Alternate History The Flight of Werner Von Braun (Alternate History Stand-Alone)
- Thread starter ChrisNuttall
- Start date
Well,good chapters,but why Hans bothered with sending brothel workers to prison? they do not knew anytching.
And,Sralin even without USA would hold - soviets retake Stalingrad without Lend-Lease.
It would be impossible to go any further,but they would hold on Don river.All thanks to german stupidity - they genocided millions of soviet prisoners,so soviet stop mass-surrender and start fighting.
And,Sralin even without USA would hold - soviets retake Stalingrad without Lend-Lease.
It would be impossible to go any further,but they would hold on Don river.All thanks to german stupidity - they genocided millions of soviet prisoners,so soviet stop mass-surrender and start fighting.
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
well,he is wasting resources.But-puritans never were smart....
Chapter Fourteen
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Fourteen: Berlin, 1949
"The staff have all been interrogated," Hauptsturmfuehrer Heinz reported. "They knew nothing about Von Braun, and cared less. They were told to keep their eyes and ears firmly shut. I imagine it made their work easier."
Hans glared at the younger man. He was in no mood for jokes. The search had turned up nothing so far, certainly nothing useful. He'd come up with a list of names, people who visited the love hotel, and it might be useful when the succession crisis began, but right now he needed to find Von Braun. The rocket scientist appeared to have made it out of the city and ... and where was he? Hans couldn't help wondering if he'd been tricked. It would be just like the British to dangle a false trail to distract the SS, while they kept Von Braun locked up in the embassy and drained him dry. If he'd been tricked ...
His eyes lingered on the map. It wasn't impossible. Von Braun – or someone knitted out like him – could easily have passed through the station, bought a pair of tickets, then headed out the other door ... perhaps even changed his appearance in the washroom before making his escape. There weren't many ticket inspectors outside the platforms themselves and it would be very easy to get away with it, getting out of the station and meeting up with a diplomatic car to drive back to the embassy before the blockade was in place. Hans had ordered that every car trying to get in or out was to be inspected, but ... if the British had moved fast, they might have gotten home free before it was too late.
And we can't search the embassy for Von Braun, Hans thought. It would be a major diplomatic incident if the Reich searched an embassy belonging to an insignificant power, let alone the third or fourth most powerful nation in the world. The Americans would mount a major diplomatic protest, and most of the world would join them. Even if we play it off as a rogue operation, we would still wind up in deep shit.
He dismissed Heinz with a nod and stared down at the reports, grinding his teeth in frustration. The SS had hundreds of thousands of men – good loyal Aryans – under its banner, but there was no way they could search an ever-growing region that was already hundreds of square miles and growing by the minute. It had been hard enough to get forces into place to search the trains, and he was uneasily aware his targets could have left the train before the alert went out ... if they'd ever been on a train. He looked at the phone, wondering just how long he had before the Reichsführer-SS called for an update. Hans needed something to give him, but what? He was all too aware Himmler had already marked him out as the scapegoat, if the disaster couldn't be contained before it became public knowledge.
Bile rose in his throat, making him swallow to keep from retching. He had been the man on the spot, and yet ... he'd had to follow orders. He could have kept Von Braun from the love hotel, or from the lecture theatre, or even banned him from bringing strange women back to his chambers. It wouldn't have been that hard to find a woman who fitted his requirements – dozens, even hundreds, of women – and he could even have sold it to his superiors as part of the eugenics program. But he hadn't been allowed to do anything of the sort. Von Braun had to be given some freedom, more than almost everyone else in the Reich. And it had bitten them in the ass.
It will be different, Hans promised himself. When we get him back, he'll be a prisoner in all but name.
He looked back at the map, repeating the promise time and time again. There would be no freedom this time. Von Braun would be escorted everywhere, his guards escorting him to the toilet and even sleeping in his bedroom at night. There would be no more luxury – no more food and drink denied to the rest of the Reich – and definitely no more women. He wouldn't even be allowed to leave the rocket complex, not even to visit Berlin. The rest of the military wouldn't be allowed to talk to him, certainly not face to face ...
His heart sank. There was no point in planning how he was going to keep Von Braun in custody, after his recovery, until he actually was recovered. There was no guarantee, either, that he'd be allowed anywhere near the rocket complex again. The eastern front always needed men and Hans was all too aware that he could easily be sent there – again - even if he recovered Von Braun. Himmler would still need a scapegoat, and in truth Hans knew he'd been lax. He could have been a great deal more careful about vetting Von Braun's one-night stands.
There was a tap on the door. Hans looked up. The young Untersturmfuehrer stood there.
"Herr Sturmbannfuehrer?"
Hans scowled, but motioned for the young man to come inside. "Anything?"
"Yes, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," the youngster said. "I found something interesting."
"And is it actually helpful," Hans asked, "or is it a pointless diversion?"
The Untersturmfuehrer tapped the map. "I spent the evening calling the stations – all the possible places the fugitives could have left their train – and comparing notes. It was a long and difficult task, but we came up with a handful of names for people who either didn't get on the trains or seemingly didn't get off. They should have been noted at both Berlin and their destination station ... and some weren't."
Hans frowned. The average train called at ten – or more – stations between its departure point and its final destination. There were at least fifty possible trains the fugitives could have taken, assuming they'd actually boarded the train. Even narrowing it down a little, by assuming they'd intended to go to the listed destination, it would still take a long time to narrow it down. He wasn't sure if the Untersturmfuehrer had done something useful, or if he'd just wasted a great deal of time.
"And?"
"I called the stations along the way," the Untersturmfuehrer said, "and checked with the train staff. There were a handful of people who weren't noted leaving the train, but only two who match the profile. Middle-aged woman, elderly man."
Hans sucked in his breath. "You found them?"
"Not quite," the Untersturmfuehrer said. "Their train was searched, near Werder. They were not found."
"I see." Hans stared at the map, his finger tracing a railway line as it headed west. "And they were definitely on the train?"
"Yes, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer. They were definitely noted by the ticket conductor and trolley woman. I've had them both transferred to the Werder SS HQ."
Hans had to smile. "Good thinking," he said. "So ... where did they leave the train?"
"I'm unsure as yet," the Untersturmfuehrer admitted. "They were on the train after it left Potsdam, but they were either missing when the train was searched or the searchers simply missed them. There's no hint they left the train at any point after the search, so ..."
Hans reached for his phone and called the ops operator. "Have my plane prepared immediately," he ordered. He would have preferred a car, but there was no time. This was the first real lead they'd had and he needed to be on the spot, or someone else would claim the credit for recovering Von Braun. "I'm flying to Werder."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer."
"You're coming with me," Hans said, once he'd put the phone back in its cradle. "Grab your overnight bag and meet me at the runaway, ten minutes from now."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," the Untersturmfuehrer said. He sounded nervous – flying at night wasn't remotely safe, even in 1949 – but knew better than to argue. "I'll be there."
Hans dismissed him with a wave, then sat back and eyed the phone. Should he call Himmler and brief him? Perhaps not ... the blockade had been thrown up so quickly there'd been no time to patch all the holes, certainly not in less than a day. Dozens of people would have escaped inspection, none enemies of the Reich. The more he considered it, the more flimsy he knew the case to be. If the two missing people hadn't matched the fugitives, he would have dismissed the report as a statistical hiccup. Instead, it was the first lead they'd had in hours.
He found Werder on the map and forced himself to think. The train would have been stopped outside the town ... he flicked through the pile of reports until he found the brief account forwarded by the search coordinator ... and the fugitives had not been found. Had they changed trains at Potsdam? He'd have to check, although there was no way to be sure. Or had they ditched the train when it had been stopped? Or had they been hiding in the washroom? The searchers should have known to check, but if there had been a woman in there they might have skipped it ... Hans ground his teeth as he stood, collected his bag, and headed for the door. If the searchers had missed the fugitives, heads were going to roll.
The air outside was cold and hard, tainted with a scent of ash from the nearby incinerator. Hans shivered, looking west towards Berlin. The city was a bright haze in the darkness, a glow that could be seen for miles around ... a beacon of civilisation, man's best hope against the encroaching barbarism. Hans had grown up during the hunger years – his father had been killed in the war, his mother forced to sell herself to keep her children alive – and the thought of going back to those times was terrifying. The Reich was all that stood between Germany and another collapse, and it had to be preserved. Von Braun didn't understand that, Hans mused, but who could blame him? He'd always lived in the lap of luxury.
He scrambled into the tiny plane, stowed his bag under the seat and strapped himself into his seat. The Untersturmfuehrer sat next to him, looking terrified. The tiny aircraft was only a little bit larger than a fighter, small compared to a bomber or a passenger aircraft. Hans would have preferred a larger aircraft too, but there just wasn't time. He covered his ears as the pilot brought the engine to life, then steered the aircraft onto the runway and took off. The Untersturmfuehrer was praying ... Hans hid his disgust with an effort. The SS were discouraged from worship. Christianity had made Germany soft.
The engine noises grew louder as the plane climbed higher. Hans peered down at the lights sparkling in the darkness, remembering the days when no one had been allowed to shine lights after dark for fear of British bombers. Now, the land around Berlin was a sea of lights, from the party complexes and factories around the city to the cars and trucks moving in and out of the region. Even at night, the Reich's mighty industry never slept. It was striking. Hans had flown over Russia and he'd been shocked at just how dark it had been, back then. There had been no lights at all, save for the German settlements. Proof, if he'd needed it, that the Russians were barbaric Untermenschen.
He forced himself to relax as the land below grew darker, the lights spreading out more as the plane flew further west, even though it was a grim reminder the electrification program hadn't reached every last bit of Germany. There were farms below that shunned the benefits of modernisation, towns and hamlets linked together by roads that were poorly maintained and muddy tracks that were sometimes impossible to find, if you weren't local. The farmers couldn't be relied upon either, certainly not to support the party. They were often proud and patriotic, but their loyalty to their country was to something abstract. To them, the central government – Imperial, Weimar or Nazi – was the enemy. And that meant they might not raise the alarm if they saw the fugitives.
The plane started to descend, Hans's stomach twisting painfully as Werder came into view. The SS complex outside the city was brightly lit ... a flicker of alarm ran through him, even though he knew the Reich was at peace and there were hundreds of interceptor squadrons between the English Channel and Werder. Göring had promised, if he recalled correctly, that the British would never bomb Berlin, and had ended up in hot water after the RAF had bombed Berlin. Hans wondered how Göring had managed to retain his position after that, let alone become one of the contenders to replace Hitler. But then, Hitler had always been loyal to those who were loyal to him. Himmler was nowhere near so sentimental.
His legs felt wobbly as the plane landed, the door opening to reveal a greeting party. Hans scowled inwardly as he clambered out, passed his bag to an orderly and snapped orders for him to be taken at once to the interrogation chamber. There was no time for formalities. The officer in command looked nervous as he hurried Hans through a checkpoint, then down a long corridor. Hans kept his eyes open, noting the signs of a complex that had become alarmingly lax over the last few years. The guards needed to be put through a series of exercises, if not sent east for a month or two. Werder was unlikely to be attacked any time soon – they were hundreds of miles from danger – but that was no excuse for carelessness.
The interrogation chamber was brightly lit, the lamps angled to illuminate the woman sitting at the table while casting shadow over her interrogators. Her hands were cuffed to the table, more to remind her of her own helplessness than for any practical purpose. The woman didn't look very dangerous, but ... Hans ground his teeth. The British agent who'd seduced Von Braun was clearly smart as well as dangerous. And if she'd gotten off the train before the search began, she was clearly not prone to panic either.
Hans took a seat and picked up the woman's file, skimming the important parts with practiced ease. A young widow, husband dead in the war, working to support herself ... no children, apparently, and no relatives who might be convinced to take her in. Hans was mildly surprised she hadn't remarried, although he could understand the advantages of remaining single. A widow had freedoms an unmarried daughter did not. And yet, she shouldn't have had to work for a living ...
He forced himself to speak gently. "What happened?"
The woman was clearly terrified, her words tumbling over and blurring together as she spoke. "I ... I was selling food, drink and newspapers on the train. There were two people in first class – an old man and his daughter. I saw them after Berlin and after Potsdam, but then they vanished. After the search, there was no sign of them. I thought ... I didn't realise it was a problem until we were interrogated, after the train reached its final destination. I ..."
Hans held up a hand. "Are you sure they didn't leave the train at Potsdam? Or Brandenburg?"
The woman tried to look up, but the light was too bright. "They were definitely on the train after Potsdam, and I didn't see them at all after the search. I was told to make another round before we reached Brandenburg and I didn't see them, either of them."
"They could have been in the washroom," Hans pointed out.
"Both of them?" The woman shook her head. "Not at the same time."
Hans supposed she had a point. There was no way to be sure your luggage wouldn't be stolen, if you left it alone. Petty thief was epidemic in parts of the Reich and very few people took chances. Besides, there was normally only one or two washrooms per carriage. It would be hard for two people to go at the same time.
"Thank you for your time," Hans said. "I'll see that you are compensated."
He stood and left the room. "Have her moved to a comfortable chamber for the night," he ordered, when he was outside. The complex had some rooms that could have passed for a hotel suite, except they were designed to be inescapable. "I trust you got a description?"
"Yes, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," the officer said. "We got one from both the witnesses."
Hans nodded, slowly. The drawings were very far from perfect, but ... they did look like Von Braun and the mysterious Kathleen O'Brian, if you looked carefully and used your imagination quite a bit. They were travelling under false names – Werner and Käthe Schmidt – the former making him jump before he remembered that Werner was a very common name in the Reich. There was no reason that anyone who saw a man called Werner would immediately think of Werner Von Brain. He allowed himself a tight smile. There was no reason they couldn't put an alert out for Werner and Käthe Schmidt. If they were fool enough to keep using the papers ...
"Put out an alert," he ordered. There was no way to be sure, but the odds were not in favour of it being a coincidence. "And ensure the search team is reprimanded for their failure."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer."
Hans nodded as he walked into his new office. The map on the wall told a worrying story – the landscape surrounding the search point was dangerously undeveloped, with plenty of possible ways two fugitive could evade checkpoints – but he had no intention of giving up. He had to find them, and that meant ...
They have to be somewhere within this region, he told himself. Even assuming they'd stolen a vehicle, they couldn't have gotten that far from the checkpoint. And we will find them.
"The staff have all been interrogated," Hauptsturmfuehrer Heinz reported. "They knew nothing about Von Braun, and cared less. They were told to keep their eyes and ears firmly shut. I imagine it made their work easier."
Hans glared at the younger man. He was in no mood for jokes. The search had turned up nothing so far, certainly nothing useful. He'd come up with a list of names, people who visited the love hotel, and it might be useful when the succession crisis began, but right now he needed to find Von Braun. The rocket scientist appeared to have made it out of the city and ... and where was he? Hans couldn't help wondering if he'd been tricked. It would be just like the British to dangle a false trail to distract the SS, while they kept Von Braun locked up in the embassy and drained him dry. If he'd been tricked ...
His eyes lingered on the map. It wasn't impossible. Von Braun – or someone knitted out like him – could easily have passed through the station, bought a pair of tickets, then headed out the other door ... perhaps even changed his appearance in the washroom before making his escape. There weren't many ticket inspectors outside the platforms themselves and it would be very easy to get away with it, getting out of the station and meeting up with a diplomatic car to drive back to the embassy before the blockade was in place. Hans had ordered that every car trying to get in or out was to be inspected, but ... if the British had moved fast, they might have gotten home free before it was too late.
And we can't search the embassy for Von Braun, Hans thought. It would be a major diplomatic incident if the Reich searched an embassy belonging to an insignificant power, let alone the third or fourth most powerful nation in the world. The Americans would mount a major diplomatic protest, and most of the world would join them. Even if we play it off as a rogue operation, we would still wind up in deep shit.
He dismissed Heinz with a nod and stared down at the reports, grinding his teeth in frustration. The SS had hundreds of thousands of men – good loyal Aryans – under its banner, but there was no way they could search an ever-growing region that was already hundreds of square miles and growing by the minute. It had been hard enough to get forces into place to search the trains, and he was uneasily aware his targets could have left the train before the alert went out ... if they'd ever been on a train. He looked at the phone, wondering just how long he had before the Reichsführer-SS called for an update. Hans needed something to give him, but what? He was all too aware Himmler had already marked him out as the scapegoat, if the disaster couldn't be contained before it became public knowledge.
Bile rose in his throat, making him swallow to keep from retching. He had been the man on the spot, and yet ... he'd had to follow orders. He could have kept Von Braun from the love hotel, or from the lecture theatre, or even banned him from bringing strange women back to his chambers. It wouldn't have been that hard to find a woman who fitted his requirements – dozens, even hundreds, of women – and he could even have sold it to his superiors as part of the eugenics program. But he hadn't been allowed to do anything of the sort. Von Braun had to be given some freedom, more than almost everyone else in the Reich. And it had bitten them in the ass.
It will be different, Hans promised himself. When we get him back, he'll be a prisoner in all but name.
He looked back at the map, repeating the promise time and time again. There would be no freedom this time. Von Braun would be escorted everywhere, his guards escorting him to the toilet and even sleeping in his bedroom at night. There would be no more luxury – no more food and drink denied to the rest of the Reich – and definitely no more women. He wouldn't even be allowed to leave the rocket complex, not even to visit Berlin. The rest of the military wouldn't be allowed to talk to him, certainly not face to face ...
His heart sank. There was no point in planning how he was going to keep Von Braun in custody, after his recovery, until he actually was recovered. There was no guarantee, either, that he'd be allowed anywhere near the rocket complex again. The eastern front always needed men and Hans was all too aware that he could easily be sent there – again - even if he recovered Von Braun. Himmler would still need a scapegoat, and in truth Hans knew he'd been lax. He could have been a great deal more careful about vetting Von Braun's one-night stands.
There was a tap on the door. Hans looked up. The young Untersturmfuehrer stood there.
"Herr Sturmbannfuehrer?"
Hans scowled, but motioned for the young man to come inside. "Anything?"
"Yes, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," the youngster said. "I found something interesting."
"And is it actually helpful," Hans asked, "or is it a pointless diversion?"
The Untersturmfuehrer tapped the map. "I spent the evening calling the stations – all the possible places the fugitives could have left their train – and comparing notes. It was a long and difficult task, but we came up with a handful of names for people who either didn't get on the trains or seemingly didn't get off. They should have been noted at both Berlin and their destination station ... and some weren't."
Hans frowned. The average train called at ten – or more – stations between its departure point and its final destination. There were at least fifty possible trains the fugitives could have taken, assuming they'd actually boarded the train. Even narrowing it down a little, by assuming they'd intended to go to the listed destination, it would still take a long time to narrow it down. He wasn't sure if the Untersturmfuehrer had done something useful, or if he'd just wasted a great deal of time.
"And?"
"I called the stations along the way," the Untersturmfuehrer said, "and checked with the train staff. There were a handful of people who weren't noted leaving the train, but only two who match the profile. Middle-aged woman, elderly man."
Hans sucked in his breath. "You found them?"
"Not quite," the Untersturmfuehrer said. "Their train was searched, near Werder. They were not found."
"I see." Hans stared at the map, his finger tracing a railway line as it headed west. "And they were definitely on the train?"
"Yes, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer. They were definitely noted by the ticket conductor and trolley woman. I've had them both transferred to the Werder SS HQ."
Hans had to smile. "Good thinking," he said. "So ... where did they leave the train?"
"I'm unsure as yet," the Untersturmfuehrer admitted. "They were on the train after it left Potsdam, but they were either missing when the train was searched or the searchers simply missed them. There's no hint they left the train at any point after the search, so ..."
Hans reached for his phone and called the ops operator. "Have my plane prepared immediately," he ordered. He would have preferred a car, but there was no time. This was the first real lead they'd had and he needed to be on the spot, or someone else would claim the credit for recovering Von Braun. "I'm flying to Werder."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer."
"You're coming with me," Hans said, once he'd put the phone back in its cradle. "Grab your overnight bag and meet me at the runaway, ten minutes from now."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," the Untersturmfuehrer said. He sounded nervous – flying at night wasn't remotely safe, even in 1949 – but knew better than to argue. "I'll be there."
Hans dismissed him with a wave, then sat back and eyed the phone. Should he call Himmler and brief him? Perhaps not ... the blockade had been thrown up so quickly there'd been no time to patch all the holes, certainly not in less than a day. Dozens of people would have escaped inspection, none enemies of the Reich. The more he considered it, the more flimsy he knew the case to be. If the two missing people hadn't matched the fugitives, he would have dismissed the report as a statistical hiccup. Instead, it was the first lead they'd had in hours.
He found Werder on the map and forced himself to think. The train would have been stopped outside the town ... he flicked through the pile of reports until he found the brief account forwarded by the search coordinator ... and the fugitives had not been found. Had they changed trains at Potsdam? He'd have to check, although there was no way to be sure. Or had they ditched the train when it had been stopped? Or had they been hiding in the washroom? The searchers should have known to check, but if there had been a woman in there they might have skipped it ... Hans ground his teeth as he stood, collected his bag, and headed for the door. If the searchers had missed the fugitives, heads were going to roll.
The air outside was cold and hard, tainted with a scent of ash from the nearby incinerator. Hans shivered, looking west towards Berlin. The city was a bright haze in the darkness, a glow that could be seen for miles around ... a beacon of civilisation, man's best hope against the encroaching barbarism. Hans had grown up during the hunger years – his father had been killed in the war, his mother forced to sell herself to keep her children alive – and the thought of going back to those times was terrifying. The Reich was all that stood between Germany and another collapse, and it had to be preserved. Von Braun didn't understand that, Hans mused, but who could blame him? He'd always lived in the lap of luxury.
He scrambled into the tiny plane, stowed his bag under the seat and strapped himself into his seat. The Untersturmfuehrer sat next to him, looking terrified. The tiny aircraft was only a little bit larger than a fighter, small compared to a bomber or a passenger aircraft. Hans would have preferred a larger aircraft too, but there just wasn't time. He covered his ears as the pilot brought the engine to life, then steered the aircraft onto the runway and took off. The Untersturmfuehrer was praying ... Hans hid his disgust with an effort. The SS were discouraged from worship. Christianity had made Germany soft.
The engine noises grew louder as the plane climbed higher. Hans peered down at the lights sparkling in the darkness, remembering the days when no one had been allowed to shine lights after dark for fear of British bombers. Now, the land around Berlin was a sea of lights, from the party complexes and factories around the city to the cars and trucks moving in and out of the region. Even at night, the Reich's mighty industry never slept. It was striking. Hans had flown over Russia and he'd been shocked at just how dark it had been, back then. There had been no lights at all, save for the German settlements. Proof, if he'd needed it, that the Russians were barbaric Untermenschen.
He forced himself to relax as the land below grew darker, the lights spreading out more as the plane flew further west, even though it was a grim reminder the electrification program hadn't reached every last bit of Germany. There were farms below that shunned the benefits of modernisation, towns and hamlets linked together by roads that were poorly maintained and muddy tracks that were sometimes impossible to find, if you weren't local. The farmers couldn't be relied upon either, certainly not to support the party. They were often proud and patriotic, but their loyalty to their country was to something abstract. To them, the central government – Imperial, Weimar or Nazi – was the enemy. And that meant they might not raise the alarm if they saw the fugitives.
The plane started to descend, Hans's stomach twisting painfully as Werder came into view. The SS complex outside the city was brightly lit ... a flicker of alarm ran through him, even though he knew the Reich was at peace and there were hundreds of interceptor squadrons between the English Channel and Werder. Göring had promised, if he recalled correctly, that the British would never bomb Berlin, and had ended up in hot water after the RAF had bombed Berlin. Hans wondered how Göring had managed to retain his position after that, let alone become one of the contenders to replace Hitler. But then, Hitler had always been loyal to those who were loyal to him. Himmler was nowhere near so sentimental.
His legs felt wobbly as the plane landed, the door opening to reveal a greeting party. Hans scowled inwardly as he clambered out, passed his bag to an orderly and snapped orders for him to be taken at once to the interrogation chamber. There was no time for formalities. The officer in command looked nervous as he hurried Hans through a checkpoint, then down a long corridor. Hans kept his eyes open, noting the signs of a complex that had become alarmingly lax over the last few years. The guards needed to be put through a series of exercises, if not sent east for a month or two. Werder was unlikely to be attacked any time soon – they were hundreds of miles from danger – but that was no excuse for carelessness.
The interrogation chamber was brightly lit, the lamps angled to illuminate the woman sitting at the table while casting shadow over her interrogators. Her hands were cuffed to the table, more to remind her of her own helplessness than for any practical purpose. The woman didn't look very dangerous, but ... Hans ground his teeth. The British agent who'd seduced Von Braun was clearly smart as well as dangerous. And if she'd gotten off the train before the search began, she was clearly not prone to panic either.
Hans took a seat and picked up the woman's file, skimming the important parts with practiced ease. A young widow, husband dead in the war, working to support herself ... no children, apparently, and no relatives who might be convinced to take her in. Hans was mildly surprised she hadn't remarried, although he could understand the advantages of remaining single. A widow had freedoms an unmarried daughter did not. And yet, she shouldn't have had to work for a living ...
He forced himself to speak gently. "What happened?"
The woman was clearly terrified, her words tumbling over and blurring together as she spoke. "I ... I was selling food, drink and newspapers on the train. There were two people in first class – an old man and his daughter. I saw them after Berlin and after Potsdam, but then they vanished. After the search, there was no sign of them. I thought ... I didn't realise it was a problem until we were interrogated, after the train reached its final destination. I ..."
Hans held up a hand. "Are you sure they didn't leave the train at Potsdam? Or Brandenburg?"
The woman tried to look up, but the light was too bright. "They were definitely on the train after Potsdam, and I didn't see them at all after the search. I was told to make another round before we reached Brandenburg and I didn't see them, either of them."
"They could have been in the washroom," Hans pointed out.
"Both of them?" The woman shook her head. "Not at the same time."
Hans supposed she had a point. There was no way to be sure your luggage wouldn't be stolen, if you left it alone. Petty thief was epidemic in parts of the Reich and very few people took chances. Besides, there was normally only one or two washrooms per carriage. It would be hard for two people to go at the same time.
"Thank you for your time," Hans said. "I'll see that you are compensated."
He stood and left the room. "Have her moved to a comfortable chamber for the night," he ordered, when he was outside. The complex had some rooms that could have passed for a hotel suite, except they were designed to be inescapable. "I trust you got a description?"
"Yes, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," the officer said. "We got one from both the witnesses."
Hans nodded, slowly. The drawings were very far from perfect, but ... they did look like Von Braun and the mysterious Kathleen O'Brian, if you looked carefully and used your imagination quite a bit. They were travelling under false names – Werner and Käthe Schmidt – the former making him jump before he remembered that Werner was a very common name in the Reich. There was no reason that anyone who saw a man called Werner would immediately think of Werner Von Brain. He allowed himself a tight smile. There was no reason they couldn't put an alert out for Werner and Käthe Schmidt. If they were fool enough to keep using the papers ...
"Put out an alert," he ordered. There was no way to be sure, but the odds were not in favour of it being a coincidence. "And ensure the search team is reprimanded for their failure."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer."
Hans nodded as he walked into his new office. The map on the wall told a worrying story – the landscape surrounding the search point was dangerously undeveloped, with plenty of possible ways two fugitive could evade checkpoints – but he had no intention of giving up. He had to find them, and that meant ...
They have to be somewhere within this region, he told himself. Even assuming they'd stolen a vehicle, they couldn't have gotten that far from the checkpoint. And we will find them.
Chapter Fifteen
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Fifteen: Near Werder, 1949
Kathleen awoke, sharply.
She sat upright, unsure what had disturbed her. The sound from outside puzzled her ... it took her a moment, one hand reaching for her pistol, before she realised the animals needed to be fed. She stood and headed for the door, glancing around to make sure they were still alone as she stepped outside and wandered over to the barn. The pigs were making a fuss – there was little left of the man she'd killed – and the chickens were clucking up a storm. She tossed slops to the pigs and feed to the chickens, then walked back to the farmhouse. Von Braun was sitting upright, looking stunned. She wondered just how much he recalled of the previous night.
"There's just bad coffee, I'm afraid," she said. The farmer didn't seem to have any cows ... she guessed he either took his coffee black or traded with his neighbours for milk. There was no refrigerator, suggesting he either stored his milk in an icebox or a stream or traded on a daily basis. "How are you feeling?"
"Terrible," Von Braun said. "Did they chase us?"
"I'm sure they're still looking for us," Kathleen said. She had no idea if the enemy had realised where and when they'd left the train, or where they'd gone afterwards. "There's no going back now."
She boiled water in a kettle so old she feared lead poisoning, over a stove so primitive she thought it dated back to the days of Frederick the Great. The mugs were filthy and she had to wash them twice before pouring hot water and mixing in the coffee grains; the bread, sitting in a metal container, was hard and difficult to chew. Von Braun said nothing, but it was clear he didn't like his breakfast. Kathleen didn't like it either, to be fair, yet it was better than the slop they'd be served in a concentration camp. She wondered, absently, if she'd be thrown in the camps or simply executed, before she could say anything that might embarrass the Reich. It wasn't as if she knew anything they'd find useful, beyond the basics. She was rarely told anything she didn't need to know. She'd never liked it, but she understood the logic. What she didn't know she couldn't tell. And the Nazis had plenty of ways to make her talk.
"There's not much of a bathroom either," she said. As far as she could tell, the farmer had never bothered to wash. She supposed that explained the smell. "Just wash yourself down, as best as you can, and then we'll change clothes."
Her skin crawled as she found the farmer's spare clothes and piled them up, feeling itchy even before she changed into them. They were too large for either of them, but they'd have to do. Von Braun looked like an elderly farmer by the time she'd finished, while she looked like a farmer's wife. She briefed Von Braun on their new cover story, hoping to hell no one thought to ask pointed questions. It would be painfully obvious, very quickly, that he knew nothing about farming. And that would be disastrous.
She went outside and loaded the sheep into the back of the lorry, then helped Von Braun into the cab before making one final sweep of the farmhouse. There was no sign they'd ever been there, as far as she could tell. She didn't think there was any point in burning the farmhouse down – that might attract attention – but she was still tempted to do it. Instead, she opened all the pens and walked away. The pigs would do a great deal of damage to the local environment, she told herself, at least until they were hunted down and killed. It was a small and petty revenge, but it would have to do. And besides, leaving the animals penned up would condemn them to a lingering death.
"We can't rely on the first set of papers any longer," she cautioned him, as she clambered into the cab. "We have a second set, but we may not be able to rely on them either."
Von Braun looked worried. "So what do we do?"
"We find a third set somewhere else," Kathleen said. She wasn't sure how, not yet. Most of her contacts were in Berlin or France. "I've got a few ideas ..."
She started the engine and steered the truck out of the farmhouse, back down the long and winding roads. The sheep in the back complained loudly, but she found it hard to care. They would provide cover, if the SS saw them passing. The more they looked like farmers taking their goods to market, the less likely anyone would try to stop them. She told herself not to rely on the guise as she drove onwards, picking the smaller roads in a bid to remain unnoticed. It wasn't easy. There were no maps in the cab, no way to pick out a route ... hell, from what she'd heard, she thought some of the back roads had never been charted anyway. The farmers had certainly been disinclined to cooperate. She kept heading west, keeping her eyes open. If the handful of farmers they passed noticed anything odd, they kept it to themselves.
Her heart sank as they neared an intersection and noted the long line of vehicles, waiting to go through a checkpoint. Kathleen assumed the SS were searching for them – she dared not assume otherwise – and kept going, crossing the road and heading further into the countryside. There was no checkpoint on the next road, thankfully, but she didn't relax until they were a long way from the farm. Her mind raced as they kept moving, passing small towns and hamlets and tiny farms, wondering just how long they had. Assuming the SS knew where they'd left the train, they could probably make a rough guess at just how far they'd travelled. But would they deduce she'd obtained a truck? It was much more likely they were searching for a stolen car.
She kept the thought to herself as they neared the edge of Magdeburg. The city was surrounded by a number of smaller towns, some on the verge of being swallowed by the expanding city, and there didn't seem to be any checkpoints on any of the roads. They ditched the truck near the edge of a town, then headed inwards to find an inn. The larger hotels would check their ID cards, Kathleen was all too aware, but the smaller inns tended to do as little as they could, on the grounds that checking everything would scare away potential customers. They had quite a bit in common with the love hotels, she reflected, as they found a potential inn and stepped inside. Discretion was guaranteed, as long as the guests behaved themselves.
"Welcome," the innkeeper said. She was a sour-faced woman who looked as if she was permanently chewing on lemons. "What can I do for you?"
"A room for my father and I, please." Kathleen did her best to speak as a country bumpkin might, twisting her accent to appeal to the innkeeper's prejudices. Some things were universal, and one of them was townspeople thinking country folk were stupid. Funny, given how much the Nazis idolised the small farmer, but even they couldn't do anything about it. "And dinner, too."
The innkeeper named a price. They dickered for a moment before Kathleen gave him and paid. It was daylight robbery, but she had the money and she needed to avoid behind noticed as much as possible. The assistant – a Slavic girl who was clearly a slave, no matter what kind of ephiruisms the locals used to pretend otherwise – led them upstairs into a single cramped room. Kathleen wondered if the innkeeper was implying she intended to commit incest with her father – the townspeople claimed the farmers were inbred, which wasn't true as far as she knew – or if she was hinting she knew they weren't really farmers. Or related.
We'll just have to cope, she thought. Either way, she probably won't call the SS.
She put the thought aside as she offered the girl a tip. The girl looked too frightened to accept. Kathleen winced inwardly as she saw the nasty-looking bruise on the girl's face. Her parents had been strict, but they'd never struck her so badly she'd been permanently scarred. She had heard some horror stories about English girls who'd gone into service with the aristocracy, but they paled when compared to the realities of Nazi Germany. The girl was probably more than just slapped around. There might be harsh laws against miscegenation, but laws were meaningless when a German wanted to have some fun with his slave girl. If the innkeeper had a husband or a son ...
The girl bowed and retreated. Kathleen tapped her lips, then nodded to the walls. There were no visible peepholes, let alone bugs, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Von Braun nodded, then sat on the bed and turned on the radio as Kathleen hurried into the washroom to shower and change. The water was lukewarm, and refused to grow any warmer, but it was better than nothing. She almost felt human again.
"You have a wash, then a nice nap," she said, playing the doting daughter. The look Von Braun shot her suggested he was far from impressed. Kathleen had to admit her real father wouldn't be very impressed either. "I'll be back soon."
She stepped outside and hurried down the stairs, pausing to look through the window into the back garden. There was a kennel outside, a kennel too large for a dog ... horror washed through her as she realised it was for the girl. Her legs buckled, forcing her to grit her teeth to calm herself. She had seen countless horrors during her career, nearly all of them coming out of Nazi Germany, but the inhumanity before her was just ... she bit her lip, hard. The girl wasn't human, as far as the innkeeper was concerned. She was just an Untermensch, who existed solely at the whim of her masters. If she died on the job, the innkeeper would simply order another one.
It was hard, so hard, to force herself to keep going, to school her face into a blank mask as she returned to the front desk. She had seen all sorts of injustices in her career and yet ... it was easy, so easy, to lose track of the sheer horror, to be lulled into thinking the dead or enslaved were nothing more than numbers on paper. And yet ...
The innkeeper smiled at her, rather coldly. "Can I help you?"
"I need to talk to a Schwarzhändler," she said, putting a handful of coins on the desk. The innkeeper would know her local black marketer. Everyone did. "Where can I find one?"
The innkeeper said nothing for a long cold moment. Kathleen braced herself, hoping the woman was weighing up the odds instead of planning to betray them. There would be rewards if she helped a Schwarzhändler make contact with a farmer, including a chance to purchase food and drink that wasn't rationed and was therefore completely off the books, but there were also risks, if it turned out the SS was running a sting operation. The black market was tolerated, rather than encouraged, and there were limits to how much protection local officers could expend if Berlin took an interest.
"Well, I wouldn't know anything about that," the innkeeper said, finally. "But if you go to the Führer's Cross and ask for Ludwig, you might get somewhere."
Or I might walk straight into a trap, Kathleen thought, as she collected the address details and headed out. The innkeeper would lose everything if she got a reputation for being a snitch – the local black market would refuse to have anything to do with her, at the very least – but if she was being pressured by the SS she might have no choice. What other choice do I have?
She kept the thought to herself as she walked through the streets, pretending to be a tourist on her first visit to the town. There were fewer police and security guards on the streets than she'd expected, and most seemed to be escorting guest workers rather than checking ID papers. She grimaced at the rows of chained men being marched to building sites – Magdeburg wasn't expanding as fast as Berlin, but it was expanding – and sighed inwardly by how the locals seemed to look away from the workers, pretending they couldn't see them. Anyone who showed too much interest might live to regret it. Or not.
The Führer's Cross proved to be a fairly typical pub, worked by barmaids in very traditional outfits and occupied by a number of elderly men, drinking their twilight years away. Kathleen tried not to roll her eyes as they whistled after her, reminding her that young women were rarely welcome in pubs unless they were workers or whores. The former were often treated as the latter, encouraged to service the customers ... she was mildly surprised the guest worker girls hadn't been ordered to work in the pub. But then, the Nazis believed no Slavic woman could possibly live up to a German girl. The barmaids could easily have stepped off a recruiting poster.
She held the bartender's eyes as she walked up to the counter. "I need to speak to Ludwig."
The man said nothing for a moment, then turned and beckoned her into a rear room. A pair of barmaids stood there, waiting. Kathleen tensed as they moved forward and searched her briskly, their fingers going everywhere, then nodded and headed out of the room. The bartender nodded back, then motioned for Kathleen to sit on a sofa before sitting next to her. Kathleen felt dangerously exposed ...
"You have nerve, I'll grant you," the bartender said. "I am Ludwig."
Kathleen understood. Most decent women would never have walked into a pub. Not here. She wondered, suddenly, just how many husbands went to the pub, secure in the knowledge their wives couldn't come after them. The Nazis insisted the husband was the head of the house, and his wife had to do as he said, but Kathleen hadn't met many German women who believed it. And yet ...
"We need papers," she said, simply. There was no time to beat around the bush. Ludwig already knew it was urgent. "My father refused to register and now they're feeling his collar, demanding he register or else. And a travel permit."
Ludwig eyed her, thoughtfully. She could guess what he was asking himself. Was she for real, or was she trying to entrap him? Her story might be true – there were supposed to be quite a few farmers who hadn't registered, then found themselves caught in a trap because of the fines or jail sentences for not registering – or it might be a lie to cover up a far worse reality. Jewish ancestry? The black market did a roaring trade in documents to cover up Jews in the family tree ... pointless, if the Jew was within two or fewer generations, but sometimes the only thing standing between an innocent person and a fate worse than death if they just happened to have a Jewish great-great-grandfather. And forging such papers was a very serious crime. It could be a trap ...
... Except ... the SS didn't need to bother entrapping anyone. If they had caught some of his friends in high places – and he wouldn't be a decent Schwarzhändler if he didn't have allies in the local government and security establishment – they would have scooped him up and given him a flat choice between turning informer or being sent east.
She put her money on the sofa. "We can pay."
"Real papers," Ludwig said, slowly. "That could take two or three days."
Kathleen sighed, inwardly. Staying at the farm for two days would have been risky enough. The town was a great deal worse. There would be eyes and ears everywhere, and one slip would be enough to doom them. She would have preferred not to have to deal with the black market, but what other choice did she have? The forged papers couldn't be relied upon any longer.
"That will be acceptable," she lied. There was no point in suggesting that he hurry. He'd need to get papers from the town clerk, then fill them in and slip the completed paperwork back into the files. The regime was disturbingly good at keeping its paperwork in order, then sending copies from one end of the Reich to the other. Still, a couple of days to plan their next move would be useful. She could find maps, talk to people who knew the area. "And if the paperwork is complete, I'll pay you a bonus if you can provide the papers in less than two days."
Ludwig nodded, thoughtfully. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "Is there anything else?"
"Not yet," Kathleen said. She needed to think of a way to get out of town, then decide if she wanted to rely on him for something – anything – else. She was already far too exposed for her peace of mind. "But I'll let you know."
She stood and left the room, feeling sweat prickling down her black. The logic was sound – Ludwig would lose everything if he betrayed her – but she knew better than to assume it would be convincing. The SS would take a dim view of his career and if they caught him, they might drain him dry and then throw what remained into the camps. Betraying his contacts might be all that stood between him and a very unpleasant fate indeed ...
There's no other choice, she told herself. We have to hope for the best and plan for the worst.
Kathleen awoke, sharply.
She sat upright, unsure what had disturbed her. The sound from outside puzzled her ... it took her a moment, one hand reaching for her pistol, before she realised the animals needed to be fed. She stood and headed for the door, glancing around to make sure they were still alone as she stepped outside and wandered over to the barn. The pigs were making a fuss – there was little left of the man she'd killed – and the chickens were clucking up a storm. She tossed slops to the pigs and feed to the chickens, then walked back to the farmhouse. Von Braun was sitting upright, looking stunned. She wondered just how much he recalled of the previous night.
"There's just bad coffee, I'm afraid," she said. The farmer didn't seem to have any cows ... she guessed he either took his coffee black or traded with his neighbours for milk. There was no refrigerator, suggesting he either stored his milk in an icebox or a stream or traded on a daily basis. "How are you feeling?"
"Terrible," Von Braun said. "Did they chase us?"
"I'm sure they're still looking for us," Kathleen said. She had no idea if the enemy had realised where and when they'd left the train, or where they'd gone afterwards. "There's no going back now."
She boiled water in a kettle so old she feared lead poisoning, over a stove so primitive she thought it dated back to the days of Frederick the Great. The mugs were filthy and she had to wash them twice before pouring hot water and mixing in the coffee grains; the bread, sitting in a metal container, was hard and difficult to chew. Von Braun said nothing, but it was clear he didn't like his breakfast. Kathleen didn't like it either, to be fair, yet it was better than the slop they'd be served in a concentration camp. She wondered, absently, if she'd be thrown in the camps or simply executed, before she could say anything that might embarrass the Reich. It wasn't as if she knew anything they'd find useful, beyond the basics. She was rarely told anything she didn't need to know. She'd never liked it, but she understood the logic. What she didn't know she couldn't tell. And the Nazis had plenty of ways to make her talk.
"There's not much of a bathroom either," she said. As far as she could tell, the farmer had never bothered to wash. She supposed that explained the smell. "Just wash yourself down, as best as you can, and then we'll change clothes."
Her skin crawled as she found the farmer's spare clothes and piled them up, feeling itchy even before she changed into them. They were too large for either of them, but they'd have to do. Von Braun looked like an elderly farmer by the time she'd finished, while she looked like a farmer's wife. She briefed Von Braun on their new cover story, hoping to hell no one thought to ask pointed questions. It would be painfully obvious, very quickly, that he knew nothing about farming. And that would be disastrous.
She went outside and loaded the sheep into the back of the lorry, then helped Von Braun into the cab before making one final sweep of the farmhouse. There was no sign they'd ever been there, as far as she could tell. She didn't think there was any point in burning the farmhouse down – that might attract attention – but she was still tempted to do it. Instead, she opened all the pens and walked away. The pigs would do a great deal of damage to the local environment, she told herself, at least until they were hunted down and killed. It was a small and petty revenge, but it would have to do. And besides, leaving the animals penned up would condemn them to a lingering death.
"We can't rely on the first set of papers any longer," she cautioned him, as she clambered into the cab. "We have a second set, but we may not be able to rely on them either."
Von Braun looked worried. "So what do we do?"
"We find a third set somewhere else," Kathleen said. She wasn't sure how, not yet. Most of her contacts were in Berlin or France. "I've got a few ideas ..."
She started the engine and steered the truck out of the farmhouse, back down the long and winding roads. The sheep in the back complained loudly, but she found it hard to care. They would provide cover, if the SS saw them passing. The more they looked like farmers taking their goods to market, the less likely anyone would try to stop them. She told herself not to rely on the guise as she drove onwards, picking the smaller roads in a bid to remain unnoticed. It wasn't easy. There were no maps in the cab, no way to pick out a route ... hell, from what she'd heard, she thought some of the back roads had never been charted anyway. The farmers had certainly been disinclined to cooperate. She kept heading west, keeping her eyes open. If the handful of farmers they passed noticed anything odd, they kept it to themselves.
Her heart sank as they neared an intersection and noted the long line of vehicles, waiting to go through a checkpoint. Kathleen assumed the SS were searching for them – she dared not assume otherwise – and kept going, crossing the road and heading further into the countryside. There was no checkpoint on the next road, thankfully, but she didn't relax until they were a long way from the farm. Her mind raced as they kept moving, passing small towns and hamlets and tiny farms, wondering just how long they had. Assuming the SS knew where they'd left the train, they could probably make a rough guess at just how far they'd travelled. But would they deduce she'd obtained a truck? It was much more likely they were searching for a stolen car.
She kept the thought to herself as they neared the edge of Magdeburg. The city was surrounded by a number of smaller towns, some on the verge of being swallowed by the expanding city, and there didn't seem to be any checkpoints on any of the roads. They ditched the truck near the edge of a town, then headed inwards to find an inn. The larger hotels would check their ID cards, Kathleen was all too aware, but the smaller inns tended to do as little as they could, on the grounds that checking everything would scare away potential customers. They had quite a bit in common with the love hotels, she reflected, as they found a potential inn and stepped inside. Discretion was guaranteed, as long as the guests behaved themselves.
"Welcome," the innkeeper said. She was a sour-faced woman who looked as if she was permanently chewing on lemons. "What can I do for you?"
"A room for my father and I, please." Kathleen did her best to speak as a country bumpkin might, twisting her accent to appeal to the innkeeper's prejudices. Some things were universal, and one of them was townspeople thinking country folk were stupid. Funny, given how much the Nazis idolised the small farmer, but even they couldn't do anything about it. "And dinner, too."
The innkeeper named a price. They dickered for a moment before Kathleen gave him and paid. It was daylight robbery, but she had the money and she needed to avoid behind noticed as much as possible. The assistant – a Slavic girl who was clearly a slave, no matter what kind of ephiruisms the locals used to pretend otherwise – led them upstairs into a single cramped room. Kathleen wondered if the innkeeper was implying she intended to commit incest with her father – the townspeople claimed the farmers were inbred, which wasn't true as far as she knew – or if she was hinting she knew they weren't really farmers. Or related.
We'll just have to cope, she thought. Either way, she probably won't call the SS.
She put the thought aside as she offered the girl a tip. The girl looked too frightened to accept. Kathleen winced inwardly as she saw the nasty-looking bruise on the girl's face. Her parents had been strict, but they'd never struck her so badly she'd been permanently scarred. She had heard some horror stories about English girls who'd gone into service with the aristocracy, but they paled when compared to the realities of Nazi Germany. The girl was probably more than just slapped around. There might be harsh laws against miscegenation, but laws were meaningless when a German wanted to have some fun with his slave girl. If the innkeeper had a husband or a son ...
The girl bowed and retreated. Kathleen tapped her lips, then nodded to the walls. There were no visible peepholes, let alone bugs, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Von Braun nodded, then sat on the bed and turned on the radio as Kathleen hurried into the washroom to shower and change. The water was lukewarm, and refused to grow any warmer, but it was better than nothing. She almost felt human again.
"You have a wash, then a nice nap," she said, playing the doting daughter. The look Von Braun shot her suggested he was far from impressed. Kathleen had to admit her real father wouldn't be very impressed either. "I'll be back soon."
She stepped outside and hurried down the stairs, pausing to look through the window into the back garden. There was a kennel outside, a kennel too large for a dog ... horror washed through her as she realised it was for the girl. Her legs buckled, forcing her to grit her teeth to calm herself. She had seen countless horrors during her career, nearly all of them coming out of Nazi Germany, but the inhumanity before her was just ... she bit her lip, hard. The girl wasn't human, as far as the innkeeper was concerned. She was just an Untermensch, who existed solely at the whim of her masters. If she died on the job, the innkeeper would simply order another one.
It was hard, so hard, to force herself to keep going, to school her face into a blank mask as she returned to the front desk. She had seen all sorts of injustices in her career and yet ... it was easy, so easy, to lose track of the sheer horror, to be lulled into thinking the dead or enslaved were nothing more than numbers on paper. And yet ...
The innkeeper smiled at her, rather coldly. "Can I help you?"
"I need to talk to a Schwarzhändler," she said, putting a handful of coins on the desk. The innkeeper would know her local black marketer. Everyone did. "Where can I find one?"
The innkeeper said nothing for a long cold moment. Kathleen braced herself, hoping the woman was weighing up the odds instead of planning to betray them. There would be rewards if she helped a Schwarzhändler make contact with a farmer, including a chance to purchase food and drink that wasn't rationed and was therefore completely off the books, but there were also risks, if it turned out the SS was running a sting operation. The black market was tolerated, rather than encouraged, and there were limits to how much protection local officers could expend if Berlin took an interest.
"Well, I wouldn't know anything about that," the innkeeper said, finally. "But if you go to the Führer's Cross and ask for Ludwig, you might get somewhere."
Or I might walk straight into a trap, Kathleen thought, as she collected the address details and headed out. The innkeeper would lose everything if she got a reputation for being a snitch – the local black market would refuse to have anything to do with her, at the very least – but if she was being pressured by the SS she might have no choice. What other choice do I have?
She kept the thought to herself as she walked through the streets, pretending to be a tourist on her first visit to the town. There were fewer police and security guards on the streets than she'd expected, and most seemed to be escorting guest workers rather than checking ID papers. She grimaced at the rows of chained men being marched to building sites – Magdeburg wasn't expanding as fast as Berlin, but it was expanding – and sighed inwardly by how the locals seemed to look away from the workers, pretending they couldn't see them. Anyone who showed too much interest might live to regret it. Or not.
The Führer's Cross proved to be a fairly typical pub, worked by barmaids in very traditional outfits and occupied by a number of elderly men, drinking their twilight years away. Kathleen tried not to roll her eyes as they whistled after her, reminding her that young women were rarely welcome in pubs unless they were workers or whores. The former were often treated as the latter, encouraged to service the customers ... she was mildly surprised the guest worker girls hadn't been ordered to work in the pub. But then, the Nazis believed no Slavic woman could possibly live up to a German girl. The barmaids could easily have stepped off a recruiting poster.
She held the bartender's eyes as she walked up to the counter. "I need to speak to Ludwig."
The man said nothing for a moment, then turned and beckoned her into a rear room. A pair of barmaids stood there, waiting. Kathleen tensed as they moved forward and searched her briskly, their fingers going everywhere, then nodded and headed out of the room. The bartender nodded back, then motioned for Kathleen to sit on a sofa before sitting next to her. Kathleen felt dangerously exposed ...
"You have nerve, I'll grant you," the bartender said. "I am Ludwig."
Kathleen understood. Most decent women would never have walked into a pub. Not here. She wondered, suddenly, just how many husbands went to the pub, secure in the knowledge their wives couldn't come after them. The Nazis insisted the husband was the head of the house, and his wife had to do as he said, but Kathleen hadn't met many German women who believed it. And yet ...
"We need papers," she said, simply. There was no time to beat around the bush. Ludwig already knew it was urgent. "My father refused to register and now they're feeling his collar, demanding he register or else. And a travel permit."
Ludwig eyed her, thoughtfully. She could guess what he was asking himself. Was she for real, or was she trying to entrap him? Her story might be true – there were supposed to be quite a few farmers who hadn't registered, then found themselves caught in a trap because of the fines or jail sentences for not registering – or it might be a lie to cover up a far worse reality. Jewish ancestry? The black market did a roaring trade in documents to cover up Jews in the family tree ... pointless, if the Jew was within two or fewer generations, but sometimes the only thing standing between an innocent person and a fate worse than death if they just happened to have a Jewish great-great-grandfather. And forging such papers was a very serious crime. It could be a trap ...
... Except ... the SS didn't need to bother entrapping anyone. If they had caught some of his friends in high places – and he wouldn't be a decent Schwarzhändler if he didn't have allies in the local government and security establishment – they would have scooped him up and given him a flat choice between turning informer or being sent east.
She put her money on the sofa. "We can pay."
"Real papers," Ludwig said, slowly. "That could take two or three days."
Kathleen sighed, inwardly. Staying at the farm for two days would have been risky enough. The town was a great deal worse. There would be eyes and ears everywhere, and one slip would be enough to doom them. She would have preferred not to have to deal with the black market, but what other choice did she have? The forged papers couldn't be relied upon any longer.
"That will be acceptable," she lied. There was no point in suggesting that he hurry. He'd need to get papers from the town clerk, then fill them in and slip the completed paperwork back into the files. The regime was disturbingly good at keeping its paperwork in order, then sending copies from one end of the Reich to the other. Still, a couple of days to plan their next move would be useful. She could find maps, talk to people who knew the area. "And if the paperwork is complete, I'll pay you a bonus if you can provide the papers in less than two days."
Ludwig nodded, thoughtfully. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "Is there anything else?"
"Not yet," Kathleen said. She needed to think of a way to get out of town, then decide if she wanted to rely on him for something – anything – else. She was already far too exposed for her peace of mind. "But I'll let you know."
She stood and left the room, feeling sweat prickling down her black. The logic was sound – Ludwig would lose everything if he betrayed her – but she knew better than to assume it would be convincing. The SS would take a dim view of his career and if they caught him, they might drain him dry and then throw what remained into the camps. Betraying his contacts might be all that stood between him and a very unpleasant fate indeed ...
There's no other choice, she told herself. We have to hope for the best and plan for the worst.
Chapter Sixteen
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Sixteen: Near Magdeburg, 1949
The next two days passed very slowly.
Kathleen made good use of them by exploring the town, passing through rows upon rows of shops and market stalls, keeping her eyes and ears opened as she wandered from place to place. It was astonishing how much one could learn if one just listened, she'd learnt in basis training, and she knew it was true. The Nazis could censor the newspapers, writing lies that fooled very few people, but they couldn't keep housewives from talking as they did their daily shopping and escorted their children to school and back. Kathleen heard complains about husbands suddenly being recalled to duty – there had been an official statement that there was nothing to worry about, which had had the exact opposite effect on the readers – and older boys in the Hitler Youth being given actual work to do. She wasn't sure what to make of that – technically, the Hitler Youth was a branch of the military, but she'd never heard of the lads being deployed – yet she'd heard the rumour too many times to dismiss it out of hand.
And are they being sent out to search for us, she asked herself, or am I overthinking it?
She didn't know. The Hitler Youth had a lot of paramilitary aspects, drilling the young men so they could be converted into trained soldiers very quickly, when they did their military service. She didn't think they could be counted as real soldiers, but they'd know how to shoot and follow orders and most were disturbingly fanatical. She'd met German parents, old enough to remember the days before Hitler, who worried about what sort of poison the Hitler Youth – or the BDM girls – were imbibing, but there was little they could do about it. She pitied the poor children who had any trace of Jewish blood – or anything else on the undesirable list – if their peers figured it out. They'd be lucky if they were merely driven out of town.
The thought haunted her as she kept exploring the city, leaving Von Braun in the inn. It was risky too, but taking him outside was even more risky. She went through the train station and noted the increased SS presence, the stormtroopers checking papers with a banal thoroughness that would have been admirable if she hadn't known it was aimed at them, then inspected the railway tracks and noted where and when passing trains happened to stop. The Nazis prided themselves on the passenger trains running on time, and the only reason they could make that happen was through pausing the freight trains long enough to allow the passenger trains to pass. She was mildly surprised they hadn't expanded the railway lines in western Germany, but she supposed it made a certain kind of sense. There were few military threats to the west – Britain wasn't going to invade on her own, Vichy had been thoroughly cowed, Spain was an allied state – while the Nazis needed to expand their railway network as far into Russia as possible. The Soviets had made a point of destroying as much of their network when they retreated, once they'd gotten organised, and their railways hadn't quite matched the German network anyway. It was, she hoped, something she could take advantage of. Later.
On the third day, she slipped into the innkeeper's office while she was berating her slave and stole a handful of papers.
It was risky in more ways than one, she thought sourly, as she sneaked out again and headed back to the room. Von Braun was already waiting, washed and changed into a fresh set of civilian clothes that made him look older than any of the pictures printed in propaganda rags. She'd forbidden him to shave, making him almost unrecognisable ... at least, she thought, if the searchers were going by his official pictures. How many had seen him unshaven? She'd asked, but he hadn't been sure. He hadn't paid attention to such details until it was far too late.
And if the thief is discovered, she thought, the poor slave might be blamed for it.
She sighed and nodded politely to the innkeeper as they left the inn and headed towards the pub. The hell of it was that the innkeeper wasn't the worst in the city. She'd heard women talking about their slave girls as they might talk about a dog, or worse; they'd talked about the slaves being locked in sheds, or cellars, or simply being told to sleep in the garden for the night. One poor girl had been treated so badly the neighbours had felt sorry for her ... and then found themselves in hot water, when they'd been caught giving food to the girl. It was just ...
Her heart sank. Her mother had described Germany as a civilised country. And now it was a nightmare.
Ludwig nodded as they reached the Führer's Cross and beckoned them into the backroom. There was no search this time, something that bothered her; the pup was surprisingly empty, the only customers sitting outside rather than leaning against the country, trying to flirt with the barmaids. She wondered, too late, if they'd walked right into a trap; she slipped her hand into her pocket, ready to draw her gun and come up firing. She'd have to put the first bullet through Von Braun's head, but Ludwig would be the second to die.
He met her eyes. "Käthe Schmidt, I presume?"
Kathleen tried not to flinch. She had assumed the faked names were worthless now – the enemy had had plenty of time to uncover the deception – but hearing it so clearly was unpleasant. An alert had clearly been sent out, one that ... she gritted her teeth, unsure if she should just open fire. Ludwig might not intend to betray them – she knew the SS could be closing in, even now – but who knew? Her mission might be over, leaving her with bare seconds to execute Von Braun – denying him to the Nazis – before it was too late.
"There is an alert out for you, and your partner," Ludwig said. "Thankfully, I reached out to two separate clerks for your paperwork. The only person who knows there are two of you is me. But tell me ... why is there an alert out for you?"
"I imagine the alert would have told the fully story," Kathleen lied. There was no way in hell the SS would admit to losing Von Braun if they had any other choice. "Did it not?"
"There was no reason given," Ludwig told her. "That is not exactly uncommon, when politics are involved."
Kathleen forced herself to think. It was too late to insist she wasn't Käthe Schmidt, too late to back off and vanish ... she wondered, numbly, what he wanted. She could think of a few things, none pleasant. Or he might think he could get away with betraying her. The locals wouldn't realise he had, if the SS took them away quietly, and that would mean he could carry on being a Schwarzhändler. But he'd be a fool to think the SS would leave him alone forever.
She met his eyes. "And no one else knows about this?"
"Not yet." Ludwig held himself calmly. Either he underestimated her or he had someone listening from a distance, ready to intervene if she turned violent. "But it is poison for someone like me to become involved in politics. Why should I take the risk of helping you?"
"I could give you several reasons," Kathleen said. "My father was on the wrong side of a political struggle, and his enemies will not hesitate to eliminate you just to make sure there's no chance of word of his escape getting out. They won't thank you even if you do betray us" – she shrugged – "or maybe they will, and then shoot you. Or ... if you make a habit of betraying your customers, how long will it be before you don't have any customers? Or before one of them kills you, to make sure your secrets remain hidden?"
Ludwig looked amused. "And you think they could?"
Kathleen shrugged. A Schwarzhändler never worked alone. He was always part of a much larger network of underground contacts, from the lowest to the highest, and his network would not be pleased if he betrayed anyone. He would never be trusted again ... and it was much more likely he'd be murdered within a week, unless the SS protected him. And even they couldn't be trusted. For a paramilitary – and increasingly military – secret police force, they really were quite astonishingly corrupt. If half the rumours were true, the SS task force charged with destroying the black market was secretly running it.
"And third, if they do take us into custody, I will make sure they know all about how you helped a bunch of Jews escape the city," she added. "Do you think they'll trust you after that?"
She let the words hang in the air. Ludwig might have helped Jewish refugees – although she doubted it – but the mere accusation would be enough to land him in very hot water indeed. The SS would not be amused, and the Einsatzgruppen were fanatical. Ludwig would be thrown into a camp, after being tortured to force him to divulge the names of everyone who had ever bought false papers from him. Hell, the odds were good he'd be murdered well before they started the interrogation. It was astonishing how many good Germans had something undesirable lurking in their family tree. How many had secrets they would kill to hide?
His face darkened. "And you think you can just walk out of here after saying that?"
"You might be able to kill us, and dispose of our bodies, but the SS will keep hunting us," Kathleen said. "I get my father to his friends in the west, they'll make sure everyone knows where he is. You'll be perfectly safe. We might even find more work for you. But if they keep looking, they'll eventually stumble across you. Who knows what'll happen then?"
Ludwig picked up a folder and passed it to her. "Two sets of papers," he said. "Both authentic" – he allowed himself a faint chuckle – "after all, they did come out of the local registry office. Your husband is a retired teacher, who married one of his students and had to leave his job ... luckily, you had enough money to live on for a few years. They should hold up as long as no one carries out a formal inspection. A simple phone call won't be enough to uncover any discrepancies."
"Thank you," Kathleen said. She opened the folder and scanned the contents quickly. The ID papers looked good, although the photographs were a little blurry. A note at the bottom said the papers had originally been issued in 1939 and then reissued in 1949. "And like I said, there may be other employment further down the line."
Ludwig eyed her sourly. She hoped to hell she could trust him to keep his mouth shut. They were bound together now; each at risk of losing everything if they were betrayed by the other, each convinced they'd be betrayed in return, if they betrayed first. Ludwig knew he was in trouble, but ... he didn't know how much trouble. He might go to the SS, convinced he had only provided papers to a bureaucrat who had found himself on the wrong side of a political dispute, only to discover – too late – that he had aided and abetted the flight of Werner Von Braun. He'd be murdered, of course, but first he would be made to talk.
"I hope I never see you again," he said, curtly.
"Me too," Kathleen said. She wanted to cut his throat, but she knew her limits. She could kill him, yet not the rest of his staff. "Just make sure you destroy all the paperwork linked to us. Being caught with it will be a death sentence."
Ludwig surprised her by smiling. "What isn't, these days?"
Kathleen took Von Braun's hand and led him out of the room, back onto the streets. She almost wished Ludwig had asked for something sexual, perhaps involving her mouth ... not uncommon, amongst Schwarzhändlers. Housewives would do anything to keep their children from starving, even letting a Schwarzhändler have sex with them ... she scowled, recalling the charges the Nazis had levelled against the Jews. That was one of the worst, all the more so because it simply wasn't true. The Schwarzhändlers were all German.
Von Braun put his lips close to her ears. "Can we trust him?"
"Not for long," Kathleen said. "This way."
She led him down a set of roads, carefully changing their direction randomly while keeping an eye out for familiars, before deciding they weren't being followed. The SS had the resources to mount a proper surveillance operation – with enough shadows working together, it was easy to make sure the target didn't realise they were being followed – but she doubted Ludwig had more than a handful of people in his employ. Besides, if the SS knew – or suspected – who they were, they'd have swooped down already and arrested them. Kathleen had no doubt of it.
The buildings thinned out as they neared the edge of town and walked towards the railway siding, half-concealed in a hollow. The designer had done a good job, Kathleen reflected as she checked for any watching eyes. The freight trains couldn't be hidden – obviously – when they were on the main lines, but when they were on a siding they were almost impossible to see unless you were very close. It struck her as odd, yet ... perhaps it wasn't that inexplicable. The Nazis didn't need to turn West Germany into an industrial nightmare. They had much of the former USSR to exploit.
Von Braun nudged her. "Is anyone going to believe our cover story?"
"Yeah," Kathleen said. It hurt her pride to be taken for the young wife of an elderly man, but she'd done worse in her career. Besides, there were quite a few senior Nazis who enjoyed the favour of young women. They sometimes even married the girls. The age gap would have raised eyebrows, if they had been an older woman and a younger man, but not the other way around. "Just don't say much and let them think I'm your caretaker as well as your wife."
Her lips twisted in dark amusement. She'd known a young girl at school who'd married a man twenty years her senior, when she reached adulthood, and she hadn't had a problem with it at the time. But when she was forty, her husband would be sixty and when she was sixty ... Kathleen doubted it would end well. That girl had always been a silly little thing, unaware of the shadow consuming the continent on the other side of the English Channel ...Kathleen wondered, suddenly, what that girl would think if she knew what Kathleen was doing now. Nothing good, she supposed. She'd always believed such matters should be left to the men.
And that only works as long as the men know what they're doing, Kathleen thought, coldly. She'd been too young to do anything in 1936, but it had been clear Chamberlain had let Hitler score bloodless victory after victory, then declared war just in time to help Hitler score more victories. The Führer probably hadn't been able to believed his luck. Chamberlain was a fool. A German spy in his place would probably have done less damage.
She put the thought aside as a train roared into view, pausing on the far side of the siding and then backing slowly into the gorge. The driver seemed to know what he was doing, she noted; he kept moving until his engine was firmly inside the siding, then stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was sure neither the driver nor the engineer were going to disembark and check the siding, then stood and hurried forward. There wasn't much time – she could hear the passenger train already – for them to scramble into the rear wagon and duck down. The coal was going to stain their skin and clothes, but she'd brought spare sets ... she hoped, prayed, that it would be enough. They had to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the SS.
The train rumbled into life as soon as the passenger train was gone, moving out of the siding and onto the main line. Kathleen breathed a sigh of relief. It was unlikely the SS was searching freight trains, at least at first. Himmler would need to get Speer's cooperation and that might prove tricky, if Speer wanted Himmler to end up with egg on his face. But she knew she could be wrong ...
Von Braun looked uncomfortable. "Where are we going?"
"The train is supposed to go to an industrial factory in the Rhineland," Kathleen said. She wasn't entirely sure that was true – it had been very tricky to get an idea of the schedule - but as long as the train headed west they'd be going in the right general direction. "We'll have to hop out at some point, and hope to hell the papers hold up long enough to get us through the next set of checkpoints."
"I see," Von Braun said. "I ..."
His face fell. "What if we never make it out?"
I shoot you before they can take you alive, Kathleen thought. And then I kill myself.
She shook her head. "They can't keep us from inching west," she said, instead. Von Braun didn't need to know she intended to kill him, if there was no other choice. "And as long as we keep our heads down, we should be safe."
Sure, her thoughts added. They sounded very much like her father, when he'd been in a particularly sarcastic mode. Famous last words, don't you know?
The next two days passed very slowly.
Kathleen made good use of them by exploring the town, passing through rows upon rows of shops and market stalls, keeping her eyes and ears opened as she wandered from place to place. It was astonishing how much one could learn if one just listened, she'd learnt in basis training, and she knew it was true. The Nazis could censor the newspapers, writing lies that fooled very few people, but they couldn't keep housewives from talking as they did their daily shopping and escorted their children to school and back. Kathleen heard complains about husbands suddenly being recalled to duty – there had been an official statement that there was nothing to worry about, which had had the exact opposite effect on the readers – and older boys in the Hitler Youth being given actual work to do. She wasn't sure what to make of that – technically, the Hitler Youth was a branch of the military, but she'd never heard of the lads being deployed – yet she'd heard the rumour too many times to dismiss it out of hand.
And are they being sent out to search for us, she asked herself, or am I overthinking it?
She didn't know. The Hitler Youth had a lot of paramilitary aspects, drilling the young men so they could be converted into trained soldiers very quickly, when they did their military service. She didn't think they could be counted as real soldiers, but they'd know how to shoot and follow orders and most were disturbingly fanatical. She'd met German parents, old enough to remember the days before Hitler, who worried about what sort of poison the Hitler Youth – or the BDM girls – were imbibing, but there was little they could do about it. She pitied the poor children who had any trace of Jewish blood – or anything else on the undesirable list – if their peers figured it out. They'd be lucky if they were merely driven out of town.
The thought haunted her as she kept exploring the city, leaving Von Braun in the inn. It was risky too, but taking him outside was even more risky. She went through the train station and noted the increased SS presence, the stormtroopers checking papers with a banal thoroughness that would have been admirable if she hadn't known it was aimed at them, then inspected the railway tracks and noted where and when passing trains happened to stop. The Nazis prided themselves on the passenger trains running on time, and the only reason they could make that happen was through pausing the freight trains long enough to allow the passenger trains to pass. She was mildly surprised they hadn't expanded the railway lines in western Germany, but she supposed it made a certain kind of sense. There were few military threats to the west – Britain wasn't going to invade on her own, Vichy had been thoroughly cowed, Spain was an allied state – while the Nazis needed to expand their railway network as far into Russia as possible. The Soviets had made a point of destroying as much of their network when they retreated, once they'd gotten organised, and their railways hadn't quite matched the German network anyway. It was, she hoped, something she could take advantage of. Later.
On the third day, she slipped into the innkeeper's office while she was berating her slave and stole a handful of papers.
It was risky in more ways than one, she thought sourly, as she sneaked out again and headed back to the room. Von Braun was already waiting, washed and changed into a fresh set of civilian clothes that made him look older than any of the pictures printed in propaganda rags. She'd forbidden him to shave, making him almost unrecognisable ... at least, she thought, if the searchers were going by his official pictures. How many had seen him unshaven? She'd asked, but he hadn't been sure. He hadn't paid attention to such details until it was far too late.
And if the thief is discovered, she thought, the poor slave might be blamed for it.
She sighed and nodded politely to the innkeeper as they left the inn and headed towards the pub. The hell of it was that the innkeeper wasn't the worst in the city. She'd heard women talking about their slave girls as they might talk about a dog, or worse; they'd talked about the slaves being locked in sheds, or cellars, or simply being told to sleep in the garden for the night. One poor girl had been treated so badly the neighbours had felt sorry for her ... and then found themselves in hot water, when they'd been caught giving food to the girl. It was just ...
Her heart sank. Her mother had described Germany as a civilised country. And now it was a nightmare.
Ludwig nodded as they reached the Führer's Cross and beckoned them into the backroom. There was no search this time, something that bothered her; the pup was surprisingly empty, the only customers sitting outside rather than leaning against the country, trying to flirt with the barmaids. She wondered, too late, if they'd walked right into a trap; she slipped her hand into her pocket, ready to draw her gun and come up firing. She'd have to put the first bullet through Von Braun's head, but Ludwig would be the second to die.
He met her eyes. "Käthe Schmidt, I presume?"
Kathleen tried not to flinch. She had assumed the faked names were worthless now – the enemy had had plenty of time to uncover the deception – but hearing it so clearly was unpleasant. An alert had clearly been sent out, one that ... she gritted her teeth, unsure if she should just open fire. Ludwig might not intend to betray them – she knew the SS could be closing in, even now – but who knew? Her mission might be over, leaving her with bare seconds to execute Von Braun – denying him to the Nazis – before it was too late.
"There is an alert out for you, and your partner," Ludwig said. "Thankfully, I reached out to two separate clerks for your paperwork. The only person who knows there are two of you is me. But tell me ... why is there an alert out for you?"
"I imagine the alert would have told the fully story," Kathleen lied. There was no way in hell the SS would admit to losing Von Braun if they had any other choice. "Did it not?"
"There was no reason given," Ludwig told her. "That is not exactly uncommon, when politics are involved."
Kathleen forced herself to think. It was too late to insist she wasn't Käthe Schmidt, too late to back off and vanish ... she wondered, numbly, what he wanted. She could think of a few things, none pleasant. Or he might think he could get away with betraying her. The locals wouldn't realise he had, if the SS took them away quietly, and that would mean he could carry on being a Schwarzhändler. But he'd be a fool to think the SS would leave him alone forever.
She met his eyes. "And no one else knows about this?"
"Not yet." Ludwig held himself calmly. Either he underestimated her or he had someone listening from a distance, ready to intervene if she turned violent. "But it is poison for someone like me to become involved in politics. Why should I take the risk of helping you?"
"I could give you several reasons," Kathleen said. "My father was on the wrong side of a political struggle, and his enemies will not hesitate to eliminate you just to make sure there's no chance of word of his escape getting out. They won't thank you even if you do betray us" – she shrugged – "or maybe they will, and then shoot you. Or ... if you make a habit of betraying your customers, how long will it be before you don't have any customers? Or before one of them kills you, to make sure your secrets remain hidden?"
Ludwig looked amused. "And you think they could?"
Kathleen shrugged. A Schwarzhändler never worked alone. He was always part of a much larger network of underground contacts, from the lowest to the highest, and his network would not be pleased if he betrayed anyone. He would never be trusted again ... and it was much more likely he'd be murdered within a week, unless the SS protected him. And even they couldn't be trusted. For a paramilitary – and increasingly military – secret police force, they really were quite astonishingly corrupt. If half the rumours were true, the SS task force charged with destroying the black market was secretly running it.
"And third, if they do take us into custody, I will make sure they know all about how you helped a bunch of Jews escape the city," she added. "Do you think they'll trust you after that?"
She let the words hang in the air. Ludwig might have helped Jewish refugees – although she doubted it – but the mere accusation would be enough to land him in very hot water indeed. The SS would not be amused, and the Einsatzgruppen were fanatical. Ludwig would be thrown into a camp, after being tortured to force him to divulge the names of everyone who had ever bought false papers from him. Hell, the odds were good he'd be murdered well before they started the interrogation. It was astonishing how many good Germans had something undesirable lurking in their family tree. How many had secrets they would kill to hide?
His face darkened. "And you think you can just walk out of here after saying that?"
"You might be able to kill us, and dispose of our bodies, but the SS will keep hunting us," Kathleen said. "I get my father to his friends in the west, they'll make sure everyone knows where he is. You'll be perfectly safe. We might even find more work for you. But if they keep looking, they'll eventually stumble across you. Who knows what'll happen then?"
Ludwig picked up a folder and passed it to her. "Two sets of papers," he said. "Both authentic" – he allowed himself a faint chuckle – "after all, they did come out of the local registry office. Your husband is a retired teacher, who married one of his students and had to leave his job ... luckily, you had enough money to live on for a few years. They should hold up as long as no one carries out a formal inspection. A simple phone call won't be enough to uncover any discrepancies."
"Thank you," Kathleen said. She opened the folder and scanned the contents quickly. The ID papers looked good, although the photographs were a little blurry. A note at the bottom said the papers had originally been issued in 1939 and then reissued in 1949. "And like I said, there may be other employment further down the line."
Ludwig eyed her sourly. She hoped to hell she could trust him to keep his mouth shut. They were bound together now; each at risk of losing everything if they were betrayed by the other, each convinced they'd be betrayed in return, if they betrayed first. Ludwig knew he was in trouble, but ... he didn't know how much trouble. He might go to the SS, convinced he had only provided papers to a bureaucrat who had found himself on the wrong side of a political dispute, only to discover – too late – that he had aided and abetted the flight of Werner Von Braun. He'd be murdered, of course, but first he would be made to talk.
"I hope I never see you again," he said, curtly.
"Me too," Kathleen said. She wanted to cut his throat, but she knew her limits. She could kill him, yet not the rest of his staff. "Just make sure you destroy all the paperwork linked to us. Being caught with it will be a death sentence."
Ludwig surprised her by smiling. "What isn't, these days?"
Kathleen took Von Braun's hand and led him out of the room, back onto the streets. She almost wished Ludwig had asked for something sexual, perhaps involving her mouth ... not uncommon, amongst Schwarzhändlers. Housewives would do anything to keep their children from starving, even letting a Schwarzhändler have sex with them ... she scowled, recalling the charges the Nazis had levelled against the Jews. That was one of the worst, all the more so because it simply wasn't true. The Schwarzhändlers were all German.
Von Braun put his lips close to her ears. "Can we trust him?"
"Not for long," Kathleen said. "This way."
She led him down a set of roads, carefully changing their direction randomly while keeping an eye out for familiars, before deciding they weren't being followed. The SS had the resources to mount a proper surveillance operation – with enough shadows working together, it was easy to make sure the target didn't realise they were being followed – but she doubted Ludwig had more than a handful of people in his employ. Besides, if the SS knew – or suspected – who they were, they'd have swooped down already and arrested them. Kathleen had no doubt of it.
The buildings thinned out as they neared the edge of town and walked towards the railway siding, half-concealed in a hollow. The designer had done a good job, Kathleen reflected as she checked for any watching eyes. The freight trains couldn't be hidden – obviously – when they were on the main lines, but when they were on a siding they were almost impossible to see unless you were very close. It struck her as odd, yet ... perhaps it wasn't that inexplicable. The Nazis didn't need to turn West Germany into an industrial nightmare. They had much of the former USSR to exploit.
Von Braun nudged her. "Is anyone going to believe our cover story?"
"Yeah," Kathleen said. It hurt her pride to be taken for the young wife of an elderly man, but she'd done worse in her career. Besides, there were quite a few senior Nazis who enjoyed the favour of young women. They sometimes even married the girls. The age gap would have raised eyebrows, if they had been an older woman and a younger man, but not the other way around. "Just don't say much and let them think I'm your caretaker as well as your wife."
Her lips twisted in dark amusement. She'd known a young girl at school who'd married a man twenty years her senior, when she reached adulthood, and she hadn't had a problem with it at the time. But when she was forty, her husband would be sixty and when she was sixty ... Kathleen doubted it would end well. That girl had always been a silly little thing, unaware of the shadow consuming the continent on the other side of the English Channel ...Kathleen wondered, suddenly, what that girl would think if she knew what Kathleen was doing now. Nothing good, she supposed. She'd always believed such matters should be left to the men.
And that only works as long as the men know what they're doing, Kathleen thought, coldly. She'd been too young to do anything in 1936, but it had been clear Chamberlain had let Hitler score bloodless victory after victory, then declared war just in time to help Hitler score more victories. The Führer probably hadn't been able to believed his luck. Chamberlain was a fool. A German spy in his place would probably have done less damage.
She put the thought aside as a train roared into view, pausing on the far side of the siding and then backing slowly into the gorge. The driver seemed to know what he was doing, she noted; he kept moving until his engine was firmly inside the siding, then stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was sure neither the driver nor the engineer were going to disembark and check the siding, then stood and hurried forward. There wasn't much time – she could hear the passenger train already – for them to scramble into the rear wagon and duck down. The coal was going to stain their skin and clothes, but she'd brought spare sets ... she hoped, prayed, that it would be enough. They had to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the SS.
The train rumbled into life as soon as the passenger train was gone, moving out of the siding and onto the main line. Kathleen breathed a sigh of relief. It was unlikely the SS was searching freight trains, at least at first. Himmler would need to get Speer's cooperation and that might prove tricky, if Speer wanted Himmler to end up with egg on his face. But she knew she could be wrong ...
Von Braun looked uncomfortable. "Where are we going?"
"The train is supposed to go to an industrial factory in the Rhineland," Kathleen said. She wasn't entirely sure that was true – it had been very tricky to get an idea of the schedule - but as long as the train headed west they'd be going in the right general direction. "We'll have to hop out at some point, and hope to hell the papers hold up long enough to get us through the next set of checkpoints."
"I see," Von Braun said. "I ..."
His face fell. "What if we never make it out?"
I shoot you before they can take you alive, Kathleen thought. And then I kill myself.
She shook her head. "They can't keep us from inching west," she said, instead. Von Braun didn't need to know she intended to kill him, if there was no other choice. "And as long as we keep our heads down, we should be safe."
Sure, her thoughts added. They sounded very much like her father, when he'd been in a particularly sarcastic mode. Famous last words, don't you know?
Chapter Seventeen
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Seventeen: Near Frankfurt, 1949
The journey was incredibly uncomfortable, but it did have the advantage of being relatively quick. Kathleen would have been quite happy if they'd been able to stay on the train all the way to the Rhineland, yet the way the train paused in the next siding – with the driver stamping up and down the train while muttering to himself in a strong Bavarian accent – suggested they were in trouble. Her instincts were screaming in alarm, even before she heard the driver scrambling up into the freight car. If someone had issued the order to search freight trains too, they were in some trouble.
She drew her pistol, cursing under her breath. She wouldn't able to get close enough to the driver to take him out in hand-to-hand combat, certainly without the advantage of surprise that would make up for her physical inferiority. The engine driver was almost certainly a strong man, well used to transferring coal from the tender to the furnace. She wasn't fool enough to think she could best him without surprise ... the driver poked his head over the lid of the wagon and stared at them, his eyes going wide. Kathleen shot him in the face.
Von Braun jumped. Kathleen blinked in surprise – surely, he'd heard a gun being fired before – and then clambered over the edge of the wagon, allowing herself to drop to the ground. The pistol hadn't been remotely silent and she was all too aware the driver wouldn't be alone. There was no sign of an SS checkpoint, but ... she hurried to the engine and peered inside. The fireman was gabbing into his radio ... Kathleen shot him too, then turned off the radio and ran back to the wagon. Von Braun was staring at the body ... Kathleen almost laughed, despite everything. Von Braun had been in the SS! If he'd never seen a dead body before he'd decided to defect, he was almost certainly unique.
"Help me get the body to the engine," Kathleen snapped. Von Braun clambered over the wagon and lowered himself to the ground. "Hurry!"
She cursed, again, as she dragged the body forward. The driver was a heavyset man, so heavily muscled she had real trouble moving him; she shuddered to think what his fists could have done to her, if she had tried to fight him without a weapon. Von Braun staggered up beside her and helped, hauling the body along the tracks and up into the engine. He let out a gasp as he saw the second body, bleeding from a neat little hole in the head. Kathleen saw the party badge on his lapel and felt a flicker of vindictive satisfaction. The two men had probably been good little Nazis. They deserved to die.
"We don't have much time," she said, as she stared at the control panel. She knew how to drive, and how to fly, but the steam engine threatened to defeat her. SOE had never thought she needed to know how to drive one – a terrible oversight, she reflected wryly – and she didn't have the time to figure it out. "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
Von Braun looked shocked. "Open the valves, take off the brakes, and she should be on her way," he managed, pointing to a handful of levers. "But we'll be following the tracks ..."
"Get down and into the woods," Kathleen said. She wasn't sure how much the fireman had managed to report, or who he'd been talking to, but the alert would have gone up the line until it reached the SS. They might have already dispatched a small army to secure the train and arrest them. "Hurry!"
She watched him jump down and run, then set the train into motion and jumped down herself. There didn't seem to be any piece of safety gear ensuring the driver had to have his hand on the levers or the train would grind to a halt ... she darted into the woods as the train picked up speed, heading onto the mainline. There would be a crash, sooner or later, and hopefully the bodies would be so badly damaged the SS wouldn't be sure what had happened to them. It wasn't much, and she knew better than to count on it, but the thought gave her a flicker of dark amusement as she joined Von Braun and led the way into the woods. It was a pretty revenge, for what the Reich had done to her people, but it was a start. Getting Von Braun all the way to Britain would be even better.
He followed her like a lost sheep, never saying a word, as they reached a road and looked up and down. There were surprisingly few cars in evidence ... she frowned inwardly, wondering if it would be wiser to head into the nearest city or try to stay in the countryside, then breathed a sigh of relief as she saw a car coming into view. The driver saw her wave and slowed to a halt, his eyes flickering over her face and chest. She pointed the gun at him and watched him freeze in sudden terror.
"Get out of the car," she ordered. "Now!"
The driver hesitated, then stumbled out. Kathleen motioned for him to turn around and then scooped up a rock and hit him, neatly, on the back of the head. He crumpled to the ground, stunned. Kathleen dragged the body to the rear of the car, opened the boot, and hefted him inside, then yelled for Von Braun to get into the passenger seat. She slammed the boot down hard, took the driver's seat and put the car into gear. She had no idea how long they had before the SS came after them, but she dared not wait a second longer than absolutely necessary. There hadn't even been time to tie the poor driver up!
She kept her eyes open as they drove faster, all too aware time was limited. There would be checkpoints on the autobahns, of course, and their clothes were still stained with coal. She made a mental note to pull over, the moment she was sure they were clear, so they could change their clothes. And do something more permanent about the driver. The man hadn't seen them very clearly, but he had seen them. She dared not leave him alive to tell the SS what he'd seen.
If he's prepared to admit he had his car stolen by a woman, Kathleen thought. The regime pretended women couldn't possibly be dangerous, even as they hailed female fliers as great heroines and praised women who put their lives at risk for the Reich. If I could be sure he wouldn't tell anyone ...
"Keep still," she hissed, as she saw a military truck approaching on the other side of the road. "Don't show any sign of alarm."
It was hard to follow her own advice as the convoy came into view. Five trucks, flanked by motorcycles, loaded with black-clad soldiers. She guessed it was the local quick reaction force, surprisingly quick to react for a place so deep within the Reich that there was no reason to expect an attack. Whoever was coordinating the search had probably lit a fire underneath the local commanders, she guessed. She'd heard horror stories about a Home Guard exercise in 1947 that had ended badly, because the officers hadn't been holding proper drills and the soldiers had allowed their skills to atrophy. The thought of the SS having the same problem was darkly amusing, even though the SS was rotating units from the Reich to the war zones and then back again on a regular basis. A stormtrooper who forgot his skills was likely to be killed before he managed to recover them, in the east. Or the Middle East. It really was astonishing how quickly the Reich had worn out its welcome.
Or perhaps it is not astonishing at all, she reminded herself. They can't keep themselves from treating their allies like subhuman swine, even when they need them.
She kept driving, keeping her eye out for a place to stop. The Reich didn't seem to see the value of setting up petrol stations along the autobahn, although petrol was still heavily rationed. She wondered, idly, who the driver was ... he drove a relatively modern car, and his petrol tank was full. Not, she supposed, that it mattered. They'd committed so many crimes in the last few days that the Reich would have trouble deciding which one should be put on their execution warrant. If they even bothered with the formalities before they shot her ... Kathleen, like all twilight warriors, knew she had no legal protection. The Reich would shoot her, if they caught her, and no one in Britain would ever know what had happened to her. They shot German spies too.
"This should do," she said, pulling off the autobahn and finding a quiet – and relatively secluded – place to stop. "Change into clean clothes. I need to check on our guest."
Von Braun said nothing as he started to change. Kathleen shrugged and drew her pistol, then opened the boot. The driver shifted uneasily, blood staining his hair. She smacked him on the head again, feeling a twinge of guilt. Head wounds could be nasty, even if the victim received proper medical attention. The idea you could whack someone over the head and they'd be right as rain a few hours later was just absurd. The man might be concussed. Being trapped in the boot hadn't done him any favours either. She found a tow rope and used it to tie the driver up, then stuffed a rag into his mouth. They'd have to ditch the body sooner or later – if they passed a checkpoint and the guards insisted on searching, they were dead – but not yet. She had no idea if they were in the clear or not.
She saw Von Braun shift uncomfortably as she took her own clothes and changed, using the rear of the car to give her a little privacy. She'd had none of that in basic training, and it wasn't the first time she'd had to change near a man she barely knew, but ... she frowned inwardly, wondering what was bothering him. He'd had plenty of time to come to terms with leaving the Reich ... betraying the Reich. Or was it only just starting to dawn on him that he was committed? Von Braun was hardly stupid, but ... she'd known quite a few people who were book-smart and yet street-dumb. Her mother had told Kathleen that her relatives hadn't been that different, before Kristallnacht. And then it had been too late.
"You killed them," Von Braun said. "You ..."
Kathleen gave him a sharp look. "Were those the first men you saw die?"
"No, but ..." Von Braun didn't seem to know how to put his feelings into words. "Did you have to kill them?"
"Someone told the driver to search the train," Kathleen said, curtly. "If I hadn't killed him, what do you think he'd have done?"
She scowled, suddenly, and went on before he could answer. "They would have taken us prisoner and reported our capture to the SS. The stormtroopers would have arrived and taken us both into custody, me to a torture chamber and you to a cell. They'd probably have arrested the driver and fireman too, just in case they knew who you were, and made sure they never had a chance to pass on what they knew. That guy in the boot? He'll be dead too, if the SS gets its hands on him. They'll kill him without a second thought."
Von Braun swallowed. "They wouldn't ..."
Kathleen snorted. "They killed Korolev, remember? You think they'd hesitate to kill a handful of insignificant men, just because they might know something?"
She saw him flush and sighed, inwardly. Von Braun had had the luxury of pretending the Reich wasn't a monstrous state, run by monsters. She supposed it made a certain kind of sense – there were plenty of German citizens who had no idea of the horror the Nazis had unleashed in the former USSR – but still ... she shook her head. Von Braun had lived most of his life in a bubble. He hadn't seen Jews being rounded up and marched to their deaths, he hadn't seen communists and homosexuals and liberals and everyone else the Reich considered undesirable being executed, he hadn't seen men and women being arrested because their child had denounced them, or simply said the wrong thing at school. He had been free, in a way, to the point he had never quite realised he was also a prisoner. The bars had been faint, difficult to see, but they'd been there all along.
"That's the reality of the Reich," she said. "Horror and repression, terror and mass slaughter ... God! Do you have any idea how many women and children are widows or cripples now, in London, because of the rockets you designed? You helped enable a regime that has done crimes beyond imagination, that hypocritically condemns Britain and America and even Russia while carrying out atrocities so huge that it is difficult to wrap your head around the sheer scale! And even if you don't care about the Untermenschen" – the word tasted foul on her tongue – "perhaps you should care about your fellow Germans! The Reich has led them into darkness and is now keeping them there!"
Von Braun flinched. "I thought I was doing the right thing ..."
"Yeah," Kathleen said. "I saw a French village raided, two years ago. The men were marched off to the camps ... if any are alive now, I'd be very surprised. The women were raped and then murdered, their bodies left for their neighbours to find. And I'm sure the men who committed that atrocity, who wiped out a community that dated back hundreds of years, thought they were doing the right thing too!"
She laughed, harshly. "They said they were wiping out resistance fighters. Making a show of brutal punishment, so that all would know the fate of those who tried to fight the Herrenvolk. And you know what? There were no resistance fighters in that town. None. They were just innocent people, men and women and children, who were murdered by the regime."
"I chose to leave," Von Braun said.
"Yes, you did," Kathleen agreed. "And there is no easy way to get you out of the country. They are looking for us, and now they have a rough idea of where we are. There is no time to worry about the how and why, not any longer. If I have to kill, or kidnap, to get you safely away from the regime, I will do it."
She forced herself to calm down. Von Braun wasn't the only person who had been taken in by the Nazi lies. She knew some of her relatives had thought Hitler was a beacon of hope, that he wouldn't really be bad for the Jews; she knew hundreds of ordinary Germans who had believed the promises, or were simply too afraid to speak out. Von Braun might have survived, if he'd told Hitler or Himmler that their regime was turning into a prison camp above ground and a mass grave below, but anyone else who tried would be thrown into the camps or simply executed. There was nothing the average person could do to stop the Nazis. They couldn't even organise protest ...
And far too many think the regime is doing a good job, she thought, bitterly. There had been whispers about a German military plot to remove Hitler, but those whispers had died with the last glimmerings of German civilisation. They won't be moved to protest until it is far too late.
"I understand," Von Braun said, tiredly. "But ..."
Kathleen shrugged and put the car into gear, then drove back onto the autobahn. They'd have to abandon the car – there was enough petrol, she was sure, to start a fire that would erase all traces of their presence – and then find another one, preferably without kidnapping a second person. A hundred schemes ran through her mind – she knew how to hot wire a car, or steal a set of licence plates to confuse the hunters – but she'd have to wait and see what happened before she decided what to do. They had to make sure they were well away from where they'd ditched the train ... she wanted to believe the SS hadn't connected them with the train disaster, but it was wishful thinking. The SS would still be hunting them, even if they thought the train had been hijacked by bandits rather than a runaway rocket scientist and his escort.
Von Braun looked at her. "Where do we go from here?"
"Keep heading west," Kathleen said. They had time to reach Occupied France, she thought, and meet their contacts there. The pickup was scheduled for five days from now ... if they missed it, life would get a great deal harder. She kept her answer deliberately vague. What he didn't know he couldn't tell. "We'll find a way across the channel there."
"And then?"
Kathleen glanced at him. "You get a chance to make up for your sins," she said. She knew Von Braun was a genius. The British and American rocket programs could make good use of him. "And hopefully the Reich finds itself unable to expand any further."
She turned her eyes back to the road. They had a long way to go before they reached France and she could feel the noose tightening, even though there was no one in sight. It was a race against time now, to get out of the region before the SS sealed it off and started searching thoroughly. If their driver was reported missing ...
Worry about him later, she told herself, firmly. Right now, we have to keep moving.
The journey was incredibly uncomfortable, but it did have the advantage of being relatively quick. Kathleen would have been quite happy if they'd been able to stay on the train all the way to the Rhineland, yet the way the train paused in the next siding – with the driver stamping up and down the train while muttering to himself in a strong Bavarian accent – suggested they were in trouble. Her instincts were screaming in alarm, even before she heard the driver scrambling up into the freight car. If someone had issued the order to search freight trains too, they were in some trouble.
She drew her pistol, cursing under her breath. She wouldn't able to get close enough to the driver to take him out in hand-to-hand combat, certainly without the advantage of surprise that would make up for her physical inferiority. The engine driver was almost certainly a strong man, well used to transferring coal from the tender to the furnace. She wasn't fool enough to think she could best him without surprise ... the driver poked his head over the lid of the wagon and stared at them, his eyes going wide. Kathleen shot him in the face.
Von Braun jumped. Kathleen blinked in surprise – surely, he'd heard a gun being fired before – and then clambered over the edge of the wagon, allowing herself to drop to the ground. The pistol hadn't been remotely silent and she was all too aware the driver wouldn't be alone. There was no sign of an SS checkpoint, but ... she hurried to the engine and peered inside. The fireman was gabbing into his radio ... Kathleen shot him too, then turned off the radio and ran back to the wagon. Von Braun was staring at the body ... Kathleen almost laughed, despite everything. Von Braun had been in the SS! If he'd never seen a dead body before he'd decided to defect, he was almost certainly unique.
"Help me get the body to the engine," Kathleen snapped. Von Braun clambered over the wagon and lowered himself to the ground. "Hurry!"
She cursed, again, as she dragged the body forward. The driver was a heavyset man, so heavily muscled she had real trouble moving him; she shuddered to think what his fists could have done to her, if she had tried to fight him without a weapon. Von Braun staggered up beside her and helped, hauling the body along the tracks and up into the engine. He let out a gasp as he saw the second body, bleeding from a neat little hole in the head. Kathleen saw the party badge on his lapel and felt a flicker of vindictive satisfaction. The two men had probably been good little Nazis. They deserved to die.
"We don't have much time," she said, as she stared at the control panel. She knew how to drive, and how to fly, but the steam engine threatened to defeat her. SOE had never thought she needed to know how to drive one – a terrible oversight, she reflected wryly – and she didn't have the time to figure it out. "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
Von Braun looked shocked. "Open the valves, take off the brakes, and she should be on her way," he managed, pointing to a handful of levers. "But we'll be following the tracks ..."
"Get down and into the woods," Kathleen said. She wasn't sure how much the fireman had managed to report, or who he'd been talking to, but the alert would have gone up the line until it reached the SS. They might have already dispatched a small army to secure the train and arrest them. "Hurry!"
She watched him jump down and run, then set the train into motion and jumped down herself. There didn't seem to be any piece of safety gear ensuring the driver had to have his hand on the levers or the train would grind to a halt ... she darted into the woods as the train picked up speed, heading onto the mainline. There would be a crash, sooner or later, and hopefully the bodies would be so badly damaged the SS wouldn't be sure what had happened to them. It wasn't much, and she knew better than to count on it, but the thought gave her a flicker of dark amusement as she joined Von Braun and led the way into the woods. It was a pretty revenge, for what the Reich had done to her people, but it was a start. Getting Von Braun all the way to Britain would be even better.
He followed her like a lost sheep, never saying a word, as they reached a road and looked up and down. There were surprisingly few cars in evidence ... she frowned inwardly, wondering if it would be wiser to head into the nearest city or try to stay in the countryside, then breathed a sigh of relief as she saw a car coming into view. The driver saw her wave and slowed to a halt, his eyes flickering over her face and chest. She pointed the gun at him and watched him freeze in sudden terror.
"Get out of the car," she ordered. "Now!"
The driver hesitated, then stumbled out. Kathleen motioned for him to turn around and then scooped up a rock and hit him, neatly, on the back of the head. He crumpled to the ground, stunned. Kathleen dragged the body to the rear of the car, opened the boot, and hefted him inside, then yelled for Von Braun to get into the passenger seat. She slammed the boot down hard, took the driver's seat and put the car into gear. She had no idea how long they had before the SS came after them, but she dared not wait a second longer than absolutely necessary. There hadn't even been time to tie the poor driver up!
She kept her eyes open as they drove faster, all too aware time was limited. There would be checkpoints on the autobahns, of course, and their clothes were still stained with coal. She made a mental note to pull over, the moment she was sure they were clear, so they could change their clothes. And do something more permanent about the driver. The man hadn't seen them very clearly, but he had seen them. She dared not leave him alive to tell the SS what he'd seen.
If he's prepared to admit he had his car stolen by a woman, Kathleen thought. The regime pretended women couldn't possibly be dangerous, even as they hailed female fliers as great heroines and praised women who put their lives at risk for the Reich. If I could be sure he wouldn't tell anyone ...
"Keep still," she hissed, as she saw a military truck approaching on the other side of the road. "Don't show any sign of alarm."
It was hard to follow her own advice as the convoy came into view. Five trucks, flanked by motorcycles, loaded with black-clad soldiers. She guessed it was the local quick reaction force, surprisingly quick to react for a place so deep within the Reich that there was no reason to expect an attack. Whoever was coordinating the search had probably lit a fire underneath the local commanders, she guessed. She'd heard horror stories about a Home Guard exercise in 1947 that had ended badly, because the officers hadn't been holding proper drills and the soldiers had allowed their skills to atrophy. The thought of the SS having the same problem was darkly amusing, even though the SS was rotating units from the Reich to the war zones and then back again on a regular basis. A stormtrooper who forgot his skills was likely to be killed before he managed to recover them, in the east. Or the Middle East. It really was astonishing how quickly the Reich had worn out its welcome.
Or perhaps it is not astonishing at all, she reminded herself. They can't keep themselves from treating their allies like subhuman swine, even when they need them.
She kept driving, keeping her eye out for a place to stop. The Reich didn't seem to see the value of setting up petrol stations along the autobahn, although petrol was still heavily rationed. She wondered, idly, who the driver was ... he drove a relatively modern car, and his petrol tank was full. Not, she supposed, that it mattered. They'd committed so many crimes in the last few days that the Reich would have trouble deciding which one should be put on their execution warrant. If they even bothered with the formalities before they shot her ... Kathleen, like all twilight warriors, knew she had no legal protection. The Reich would shoot her, if they caught her, and no one in Britain would ever know what had happened to her. They shot German spies too.
"This should do," she said, pulling off the autobahn and finding a quiet – and relatively secluded – place to stop. "Change into clean clothes. I need to check on our guest."
Von Braun said nothing as he started to change. Kathleen shrugged and drew her pistol, then opened the boot. The driver shifted uneasily, blood staining his hair. She smacked him on the head again, feeling a twinge of guilt. Head wounds could be nasty, even if the victim received proper medical attention. The idea you could whack someone over the head and they'd be right as rain a few hours later was just absurd. The man might be concussed. Being trapped in the boot hadn't done him any favours either. She found a tow rope and used it to tie the driver up, then stuffed a rag into his mouth. They'd have to ditch the body sooner or later – if they passed a checkpoint and the guards insisted on searching, they were dead – but not yet. She had no idea if they were in the clear or not.
She saw Von Braun shift uncomfortably as she took her own clothes and changed, using the rear of the car to give her a little privacy. She'd had none of that in basic training, and it wasn't the first time she'd had to change near a man she barely knew, but ... she frowned inwardly, wondering what was bothering him. He'd had plenty of time to come to terms with leaving the Reich ... betraying the Reich. Or was it only just starting to dawn on him that he was committed? Von Braun was hardly stupid, but ... she'd known quite a few people who were book-smart and yet street-dumb. Her mother had told Kathleen that her relatives hadn't been that different, before Kristallnacht. And then it had been too late.
"You killed them," Von Braun said. "You ..."
Kathleen gave him a sharp look. "Were those the first men you saw die?"
"No, but ..." Von Braun didn't seem to know how to put his feelings into words. "Did you have to kill them?"
"Someone told the driver to search the train," Kathleen said, curtly. "If I hadn't killed him, what do you think he'd have done?"
She scowled, suddenly, and went on before he could answer. "They would have taken us prisoner and reported our capture to the SS. The stormtroopers would have arrived and taken us both into custody, me to a torture chamber and you to a cell. They'd probably have arrested the driver and fireman too, just in case they knew who you were, and made sure they never had a chance to pass on what they knew. That guy in the boot? He'll be dead too, if the SS gets its hands on him. They'll kill him without a second thought."
Von Braun swallowed. "They wouldn't ..."
Kathleen snorted. "They killed Korolev, remember? You think they'd hesitate to kill a handful of insignificant men, just because they might know something?"
She saw him flush and sighed, inwardly. Von Braun had had the luxury of pretending the Reich wasn't a monstrous state, run by monsters. She supposed it made a certain kind of sense – there were plenty of German citizens who had no idea of the horror the Nazis had unleashed in the former USSR – but still ... she shook her head. Von Braun had lived most of his life in a bubble. He hadn't seen Jews being rounded up and marched to their deaths, he hadn't seen communists and homosexuals and liberals and everyone else the Reich considered undesirable being executed, he hadn't seen men and women being arrested because their child had denounced them, or simply said the wrong thing at school. He had been free, in a way, to the point he had never quite realised he was also a prisoner. The bars had been faint, difficult to see, but they'd been there all along.
"That's the reality of the Reich," she said. "Horror and repression, terror and mass slaughter ... God! Do you have any idea how many women and children are widows or cripples now, in London, because of the rockets you designed? You helped enable a regime that has done crimes beyond imagination, that hypocritically condemns Britain and America and even Russia while carrying out atrocities so huge that it is difficult to wrap your head around the sheer scale! And even if you don't care about the Untermenschen" – the word tasted foul on her tongue – "perhaps you should care about your fellow Germans! The Reich has led them into darkness and is now keeping them there!"
Von Braun flinched. "I thought I was doing the right thing ..."
"Yeah," Kathleen said. "I saw a French village raided, two years ago. The men were marched off to the camps ... if any are alive now, I'd be very surprised. The women were raped and then murdered, their bodies left for their neighbours to find. And I'm sure the men who committed that atrocity, who wiped out a community that dated back hundreds of years, thought they were doing the right thing too!"
She laughed, harshly. "They said they were wiping out resistance fighters. Making a show of brutal punishment, so that all would know the fate of those who tried to fight the Herrenvolk. And you know what? There were no resistance fighters in that town. None. They were just innocent people, men and women and children, who were murdered by the regime."
"I chose to leave," Von Braun said.
"Yes, you did," Kathleen agreed. "And there is no easy way to get you out of the country. They are looking for us, and now they have a rough idea of where we are. There is no time to worry about the how and why, not any longer. If I have to kill, or kidnap, to get you safely away from the regime, I will do it."
She forced herself to calm down. Von Braun wasn't the only person who had been taken in by the Nazi lies. She knew some of her relatives had thought Hitler was a beacon of hope, that he wouldn't really be bad for the Jews; she knew hundreds of ordinary Germans who had believed the promises, or were simply too afraid to speak out. Von Braun might have survived, if he'd told Hitler or Himmler that their regime was turning into a prison camp above ground and a mass grave below, but anyone else who tried would be thrown into the camps or simply executed. There was nothing the average person could do to stop the Nazis. They couldn't even organise protest ...
And far too many think the regime is doing a good job, she thought, bitterly. There had been whispers about a German military plot to remove Hitler, but those whispers had died with the last glimmerings of German civilisation. They won't be moved to protest until it is far too late.
"I understand," Von Braun said, tiredly. "But ..."
Kathleen shrugged and put the car into gear, then drove back onto the autobahn. They'd have to abandon the car – there was enough petrol, she was sure, to start a fire that would erase all traces of their presence – and then find another one, preferably without kidnapping a second person. A hundred schemes ran through her mind – she knew how to hot wire a car, or steal a set of licence plates to confuse the hunters – but she'd have to wait and see what happened before she decided what to do. They had to make sure they were well away from where they'd ditched the train ... she wanted to believe the SS hadn't connected them with the train disaster, but it was wishful thinking. The SS would still be hunting them, even if they thought the train had been hijacked by bandits rather than a runaway rocket scientist and his escort.
Von Braun looked at her. "Where do we go from here?"
"Keep heading west," Kathleen said. They had time to reach Occupied France, she thought, and meet their contacts there. The pickup was scheduled for five days from now ... if they missed it, life would get a great deal harder. She kept her answer deliberately vague. What he didn't know he couldn't tell. "We'll find a way across the channel there."
"And then?"
Kathleen glanced at him. "You get a chance to make up for your sins," she said. She knew Von Braun was a genius. The British and American rocket programs could make good use of him. "And hopefully the Reich finds itself unable to expand any further."
She turned her eyes back to the road. They had a long way to go before they reached France and she could feel the noose tightening, even though there was no one in sight. It was a race against time now, to get out of the region before the SS sealed it off and started searching thoroughly. If their driver was reported missing ...
Worry about him later, she told herself, firmly. Right now, we have to keep moving.
Chapter Eighteen
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Eighteen: Near Frankfurt, 1949
Hans frowned as the plane orbited the crash site, then dropped down neatly to land on the field beside the derailed train. The track curved, before it started to run into Frankfurt, and the train had tried to run it far too fast for anyone's safety. The locomotive had gone off the tracks, dragging a dozen wagons behind it, and crashed to the ground. They were lucky, he supposed, that the locomotive had survived relatively intact. The same could not be said for the Untermenschen in the last two carriages. The survivors were so badly injured that the SS would have to put them out of their misery, rather than offer any medical care.
He stumbled out of the plane, took a long breath, then hurried towards the command post. A young officer stood there, his face pale for all that he wore SS black. Too young, Hans noted absently. He'd probably joined up after the fighting was over and somehow escaped being sent east, to be blooded – or killed – fighting the partisans. Someone was going to pay for showing so much favour to a young man, doing him no real favours at all. If he wasn't up to the task of cleansing the Reich, he should have been discharged – or encouraged to transfer – a long time ago. Hans made a mental note to check on the man's relatives – someone had probably pulled strings on his behalf – and then snapped a salute. The officer returned it immediately.
"Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," he said. "I am Obersturmfuehrer Keitel and ..."
Hans frowned, inwardly. Keitel? There was a Keitel amongst Hitler's inner circle, a man who was wholly loyal to the Führer ... who had to be, because everyone else despised him with a passion. Was Obersturmfuehrer Keitel a relative of the Keitel? Or ... he dismissed the thought. There was no time to worry about it now.
"Report," he snapped.
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel didn't show any visible irritation at being cut off. "The railway coordinator issued orders to carry out random searches of all freight trains heading west," he said, clearly unaware that Hans had been the one who'd issued the orders. "This particular train was ordered to pause at a siding, four miles to the east, and wait to be searched. The driver radioed that he would carry out a preliminary check and left the cab. The next thing we know, the fireman was calling us and reporting that he'd heard a shot. The message cut off and we were unable to raise the engine again."
Hans sucked in his breath. A shot in the middle of the countryside wasn't exactly uncommon – farmers were allowed to own rifles, and military reservists were supposed to keep their weapons in case they were called back to the colours – but combined with the engine crew going off the air ... it was worrying.
"And then?"
"The quick reaction force, under my command, was dispatched to the scene," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel continued. "Midway there, the derailment was reported and we were ordered to go there instead. We ..."
"I see," Hans said. "And did it occur to you that perhaps you should secure the siding first?"
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel went even paler. "Herr Sturmbannfuehrer ..."
"Never mind," Hans said. The SS stormtroopers were not taught to disobey orders, even when the orders were foolish in the extreme. The man who had redirected the troops was going to pay. If the train had been carrying unwanted passengers, they'd clearly jumped ship in the siding, rather than staying onboard until the train had detailed. "What did you do when you found the wreckage?"
"We discovered two bodies in the cab," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel told him. "One was badly mutilated, and the cause of death is uncertain, but the other was clearly shot. The bullet wound was easy to spot, and it appears he was dead when the engine was set into motion ..."
Hans felt a flicker of admiration for the fugitives, mingled with grim annoyance. They'd gambled and won, at least to some extent. They couldn't have known the train would derail, let alone where and when, but they'd managed to distract the SS long enough to put some distance between themselves and the siding. Where had they gone? Into Frankfurt? Or had they slipped around the city and headed further west? Hell, were they on foot or had they obtained – stolen - a car? There was no way to be sure.
There's no way to be sure it was our fugitives either, he reminded himself. The derailment might not have anything to do with them.
He frowned, considering the possibilities. The French Untermenschen had never risked mounting a raid so deep into Germany – they knew the kind of retaliation they'd face – but they had to do something to keep themselves going as more and more Frenchmen bowed the knee to the Reich. Or ... the Russians shouldn't have been able to get so far west without being spotted, yet ... he knew from grim experience the partisans were both cunning and brave, willing to give their lives for a chance to hurt the Reich. The British might have sent a commando team of their own ... no, that would be an act of war. Who else was there? Jewish exiles? It was to laugh. They could barely support themselves without British or American help.
Hans snapped his fingers at a young trooper. "Get a map," he snapped. "Now."
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel looked displeased. Hans might outrank him, but issuing orders to his subordinates in front of him was a severe breach of military etiquette. Hans didn't care. Anyone who had wanted to sabotage the train would have set out to do a great deal more damage ... if they'd waited ten minutes, they'd have had a chance to slam the freight train into a passenger train, ensuring hundreds of casualties- important casualties – and causing a disaster that couldn't possibly be hushed up. No, sending the train out of the siding had been a diversion, rather than an act of terror, and that meant their fugitives had resurfaced. Von Braun was an engineer as well as a rocket scientist, and he would have little trouble setting the train into motion. And he was too impressed with his own intelligence to stop and think about what he was doing. The prospect of killing hundreds of Germans wouldn't cause him any hesitation because it would never occur to him that he would.
The youngster returned, with a map. Hans picked out the siding and cursed under his breath as he scanned the surrounding area. There was a network of small towns surrounding Frankfurt – he doubted the fugitives would risk entering the city – and plenty of smaller roads that couldn't be sealed off as effectively as the autobahn. Were they on foot, he asked himself again, or did they have a car? If they did, they could be quite some distance away by now ...
"I want roadblocks on all the major roads heading west from this point," he said, drawing lines on the map. "Put out an alert – two people, one man and one woman, trying to make their way west. Anyone who fits the description is to be held until their identity can be verified. There are to be no leaks. Not one."
His mind raced. Had the fugitives gone east instead and tried to double back? Or south ... Switzerland wasn't that far away, and they might assume they could sneak through the military forces on exercise guarding the border. The exercise hadn't been made public, at least partly in hopes the fugitives would try to head south, but he'd be surprised if word hadn't spread all the way to Frankfurt. Or would they go north instead? It would be difficult to get across Baltic Sea into Sweden – the Kriegsmarine patrolled the waters pretty heavily, and they were holding their own naval exercise – but they might take the risk. The Danes were Aryan, and greatly honoured within the Reich, yet they had never reconciled themselves to being part of something greater than themselves. The fugitives might find help within Denmark. Or ...
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel said. "We'll need to call up reservists, perhaps even the Heer ..."
"No," Hans said, flatly. "The Heer is not to be involved."
He turned away and surveyed the wreckage, leaving the junior officers to pass on his orders. It would take time to seal off the entire area, time they didn't have, but ... there was no choice. They had to do it, and quickly, before the fugitives got away again. Von Braun's escort was clearly no slouch, smart enough to get well clear before her time ran out. Hans visualised the map, wondering just how they'd escaped the first train and made it onto a second. They'd moved quite some distance ... had they found a car or boarded a second train? Or ... he shook his head. They'd get the answers out of her, once she was in their hands. And when they'd drained her dry, she'd be executed. There would be no last-minute reprieve for such an unnatural woman.
"The orders have been sent, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel said. "My superiors are requesting ..."
"I'll speak to them myself," Hans said. Himmler had given him near-complete authority and he intended to make damn sure it wasn't wasted. The local SS might object to him moving in and issuing orders, particularly to men who formally outranked him, but they could take such complaints to the Reichsführer-SS. Hans was sure Himmler would give such complaints very little time indeed. "When the railway staff arrive to clear the tracks, make sure they leave the wagons as intact as possible. We'll go over them later for clues."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel said. He paused. "What about ..."
He indicated the smashed wagons, where the Untermenschen were dying. Hans turned and walked towards them, feeling disgust bubbling deep in his throat. The Slavs were barbaric people, unable to do anything without help from their betters; they didn't deserve the honour the Reich had granted them by allowing the men a chance to work to build a wonder that would last a thousand years. Some were already dead or bleeding to death, the latter badly mutilated by the crash; some were staring at him with hostile eyes, leaving him in no doubt of what they'd do to him, if they ever had a chance. A handful of chains lay open, suggesting their occupants had taken advantage of the chaos to vanish. Cowards, Hans thought. It didn't look as if they'd made any attempt to free the rest of the prisoners. But he supposed it worked in his favour. They could tell the world they were searching for runaway workers – everyone knew what barbaric Untermenschen would do, when confronted by sweet and innocent German maidens – while really searching for Von Braun and his escort. The press release practically wrote itself.
The Untermenschen moaned. Hans snorted. Didn't they know to be quiet in the presence of their betters?
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel looked green around the gills. Hans rolled his eyes. What a child! What had he been doing, on the day the Waffen-SS recruits were given prisoners and told to hack them up, to harden them for the work they'd do for the Reich? Had he skipped that lesson? Told his instructors he was excused? Or had he somehow managed to avoid getting his hands dirty? Hands neither knew nor cared. There was no room for such fine sentiment, in the service of the Reich. The sooner the Untermenschen were wiped out, the better. Their bodies would serve a better cause as fertilizer, than anything else. There was nothing they couldn't do that a good German couldn't do better.
"You need to deal with the cripples," Hans said, simply. He drew his pistol and shot the nearest Untermenschen in the head. There was no point in keeping the man alive any longer. Even if he could be carried to the factory, or whatever the gang had been heading to work, the Reich wouldn't get anything out of them. "You put them down now, to save time for later."
He shot the next man, then the next. "Do it."
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel looked as if he were going to be sick, his hand trembling as he drew his pistol. Hans watched him narrowly, wondering just what he'd thought he was doing when he joined the SS. Did he like the uniform? Hans had known recruits who had thought that they'd be given their Sigrunens on the very first day ... idiots. They hadn't realised that weeks and months of training lay ahead, before they were allowed to pin the Sigrunen to their jacket. The younger man's shaking grew worse as he levelled the pistol at the next Untermenschen, his fingers seemingly frozen, unwilling to move.
"Do it," Hans snapped. "What do you think he'd do to you, given the chance?"
The younger man pulled the trigger. The Untermenschen fell back, dead. Hans sighed inwardly as Obersturmfuehrer Keitel stumbled back, then forced himself to keep going. Not a good fit, Hans decided, as he snapped orders to the rest of the squad, noting which men carried out the orders with enthusiasm and which were clearly reluctant to have anything to do with it. They'd have to purge themselves of such feelings, he told himself sternly, if they wanted to have a future in the SS. The Untermenschen might look human, but they were only Untermenschen. Brutal, barbaric, and doomed to waste their lives without the guidance of the Herrenvolk.
He watched the grisly task be completed, then stepped aside as the railway workers appeared to clear the tracks. A handful of superior officers had also arrived ... Hans took a certain pleasure ion showing them his orders from Himmler, authorising him to do whatever he needed to do to recover the fugitives. One man, one woman ... the search was going to cause a great many inconveniences to a great many people, but there was no help for it. It was unlikely the fugitives had picked up a third person along the way ... not that it mattered, he told himself. Everyone would have their papers checked, just to be sure.
An officer arrived with an updated map. The first set of roadblocks were already in place. The second would be up shortly ... Hans scowled as he studied the map, making a series of mental calculations. Just how far could the fugitives go? The larger he drew the circle on the map, the more roadblocks he needed to be sure of catching them; the smaller the circle, the greater the chance the fugitives were already outside the catchment area. Obersturmfuehrer Keitel wasn't wrong about one thing, at least. They really would need more manpower to make sure the area was sealed, manpower he couldn't assemble in a hurry. It would take days, at least, and he didn't have days. How long did he have before Himmler decided he'd outlived his usefulness? Not long, he feared.
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel returned, looking pale. Again. His jacket was stained with blood.
"It's done," he said. The raw guilt in his voice made Hans laugh. Obersturmfuehrer Keitel might not be part of an Einsatzgruppen unit, but he still needed to purge the Reich of undesirables. "What'll we do with the remaining workers?"
Hans shrugged. "They'll go to the camp and work," he said. The industrial combine might complain about the dead men, but he doubted it. Cripples were useless. Besides, there was no shortage of Untermenschen. There'd be more on the way already, unless he missed his guess. They rarely lasted long in the camps. "Unless our superiors decide they've seen too much."
The younger man blanched. Hans turned away, trying to hide his disgust. There was nothing more dangerous than an Untermensch who thought he could beat the Reich. It was impossible, of course, but the fool might get a lot of workers killed in a pointless rally instead of working for his feed. Perhaps the workers had seen too much to be allowed to live ... it was unlikely they had any idea of what had really happened, but that wasn't a good thing. They couldn't start thinking the crash had been an accident or they'd start wondering if the Reich was fallible after all. That would be utterly disastrous.
But they will be wiped out if they try to cause trouble, he reminded himself. The combine might choose to simply work them to death instead.
Hans smiled, coldly. The worker camps were designed to isolate rebels, containing any uprising long enough for the SS to wipe the rebels out batch by batch. The workers would die, for nothing. The camp would get a fresh load of Untermenschen before the bodies cooled. Their replacements would find themselves tasked with moving the bodies to the incinerator, before they did anything else, as a grim reminder of what sort of fate they could expect if they caused trouble.
He shrugged and headed for the plane. He needed to get to the nearest HQ and report in to Himmler, preferably before the Reichsführer-SS heard a report from someone else. Hans had issued orders to shut down all outgoing communications, but he was fairly sure someone would make a report to Himmler eventually ... there was no shortage of officers trying to curry favour with their supreme commander. Hell, it might even come out of another organisation entirely. Himmler was almost certain to be the next Führer and that meant everyone would be jockeying for position, trying to ensure they had a place in the new world order. It would be ironic indeed if the report came from the Heer, or the Luftwaffe ...
And if I don't make sure he hears it from me first, Hans told himself grimly, it could be the end.
Hans frowned as the plane orbited the crash site, then dropped down neatly to land on the field beside the derailed train. The track curved, before it started to run into Frankfurt, and the train had tried to run it far too fast for anyone's safety. The locomotive had gone off the tracks, dragging a dozen wagons behind it, and crashed to the ground. They were lucky, he supposed, that the locomotive had survived relatively intact. The same could not be said for the Untermenschen in the last two carriages. The survivors were so badly injured that the SS would have to put them out of their misery, rather than offer any medical care.
He stumbled out of the plane, took a long breath, then hurried towards the command post. A young officer stood there, his face pale for all that he wore SS black. Too young, Hans noted absently. He'd probably joined up after the fighting was over and somehow escaped being sent east, to be blooded – or killed – fighting the partisans. Someone was going to pay for showing so much favour to a young man, doing him no real favours at all. If he wasn't up to the task of cleansing the Reich, he should have been discharged – or encouraged to transfer – a long time ago. Hans made a mental note to check on the man's relatives – someone had probably pulled strings on his behalf – and then snapped a salute. The officer returned it immediately.
"Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," he said. "I am Obersturmfuehrer Keitel and ..."
Hans frowned, inwardly. Keitel? There was a Keitel amongst Hitler's inner circle, a man who was wholly loyal to the Führer ... who had to be, because everyone else despised him with a passion. Was Obersturmfuehrer Keitel a relative of the Keitel? Or ... he dismissed the thought. There was no time to worry about it now.
"Report," he snapped.
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel didn't show any visible irritation at being cut off. "The railway coordinator issued orders to carry out random searches of all freight trains heading west," he said, clearly unaware that Hans had been the one who'd issued the orders. "This particular train was ordered to pause at a siding, four miles to the east, and wait to be searched. The driver radioed that he would carry out a preliminary check and left the cab. The next thing we know, the fireman was calling us and reporting that he'd heard a shot. The message cut off and we were unable to raise the engine again."
Hans sucked in his breath. A shot in the middle of the countryside wasn't exactly uncommon – farmers were allowed to own rifles, and military reservists were supposed to keep their weapons in case they were called back to the colours – but combined with the engine crew going off the air ... it was worrying.
"And then?"
"The quick reaction force, under my command, was dispatched to the scene," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel continued. "Midway there, the derailment was reported and we were ordered to go there instead. We ..."
"I see," Hans said. "And did it occur to you that perhaps you should secure the siding first?"
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel went even paler. "Herr Sturmbannfuehrer ..."
"Never mind," Hans said. The SS stormtroopers were not taught to disobey orders, even when the orders were foolish in the extreme. The man who had redirected the troops was going to pay. If the train had been carrying unwanted passengers, they'd clearly jumped ship in the siding, rather than staying onboard until the train had detailed. "What did you do when you found the wreckage?"
"We discovered two bodies in the cab," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel told him. "One was badly mutilated, and the cause of death is uncertain, but the other was clearly shot. The bullet wound was easy to spot, and it appears he was dead when the engine was set into motion ..."
Hans felt a flicker of admiration for the fugitives, mingled with grim annoyance. They'd gambled and won, at least to some extent. They couldn't have known the train would derail, let alone where and when, but they'd managed to distract the SS long enough to put some distance between themselves and the siding. Where had they gone? Into Frankfurt? Or had they slipped around the city and headed further west? Hell, were they on foot or had they obtained – stolen - a car? There was no way to be sure.
There's no way to be sure it was our fugitives either, he reminded himself. The derailment might not have anything to do with them.
He frowned, considering the possibilities. The French Untermenschen had never risked mounting a raid so deep into Germany – they knew the kind of retaliation they'd face – but they had to do something to keep themselves going as more and more Frenchmen bowed the knee to the Reich. Or ... the Russians shouldn't have been able to get so far west without being spotted, yet ... he knew from grim experience the partisans were both cunning and brave, willing to give their lives for a chance to hurt the Reich. The British might have sent a commando team of their own ... no, that would be an act of war. Who else was there? Jewish exiles? It was to laugh. They could barely support themselves without British or American help.
Hans snapped his fingers at a young trooper. "Get a map," he snapped. "Now."
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel looked displeased. Hans might outrank him, but issuing orders to his subordinates in front of him was a severe breach of military etiquette. Hans didn't care. Anyone who had wanted to sabotage the train would have set out to do a great deal more damage ... if they'd waited ten minutes, they'd have had a chance to slam the freight train into a passenger train, ensuring hundreds of casualties- important casualties – and causing a disaster that couldn't possibly be hushed up. No, sending the train out of the siding had been a diversion, rather than an act of terror, and that meant their fugitives had resurfaced. Von Braun was an engineer as well as a rocket scientist, and he would have little trouble setting the train into motion. And he was too impressed with his own intelligence to stop and think about what he was doing. The prospect of killing hundreds of Germans wouldn't cause him any hesitation because it would never occur to him that he would.
The youngster returned, with a map. Hans picked out the siding and cursed under his breath as he scanned the surrounding area. There was a network of small towns surrounding Frankfurt – he doubted the fugitives would risk entering the city – and plenty of smaller roads that couldn't be sealed off as effectively as the autobahn. Were they on foot, he asked himself again, or did they have a car? If they did, they could be quite some distance away by now ...
"I want roadblocks on all the major roads heading west from this point," he said, drawing lines on the map. "Put out an alert – two people, one man and one woman, trying to make their way west. Anyone who fits the description is to be held until their identity can be verified. There are to be no leaks. Not one."
His mind raced. Had the fugitives gone east instead and tried to double back? Or south ... Switzerland wasn't that far away, and they might assume they could sneak through the military forces on exercise guarding the border. The exercise hadn't been made public, at least partly in hopes the fugitives would try to head south, but he'd be surprised if word hadn't spread all the way to Frankfurt. Or would they go north instead? It would be difficult to get across Baltic Sea into Sweden – the Kriegsmarine patrolled the waters pretty heavily, and they were holding their own naval exercise – but they might take the risk. The Danes were Aryan, and greatly honoured within the Reich, yet they had never reconciled themselves to being part of something greater than themselves. The fugitives might find help within Denmark. Or ...
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel said. "We'll need to call up reservists, perhaps even the Heer ..."
"No," Hans said, flatly. "The Heer is not to be involved."
He turned away and surveyed the wreckage, leaving the junior officers to pass on his orders. It would take time to seal off the entire area, time they didn't have, but ... there was no choice. They had to do it, and quickly, before the fugitives got away again. Von Braun's escort was clearly no slouch, smart enough to get well clear before her time ran out. Hans visualised the map, wondering just how they'd escaped the first train and made it onto a second. They'd moved quite some distance ... had they found a car or boarded a second train? Or ... he shook his head. They'd get the answers out of her, once she was in their hands. And when they'd drained her dry, she'd be executed. There would be no last-minute reprieve for such an unnatural woman.
"The orders have been sent, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel said. "My superiors are requesting ..."
"I'll speak to them myself," Hans said. Himmler had given him near-complete authority and he intended to make damn sure it wasn't wasted. The local SS might object to him moving in and issuing orders, particularly to men who formally outranked him, but they could take such complaints to the Reichsführer-SS. Hans was sure Himmler would give such complaints very little time indeed. "When the railway staff arrive to clear the tracks, make sure they leave the wagons as intact as possible. We'll go over them later for clues."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer," Obersturmfuehrer Keitel said. He paused. "What about ..."
He indicated the smashed wagons, where the Untermenschen were dying. Hans turned and walked towards them, feeling disgust bubbling deep in his throat. The Slavs were barbaric people, unable to do anything without help from their betters; they didn't deserve the honour the Reich had granted them by allowing the men a chance to work to build a wonder that would last a thousand years. Some were already dead or bleeding to death, the latter badly mutilated by the crash; some were staring at him with hostile eyes, leaving him in no doubt of what they'd do to him, if they ever had a chance. A handful of chains lay open, suggesting their occupants had taken advantage of the chaos to vanish. Cowards, Hans thought. It didn't look as if they'd made any attempt to free the rest of the prisoners. But he supposed it worked in his favour. They could tell the world they were searching for runaway workers – everyone knew what barbaric Untermenschen would do, when confronted by sweet and innocent German maidens – while really searching for Von Braun and his escort. The press release practically wrote itself.
The Untermenschen moaned. Hans snorted. Didn't they know to be quiet in the presence of their betters?
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel looked green around the gills. Hans rolled his eyes. What a child! What had he been doing, on the day the Waffen-SS recruits were given prisoners and told to hack them up, to harden them for the work they'd do for the Reich? Had he skipped that lesson? Told his instructors he was excused? Or had he somehow managed to avoid getting his hands dirty? Hands neither knew nor cared. There was no room for such fine sentiment, in the service of the Reich. The sooner the Untermenschen were wiped out, the better. Their bodies would serve a better cause as fertilizer, than anything else. There was nothing they couldn't do that a good German couldn't do better.
"You need to deal with the cripples," Hans said, simply. He drew his pistol and shot the nearest Untermenschen in the head. There was no point in keeping the man alive any longer. Even if he could be carried to the factory, or whatever the gang had been heading to work, the Reich wouldn't get anything out of them. "You put them down now, to save time for later."
He shot the next man, then the next. "Do it."
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel looked as if he were going to be sick, his hand trembling as he drew his pistol. Hans watched him narrowly, wondering just what he'd thought he was doing when he joined the SS. Did he like the uniform? Hans had known recruits who had thought that they'd be given their Sigrunens on the very first day ... idiots. They hadn't realised that weeks and months of training lay ahead, before they were allowed to pin the Sigrunen to their jacket. The younger man's shaking grew worse as he levelled the pistol at the next Untermenschen, his fingers seemingly frozen, unwilling to move.
"Do it," Hans snapped. "What do you think he'd do to you, given the chance?"
The younger man pulled the trigger. The Untermenschen fell back, dead. Hans sighed inwardly as Obersturmfuehrer Keitel stumbled back, then forced himself to keep going. Not a good fit, Hans decided, as he snapped orders to the rest of the squad, noting which men carried out the orders with enthusiasm and which were clearly reluctant to have anything to do with it. They'd have to purge themselves of such feelings, he told himself sternly, if they wanted to have a future in the SS. The Untermenschen might look human, but they were only Untermenschen. Brutal, barbaric, and doomed to waste their lives without the guidance of the Herrenvolk.
He watched the grisly task be completed, then stepped aside as the railway workers appeared to clear the tracks. A handful of superior officers had also arrived ... Hans took a certain pleasure ion showing them his orders from Himmler, authorising him to do whatever he needed to do to recover the fugitives. One man, one woman ... the search was going to cause a great many inconveniences to a great many people, but there was no help for it. It was unlikely the fugitives had picked up a third person along the way ... not that it mattered, he told himself. Everyone would have their papers checked, just to be sure.
An officer arrived with an updated map. The first set of roadblocks were already in place. The second would be up shortly ... Hans scowled as he studied the map, making a series of mental calculations. Just how far could the fugitives go? The larger he drew the circle on the map, the more roadblocks he needed to be sure of catching them; the smaller the circle, the greater the chance the fugitives were already outside the catchment area. Obersturmfuehrer Keitel wasn't wrong about one thing, at least. They really would need more manpower to make sure the area was sealed, manpower he couldn't assemble in a hurry. It would take days, at least, and he didn't have days. How long did he have before Himmler decided he'd outlived his usefulness? Not long, he feared.
Obersturmfuehrer Keitel returned, looking pale. Again. His jacket was stained with blood.
"It's done," he said. The raw guilt in his voice made Hans laugh. Obersturmfuehrer Keitel might not be part of an Einsatzgruppen unit, but he still needed to purge the Reich of undesirables. "What'll we do with the remaining workers?"
Hans shrugged. "They'll go to the camp and work," he said. The industrial combine might complain about the dead men, but he doubted it. Cripples were useless. Besides, there was no shortage of Untermenschen. There'd be more on the way already, unless he missed his guess. They rarely lasted long in the camps. "Unless our superiors decide they've seen too much."
The younger man blanched. Hans turned away, trying to hide his disgust. There was nothing more dangerous than an Untermensch who thought he could beat the Reich. It was impossible, of course, but the fool might get a lot of workers killed in a pointless rally instead of working for his feed. Perhaps the workers had seen too much to be allowed to live ... it was unlikely they had any idea of what had really happened, but that wasn't a good thing. They couldn't start thinking the crash had been an accident or they'd start wondering if the Reich was fallible after all. That would be utterly disastrous.
But they will be wiped out if they try to cause trouble, he reminded himself. The combine might choose to simply work them to death instead.
Hans smiled, coldly. The worker camps were designed to isolate rebels, containing any uprising long enough for the SS to wipe the rebels out batch by batch. The workers would die, for nothing. The camp would get a fresh load of Untermenschen before the bodies cooled. Their replacements would find themselves tasked with moving the bodies to the incinerator, before they did anything else, as a grim reminder of what sort of fate they could expect if they caused trouble.
He shrugged and headed for the plane. He needed to get to the nearest HQ and report in to Himmler, preferably before the Reichsführer-SS heard a report from someone else. Hans had issued orders to shut down all outgoing communications, but he was fairly sure someone would make a report to Himmler eventually ... there was no shortage of officers trying to curry favour with their supreme commander. Hell, it might even come out of another organisation entirely. Himmler was almost certain to be the next Führer and that meant everyone would be jockeying for position, trying to ensure they had a place in the new world order. It would be ironic indeed if the report came from the Heer, or the Luftwaffe ...
And if I don't make sure he hears it from me first, Hans told himself grimly, it could be the end.
IrishChaos
Active member
Wow very Man in the High Castle tv show. Was that how Germans felt during the Hitler years before Germany was bombed and invaded flat and rebuilt?
Chapter Nineteen
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Nineteen: Near Frankfurt, 1949
They ditched the car late in the evening, then stole another car from a village and headed further east, after swapping a handful of licence plates to confuse the police. Kathleen was careful not to tell Von Braun that she'd cut the original driver's throat, after doing everything in her power to make it look like a robbery, but she suspected he knew the truth. He'd been very quiet on the trip, saying nothing even after they'd found a place to rest for the night, something that would have worried her if there hadn't been so many other problems. The noose was steadily closing. She'd seen a handful of checkpoints blocking the roads and she had a nasty feeling, this time, that the SS had blocked every road.
"They're looking for the car," Von Braun said. "Can we not dump it?"
Kathleen suspected it was pointless. The car was common, a simple design drawn up before the war and then mass-produced in vast numbers, before the demands of wartime had forced the factory to start churning out armoured vehicles instead. There were hundreds just like it on the roads, and unless the SS had figured out what they'd done with the licence plates they shouldn't be looking for their car in particular, but they appeared to be checking every car. It was morbidly amusing how many vehicles were turning around to evade the checkpoint ... she wondered, suddenly, if they weren't the only ones who had reason to fear a search. The SS didn't need a reason to arrest someone. It was perfectly capable of snatching a target off the streets and coming up with an excuse later, if they even thought they needed one. Hell, there were so many laws in Nazi Germany that it was easy to break one without even noticing. The SS was very good at spotting broken laws ...
"We might have to," she said. She'd seen hints the SS were searching the countryside too ... nothing too definite, but her instincts were sounding the alarm. "But if they catch us in an open field, we're sunk."
She was still trying to decide what to do when she rounded the corner and spotted an official-looking car parked by the side of the road, a young man in a fancy uniform working on the wheel. He was being berated by an older woman in a BDM uniform, her face purple with rage as she shouted at him. Kathleen silently admired his self-control as the woman looked up, saw their car, and waved them to park beside the car. If someone had been yelling at her like that, the urge to slap her would have been irresistible. Her instructors had been harsh and even they hadn't been so unpleasant.
The woman snapped a salute. "Heil Hitler!"
Kathleen felt dirty as she returned the salute. It was supposed to be used on all formal occasions, but a surprisingly large number of Germans tried to avoid using the Nazi salute if possible. She'd never been sure why. The Nazis didn't ban non-members from using their salute, they actually encouraged it. The woman held up a card, identifying her as a BDM matron. Kathleen looked her up and down, wondering just what sort of maiden the older woman was intended to be. She was heavyset, her girlish pigtails a sick joke, and she carried a switch on her belt. Somehow, Kathleen had no doubt that any girl who misbehaved would have trouble sitting comfortably for the next few days. And asking questions would definitely count as misbehaviour.
"We need a replacement wheel for the car," the woman snarled, in a tone that suggested the idea of anyone saying no to her had never crossed her mind. Kathleen had met a handful of upper class women, including some who were strikingly loyal to Hitler, and none had been quite so entitled. "Your husband will help us repair the car ..."
Kathleen studied her for a long moment. The woman was loud and obnoxious, which almost certainly meant she was very well connected. BDM matrons were supposed to be pure, politically speaking, and while they didn't always have personal authority outside the BDM their male relatives almost certainly did. Kathleen knew the type – the officer's wife who thought she shared her husband's rank – and they tended to be feared all the Reich. They could cause real trouble for someone who got in their way, and they often did. Their lives were so difficult – they had to turn a blind eye to their husband's infidelities – that they had to take it out on someone beneath them.
"We don't have a spare wheel," she said, slowly. She had no doubt she could fix the wheel – there was a repair kit in the car boot, she'd checked – but she wasn't sure she wanted to help. "Where are you going ...?"
She had to jump back to avoid the slap. "I was supposed to be on holiday," the woman snapped. "My husband was back from Berlin and I was supposed to be with him. But Ida is ill and I have to go take her place, to chaperone the girls as they go to do their work on the farm and keep them away from boys ..."
Kathleen hesitated. Did she dare ...?"
"A bunch of Untermenschen are on the loose, and we are stuck out here, and this useless waste of space can't even fix a wheel," the woman snapped. She stamped back to her driver, drawing back her arm for a slap. "I think I ..."
Kathleen moved up behind her, scooped up a rock and smacked it over the woman's head. She staggered ... Kathleen blinked and hit her again, harder this time. The woman crumpled to the ground and lay still. The driver gaped, then reached for his pistol. Kathleen had hers covering him before he could his weapon out of the holster. The man clearly wasn't a combat soldier, or a bodyguard. A smart man would have had his holster unbuttoned if he'd thought he might be going into danger. Kathleen motioned for him to turn around, then smacked him over the head. He went down quicker than his mistress.
"You get them both into our car," Kathleen ordered. An idea was taking shape and form in her mind. "Let me check out their vehicle ..."
She stuck her head inside and found a surprisingly masculine folder. The documents inside confirmed the woman's story. She'd been summoned at short notice to cover for an ill comrade ... summoned from quite some distance. It was common for the BDM supervisors to be from a different town or city to their charges, but this was odd ... was it a trap? Or was something else going on? Her lips quirked. The women – her name was Gudrun, apparently; Gudrun Mühlenkamp – was clearly an unpleasant person, given that she'd tried to strike a complete stranger. She'd said she'd been with her husband ... had her husband pulled strings to get rid of her? It would be hard to blame him ...
"Mühlenkamp," she mused. She vaguely recalled hearing of an SS officer with that name ... not one of the really notorious ones, thankfully, but anyone who joined the SS had to be a monster or well on the way to becoming one. The SS didn't take conscripts. "I wonder ..."
She glanced through the rest of the papers, including a copy of Der Stürmer. It was surprisingly informative, for once; there had been a rail accident, caused by sabotage, and a number of Untermenschen had escaped into the wilderness. Kathleen's eyes narrowed as she studied the newspaper, wondering if the story had anything to do with them. She was fairly sure the train they'd escaped had crashed at some point, and ... she cursed under her breath as she read the rest of the story. It was almost hysterical in its description of just what fate the flower of German womanhood could expect, at the hands of runaway Untermenschen ... she had to admit the story made a good excuse for setting up roadblocks and checking passing cars. It was certainly less likely to cause political trouble than admitting the truth.
Kathleen searched the rest of the car, then opened a suitcase to reveal a pair of BDM outfits and a driver's uniform. "Get into this," she ordered, holding out the uniform. "You're my elderly driver now."
Von Braun balked. "Are you mad?"
"Perhaps," Kathleen said. "But I do have a plan."
She stripped Gudrun and her driver quickly, taking everything she had, and drove the original car deeper into the woods. It would be found eventually, she was sure, but ... she rigged the evidence as much as possible, to suggest a joint suicide, before turning and changing into Gudrun's outfit. The jacket was ill-fitting – Gudrun hadn't been fat, but she'd been strikingly blocky – and she had to adjust it carefully, then fiddle with the paperwork. Thankfully, the photograph was no improvement over the others she'd seen over the last few years. Gudrun's photograph made her look years younger, and even pretty in a way.
"You're my elderly driver," she repeated, as she checked Von Braun's appearance. She would have preferred to put him in a dress, but it would be difficult to make it look convincing. The SS might be reluctant to strip search a pair of women, if one had a high-ranking husband, but if they were suspicious they might take the risk. "You do know how to drive, don't you?"
Von Braun gave her a nasty look. "Of course."
"Then drive," Kathleen said. "Take us straight to the nearest roadblock."
She allowed herself a tight smile. "We don't have anything to hide, remember?"
The car lurched into motion. It had clearly been a while since Von Braun had driven himself anywhere. Kathleen kept an eye on him, between reading the rest of the paperwork and memorising details as quickly as possible. It was hard to be sure none of the troop had met the real Gudrun, but reading between the lines it seemed plausible. Gudrun was a last-minute replacement, not someone who'd been with the troop from the beginning. She'd have to be take care to deal with anyone who spotted the impersonation, before it was too late.
And be as nasty and disagreeable as possible, so they don't try to seek out my company, she added, mentally. Let them be glad when I'm gone.
A long line of vehicles greeted them as they reached the autobahn, waiting to go through the checkpoint. "Drive us right up to them," Kathleen said. "We don't have anything to hide, remember?"
She composed herself as Von Braun took them right up to the checkpoint. The SS guards looked slightly bemused, and fearful. They probably hadn't been surprised to see people noticing them and then turning around, heading the other way as fast as possible. She kept her eyes open as a young man held up his hand to order them to stop, allowing herself a moment of relief as she noted they didn't have any armoured vehicles backing them up. They could gun the engine and run ... no, not quite.
Kathleen opened the door and stepped outside, holding up her portfolio. "And what is the meaning of this?"
She went on, channelling all the entitlement of the real Gudrun into her voice. "I have been torn from my husband's arms, on his return from the front, to escort the young ladies as they make their way around the Reich And what do I, Gudrun Mühlenkamp, see when I leave my home and come here? Men, blocking my way! When I am already running late! Do you have any sort of explanation, any at all?"
The leader saw the photograph and winced. Kathleen had no idea if Gudrun was married to the Mühlenkamp, or if the name was just a happy coincidence, but the young man had to know she would be connected. Very well connected. A word from her could get him sent to the front, or the camps, or ... it hardly mattered, as long as he was sent so far from the Reich that the odds of coming back in a coffin were far higher than being promoted.
"I have had to leave my husband to attend to this matter," she thundered. "Why are you slowing me down?"
"We're searching for Untermenschen," the leader managed. His face was pale. "I have orders to check ..."
Kathleen waved the portfolio under his nose. "And are you daring to suggest that I am Untermensch? Give me your name, and your number ..."
The leader blanched. His subordinates started backing away. The merest suggestion of having an Untermensch somewhere in your family tree was a deadly insult in the Reich, where having a Jewish grandparent could cost you everything. If she happened to be related to the Mühlenkamp, the insult could destroy the man's career ...
"No, but ..."
"But nothing!" Kathleen waved the papers at him again. "Check now, and stop wasting my time, so I can proceed to meet my charges. Now!"
The leader stepped backwards, hastily. "You may proceed," he said. "Heil Hitler!"
"Heil Hitler," Kathleen echoed.
She clambered back into the car and slammed the door closed, then snapped an order loud enough to be heard outside. The SS troops hastily jumped out the way as Von Braun gunned the engine, driving forward with remarkable speed. Kathleen wanted to tell him to be more careful – the last thing they needed was to lose another wheel – but held her tongue as they drove down the near-empty autobahn. It looked as if there were fewer people heading east than normal too.
Von Braun snickered. "I can't believe we got away with it."
Kathleen reminded herself, again, that he'd led a very sheltered existence. "The poor bastard knew what would happen, if he got in the way of a well-connected woman," she said. "His career would go up in smoke."
She felt a twinge of sympathy, more for Gudrun than for the black-clad man they'd fooled. German women had very little legal authority, certainly over men, but that didn't stop them using their husbands to wield authority or even to extract revenge. Some of the nastier little disputes within the upper levels of the regime, she'd heard, had been fought out by men serving as proxies for their wives, women who would remain relatively safe no matter what they did. They didn't feel the risk as strongly as the men, which allowed them to demand harsh action and ...
"Keep driving," she said. How long did they have, before the bodies were discovered? There was no way to know. The SS had cordoned off a vast area, and searching it was going to be a nightmare, but they'd do it ... if they thought they had no choice. How long would it take for them to realise their quarry had escaped the cordon? "We can't afford to be late for our date."
She paused, mischievously. "How good are you at pretending to be an SS officer?"
"I am an SS officer," Von Braun said. His voice softened a moment later. "Or at least I was."
"That's not what I meant," Kathleen said. The SS had a cadre of officers whose talents made up for the fact they were shoved to the rear, when the propaganda specialists were taking photographs for the recruitment posters. Von Braun had joined the SS, and he was a legal officer, but he'd never been through the training program. "Can you act like a bodyguard as well as a driver and escort?"
"I can act like Hans," Von Braun said. There was a hint of dark amusement in his tone. "I wonder what happened to him."
"Your minder?" Kathleen knew what she'd do if someone screwed up so badly, and Himmler would likely do something worse. Von Braun's minder could have done a great deal to make life harder for him, when he decided to defect, and there was no excuse he could give that would make up for such a failure. "I imagine he's in the camps by now."
She put the thought aside as she read through the rest of the papers. Gudrun clearly believed in being prepared – it was about the one thing they had in common – and she'd obtained files belonging to all of the girls, and their chaperones. The latter were new to the role ... in hindsight, she suspected that had been a mistake. Kathleen had been a little hellraiser at times, when she'd been a teenager, and the BDM girls wouldn't be any different. Worse, perhaps. Britain could be restrictive for young women, but Nazi Germany was far worse. It was a surprise they allowed the girls to go on tour at all. But then, they did want the women to flock to the farms.
She put the thought aside as they drove into the town. Two small coaches were parked near the town hall, both clearly marked with BDM colours. Several girls sat near them, their uniforms decidedly tight in all the wrong places. They'd been taking advantage of the lack of supervision. They were lucky the real Gudrun hadn't turned up. And yet ... Kathleen was briefly tempted to change her mind, to find another way to head west, but she couldn't think of anything else. It was just a matter of time before the SS realised they'd escaped the cordon and widened the search.
"Park over there," she ordered, pointing to a space behind the coaches. "And wait for me here. Do not engage with anyone."
She hesitated, then passed him the driver's pistol. "Don't use this unless there is no other choice," she added. Leaving him alone was dangerous, but she couldn't bring him into the building. "And don't try to flirt with the girls."
Von Braun nodded. "Understood."
They ditched the car late in the evening, then stole another car from a village and headed further east, after swapping a handful of licence plates to confuse the police. Kathleen was careful not to tell Von Braun that she'd cut the original driver's throat, after doing everything in her power to make it look like a robbery, but she suspected he knew the truth. He'd been very quiet on the trip, saying nothing even after they'd found a place to rest for the night, something that would have worried her if there hadn't been so many other problems. The noose was steadily closing. She'd seen a handful of checkpoints blocking the roads and she had a nasty feeling, this time, that the SS had blocked every road.
"They're looking for the car," Von Braun said. "Can we not dump it?"
Kathleen suspected it was pointless. The car was common, a simple design drawn up before the war and then mass-produced in vast numbers, before the demands of wartime had forced the factory to start churning out armoured vehicles instead. There were hundreds just like it on the roads, and unless the SS had figured out what they'd done with the licence plates they shouldn't be looking for their car in particular, but they appeared to be checking every car. It was morbidly amusing how many vehicles were turning around to evade the checkpoint ... she wondered, suddenly, if they weren't the only ones who had reason to fear a search. The SS didn't need a reason to arrest someone. It was perfectly capable of snatching a target off the streets and coming up with an excuse later, if they even thought they needed one. Hell, there were so many laws in Nazi Germany that it was easy to break one without even noticing. The SS was very good at spotting broken laws ...
"We might have to," she said. She'd seen hints the SS were searching the countryside too ... nothing too definite, but her instincts were sounding the alarm. "But if they catch us in an open field, we're sunk."
She was still trying to decide what to do when she rounded the corner and spotted an official-looking car parked by the side of the road, a young man in a fancy uniform working on the wheel. He was being berated by an older woman in a BDM uniform, her face purple with rage as she shouted at him. Kathleen silently admired his self-control as the woman looked up, saw their car, and waved them to park beside the car. If someone had been yelling at her like that, the urge to slap her would have been irresistible. Her instructors had been harsh and even they hadn't been so unpleasant.
The woman snapped a salute. "Heil Hitler!"
Kathleen felt dirty as she returned the salute. It was supposed to be used on all formal occasions, but a surprisingly large number of Germans tried to avoid using the Nazi salute if possible. She'd never been sure why. The Nazis didn't ban non-members from using their salute, they actually encouraged it. The woman held up a card, identifying her as a BDM matron. Kathleen looked her up and down, wondering just what sort of maiden the older woman was intended to be. She was heavyset, her girlish pigtails a sick joke, and she carried a switch on her belt. Somehow, Kathleen had no doubt that any girl who misbehaved would have trouble sitting comfortably for the next few days. And asking questions would definitely count as misbehaviour.
"We need a replacement wheel for the car," the woman snarled, in a tone that suggested the idea of anyone saying no to her had never crossed her mind. Kathleen had met a handful of upper class women, including some who were strikingly loyal to Hitler, and none had been quite so entitled. "Your husband will help us repair the car ..."
Kathleen studied her for a long moment. The woman was loud and obnoxious, which almost certainly meant she was very well connected. BDM matrons were supposed to be pure, politically speaking, and while they didn't always have personal authority outside the BDM their male relatives almost certainly did. Kathleen knew the type – the officer's wife who thought she shared her husband's rank – and they tended to be feared all the Reich. They could cause real trouble for someone who got in their way, and they often did. Their lives were so difficult – they had to turn a blind eye to their husband's infidelities – that they had to take it out on someone beneath them.
"We don't have a spare wheel," she said, slowly. She had no doubt she could fix the wheel – there was a repair kit in the car boot, she'd checked – but she wasn't sure she wanted to help. "Where are you going ...?"
She had to jump back to avoid the slap. "I was supposed to be on holiday," the woman snapped. "My husband was back from Berlin and I was supposed to be with him. But Ida is ill and I have to go take her place, to chaperone the girls as they go to do their work on the farm and keep them away from boys ..."
Kathleen hesitated. Did she dare ...?"
"A bunch of Untermenschen are on the loose, and we are stuck out here, and this useless waste of space can't even fix a wheel," the woman snapped. She stamped back to her driver, drawing back her arm for a slap. "I think I ..."
Kathleen moved up behind her, scooped up a rock and smacked it over the woman's head. She staggered ... Kathleen blinked and hit her again, harder this time. The woman crumpled to the ground and lay still. The driver gaped, then reached for his pistol. Kathleen had hers covering him before he could his weapon out of the holster. The man clearly wasn't a combat soldier, or a bodyguard. A smart man would have had his holster unbuttoned if he'd thought he might be going into danger. Kathleen motioned for him to turn around, then smacked him over the head. He went down quicker than his mistress.
"You get them both into our car," Kathleen ordered. An idea was taking shape and form in her mind. "Let me check out their vehicle ..."
She stuck her head inside and found a surprisingly masculine folder. The documents inside confirmed the woman's story. She'd been summoned at short notice to cover for an ill comrade ... summoned from quite some distance. It was common for the BDM supervisors to be from a different town or city to their charges, but this was odd ... was it a trap? Or was something else going on? Her lips quirked. The women – her name was Gudrun, apparently; Gudrun Mühlenkamp – was clearly an unpleasant person, given that she'd tried to strike a complete stranger. She'd said she'd been with her husband ... had her husband pulled strings to get rid of her? It would be hard to blame him ...
"Mühlenkamp," she mused. She vaguely recalled hearing of an SS officer with that name ... not one of the really notorious ones, thankfully, but anyone who joined the SS had to be a monster or well on the way to becoming one. The SS didn't take conscripts. "I wonder ..."
She glanced through the rest of the papers, including a copy of Der Stürmer. It was surprisingly informative, for once; there had been a rail accident, caused by sabotage, and a number of Untermenschen had escaped into the wilderness. Kathleen's eyes narrowed as she studied the newspaper, wondering if the story had anything to do with them. She was fairly sure the train they'd escaped had crashed at some point, and ... she cursed under her breath as she read the rest of the story. It was almost hysterical in its description of just what fate the flower of German womanhood could expect, at the hands of runaway Untermenschen ... she had to admit the story made a good excuse for setting up roadblocks and checking passing cars. It was certainly less likely to cause political trouble than admitting the truth.
Kathleen searched the rest of the car, then opened a suitcase to reveal a pair of BDM outfits and a driver's uniform. "Get into this," she ordered, holding out the uniform. "You're my elderly driver now."
Von Braun balked. "Are you mad?"
"Perhaps," Kathleen said. "But I do have a plan."
She stripped Gudrun and her driver quickly, taking everything she had, and drove the original car deeper into the woods. It would be found eventually, she was sure, but ... she rigged the evidence as much as possible, to suggest a joint suicide, before turning and changing into Gudrun's outfit. The jacket was ill-fitting – Gudrun hadn't been fat, but she'd been strikingly blocky – and she had to adjust it carefully, then fiddle with the paperwork. Thankfully, the photograph was no improvement over the others she'd seen over the last few years. Gudrun's photograph made her look years younger, and even pretty in a way.
"You're my elderly driver," she repeated, as she checked Von Braun's appearance. She would have preferred to put him in a dress, but it would be difficult to make it look convincing. The SS might be reluctant to strip search a pair of women, if one had a high-ranking husband, but if they were suspicious they might take the risk. "You do know how to drive, don't you?"
Von Braun gave her a nasty look. "Of course."
"Then drive," Kathleen said. "Take us straight to the nearest roadblock."
She allowed herself a tight smile. "We don't have anything to hide, remember?"
The car lurched into motion. It had clearly been a while since Von Braun had driven himself anywhere. Kathleen kept an eye on him, between reading the rest of the paperwork and memorising details as quickly as possible. It was hard to be sure none of the troop had met the real Gudrun, but reading between the lines it seemed plausible. Gudrun was a last-minute replacement, not someone who'd been with the troop from the beginning. She'd have to be take care to deal with anyone who spotted the impersonation, before it was too late.
And be as nasty and disagreeable as possible, so they don't try to seek out my company, she added, mentally. Let them be glad when I'm gone.
A long line of vehicles greeted them as they reached the autobahn, waiting to go through the checkpoint. "Drive us right up to them," Kathleen said. "We don't have anything to hide, remember?"
She composed herself as Von Braun took them right up to the checkpoint. The SS guards looked slightly bemused, and fearful. They probably hadn't been surprised to see people noticing them and then turning around, heading the other way as fast as possible. She kept her eyes open as a young man held up his hand to order them to stop, allowing herself a moment of relief as she noted they didn't have any armoured vehicles backing them up. They could gun the engine and run ... no, not quite.
Kathleen opened the door and stepped outside, holding up her portfolio. "And what is the meaning of this?"
She went on, channelling all the entitlement of the real Gudrun into her voice. "I have been torn from my husband's arms, on his return from the front, to escort the young ladies as they make their way around the Reich And what do I, Gudrun Mühlenkamp, see when I leave my home and come here? Men, blocking my way! When I am already running late! Do you have any sort of explanation, any at all?"
The leader saw the photograph and winced. Kathleen had no idea if Gudrun was married to the Mühlenkamp, or if the name was just a happy coincidence, but the young man had to know she would be connected. Very well connected. A word from her could get him sent to the front, or the camps, or ... it hardly mattered, as long as he was sent so far from the Reich that the odds of coming back in a coffin were far higher than being promoted.
"I have had to leave my husband to attend to this matter," she thundered. "Why are you slowing me down?"
"We're searching for Untermenschen," the leader managed. His face was pale. "I have orders to check ..."
Kathleen waved the portfolio under his nose. "And are you daring to suggest that I am Untermensch? Give me your name, and your number ..."
The leader blanched. His subordinates started backing away. The merest suggestion of having an Untermensch somewhere in your family tree was a deadly insult in the Reich, where having a Jewish grandparent could cost you everything. If she happened to be related to the Mühlenkamp, the insult could destroy the man's career ...
"No, but ..."
"But nothing!" Kathleen waved the papers at him again. "Check now, and stop wasting my time, so I can proceed to meet my charges. Now!"
The leader stepped backwards, hastily. "You may proceed," he said. "Heil Hitler!"
"Heil Hitler," Kathleen echoed.
She clambered back into the car and slammed the door closed, then snapped an order loud enough to be heard outside. The SS troops hastily jumped out the way as Von Braun gunned the engine, driving forward with remarkable speed. Kathleen wanted to tell him to be more careful – the last thing they needed was to lose another wheel – but held her tongue as they drove down the near-empty autobahn. It looked as if there were fewer people heading east than normal too.
Von Braun snickered. "I can't believe we got away with it."
Kathleen reminded herself, again, that he'd led a very sheltered existence. "The poor bastard knew what would happen, if he got in the way of a well-connected woman," she said. "His career would go up in smoke."
She felt a twinge of sympathy, more for Gudrun than for the black-clad man they'd fooled. German women had very little legal authority, certainly over men, but that didn't stop them using their husbands to wield authority or even to extract revenge. Some of the nastier little disputes within the upper levels of the regime, she'd heard, had been fought out by men serving as proxies for their wives, women who would remain relatively safe no matter what they did. They didn't feel the risk as strongly as the men, which allowed them to demand harsh action and ...
"Keep driving," she said. How long did they have, before the bodies were discovered? There was no way to know. The SS had cordoned off a vast area, and searching it was going to be a nightmare, but they'd do it ... if they thought they had no choice. How long would it take for them to realise their quarry had escaped the cordon? "We can't afford to be late for our date."
She paused, mischievously. "How good are you at pretending to be an SS officer?"
"I am an SS officer," Von Braun said. His voice softened a moment later. "Or at least I was."
"That's not what I meant," Kathleen said. The SS had a cadre of officers whose talents made up for the fact they were shoved to the rear, when the propaganda specialists were taking photographs for the recruitment posters. Von Braun had joined the SS, and he was a legal officer, but he'd never been through the training program. "Can you act like a bodyguard as well as a driver and escort?"
"I can act like Hans," Von Braun said. There was a hint of dark amusement in his tone. "I wonder what happened to him."
"Your minder?" Kathleen knew what she'd do if someone screwed up so badly, and Himmler would likely do something worse. Von Braun's minder could have done a great deal to make life harder for him, when he decided to defect, and there was no excuse he could give that would make up for such a failure. "I imagine he's in the camps by now."
She put the thought aside as she read through the rest of the papers. Gudrun clearly believed in being prepared – it was about the one thing they had in common – and she'd obtained files belonging to all of the girls, and their chaperones. The latter were new to the role ... in hindsight, she suspected that had been a mistake. Kathleen had been a little hellraiser at times, when she'd been a teenager, and the BDM girls wouldn't be any different. Worse, perhaps. Britain could be restrictive for young women, but Nazi Germany was far worse. It was a surprise they allowed the girls to go on tour at all. But then, they did want the women to flock to the farms.
She put the thought aside as they drove into the town. Two small coaches were parked near the town hall, both clearly marked with BDM colours. Several girls sat near them, their uniforms decidedly tight in all the wrong places. They'd been taking advantage of the lack of supervision. They were lucky the real Gudrun hadn't turned up. And yet ... Kathleen was briefly tempted to change her mind, to find another way to head west, but she couldn't think of anything else. It was just a matter of time before the SS realised they'd escaped the cordon and widened the search.
"Park over there," she ordered, pointing to a space behind the coaches. "And wait for me here. Do not engage with anyone."
She hesitated, then passed him the driver's pistol. "Don't use this unless there is no other choice," she added. Leaving him alone was dangerous, but she couldn't bring him into the building. "And don't try to flirt with the girls."
Von Braun nodded. "Understood."
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Depends who you ask. There was a lot of reisionism after the war was clearly lost.
Chris
Almost everybody supported it.Von Schaufenberg even made photos of destroyed polish town/where was no army or military targets/ and have no problems with it.
Till he get injured,and germans start loosing war.
Even then many supported it.My grandma was send to german work camp in Bavaria in 1944 after germans destroyed Warsaw.
According to her german catholics treated them/poles/ as human,protestants as lesser humans,and prussians as talking animals.
According to what i read,Berlin civilians belived that Hitler made miracle and win on his birthday in 1945....
Chapter Twenty
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Twenty: Near Bingen, 1949
Kathleen would have liked the woman who ran to greet her, the moment she stepped into the office, if they'd met under other circumstances. She was young and pretty and really too good-natured to be a BDM matron; indeed, her pigtails looked strikingly reasonable rather than a walking joke. It was clear the girls had been running rings around her, though, and Kathleen was sure Gudrun would never have stood for it. And that meant she couldn't stand for it too.
"And just why are the girls lounging around outside," she demanded, "in full view of the young men?"
The woman flushed. "I ... we've ...been having problems keeping them on task ..."
Kathleen gave her a disdainful look. "And it never occurred to you to keep them in the barracks? Or the town hall? Or even their coaches?"
"I ..."
"We will have to deal with this," Kathleen said, with an unmistakable tone of I'll deal with you later. "Did you think to organise a replacement driver for the coaches?"
The woman's flush deepened. "I was told ..."
"Were you?" Kathleen made a show of looking around the office. "And what is your name?"
"Heidi," the woman said. "I'm from Danzig ..."
"I didn't ask for your life story," Kathleen said. The file had been surprisingly thin, for a BDM dossier. Heidi was relatively new to the BDM, with only a couple of years in the ranks. Reading between the lines, Kathleen guessed she'd joined the adult side of the organisation in hopes of escaping an unwanted marriage. East Germany had always been more traditional than the west and there were few opportunities for young women. "Do you have anyone here who actually knows the town?"
"Yes," Heidi said. "Young Greta ... ah, Ida had to swat her for visiting her family when we arrived, before she was taken ill."
"I see," Kathleen said. "Go assemble the girls in front of the hall. Now."
Heidi bowed her head, then hurried out the door. Kathleen allowed herself a sigh of relief. The BDM trained its younger chaperones to accept orders from their elders and betters without question – the real Gudrun would probably have been a great deal worse – but Kathleen had never been a BDM girl, let alone a matron. There were a great many things she didn't know, things that could easily trip her up if Heidi and her peers thought to question them. She was damn lucky the BDM worked hard to break any former connection between the girls and their supervisors. None could be expected to know the real Gudrun, at least by sight. If there were any who did ...
They'd have gone to the Berlin BDM, Kathleen told herself. The Berliner girls tended to be the best-connected, with the greatest chance of finding husbands who were well-connected themselves. The girls from smaller towns would be lucky if they married soldiers. The farm girls would stay on the farms. There's no one here who should know her.
Heidi returned, looking pale. "The girls are assembled ..."
Kathleen strode past her, pulling her mask firmly into place. The girls outside looked hale and hearty, little different from the girls she'd known at school, but by BDM standards they were a disgrace. Some wore their shirts a little too tightly, some had their skirts hiked up to their knees – impressive, given that the cloth was cut to make raising it difficult – and none wore their hats properly. Kathleen would have been impressed, if she hadn't had to pretend to be Gudrun. It was nice to see some evidence of defiance, even though it was probably pointless. The teenage girls – the oldest would be barely eighteen – wouldn't be allowed to act up any longer. They'd be married shortly, their husbands charged with ruling every aspect of their lives ...
The thought made her angry. She channelled it to play Gudrun. "You girls are a disgrace," she said. Her old tutor had said the same, but she hadn't had anything like as much power and authority as the BDM matrons enjoyed. "One pause, long enough for me to be summoned, and you look and act like French whores! What were you thinking?"
She refused to allow herself to smile as her eyes walked along the line of girls. "Put your hat where it belongs. Wipe that powder off your face. Drop your skirt, now, before the boys peek up it. Loosen your shirt. Where is your bra?"
The girl in front of her winced, despite her best attempt to hide it. Her shirt was too tight and her nipples were clearly visible ... Kathleen knew precisely what Gudrun would do, with the switch at her belt. Switching the silly girl in front of the rest would not only teach her a lesson, but also make the rest understand what would happen if they defied their new mistress again. She held the girl's eyes for a long moment instead, until the girl looked down, and then allowed her eyes to keep heading down the line, snapping out sharp remarks and orders until she reached the last girl. She didn't look too bad, compared to the others, but there was a hint of mischief in her eyes.
Kathleen raised her voice. "Greta, step forward!"
A young girl, one of the handful with no uniform problems, took a step out of the line. She was pretty enough, Kathleen thought, but there was a rebellious glint in her eye that promised trouble. Her face twitched, slightly, as she moved. Kathleen winced, inwardly. The BDM normally tried to make sure the girls, when they went on tour, never went anywhere near their hometowns. Greta should have known better than to risk visiting her family, when she'd realised where they were going. It had landed her in hot water, and now she had to be wondering if she was going to be switched again ...
Kathleen scowled at the younger girl. "You know this town, do you not?"
"Yes, Matron," Greta said.
"You will assist my driver in finding a place to store our car," Kathleen said. "It needs to remain here until we return, to collect it. Can you do it?"
"Yes, Matron," Greta said.
"Go now." Kathleen raised her voice as she turned to the rest of the girls. "You have ten minutes to fix your uniforms, then collect anything you may have left in the barracks before we depart. We will not be coming back here, so anything you leave will not be recovered and returned to you. Stow your bags in the coaches, then line up here. I don't want to see a single hair out of place. Dismissed!"
The girls hurried off. "Get us some food and water, for the trip, and anything else you think we might need," Kathleen added, to Heidi. She had to keep the younger woman busy or she might start thinking, and that would end badly. "And make sure the coaches have enough petrol. We don't want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere."
Heidi looked oddly relieved as she nodded, then hastened away. The food wouldn't be great, Kathleen was sure, but she could tolerate corned beef or cheese sandwiches and water. She suspected Heidi hadn't thought to do anything on her own, even something as simple as ordering food. But then, she'd never been taught to do anything without orders from her superior.
Kathleen shrugged as she led Greta to the car, explained who she was to Von Braun, and gave a handful of very specific instructions. The car needed to be parked in a garage and locked away, officially for protection from the elements. Unofficially, no one would bother to check the car as long as the bill was paid. Greta suggested a garage not too far away and seemed a little surprised when Kathleen hopped into the car too, just in case. There was no way she could leave Greta and Von Braun alone. Quite apart from his womanising reputation, it would be incredibly out of character. Greta would be even worse trouble if she were left alone with a man.
They reached the garage and clambered out, Von Braun waiting patiently as Kathleen repeated her instructions to the staff and then let them drive the car into a shed. She paid for two week's storage, billed to the BDM, and then left the car behind. The SS would sweep through the town sooner or later, she was sure, once they realised their quarry had escaped the net, but it was unlikely they'd find the car. Even if they did, would they know what it meant? She led the way back to the town hall, telling herself the deception didn't have to last for very long. They just needed to head west and then ditch the girls. By the time Heidi realised Gudrun had vanished, it would be far too late.
The girls were lined up already when she returned, looking much neater. Greta ran to join them as Kathleen looked up and down the line, nodding to herself. They looked ... bland and boring, in their surprisingly ugly uniforms, somehow looking remarkably identical despite their different heights, faces and hair colours. The uniform seemed designed to strip them of all individuality, even making it harder to remember their faces. It was difficult to believe the evidence of her own eyes, when she looked at Greta and the girl beside her, and think one was taller than the other. She had to admit it was a neat little trick.
Kathleen looked at Heidi. "I trust the bags are loaded, and we are ready to depart?"
Heidi flushed, again. "Yes," she managed. "They're in the coaches."
"Good," Kathleen said. It was odd, in her view, that that only had two qualified drivers – and one was now ill – but it worked in her favour. "My driver will take the lead coach. You will drive the other."
"Understood." Heidi looked relieved. Kathleen hid her amusement. Heidi probably wanted to hide from her. "We can leave when ready."
Kathleen raised her voice. "You may board the buses," she ordered, "and take your seats."
She watched the girls go, then followed them into the lead coach. Von Braun sat in the driver's seat, his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead of him. Kathleen had to admit he looked quite handsome in the driver's uniform, and made a mental note to ensure none of the girls was ever alone with him. They were clearly a rebellious lot, and that was likely to lead to trouble. She just needed to keep order until they reached a suitable ditching point.
The lead girl checked the coach, then nodded to her. "We're all aboard, Matron."
Kathleen checked herself, just to be sure. Leaving a girl behind would be disastrous. It was bad enough they were leaving without the proper farewell ceremonies, although that – she hoped – was understandable. The BDM girls were already behind schedule, meaning they'd have to drive fast to catch up before it was too late. Heidi had shown one glimmer of intelligence, according to the papers, by arranging for the convoy to head directly to the Rhineland, near the old French border. Alsace–Lorraine were purely German now – the old border no longer existed - and would remain that way, thanks to mass population transfers, even if the regime lost the next war. There were hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who'd lost everything, when they'd been ordered to leave. They'd become the core of the new French Resistance.
And yet, the odds of them doing more than harassing the Germans are very low, she thought, as the coach shuddered into motion. They're not going to be able to drive the invaders out of their country.
She put the thought aside as they drove onto the autobahn and headed west. There were fewer cars on the road than she'd expected, suggesting the SS was still stopping all traffic to the east. Word would have got around by now, she was sure, and anyone with something to hide would be making sure to avoid the security zone. She kicked herself, mentally, for not having thought to pick up a few newspapers, before leaving the town. The Nazi broadsheets were largely useless – they didn't have the courtesy to use soft paper, making it hard to wipe her rear with them – but she did need to know the official line. They had to be telling their people something, even if it was a tissue of lies. The story about escaped Untermenschen wasn't going to last forever.
The coach slowed as they neared the first roadblock. Kathleen kept her sudden fear off her face as she ordered Von Braun to drive right up to the checkpoint, skipping the line and parking beside the SS guards. They stared at her, then ogled the girls. Kathleen waved her folder under their eyes, then thundered abuse at them for daring to stare at the flower of German womanhood. Their commander took the papers, checked them briefly, and then waved the two coaches on. Kathleen allowed herself a moment of relief, as Von Braun took them further down the road. If they'd insisted on searching the coaches, it would have made life very difficult indeed.
Although they'd find little unless they searched everything, and checked fingerprints, she told herself. And that would cause all sorts of problems if they missed anything.
The girls eyed her with more respect, as the coaches kept going. Kathleen couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor girls, children in all but name. They'd been indoctrinated to believe in the Reich, and Adolf Hitler, and they had never been taught to think about what they were being told. She'd seen the BDM syllabus, back during her first month in Berlin, and it was nightmarish. The girls were raised to believe that Hitler knew everything, that Jews were subhuman monsters, and that the SS were the black-clad knights of the New Order. She could guess how many of the girls behind her adored the SS, and dreamt of a handsome SS officer who would sweep them off their feet and carry them into a life beyond their wildest dreams; she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the dream would turn into a nightmare. She'd seen the reports, heard the whispers ... it wouldn't end well. There was no such thing as a good SS man.
The chatter behind her got louder. Kathleen pretended not to hear, until an argument turned into a fight. She strode to the rear, separated the two fighters, and glared at everyone else until they settled down. They'd need to take a break, sooner or later, she knew; the girls would need to go to the toilet, as well as run around a bit to burn off their energy. She told Von Braun to pull off at the next lay-by, just past the farm. The girls didn't seem concerned about pissing in the field. They'd probably spent some time on the farms in their earlier years.
Heidi looked exhausted, as she stumbled out of her coach. "They were loud ..."
"You have to keep them under control," Kathleen said, tapping the switch meaningfully. Heidi was too young to be a supervisor, too close to her charges in age to be a proper figure of authority. Gudrun and Ida were supposed to be in their thirties. "Don't let them run rings around you, or you'll never have any peace."
The picnic reminded her, all too much, of her own schooldays. She had to bite her lip to remind herself she couldn't relax, not here. The girls were ignorant of a great many things – at least on paper – but youngsters tended to be more willing to think outside the box than their elders and they might notice something wrong with her. Kathleen had interviewed Germans who'd fled the Reich after the truce and they'd talked about their schooling, how the regime enabled the worst sorts of abuse and how the children responded by trying to work together to make sure no one was ever alone. They could spot a monster a mile off, she'd been told, and while she wasn't a monster ...
Her heart sank as she spotted a pair of seventeen year old girls, chasing each other around as if they were seven. They were sweet and innocent, perfectly balanced between girlhood and womanhood, and yet they'd betray her in a heartbeat if they knew who or what she was. The mere idea she might have Jewish blood would turn them against her, sending them running screaming to the SS. She'd heard the stories of what had happened to students who had discovered, often to their own surprise, that they had something undesirable lurking in their family tree. Their friends turned on them so quickly ... they'd had no choice – the regime insisted that anyone who showed sympathy to an undesirable was an undesirable themselves – but it was still nightmarish. Britain wasn't perfect, yet compared to Nazi Germany Britain was paradise. A Jew could breathe free ...
But not if the Nazis ever cross the channel and invade, she thought, grimly. She knew, all too well, that the Germans didn't consider the truce permanent. How could they? If they bring this nightmare to Britain, it will be the end.
She shuddered, inwardly. That was the true horror of the Nazi regime. It looked civilised, from a distance, but up close it was a nightmare beyond human imagination, a long darkness that reached deep into souls and turned them into collaborators, or frightened shadows of themselves, too scared to stand up for what was right. How long would it be, she asked herself, before the Reich collapsed? Would it really last a thousand years?
No, she told herself, as she ordered the girls back onto the bus. They won't last a hundred years.
But she knew, all too well, that it was already too late for the world.
Kathleen would have liked the woman who ran to greet her, the moment she stepped into the office, if they'd met under other circumstances. She was young and pretty and really too good-natured to be a BDM matron; indeed, her pigtails looked strikingly reasonable rather than a walking joke. It was clear the girls had been running rings around her, though, and Kathleen was sure Gudrun would never have stood for it. And that meant she couldn't stand for it too.
"And just why are the girls lounging around outside," she demanded, "in full view of the young men?"
The woman flushed. "I ... we've ...been having problems keeping them on task ..."
Kathleen gave her a disdainful look. "And it never occurred to you to keep them in the barracks? Or the town hall? Or even their coaches?"
"I ..."
"We will have to deal with this," Kathleen said, with an unmistakable tone of I'll deal with you later. "Did you think to organise a replacement driver for the coaches?"
The woman's flush deepened. "I was told ..."
"Were you?" Kathleen made a show of looking around the office. "And what is your name?"
"Heidi," the woman said. "I'm from Danzig ..."
"I didn't ask for your life story," Kathleen said. The file had been surprisingly thin, for a BDM dossier. Heidi was relatively new to the BDM, with only a couple of years in the ranks. Reading between the lines, Kathleen guessed she'd joined the adult side of the organisation in hopes of escaping an unwanted marriage. East Germany had always been more traditional than the west and there were few opportunities for young women. "Do you have anyone here who actually knows the town?"
"Yes," Heidi said. "Young Greta ... ah, Ida had to swat her for visiting her family when we arrived, before she was taken ill."
"I see," Kathleen said. "Go assemble the girls in front of the hall. Now."
Heidi bowed her head, then hurried out the door. Kathleen allowed herself a sigh of relief. The BDM trained its younger chaperones to accept orders from their elders and betters without question – the real Gudrun would probably have been a great deal worse – but Kathleen had never been a BDM girl, let alone a matron. There were a great many things she didn't know, things that could easily trip her up if Heidi and her peers thought to question them. She was damn lucky the BDM worked hard to break any former connection between the girls and their supervisors. None could be expected to know the real Gudrun, at least by sight. If there were any who did ...
They'd have gone to the Berlin BDM, Kathleen told herself. The Berliner girls tended to be the best-connected, with the greatest chance of finding husbands who were well-connected themselves. The girls from smaller towns would be lucky if they married soldiers. The farm girls would stay on the farms. There's no one here who should know her.
Heidi returned, looking pale. "The girls are assembled ..."
Kathleen strode past her, pulling her mask firmly into place. The girls outside looked hale and hearty, little different from the girls she'd known at school, but by BDM standards they were a disgrace. Some wore their shirts a little too tightly, some had their skirts hiked up to their knees – impressive, given that the cloth was cut to make raising it difficult – and none wore their hats properly. Kathleen would have been impressed, if she hadn't had to pretend to be Gudrun. It was nice to see some evidence of defiance, even though it was probably pointless. The teenage girls – the oldest would be barely eighteen – wouldn't be allowed to act up any longer. They'd be married shortly, their husbands charged with ruling every aspect of their lives ...
The thought made her angry. She channelled it to play Gudrun. "You girls are a disgrace," she said. Her old tutor had said the same, but she hadn't had anything like as much power and authority as the BDM matrons enjoyed. "One pause, long enough for me to be summoned, and you look and act like French whores! What were you thinking?"
She refused to allow herself to smile as her eyes walked along the line of girls. "Put your hat where it belongs. Wipe that powder off your face. Drop your skirt, now, before the boys peek up it. Loosen your shirt. Where is your bra?"
The girl in front of her winced, despite her best attempt to hide it. Her shirt was too tight and her nipples were clearly visible ... Kathleen knew precisely what Gudrun would do, with the switch at her belt. Switching the silly girl in front of the rest would not only teach her a lesson, but also make the rest understand what would happen if they defied their new mistress again. She held the girl's eyes for a long moment instead, until the girl looked down, and then allowed her eyes to keep heading down the line, snapping out sharp remarks and orders until she reached the last girl. She didn't look too bad, compared to the others, but there was a hint of mischief in her eyes.
Kathleen raised her voice. "Greta, step forward!"
A young girl, one of the handful with no uniform problems, took a step out of the line. She was pretty enough, Kathleen thought, but there was a rebellious glint in her eye that promised trouble. Her face twitched, slightly, as she moved. Kathleen winced, inwardly. The BDM normally tried to make sure the girls, when they went on tour, never went anywhere near their hometowns. Greta should have known better than to risk visiting her family, when she'd realised where they were going. It had landed her in hot water, and now she had to be wondering if she was going to be switched again ...
Kathleen scowled at the younger girl. "You know this town, do you not?"
"Yes, Matron," Greta said.
"You will assist my driver in finding a place to store our car," Kathleen said. "It needs to remain here until we return, to collect it. Can you do it?"
"Yes, Matron," Greta said.
"Go now." Kathleen raised her voice as she turned to the rest of the girls. "You have ten minutes to fix your uniforms, then collect anything you may have left in the barracks before we depart. We will not be coming back here, so anything you leave will not be recovered and returned to you. Stow your bags in the coaches, then line up here. I don't want to see a single hair out of place. Dismissed!"
The girls hurried off. "Get us some food and water, for the trip, and anything else you think we might need," Kathleen added, to Heidi. She had to keep the younger woman busy or she might start thinking, and that would end badly. "And make sure the coaches have enough petrol. We don't want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere."
Heidi looked oddly relieved as she nodded, then hastened away. The food wouldn't be great, Kathleen was sure, but she could tolerate corned beef or cheese sandwiches and water. She suspected Heidi hadn't thought to do anything on her own, even something as simple as ordering food. But then, she'd never been taught to do anything without orders from her superior.
Kathleen shrugged as she led Greta to the car, explained who she was to Von Braun, and gave a handful of very specific instructions. The car needed to be parked in a garage and locked away, officially for protection from the elements. Unofficially, no one would bother to check the car as long as the bill was paid. Greta suggested a garage not too far away and seemed a little surprised when Kathleen hopped into the car too, just in case. There was no way she could leave Greta and Von Braun alone. Quite apart from his womanising reputation, it would be incredibly out of character. Greta would be even worse trouble if she were left alone with a man.
They reached the garage and clambered out, Von Braun waiting patiently as Kathleen repeated her instructions to the staff and then let them drive the car into a shed. She paid for two week's storage, billed to the BDM, and then left the car behind. The SS would sweep through the town sooner or later, she was sure, once they realised their quarry had escaped the net, but it was unlikely they'd find the car. Even if they did, would they know what it meant? She led the way back to the town hall, telling herself the deception didn't have to last for very long. They just needed to head west and then ditch the girls. By the time Heidi realised Gudrun had vanished, it would be far too late.
The girls were lined up already when she returned, looking much neater. Greta ran to join them as Kathleen looked up and down the line, nodding to herself. They looked ... bland and boring, in their surprisingly ugly uniforms, somehow looking remarkably identical despite their different heights, faces and hair colours. The uniform seemed designed to strip them of all individuality, even making it harder to remember their faces. It was difficult to believe the evidence of her own eyes, when she looked at Greta and the girl beside her, and think one was taller than the other. She had to admit it was a neat little trick.
Kathleen looked at Heidi. "I trust the bags are loaded, and we are ready to depart?"
Heidi flushed, again. "Yes," she managed. "They're in the coaches."
"Good," Kathleen said. It was odd, in her view, that that only had two qualified drivers – and one was now ill – but it worked in her favour. "My driver will take the lead coach. You will drive the other."
"Understood." Heidi looked relieved. Kathleen hid her amusement. Heidi probably wanted to hide from her. "We can leave when ready."
Kathleen raised her voice. "You may board the buses," she ordered, "and take your seats."
She watched the girls go, then followed them into the lead coach. Von Braun sat in the driver's seat, his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead of him. Kathleen had to admit he looked quite handsome in the driver's uniform, and made a mental note to ensure none of the girls was ever alone with him. They were clearly a rebellious lot, and that was likely to lead to trouble. She just needed to keep order until they reached a suitable ditching point.
The lead girl checked the coach, then nodded to her. "We're all aboard, Matron."
Kathleen checked herself, just to be sure. Leaving a girl behind would be disastrous. It was bad enough they were leaving without the proper farewell ceremonies, although that – she hoped – was understandable. The BDM girls were already behind schedule, meaning they'd have to drive fast to catch up before it was too late. Heidi had shown one glimmer of intelligence, according to the papers, by arranging for the convoy to head directly to the Rhineland, near the old French border. Alsace–Lorraine were purely German now – the old border no longer existed - and would remain that way, thanks to mass population transfers, even if the regime lost the next war. There were hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who'd lost everything, when they'd been ordered to leave. They'd become the core of the new French Resistance.
And yet, the odds of them doing more than harassing the Germans are very low, she thought, as the coach shuddered into motion. They're not going to be able to drive the invaders out of their country.
She put the thought aside as they drove onto the autobahn and headed west. There were fewer cars on the road than she'd expected, suggesting the SS was still stopping all traffic to the east. Word would have got around by now, she was sure, and anyone with something to hide would be making sure to avoid the security zone. She kicked herself, mentally, for not having thought to pick up a few newspapers, before leaving the town. The Nazi broadsheets were largely useless – they didn't have the courtesy to use soft paper, making it hard to wipe her rear with them – but she did need to know the official line. They had to be telling their people something, even if it was a tissue of lies. The story about escaped Untermenschen wasn't going to last forever.
The coach slowed as they neared the first roadblock. Kathleen kept her sudden fear off her face as she ordered Von Braun to drive right up to the checkpoint, skipping the line and parking beside the SS guards. They stared at her, then ogled the girls. Kathleen waved her folder under their eyes, then thundered abuse at them for daring to stare at the flower of German womanhood. Their commander took the papers, checked them briefly, and then waved the two coaches on. Kathleen allowed herself a moment of relief, as Von Braun took them further down the road. If they'd insisted on searching the coaches, it would have made life very difficult indeed.
Although they'd find little unless they searched everything, and checked fingerprints, she told herself. And that would cause all sorts of problems if they missed anything.
The girls eyed her with more respect, as the coaches kept going. Kathleen couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor girls, children in all but name. They'd been indoctrinated to believe in the Reich, and Adolf Hitler, and they had never been taught to think about what they were being told. She'd seen the BDM syllabus, back during her first month in Berlin, and it was nightmarish. The girls were raised to believe that Hitler knew everything, that Jews were subhuman monsters, and that the SS were the black-clad knights of the New Order. She could guess how many of the girls behind her adored the SS, and dreamt of a handsome SS officer who would sweep them off their feet and carry them into a life beyond their wildest dreams; she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the dream would turn into a nightmare. She'd seen the reports, heard the whispers ... it wouldn't end well. There was no such thing as a good SS man.
The chatter behind her got louder. Kathleen pretended not to hear, until an argument turned into a fight. She strode to the rear, separated the two fighters, and glared at everyone else until they settled down. They'd need to take a break, sooner or later, she knew; the girls would need to go to the toilet, as well as run around a bit to burn off their energy. She told Von Braun to pull off at the next lay-by, just past the farm. The girls didn't seem concerned about pissing in the field. They'd probably spent some time on the farms in their earlier years.
Heidi looked exhausted, as she stumbled out of her coach. "They were loud ..."
"You have to keep them under control," Kathleen said, tapping the switch meaningfully. Heidi was too young to be a supervisor, too close to her charges in age to be a proper figure of authority. Gudrun and Ida were supposed to be in their thirties. "Don't let them run rings around you, or you'll never have any peace."
The picnic reminded her, all too much, of her own schooldays. She had to bite her lip to remind herself she couldn't relax, not here. The girls were ignorant of a great many things – at least on paper – but youngsters tended to be more willing to think outside the box than their elders and they might notice something wrong with her. Kathleen had interviewed Germans who'd fled the Reich after the truce and they'd talked about their schooling, how the regime enabled the worst sorts of abuse and how the children responded by trying to work together to make sure no one was ever alone. They could spot a monster a mile off, she'd been told, and while she wasn't a monster ...
Her heart sank as she spotted a pair of seventeen year old girls, chasing each other around as if they were seven. They were sweet and innocent, perfectly balanced between girlhood and womanhood, and yet they'd betray her in a heartbeat if they knew who or what she was. The mere idea she might have Jewish blood would turn them against her, sending them running screaming to the SS. She'd heard the stories of what had happened to students who had discovered, often to their own surprise, that they had something undesirable lurking in their family tree. Their friends turned on them so quickly ... they'd had no choice – the regime insisted that anyone who showed sympathy to an undesirable was an undesirable themselves – but it was still nightmarish. Britain wasn't perfect, yet compared to Nazi Germany Britain was paradise. A Jew could breathe free ...
But not if the Nazis ever cross the channel and invade, she thought, grimly. She knew, all too well, that the Germans didn't consider the truce permanent. How could they? If they bring this nightmare to Britain, it will be the end.
She shuddered, inwardly. That was the true horror of the Nazi regime. It looked civilised, from a distance, but up close it was a nightmare beyond human imagination, a long darkness that reached deep into souls and turned them into collaborators, or frightened shadows of themselves, too scared to stand up for what was right. How long would it be, she asked herself, before the Reich collapsed? Would it really last a thousand years?
No, she told herself, as she ordered the girls back onto the bus. They won't last a hundred years.
But she knew, all too well, that it was already too late for the world.
Chapter Twenty-One
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Twenty-One: Near Frankfurt, 1949
Hans glared at the map, willing it to reveal its secrets.
Nothing happened, of course. The ever-widening circle was just a line on the map, representing his best guess of just how far Von Braun could have travelled since the derailment had drawn the SS onto his tail. They'd thrown up roadblocks and searched the area around the siding, but they'd found almost nothing ... and certainly nothing that would lead them directly to Von Braun. A handful of smugglers – the former border was infested with them – and a couple of criminals, both dispatched to the camps after interrogation proved they knew less than nothing about the real problem, little else. The Untermenschen cover story was already starting to wear thin. The runaways had been spotted and captured relatively easily. The same could not be said about Von Braun.
He sifted through the pile of reports, looking for clues. There was nothing. The local Schwarzhändlers had had their arms twisted, but they'd revealed nothing remotely useful. A handful of known sources, women who would happily snitch on their neighbours for money, had been asked to keep their eyes open, yet again they'd come up with nothing. The roadblocks had revealed nothing, once again ... the only interesting moment was a disciplinary note from a roadblock to the west, where a young trooper was on report for groping a BDM girl. Hans made a mental note to quash the charge. The BDM girls had a habit of leading young troopers on, trying to get them tied down before they were ready to marry. No doubt the girl had let him be caught, in hopes of his CO forcing him to marry her. If that was the scheme, it had backfired. The poor lad was in hot water.
A reprimand will be sufficient, Hans decided, as he pushed the report away. There's no need for anything harsh.
He scowled as he eyed the drinks cabinet on the far wall. Obersturmfuehrer Keitel was trying to drink himself to death after putting the Untermenschen out of their misery, a sure sign of a lack of moral fibre. Hans would have had him replaced by now, if he hadn't been so desperately short of manpower. It felt weird to have tens of thousands under his command and yet to be short-staffed, but it was unavoidable. He needed to seal off the area ... he thought he had, yet Von Braun had clearly escaped. It was enough to make him wonder if Von Braun had been there at all.
And that young fool thinks he can escape into a bottle, Hans thought. The idiot had reported for duty smelling of alcohol, something that wouldn't inspire confidence in the men even if he'd had a long and distinguished war record. Would that it were so easy to escape.
He felt his heart sink. He'd used Himmler's authority ruthlessly, steamrolling over all opposition as he'd summoned troops from every SS base within two hundred miles, and he had nothing to show for it. He knew, with a certainty that could not be denied, that the higher-ranking officers he'd cowed into compliance were burning up the telephone lines to Berlin, bitching and moaning about how he'd commandeered their resources and thrown them into a wild goose chase. The more he used his authority, the more he desperately needed something – anything – to show for it. He would even settle for Von Braun's body, just so long as the case was finally closed. Himmler was a patient man, but – sooner or later – he'd run out of patience. And that would be the end of Hans's career.
His eyes lingered on the drinks cabinet. Nothing cheap and nasty here, not in the heart of the SS complex. Nothing French either, no matter how close they were to the border of what had once been France and was now part of the Greater German Reich. The office's original owner had expensive tastes, he noted, and Hans was very tempted to pour himself a glass. But he needed to keep his wits about him. The call could come at any moment.
The telephone rang.
Hans started, one hand reaching for the handle before he caught himself. There were three telephones in the office, one linked directly to Berlin. To Himmler. And it was that phone that was ringing. He knew, without picking it up, just who was calling him. His heart seemed to turn to ice. Himmler. It had to be Himmler. His time might have just run out.
He wanted to pretend he hadn't been in the office, but he knew better. Someone would rat him out – Keitel, perhaps – and Hans would be for the high jump. Perhaps literally. Himmler would tolerate much, from his most trusted officers, but refusing to speak to their master when he called wouldn't be tolerated. There was no excuse he'd accept, either. Hans braced himself, wondering numbly if he'd be ordered to place himself under arrest, then picked up the phone.
"Schneider."
Himmler's voice was cold, hard. "Report."
Hans took a breath. "Our search has been unsuccessful, Herr Reichsführer," he said. There was no point in pretending otherwise, even something as minor as trying to make the outlook appear rosier than it actually was. "We believe Von Braun and his escort were responsible for the derailment nearby, but so far we have been unable to locate them. The sweep through the region is proving inconclusive."
"And when," Himmler asked, "can you be sure of capturing them?"
Hans froze. Himmler rarely asked the impossible. He knew better.
"I believe they will have to either remain in the area, in which case our search will eventually expose their hiding place, or pass through one of the roadblocks," Hans said. "We are currently putting immense pressure on the criminal underground, forcing them to collaborate with us long enough to track down the fugitives. They cannot maintain their normal activities if the forces of law and order are searching for the fugitives, so ..."
"An interesting tactic," Himmler observed. His tone was unchanged. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. "And do you believe you'll locate the fugitives?"
"Yes, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. "They cannot hide forever."
"Not unless they have help," Himmler said, slowly. "The Führer's condition has emboldened Speer and Göring. They have been demanding answers, as have many lesser figures within the Reich. It is proving increasingly difficult to convince the generals to maintain a security exercise near the Swiss border, for one thing, and Speer is demanding an end to your roadblocks before you do fatal damage to the local economy. We may have to tell them the truth."
Hans shuddered. "If they know we lost Von Braun ..."
"We?" Himmler's tone didn't change, but Hans shivered anyway. "It is quite possible Von Braun and his escort is receiving help from one of our rivals, perhaps more than one. The military has never been keen on allowing us to take primacy in rocket research, while Speer feels it consumes vast resources for very little return. They may be assisting him in his flight."
"They wouldn't," Hans said, although he could see the awful logic of it. The SS was adored by all, save for high-ranking military officers. They'd fear the outcome, if Himmler became Führer, and consider either Speer or Göring to be a better alternative. If they helped Von Braun to escape, or even hid him away somewhere within the Reich, and then arranged for word to get out ... Himmler's prospects for victory in the coming power struggle would fall sharply. "That would be treason!"
"Not if they don't lose Von Braun," Himmler pointed out. "There were at least three different groups of traitors within the Wehrmacht, planning the death of our Führer and an end to the war that was less than victorious. I believed they'd been silenced, with the great victories in the east, but they may be rearing their heads again. This may be their last chance to defeat the New Order."
Hans shivered, again. The older generals were coming to the end of their careers. Their dislike of Adolf Hitler might have been tempered by his victories, and held in check by their own tradition of honour, but they still hated and detested the Nazis. They would never have a better chance to reverse the shifts in Germany, to discard the party after the Führer's death and return to the traditions of Imperial Germany ... Hans's felt his temper flare as he considered the problem. It had been the traditions of Imperial Germany that had led to its defeat in 1918, the starvation winter and the rise of the communists and the French occupation of the Rhineland, and the Führer had been quite correct to regard them as pointless and petty remnants of a bygone age. The old guard might wish to promote only from the aristocracy, but that was foolish now. Hitler and Rommel and even Hans himself had been enlisted men, yet they'd risen to the very peak of their profession. And the Old Guard thought they could put the commoners back in the box?
"I will redouble my efforts, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. He wasn't sure how he could. More men were on the way, thankfully, but he was starting to suspect Von Braun had made it out before the noose tightened. "I will not let you down."
"It is vitally important that you recapture Von Braun, or at least confirm his death," Himmler reminded him. "I'll be dispatching a rider with a handful of special messages for you, access codes you can use to contact deep-cover agents. Make use of them, as you see fit."
"Jawohl, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. He paused. "Herr Reichsführer ... I ..."
Himmler's tone hardened. "Yes?"
Hans hesitated, again. "I was wondering if we could discuss the matter with the Heer, Herr Reichsführer," he said. "If we let them know who we're really looking for ..."
"That would lead to them uniting against us," Himmler said. A hint of frustration crept into his voice. "Even if they helped us to recover Von Braun, and his escort, they would still use it to weaken our position. I will not allow that to happen."
"Yes, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. He tried to keep his own irritation out of his voice. If they'd been allowed to plaster posters of Von Braun everywhere, or at least his escort, they might have had a break by now. The handful of pictures they'd managed to distribute had been nowhere near enough, clearly. "I will find him."
"See that you do," Himmler said. "I will not tolerate failure."
There was a long pause. "The doctors" – his tone became scornful – "the real doctors, I should say, believe the Führer has no more than two weeks to live. With that quack supervising his treatment, I would be surprised if he makes it that long. That's your deadline. If Von Braun is not back in our hands by then, the consequences will be severe."
He put the phone down. Hans stared at the silent phone, then swore out loud. Himmler was clearly running out of patience – and time. If they recaptured Von Brain before Hitler died, they could pretend they'd never lost him. The British agent would be shot and dumped in an unmarked grave and Von Braun would go back to work, under very tight supervision. No one would ever know how close the Reich had come to disaster. But if they didn't recapture their quarry ... Hans found himself contemplating his future, a short and unpleasant stay in the cells under the Reichssicherheitshauptamt ending with a noodle in the back of the head. He wondered, idly, if his family would be marked for death too. Even if they weren't, they'd probably be disgraced, or pushed into disowning him. A failure had no friends or family. The odds of it rubbing off were just too high.
There's no more time, he told himself. German doctors were good at their job, with one glaring exception, but the deadline was nothing more than an estimate. The Führer might live another month or two, or drop dead tomorrow. I have to act fast.
He forced himself to sit back and study the map. The British agent might not be aware of the Führer's condition, and what it might mean for her, but she still had to get Von Braun out of the country as quickly as possible. The SS had eyes and ears everywhere, and someone would eventually rat them out. His lips twisted in dark amusement. The search had turned up a surprising number of adulterous affairs, as well as a gay couple who had allied with a pair of lesbians to pretend to perfectly normal, all the while practicing their perversions ... they were already on their way to the camps, where their bodies would be dissected in hopes of finding the homosexual gene. No, the British agent would know she couldn't hide forever. And that meant she had to get moving before her time ran out.
Hans allowed himself a tight smile. "If I were a British agent, how would I get my charge out of the country?"
It wouldn't be easy, he thought. The Swiss border had been sealed. Vichy France would hand them both back to the Reich ... so would the Spanish, although with a little more reluctance. Franco liked to pretend he was independent, but Spain was heavily dependent on the Reich and there was no way the Spanish Army could stand off the Wehrmacht. Italy ... no, that would be too much of a risk. Mussolini's power wasn't what it was, after Italy had taken stock of the price it had paid for his wars, but everyone knew he still enjoyed Hitler's backing. Taking a ship from Occupied France? Not bloody likely. The Reich did allow a certain degree of emigration, but after the Anne Frank disaster the border guards made sure to check and recheck the papers of anyone seeking to leave for good. There was no way any forged papers could pass such a check, unless they really did have help from the heart of the Reich. And if that was the case they'd be in Britain by now.
A thought crossed his mind. It would be a risk, but if it paid off it would pay off handsomely.
He lifted his phone and called the duty officer. "Send Keitel to me at once."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer."
Hans sat back in his chair and waited. Keitel stumbled in shortly afterwards, his face bearing the tell-tale signs of a drunkard trying to sober up by sticking his head under the cold water tap. Hans let his eyes run up and down the younger man's uniform, silently cataloguing all the many problems that were barely – if ever – tolerated on active duty and never anywhere else. Keitel would be in deep shit if he reported for a parade looking like that ... Hans could just imagine senior officers exploding like firecrackers, then competing to see who could be the quickest to assign the unfortunate junior to the eastern front. Keitel would be lucky if he wasn't summarily demoted too. Whatever family connections he had, they wouldn't be enough to save him.
"Herr Sturmbannfuehrer?"
"Heil Hitler," Hans corrected, sharply. Keitel was under his command, at least for the moment, and his lack of formality reflected badly on Hans himself. There wasn't any time to pass him back to his former superiors either, not now. "I hope you are sober enough to think."
Keitel eyed him, darkly. Hans tried not to roll his eyes. How Keitel had passed basic training, and been promoted, without getting his hands dirty was beyond him. It was vanishingly rare for a young officer to escape duty on the eastern front, and there were no postings beyond Warsaw that could be considered wholly safe. Some were more pacified than others, according to the reports, but it was rare for a month to go by without at least two attacks. The partisans had no intention of surrendering, and accepting their place in the Reich. Hans had destroyed entire villages, killing everyone right down to the youngest child, to make sure the land was safe for German settlement. How Keitel had avoided such service ...
Hans shook his head. "The fugitives have been making their way west," he said, pointing to the map. Keitel didn't look too drunk to think straight. Even if he was, Hans could get his thoughts in order while his subordinate tried to pretend to be paying attention. "They made no attempt to race to the Swiss border, nor do they appear to have headed north. We can draw a straight line from Berlin to the west, if we follow them. Right?"
Keitel nodded, curtly.
"So they have to be heading to France," Hans added. "And there are limits to where they can go in France. Vichy will lift its skirts and bend over for us if we order" – he smiled, remembering some very accommodating French girls – "and we have a heavy military presence along the Atlantic coastline. They have to assume we're working closely with the Heer to seal the area off."
The younger man looked disgusted. Hans snorted. Keitel really needed to get his hands dirty. A tour in the east would toughen him up. Or get him killed. Either way, the Reich came out ahead. Perhaps he needed some time with a French girl too. Some protested, playing hard to get, but they all opened their legs eventually. They were famous for it. There was a reason France was the most popular posting in the Reich.
"So this is what we're going to do," Hans continued. It was a gamble, but the logic was sound. Besides, he needed results and quickly or he might as well defect himself. And that was just unthinkable. "Listen carefully."
Hans glared at the map, willing it to reveal its secrets.
Nothing happened, of course. The ever-widening circle was just a line on the map, representing his best guess of just how far Von Braun could have travelled since the derailment had drawn the SS onto his tail. They'd thrown up roadblocks and searched the area around the siding, but they'd found almost nothing ... and certainly nothing that would lead them directly to Von Braun. A handful of smugglers – the former border was infested with them – and a couple of criminals, both dispatched to the camps after interrogation proved they knew less than nothing about the real problem, little else. The Untermenschen cover story was already starting to wear thin. The runaways had been spotted and captured relatively easily. The same could not be said about Von Braun.
He sifted through the pile of reports, looking for clues. There was nothing. The local Schwarzhändlers had had their arms twisted, but they'd revealed nothing remotely useful. A handful of known sources, women who would happily snitch on their neighbours for money, had been asked to keep their eyes open, yet again they'd come up with nothing. The roadblocks had revealed nothing, once again ... the only interesting moment was a disciplinary note from a roadblock to the west, where a young trooper was on report for groping a BDM girl. Hans made a mental note to quash the charge. The BDM girls had a habit of leading young troopers on, trying to get them tied down before they were ready to marry. No doubt the girl had let him be caught, in hopes of his CO forcing him to marry her. If that was the scheme, it had backfired. The poor lad was in hot water.
A reprimand will be sufficient, Hans decided, as he pushed the report away. There's no need for anything harsh.
He scowled as he eyed the drinks cabinet on the far wall. Obersturmfuehrer Keitel was trying to drink himself to death after putting the Untermenschen out of their misery, a sure sign of a lack of moral fibre. Hans would have had him replaced by now, if he hadn't been so desperately short of manpower. It felt weird to have tens of thousands under his command and yet to be short-staffed, but it was unavoidable. He needed to seal off the area ... he thought he had, yet Von Braun had clearly escaped. It was enough to make him wonder if Von Braun had been there at all.
And that young fool thinks he can escape into a bottle, Hans thought. The idiot had reported for duty smelling of alcohol, something that wouldn't inspire confidence in the men even if he'd had a long and distinguished war record. Would that it were so easy to escape.
He felt his heart sink. He'd used Himmler's authority ruthlessly, steamrolling over all opposition as he'd summoned troops from every SS base within two hundred miles, and he had nothing to show for it. He knew, with a certainty that could not be denied, that the higher-ranking officers he'd cowed into compliance were burning up the telephone lines to Berlin, bitching and moaning about how he'd commandeered their resources and thrown them into a wild goose chase. The more he used his authority, the more he desperately needed something – anything – to show for it. He would even settle for Von Braun's body, just so long as the case was finally closed. Himmler was a patient man, but – sooner or later – he'd run out of patience. And that would be the end of Hans's career.
His eyes lingered on the drinks cabinet. Nothing cheap and nasty here, not in the heart of the SS complex. Nothing French either, no matter how close they were to the border of what had once been France and was now part of the Greater German Reich. The office's original owner had expensive tastes, he noted, and Hans was very tempted to pour himself a glass. But he needed to keep his wits about him. The call could come at any moment.
The telephone rang.
Hans started, one hand reaching for the handle before he caught himself. There were three telephones in the office, one linked directly to Berlin. To Himmler. And it was that phone that was ringing. He knew, without picking it up, just who was calling him. His heart seemed to turn to ice. Himmler. It had to be Himmler. His time might have just run out.
He wanted to pretend he hadn't been in the office, but he knew better. Someone would rat him out – Keitel, perhaps – and Hans would be for the high jump. Perhaps literally. Himmler would tolerate much, from his most trusted officers, but refusing to speak to their master when he called wouldn't be tolerated. There was no excuse he'd accept, either. Hans braced himself, wondering numbly if he'd be ordered to place himself under arrest, then picked up the phone.
"Schneider."
Himmler's voice was cold, hard. "Report."
Hans took a breath. "Our search has been unsuccessful, Herr Reichsführer," he said. There was no point in pretending otherwise, even something as minor as trying to make the outlook appear rosier than it actually was. "We believe Von Braun and his escort were responsible for the derailment nearby, but so far we have been unable to locate them. The sweep through the region is proving inconclusive."
"And when," Himmler asked, "can you be sure of capturing them?"
Hans froze. Himmler rarely asked the impossible. He knew better.
"I believe they will have to either remain in the area, in which case our search will eventually expose their hiding place, or pass through one of the roadblocks," Hans said. "We are currently putting immense pressure on the criminal underground, forcing them to collaborate with us long enough to track down the fugitives. They cannot maintain their normal activities if the forces of law and order are searching for the fugitives, so ..."
"An interesting tactic," Himmler observed. His tone was unchanged. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. "And do you believe you'll locate the fugitives?"
"Yes, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. "They cannot hide forever."
"Not unless they have help," Himmler said, slowly. "The Führer's condition has emboldened Speer and Göring. They have been demanding answers, as have many lesser figures within the Reich. It is proving increasingly difficult to convince the generals to maintain a security exercise near the Swiss border, for one thing, and Speer is demanding an end to your roadblocks before you do fatal damage to the local economy. We may have to tell them the truth."
Hans shuddered. "If they know we lost Von Braun ..."
"We?" Himmler's tone didn't change, but Hans shivered anyway. "It is quite possible Von Braun and his escort is receiving help from one of our rivals, perhaps more than one. The military has never been keen on allowing us to take primacy in rocket research, while Speer feels it consumes vast resources for very little return. They may be assisting him in his flight."
"They wouldn't," Hans said, although he could see the awful logic of it. The SS was adored by all, save for high-ranking military officers. They'd fear the outcome, if Himmler became Führer, and consider either Speer or Göring to be a better alternative. If they helped Von Braun to escape, or even hid him away somewhere within the Reich, and then arranged for word to get out ... Himmler's prospects for victory in the coming power struggle would fall sharply. "That would be treason!"
"Not if they don't lose Von Braun," Himmler pointed out. "There were at least three different groups of traitors within the Wehrmacht, planning the death of our Führer and an end to the war that was less than victorious. I believed they'd been silenced, with the great victories in the east, but they may be rearing their heads again. This may be their last chance to defeat the New Order."
Hans shivered, again. The older generals were coming to the end of their careers. Their dislike of Adolf Hitler might have been tempered by his victories, and held in check by their own tradition of honour, but they still hated and detested the Nazis. They would never have a better chance to reverse the shifts in Germany, to discard the party after the Führer's death and return to the traditions of Imperial Germany ... Hans's felt his temper flare as he considered the problem. It had been the traditions of Imperial Germany that had led to its defeat in 1918, the starvation winter and the rise of the communists and the French occupation of the Rhineland, and the Führer had been quite correct to regard them as pointless and petty remnants of a bygone age. The old guard might wish to promote only from the aristocracy, but that was foolish now. Hitler and Rommel and even Hans himself had been enlisted men, yet they'd risen to the very peak of their profession. And the Old Guard thought they could put the commoners back in the box?
"I will redouble my efforts, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. He wasn't sure how he could. More men were on the way, thankfully, but he was starting to suspect Von Braun had made it out before the noose tightened. "I will not let you down."
"It is vitally important that you recapture Von Braun, or at least confirm his death," Himmler reminded him. "I'll be dispatching a rider with a handful of special messages for you, access codes you can use to contact deep-cover agents. Make use of them, as you see fit."
"Jawohl, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. He paused. "Herr Reichsführer ... I ..."
Himmler's tone hardened. "Yes?"
Hans hesitated, again. "I was wondering if we could discuss the matter with the Heer, Herr Reichsführer," he said. "If we let them know who we're really looking for ..."
"That would lead to them uniting against us," Himmler said. A hint of frustration crept into his voice. "Even if they helped us to recover Von Braun, and his escort, they would still use it to weaken our position. I will not allow that to happen."
"Yes, Herr Reichsführer," Hans said. He tried to keep his own irritation out of his voice. If they'd been allowed to plaster posters of Von Braun everywhere, or at least his escort, they might have had a break by now. The handful of pictures they'd managed to distribute had been nowhere near enough, clearly. "I will find him."
"See that you do," Himmler said. "I will not tolerate failure."
There was a long pause. "The doctors" – his tone became scornful – "the real doctors, I should say, believe the Führer has no more than two weeks to live. With that quack supervising his treatment, I would be surprised if he makes it that long. That's your deadline. If Von Braun is not back in our hands by then, the consequences will be severe."
He put the phone down. Hans stared at the silent phone, then swore out loud. Himmler was clearly running out of patience – and time. If they recaptured Von Brain before Hitler died, they could pretend they'd never lost him. The British agent would be shot and dumped in an unmarked grave and Von Braun would go back to work, under very tight supervision. No one would ever know how close the Reich had come to disaster. But if they didn't recapture their quarry ... Hans found himself contemplating his future, a short and unpleasant stay in the cells under the Reichssicherheitshauptamt ending with a noodle in the back of the head. He wondered, idly, if his family would be marked for death too. Even if they weren't, they'd probably be disgraced, or pushed into disowning him. A failure had no friends or family. The odds of it rubbing off were just too high.
There's no more time, he told himself. German doctors were good at their job, with one glaring exception, but the deadline was nothing more than an estimate. The Führer might live another month or two, or drop dead tomorrow. I have to act fast.
He forced himself to sit back and study the map. The British agent might not be aware of the Führer's condition, and what it might mean for her, but she still had to get Von Braun out of the country as quickly as possible. The SS had eyes and ears everywhere, and someone would eventually rat them out. His lips twisted in dark amusement. The search had turned up a surprising number of adulterous affairs, as well as a gay couple who had allied with a pair of lesbians to pretend to perfectly normal, all the while practicing their perversions ... they were already on their way to the camps, where their bodies would be dissected in hopes of finding the homosexual gene. No, the British agent would know she couldn't hide forever. And that meant she had to get moving before her time ran out.
Hans allowed himself a tight smile. "If I were a British agent, how would I get my charge out of the country?"
It wouldn't be easy, he thought. The Swiss border had been sealed. Vichy France would hand them both back to the Reich ... so would the Spanish, although with a little more reluctance. Franco liked to pretend he was independent, but Spain was heavily dependent on the Reich and there was no way the Spanish Army could stand off the Wehrmacht. Italy ... no, that would be too much of a risk. Mussolini's power wasn't what it was, after Italy had taken stock of the price it had paid for his wars, but everyone knew he still enjoyed Hitler's backing. Taking a ship from Occupied France? Not bloody likely. The Reich did allow a certain degree of emigration, but after the Anne Frank disaster the border guards made sure to check and recheck the papers of anyone seeking to leave for good. There was no way any forged papers could pass such a check, unless they really did have help from the heart of the Reich. And if that was the case they'd be in Britain by now.
A thought crossed his mind. It would be a risk, but if it paid off it would pay off handsomely.
He lifted his phone and called the duty officer. "Send Keitel to me at once."
"Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer."
Hans sat back in his chair and waited. Keitel stumbled in shortly afterwards, his face bearing the tell-tale signs of a drunkard trying to sober up by sticking his head under the cold water tap. Hans let his eyes run up and down the younger man's uniform, silently cataloguing all the many problems that were barely – if ever – tolerated on active duty and never anywhere else. Keitel would be in deep shit if he reported for a parade looking like that ... Hans could just imagine senior officers exploding like firecrackers, then competing to see who could be the quickest to assign the unfortunate junior to the eastern front. Keitel would be lucky if he wasn't summarily demoted too. Whatever family connections he had, they wouldn't be enough to save him.
"Herr Sturmbannfuehrer?"
"Heil Hitler," Hans corrected, sharply. Keitel was under his command, at least for the moment, and his lack of formality reflected badly on Hans himself. There wasn't any time to pass him back to his former superiors either, not now. "I hope you are sober enough to think."
Keitel eyed him, darkly. Hans tried not to roll his eyes. How Keitel had passed basic training, and been promoted, without getting his hands dirty was beyond him. It was vanishingly rare for a young officer to escape duty on the eastern front, and there were no postings beyond Warsaw that could be considered wholly safe. Some were more pacified than others, according to the reports, but it was rare for a month to go by without at least two attacks. The partisans had no intention of surrendering, and accepting their place in the Reich. Hans had destroyed entire villages, killing everyone right down to the youngest child, to make sure the land was safe for German settlement. How Keitel had avoided such service ...
Hans shook his head. "The fugitives have been making their way west," he said, pointing to the map. Keitel didn't look too drunk to think straight. Even if he was, Hans could get his thoughts in order while his subordinate tried to pretend to be paying attention. "They made no attempt to race to the Swiss border, nor do they appear to have headed north. We can draw a straight line from Berlin to the west, if we follow them. Right?"
Keitel nodded, curtly.
"So they have to be heading to France," Hans added. "And there are limits to where they can go in France. Vichy will lift its skirts and bend over for us if we order" – he smiled, remembering some very accommodating French girls – "and we have a heavy military presence along the Atlantic coastline. They have to assume we're working closely with the Heer to seal the area off."
The younger man looked disgusted. Hans snorted. Keitel really needed to get his hands dirty. A tour in the east would toughen him up. Or get him killed. Either way, the Reich came out ahead. Perhaps he needed some time with a French girl too. Some protested, playing hard to get, but they all opened their legs eventually. They were famous for it. There was a reason France was the most popular posting in the Reich.
"So this is what we're going to do," Hans continued. It was a gamble, but the logic was sound. Besides, he needed results and quickly or he might as well defect himself. And that was just unthinkable. "Listen carefully."
Chapter Twenty-Two
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Twenty-Two: Alsace–Lorraine, 1949
If you need proof that Hitler and his party cannot be trusted, Kathleen thought coldly, you just need to look at Alsace–Lorraine.
She kept her expression carefully blank as the two coaches drove into Schmidtstadt and parked near the town hall. Alsace–Lorraine had been French until Germany had annexed it in 1871, then reclaimed by the French in 1918, and then reclaimed again by the Germans in 1940. The French surrender had included an agreement that Germany would not annex Alsace–Lorraine again, but the agreement hadn't lasted any longer than the war. The Germans had been wearing down any sense of French independence from the moment they occupied the territory, then tossed aside all pretence in 1944 and formally annexed Alsace–Lorraine into the Greater German Reich. It was more German, in 1949, than much of Germany.
Kathleen frowned, inwardly, as she surveyed the town. The French residents had been largely deported into France or the colonies, creating room for German settlers – all carefully vetted by the Nazis – to move into Alsace–Lorraine. They'd knocked down most of the former buildings and replaced them with Hitler's favoured gothic style, preserving very little of the former town. They'd even erased the original name, so completely Kathleen had no idea what Schmidtstadt had been called before it was turned into a German town. She'd passed through the region two years ago, when she'd been preparing herself for further missions, and it was astonishing how much had changed. The town hadn't looked quite so German then, not really. Now ... it was a grim reminder that there was no escape from the Nazis. The SS recruiting station was another. If she recalled correctly, a surprising number of Frenchmen – who claimed German blood – had sought to gain status by joining the SS. She had no idea how many had returned from the east, but she doubted the survivors had gotten what they wanted. There was nothing the French could do, in Hitler's eyes, to escape the taint of having been born French.
"Stay here," she muttered to Von Braun, as she opened the door. The mayor was already hurrying towards them, a jovial fat man wearing a very traditional outfit. A pistol hung at his belt, making her smile. The Germans might hold the cities and roads, but the French insurgents hadn't surrendered. Not yet. The man wouldn't be armed if he didn't fear attack. "I'll deal with him."
She clambered out of the coach and nodded to the mayor. "I trust everything is in order?"
"Of course, of course," the mayor said. He bowed deeply. "The lads have been looking forward to the formal dance for weeks."
Kathleen nodded, curtly. The tour's official purpose was to give the girls a taste of life on the farm, or in other parts of the Reich, but the real purpose was to encourage relationships between young men and women. There were far more German men than woman in Alsace–Lorraine and marrying Frenchwomen, no matter how pleasant, was unacceptable. If the young men married well and settled down, they'd start becoming a real community, one that would expand outwards until it pushed the French into the sea. It was ironic, she supposed, that the Reich wanted the girls to find partners while guarding their chastity, but the Nazis had never cared about their own hypocrisy. She wondered, suddenly, just how many German settlers had French girlfriends, even wives and children. Their marriages, if they were married, weren't recognised in Germany. She felt sick just thinking about it.
"My girls need to freshen up, then they can have a tour of the town," Kathleen said. "I trust that meets with your approval?"
"Of course, of course," the Mayor said. "My wife has already made the arrangements."
Kathleen ordered the girls off the coach and into the barracks, making sure to keep Heidi busy unloading the coaches so she didn't start thinking. Kathleen had done her best to keep jumping down the younger woman's throat, every time she made a mistake, but she had a nasty feeling Heidi was starting to get used to her, no matter how bitchy she acted. Either that, or she had a plan. Kathleen would have been more worried about it if she hadn't been planning to ditch the BDM girls in the evening, using the dance as cover for her disappearance. She just had to make sure she dropped the right hints.
The Mayor's wife – a sour-faced women, so different from her husband that Kathleen couldn't help wondering why they'd gotten married in the first place – watched the girls freshening up, then led them on a tour of Schmidtstadt. The town could have come right out of a tourist brochure, Kathleen noticed, although few tourists were visiting the Reich these days. She kept her eyes open, looking for more changes. There were more shops and homes – the latter disturbingly picturesque – and a marked absence of bullet holes. The stormtrooper standing guard in front of the recruiting station seemed remarkably lax, winking openly at the girls instead of pretending to be a statue. Kathleen shot him a disapproving look to cover her own concern. Two years ago, there had been more guards and they'd all been alert. Now ... had the resistance been crushed? It wasn't impossible.
They stopped outside a large statue of Adolf Hitler, the girls making admiring noises as they stared up at the founder of the Greater German Reich. They'd been taught to idolise him and ... Kathleen kept her face blank, even as she read the inscription under the statue. It credited Hitler with bringing the light of civilisation into France, Russia and North Africa, driving away the Jew and cleansing the land so it could be settled with hardy German stock. She scowled inwardly, wondering why no one noticed the contradiction. How could the Jews be both feared and contemptible, terrifying enemies and yet sneaks who had no power of their own? But then, anyone who pointed out the contradiction would rapidly learn to keep his mouth shut. His teachers would show him no mercy, for fear they'd be tainted by his apostasy.
"I have friends nearby," Kathleen said to Heidi, as they returned to the town hall. "I'll be going to see them after the dance. You can make sure the girls are counted, and then bedded down."
Heidi looked stunned. Kathleen didn't blame her. The older woman was supposed to be in charge, not heading off to see a friend. But Heidi knew better than to ask too many questions ... not yet. She'd ask a few when Kathleen and Von Braun failed to return, yet by then it would be too late. By the time the SS unravelled the tissue of lies, Von Braun would be in Britain and the mission would be completed. It was quite possible they'd never untangle the lies, she told herself, as she turned away. They might not connect the dead bodies in the stolen car with Gudrun, let alone Kathleen and Von Braun. Hell, if the woman's death was hushed up to avoid scandal ...
It doesn't have to last forever, Kathleen told herself. Just a few more days.
Von Braun was sitting in the coach, reading the newspapers. "Are we leaving them here?"
"Tonight," Kathleen said. Von Braun – or, rather, the male driver – wasn't allowed to share a barracks with the girls. Kathleen hadn't bothered to argue, merely noting he could sleep in the coach. She could have thrown her weight around and demanded a room for him, but she wanted him to stay where he was. "I have already arranged to borrow a car. I'll collect you when the dance is well underway, and then we'll set off."
"They're nice girls," Von Braun said, softly. "Try not to get them in too much trouble."
"They'll turn us over to the SS in a heartbeat, if they figure out who we are," Kathleen said, flatly. She'd checked the noticeboard in the town hall and seen nothing that might suggest the search was still underway, but she dared not assume they were safe. They were still deep within enemy territory. "Let them think you're just a driver, nothing else."
Von Braun nodded. "Understood."
Night fell slowly, the bright lights of the town contrasting oddly with the utter darkness of the surrounding hills. Kathleen felt cold, despite the summer heat, as she stared into the shadows, wondering how many Frenchmen were hiding in the hillside after being driven off their lands, watching in horror as their countryside was reshaped by a tyrant's whim. They were lucky they didn't live in the east, she thought, although that was small comfort to the men who had been displaced. If the Nazis hadn't been able to expand into the former USSR, they would have swept west by now, erasing France as surely as they'd erased Poland. There was little left of pre-war Poland by now, she'd been told, and the Nazis hadn't stopped there. Their bulldozers had knocked down the Kremlin years ago.
She led the girls to the dance hall, then stepped aside to watch as the band started to play. They weren't very good, by Berlin standards, but they were genuinely enthusiastic and she couldn't help feeling a twinge of warmth as they kept playing. The girls pretended to act shy as the young men eyed them, yet each accepted without hesitation when a boy asked them to dance. Kathleen made a show of keeping her eye on them, snapping at a boy who let his hand drop a little too low and snarling at a girl who brushed her breast against her partner's arm. The real Gudrun would probably have slapped the boy and dragged the girl out by her ear, to administer a lesson in chastity. Holding hands, even kissing, was one thing, but doing anything else could mark a girl for life.
Heidi caught her eye. "I don't know if I should drink ..."
"Just make sure you're in good form for tomorrow," Kathleen told her. It was a little out of character, but the more everyone drank the harder it would be for them to recall what had happened. Heidi probably wasn't used to alcohol. She wouldn't realise she'd drunk too much until it caught up with her and then it would be too late. "Drink lots of water too."
She hid her amusement as the music got louder. The girls seemed to be having fun, at least, revelling in the chance to dance without their parents watching from the sidelines. They might not have realised Kathleen wasn't Gudrun, but they certainly knew Gudrun – the real woman or the fake – would end up in hot water if something happened on the trip. They might get slapped, or switched, but their sins wouldn't be reported to their parents. It would make their supervisors look bad.
Kathleen slipped backwards, heading to the washrooms ... and then walking past, into the darkness. The streets outside were brightly lit, but there was almost no one in evidence. The SS guard was nowhere to be seen. Kathleen turned and headed towards the coaches – they'd been moved away from the barracks, once the luggage had been transferred – and then stopped as she saw someone in the shadows. Two people ... she hesitated, unsure if she should pretend she hadn't seen the movement, then turned and walked forward. She heard a sigh – a very male sigh – as she rounded the corner. Greta was kissing a young man, his hand under her shirt and her hand in his pants. Kathleen felt oddly conflicted. It hadn't been that young since she'd been a teenager herself. She recalled what it had been like with almost painful clarity.
She cleared her throat. Greta started, and then jumped away. The young man – a farmer, by his dress – yanked his hand back, then hastily buttoned up his pants. Kathleen hid her amusement with an effort, then met his eyes. He flinched under her gaze. A word from her would get him in very hot water indeed.
"Go back to the dance hall and stay there for the rest of the evening," she ordered, curtly. If he'd been pushing Greta into the wall, pinning her in place, she wasn't sure what she'd do. There wasn't anything, as far as she could tell, that wouldn't cause problems. Serious problems. "And don't let me catch you doing anything like this again."
The man scurried past her, clearly cowed. Kathleen hid her amusement, although it wasn't really funny. If he'd been caught making love to a local girl, one with a local father and brothers, he'd have been beaten to within an inch of his life. Greta had no relatives here, no one to take care of her apart from three inexperienced supervisors and a fake. If the encounter had turned sour, she would have been alone.
Kathleen looked at her for a moment. "Are you alright?"
Greta couldn't hide the anger in her voice. "Did you have to ..."
She stopped and started again. "I thought using my hand meant I couldn't get pregnant."
Kathleen hid her amusement with an effort. The Nazis made no attempt to offer formal sex education – their lessons for young women didn't include explanations for how babies were made, merely instruction covering pregnancy and the early years of motherhood – but anyone who grew up near a farm should have at least a rough idea of how a man could get a woman pregnant. Kathleen's mother had been reluctant to discuss the issue, yet even she had sat her daughter down one day – after she'd started her first period – and told her the facts of life. It had been an intensely embarrassing conversation, but it had been more instruction than the average German girl ever had. Unless their mothers were honest too ...
And that is supposed to happen just before marriage, Kathleen thought. She wasn't sure why her mother had given her the talk so early, unless she'd been conceived a month before her parents had married, bit she was grateful nonetheless. For a girl to know too much too soon ... it makes her and her parents look bad.
"It does," Kathleen said. She recalled some of the discussions she'd had with her school friends, girls pretending they weren't ignorant when it was clear they knew nothing, and cringed inwardly. The lack of any formal education meant the vacuum of their ignorance was filled by all manner of nonsense, from the girl being unable to get pregnant if she was on top to ideas that made her want to give up all thought of being married. "But if you were caught with him, what do you think would happen?"
Greta eyed her, rebelliously. "And if I want to stay here and marry him ...?"
"You can, if you want," Kathleen said. It would be interesting if Greta's father said no. The BDM tried to match good German girls with good German boys, and they'd support a match between Greta and a local youth. She wondered, idly, who'd come out ahead ... or if Greta would try to get pregnant before her family found out, to force their hand. "But you should at least consider the consequences first."
"I ..." Greta swallowed, and started again. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in that little town."
Kathleen felt a wave of sympathy. Greta had almost no prospects for the future, beyond becoming a wife or mother. There weren't many careers for women, unless she remained in the BDM, and even that was secondary to being a wife. She would never have a position of her own, never have any real freedom ... her property, if she had any, would become her husband's. If she were lucky, she might marry a diplomat and travel ... even then, she would still belong to her husband. And nothing Kathleen could say or do would change that.
"I don't know what the future will hold," she said, finally. "But you have to keep your options open as long as possible. Getting married, or pregnant, now will close those options down, sharply. Maybe it will work out for you, maybe it won't. But you need to be careful."
Greta gave her an odd look. Kathleen realised, too late, that she'd acted very out of character. Gudrun would have slapped Greta on the spot, she was sure, and then scolded her so loudly the entire town would have heard the racket. There was no helping it now. Instead, she stepped back and looked Greta up and down. Her lips were a little puffy, and her face was streaked with tears, but that was nothing a quick wash wouldn't solve. She was lucky she hadn't gotten anything ... male ... on her uniform. There was no way she could have hidden that in a hurry, certainly not before it was too late. The local washerwomen would notice and then all hell would break loose.
"Go back to the hall and wash," Kathleen said, quietly. "And don't mention a word about this to anyone."
Greta nodded, then frowned. "Do you regret getting married?"
Kathleen shrugged. "I wasn't given a choice," she said. Gudrun certainly hadn't, if Kathleen was any judge. Marriages amongst that class were arranged, and the happy couple was given very little choice. "My husband and I learnt to get on, but it took time."
She pointed to the hall. "Go."
Greta turned and hurried away. Kathleen watched her go, feeling conflicted. Greta was a sweet girl, and yet she would betray her in an instant if she knew who Kathleen really was. Or what. And yet ... could she be blamed for believing what she'd been told? It was hard, almost impossible, to divest yourself of lies you learnt as a child. Kathleen knew Jews who refused to believe what had happened to their fellows in Germany, despite all the evidence. The idea that Germany was a civilised country was just too deeply rooted in their minds ...
Worry about it later, she told herself. Right now, it's time to go.
If you need proof that Hitler and his party cannot be trusted, Kathleen thought coldly, you just need to look at Alsace–Lorraine.
She kept her expression carefully blank as the two coaches drove into Schmidtstadt and parked near the town hall. Alsace–Lorraine had been French until Germany had annexed it in 1871, then reclaimed by the French in 1918, and then reclaimed again by the Germans in 1940. The French surrender had included an agreement that Germany would not annex Alsace–Lorraine again, but the agreement hadn't lasted any longer than the war. The Germans had been wearing down any sense of French independence from the moment they occupied the territory, then tossed aside all pretence in 1944 and formally annexed Alsace–Lorraine into the Greater German Reich. It was more German, in 1949, than much of Germany.
Kathleen frowned, inwardly, as she surveyed the town. The French residents had been largely deported into France or the colonies, creating room for German settlers – all carefully vetted by the Nazis – to move into Alsace–Lorraine. They'd knocked down most of the former buildings and replaced them with Hitler's favoured gothic style, preserving very little of the former town. They'd even erased the original name, so completely Kathleen had no idea what Schmidtstadt had been called before it was turned into a German town. She'd passed through the region two years ago, when she'd been preparing herself for further missions, and it was astonishing how much had changed. The town hadn't looked quite so German then, not really. Now ... it was a grim reminder that there was no escape from the Nazis. The SS recruiting station was another. If she recalled correctly, a surprising number of Frenchmen – who claimed German blood – had sought to gain status by joining the SS. She had no idea how many had returned from the east, but she doubted the survivors had gotten what they wanted. There was nothing the French could do, in Hitler's eyes, to escape the taint of having been born French.
"Stay here," she muttered to Von Braun, as she opened the door. The mayor was already hurrying towards them, a jovial fat man wearing a very traditional outfit. A pistol hung at his belt, making her smile. The Germans might hold the cities and roads, but the French insurgents hadn't surrendered. Not yet. The man wouldn't be armed if he didn't fear attack. "I'll deal with him."
She clambered out of the coach and nodded to the mayor. "I trust everything is in order?"
"Of course, of course," the mayor said. He bowed deeply. "The lads have been looking forward to the formal dance for weeks."
Kathleen nodded, curtly. The tour's official purpose was to give the girls a taste of life on the farm, or in other parts of the Reich, but the real purpose was to encourage relationships between young men and women. There were far more German men than woman in Alsace–Lorraine and marrying Frenchwomen, no matter how pleasant, was unacceptable. If the young men married well and settled down, they'd start becoming a real community, one that would expand outwards until it pushed the French into the sea. It was ironic, she supposed, that the Reich wanted the girls to find partners while guarding their chastity, but the Nazis had never cared about their own hypocrisy. She wondered, suddenly, just how many German settlers had French girlfriends, even wives and children. Their marriages, if they were married, weren't recognised in Germany. She felt sick just thinking about it.
"My girls need to freshen up, then they can have a tour of the town," Kathleen said. "I trust that meets with your approval?"
"Of course, of course," the Mayor said. "My wife has already made the arrangements."
Kathleen ordered the girls off the coach and into the barracks, making sure to keep Heidi busy unloading the coaches so she didn't start thinking. Kathleen had done her best to keep jumping down the younger woman's throat, every time she made a mistake, but she had a nasty feeling Heidi was starting to get used to her, no matter how bitchy she acted. Either that, or she had a plan. Kathleen would have been more worried about it if she hadn't been planning to ditch the BDM girls in the evening, using the dance as cover for her disappearance. She just had to make sure she dropped the right hints.
The Mayor's wife – a sour-faced women, so different from her husband that Kathleen couldn't help wondering why they'd gotten married in the first place – watched the girls freshening up, then led them on a tour of Schmidtstadt. The town could have come right out of a tourist brochure, Kathleen noticed, although few tourists were visiting the Reich these days. She kept her eyes open, looking for more changes. There were more shops and homes – the latter disturbingly picturesque – and a marked absence of bullet holes. The stormtrooper standing guard in front of the recruiting station seemed remarkably lax, winking openly at the girls instead of pretending to be a statue. Kathleen shot him a disapproving look to cover her own concern. Two years ago, there had been more guards and they'd all been alert. Now ... had the resistance been crushed? It wasn't impossible.
They stopped outside a large statue of Adolf Hitler, the girls making admiring noises as they stared up at the founder of the Greater German Reich. They'd been taught to idolise him and ... Kathleen kept her face blank, even as she read the inscription under the statue. It credited Hitler with bringing the light of civilisation into France, Russia and North Africa, driving away the Jew and cleansing the land so it could be settled with hardy German stock. She scowled inwardly, wondering why no one noticed the contradiction. How could the Jews be both feared and contemptible, terrifying enemies and yet sneaks who had no power of their own? But then, anyone who pointed out the contradiction would rapidly learn to keep his mouth shut. His teachers would show him no mercy, for fear they'd be tainted by his apostasy.
"I have friends nearby," Kathleen said to Heidi, as they returned to the town hall. "I'll be going to see them after the dance. You can make sure the girls are counted, and then bedded down."
Heidi looked stunned. Kathleen didn't blame her. The older woman was supposed to be in charge, not heading off to see a friend. But Heidi knew better than to ask too many questions ... not yet. She'd ask a few when Kathleen and Von Braun failed to return, yet by then it would be too late. By the time the SS unravelled the tissue of lies, Von Braun would be in Britain and the mission would be completed. It was quite possible they'd never untangle the lies, she told herself, as she turned away. They might not connect the dead bodies in the stolen car with Gudrun, let alone Kathleen and Von Braun. Hell, if the woman's death was hushed up to avoid scandal ...
It doesn't have to last forever, Kathleen told herself. Just a few more days.
Von Braun was sitting in the coach, reading the newspapers. "Are we leaving them here?"
"Tonight," Kathleen said. Von Braun – or, rather, the male driver – wasn't allowed to share a barracks with the girls. Kathleen hadn't bothered to argue, merely noting he could sleep in the coach. She could have thrown her weight around and demanded a room for him, but she wanted him to stay where he was. "I have already arranged to borrow a car. I'll collect you when the dance is well underway, and then we'll set off."
"They're nice girls," Von Braun said, softly. "Try not to get them in too much trouble."
"They'll turn us over to the SS in a heartbeat, if they figure out who we are," Kathleen said, flatly. She'd checked the noticeboard in the town hall and seen nothing that might suggest the search was still underway, but she dared not assume they were safe. They were still deep within enemy territory. "Let them think you're just a driver, nothing else."
Von Braun nodded. "Understood."
Night fell slowly, the bright lights of the town contrasting oddly with the utter darkness of the surrounding hills. Kathleen felt cold, despite the summer heat, as she stared into the shadows, wondering how many Frenchmen were hiding in the hillside after being driven off their lands, watching in horror as their countryside was reshaped by a tyrant's whim. They were lucky they didn't live in the east, she thought, although that was small comfort to the men who had been displaced. If the Nazis hadn't been able to expand into the former USSR, they would have swept west by now, erasing France as surely as they'd erased Poland. There was little left of pre-war Poland by now, she'd been told, and the Nazis hadn't stopped there. Their bulldozers had knocked down the Kremlin years ago.
She led the girls to the dance hall, then stepped aside to watch as the band started to play. They weren't very good, by Berlin standards, but they were genuinely enthusiastic and she couldn't help feeling a twinge of warmth as they kept playing. The girls pretended to act shy as the young men eyed them, yet each accepted without hesitation when a boy asked them to dance. Kathleen made a show of keeping her eye on them, snapping at a boy who let his hand drop a little too low and snarling at a girl who brushed her breast against her partner's arm. The real Gudrun would probably have slapped the boy and dragged the girl out by her ear, to administer a lesson in chastity. Holding hands, even kissing, was one thing, but doing anything else could mark a girl for life.
Heidi caught her eye. "I don't know if I should drink ..."
"Just make sure you're in good form for tomorrow," Kathleen told her. It was a little out of character, but the more everyone drank the harder it would be for them to recall what had happened. Heidi probably wasn't used to alcohol. She wouldn't realise she'd drunk too much until it caught up with her and then it would be too late. "Drink lots of water too."
She hid her amusement as the music got louder. The girls seemed to be having fun, at least, revelling in the chance to dance without their parents watching from the sidelines. They might not have realised Kathleen wasn't Gudrun, but they certainly knew Gudrun – the real woman or the fake – would end up in hot water if something happened on the trip. They might get slapped, or switched, but their sins wouldn't be reported to their parents. It would make their supervisors look bad.
Kathleen slipped backwards, heading to the washrooms ... and then walking past, into the darkness. The streets outside were brightly lit, but there was almost no one in evidence. The SS guard was nowhere to be seen. Kathleen turned and headed towards the coaches – they'd been moved away from the barracks, once the luggage had been transferred – and then stopped as she saw someone in the shadows. Two people ... she hesitated, unsure if she should pretend she hadn't seen the movement, then turned and walked forward. She heard a sigh – a very male sigh – as she rounded the corner. Greta was kissing a young man, his hand under her shirt and her hand in his pants. Kathleen felt oddly conflicted. It hadn't been that young since she'd been a teenager herself. She recalled what it had been like with almost painful clarity.
She cleared her throat. Greta started, and then jumped away. The young man – a farmer, by his dress – yanked his hand back, then hastily buttoned up his pants. Kathleen hid her amusement with an effort, then met his eyes. He flinched under her gaze. A word from her would get him in very hot water indeed.
"Go back to the dance hall and stay there for the rest of the evening," she ordered, curtly. If he'd been pushing Greta into the wall, pinning her in place, she wasn't sure what she'd do. There wasn't anything, as far as she could tell, that wouldn't cause problems. Serious problems. "And don't let me catch you doing anything like this again."
The man scurried past her, clearly cowed. Kathleen hid her amusement, although it wasn't really funny. If he'd been caught making love to a local girl, one with a local father and brothers, he'd have been beaten to within an inch of his life. Greta had no relatives here, no one to take care of her apart from three inexperienced supervisors and a fake. If the encounter had turned sour, she would have been alone.
Kathleen looked at her for a moment. "Are you alright?"
Greta couldn't hide the anger in her voice. "Did you have to ..."
She stopped and started again. "I thought using my hand meant I couldn't get pregnant."
Kathleen hid her amusement with an effort. The Nazis made no attempt to offer formal sex education – their lessons for young women didn't include explanations for how babies were made, merely instruction covering pregnancy and the early years of motherhood – but anyone who grew up near a farm should have at least a rough idea of how a man could get a woman pregnant. Kathleen's mother had been reluctant to discuss the issue, yet even she had sat her daughter down one day – after she'd started her first period – and told her the facts of life. It had been an intensely embarrassing conversation, but it had been more instruction than the average German girl ever had. Unless their mothers were honest too ...
And that is supposed to happen just before marriage, Kathleen thought. She wasn't sure why her mother had given her the talk so early, unless she'd been conceived a month before her parents had married, bit she was grateful nonetheless. For a girl to know too much too soon ... it makes her and her parents look bad.
"It does," Kathleen said. She recalled some of the discussions she'd had with her school friends, girls pretending they weren't ignorant when it was clear they knew nothing, and cringed inwardly. The lack of any formal education meant the vacuum of their ignorance was filled by all manner of nonsense, from the girl being unable to get pregnant if she was on top to ideas that made her want to give up all thought of being married. "But if you were caught with him, what do you think would happen?"
Greta eyed her, rebelliously. "And if I want to stay here and marry him ...?"
"You can, if you want," Kathleen said. It would be interesting if Greta's father said no. The BDM tried to match good German girls with good German boys, and they'd support a match between Greta and a local youth. She wondered, idly, who'd come out ahead ... or if Greta would try to get pregnant before her family found out, to force their hand. "But you should at least consider the consequences first."
"I ..." Greta swallowed, and started again. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life in that little town."
Kathleen felt a wave of sympathy. Greta had almost no prospects for the future, beyond becoming a wife or mother. There weren't many careers for women, unless she remained in the BDM, and even that was secondary to being a wife. She would never have a position of her own, never have any real freedom ... her property, if she had any, would become her husband's. If she were lucky, she might marry a diplomat and travel ... even then, she would still belong to her husband. And nothing Kathleen could say or do would change that.
"I don't know what the future will hold," she said, finally. "But you have to keep your options open as long as possible. Getting married, or pregnant, now will close those options down, sharply. Maybe it will work out for you, maybe it won't. But you need to be careful."
Greta gave her an odd look. Kathleen realised, too late, that she'd acted very out of character. Gudrun would have slapped Greta on the spot, she was sure, and then scolded her so loudly the entire town would have heard the racket. There was no helping it now. Instead, she stepped back and looked Greta up and down. Her lips were a little puffy, and her face was streaked with tears, but that was nothing a quick wash wouldn't solve. She was lucky she hadn't gotten anything ... male ... on her uniform. There was no way she could have hidden that in a hurry, certainly not before it was too late. The local washerwomen would notice and then all hell would break loose.
"Go back to the hall and wash," Kathleen said, quietly. "And don't mention a word about this to anyone."
Greta nodded, then frowned. "Do you regret getting married?"
Kathleen shrugged. "I wasn't given a choice," she said. Gudrun certainly hadn't, if Kathleen was any judge. Marriages amongst that class were arranged, and the happy couple was given very little choice. "My husband and I learnt to get on, but it took time."
She pointed to the hall. "Go."
Greta turned and hurried away. Kathleen watched her go, feeling conflicted. Greta was a sweet girl, and yet she would betray her in an instant if she knew who Kathleen really was. Or what. And yet ... could she be blamed for believing what she'd been told? It was hard, almost impossible, to divest yourself of lies you learnt as a child. Kathleen knew Jews who refused to believe what had happened to their fellows in Germany, despite all the evidence. The idea that Germany was a civilised country was just too deeply rooted in their minds ...
Worry about it later, she told herself. Right now, it's time to go.