good. But Adelinde had told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he ever wanted to see her naked again, he had to forget about removing Gudrun from the university. Herman didn’t know what to do about her either.
“Just you wait,” he said. Caius’s sons were in the military, if he recalled correctly; his daughters were still at school, too young to either marry or try to get into the university. “Your wife might be out on the streets too.”
“My wife has too much sense,” Caius said. He pulled a packet of cheap cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Herman, who took it with practiced ease. “And my daughters are too young to want to do anything more than keep their heads down and avoid the teachers.”
He sighed as he struck a match and lit the cigarettes. “But they’re already talking about quitting the BDM…”
Herman snorted, privately relieved that Gudrun had left the BDM last year. Kurt and Johan had both loved the Hitler Youth, but Siegfried hadn’t found it quite so enjoyable. He had a feeling that his youngest son, like many other teenagers, would start demanding to be allowed to quit soon enough – and if the BDM had been hard on a policeman’s daughter, he was sure it would have been worse for many other girls. How many teenagers would demand to be allowed to spend the time elsewhere, instead of being taught how to serve the Reich?
He breathed in the smoke as they walked past the front desk, through the armoured door and out onto the streets. Berlin felt different now, as if it were hanging on the knife edge between chaos and order, as if the population was no longer inclined to obey orders without asking questions and demanding answers first. It made him feel uneasy; he’d grown up in a world where saying the wrong thing could lead to jail or worse. Even spending most of his life in the military and police hadn’t cured him of the corrosive fear that he could say the wrong thing, in front of the wrong pair of ears, and wind up dead. And, even though children learned to be careful of what they said at school, his daughter was still standing up for the right to free speech.
She’s brave, he thought. And yet she’s naive.
It was a bitter thought. Gudrun had endured so much more than the lash of his belt, yet she had no conception of just how bad things could become. Herman knew; he’d been a paratrooper before leaving the military and joining the police. He knew the savage horrors of war – and the worse horrors unleashed by the SS, intent on keeping the government in power at all costs. If she was arrested a second time, after opening her mouth in front of hundreds of witnesses, there would be no mercy. She’d be lucky if the rest of her family wasn’t scooped up off the streets and marched into the concentration camps.
“I understand how they feel,” Caius said. “I had to beat the shit out of one of the matrons, after she hurt my daughter. None of them signed up for the BDM.”
And what happens, Herman asked himself again, to girls who don’t have powerful protectors?
It was easy to push Gastarbeiters around. He certainly didn’t feel any guilt about it. They were Untermenschen. No one in power would care if a handful got their skulls cracked, if they didn’t obey orders or merely looked at the policemen the wrong way. But it was different when the people on the streets were wives and children, ordinary Germans who had relatives in the police and the army. Herman would have cheered if an agitator was taken off the streets, until he’d discovered that his own daughter was one of them. He remembered feeling angry when Gudrun had come home sporting bruises, after playing games with the BDM; it would be worse, far worse, if she was beaten bloody by the police. And he was the police.
“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “Just be glad they’re not old enough to cause trouble yet.”
“Hah,” Caius said. He sounded bitter. “One of them is already suggesting a strike at school.”
Herman laughed, then sobered. It would take a brave child to stand up to the teachers at school – the teachers had little compunction about inflicting corporal punishment on their charges, if they misbehaved – but his son was brave. Poor Siegfried had two older brothers – and now one sister – to emulate. And Siegfried already knew the teachers weren’t particularly fair. Some of them lashed students because they enjoyed it, not because their victims deserved punishment.
He shuddered. His perfect family was gone. The world was changing. He no longer felt comfortable in the city he’d patrolled for the last fifteen years…
…And, in all honesty, he had no idea what was going to happen next.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Berlin, Germany
21 August 1985
“This just popped up on the network,” Sven said.
Horst glanced up, interested. He’d taken to spending more time with Sven over the last week, although the orders he’d received – after he’d made a carefully non-committal report to his handlers – had told him to stick close to Gudrun. Gudrun herself had claimed to be unconcerned, but Horst was fairly sure that was nothing more than bravado. She’d set herself up as a student leader, the student leader, and she couldn’t really allow herself to show fear.
And she keeps nagging me to teach her how to fight, he thought. But where can we do it without attracting attention?
He pushed the thought aside. “What is it?”
“It’s a note from a friend in the Finance Ministry,” Sven said. “Apparently, they’re going to cut the Mutterkreuz support payments completely.”
Horst leaned forward. “Are you sure?”
“The source has proven reliable before,” Sven said. “He was the one who provided us with the comparative price data.”
Horst frowned. The upside of all the students involved in protest movements, on one level or another, was hundreds of minds studying the government’s official statistics and comparing them with reality. It hadn’t taken long to realise that the real prices for everything from food to clothing were slowly creeping upwards, forcing families to spend more and more on basic necessities. Horst was no economist – it was a closed field to him – but he’d been taught the basics of budgeting at his stepfather’s knee. A person – or a family – simply couldn’t spend more than they earned.