Ragnarok

Chapter Fourteen

Berlin/Front Lines, Germany Prime

3 November 1985

Berlin looked… different.

Volker Schulze stood on the roof of the Reichstag, peering east. The city was dark and silent, the curfew holding now the series of street parties had come to an end. Armed soldiers were patrolling, he knew, watching for trouble, but none of them were visible as he looked down at the streets. Berlin was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

They know the offensive is going to begin, he thought, as a cool breeze washed across the rooftop. And any spies still in the city know too.

It wasn’t a reassuring thought. Berlin had been riddled with spies, even before the uprising; entire divisions of informers, ranging from unhappy wives and bratty children to paid provocateurs, had been uncovered in the RSHA’s files. The Reich had told its citizens, time and time again, that it was good and right to inform on one’s friends and family, if they showed signs of disloyalty. And he had no doubt there were rings of spies and informers who had never been listed in the files, not when the different factions in the Reich were struggling for supremacy. He would be surprised if Karl Holliston didn’t know — already — that the Provisional Government was gearing up for an offensive against Germany East.

But he might not believe the reports, he told himself, although he knew it was nothing more than wishful thinking. Launching an offensive now is risky as hell.

He scowled as it grew colder. It would be colder still further eastwards as winter descended, a winter that had shattered entire armies in days gone by. Volker had fought in the east as a young man. He knew how dangerous the Russian winter could be. And yet he’d given orders that ran the risk — the very real risk — of leaving his forces caught outside winter quarters when the snow finally descended. There had been no choice, he told himself, but it still worried him. General Winter had come far too close to beating the Third Reich on its own.

There’s no choice, he told himself. He’d gone over the facts and figures time and time again, hoping for a better way. But there was none. The SS could not be allowed time: time to rebuild its forces, time to unlock the nuclear warheads, time to subvert the Provisional Government and trigger another civil war. We have to end the war now.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, feeling a sudden flicker of bitter envy for Herman Wieland. There was nothing to envy. Herman — a man in his late fifties — was going back to the front. And yet, he’d be placing his life at risk, while Volker knew he didn’t dare take a rifle himself and join the fight. It felt wrong, somehow, to send so many men to their deaths while he stayed behind, in safety. But what choice did he have? He was the glue holding the Provisional Government together.

And besides, the nasty part of his mind pointed out, you won’t survive long if the war is lost.

Volker nodded reluctantly, conceding the point. Konrad was dead already, his corpse laid to rest in a graveyard on the other side of Berlin, but his wife and daughter were still alive — and dangerously vulnerable. He’d had them both sent out of Berlin, their names changed to protect them from the remaining loyalists, yet he knew Holliston would stop at nothing to find and kill them if he won the war. Volker had never spoken to Holliston, but he knew the man’s reputation. He would do whatever it took to regain control and stamp his will on the Reich.

He felt a faint sensation of guilt as he peered over the darkened city. Thousands of Berliners had been evacuated westwards, now the siege had been lifted, but they still weren’t safe. And yet he’d made plans to have his wife and daughter shipped to Britain if the war was lost, if the SS recovered Berlin… none of the others in Berlin, save for the remainder of the government, had the ability to protect their families. It felt wrong, somehow, to put his family first, yet what choice did he have? He knew exactly what would happen to his family if the war was lost. The remainder of the population would probably be safe if they kept their heads down…

But that might not be true, he told himself, sourly. All the reports we received from the front lines…

Volker had no illusions about the SS. He’d been a stormtrooper. He knew just how brutal the SS could be. And yet, there had been a savagery unleashed in the last few months that was quite beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Villages smashed flat, towns devastated, men shot, women raped, children marched eastwards to an uncertain destination… it was as if a devil had come to Germany Prime. It was possible that some of the stories were exaggerated — he certainly hoped that some of the stories were exaggerated — but there was just too much evidence to support them. He’d even seen photographs of some of the mutilated bodies left behind by the SS.

He shook his head, tiredly. He’d thought he was joining the defenders of civilisation, when he’d joined the SS. And maybe many of the ordinary stormtroopers still believed that they were defending civilisation. But their leadership was as corrupt as any other department within the Reich, more interested in its own power than in protecting the Reich from its enemies. And they had betrayed their loyal servants…

Behind him, a door opened.

“Your aide told me I’d find you up here,” Voss’s voice said.

Volker didn’t turn. “I like looking at the city,” he said. “It reminds me of what we’re fighting for.”

Voss stepped up beside him. “I never liked Berlin,” he said. “There were too many people here.”

“Perhaps,” Volker said. It was true, he supposed. Anyone who wanted to make a name for himself would come to Berlin, given time. There had been no shortage of talk over the last two decades about restricting the growth of the city’s population. “But it’s also the capital of the Reich.”

He sighed as he peered towards a particularly dark section of the city. The power distribution network had failed there, after an SS suicide squad had attacked the transformers and destroyed them. Normally, it would have been a simple repair, but there was nothing normal about a city under siege. The engineers swore blind they were working on the problem, yet there was a lack of spare parts. And there were several other parts of the city where the electrical supply was hanging by a thread…

And if we can’t keep Berlin lit, he thought grimly, what good are we?

The thought sent a cold shiver running down his spine. There was no way to avoid the simple fact that the Reich Council — in its various incarnations — had ruled the Reich for over thirty-five years, ever since Adolf Hitler had died. It had enjoyed a certain legitimacy through sheer longevity. But his government had barely been in existence for a couple of months. It certainly didn’t control the state as completely as the Reich Council had done.

And, in overthrowing the Reich Council, he reminded himself, we proved that a government could be overthrown.

He shook his head, bitterly. He’d looked into the hidden history of protest movements within the Reich — communists, democrats, feminists — and they’d all ended badly, so badly they’d been scrubbed from history and almost forgotten. Indeed, he’d never heard of women demanding rights after the war. The SS had crushed the movement — the women themselves had been dispatched to Germany East — and everyone had pretended that it had never happened. But the women had been lucky, compared to the communists. They’d wound up hanging from meathooks in cellars below Berlin.

Voss cleared his throat. “Herr Chancellor?”

Volker cursed under his breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. Confessing weakness had always bothered him, but he trusted Voss. The Field Marshal had had ample opportunity to take power for himself after the Reich Council had fallen. “I was woolgathering.”

“The lead units are in position,” Voss told him. “We can launch the offensive at daybreak.”

Volker glanced at him. “I would have thought that was a little predictable.”

“We don’t have the finely-tuned army we’d need to launch a night-time offensive,” Voss reminded him. “If we had more time…”

“We don’t,” Volker said, sharply.

He turned to look at the other man. Voss knew — he was one of the few who did — just how little time the Reich actually had. They needed to win — quickly — or they would lose, no matter who came out ahead. Holliston would inherit a broken country if he ever retook Berlin. And yet, Volker didn’t dare risk so many men without some guarantee of victory…

Don’t be stupid, he told himself, sharply. There is never any guarantee of victory.

It was tempting, chillingly tempting, to call off the offensive. He could do it, too. But there would be someone who wouldn’t get the message, who would launch an attack without support and get slaughtered for it. And that too would be bad.

“Launch the offensive as planned,” he ordered. “Pocket and destroy the bastards.”

“Jawohl, Herr Chancellor,” Voss said.

Volker nodded as he led the way towards the door. He would have liked to convince the stormtroopers to surrender, but he knew that was unlikely. Even without the atrocities to fuel anger — he’d been quietly warned that his soldiers could not be expected to take prisoners — the stormtroopers would be unlikely to surrender without being hammered into the ground first. They were tough.

And they will die to defend a man who fled Berlin rather than fight, Volker told himself, bitterly. He’d been a stormtrooper. If things had been different, he might have been one of the black-clad men on the other side of the front lines. And their deaths will be for nothing.

Herman couldn’t sleep.

The makeshift accommodation was staggeringly uncomfortable, leaving him with aches and pains even as he tried to catch a few hours of sleep. He couldn’t remember having any troubles sleeping on the hard ground — or a handful of blankets — when he’d been a paratrooper, but he’d been nearly thirty years younger at the time. Now… he felt old and frail, even as he tried to sleep. Part of him honestly worried that he wouldn’t be able to get up and walk in the morning.

He glanced at his watch, then at his comrades. They seemed to have managed to fall asleep, although some of them might be lingering on the very edge of awareness. He still recalled days from his youth when his comrades had sworn blind he’d been asleep, although he’d been awake and aware — or thought he’d been awake and aware — the whole time. Back then, he’d thought nothing of a forty mile forced march through the mud. Now…

I’m too old for this shit, Herman thought. It was 0530, according to his watch; the offensive was scheduled for dawn, still two hours away. I could be back home and in bed…

He scowled as he forced himself to stand up, despite his aching body. There was no point in trying to sleep, not now. He wasn’t a young man any longer, able to survive on a few hours of sleep. Carefully, he picked his way to the door and peered outside. The guard was sitting on the ground, snoring quietly. Herman felt a hot flash of anger as he stared down at him, knowing it was sheer luck that an inspector hadn’t passed. The entire unit would be in deep shit if their guard had been caught sleeping.

And if we’d been caught by the enemy, he thought, we’d all be dead.

He removed the guard’s weapon, then hissed at him to wake up. The guard jumped, one hand reaching for the rifle that was no longer there; Herman held it up, fighting down the urge to slam the butt into the guard’s face. He was no longer in the police force.

“You fell asleep,” he growled. The guard looked younger than him, although not young enough to pass for a fresh-faced young man right out of the training centre. “You could have gotten us all killed.”

He scowled as the guard began to splutter excuses. Yes, they were in the middle of an armed camp; no, that didn’t excuse the guard falling asleep. Herman’s old instructors would not have hesitated to hand out harsh punishment to the entire unit, even during training; now, in the middle of a war, a soldier could be shot for falling asleep on guard. There was no excuse for doing something so stupid that an enemy could simply walk up to the makeshift barracks and lob a couple of grenades inside.

“Idiot,” he said, finally. “Give me a cigarette and it won’t go any further.”

The guard looked relieved as he removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held them out. Herman took one, his policeman’s eye noting the lack of any actual markings on the cigarette packet. Probably imported from France and sold on the black market, he decided, rather than purchased legitimately from an authorised dealer. Evading tax would have been a serious crime, two years ago — the authorities would have taken a very dim view of it — but it wasn’t a problem now. Besides, Berlin’s vast stockpile of cigarettes had been drained by the war. No new shipments were coming into the city.

He borrowed a match to light the cigarette, then inhaled the smoke. It tasted odd, compared to the ones he’d smoked on duty, but he found it hard to care. Doctors might insist that smoking posed a health risk — it was funny how they’d started saying that as the cost of smoking had begun to rise — yet he was a policeman. There had always been the risk of a violent death, even before the war. A suspect, knowing he’d be lucky to escape execution, might just choose to fight…

“Two hours,” the guard said.

Herman nodded in grim agreement. They’d been told they’d be going to the front after the lead units had punched a hole in the enemy lines, but very little else. The older soldiers had been offended at being told so little, even though they knew it posed a security risk. There was just too great a chance of someone sneaking out of the camp, finding a telephone and calling his SS masters. Or merely going back to Berlin for some fun. There had been a surprising number of soldiers on punishment duty when the makeshift unit had arrived at the camp.

We’re too close to Berlin, Herman thought, dryly.

It was a common problem. Soldiers — bored or aware of their own mortality — had a tendency to sneak out of camp in search of wine, women and song. Herman had often rounded up soldiers who’d made it to the pubs, marching them back to the camps and handing them over to their superiors. It was even a danger in a combat zone, even though the soldiers really should have known better. He’d heard horror stories about young men sneaking out of camp in South Africa, only to be caught, killed and mutilated by the local insurgents.

But the stories could easily have been spread by the higher-ups, he reminded himself. How better to discourage soldiers from fraternising with the enemy?

He leaned against the doorway and watched, grimly, as the camp slowly came to life. There would be no formal assembly, not today; units would form up, then march to the front lines and go to war. He wished, suddenly, for a hot bath or even a shower, but he knew they were both impossible. It was a military camp, not a holiday home. There were few luxuries even for the commanders.

“Thank you,” the guard said. “I could have wound up in real trouble.”

Herman scowled. He honestly wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing. Falling asleep in the middle of a camp was bad enough, but falling asleep in a war zone could prove lethal. The guard deserved whatever punishment was meted out to him. And yet, Herman wasn’t sure he could have coped with his punishment. He was no longer able to drop and give a hundred push-ups on command.

“Never mind,” he said. “But if you fall asleep on duty again, I’ll kick you in the nuts and then slit your throat.”

And I mean it, he added, silently. It wouldn’t be the first time a dangerously-incompetent soldier had been pushed out or murdered by his comrades. You put us all in danger.

He turned and peered back into the hut. There were few buildings still standing between Berlin and the front lines; the hut, he’d been told, had been patched up by the engineers before the company had been told to sleep there. He didn’t know if they’d been given the hut because the higher-ups thought they’d need somewhere relatively warm and dry to sleep or if it was an unsubtle insult aimed at the old men. But he had a feeling he’d be wishing, soon enough, that they were back in the hut…

Time to get ready, he thought. Dawn was starting to waver on the horizon. In the distance, he could hear the sound of shellfire and explosions. It wouldn’t be long before the first units started to advance on the enemy positions. We’re going back to the war.