Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  And yet we have no choice, but to gamble, she thought, sourly. To try to ensure that the next government in Germany is friendly to us.

  It was an unpleasant thought, but she faced it squarely. Britain had always had problems when one power dominated the European mainland, from Philip of Spain to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. A single bloc dominating Europe would always be a threat, even if relations were superficially friendly. But there was no way to break up the Reich, not without risking nuclear war. She doubted the French or any of the other subject nations could break free on their own ...

  ... And even if they did, it would be decades before they could serve as counterbalances to German power.

  She turned her head, gazing up towards the portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. The artist had depicted him in Ten Downing Street, although he’d clearly not bothered to look at any photographs of the office that might have been taken when Churchill had actually been Prime Minister. But that was of no account. Churchill had been forced out of office for wanting to continue the fight, after Russia fell; he’d warned, desperately, that it wouldn't be long before Hitler would seek to jump across the English Channel and take London. But no invasion had ever materialised.

  What would you do, she asked the image silently, if you faced the same choice as I?

  It was a conundrum, she admitted privately. Britain - and America - could support the Berlin Government, yet the Berlin Government might prove to be a menace in its own right. She had no illusions about the sheer power of the German military, although reports from the front lines suggested that some long-held beliefs had been grossly overstated. But a victory for the government in Germanica would unleash a nightmare. She’d never actually met Karl Holliston, but she’d heard enough about him to be sure that he was planning to purge everyone on the other side.

  At best, Germany will be badly weakened, she thought, dryly. It wasn't much, but it was something. She intended to cling to it if she was ever called upon to justify her decisions. But at worst, we’ll unleash a nuclear holocaust.

  It had not been easy for her to send the Royal Navy to the Falklands or to use the police and security services to break the miners. She'd known that people would get hurt - and while she was disinclined to care about enemy soldiers and communist subversives, she did worry about her own people. It was nearly seventy years since the Great War, but the British Government still remembered just how many young men had been killed. No government could hope to survive a callous approach to British casualties ...

  ... And with nuclear weapons involved, the prospect of millions of people being killed was terrifyingly high.

  But Holliston had stepped right across the line. He hadn't launched nuclear missiles at America or blown up a French city for defying him. He’d killed thousands of German soldiers and risked the lives of untold numbers of soldiers and civilians. Margaret had seen the projections. There was a very good chance that nuclear material would be blown over Berlin, sentencing the population to long lingering deaths. And Warsaw was even closer to the blasts ...

  And Warsaw was on his side, Margaret thought. He sentenced thousands of his supporters to a hellish doom.

  She sighed as she stood. Something would have to be done, despite the risk. Karl Holliston had to be stopped. But what could they do? She’d already authorised the dispatch of antiaircraft missiles and other weapons to the Berlin Government, but even that was pushing the limits. Hell, what were the limits? SOE had long-since given up shipping weapons and supplies to Occupied France; now, all they could do was watch from the sidelines and hope.

  We can offer help, she thought. But it won’t be enough to tip the balance. The Germans will have to do it for themselves.

  Churchill would not have understood, she suspected. He had been a man of action, always looking for ways to take the fight to the enemy. But Churchill - and Hitler - had lived during the last great period of conquest. She - and Karl Holliston - lived in a world overshadowed by atomic bombs. And those bombs had kept the peace for over forty years.

  But now the genie is out of the bottle, she thought. And who knows what will happen next?

  Chapter Twenty

  Germany East

  3 November 1985

  The snowstorm came out of nowhere.

  Horst cursed savagely as he fought for control of the vehicle, wishing he’d thought to demand an ATV from the troops in Warsaw. But there had been no time. He wrestled with the steering wheel as the vehicle threatened to skid off the road, then somehow forced it to keep going as the temperature plummeted rapidly. By the time they finally reached the next set of settlements, he was ready to risk everything just to get his hands on a better vehicle. He’d hoped to reach Germanica before the storms hit.

  “This is a bigger settlement,” he said, as they stopped outside the gates. “Try not to sleep with any of the girls.”

  Kurt gave him a nasty look. Horst hadn't been able to resist teasing him lightly about Heidi, although he had to admit that Kurt had done well to resist her. He would have had problems if she’d come onto him like that, even though he was wearing a wedding ring. Hell, for all he knew, the ring had been the only thing keeping Heidi from trying to seduce him ... he pushed the thought to the back of his mind as the guards appeared, their weapons at the ready as they walked towards the car. This settlement, clearly, was far more significant than the previous two they’d visited.

  And if we could find another farm, Horst thought, we would.

  The guard tapped on the window, meaningfully. Horst opened it, cursing the cold under his breath as he passed the guard their papers. The guard scanned them quickly, then waved at the gatekeepers. Horst braced himself as the gates opened, knowing they might be walking into a trap. If there was something wrong with their papers - if someone had checked with Germanica - they might be about to find out.

  “Welcome,” a grim-faced older man said, as they parked outside the main building. “It has been too long since we have had guests.”

  Horst nodded, clambering out of the car. “We are glad to be here,” he said, truthfully. “Can you put us up for the night?”

  The question was a formality. No settlement would turn away a German citizen, whatever his papers said. Trying to sleep out in the open would be a death sentence, with or without the threat of insurgent attacks. It was already bitterly cold and he knew, all too well, that it would get worse. He glanced around, taking in the guardposts and spotlights shining into the darkening sky, then hurried into the main building. Kurt followed him, already shivering helplessly. He simply wasn't used to the eastern cold.

  Inside, it was warm and welcoming. Horst took off his coat with an effort and passed it to a young boy who gazed at him with admiring eyes. Horst felt an odd pang of disquiet at the obvious hero-worship in the youngster’s eyes, remembering when he’d admired the black-clad men who’d visited his uncle. He’d wanted to wear the black uniform and the Sigrunen for himself, but he hadn't understood the price. He had been lucky - very lucky - that Gudrun hadn't tried to kill him, when she’d found out the truth.

  And I was expected to betray her, he thought, as he followed the lady of the house into a large sitting room. My superiors would have rewarded me if I’d betrayed her the day we first met.

  He felt a flicker of homesickness as he took a seat on the sofa. Germany East believed in extended families, believed in doing everything it could to encourage family ties; the sitting room was large enough to accommodate the entire adult population of the settlement, male and female alike. It was warm and comfortable and welcoming in a way Gudrun’s home in Berlin had never been, reminding him of days playing chess and singing songs with his family ...

  ... But there was an odd tinge of something in the air.

  It wasn't suspicion, he thought, as he was passed a mug of warm chocolate. The guards didn't seem to have the slightest doubt about Horst and Kurt’s credentials. But there was ... something ... hanging in the air, a tint of fear that bothered him more th
an he cared to admit, even to himself. This wasn't Germany Prime. The locals knew just how harsh and cold and bitterly unpleasant life could be. They wouldn't be scared by just anything.

  He sipped his chocolate and waited, studying the handful of settlers who’d joined them. The girls looked young and pretty, yet still radiating the sense of toughness he’d missed so much in Germany Prime. Only a fool would take an Easterner girl lightly, no matter what the Reich had to say about the proper relationship between men and women. A farmwife had so much more to do than cook food and bear children. He would be surprised if the girls facing him, eying him with frank interest, were weaker than men from Germany Prime.

  There were no men of military age in the room. The guards outside had clearly been of military age, but he suspected there wouldn't be many others in the settlement. There were four men in the room, yet three of them were clearly too old for military service and the fourth too young. But then, if the settlement came under attack, they would have to take up weapons to defend themselves.

  The oldest man leaned forward, suddenly. “Have you heard the news?”

  Horst and Kurt exchanged glances. “No,” Horst said, finally. “We've been on the road all day.”

  He kept his face impassive with an effort. What news? Had someone assassinated Karl Holliston, and his successor had sued for peace? Or had the great offensive finally begun? Horst didn't know many details - there had been a very real risk he would fall into enemy hands - but he knew the offensive should have started by now. The battle might still be underway.

  “The rebels used atomic bombs,” the old man said. He looked as if he wanted to spit. “They’ve used atomic bombs on German soil!”

  Horst stared at him in shock. Nukes? He couldn't imagine Volker Schulze authorising the use of nuclear weapons, not on German soil. No matter how they were used, large swathes of the fatherland would be contaminated indefinitely. Horst had even heard that the ruins of Jerusalem and Mecca were still radioactive, even thirty-five years after the blasts. But no one had been interested in rebuilding the destroyed cities ...

  “They couldn't have,” Kurt said. He sounded as shocked as Horst felt. “Sir ...”

  “They might have done,” Horst said, cutting him off. “What did they do?”

  “They destroyed Warsaw,” the old man said. “The city wouldn't surrender and they destroyed it.”

  Horst nodded slowly, keeping his face under very tight control. It was a lie. It had to be a lie. And yet, there was something about it that bothered him. Volker Schulze wouldn't use nuclear weapons, but Karl Holliston had already shown he was more than willing to devastate Germany from end to end if it was what it took to put him back in power. And there was no point in spreading such a story unless nuclear weapons had been used.

  They want to get ahead of the rumours, Horst thought. And so they’re not denying that nuclear weapons were used, they’re just lying about who used them.

  He considered the problem rapidly, hoping that Kurt would have the sense to keep his mouth shut. They couldn’t be seen denying the official version of the story, even if it was utter nonsense. Germany East was vast. Rumours would spread, of course, but Holliston would have plenty of time to shape them. And no one would want to believe that their Fuhrer could unleash radioactive hell on German soil without a second thought.

  And Warsaw?

  Volker Schulze would not have authorised the destruction of an entire city, certainly not so quickly. Even Himmler hadn't made the decision so rapidly - and Himmler hadn't had to worry about targeting German civilians. Warsaw might have surrendered, once it was cut off from Germany East, or it might have been isolated and starved into submission. There was no need - there hadn't been a need - to destroy the entire city. And smashing Warsaw would damage the road and rail networks the Heer would need for its advance.

  No, the story made no sense. But the only reason anyone would spread the story was to explain the use of nuclear bombs.

  Holliston must have used them to stop the offensive in its tracks, he thought. And that means our mission to Germany East is more necessary than ever.

  “That is horrific,” he said, finally. “We saw the rebels commit many atrocities during the fighting, but using an atomic bomb on an innocent city is a whole new level of horror.”

  The small boy - Horst hadn't picked up his name - looked fascinated. “Is it true the rebel Untermenschen drank the blood of dead stormtroopers?”

  “Johan,” one of the older men snapped.

  Horst bit down the response that came to mind. Johan - Gudrun had a brother called Johan, he recalled - was a child. Death and devastation were abstract concepts to him, even though he’d been raised in Germany East. He probably wasn't old enough to realise that death meant death, or that a war wound could destroy a person’s life ... or that civilians, caught up in the maelstrom of war, could suffer worst of all.

  “I’ll be going to war next year,” Johan continued. “My tutor says I have the best shooting skills in my class.”

  “No, you won’t,” one of the girls snapped.

  “You’re just jealous,” Johan said. “You don’t get to go to war.”

  Horst rolled his eyes as Johan was marched out of the room. Had he been such an enthusiastic little shit when he’d been a boy? Probably - he’d certainly looked forward to the day he could join the Waffen-SS. Johan wouldn't be fighting next year, Horst hoped; he wouldn't be joining the SS unless Horst had vastly underestimated his age. But if the war raged forward and swept over the settlement, he feared that Johan would take his rifle and try to fight.

  “His father is away at the front,” one of the older men said. “I beg pardon for his conduct.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Horst said. “Your grandson?”

  “Yes,” the older man said. “And all three of my sons are away.”

  Horst felt a stab of pity that left him feeling numb. This was war; not glory, not conquest, but broken lives and dead bodies. Whoever won, countless families would be mourning their dead for decades to come. He knew women back in Berlin who had married their sweethearts before the men marched off to the front, only to discover that they were pregnant - and that their new husbands had been killed, long before their children were born. They wouldn't face the stigma of being unmarried mothers - they had been married - but they wouldn't have easy lives. Getting married again wouldn't be easy.

  Polygamy is legal in Germany East, he thought. But it isn't in Germany Prime.

  He shuddered as he peered into the future. Countless war widows, some with children, unable to support themselves as they struggled to bring up their families. Who would support them? The government had nearly bankrupted itself paying bonuses to women who won the Mutterkreuz. And that had been before the war ...

  Kurt elbowed him. He realised, suddenly, that the old man was still talking.

  “I’m sorry,” Horst said. “I lost my train of thought.”

  “I was wondering what you made of it,” the old man said. “And what you think we should do.”

  “I don’t think this settlement will attract a nuke,” Horst said, after a moment. “It’s too small.”

  He shrugged. The Americans were supposed to have millions of nuclear bombs and missiles, according to the Reich Council, but that struck him as rather unlikely. That would be enough tonnage to reduce the entire planet to rubble. No, no one would waste a nuclear warhead on a tiny little settlement in the middle of nowhere. But what would happen when civilians started fleeing the front?

  “I think you should tighten your guard,” he added, after a moment. “People are going to start fleeing soon.”

  And dying, he added, silently. Winter has arrived.

  He shook his head as a middle-aged woman - probably Johan’s mother - carried a tray of bread and cheese into the room. The smells that followed her suggested that it was merely the first course. If the settlement was anything like the one Horst had grown up on, there would always be additional food for u
nexpected guests. But he couldn't help wondering just how long that would last. Winter had arrived ... and it might not be long before hordes of refugees started battering at the doors.

  It wasn't a pleasant thought. Travel within Germany East was tightly controlled - it was why he’d gone to so much trouble to forge their papers - but he doubted Holliston could spare many men for internal security. People concerned about radioactivity - or even the rebel advance - would flee their settlements, heading east. And many of them would be armed, presenting a whole new problem for any guards who tried to stop them. How long would the SS stormtroopers remain popular in Germany East if they started shooting refugees?

  And it might trigger a civil war within the civil war, he thought. And there will be nothing left but chaos.

  The conversation around the dinner table was gloomy, even though the meal was excellent and the beer superb. Horst listened as more and more exaggerated stories of radiation poisoning were told, ranging from everyone infected dying within seconds to long-term suffering that could only be ended by a mercy kill. He couldn’t help wondering just what would happen, if such a staunchly loyal settlement was terrified of the future. And what they would do if they found out the truth.