His smile grew wider. “And they certainly will have problems once our stay-behind cells come out of hiding.”
Gudrun took a moment to put it all together. “Won’t that encourage atrocities against the civilian population?”
“Yes,” Voss said, flatly. “Would you rather lose Berlin? And, with it, any hope of preserving your revolution?”
He is not my father, Gudrun reminded herself, sharply. The tone - the voice he used to address a silly little girl - was far too close to her father when he was in a bad mood, but her father was ... well, her father. It was his job to keep her from making stupid mistakes, even ones as minor as adding two and two together and getting five. And he should not be talking to me like that.
She leaned forward, speaking in an icy tone she would never have dared use to her real father. “And would you prefer to see countless civilians killed?”
“I would prefer to see the SS vanish,” Voss said. He sounded oddly amused - and, for a second, she saw a flash of respect in his eyes. “But we have to deal with the reality we have, not the reality we want. And the reality we have is that failing to make life difficult for the SS’s logistic officers is going to cost us badly. Allowing them to mass their firepower against Berlin will be disastrous.”
“I understand the costs,” Schulze said, quietly. “And we have no choice.”
The hell of it, Gudrun knew, was that they were right. Horst had taught her enough about logistics for her to understand their argument. But, at the same time, she knew what would happen to any innocent civilians caught nearby. The reports from the east were an endless liturgy of horror. They’d be tortured, raped and finally killed. If the SS had ever hoped to win hearts and minds - and she found it rather unlikely - that hope had long since faded.
She closed her eyes in pain. Horst had explained, more than once, that the easterners regarded the westerners as soft, but she’d never really understood it. The Reich had never been noticeably more liberal in Germany Prime. Indeed, the only place where there had been any real hint of liberalism had been Germany South ... and, even there, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time was more than enough to get someone sent to a concentration camp and brutally murdered. But it didn't really matter. Whatever the cause, the easterners held the westerners in contempt. And that contempt was pushing them to commit atrocities.
Voss cleared his throat. “I don’t promise victory,” he said. “But as long as they don’t make a major breakthrough, we should be able to hold the line.”
“Except that we already have rats within the walls,” Admiral Wilhelm Riess said. The head of the Abwehr scowled at Voss. “They have at least one team of commandos in Berlin, perhaps more.”
“We have doubled security at all vulnerable points and mounted a number of raids on suspect households,” Voss said, sharply. “There is little else we can do.”
“They are already spreading SS propaganda,” Riess announced, loudly. He pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his briefcase and unfolded it, holding it in the air so they could see the words. “This was found near a recruiting station.”
He gave Gudrun a sharp look. “They clearly learned a few things from you.”
Gudrun scowled as she read the poster. It wasn’t much, merely a reminder that the SS was coming and all those who stood against their advance would be branded traitors, but the mere fact that someone had managed to put it in place was worrying. And yet, it would be easier for the SS than it had been for her, back when the underground movement had been starting out. There were fewer policemen on the street and a growing tradition of questioning uniformed authority.
“And this isn't the worst of it,” Riess continued. He reached back into his briefcase. “My men caught a handful of brats distributing these!”
Gudrun frowned as Riess produced a handful of leaflets and placed them on the table. She took one and read it, quickly. The basic message was identical to the poster, but there was an offer of conditional amnesty for anyone who deserted the provisional government or simply turned on their comrades, when the main offensive began. She had no idea how many people would be tempted, yet - as the noose tightened around Berlin - she had a feeling that far too many people would be very tempted indeed.
“I see,” Schulze said. “And what did the distributors have to say?”
“Very little,” Riess admitted. “They were refugee children, already on the verge of starvation. Their families were to be given additional foodstuffs if their children distributed the leaflets around Berlin. We have rounded up and interrogated the families, but they don't seem to know anything useful. We need tighter security.”
“Which we do not have the manpower to provide,” Voss snapped. “If we put more soldiers on the streets, we take them away from the front lines.”
“Then we need to expand our counter-intelligence network,” Riess snapped back. “The SS handled all such matters and the SS is gone!”
Gudrun groaned, inwardly, as the pieces fell into place. It was a power grab. The Abwehr - military intelligence - had long resented its subordination to the SS, although - unlike the Gestapo - it had managed to retain a separate identity. Expanding the Abwehr’s counter-intelligence responsibilities would give Riess far more power, which he could use to push himself into prominence. Why not? Himmler had done the same and, before the uprising, the SS had been one of the most powerful factions in Germany.
And if we let the Abwehr grow in power, she thought numbly, how long will it be before we have a new master?
She shuddered at the thought. She’d always had mixed feelings about the SS, but after reading some of the files she'd discovered just how far the SS had worked its way into the warp and weft of German politics. Politicians, military officers and bureaucrats had been steadily brought under the SS’s sway, bribed or blackmailed into supporting its decisions and enforcing its rules. She’d been taught to fear the informer from a very early age - like all German children - but she’d never imagined that high-ranking politicians could feel the same way. It had simply never crossed her mind.
“This is not the time to expand the Abwehr’s responsibilities,” Voss said. “We need to locate and remove other SS informers within the ranks.”
“And someone within the ranks may be helping them,” Riess pointed out. “Tracking down the commandos within Berlin might lead us to the informers.”
“I highly doubt they will allow themselves to be taken alive,” Voss sneered. “These men are trained to avoid capture.”
Schulze tapped the table. “This is a decision for another time,” he said. “Right now, the police are attempting to track down the commandos.”
“The police,” Riess said. He sounded scornful. “The Berlin police couldn't organise a drunken rampage in a brewery, let alone find an experienced SS commando cell!”
“Nonetheless, they are all we have,” Schulze said. “Training your people to serve an expanded counter-intelligence function would take too long.”
Riess sat back, looking cross. Gudrun eyed him, wondering just what was going through his head. Irritation at having his power grab shot down so quickly, frustration at failing to take advantage of the chaos to benefit himself ... or genuine concern? There was no reason why Riess couldn't be worried about the SS commandos, even if he was inclined to use their existence to benefit himself. The SS and the Abwehr had been enemies for so long that Riess didn't have any hope of survival if Berlin fell.
Karl Holliston will purge everyone who isn't willing to pledge themselves to the SS, she thought. And he won’t trust the military at all.
Schulze cleared his throat. “Are there any other matters of concern?”
“The food stockpiles are under pressure,” Kruger said, flatly. “Right now, there is no hope of bringing in food from outside the blockade. Assuming that our remaining warehouses do not come under attack, we have enough food to feed the city for roughly one month at current rations. I believe we can stretch that out to two months if we cut rations to e
veryone, but the men on the front lines.”
“That will certainly cause problems within the city,” Gudrun said, quickly.
“Yes, it will,” Kruger acknowledged. “Quite apart from riots, there will be long-term health problems. Cutting food supplies to pregnant women, for example, may damage the babies in the womb. Cutting food supplies to children will cause other problems.”
Gudrun shuddered. She had a feeling she knew exactly what the SS would do, faced with the same situation. Round up everyone who was nothing more than a useless mouth - the old, the infirm - and execute them. No, murder them. Grandpa Frank had been a horror, a blight on his family, but she recoiled in horror at the thought of murdering him. He’d died a hero, perhaps making up for the sins of his past ... how many others would be denied the same chance, if they were killed out of hand. There was no way she could condone such a solution.
And yet, the nasty part of her mind whispered, is it not better that they should die, so that the rest of us may live?
She told that part of her mind to shut up and leaned forward. “What will happen if we cut rations later - say two weeks from now?”
“Impossible to tell,” Kruger said. “The only real case study we have comes from Leningrad, where the city practically starved itself to death before the defences finally collapsed. I have no idea just how long the public will remain calm, particularly since we don’t have enough manpower to squash any riot before it gets out of hand. Right now, with the population already aware that governments can be overthrown ...”
Gudrun had no trouble filling in the blanks. A starving population, desperate for succour, rising up against the provisional government. Soldiers, forced to choose between shooting their families and turning on the government, attacking the Reichstag. And the SS watching the chaos from a safe distance, then stepping in to restore order and impose its own peace once the infighting came to an end. It had happened before, after all, when Kurt and his men turned their weapons on the SS stormtroopers before the Reichstag. And if they were unlucky, it would happen again.
It isn't fair, she told herself, sharply. We wanted to change the world.
And you did, her own thoughts replied.
“We will lower rations for those who can handle it,” Schulze said. His voice was very flat, betraying no emotion. “And we will go on short rations too.”
Voss leaned forward. “Do you think the public will believe us if we say we’re on short rations?”
“We have to try,” Schulze said. “And we are not going to be holding banquets when people are starving in the streets.”
Gudrun wondered, darkly, just how many other politicians were going to follow his example and go hungry. The black market had been a feature of Berlin life for decades, run - she hadn't been surprised to discover, after the uprising - by a number of high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats. It wouldn't be long before someone started trying to sell off government supplies, even if there was a war on. Hell, she wouldn't be surprised to discover that someone was already doing it.
There will be families trading everything they own, just for a can of preserved meat, she thought, bitterly. And girls forced to prostitute themselves for a bite to eat.
“Warn your people,” Schulze added, addressing the whole room. His voice was firm, warning them that there were limits. “I will not tolerate anyone breaking the united front in any way. The only thing keeping the people from turning on us is the awareness that we are suffering too.”
Except we are down in the bunker and the people upstairs are not, Gudrun thought. And the snipers are still looking for targets.
“The people of Berlin haven’t known privation in a very long time,” Voss pointed out. Horst had raised the same concerns, Gudrun recalled. “Do they have the drive to hold out?”
“Let us hope so,” Schulze said. He smiled, rather dryly. “Because if they don't, we are all about to die.”
Chapter Thirty
Berlin, Germany Prime
8 October 1985
Gudrun felt a stab of guilt, despite the gnawing pain in her stomach, as she walked towards the car, Horst following her. The hospital was crammed with casualties, soldiers wounded in the ongoing battle for Berlin. Their words haunted her, leaving her wondering if she had done the right thing after all. How many young men were dead - or crippled - because of her? And how many wives and girlfriends were never going to see their menfolk again - or would wish, afterwards, that their menfolk had died rather than returned as cripples?
She shuddered, bitterly. Some of the men had cursed her, others had been so lost in their pain that it was hard to tell who - if anyone - they were talking to. She’d heard a young man - younger than her, she thought - screaming for his mother as the doctors fought to save his life, watched helplessly as an older man begged to be killed rather than be forced to live without his legs. And the nurses - and the young girls who had volunteered to assist in the hospital - slowly giving into despair as more and more wounded flowed into the hospital.
I thought it was bad when Konrad was in hospital, Gudrun thought, fighting down the urge to start crying. But this is far worse.
“It isn't your fault,” Horst said, quietly. The car lurched to life, the driver steering them onto the road. Civilian traffic had been banned the day the SS finally surrounded Berlin, leaving the streets clear. “It wasn't you who decided to invade Germany Prime.”
Gudrun shook her head slowly, blinking away tears. Kurt was on the front lines; Kurt, her bigger brother who had alternatively tormented her and protected her. Kurt, who had helped her sneak into the hospital ... had it really only been a few scant months ago? It felt like an eternity had passed between the girl she’d been and the woman she had become. And if Kurt was wounded or killed, she didn't know what she’d do. The thought of being responsible for her brother’s death was horrifying.
“I know,” she breathed. Horst wrapped a warm arm around her, heedless of the driver’s presence. “But it doesn't feel that way.”
She leaned into his arm, but said nothing as the car finally reached the Reichstag and passed through two checkpoints before driving into the garage. Security had been tightened, again, as the fighting wore on. The SS commando cell hadn't launched any big attacks, thankfully, but a handful of policemen had been killed on the streets and a pair of soldiers badly wounded by a makeshift bomb. Gudrun’s father had said that the attacks might not be the work of trained professionals - there was an amateurish feel about the incidents that suggested inexperience - but there was no way to be sure. Either way, the original group of commandos hadn't gone away. They would be planning something.
And Horst hasn't heard anything since the fighting began, she thought. Who knows what that means?
She tossed possibilities around in her mind as they walked up to her bedroom. They might assume that Horst couldn't sneak out of the Reichstag without being noticed ... or they might have finally realised that Horst had turned against them. If the latter ... Gudrun wouldn't have bet on his survival, if he fell into their hands. The SS regarded betrayal as the worst of all sins. Horst would be executed, once they knew he was guilty. And who knew if anyone would be told what had happened to him?
It was hard to care, in her state, just who saw Horst following her into the room. The staff had probably noticed something, by now; they knew she’d shared both the upper bedroom and the bunker suite with him. Her father would be furious if rumours got out, she knew, but she was too tired to worry about it. And besides, her parents approved of her prospective marriage. That, at least, was a weight off her mind.
“It isn't your fault,” Horst said, as Gudrun sat down heavily. “The SS made its own choices.”
He moved behind Gudrun and began to massage her neck. “None of this is your fault.”
“I don’t feel that way,” Gudrun said. She felt too hungry to do anything, but sit. She’d noticed how the price of food was slowly rising, long before the uprising, yet she’d never really been hungry. Little
flickers of hunger, caused by turning down school food, were nothing compared to the gnawing pain in her chest. “How many people are going to die because of me?”
“It would have happened anyway,” Horst said. He let go of her neck and walked around the chair, kneeling in front of her. “The Reich was heading for a fall long before you were born.”
Gudrun swallowed. She found it hard to imagine what it had been like in 1944, when the Reich and the British Empire had finally signed a truce. Or in 1940-41, when panzers had rolled into France and Russia. Or even in 1919, when Germany had been unfairly blamed and penalised for all the woes of the world. Her history teachers had told her that Germany had been betrayed, from within and without, but now ... the Reich might have built a towering edifice, yet they’d built on very shaky ground.
“Kruger said as much,” she said. “But I don't believe it.”
Horst reached out and took her hands, holding them gently in his. “Gudrun,” he said, very quietly. “Gudrun ... will you marry me?”
Chosen of the Valkyries (Twilight Of The Gods Book 2) Page 30