by G T Almasi
From my point of view, the Grosskuppel is flanked on the left by the presidential residence. To the right is the old Reichstag, so dwarfed by its colossal neighbor that it looks like a souvenir from a tourist shit shop. Close by the Reichstag, the statue on top of Brandenburg Gate pokes into the evening. Opposite Brandenburg Gate, the city’s vast public park—the Tiergarten—stretches left from the main boulevard to the Berlin Zoo. Next to the zoo lurk the pair of 130-foot-tall concrete fortresses known collectively as the Flak Towers. They’re one of the massive anti-aircraft emplacements that circle the city. Beyond these sinister towers, Berlin’s tidy suburbs provide a domestic frame for the capital.
I turn around and peer south. The sky is just as dark that way as any other direction, but I imagine I can still see the fire-red sky over Munich. Talon was a pain in the butt with lousy taste in mentors, but she would have been a kick-ass ExOps Level. I guess loyalty counts for something, even if it’s to a lunatic. It took a lot of balls to go out the way she did.
Soft footsteps approach my brooding corner.
“Hey.” Patrick huffs and puffs.
“Long climb?” I ask.
“I forgot how tall this sucker is.” My partner breathes heavily.
“I thought you said you’d been here before, when you were still at the embassy.”
“Yeah, but I used the damn elevator.”
Berlin’s electrical service is getting spottier every day. This makes a big difference when ascending a structure the height of a thirty-story building. Brando leans on the parapet and takes in the city. “You thinking about something?”
“Yah,” I say. “Talon.”
“Huh.” Patrick exhales sharply. “Talk about going out in a blaze of glory.”
“Think there was anything left of her?”
“Pshht,” he scoffs. “No way. It’s one thing to be anywhere near ground zero, but to actually be ground zero, forget it. She was atomically disincorporated.”
I mull being reduced to one’s component electrons and neutrons. “So, what then? She turned into air?”
“Kind of, I suppose.”
“We’re breathing her?”
“Fuck, I hope not.” Brando looks around for little nano-Talons. “Whatever she’s become is radioactive as hell.”
I let him finish getting his wind back, then ask him, “Where’s ExOps?”
“A small city called Szczecin, ninety miles northeast,” he says. “Kennedy has hooked up with an army regiment. He’ll serve as an advance scouting force. Intel, sabotage, all that stuff.”
“So the AEF trusts us?”
“Oh, not for the Americans. They don’t even know Director Kennedy has left D.C.” Patrick taps his fist on the decorative wall that crowns the arch. “We’re the advance party for the Loyalist army.”
“You mean for Victor?”
My partner smiles, “Not for him personally, but yeah, for one of Victor’s commanders.”
“Nice.” I sweep my gaze around the skyline. “And where is he?”
“Victor’s staff company is with the main Wehrmacht force. We’re pretty sure he’s coming from Frankfurt, that way.” Brando points southwest.
“Then who are the troops you told me about earlier? To the east.”
“Those weren’t troops, really. They’re a special detachment from Deutsche Petroleum’s private security force.” Patrick shifts his position.
I have to think about that for a second. “Wait, we’re gonna fend off a horde of gun-toting dirt-eaters with security guards?”
“No, no. DP’s security force will keep watch on the border with Russia until the Reich can send regular army units there.”
I ask, “And if the Soviets invade?”
Brando sees my skeptical expression. He says, “Didn’t you read the brief?”
I don’t answer.
He sighs. “Trust me, they’ll be fine.”
I study the busy night sky for a minute, then the slumbering buildings. There’s a hole in the world. No matter how many of those darkened windows, doors, and streets I explore, I’ll never find Krysta in any of them. I ask, “How’s Doska?”
“Stable. He’ll live, but they had to take him to a hospital.”
“Hospital?” Real medical facilities have to report dramatic injuries like having some of your extremities blown off.
“Rachel knows an emergency room that keeps terrible records.”
“Hm,” I grunt. “Will he lose his hands?”
“Yeah, they’re history.” Patrick says. “But he’ll get synthetics, like the one you have.”
I flex my artificial fingers. Last year I socked one of my mom’s kidnappers so hard his jaw nearly liquefied. The impact shattered my hand’s many little bones and left me with a black-and-blue bag of broken marbles hanging off my arm. The rattling mess was still attached to me, but I got a prosthetic hand anyway. ExOps doesn’t miss many opportunities to upgrade their Levels.
“Did Dos find out Krysta is gone?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they waited to tell him. He’s in enough shock as it is.”
It’s a shock all right.
I draw the night deep into my lungs to unfog my head, and nod my chin at the foreboding panorama. “So what’re we lookin’ at there?”
“Wolf’s forces have retreated to the middle of the city. They’re cut off from the rest of the country, but they’ve turned Berlin into a fortress.”
“How many of those big Flak Towers do they control?”
“All.”
Shit.
“How’s Victor gonna pry ’em outta there?”
“They’re working on that. Those towers are tough nuts.”
We silently return to the skyline. A smile slides across my partner’s mouth.
“What?”
His smile gets bigger. “We’ve got a lead on Fredericks.”
“Now you tell me?” I drop from my perch and whack him on the shoulder. “Where?”
Patrick says, “The old government district on Wilhelmstrasse. C’mon, I’ll fill you in on the way.” While we jog down the arch’s long staircase, he tells me there’s an old bunker system under the Reichschancellory. A patrol from another Circle of Zion cell noticed signs that a group of people had very recently passed through the bunker complex. They found a person in a sleeping cubicle and asked him who he was, but the man was badly injured and not very lucid. His papers identified him as a United States citizen named Jakob Fredericks. The Circle members left him there, returned to base, then put the news on the grapevine.
That was seventeen minutes ago.
The son-of-a-bitch is here. And I’m gonna get him.
—DARE: HIGHLORD—
24 SEP 1981
SIGNAL FROM DEUTSCHE PETROLEUM TO BERLIN
From: Deutsche Petroleum Security Director Erik von Macht
To: Chancellor Honecker
Re: Securing the eastern frontier
Herr Chancellor,
You honor my Security Force by selecting them to defend Greater Germany’s Eastern Frontier. As you wisely suppose, my Security Force must expand to meet this crisis.
Naturally, this augmentation will require significant funding. Estimating the cost will only delay the deployment, and so I humbly request an open budget for this mission. Of course, I will requisition only the money I deem absolutely necessary to neutralize the Red threat as efficiently as possible.
Your obedient servant,
—Erik von Macht
37
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 11:20 P.M. CEST
BENEATH THE REICHSCHANCELLORY, BERLIN
Just because these passages span the whole cityscape doesn’t mean they go in a straight line. Up, down, this way, that way. It’s like a sl
ow-motion roller coaster.
Chaim runs the maze as quickly as he can. Patrick and I follow at his heels. None of us talk. Finally, Chaim slows, then signals us to stop.
“There,” he gasps, out of breath. “That tunnel leads to the Führerbunker, under the Reichschancellory.” Our guide points at a narrow hole in the wall, dug by the Circle of Zion to link two otherwise unconnected subterranean networks.
I pull myself into the tunnel, then crawl forward on my elbows and knees. I hear my partner scuffing along behind me. The light goes from “barely” to “absolutely none.” My arms drag me forward. I try not to kick Brando in the face.
Breathe. Pull. Repeat.
A faint light ahead makes my heart beat faster. We skooch out of a hole painstakingly chiseled through an eight-foot-thick concrete wall. My infrared vision shows cool blues and grays. The interior walls are coated with dimly glowing phosphorescent paint. I switch to millimeter-wave. The space around me turns into a bright-green lattice floating on a blue-black background. The lattice describes the blocky rooms around me.
I draw Li’l Bertha from her holster and move forward. My head pans from side to side, looking through the surrounding walls into the spaces beyond. At the end of a hallway, a scowling face appears from the gloom. I slow my pace and aim my pistol. When I’m practically on top of the fiendish-looking bruiser, I realize it’s only a stupid picture on the wall.
Of course it’s fucking Hitler.
Dang, Charlie Chaplin really nailed it.
Brando whispers, “Jeez, it’s him.”
A shiver skips across my shoulders then down my arms. The faintly lambent walls, the dust on everything, and the still, stale air make this place feel like a haunted mausoleum.
Fresh footprints in the dust reveal the Circle patrol’s route from earlier today. Other tracks, partially dust-filled, show the paths of exploration parties that could be from years ago.
We press on past chambers lined with old couches, genteel coatracks, heavy wooden tables stacked with books. A row of antique floor lamps lean against the wall.
There. A horizontal shape, within one of the outlined cubes. I change direction and pussyfoot toward the occupied cubicle. Patrick holds the back of my jacket as he follows close behind me.
“Darwin,” I comm. “Next room on the left.”
He comms, “Anybody else in here?”
“Negative.”
“Okay.” His fingers let go of me and slide into his X-bag. He takes out a skinny flashlight and clicks it on. My eyes squint in the relative brightness until my vision Mods adjust.
I shut off my radar vision, then enter the room. My partner follows me. His flashlight illuminates the confined space. In one corner sits an army cot. On it, a man lies on his side, facing the wall. Crumbled stuffing drips out of the torn fabric of the mattress. A plastic canteen sits on the floor beside the cot.
The man wears the remnants of a once fine dark blue suit. The jacket’s sleeves are ripped at the shoulders and elbows. After a moment I see that his pants aren’t from the suit, they’re just grubby old blue jeans. On his feet are a battered pair of brown hiking boots.
My shoulders flinch when Patrick’s whisper breaks the stillness. “Think he’s booby-trapped?”
I advance on the motionless figure and reengage my radar vision. Semitransparent outlines of his clothes with solid dots for buttons. The man’s limbs appear as brighter outlines. One of those outlines takes an unnatural detour. His right arm is broken. No weapons or bombs, though. A few Mods, the kind an Info Operator carries.
I switch to normal vision and roll the man on his back.
It’s Fredericks.
Barely.
Brando’s flashlight splinters Fredericks’s features into a dark-and-white mosaic of torment. Water streams from his swollen eyes past his smashed-in nose. Fredericks wakes, aware of our presence, and begins to sob. His mouth gapes with missing teeth. Above my oldest enemy’s forehead is a raw, red swath of scalp where his hair has been torn out.
Fredericks tries to speak, but instead he coughs like a backfiring diesel. Blood spurts from his nostrils, mixing with the tears on his face. He presses his feet into the dirty mattress and pushes himself into a sitting position. He leans against the wall, gasping for breath.
“T-talon?” Fredericks stammers. “Thank God you…f-found me…again.” Saliva drools from the corner of his mouth onto his shirt.
What’d those fuckers do to him?
Patrick’s eyes meet mine, his lips pressed tight in disgust. “That is Fredericks, right?”
The wreck on the cot writhes in agony.
“Yeah.” I exhale slowly. “Dammit.”
I wanted to do all this shit to Fredericks myself. My carefully tended hatred wilts at the sight of my enemy’s pathetic vulnerability. The bitterness I’ve harbored for this maggot drains out of me like crud down a sewer.
“Dammit!” I shout.
Brando reaches into his X-bag to extract a data pod. He briefly plugs it into his hip-mounted dataport and programs it to extract everything from whoever it gets stuck into next. Patrick moves Jakob’s ragged shirttails to expose the man’s input–output connection and inserts the pod into Fredericks’s hip port. The pod’s little light glows yellow to indicate a task in progress. This is gonna be a big one.
I say, “You may really have to wipe your childhood this time.”
“Heh.” Patrick sighs. “I have a bunch of archived Day Loops I can erase. If that doesn’t give me enough room I’ll delete Asia from my local copy of the FED.”
While we download Fredericks’s life story, I take a closer look at his injuries. They’re concentrated above his waist. His legs are in decent shape. I guess his torturers didn’t want to carry him.
Externally, Fredericks’s face looks the worst. His eyes are so swollen, I doubt he can see. One ear has been burned black. My radar vision shows a lot of fractured ribs, but the man’s spine seems intact. Between his organs, strange shapes slither and change shape before pooling into his lower abdomen.
Internal bleeding.
“Jakob.” I lower my voice to sound like Talon. “Why did the secret police do this to you?”
“Codes,” he whispers. “Codes for everything. Jackframes, defense systems, bank databases, government employee manifests.”
I say to Patrick, “Sounds like Wolf is planning to attack the U.S.”
Before my partner can answer, Fredericks interjects, “No. They wanted…Reich codes. Ministries, Abwehr, Deutsche Bank, the army, navy, air force, anything and…” Cough-cough. “…everything.
At Brando’s prompting I ask Fredericks why the Red Army Faction kidnapped him. His answer is confusing. It sounds like the Faction wanted to deliver Fredericks to the invading Americans in exchange for…amnesty? Jobs in the new government? Before we can draw more clarity from the man, he breaks down weeping.
“I shouldn’t have let Talon find me,” he cries. “Too many…too many of them, even for her.”
I’m not sure how to play this. I’ve been pretending to be the person we’re now talking about. I soften my voice and whisper, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Fredericks gulps. “It’s always been my—” He dives into another coughing fit. When he catches his breath, he hoarsely recounts Talon’s attempt to rescue him.
Not that we needed reminding, but the Red Army Faction was entirely populated by ruthless slits. They chained Fredericks into a stone-walled cell and set a round-the-clock guard. Naturally, Talon eliminated the guard, but Fredericks wasn’t alone in his holding pen. The biology kid, Joseph Troust, had plugged a lethal injection feed into Fredericks’s arm. The deadly feed was kept closed by a dead-man’s switch, which Joseph held shut with one hand while pressing a knife to Fredericks’s neck with the other. A shallow cut across Fredericks’s throat attests to this. Jose
ph insisted Talon submit to the Faction.
Joseph’s threat to kill Fredericks was absolutely real. The last thing the Faction needed was an American intelligence officer leading Europe’s entire law enforcement community to their Butthole Bungalow. From Talon’s point of view, it was critical that she reacquire Fredericks quickly. The secret police had launched a department-wide manhunt for their Very Important Hostage, and their millions of eyes can rapidly find anyone, anywhere in the world.
Even with this urgency, the immediate risk to Fredericks’s life was too great. Talon surrendered herself. I imagine her plan was to secure Fredericks’s safety and then bust him out. I also imagine the girl didn’t count on being gruesomely transmutated into a human atom bomb by the Faction’s resident mad scientist.
As we witnessed in Munich, the Gestapo found the Faction and reclaimed their presumed fountain of intel with a very un-secret-police-like all-out frontal assault. As soon as this final piece of business was concluded, Wolf went north to catch up with his army marching on Berlin.
Ironically, after all this work to retrieve Fredericks, the secret schmopes essentially abandoned him. Maybe Wolf figured they’d hollowed the fucker out so completely there wasn’t any point in guarding him. Or maybe the Gestapo recaptured Fredericks to send a message to any other potential troublemakers. Whatever the reason, after Wolf’s attack on the capital began, Fredericks lurched away from captivity and crawled into this bunker to die.
Which he may do any second.
“Darwin,” I comm. “Let’s get this asshole outta here.”
38
FOUR MINUTES LATER, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 11:36 P.M. CEST