Storm Front (Twilight of the Gods Book 1) Read online

  It took Gudrun a moment to realise what he was trying to tell her. If someone could be so out of touch in a small factory, and she had no trouble in believing it, how much more out of touch were the people in the Reichstag, the men who ran the country? Had they started the war in South Africa because they believed, honestly believed, that victory would be no harder than baking a cake?

  “I believe my daughter misses you,” Volker Schulze said, after a moment. “You are, of course, quite welcome to visit any time you like.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Gudrun said. It wasn't entirely proper, but there would be a chaperone in the house if necessary. “And I’m sorry...”

  “For not being pregnant?” Volker Schulze asked, dryly. “I respect the Reichsführer’s feelings regarding the need to raise the next generation of German men, but I am enough of a traditionalist to believe that the happy couple should be married before they start producing children. A child should know his father.”

  Gudrun blushed, furiously. No one would really care if she was a virgin or not on her wedding night, not when everyone would understand her giving herself to her boyfriend before he went off to the war. The only real question would be if she’d had a child - and, if she had, what benefits the child could claim. Konrad’s baby could draw an SS pension as well as state child support; hell, if she claimed he’d been planning to marry her - and his family would likely back her up - she could claim his SS pension as well. But it was immaterial. She’d never let him take off her panties, let alone go inside her...

  “I agree,” she said, torn between an insane urge to giggle and a growing urge to just turn and run. Talking to her mother about men had been quite bad enough. “Please will you let me know the moment you hear anything?”

  “I’ll call your house directly,” Volker Schulze promised.

  He escorted her to the door - there was no sign of his wife or daughter - and waved her through. Gudrun gave him an impulsive hug, then hurried down the steps and back onto the road that led home. She had several other people she wanted to talk to before night fell, before she was expected home to assist her mother with the cooking. And then...

  His family doesn't know, she thought, as she walked past a handful of soldiers making their way to the barracks on the outskirts of the city. She’d been sure of it, but it never hurt to make sure. They would have told me something if they’d heard anything.

  She glanced at her watch, then turned the corner. A couple of boys she'd known from her first house lived there; she’d played with them as a little girl, before they’d gone to school and emerged too stuck-up to play with girls. They too had gone to the wars. No one would mind if she asked after them, surely? And one of them had been in the same unit as Hilde’s boyfriend. It would be interesting to hear what they had to say.

  ***

  Horst Albrecht knew, without false modesty, that he was a very smart young man. Everyone had told him so, right from the day he’d entered upper schooling in Germanica and impressed his tutors with his intelligence. Indeed, his family had been so proud of him that they’d entered him into the SS Academy two years before the normal application date; the SS, somewhat to Horst’s surprise, had accepted him without question. It had taken him a while to see why his superiors might be interested in a spy who was barely old enough to shave. But, by the time he’d graduated from one of the covert programs, he’d come to see the value of an agent who was literally eighteen years old.

  “The university is a breeding ground for ideas,” his trainers had told him, when he’d finally passed the course. Being a spy was far more than charging around like Otto Skorzeny, riding hot motorcycles and winning the hearts of beautiful women. “Some of those ideas will be very bad. Your task is to watch for those who spread bad ideas and report them.”

  It hadn't been hard, at first. Horst had entered the university with the 1984 class; he’d made friends, chatted happily to everyone and was generally well-liked by his peers. The students didn't want to look beyond the surface, not when they were escaping a regimented existence for the first time in their lives. Horst had no trouble making friends and generally being popular; hell, he’d even had a couple of girlfriends.

  He hadn’t expected Gudrun to be a troublemaker. Even now, hours after he’d made his slow way to the SS safehouse - it doubled as a boarding house for students from Germany East, supervised by a grim-faced matron who provided all the explanation other students needed for why they weren't invited to the safehouse - he still couldn't quite believe it. Gudrun was intelligent, true, and strikingly pretty; he might have dated her himself if she hadn't been involved with an SS trooper. Her father was a policeman, her brother a soldier in the Berlin Guard... she hardly fitted the profile of a potential troublemaker. There were few petty little resentments in her life, save for being born female...

  And she could overcome most of those problems by being a good student, Horst thought, as he opened the door into his apartment. A computer expert or rocket scientist would be worth her weight in gold, if she truly hated the thought of becoming a housewife.

  And yet, she’d said, quite clearly, that her boyfriend had been quietly shipped home, his wounds covered up. Her concern - and her anger - was quite justified.

  The apartment wasn't big, although it was vastly superior to the military barracks or slave pens for the Untermenschen in Germanica. He dropped his bag on the bed, clicked the kettle on and prepared a mug of coffee. He’d long since grown used to the idea of never touching a drop of alcohol, even on Victory Day. Who knew what would come out of his mouth when he was drunk? Once his drink was ready, he placed it on the bedside table and lay down to have a bit of a think.

  Technically, he should report Gudrun at once. She had doubts - and, instead of burying them, she was trying to do something, something that might easily turn out to be treacherous. Horst couldn't imagine what she had in mind - eight students or eighty, armed rebellion was unlikely to succeed and she had to know it - but it was his duty to report her to his superiors and let them decide how to handle the matter. It might come to nothing, he knew, or it might become something truly serious. His superiors might decide to quietly vanish Gudrun and her fellows, shipping them off to Germany East or merely dumping them into a slave camp; the girls, at least, would make good breeding stock.

  And yet, he too had his doubts.

  He’d liked Konrad Schulze, the first time they’d met. It wasn't something he could show, not when it would risk his cover, but he’d liked the older man. In some ways, Konrad had reminded Horst of his brother, who hadn’t actually vanished into America and never returned. He’d been blonde, blue-eyed and muscular, so muscular that Horst had wondered if he’d been used as the template for countless recruiting posters. Horst had even used his security codes to look up the young man’s file and discovered, to his amusement, that Konrad was on the short list for promotion. Someone thought very highly of him.

  But they don’t now, Horst thought, savagely. They see him as an embarrassment.

  It was a bitter thought. Konrad had been no covert agent, no undercover operative all too aware that even the merest hint of suspicion would mean instant death or permanent incarceration in a black prison. He’d certainly had no reason to believe he would simply be abandoned by his superiors, if he were caught by the enemy. No, he’d worn his black uniform proudly. Konrad should have been given full honours, if he'd been killed, or brought home on a pension if he'd been badly wounded. Instead...

  He didn't think Gudrun had lied, but it would be easy enough to check her story. The computers in the apartment - another reason not to let anyone who wasn't an SS operative enter the building - were linked directly to the Berlin Network. He logged on, accessed the hospital records and searched for Konrad’s name. The computers were slow - they hadn't had university students fiddling with the coding to make them a little more efficient - but it didn't take him long to uncover records belonging to one Konrad Schulze. He’d been badly wounded - the file didn't go into
details, suggesting that no one had told the hospital administrators very much - and wasn't expected to survive.

  They should have triaged him, he thought, genuinely shocked. It was an accepted fact of military life that badly-wounded soldiers were often allowed to die so less-wounded soldiers could be saved, yet... it was clear, just from reading between the lines, that the medical staff had worked desperately to save him. And yet, the brain damage alone almost guaranteed that Konrad would never recover. The bastards could have given him a mercy killing and come up with a cover story: instead they seemed content to leave him on life support indefinitely. A hero... and they chose to leave him a vegetable!

  Horst kept his feelings under tight control as he logged out of the hospital network, then checked the SS personnel database. Konrad’s file had been marked inactive - and it wasn't the only one. Cross-referencing the database showed Horst several hundred other troopers who seemed to be permanently in bureaucratic limbo, marked as neither dead nor alive. And if that was true of the SS, it was very likely true of the army too.

  She didn't lie, he thought, numbly. And that means... what?

  He turned the computer off, finished his coffee and lay back on his bed. He’d been raised to worship the SS, just like everyone else in Germany East. The SS was all that stood between the settlements and insurgents who would happily kill German men, rape German women and eat German children. He’d grown up reading horror stories, all of which had happy endings when the SS rescued the women or avenged their deaths. Joining the SS hadn't been a hard decision at all. They’d been his heroes!

  And now they were being betrayed, betrayed by their own leaders.

  Gudrun would run into trouble, sooner or later. Horst had no doubt of it. She was intelligent, and she knew to guard her tongue around strangers, but she had no way of knowing how things worked in the world. Hell, she’d managed to invite an SS spy to her very first meeting! She couldn't get very far without help...

  ... And Horst, who knew his duty called for him to report her, was seriously considering offering her that help.

  It was a hard choice to make. If he were caught, his family would disown him - and it probably wouldn't be enough to save their lives. It would be easy to alert the SS, to have Gudrun and the rest of the students put under surveillance, and put an end to the whole affair... but he didn't want to put an end to the whole affair. He wanted her to do... what? What would she do if she proved her point?

  Perhaps I’ll just wait and see if she has a plan, he told himself. And if she does, I can decide what to do about it.

  Chapter Eight

  Wewelsburg Castle, Germany

  20 July 1985

  It was blasphemy to even consider it, but there were times when Reichsführer-SS Karl Holliston thought that Heinrich Himmler had been a very strange man. Karl understood the value of strength - and the will to use it - as much as any other SS officer, yet Himmler’s obsession with the occult had undermined the last five years of his career, allowing him to be gently nudged aside by his former subordinates. Wewelsburg Castle itself was a grand monument to that obsession; parts of the castle had been redesigned to look like something from the Grand Order of Teutonic Knights, while other parts were designed to serve as the SS’s western centre of operations. There was even a monument to the Holy Grail in the lower levels, perched in the centre of a round table.

  And some of Himmler’s other ideas might have caught on, if he’d had longer, Karl thought. Shrines to the old gods, grand ceremonies of might and magic...

  He shook his head in rueful amusement. Rumours of virgin sacrifices and blood oaths had hovered around the castle for as long as the SS had occupied it - and, indeed, there were some very strange cults and secret societies rumoured to exist within the SS itself. Karl had never seen anything to indicate that they even existed, but that proved nothing. The SS was a multitude of competing factions and some of them were very secretive indeed. And yet, what need did they have of the old gods? All that was needed was the will to power.

  A strong will can overcome anything, Karl thought, remembering his training as a young officer. They’d been pushed to the limit, the weak falling by the wayside or dying in training; the survivors strong enough to keep going, whatever the world threw at them. It had been twenty years since Karl had seen active service, since he’d been promoted into a desk job, but he’d done his best to stay in shape. And the will to power is everything.

  His buzzer rang. “Herr Reichsführer, Obergruppenfuehrer Felix Kortig is here,” his secretary said. “Shall I send him in?”

  “Yes, please,” Karl said. Maria had been with him ever since he’d been promoted into high office, her status rising with his. If she had any interests outside the office, he’d never seen them. He could be rude to anyone else, but not her. “And hold all calls until I’ve finished with him.”

  He looked up as the door opened, revealing a blonde-haired man wearing a black uniform and carrying a pistol at his belt. Karl couldn't avoid a flicker of envy as Obergruppenfuehrer Felix Kortig strode forward and snapped out a precise salute. Kortig might be an Obergruppenfuehrer, but he was still jumping out of planes with the young bucks, while Karl himself was stuck in an office, playing political games with the civilians and the military.

  “Herr Reichsführer,” Kortig said. “Heil Bormann!”

  “Heil Bormann,” Karl echoed. “You may speak freely - and relax.”

  Kortig relaxed, minimally. “Jawohl, Herr Reichsführer,” he said. “You wished to speak with me?”

  “Yes,” Karl said. He tapped the papers on his desk. “I trust you have had an opportunity to study the proposals for Operation Headshot?”

  “I have,” Kortig said. “They’re unworkable.”

  Karl blinked in surprise, despite himself. Very few people would tell the Reichsführer-SS that one of his pet concepts was unworkable, which might explain why Himmler had been able to waste so many resources on his occult research. Sending teams of dedicated researchers to Tibet, even in the aftermath of the war, hadn't been too costly, but transporting ancient artefacts all the way back to Germany had proved a major strain. The rest of the Reich hadn't been too pleased at the prospect of a diplomatic incident with China, even if the Chinese had been fighting a civil war at the time.

  He pushed the thought aside, angrily. “Unworkable?”

  “Yes, Herr Reichsführer,” Kortig said.

  Karl bit down on his anger with an effort. “Otto Skorzeny plotted to jump into London in 1950 and slaughter the British Government,” he said. “Wouldn't that have been a more challenging operation?”

  “The operation was planned in the context of an outright invasion,” Kortig pointed out, smoothly. “I have seen those plans, Herr Reichsführer; Skorzeny intended to jump into Westminster, kill as many government ministers as he could find and then escape into the streets of London. Given the lack of extraction plans, I suspect Skorzeny believed the whole operation to be a suicide mission. The best the commandos could reasonably hope for was to go to ground in London and wait for the invasion force to seize the city.”

  He tapped the map, sharply. “It was never envisaged, at the time the plan was drawn up, that the British would be our allies, nor that we would be trying to put a friendly government into Westminster. The understanding was that they were our enemies and their country would be ruled with an iron hand.”

  Karl nodded, once. Britain had been - and still was - the Reich’s most determined enemy, one protected by a body of water that might as well have been a castle moat. Hitler had shied away from trying to launch an offensive across the English Channel, when the British had been at their weakest; in 1950, with American forces based in Britain, an invasion would have been a very chancy affair indeed. And then the British had developed their own nuclear weapons and plans for a later invasion had been abandoned. Taking London would have been pointless if Berlin had been thrown into the fire.

  “Pretoria is a different case, Herr Reichsführer,
” Kortig said, his finger tracing positions on the map. “Their government is scattered, to reduce the risk of being decapitated by a suicide bomber, and we have been unable to obtain solid information on who is where at any one time. In addition, the South African troops protecting Pretoria are experienced battle-hardened veterans, men who are well used to coping with surprise attacks and driving back the attackers before they can do major damage...”

  “Our stormtroopers are far better trained than black-assed terrorists,” Karl said, icily.

  “It won’t matter,” Kortig said. “At best, we may eliminate one or two senior government ministers, but I couldn't guarantee we would get them all. The South Africans would know we’d effectively declared war on them. These are not Italians, Herr Reichsführer; the South Africans will strike back at our own forces within their country. Our alliance with them will be at an end. The only people who will gain from the whole affair will be the blacks, who will no doubt sit back and watch as the whites destroy each other.”

  He shook his head. “South Africa is not a country that can be easily bullied, Herr Reichsführer,” he said. “Operation Headshot is a disaster waiting to happen.”