“You’re not old enough to remember what it was like after,” Reuters argued, almost pleading now as he realised he was losing the will to fight. “Die Amerikaner… die Russen… you never knew the devastation they left us with…!”
“Wilhelm was old enough,” Schiller observed pointedly, never for a moment realising it might’ve been the first time he’d ever referred to Hegel by his given name. “Where’s he, now…? No…” Schiller admitted, his voice almost breaking with emotion. “You’re right, I never knew any of that… You, I could understand, Kurt… you suffered through all of that and so much more…” He gave a hollow laugh that carried no mirth whatsoever. “But what reason should I have to be a party to this…? ‘Just following orders’…? Let them put that on my headstone, eh, with the SS and the Gestapo and all the rest…?”
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of,” Reuters conceded uncomfortably, those final terrible screams from inside that Buchenwald interrogation cell impossible to forget. “We’ve all blood on our hands…”
“But you’ve never actually pulled the trigger, have you, Kurt?” Schiller accused darkly, his mind suddenly clouded by terrible images of Hess, Göring, Bormann and Zeigler, shot to death and lying dead in pools of their own blood as he stood over them with a smile of cold satisfaction on his lips. “There’s real blood on my hands…” He continued in soft, horrified tones and a shudder in his voice. “Blood enough to cry ‘Out, damn’d spot!’ and go on washing them for all eternity like Lady Macbeth… Who indeed might’ve thought those old men should have so much blood in them…?” Without realising it, Schiller was actually wringing his hands obsessively as they lay in his lap, a fact that caused the Reichsmarschall even greater unease.
“We did not cause this…!” Reuters insisted angrily, clinging to the one thread of partial truth he had left. “We didn’t do any of this…!”
“It’s not about that, don’t you understand…?” Schiller demanded, tears in his eyes now as he reached crux of it all… the crux of everything he’d never before had the courage to speak of aloud. “We knew what was coming…! We could have stopped them… stopped them before all this insanity began…and instead we gave them guns and tanks and planes enough to conquer and hold an entire continent… forever…! It doesn’t matter that we didn’t cause any of this…” A single tear streaked down one cheek and disappeared beneath his jawline. “…What matters is that we did nothing to stop it… when we could have done so much…”
That his aide turned away then to once more stare out at the passing forest was a small mercy indeed as Reuters too turned his head aside, desperate to conceal the tears collecting at the corners of his own eyes.
What does he mean… real blood…? He mused with more than a little concern as he considered everything Schiller had just said. What has he done…? So perfectly tuned had the cold rationale of what they were doing become over the passing years that Reuters was able to completely dismiss the subject of The Holocaust in an instant. The obvious distress of an old friend however was more difficult to ignore. There was also a selfish fear growing within him now… the fear of a tired old man suddenly bereft of the one friend and companion he’d always been able to rely on. So much blood in those ‘old men’…? What has he done…?
Officer’s ward, Base Infirmary
RAAF Tocumwal, New South Wales
October 5, 1942
Monday
Max Thorne woke up late into that Monday morning after having experienced the first truly deep, refreshing sleep he’d had in so long that he couldn’t remember. A shower, a shave and a clean uniform were his morning priorities and by noon he’d been ready to walk out into the world once more, far more comfortable with a cloudy afternoon in the mid-twenties (centigrade) than he’d felt about the scorching heat of the day before. Having visited the officers’ mess just long enough to take the barest minimum of bland food required to replenish his energy, he subsequently spent the rest of that afternoon seated at Briony Morris’ bedside where she remained in the deep, motionless slumber of the truly exhausted.
She’d been suffering severe dehydration – for which she’d been given saline solution through an intravenous drip – and the bandages and sticking plasters on her exposed face and arms were testament to the injuries she’d suffered at the hands of Eddie Leonski. To say she was lucky to be alive in a purely medical sense would be stretching the truth somewhat, her close encounter with a serial killer notwithstanding, but she was weak and physically fragile for all that and in need of a great deal of rest and professional care.
The officer’s ward was small with just a dozen beds lining both sides of a bright, well-lit room that was carefully maintained by nursing and cleaning staff. A young doctor – a captain by rank – checked in on Briony on a regular basis, reservedly confident that she was physically going to be fine and for the rest of the time, Throne mostly lounged alone beside her bed in an old, padded armchair someone had scrounged up and kindly brought in.
As the afternoon moved on toward evening, he sat and hummed absent-mindedly along to anything that came to mind, but found that ultimately his thoughts kept coming back to that fragment of a tune Brandis had whistled softly to himself as he’d wandered off into the bush. A song he’d not thought of in many years, he softly whistled that same first few bars to himself now.
“Scorpions… nice…” Lloyd observed from the doorway, just out of Thorne’s peripheral vision as he stepped into the room.
“Yeah…” Thorne nodded with a faint smile, glancing around at the sound of his voice. “You a mind reader or something…?”
“Rupert mentioned you’d been asking around for a guitar,” Evan admitted with a grin, both hands full carrying his and Thorne’s instruments by their necks. “On a whim, I decided to pack these into the Extender before we left Iraq… somehow I knew you might be wanting it, and I wasn’t gonna let you get all the ‘applause’, was I?”
“You’re a good man, ‘Charlie Brown’…” Thorne acknowledged with a nod and a grin of his own, happily accepting the instrument as Lloyd walked over. “We got a ‘captive audience’ here… whaddya wanna play…?”
“What you were whistling’s good enough for a start,” Lloyd shrugged as he dragged a wooden chair across from beside an empty bed opposite and sat down on the other side of Briony. “Bit portentous isn’t it? What made you think of that song in particular?”
That bloody Brandis was whistling it as he buggered off…” Thorne replied sourly with a grimace as he recalled the circumstances of what had occurred the day before. “Right before the dirty prick blasted me with pepper spray…”
“If I recall your recounting of it correctly, you were threatening to shoot him… right after he basically saved your life….”
“You gonna play or what…?” Thorne growled, not appreciating having the obvious pointed out to him and changing the subject.
“It’s been a while, but I reckon I remember it…” Lloyd chuckled. “You can start off though – I can’t whistle for shit…”
After a moment spent plucking experimentally at the strings and carefully fine-tuning one or two of them, Thorne settled himself, took a breath and began to play, at the same time whistling the opening bars of The Scorpions’ iconic Winds of Change. Lloyd joined in after a bar or two, the two practised enough playing together to blend perfectly into a fine acoustic rendition as they began to sing.
The melodic sound spread to the neighbouring wards and within a minute or so, a doctor, a nurse and two of the more mobile of the infirmary’s patients had collected as an impromptu audience, standing in the open double-doorway through which Lloyd had entered earlier. Thorne saw none of it, eyes closed and lost in the music as he concentrated on the words and chords and Evan, the more experienced player of the two, took the lead with the guitar.
Released in the Realtime year of 1991, the Scorpions’ distinctive power ballad eventually became a worldwide hit and for many became an anthem for the spread o
f freedom throughout the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations of Europe. To Thorne it was all of that and more, and it always left his skin tingling with goose bumps whenever he sang or played it, his mind filled with images of the Berlin Wall coming down and the momentous end of a Cold War that had lasted the better part of half a century.
Somewhere between the second chorus and the bridge, Briony Morris stirred, sighed faintly and opened her eyes, her first sight that of Max Thorne seated right beside her, playing and singing with his eyes closed tight.
“My Jean Valjean…” she whispered softly, managing a weak smile as she listened to the haunting lyrics and the melody of two fine guitars. “He said you would sing to me…”
Lost in the music, Thorne heard nothing of her words. Lloyd, sitting on the opposite side of the bed, realised that she’d woken but decided to continue playing, seeing no reason to interrupt the moment unless absolutely necessary.
By the time Thorne had whistled out the final bars of the song, a gathering of eight or ten people in uniforms or hospital gowns had collected in that doorway, Alec Trumbull and Sergeant Langdale among them. The group were all smiling as the performance came to a close but no one applauded, the general, unspoken consensus seeming to be that quiet appreciation more suited the mood.
As Thorne finished and opened his eyes, he was mildly surprised to find Briony staring at him, smiling.
“Hey kiddo,” he ventured, forcing a thin smile of his own as he glanced self-consciously around and turned a fine shade of pink upon seeing the audience at the doorway. “Good to meet you, finally…”
“He said you’d sing for me…” she repeated weakly, still managing a smile in spite of a slew of bad memories flooding back to her from the last few days and weeks. “You sing good… sing well…” she croaked, unconsciously correcting her own grammar exactly as Brandis would’ve expected.
“You’re being far too kind,” he grinned back, filing away that particular piece of enigmatic information regarding James Brandis for future consideration with all the others piling up. Placing the guitar gently down on the floor by the chair, he slipped down onto one knee beside the bed until he was right beside her.
“Listen…” he began, not sure exactly how to break the news to her but knowing he had to “…your dad…” Already filled with the powerful emotion of playing the song, he was now finding himself a little vulnerable and overwhelmed by the idea of breaking even more bad news to a young woman who’d already lost so much.
“I know he’s dead,” she said quickly, her smile faltering then as she let him off the hook. “They’re all dead.” She rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling fan whirling slowly above the bed and fighting back the tears that wanted to come. “I don’t know if it’s God’s will or not, but I want to believe its all part of His plan…” She glanced toward him and caught the momentary flash of cynicism on his face. “I know you don’t agree… don’t believe… but that’s all right… you don’t have to…” She managed another smile that was fainter than before but there nevertheless. “I believe, and that’s all that matters…”
“Your dad saved my life…” Thorne continued haltingly, feeling an overpowering urge to provide more detail as a lump rose in his throat. “He sacrificed himself to save me…”
“Gospel of John, Chapter Fifteen, Verse Thirteen…” She ventured. “Father O’Donnell gave a sermon about it last week, talking about the war. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’…”
“He was a good man… he was… a friend…” Thorne agreed, his voice thick with emotion. “I made him a promise… I promised…” his voice broke then as he fought back the memories of a dying man in his arms in the desert.
“That you’d look after me…” She finished for him, sitting up awkwardly in her weakened state and throwing her arms around his neck before he could react and possibly pull back. She hugged him tightly, burying her head into his shoulder, and after a moment or two of awkward silence with him not knowing what to do about the situation, Max Thorne finally worked out there was only one thing he could do.
“Yes…” he croaked softly, barely audible as he belatedly raised his own arms and hugged her in return, accepting the consequences of the vow he’d made despite feeling completely and utterly inadequate to the task.
Most of those gathered at the door had wandered away by that stage, with just Trumbull and Langdale still standing there, looking on. As Evan Lloyd took his queue to leave, he rose from his seat as quietly as he was able and threw Thorne a silent not of acknowledgement as he moved across to stand with the rest of them. With a moment’s unspoken agreement, the trio turned as one and left the room, giving the man and girl time to talk and grieve in private.
On a side table in the hall, by the doorway, a Panasonic Model 31 Toughbook laptop lay momentarily forgotten, its ruggedized exterior casing vaguely scuffed and coated in a fine layer of dust. Realising it was missing just minutes later, the owner returned and lifted it quickly from the table, walking away down the hallway without a single word.
Port of Diego-Suárez
Island of Madagascar
October 9, 1942
Friday
Diego-Suárez, capital of Madagascar’s Diane Region, lay at the very northern tip of the island. Possessed of one of the largest deep water ports in the Indian Ocean, the city had been a French colony since the end of the Franco-Hova wars of the late 1800s, and following the French Capitulation of 1940 it had become an important naval base for the Vichy government and, as a matter of course, for the Kriegsmarine also.
With the Commonwealth nation of South Africa so close to the west, maintaining supplies and a credible military force had been difficult in the first years of the war, although the reduction of British power in North Africa and the constant predation of U-boats against Allied shipping in the South Atlantic had gone a long way toward securing the Vichy French hold on Madagascar in general, aided substantially by supplies of munitions and important raw materials via German allies in the Pacific region in the form of the Soviet Union and Japan.
Korvettenkapitän Theodor Detmers looked out from the bridge of the HSK Kormoran and took in the sunlit vista of the huge port anchorage that bright, cloudless morning. A selection of French and German warships of varying sizes lay at berth around him, ranging from coastal defence corvettes and destroyers right up to the heavy cruisers Blücher and Prinz Eugen and the compact but powerful ‘pocket battleship’ Admiral Graf Spee.
Of even greater interest to him was the presence of a relatively large number of Japanese naval vessels including the battleships Yamato and Hyuga and the light carrier Ryūjō: the Japanese had long sought to expand their power into the Indian Ocean and the reciprocal agreement of a Madagascan naval anchorage in exchange for a logistical supply chain to support the island had been considered a profitable trade for both parties.
One of those Japanese warships was tied up alongside at that very moment in a ‘reversed’ position, facing in the opposite direction. The cruiser Haguro was slightly longer than Kormoran and substantially faster, but she displaced a lesser tonnage than the huge, German raider and her sleek lines were somewhat dwarfed by its bulk. Forward of the bridge, Kormoran’s crew swarmed across the deck as a ship’s crane lifted one of the long, lead-encased RFR crates from the main hold and slowly, painstakingly transferred it across to the cruiser’s quarter deck where several dozen Japanese sailors waited eagerly to secure it.
“Just like losing a child…” Gerhard Fuchs observed sadly, standing beside Detmers and also watching the spectacle.
“My condolences to your wife…” Detmers countered drily, “…a boy, I presume…?”
“Well, perhaps not a child,” Fuchs grinned, “but you understand what I mean, I’m sure…” He shrugged. “Almost ten years of work to produce just three of these, and now this one has ‘flown the nest’.”
Three of these…? Detmers wondered silently, no more
the wiser as to what the huge crates held within but certain it was something incredibly important and possibly also something equally dangerous. …Then where is the other one…?
“Why not give them both to the Japanese and let them take them the rest of the way to Tokyo…?” The korvettenkapitän suggested instead with a faint growl, eager to have his ship freed up for its intended purpose of commerce raiding.
“Theodor, my friend, the answer to that is quite simple…” Fuchs answered with his characteristically infectious good humour. “That cruiser out there is not going back to Japan…”
“You never did tell me what’s actually in those crates,” Detmers pointed out, the previous remark drawing a raised eyebrow from him.
“No, I didn’t…” Fuchs replied, dancing about the subject with aplomb. “You know that’s classified, Theodor, but I promise you it won’t be too much longer before everyone knows…”
“We’ve had messages requesting we return to Deutschland… orders from most high…” he added pointedly, suddenly very concerned of the repercussions of ignoring those same orders.
“Not quite the ‘most high’ as you so eloquently put it, Theodor,” Fuchs countered, the lightness draining slightly from his tone now. You’ve seen the letter of authorisation I carry, and that is signed by the Führer himself… I think you’ll agree there’s none higher than that…? As I’ve already also explained, they do not come with the correct authorising code-words,” Fuchs continued, lightening his tone a little. “The enemy will make every effort to trick or mislead us, and we must remain determined and vigilant… We continue with our original orders…”
The ship hadn’t entered Diego-Suárez under its own flag. Flying a German ensign while attempting to transit the Horn of Africa would’ve been tantamount to suicide with the majority of the journey well within range of South African warships and maritime aircraft. Instead, they’d assumed the identity of another vessel entirely – a Norwegian vessel by the name of M/T Herborg that had been captured in the Indian Ocean just two weeks before by Thor, another German commerce raider.
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 113