by Pirate Irwin
Goon senior went puce in the face and again sought help from his younger slightly more intelligent looking partner, who suddenly looked as if he wished he was somewhere else faced by the good looking and physically impressive officer standing in front of him with his pistol still drawn. He shrugged back at his older partner, which hardly made his humour improve. “Well, Lieutenant, I see you give us little choice but to withdraw, given you hold a pistol and little old me just this sap, but I am afraid the Baron will be going with us to undergo further interrogation,” goon senior said somewhat triumphantly.
“For what exactly?” asked Sebastian.
“For conspiring to kill the Führer, why, I am surprised after your stay at Rastenburg you would not be apprised of the facts particularly with your contacts in high places,” replied goon senior with evident relish at being able to give Sebastian the news. Sebastian felt his legs go weak at the revelation that the Baron had been unmasked or betrayed because it also meant he was now one layer weaker in protective cover and could be a main suspect with his close connections to the family, which made him immediately regret his grandstanding on behalf of the battered old man sitting limply in the chair in the middle of the room. However, he decided that he would not give an inch, as bullies such as these could sense when their prey was weakening so he jutted out his chin and still holding the pistol indicated for both of them to get out. “I suggest you two clear off and consult with the Foreign Ministry before you do something quite so radical as dragging off one of their senior diplomats. It might serve you both better in the future if you checked the facts first. From what I hear there are lots of denunciations going on and often with the flimsiest of evidence. It always happens when the authorities become even more paranoiac as things start to fall apart on the battlefield. So please check, there’s a good boy,” aiming this at goon senior to further rattle his cage. Steaming goon senior gesticulated at junior to go and make the call to headquarters while he stayed to ensure the Baron didn’t suddenly disappear down a drainpipe with the aid of this trumped up officer. They just stood there looking at each other in silence while junior made his call, both making clear their contempt for the other, though Sebastian was cocksure enough to assume that the thug’s was more to do with his own inadequacies than hatred for the German Army. Junior returned five minutes later and whispered in his superior’s ear. Senior evidently did not like what he had heard and remonstrated with junior but it was to no avail as the younger man stood his ground and refused to go back and make another phone call telling him he could do it if he didn’t believe him. Senior looked as if all of a sudden the whole world was against him, which for the large part it was, and that included most of what remained of civilised Germany, and he went over to the bed and picked up his trademark Gestapo leather coat while throwing the other one at his inferior. “We’ll be back Baron and next time, do not expect to have such an easy time of it. I for one will not forget this incident and Lieutenant, you better not be implicated in this because if you are you will never forget what happens to you. I swear you will be taken care of by me personally. Good day,” and with that they departed.
Sebastian ensured they had left the premises before releasing the Baron from the chair, untying his bound hands and helping him to his bed before scurrying off to the bathroom and wetting a towel with soapy water and tending to his host. He wondered where the hell Victoria was or indeed the servants and once he had wiped the blood away from the Baron’s face and realized his lips weren’t so badly damaged that he could talk he asked him. The Baron’s stunning blue eyes flickered up to the ceiling in anger. “You’re a stupid brave fool, Sebastian. You shouldn’t have intervened because you will attract unnecessary attention to yourself and he will wreak vicious revenge on you and whoever is closest to you,” he moaned.
“Well, that is a pretty short list, Baron,” replied Sebastian.
“You know who I mean,” grunted the Baron.
Sebastian knew he meant Victoria but it still left unanswered as to where she had been when her husband had been receiving his bashing. So he asked the Baron again. “The servants were off for the day as soon as I finished lunch and Victoria had gone out with Henrietta for a walk,” he replied.
“Perfect timing,” intoned Sebastian sarcastically as he didn’t believe Victoria innocent of the affair, considering she had never really enjoyed spending time with her daughter-in-law as she considered her a rival, which was absolute nonsense as Henrietta was a woman of virtue while her mother-in-law didn’t even believe the word existed in the dictionary. “What did you say?” asked the Baron, but Sebastian desisted from repeating his suspicions, as von Preetz was in a distressed enough state as it was. He patted him on the shoulder and gave him a sleeping draft to help him rest while assuring him he would send Victoria up as soon as she returned. Before leaving, though, he asked the Baron the one question which had him concerned about his personal well-being: did the regime know many of the names involved in the resistance. The Baron raised himself painfully on one elbow and mumbled “perhaps, because I for one have been betrayed, but as to who is the traitor within, I do not know. It will only be a matter of time before I am arrested for real and all I ask you is to be more circumspect in your behaviour and attitude to even those bullies, because while we may be losing the war, they are still in control and hold the power of life and death over each and all of us. It is dreadful but that is the way it is.”
Sebastian laughed harshly at the Baron’s comment and related to him what had happened with von Schlabrendorff and von Tresckow and their latest failed attempt to take care of Hitler. The Baron was visibly shocked, his eyes took on an even sadder hue than ever as there remained very few people who he was fond of and with Eric gone Sebastian had become like a surrogate son to him, and it shocked him that even in the resistance there were people prepared to send someone unknowingly to their death just so they could achieve their aims which in his mind placed them on a par with the very regime they were trying to eradicate. “I’m sorry, Sebastian. If I’d known what lengths they were prepared to go to I would never have placed you in such danger. However, I still say to you keep faith with our movement but remain alert always because there are obviously moves afoot to remove us and, to be honest with you, what you have won me today is simply a reprieve. They will be back soon and this time they will be armed with some sort of paperwork, which makes their thuggery legal and you could be dragged in. Now let me sleep, dear boy,” said the Baron softly.
“Oh, you poor darling. How could they treat you like this,” cooed Victoria as she fussed round the Baron hours later after she had arrived back, not with Henrietta, but laden with shopping bags. Sebastian mused that not even the self-apparent destruction of Berlin by continuous bombing raids could dissuade this strumpet of the regime to halt her spending spree, and given the suspicion that the Baron was under now it was very unlikely that she would be attending any high functions with Nazi officials again. That was on the assumption that she had not taken herself another highly placed lover, which being an arch survivor he could not discount. She looked as ravishing as ever with her black hair cut short, sporting a fringe, and with the sides curling round her delectable ears and almost meeting just below her mouth while she was dressed, for her anyway, in relatively conservative fashion, with no low cut dress but a beautiful pink outfit buttoned up to her throat and the hem amazingly going below her kneecaps. She had seemed both genuinely happy to see him return safely from the Front and upset at what had happened to her oft-cuckolded husband, how long that would last was open to question. She kissed the Baron softly on the forehead and left the room with Sebastian, who had sat in the corner, while von Preetz had slept fitfully, pondering what his options were. The net was closing in on him in every direction, whether it be the Soviets’ inevitable drive to Berlin or the Gestapo as they would surely assume, more by accident than design, that if the Baron was a rotten apple then his sponsorship of Der Engländer only added to his guilt and Sebast
ian was bound to be held in the utmost suspicion. What better for the ailing regime than a show trial of an aristocrat and diplomat along with an Englishman who had combined to undermine Germany and the glorious 1000-year Reich by plotting to kill Hitler. He could only imagine his mother’s shame back in England at the newsreel footage that would undoubtedly find its way into Allied hands of the traitor dressed in German army uniform in the dock. He had shamed the poor woman often enough with his drunken debauched behaviour but this was somewhat more of an earthquake syndrome. W B Yeats had written “the world of excess leads to the palace of wisdom” and he had certainly lived up to that in London and Oxford, but this was not excess, this was treason. Even if he were to be tried for plotting against the regime – two wrongs don’t make a right, he could just hear his mother reproaching him, but there again Sebastian reflected darkly look on the bright side, you can’t be hanged twice. He had Victoria to thank for rousing him from his indolence as she had swept majestically into the bedroom – a place she rarely if ever visited these days and once the Baron had been settled she took him away and ordered the cook, who had returned from her day out, to put together something for dinner. They ate mostly in silence. Victoria did not wish to hear bad news from the Front and Sebastian could not tell her about his own narrow escape as he did not trust her even though he conceded that she did have genuinely strong feelings for him despite his outburst at Eric’s funeral. He asked about Henrietta, von Helldorf and Nebe and was slightly shocked to hear that Henrietta was now going out with Beckmann; he felt jealous even but could see it was her way of keeping close to Eric by making love to someone who had been with him in the campaign and near him when he died. As for von Helldorf and Nebe there was little news except that the Count received an admonishment for the lack of policing in Berlin not only from his superiors but also from Victoria – I wonder which one hurt the most, thought Sebastian, and grinned. Nebe had not been around to the house for weeks, though she had seen him at several functions where he had been cold and aloof both to her and the Baron and gave the impression he was tense and distracted by other matters. “Probably fighting with his conscience,” interjected Sebastian and immediately regretted it, as Victoria would not have been aware of Nebe’s actions on the Eastern Front. Victoria raised her eyebrows. “Why would that be Sebastian?” He groaned and decided the best way out was to place his hand on her inner thigh and caress it gently. It had the desired effect as she slumped back in the straight backed oak chair and spread her legs, beckoning him to come to her and once again he did, as if he could not find the willpower to stop himself with the Baron lying in pain upstairs but there again he was a busted flush and Victoria could give him some protection with her undisputed loyalty to the regime. She inched herself onto the table, sending the plates and glasses flying onto the floor where the carpet muffled the breaking of the fine crystal. He mounted her, pulling down her stockings, and discovered she was wearing no panties, which only turned him on more. He stripped off his trousers and pants and she took him in her mouth ignoring the warning sounds that the table was literally on its last legs. “Don’t come, Sebastian, just tell me when you are on the point of it and then enter me,” she whispered. It was easier said than done for Sebastian, but he managed to restrain himself and bit her ear three times to indicate he was on the verge of exploding inside her luscious mouth.
She released him and he entered her forcefully as self-hatred took over but she was oblivious to his extra force, believing it to be simply desire that was urging him on. They both came at the same time, she screeching in delight, he groaning in contempt at himself and herself and everything that surrounded them where moral values did not exist. She stroked his head softly while they lay on the table declaring her love for him while he kept his thoughts to himself but he was fast coming to realize that his feelings were not too far removed from hers and it only made him hate himself even more. Their post-coital clutch was savagely interrupted as the table finally gave way – a table that had withstood poundings from the Baron’s forebears, who had not so much stood on ceremony as banged huge metal goblets on the surface and their chain mailed fists while the more recent ancestors had performed similar jocular, in the German sense of the word, actions on it. However, now almost symbolically in the dying days of this immoral regime with their last remaining male descendant lying in agony upstairs, an illicit coupling between his wife and one of the enemy, though a convert in the loosest sense of the term, had brought the table literally to its knees and it made Sebastian howl with laughter. His moment of hysteria which Victoria joined in when he told her what he had been thinking about was brought swiftly to an end as the door was roughly barged open and into the room strode the two thugs from earlier that afternoon. Sebastian scrambled rather unsteadily to his feet and his embarrassment at being caught with his host’s wife was compounded as he stood on a piece of glass which had him hopping from foot to foot as he desperately tried to pull it out. Victoria remained unabashedly unashamed and aside from placing a providential bunch of grapes in front of her bush tried to stare the brutal duo out but it was to no avail. Thug senior sneered at Sebastian and laughed derisively at Victoria’s attempts at making herself decent before brandishing a piece of paper. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, you needn’t get dressed, it’s not you we have come for but that old fart upstairs. This is simply to show you that you cannot intervene this time as it is an official arrest warrant for treason against the Baron,” he beamed triumphantly, revealing a set of rotted brown teeth. He gestured to his younger sidekick to go upstairs and he would follow but before he left he could not resist putting the boot in further. “Judging by this scene before me it would appear that your heart is no longer in protecting him anyway, as you have other priorities. It seems that betrayal is an illness in this house. No wonder Weimar was such a failure, with leaders like these how could Germany have succeeded,” he delivered one of his gargoylesque smiles and shut the door, leaving the lovers to contemplate their actions while he took every step up the staircase with increasing joy and the anticipation of at last achieving that orgasm he had been robbed of earlier in the day because of the interfering army officer. Yes indeed, he was looking forward to a second intensive session with the Baron, only this time it would be down at the forbidding building on Prinz Albrechtstrasse where very many entered but few left alive and only the most stubborn refused to divulge the information they had. What, he mused, would really make his night would be for the Baron to give him the Lieutenant’s name as one of the conspirators and if he did so then he might be lighter on him than he had planned – this scene he had just witnessed would no doubt provide ample ammunition to prise the name out of him. As for Sebastian and Victoria, they sat slumped in the middle of the dining room surrounded by the debris from their passionate engagement, deflated at their tryst having been discovered by that unattractive duo and at the same time realizing that the older one would waste no time in revealing it to their prey upstairs, though he had to be blind not to have recognized what was going on for ages. However, it wasn’t so much what the effect would be on the Baron that they were so dejected but more so what the repercussions would be for them. Sebastian feared, just as the senior thug had wanted him to, that the Baron would not stand up to interrogation German style and reveal his part in the conspiracy against the regime while Victoria saw her upwardly mobile surge into first the aristocracy and then the party come to a juddering halt and be torn asunder by her husband’s stupidity at getting involved in schoolboy plots. As a result they were both still naked when thug senior threw open the door again and revealed their infidelity to the former master of the house. “See, Baron, how can you think yourself capable of taking down the Reich when you cannot even see what is going on in your own household. You really are a pathetic specimen,” he said with evident glee. Sebastian looked squarely into the Baron’s face and saw not the anger or the upset he expected but instead a calm acceptance of what had gone on. He winked at Sebastian as he was r
oughly turned on his heels and marched out. Sebastian understood that his betrayal of his host would not be a catalyst for the whole deck of cards falling down on top of him – the Baron had long ago concluded exactly what type of person Victoria was and for that matter was his English guest.