Frederica sounded calm. “Nice uniform, Erich. I see you’ve been promoted. I’m not that good at reading SS ranks, but it looks like you made Obersturmführer.”
“Hauptsturmführer, in fact. Not that it makes much difference now.”
“No, it doesn’t make any difference. So go home and take off your tunic and your military trinkets. Hitler’s dead. Goebbels too. The SS is finished.”
Erich’s tone became more ominous. “I know. The German nation is lost and it’s people like you who are responsible.” He stepped toward her out of Katja’s line of sight.
“What are you talking about?” Frederica was obviously fed up.
“You know what I’m talking about. You were whoring around with Goebbels, but you never were a National Socialist, were you? You never joined the party. Why? You didn’t approve of our program for a glorious race, for German superiority?”
Katja took another step down the stairs, uncertain. What could she do to get him out of the house?
Frederica was not intimidated. “Erich, what the Nazis wanted was absurd. An Aryan race? What nonsense. Do you remember what they all looked like? Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, not to mention Goering, all tarted up and drugged? That’s who you followed.”
“You’re wrong. A few corrupt men, a bad strategy, traitors in the leadership—none of that changes the beauty of the idea. We are a master race, at least some of us. The ones who have the animal courage to take what’s ours.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Frederica’s voice grew more tentative.
“We’d have made a great couple, once. But you dumped me for the Reichsminister. Why? Because he could buy you nice things, take you to his country house? Well, he’s dead now, and I’m alive, so you and I, we’re going to have one last dance.”
There was a pause. “Where’s your girlfriend. I saw you two come back here.” He called out in a singsong voice, “I know you’re here, Katja. You want to come out and see a real German man stake his claim?”
He seemed unconcerned that no one responded.
“If she comes out while we’re at it, she’ll get a little surprise, won’t she?”
Katja heard the sound of the metal buckle on his uniform belt and a moment of silence while he presumably unbuttoned his trousers.
“Oh, look, a nice hard one. Just for you. It would have been nicer at your house, but this place will do too. I’ll try to make it worthwhile.”
Horrified, Katja advanced farther down the staircase. She could see Frederica, holding out her hand to stop him.
“Erich, get ahold of yourself. This isn’t you. You’re an honest soldier, not a rapist.”
He stepped up to her and slapped her across the face. “Shut up. I’m claiming what’s mine and you’re going to take it.” He shoved her, causing her to topple back onto the sofa, and let himself fall on top of her. “Don’t fight me, you little bitch, or I swear I’ll shoot you and then put it in you.”
Frederica struggled, but he pinned her down while he yanked up her skirt and pressed himself between her legs.
It took all of Katja’s will to not rush in and try to separate them. He was big, and he still had a pistol, although at the moment it lay in its holster on the floor right next to him. She couldn’t possibly get to it in time.
She forced herself to wait, and wait. Then, when his grunting told her his entire focus was on gratifying the fire between his legs, she moved.
The carpet muted her step while she raced across the living-room floor, but he must have heard her inhale as she raised her arms for the strike. He turned his head, his initial smirk changing to astonishment as he saw the knife and tried to lift himself up.
“Uhh!” Katja grunted as she slammed the dagger with two hands into his back. His shift of position caused the blade to enter at an angle and the fabric of his tunic slowed penetration, but the shock caused him to collapse back onto his elbows. Without thinking, she withdrew the blade and struck again with all her strength. This time the blade pierced more deeply and he jerked in rage, falling sideways off Frederica. He crouched on the floor and his wheezing told her she had collapsed one of his lungs.
“Fucking cowards…” he rasped through clenched teeth, clawing himself up to his knees but held prisoner by his own trousers that were twisted around his legs. “I’ll…kill…you…” He reached out to seize Katja by the leg.
“Real German man?” The memory of concentration camp guards flashed through Katja’s mind. She plunged the dagger again, this time between his neck and shoulder, and heard the squishing sound as it slid down to a satisfying depth. “This is for Cecily,” she snarled, lifting the weapon and bringing down again in the same place, “and for Violette and Denise.” She drew back for a final thrust but felt Frederica’s hand on her arm. Somehow she had gotten to her feet and pulled down her skirt.
“Leave him. He’s done for,” Frederica said, snatching Erich’s holster before he could reach it.
Katja stood panting and dazed for a moment, watching him slip to the floor, when she heard the sound of motor vehicles in front of the house.
“Russians. Let’s get out of here.” Frederica tugged on her arm and pulled her along to the rear of the house. They were at the back door just as they heard the front door open and the sound of Russian voices.
In less than a minute they passed through the garden and had made it into the underbrush of the neighboring woods when gunshots rang out. “I guess they finished him,” Frederica said.
They were among trees now and still running, stumbling, not pausing to look back until they both were exhausted. They stopped to catch their breath and listened. No snapping of wood, nothing but the distant sounds of military vehicles, the occasional faint rattatat rattatat of soldiers celebrating victory by firing into the air. Katja focused now on Frederica.
“Are you all right, darling? Did he hurt you? I’m sorry I let him go so far. I had to surprise him.”
Frederica leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I’m all right. Thank you for rescuing me, but my God, I’ve never seen you that…savage. The fool was going on about animal courage, but I’m sure he never expected to meet it in you.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him. I saw him hurting you and I just wanted to stop him. And he said he was a Hauptsturmführer, like the commandant of Ravensbrück. I suppose I lost my head. I don’t know.”
Frederica took Katja’s hand. “Whatever it was, thank you. And by the way, how did you come up with a knife while you were upstairs?”
“It was a dagger, actually. An opera prop from Macbeth. One of my father’s souvenirs. A horrible thing to use on somebody.” She shuddered.
“Well, now we have something better.” Frederica held up Erich’s heavy holster. “I’d rather we’d gotten away with all the food we packed, but now that Germany’s collapsed, nothing else is going to protect us.” She shaded her eyes as she surveyed the newly verdant fields and woods between the clusters of houses. “By the way, do you know where we are?”
“Yes, I know the Grünewald area very well. If we keep going west, we’ll eventually come to the Havel River. Then we follow that south to Wannsee. From there it’s only a few hours to Potsdam.”
“Let’s get started then.” Frederica linked her arm in Katja’s and they trudged along, keeping a steady pace toward the west.
The sun was on the horizon when they reached a body of water where refugees plodded southward along the shore, silhouetted like dreary phantoms. “Is this the Havel?” Frederica asked.
Katja pulled her close, comfortingly. “Sorry, no. It’s only the Grünewaldsee, but we’ll follow the shoreline with the others as long as our feet hold out, then look for a place to sleep. I’m just wondering why there aren’t more Russians here.”
“I’m sure there will be shortly. All the battle reports I heard in the bunker said Berlin was surrounded on all sides, though probably more thinly on the western side. So they must be out there somewhere.”
They kept a
steady pace and Katja tried not to think about the supplies they’d had to leave behind, but as darkness fell, they began passing groups that had set up little campsites, some with children and elderly.
“Do you think we should stop?” Frederica asked. “Someone might share their space and a little food with us.” They wandered near a family that had built a bonfire and were heating something in a pot. But one of the men from the circle stood up and confronted them.
“There’s nothing for you here. Sorry, but we don’t even have enough food for us. Move on.” He tilted his head in the direction he thought they should go.
They backed off and drifted away from the campsites. “So much for the solidarity of the Volk,” Katja grumbled.
They plodded on for two more hours, pushing themselves to their limit, trying to cover ground. Then, as they feared, it began to rain, lightly at first, then insistently. At the same time, a dark structure loomed up before them.
“The Jagdschloss,” Katja exclaimed. “I forgot about that. The old royal hunting lodge they turned into a museum. It might just save us tonight.”
“You’re thinking of breaking in? If not, let’s do think about it.”
“Not into the main building. I’m sure it’s locked and guarded. But a big place like that has to have maintenance quarters, and they can’t be guarding every room and corner.”
As if to encourage them further, the sky gave off a clap of thunder. Another five minutes of hiking with soaked feet brought them to the perimeter of the building complex. Light shone in some of the top-floor windows of the central building, but no vehicles were parked outside the complex, and all the surrounding low buildings were dark, their windows barred. All they could hear was the splattering of rain and the sound of water gurgling through a nearby waterspout and plashing onto stone.
They made their way around the rough stone walls past an entry tunnel wide enough for a car, then along a range to the south, tugging on each set of bars. Nothing seemed penetrable until, on the southeast side, they came upon a framework that was damaged and loose. Frederica took hold of the bars and, at the next thunderclap, wrenched the entire iron grid out of the window emplacement. Using the handle of the Luger, she shattered the window and pried out the shards of glass. In just a few moments, both of them were inside.
They stood for a moment in the darkness, water dripping from their hair and clothing. Slowly their eyes adapted and they could make out vague shapes. They stepped to the other side of the room and peered through the windows looking toward the inner court.
It was wide, partly paved and partly covered in lawn. The hunting lodge itself was a three-story building around a central tower with a cupola. The façade was whitewashed, the surfaces between the windows dotted with antlers. Two Kübelwagen stood parked in front.
“Military vehicles,” Katja whispered. “German. They haven’t evacuated yet.”
“Where would they evacuate to? There’s no place left to go. But look,” Frederica said. “Here are lanterns. Just what we need. This must be a gatehouse or watchman’s quarters. Matches would be nice too, of course.”
Katja groped her way around the room, stumbling over various crates, stools, buckets. Then at the corner she felt a cabinet and opened it. She could see nothing but a wall of darkness so she ran her hand gingerly down the surface. “Ah, drawers. Too bad we don’t have a lantern to see into the drawers,” she quipped.
“I’ve got something,” Frederica whispered from the other side of the room. She held up a box, shook it, and was satisfied with the sound. “Matches.” She struck one and held it to the wick of one of the lanterns. It caught and she adjusted the wick, then held up the lantern.
“Looks like a carpenter’s shop. Would be nice if we could find a safe place to sleep.”
Shielding their lantern so it projected light only in a dull circle onto the floor, they pushed the door at the end of the room. It opened to a stairwell leading downward. “Let’s try the basement,” Katja suggested. “At least we won’t have to shield the light.”
The first room held nailed crates with numbers on them. At the far end of the room was another door. Frederica tried it and it opened. “Well, this looks more promising.”
Large rectangles of what were obviously paintings were wrapped in canvas and sheltered against the walls by sandbags. Crates down the center of the room, also packed on both sides by a wall of sandbags, seemed to contain more of the same. Katja moved quickly beyond them to four statues wrapped in heavy padded material. Painted halos that protruded from the top of each bundle revealed they were wooden saints.
“Exactly what we need,” she announced.
“We need saints?”
“No, something to sleep on.” Setting down the lantern, she began to undo the knots that held the bundles together. In a few minutes, they had unwrapped and laid out four thick packing quilts at the feet of the wooden effigies. As an afterthought, she rolled up one of them as a long pillow and patted it with satisfaction.
“Soft and dry. Now we can take off all this wet clothing. God, what a relief. Even this leather holster is soggy.”
By the lantern light, they rid themselves of their drenched clothing, wrung each article out as well as possible, and draped it over the statues. Only their shoes and the holstered gun stayed close by. They were shivering by then, so they lay down, warming themselves against each other back to front.
“This is the first time we’ve been together in weeks,” Katja said. “It was so awful coming home night after night and having to sleep in your bed without you.”
“Yes, while I was away on vacation with Adolf Hitler,” Frederica murmured into her ear.
“Don’t joke about that. I was terrified the Russians would kill you along with him.”
“Let’s not talk about Hitler. Let’s just enjoy being here together, so close to rescue. We only have to get to the Allies and Handel will take care of the rest.” She kissed slowly down the center of Katja’s back, warming the cool, damp flesh with her mouth.
Katja squirmed playfully and tried to press closer. “You have an awful lot of confidence in this Handel. Do you think he cares about us now, or are we just pawns in the game of espionage? Dispensable, now that the war is won and you don’t need your code name any more.”
“I hope he cares. All this time I’ve imagined him as a father figure, wise and protective. The family I didn’t have, I suppose.”
“Well, we need him to get us out of Germany, but I’m your family now, and I’ll mother you if ever you need me to.”
Frederica nuzzled against the back of her neck. “I’m not sure I’d know how to act around a mother. I don’t feel like I’ve ever really had one.”
“It makes me so sad to hear that.”
“No need to be. My father filled in pretty well and got me through nearly to adulthood before he died.”
“What a horror. How old were you then?”
“Eighteen, so I wasn’t a child any more. It was frightening at first, to know I was alone and, if I fell, no one would catch me. But then Rudi arrived and I had a sort of brother.”
“You must be terribly bitter toward your mother.”
“No. Not any more. I’ve carried around my anger so long it’s grown stale. Besides, I sort of understand her now. I mean about not wanting to be tied down to a boring husband and a child when you can be on the barricades, saving the world. In a way I’m a little like her. I wouldn’t have taken the risks I did at the propaganda ministry, flirting with Goebbels, flirting with death, actually, if I’d had a family. But that’s over now. Now there’s you.”
Katja turned in Frederica’s arms and exhaled luxuriously against warm breasts. “When I’m in your arms, I can almost forget that the world is half in ruin. I can’t believe I lived so many years without you. Without this.” She drew herself up and pressed her lips to Frederica’s mouth the way she had so often in the last year, and every time it was a coming home. This time too, it began as gratitude, then g
rew to hunger.
Frederica’s insistent hands explored the long-familiar places, and Katja responded with animal pleasure. “Hail, Caesar,” she breathed, and opened her legs to the delicious invasion. The exquisite tension began like flickering lights, fireflies igniting and then disappearing, but the adept hand teased them back again and again in brief tormenting flashes. Each one was longer and brighter and more electric, until they combined in a bright pulsation and the dazzling eruption of climax.
Katja panted, spent, as the afterglow spread to every muscle, but she resisted drowsing. Next to her, she felt Frederica’s ardor, and she turned on her side to caress the already moist thighs. “I want us to fall asleep this way every night,” she murmured into Frederica’s throat, and slid her own fingers into the welcoming place. She gave back the delicious torment, drawing forth the hot filament, then halting, then fanning it again until Frederica moaned surrender. It seemed a sort of victory—of their love over the Führerbunker, over the war, over the madness that still blustered above their heads.
Chapter Thirty-six
The yanking open of the basement door awakened them, and they bolted upright. The two soldiers were obviously surprised as well and halted in astonishment. Katja pulled the quilted mat up to her shoulders and muttered softly, “Shit. The Russians have arrived.”
Seeing that they were naked, one of them, an Asiatic with a wide, flat face, broke into a grin and pulled the cellar door closed behind him. He remarked something to his comrade, and his predatory leer made it clear what he was proposing. The second man leaned his rifle against the wall and knelt down in front of them. Chuckling softly, he took hold of the mat and tugged it slowly toward him, leaving them naked and cowering.
The Asian also laid down his rifle and advanced slowly, undoing his trousers as he neared.
Katja waited until they were both kneeling on the mat, close enough for her to smell rancid sweat and tobacco.
“Nyet!” she said, pulling the Luger out from under the mat and pointing it at the first soldier’s eye. Bewilderment crossed both men’s faces.
Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright Page 25