Chosen of the Valkyries (Twilight Of The Gods Book 2) (8 page)

“What an idiot,” someone muttered from behind him.

Kurt ignored the comment and watched as the remaining evacuees were hustled onto the buses.  He couldn’t help noticing that some of the girls waved cheerfully at the soldiers, blowing kisses as the bus roared to life.  No doubt there had been some flirting going on, even though the soldiers were
meant
to be helping convert the town into a strongpoint.  Who knew?  It might even lead to marriage.  Soldiers were encouraged to marry young, just to sire the next generation of Germans before they were killed in one of the
Reich’s
wars.

Or it might lead to nothing
, he thought, as he made his way towards the makeshift command post.  The radio antenna had been positioned some distance from the CP, just to ensure the SS didn't take out the CP as well as the radio when they tracked it down. 
The flirters may never see one another again
.

“Message from HQ,” the radio operator said.  “
Generalmajor
Gath is on his way to inspect the defence lines.”

Kurt swore, inwardly.  They’d barely started ... had the main offensive begun already?  He peered through the window, looking eastwards for some signs of trouble, but all seemed safe and tranquil.  Maybe
Generalmajor
Gunter Gath - the CO of the Eastern Defence Line - merely wanted to get a feel for the terrain before the shooting actually began.  Or maybe he thought that Kurt - who was handling responsibilities well above his pay grade - should be supervised.

Or maybe he wants to kiss my ass
, he thought, darkly.  He’d never met Gath in person. 
I have a sister on the Reich Council, after all
.

“Acknowledge the message,” he said.  
Generalmajor
Gath was already on his way.  There was no point in trying to deter him, not now.  “And then request additional landmines and AT weapons from stores.”

He sucked in his breath as he walked back outside.  His men were already hard at work, digging trenches, fortifying a number of houses and emplacing antitank weapons in the most advantageous positions.  Kurt had no idea
precisely
how the SS intended to advance, but the town was right in the middle of the shortest route to Berlin, controlling one road and far too close to the
autobahn
.  They practically
had
to secure the town to keep their flanks unmolested.  But he had no illusions about how long his men could stand off a determined offensive.

“We should have time to run through two of the drills before nightfall,” Loeb said, as he joined Kurt outside the CP.  “Once we know what we’re doing, it should be easier to fall back to the next set of defences.”

He leaned forward.  “Morale is high,
Herr Leutnant
,” he added.  “But there’s plenty of concern about the SS.”

Kurt nodded.  The men had
reason
to be concerned.  Apart from the old hands, like Loeb, they had very little actual
experience
.  Sure, their training had been savage - it wasn't uncommon for a handful of recruits to die in training accidents - but no amount of training could compensate for actual experience.  The Berlin Guard had been earmarked for deployment to South Africa, yet the uprising had taken place before they’d been redeployed ...

... But the SS had no shortage of experience.

It was a sobering thought.  The men in black, the men on the far side of the border, were combat veterans.  They would have been in almost continuous combat against insurgents in Germany East, when they hadn't been deployed to South Africa.  They’d know tricks his men had never had a chance to master; they'd know what worked and what
didn't
work.  And they would feel it in their bones. 
They
wouldn't be dependent on textbooks to tell them what to do.

“They have to be stopped,” he said.  “We
did
beat off an attack on the
Reichstag
.”

“True,” Loeb agreed.  “But that was pretty much a gamble on their part.  Victory would have brought them everything; defeat ... didn't really harm them, one way or the other.  Here ... they will be bringing to bear everything they can against us.”

“I know,” Kurt said.  “And we will defeat them.”

He frowned as he heard the helicopters clattering through the sky, a single transport escorted by a trio of armed attack helicopters.  
Generalmajor
Gath wasn't taking any chances, Kurt saw; the SS wouldn't hesitate to try to assassinate him if it could.  There were too many holes in the command network for
Generalmajor
Gath to be replaced quickly, if something happened to him.  No doubt Gath was right on top of the list of officers to be killed ...

Right below Gudrun and her allies
, Kurt thought.  He still found it hard to believe that his sister - his
sister
- had managed to crack the
Reich
in two, but it was undeniable. 
And what happens to her if we lose
?

“I hope you’re right,” Loeb said.  He shook his head.  “Too many men are about to die either way.”

“I know,” Kurt said.  The lead helicopter settled to the ground, its escorts swinging around the town as they watched for trouble.  “But defeat means the end of the world.”

Chapter Seven

Berlin, Germany

3 September 1985

“I trust you had a pleasant flight?”

“It was smooth,” Gudrun said.  She’d never flown before the uprising, but she’d discovered she enjoyed it.  “If there hadn't been so many delays, we would have made it back to Berlin before nightfall.”

“I dare say it doesn't matter,” Volker Schulze said.  “What did the French have to say?”

Gudrun hesitated.  She wasn't sure
how
to react to Schulze, these days.  He would have been her father-in-law if she’d married Konrad, a glowering presence at family meals ... she thought she could have endured it. Some of her friends
hated
their in-laws, but Schulze wasn't a bad man.  But now ... he was Chancellor of Germany, ruler of the western half of the Third
Reich
and it had been
Gudrun
who’d started the chain of events that had put him in the big chair.  She wondered, sometimes, if he blamed her for Konrad’s death ... or if he still thought of her as a little girl.  He’d known her since she was in diapers.

“They’re willing to keep sending supplies as long as we grant them political and economic independence,” she said, flatly.  “They also want the occupied territories back, but I did my best to dissuade them.”

“I doubt they will accept it indefinitely,” Schulze said, gravely.  He turned his chair, slightly, so he could peer out of the window into the distance.  “No requests for military or technological support?”

“No,” Gudrun said.  “All they want is the
Gastarbeiters
back.”

“That may cause some problems, in the short term,” Schulze mused.  “But we will have to learn how to handle it.”

He turned back to look at her.  “How long do you think Jacquinot can hang on to power?”

“I’m not sure,” Gudrun said.  She looked up at Horst.  “Do you have an opinion?”

“It depends,” Horst said.  “If the SS retakes power, I imagine Jacquinot will get down on his knees for them and stay there until he dies.  Ouvrard and his friends will be quietly removed, along with every other nationalist they can find.  There will be no hope of resistance.”

He shrugged.  “But if we win, or if the civil war bogs down, it will become a great deal harder to make predictions,” he added, after a moment.  “They may offer troops to us in exchange for more concessions.”

“Or make use of the time to build up their own armies,” Schulze said.

“I imagine they are already working on expanding their forces,” Horst said.  “But they’ll be very careful about picking a fight with us.”

“So they probably won’t try to go for Alsace-Lorraine,” Schulze said.

“I don’t think so,” Horst agreed.  “We wouldn't let that pass - and they know it.”

“So they know we are weakened, but not too weakened,” Schulze mused.  “As long as they stay quiet for the moment ... we’ll honour our side of the bargain.”

Gudrun nodded.  “Has there been any news from the east?”

“The flood of refugees has been slowing down sharply,” Schulze said.  “I don’t know if that means they’re clamping down on population movements or if everyone who wanted to flee the SS has managed to leave already.  We may never know for sure.”

“True,” Horst agreed.  “The SS has always been pretty popular in the east.”

“So you keep saying,” Gudrun said.  Hardly anyone knew that
Horst
had once been an SS agent, a spy who’d switched sides.  “I think I got the message.”

“You have to remember it,” Horst warned.  “You may think that Holliston is a lunatic and his followers madmen, but there are plenty of people in the east who will see him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler.  I don’t think they’ll crack under the economic crisis any time soon.”

“Of course not,” Schulze agreed.  “The east can feed itself.”

He took a breath.  “Right now, all we can do is muster our forces and prepare to fight - to the bitter end, if necessary,” he added.  “I’d like you to visit the recruit training camps just outside the city, if you don't mind.  Let them see what they’re fighting for.”

“Of course,” Gudrun said.  She rather suspected that Schulze didn't quite know where to put her, but she understood.  “Has there been any word from the Americans?”

“They’re making approaches to us, but it’s very quiet,” Schulze said.  “It would not do for anyone to get wind of them.”

Gudrun nodded in agreement.  Every last schoolchild in the Third
Reich
was told, time and time again, that the United States was a capitalist nightmare, a melange of interracial and incestuous breeding, a place where women led men and children ran riot in the streets.  She was sure that was a lie - discovering that Jews weren't misshapen monsters had shocked her to the core - but far too many Germans believed it without question.  The mere
suggestion
that the Americans were backing the provisional government would cripple the government’s legitimacy.  And it wasn't as if it
had
much legitimacy.

“And they will certainly be considering their own interests,” Horst warned.  “They will probably not be displeased if the
Reich
split into two pieces.”

“Or more,” Schulze agreed.  “Germany North is tightly tied to us, but Germany South and Germany Arabia
might
manage to go their own way.  I doubt either we or Germany East have the ability to force them back into line.”

“And they would become far more powerful, relatively speaking,” Gudrun said.  International politics, she’d discovered, had a great deal in common with playground skirmishing.  “They would prefer us broken and weakened.”

“Yeah,” Schulze said.  “They may help us, but they’ll look to their own interests first.”

Gudrun nodded and rose.  “I’ll see you at the meeting tonight?”

Schulze, thankfully, didn't look surprised to hear she was intending to attend the
Reich
Council meeting.  Gudrun was fairly sure that
some
of the councillors - particularly Arthur Morgenstern - thought she should be playing with dolls or looking for a suitable man, rather than involving herself in politics.  It was infuriating, given that none of them would hold the positions they did if it wasn't for her.  But then, Morgenstern had an excuse, of sorts.  His daughter was no older than Gudrun and
she
had a tendency to be silly.

So does her mother
, Gudrun thought. 
But no one can deny she’s effective
.

“It starts at seven,” Schulze said.  “Be seeing you.”

Gudrun glanced at Horst as they walked out of the office, passing the pair of armed guards and heading down the corridor.  No one was taking chances, these days; everyone believed that the SS could drop a second commando team onto the roof at any time.  Gudrun had been told that the SS would have to get very lucky to sneak an aircraft through the growing network of air defence radars covering the
Reich
, but the SS had planned and carried out far more daring dangerous operations in the past.  The guards - and clerical workers - were all armed, ready to fight at a moment’s notice.  She couldn't help wondering if that meant they would accidentally wind up firing on each other if there actually
was
an attack.

“He seems distracted,” she mused, as soon as they were out of earshot.  “Is that normal?”

“He was a factory worker only a few months ago,” Horst reminded her.  “Now he’s lost his son, seen his government overthrown and found himself forced to fill a pair of very big shoes.”

Gudrun nodded, feeling a stab of guilt.  It had been
her
fault, after all.  She knew she was being stupid - she knew the
Reich
would have had problems with or without her - but she couldn't help feeling guilty.  Hundreds of people had already died - perhaps thousands, in Germany East - and it was all her fault. 
She’d
started the ball rolling. 

“You need a bigger portfolio,” Horst added, as they walked down the stairs.  “I imagine everyone else on the council is already jockeying for position.”

“I know,” Gudrun said.  It was a minor frustration - and, she suspected, a bigger one for Schulze.  He had a very mixed cabinet and almost
all
of them were trying to build power bases of their own.  “But apart from representing the students ... what can I do?”

“Probably aim for the interior ministry,” Horst said, after a moment.  “You don’t have much experience, but the people underneath you would know what to do.  You’d only have to set policy.  And you wouldn’t be warped and twisted by years spent climbing up the ladder.”

Gudrun shook her head.  “It might be better to run for a seat on the
Reichstag
, when we finally hold elections,” she said.  “I’d have a reasonable chance of winning.”

“A
reasonable
chance,” Horst repeated.  “I’d say very few people would dare to stand against you.”

“Hah,” Gudrun said. 

She shook her head in irritation.  She
was
famous, true.  But a sizable percentage of the population refused to believe that a young
girl
- a
girl
- could possibly start an underground political movement.  As far as they were concerned, Gudrun was nothing more than a latter-day Irma Grese; a woman, true, but not one who did anything for herself.  There were quite a few people who claimed that the
true
originator of the movement had been killed by the SS - or had simply been too cowardly to reveal himself.  They certainly didn't give any credit to
Gudrun
!

“I’m serious,” Horst said.  “But tell me.  How long will it take for the various power blocks to outmanoeuvre the
Reichstag
?”

Gudrun scowled.  She hadn't known much about the inner workings of the
Reich
a year ago, but she’d always been a fast learner.  The
Reichstag
had been nothing more than a rubber stamp for years, ever since Adolf Hitler had claimed supreme power for himself.  Its members barely even met, save to engage in pointless ratification of laws and budgets hashed out by the
Reich
Council.  Most of them had surrendered their posts without a fight almost as soon as it became clear the provisional government wasn't going to collapse overnight. 

And the Reichstag has no independent means to pressure the government bureaucracies
, she thought, sourly. 
Their approval or disapproval is largely irrelevant
.

“Not long,” she said, finally.

“Exactly,” Horst said.  They reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the garage, walking across to the nearest government car.  “The
Reichstag
doesn't control anything,
ergo
the
Reichstag
is powerless.  You need to fix that problem or our government will eventually collapse - or explode into chaos.”

Gudrun sighed, inwardly, as she climbed into the car.  Horst was right, she told herself, as the engine roared to life.  But she didn't
want
to take a post she didn't understand.  It would be easy for her subordinates to outmanoeuvre her too, just as easily as the ministries could outmanoeuvre the
Reichstag
.  The only way she could think of to give the
Reichstag
some clout was to put it in charge of distributing taxes, but the Finance Ministry wouldn't give that up in a hurry.  Hans Krueger might have been the closest thing to a moderate on the old
Reich
Council - he’d switched sides in a hurry - yet that didn't make him a pushover. 

It would mean giving up some of his power
, she thought, rubbing her eyes.