Ragnarok

Chapter Eleven

Germanica (Moscow), Germany East

1 November 1985

Gudrun felt sick.

She struggled out of a morass of tiredness, dimly aware — on one level — that something was badly wrong. Her entire body felt wretched, as if she’d drunk herself senseless and then just kept drinking until she plunged into darkness. She coughed and retched, her stomach twisting painfully as she tried to throw up. Her eyes opened, only to snap closed again as brilliant white light sent daggers lancing into her mind. And her body felt filthy…

Her gorge rose. She twisted, remembering — somehow — that she was on a bed, only to lose her balance and fall down to the floor. The sudden shock of pain sent her head spinning, again; she retched again and again, dry-heaving violently until her throat and mouth hurt as much as her stomach. But there was nothing in her stomach to expel. She swallowed, hard, despite the bad taste in her mouth. Her entire body felt weak and frail, as if she had a head cold mixed with savage drunkenness.

I’ve been drinking, she thought, numbly.

She hadn’t felt so… so unpleasant since the night she’d drunk a stein of beer at a friend’s house two years ago. Her father had laughed at her, she recalled. He’d pointed out, rather sarcastically, that it was better she learn the lessons of drunkenness now, rather when she was older and raising children of her own. It was one of the few times she recalled her father being less angry than her mother about anything. Young women weren’t supposed to drink, her mother had said. It was a masculine art. Gudrun would have argued the point if her head hadn’t felt like a fragile eggshell…

Clarity returned with a shock. She was in a prison cell, in Germanica. And she’d been drugged.

She forced her eyes to open, despite the bright light. The cell was just as she remembered: small, cramped and very secure. No one seemed to be standing on the other side of the bars, watching her, but she knew it was just an illusion. There were, no doubt, hundreds of people watching her through the cameras. She would have been horrified at the thought of so many people watching her while she was naked, if she hadn’t felt so rotten. It was hard to care about anything when part of her just wanted to curl up and die.

Her body felt weak, but she forced herself to sit up anyway, despite the throbbing pain in her forehead. Perhaps she’d banged it when she fell… she honestly wasn’t sure. What had they given her? Horst had talked about drugs, but he hadn’t gone into any real detail. He’d seemed to believe that being captured was the end of the world — it would have been, if she’d been identified last time she’d been taken prisoner. Now… her head swam and she grabbed hold of the bed, using the hard metal framework to steady herself. She was damned if she was going to let them break her, not like this…

They can keep feeding you drugs, a little voice whispered at the back of her mind. You can’t eat without taking drugs.

She shuddered, swallowing hard to fight down the urge to be sick again. They could have jabbed her with a needle at any point, but instead they’d drugged her food. Why? To make it clear that she was helpless? It wasn’t as if they couldn’t hold her down and inject her with whatever they pleased. Or did they want to avoid damaging her? Or…

It was hard, so hard, to think clearly. The world blurred around her for a long moment, everything going so dim that she wasn’t sure if she’d fallen back into the darkness or merely hovered — for a long chilling moment — on the edge of oblivion. She tried to stand, she tried to clamber back onto the bed, but her body refused to cooperate. It crossed her mind, as she struggled, that she must be giving the unseen watchers one hell of a view. But she was too tired to care.

Damn them, she thought.

She heard the outer door opening behind her, but her head refused to turn as the inner door jangled open. Gudrun tensed as… someone… stepped into the cell, then cringed as strong hands pushed her against the bed. It was a man, she was sure. She could hear deep masculine breathing. And she was helpless, in an utterly undignified position… she had to fight to twist her head enough to see him. A man, wearing a white coat and a mask that obscured his face, was pressing a needle against her upper arm. She tried to fight, but it was pointless. The man took a blood sample, then casually turned and walked out of the cell, closing the inner door behind him. Gudrun slumped against the side of the bed, fighting back tears. It was all she could do not to fall back to the floor.

They can do that to me any time they like, she thought. A sense of helplessness and despair threatened to overwhelm her, mocking her. She’d started the movement that had overthrown an entire government, but now she was utterly helpless. Her jailers could do anything to her and there was nothing she could do to stop them. And to think I thought the worst thing that could happen to me was being exiled to Germany East.

She almost giggled at the thought. Karl Holliston and his cronies had to be having fits, after losing everything to a slip of a girl! They’d never seen her as a real threat — they’d never seen any woman as being fit for anything other than bearing children and raising them. Now… they had to come to terms with what she’d done to them. They might kill her — if they could bring themselves to sentence her to death — but it wouldn’t change the facts on the ground…

Her throat cracked. She tried to swallow again, but her mouth was too dry. Her entire body felt dehydrated. How long had she been asleep? She could generally get by on four or five hours of sleep per day, but now? How long had it been since she’d been captured? It felt as if she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for days, yet there was no way to know for sure any longer. Konrad had been fed through a tube. She saw no reason why they couldn’t feed her while she was drugged out of her mind.

A thought struck her, sending shivers down her spine. What had she told them while she’d been drugged? Horst had told her that the SS could get anything out of anyone, once they started using the right drugs. Could she have been interrogated? She didn’t recall anything past the moment she’d eaten the drugged food, but what did that mean? Could she have been interrogated without any memory of it? And if so, what could she have told them?

But I don’t know anything, she thought, numbly.

It was true, she thought. She knew who was on the Provisional Government, but that was no secret. The SS had still had agents within the Reichstag, even after the uprising; they’d know who had taken a seat at the table, who had resigned, who had headed east to join the remainder of the former government. She knew who’d been part of the original protest movement, but the SS would know that too. And she didn’t know anything about the Provisional Government’s future plans.

We were concentrating on staying alive, she reminded herself. We didn’t have any real plans for what we’d do after we broke the siege.

The door opened, again. This time, she managed to turn her head in time to see two more masked men enter the cell, one carrying a tray of food. His companion took her by the arms and hauled her up to the bed, pushing her bare back against the cold stone wall. She shivered, helplessly, unable to avoid a flicker of bitter gratitude as they held a cup of water to her lips and forced her to drink. It tasted normal, as far as she could tell, but that proved nothing. She was sure there were plenty of drugs that had no taste at all.

She couldn’t help feeling like an invalid — or a baby — as they fed her, placing the soft food on a spoon and pressing it into her mouth. She’d always feared that she would have to feed Grandpa Frank like that, one day; now, she couldn’t help feeling an odd sense of guilt for how badly she’d disliked him, before the uprising. But then, Grandpa Frank had had his own reasons for feeling guilty too. The memory made her look up at the two masked men. What did they have to feel guilty about? What had they done to countless helpless victims?

The men finished feeding her and withdrew, as silently as they’d come. Gudrun watched them go, feeling stronger as the food worked its way through her body. It didn’t feel as if she’d been drugged again, although she had no way to be sure. All she could do was hope and pray that she hadn’t been drugged. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to stand up and stride from one end of the cell to the other, then back again. Her legs still felt wobbly, as if they were made of spaghetti, but she pushed them forward anyway. Horst had warned her that she would need to do something — anything — to keep her mind together. And yet, the thought of him almost brought her to her knees. Would she ever see him again?

She closed her eyes, leaning against the metal bars as the full weight of what she’d lost struck home. Horst had loved her — no, he did love her. He’d turned on his masters, on his comrades, for her. And he’d risked everything just to keep her safe. And now… she tried to imagine what he would do, if he’d survived the ambush. He’d come for her, wouldn’t he?

He was born in Germany East, she thought. He could get to Germanica without problems…

She shook her head, bitterly. Horst might not have survived the ambush, back when she’d been captured. And even if he had survived… Germanica would be heavily defended, with countless stormtroopers dedicated to keeping Karl Holliston alive. If a team of SS commandos hadn’t been able to purge the Reichstag in Berlin of the makeshift Provisional Government, how could one lone man get into the Reichstag in Germanica and get her out?

And if they catch him, she told herself, they’ll make sure his death is slow and painful.

She heard the outer door opening again and looked up. Two more masked men — she thought they weren’t the same men — were looking at her, their eyes travelling up and down her naked body. She was just too wretched to care, even though she knew they might intend to rape her. The SS wanted to break her — and how better to make it clear that she no longer had any control over herself than by raping her? She braced herself as they came closer, intending to fight even though she knew it would be futile. Perhaps she’d land a blow that would force them to kill her…

“We have to talk,” the lead man said. He glanced up at the cameras. “My people are watching us at the moment.”

Gudrun stared at her. “What… what is this?”

The man ignored her question. “Is there any way to end the war?”

“You could try talking,” Gudrun said. What was this? Who was he? A friend and ally, or just someone playing a mind game? She had no doubt the SS would use every dirty trick it could think of to break her. “This war could go on for a very long time.”

“Your comrades are planning an offensive,” the man said. “But whatever happens, the Reich itself will be gravely weakened.”

Gudrun forced herself to meet his eyes. She was dead anyway, no matter what she said. It was rare for girls of good German blood to be executed — the SS normally exiled them to Germany East, marrying them off to settlers who would keep them in line — but she doubted she’d be that lucky. Karl Holliston would want to make a terrible example of her — or, if that proved futile, shoot her in the head and dump her body in an unmarked grave. There was no hope of survival.

“Does the Reich deserve to survive?”

The man shrugged. “Can we survive?”

Gudrun fought down the urge to laugh. “Who are you?”

“Some people who want to find a different way,” the man said. “We need to know if there is a different way.”

“Overthrow Holliston,” Gudrun said, sarcastically. She doubted the man would do anything of the sort. “And then we will talk.”

The man looked back at her, evenly. “And what terms will we receive?”

Gudrun lost it. She started to giggle, helplessly.

“I’m locked in a prison cell, stark naked,” she said, when she managed to regain control of herself. Someone had removed the last of her clothing while she’d been asleep. “What sort of terms do you think I could offer you?”

“Your government,” the man said. There was a hint of… something… in his voice that nagged at her mind. “What sort of terms would they offer us?”

Gudrun forced herself to think about it. The Provisional Government would have liked to control the entire Greater German Reich, but practicality told against it. The economy was in tatters. There was no way the Provisional Government could keep control of the subject nations, let alone keep fighting the war in South Africa. And Germany East? Perhaps, as Volker had suggested, it would be better if Germany East went its own way.

“They would probably agree to your independence from the rest of the Reich,” she said, finally. She doubted there was any form of compromise that would keep the Reich unified, not one that would suit both sides. “As long as you didn’t pose a threat to us, we wouldn’t pose a threat to you.”

The second man leaned forward. “You’d just let us go?”

“Yes,” Gudrun said. “I don’t think we could afford to keep you.”

She sighed. “But Holliston is the real problem,” she added. “As long as he’s alive, there can be no peace.”

The first man seemed to shrug. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” Gudrun said. She wondered if she dared ask how long she’d been in the cell, then decided she probably couldn’t trust their answers. “But Germany Prime and Germany East have been separating for years. Culturally, you’re very different from us. I don’t think you’ll tamely accept all the changes we’ve written into the laws…”

“Of course not,” the first man said. “Imagine giving everyone the vote.”

Gudrun snorted. The Reichstag had been nothing more than a rubber stamp for the Reich Council for decades. No one had taken it seriously — a seat on the Reichstag was nothing more than a convenient place for the council to dispose of their political enemies. But now, the Reichstag would regain its prominence in the Reich… if they ever managed to end the war and hold free elections. She could understand why the Easterners might sneer at it…

We gave everyone the vote, she thought. It had been hard, very hard, to convince the Provisional Government that women should have the vote. She’d had to fight a long battle to ensure that women, like men, could vote from the age of twenty. And Germany Prime, the most densely-populated part of the Reich, would have a major advantage.

She shook her head. There were hundreds of differences between the two regions, ranging from how children were raised to the private ownership of weapons and ammunition. She honestly didn’t see how they could come to terms. Holliston might not be popular — she had no idea how popular he was — but the SS was very popular. Invading and occupying Germany East might spark an insurrection against the Provisional Government.

“Get rid of Holliston,” she said. “And then you can talk to the Provisional Government.”

“We shall see,” the first man said.

He turned and led the way out of the cell, his companion giving Gudrun one last look before following him. Gudrun watched them go, feeling utterly unsure of herself. Were they genuinely planning to take steps against Karl Holliston? Or were they merely trying to trick her into implicating herself? But it wasn’t as if the SS needed an excuse to execute her. They already had her at their mercy.

She sighed as she turned and walked back to the bed. There was nothing to do in the cell, nothing but wait for something to happen to her. She sat down on the bed, resting her hands behind her head. There was no point in trying to conceal anything from the watching cameras…

Maybe they will overthrow Holliston, she thought. She found it hard to believe that Holliston was universally beloved, particularly after he’d assumed the title of Führer. A Führer with real power would be a nightmare. And if they don’t…

She shook her head. She wanted — she needed — to believe she had allies, people whose interests matched her own. And if she could convince them to turn against Holliston, she might just be able to get out of the cell before it was too late.

And if they are plants, she thought grimly, it isn’t as if I can implicate myself any further.