Storm Front (Twilight of the Gods Book 1) (34 page)

But I didn't break
, she told herself, as she stepped into the bathroom and locked the door. 
I didn't tell them anything
.

The thought made her smile before the implications caught up with her.  As far as the police knew, she was just another student who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They hadn't connected her with Sigrún, the writer of proclamations and dissident... they certainly hadn't connected her to Konrad.  There had been no
reason
to do more than strip-search her, no reason to ask more than a bare handful of questions.  But if that ever changed...

Her body was shaking as she clambered into the shower and turned on the water.  She’d never suspected Horst, not once.  Many of the new spies were too obvious to be taken seriously, but Horst?  He’d become a friend, even a potential boyfriend, without her having the slightest hint that there was something wrong with him.  And if he'd done his duty and reported her from the start... she would have been thrown into prison, along with the rest of the Valkyries. 

She shivered, even though the water was warm.  Her father was worried for her, she knew; her mother would probably feel the same way.  She’d tasted the coercive power of schoolmasters and BDM matrons from a very young age, but she’d been spared a glimpse at the true power dominating the
Reich
, keeping everyone in line.  Now... she scrubbed at her body, trying to eradicate the sensation from where she’d been touched.  It would be easy just to give up, just to surrender and allow her father to withdraw her from the university.  Who knew?  Her husband might be a kind man, willing to allow her to be more than just a housewife...

But that would be giving up
, she thought, angry at herself. 
And I’ve come too far to give up. 

She'd sneaked into a hospital, she’d started the Valkyries, she’d triggered the process that was bringing more and more people onto the streets, proving that the government was far from invincible.  She was
damned
if she was just surrendering now.  Konrad deserved better than to be forgotten by his girlfriend.  If she couldn’t have him back, and she feared his father would simply turn off the life support, she could at least fight in his name.

There was a loud tap on the door.  “Gudrun,” her mother’s voice said.  She sounded different, somehow.  “Are you in there?”

“Yes, mother,” Gudrun said, tiredly.  Really, where else would she be, if she wasn't in her room?  It wasn't as if she made a habit of sneaking into any of the other bedrooms.  “I’m just finishing.”

“I’ll wait in your room,” her mother said.

Gudrun sighed, reminded herself that she could take whatever her parents chose to dish out, then dried herself hastily.  Who knew
what
her mother would find if she decided to search Gudrun’s bedroom?  She was sure there was nothing incriminating in plain view, but she didn't want to take chances.  Wrapping the towel around herself, she opened the door and hurried back to her bedroom.  Her mother was sitting on Gudrun’s bed, resting her hands on her lap.  She looked...
different
, in a way Gudrun couldn’t quite grasp.  And there was no sign of her father.

“We need to talk,” she said, firmly.

“Yes, mother,” Gudrun said, closing the door and picking up her dressing gown.  “I’m all ears.”

***

Oh, Gudrun
, Kurt thought. 
What have you done
?

He hadn't expected the last two days to be anything more than constant physical training, shooting at the range and a host of other tasks to prepare the soldiers for combat operations in South Africa.  The horror stories some of the experienced men had told him were enough to make it clear that they needed as much training as possible before they saw the elephant, despite the limitations of any training scenarios.  But instead, the Berlin Guard had been ordered to muster and placed on alert.  The old sweats insisted they’d never been ordered to prepare for immediate operations since the sixties, when Kurt’s
father
had been in the military.  Kurt had been convinced there had been some kind of disaster.  What
else
could explain the sudden shift in priorities?

But they’d mustered and waited... and waited... and finally been sent back to barracks.  There had been so many rumours flying through the base that the CO had had to make an announcement, but it had been utterly incoherent.  Strikers in Berlin, women on the streets, schoolchildren throwing mashed potato at their teachers... Kurt had been left wondering if it had been nothing more than an unscheduled drill.  The explanation had just sounded impossibly absurd.

And then he’d heard the broadcast, when he’d gone on watch, and put the whole story together.  The leaflets - the leaflets his sister had written - had been replaced with something else, a mass - and thoroughly illegal - labour movement.  And their strike had brought women and children out onto the streets in support. 

We might have been ordered into the city, to fire on strikers and students
, he thought, as he checked the bulletin board.  They’d been due to go out of the city for mountain training, but apparently the entire training schedule had been cancelled. 
And what would have happened when we’d been ordered to open fire
?

The government had backed down, according to the radio, but he knew better than to take that for granted.  If the training schedule had been cancelled, when the unit was due to go to South Africa, it could only mean that higher command had a use for the Berlin Guard closer to home.  And that meant...?

He shuddered. 
What do we do if we are ordered to fire on women and children
?

Chapter Thirty-Three

Berlin, Germany

15 August 1985

“I’m glad to see you made it back alive,” Ambassador Turtledove said.  “I was starting to worry.”

“It could have been a great deal worse,” Andrew assured him.  “And we got the pictures out, which is something.”

“Definitely,” the Ambassador said.  He waved a hand at the comfortable chairs.  “Please, take a seat.  I trust they weren't too unpleasant?”

“Just slammed us into a cell for a couple of days,” Andrew said.  “No search, no beatings... they must be going soft.”

“They certainly backed down when the entire city ground to a halt,” the Ambassador agreed, calmly.  His secretary appeared with a couple of mugs of coffee.  “Washington needs a full report, Andrew.  What the hell is going on?”

“The cracks in the
Reich
have finally started to break open,” Andrew said.  He took a long sip of his coffee before continuing.  He’d expected worse when the Germans had swept him and Marshall off the streets, but the
Reich
had had worse problems than a pair of Americans poking their noses into the strikes.  “We always knew they would, one day.”

The Ambassador nodded.  His family was Jewish, although Andrew didn't think he practiced himself.  The
Reich
had slaughtered every Jew it could catch, without exception; there was no group in the United States that hated the Nazis as much as the Jews.  He was mildly surprised the Nazis hadn’t protested Turtledove’s appointment - he was human, unlike the shambling monsters German children were taught to fear - but the Ambassador rarely met anyone outside the highest echelons of the
Reich
.  It was unlikely the German population even knew his name.

“My contacts were predicting trouble,” Andrew added, after a moment.  “The real question is just how far the
Reich
will reform.”

“It looks as though they have conceded everything,” the Ambassador noted.  “Do you believe that’s true?”

Andrew shook his head.  “I don’t see the old regime surrendering power so easily,” he said, carefully.  “They were caught by surprise, I suspect, by the sheer volume of the strikes and street protests.  The next time, sir, they will be a great deal better prepared.”

He took another sip of his coffee.  “Legalising unions and protest groups may seem like a concession,” he added, “but it forces the leaders to come out into the open.  They’ll paint targets on their backsides for the
Waffen-SS
to kick.  I would be surprised if they weren't already seeding the protest groups with spies and agent provocateurs, just to provide an excuse for crushing the crowds and arresting the leaders.”

“If the soldiers agree to fire,” the Ambassador noted.

Andrew shrugged.  “The
Waffen-SS
will definitely fire,” he said.  “Obedience and loyalty to appointed authority has always been one of their strengths.  And... they’re like the marines, in some ways: a self-selected elite that considers themselves a cut above the rest.”

“As a retired marine,” Turtledove said stiffly, “I find that comparison highly insulting.”

“The principle is the same,” Andrew said, unfazed.  He’d done his military service in the Rangers, before transferring to OSS.  The lure of being like James Bond had drawn him into intelligence work, although supervillains and hot girls seemed to be remarkably thin on the ground.  “The
Reich
has worked hard to ensure that the
Waffen-SS
owes loyalty to the
Reich
, to the concept of the SS, rather than to the German population.  It doesn't help that most of their eastern recruits see the westerners as...”

Turtledove smirked.  “Cappuccino-sipping liberals?”

“More or less,” Andrew said.  “The real problem, sir, is what happens
after
the protest movements are crushed?”

The Ambassador sighed.  “That’s what Washington wants to know,” he said.  “And it’s a question I can't answer.”

“There are three possibilities,” Andrew said.  He’d given the matter some thought while waiting in the prison cell.  “First, the
Reich
goes back to normal.  Second, there is a prolonged period of instability that will weaken the
Reich
over the long run.  Third, outright civil war breaks out.”

“And the
Reich
has nuclear weapons,” the Ambassador said.  “Do you think they’d start something with us, just to divert their people from the current crisis?”

Andrew frowned.  He hadn't considered
that
possibility.

“They’d need to provoke a bigger crisis than the Falklands War,” he said, after a moment’s thought.  “One they could use to appeal to their own people.  A shooting incident between the Brits and Germans?  Something they could cool down if necessary.  The real danger would be accidentally ending up with a full-scale war.”

He scowled, remembering a handful of war games he’d been required to observe during his last stint in Washington.  There were too many questions over just how many advanced jet fighters, missiles and nuclear-powered submarines the
Reich
actually possessed, but it was generally agreed that the Germans could give the British a very hard time if they launched a major airborne offensive into British airspace, while using the
Kriegsmarine
to prevent reinforcements from the United States and Canada.  And yet, could they do more?  There were so many British and American troops in Britain itself that outright invasion might well be impossible.

But then, the same is true for us
, he thought. 
Invading France would be one hell of a bloodbath
.

The war games had suggested, even with both sides refraining from using nuclear weapons, that the war would be long, perhaps even terminating in a stalemate.  Invading France would be costly, advancing through Iran into Germany Arabia marginally less so... it could be years before either side scored a decisive victory.  And there were no silver bullets, no way to speed up the process.  The United States and Britain would have to gird themselves for a fight that would make the
last
major war look like a minor spat.

“They’d have to be insane to provoke us,” the Ambassador noted.  “They need shipments of computer tech from the United States.”

“They’re not exactly sane,” Andrew said.  He knew too much about the
Reich’s
crimes to have any doubt about the nature of the beast.  The Jews weren't the only people marched into the concentration camps and gassed to death.  Germany was a prison camp above ground and a mass grave below.  “They may even feel that they can win a nuclear war.”

The ambassador shook his head in disbelief.  Andrew understood.  A nuclear exchange would devastate both sides, even with the ABM system.  He doubted the
Reich
could survive after losing its cities, military bases and transit links to American nukes.  God knew the enslaved populations would see a chance for freedom and take it, lashing out at what remained of the
Reich
.  But the SS truly believed they were the
Herrenvolk
, the Master Race.  They might feel they could survive a nuclear war and rebuild from the ashes.

“Washington would like to know if there’s anything we can do,” the Ambassador said.  “
Is
there anything?”

Andrew frowned.  Of all the personnel stationed in the embassy, he had the most contact with ordinary Germans.  But even he didn't know
precisely
what was going on in the
Reich
.  The Germans themselves didn't know.

“I don’t think so,” he said, finally.  “We don't know
precisely
who’s behind the protest movement, so we don’t know who to contact.  And if we were
caught
speaking to the leadership, the
Reich
would have every right to declare us
Persona Non Grata
and toss us out of the country.  They’d play the incident for all it was worth, sir.  I think the only thing we can reasonably do is watch from a safe distance.”

Turtledove snorted.  “
Is
there such a thing?”

“Maybe not, sir,” Andrew said.  “But better the
Reich
remains concentrated on its own internal problems than looking at us and contemplating war.”

“There are some in Washington who’ll want to use this opportunity to put the boot in and end the cold war,” Turtledove said.  He finished his coffee and placed the cup on the table.  “Of course, they might just replace the cold war with a hot war.”

Andrew nodded.  The
Reich’s
leadership had to be getting desperate, if they were prepared to make concessions rather than send in the
Waffen-SS
to bust some heads.  They’d see the prospect of a war with America as a relief, perhaps.  God knew they'd spent the last forty years preparing their population for one final war against the capitalist Jew-ridden pigs in the United States. 

“Write a full report and include any suggestions you might have,” the Ambassador ordered, as Andrew finished his own coffee.  “And make sure they know just how dangerous the situation is becoming.  We don’t want to stumble into a war because some back-seat driver in Washington thinks he knows better than us.”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said.  There
might
be a way to help the growing protest movement, but the Germans would turn against it if they believed that outsiders were helping the protesters.  Hell, the
Reich
might see fit to portray them as American stooges.  “Has the
Reich
said anything formally?”

“Not to us,” the Ambassador said.  He didn't sound surprised.  The German Foreign Ministry talked to the Americans as little as possible.  “I suspect they don’t want us to know just how bad things are becoming.”

Andrew nodded. “They’re likely to get worse,” he said.  “I don’t see the regime just surrendering its grip on power.  They’re not
Americans
.  There aren't regular elections with peaceful winners and losers.  The
Reich
is a party-dominated dictatorship.”

“The federal government endures, no matter which party is in power,” the Ambassador said, curtly.  “The Nazis may just need a few new figureheads.”

***

When,
Reichsführer-SS
Karl Holliston asked himself, had the
Reich
ever actually
surrendered
?

It hadn't, as far as he could recall, certainly not to feckless civilians.  The west had truly gone soft, if it was prepared to coddle strikers rather than punish them... and, for that matter, allow married women to march onto the streets as if they were men.  Didn't they
know
their duty was to remain at home, having babies and raising them while the men took care of the hard work?  How
dare
they have political opinions of their own?  How dare
anyone
have political opinions of their own?

Should have set the dogs on them
, he thought.  There were canine units in the east, deployed against work gangs of
Untermenschen
that rioted against their rightful superiors. 
And then have them publicly stripped and flogged to teach them a lesson
.

But the Reich Council had surrendered.  The Reich Council had made concessions.  The Reich Council... had betrayed the
Reich
.

It wasn't a pleasant thought, but it had to be faced.  Karl had thought he could count on Voss, as a matter of course, and several of the other ministers, yet they’d seen the protesters on the streets and turned against their sworn duty.  Who
cared
how many students were arrested or killed on the streets when the
Reich
was in danger?  The strikers... if they refused to work, they could be shot!  And yet, the Reich Council - even the military - had betrayed its own people.