Ragnarok

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Germanica, Germany East

7 November 1985

Gudrun honestly wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or worried.

Doctor Müller had beaten her — and come very close to raping her — only to be stopped by Katherine, who had apparently taken over responsibility for Gudrun’s safety. Gudrun was grateful beyond words to the older woman, yet she was also all too aware that the whole scene might have been staged to make her grateful to Katherine. The possibility of being raped had lingered over her ever since she’d been captured, yet it hadn’t happened…

She rubbed her aching jaw as she sat on the bed, cursing under her breath. It had been easier when she’d known everyone was against her, even though it had also meant she didn’t have a hope in hell of escaping. But if Katherine genuinely was on her side, what did it mean? Did she want Gudrun to escape… or did she merely want Gudrun to be broken properly? And if she asked, would she be putting Katherine’s life in danger?

Of course, she thought, looking up at the cameras. Everything I say in here is probably recorded and studied.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Part of her was tempted to start singing — very few people had told her she was a good singer — just to force her unseen watchers to listen to her; part of her felt that singing would be a risk, even with Katherine watching over her. The beating had left her shaking for hours afterwards. Who knew what would happen if Doctor Müller — or someone else — decided to have another go? She was grimly determined to keep from breaking as long as possible, but she was terrifyingly aware that she had come far too close to snapping…

…And she wasn’t sure how long she could continue to hold out.

She gazed around the cell, finally understanding why her father had insisted that his prisoners preferred to go to the work camps rather than go to jail. There was something to do in the work camps, even if the stories she’d heard ranged from horrible to truly horrific. Here, all she could do was sit on the bed and wait to be tortured — or worse. There was simply nothing else to do. And, for someone who had always enjoyed doing something, it was agony.

Boredom is a worse threat than anything else, she thought, crossly. It was frustrating as hell just to sit in the cell, even though she knew it could be worse. By the time they come for me, I’ll have driven myself mad.

She shook her head as she rose to her feet, pushing her aching body through a series of exercises she’d been taught in the BDM. Her matrons would probably have laughed at her, but it kept her body healthy and her mind off dwelling on what could happen to her. And yet, her body was no longer hers. Part of her had accepted, she realised, that she was naked, that she would always be naked… and the fact she wasn’t horrified about that worried her more than she cared to admit. Slowly — but surely — she was breaking.

And there’s nothing I can do about it, she thought, sourly.

She ground her teeth in frustration as she finished the exercises. What did Holliston want with her? Did he seriously imagine she could convince the Provisional Government to surrender? She hadn’t really been in control of events from the moment everything had started to move — and a good thing too or her arrest might have blown the whole movement out of the water. He had nothing to gain by keeping her prisoner, save satisfaction. And even that had to have its limits.

The door rattled. Gudrun straightened up as it opened, allowing Katherine to step into the room. She was carrying a pair of handcuffs, suggesting that Gudrun was going to get a chance to walk out of the cell. Gudrun sighed inwardly as Katherine motioned for her to turn around, but submitted quietly. Oddly, the simple fact that she was always handcuffed or chained when she was out of the cell gave her heart. It suggested her captors were surprisingly nervous about her.

She met Katherine’s eyes as the older woman opened the inner door. “Where are we going?”

“The Führer wants to see you,” Katherine said. Unlike some of the other guards, she didn’t bother to search Gudrun’s body before helping her out of the cell. “I suggest that you put on your best behaviour.”

Gudrun frowned. Katherine sounded normal, but there was a… hint… in her tone that she was preoccupied with an infinitely greater thought. She was tempted to pry as she was marched down the corridors and through a series of security checkpoints, yet she didn’t dare risk the uneasy rapport she’d developed with the older woman. Instead, she concentrated on memorising the layout of the Germanica Reichstag as much as possible. It was surprisingly deserted, even on the upper levels. The handful of men she saw — no women — barely glanced at her before scurrying away.

Something’s gone wrong, she thought, worried. But what?

A nasty thought occurred to her and she froze. If Holliston had used nuclear weapons — and Doctor Müller had practically admitted as much, during the beating — the Provisional Government might have retaliated. No, it would have retaliated. She knew little about nuclear weapons, but she did know that not retaliating would merely have encouraged the first user to do it again. There would have been retaliation…

…But against what?

Germanica is still standing, she thought, although it occurred to her that that might not be true. The engineers in Berlin had bragged that their bunkers could survive direct nuclear hits and ride out nuclear wars. She couldn’t imagine the SS accepting anything lesser for Germanica, a city that was practically a second capital. Might the city have been nuked? She found it hard to imagine that she wouldn’t have felt something… but it was impossible to be sure. I might be trapped under a nuclear wasteland.

It was a relief, two minutes later, to step out of the elevator into an antechamber. A giant window dominated the near wall, allowing her to peer out over Germanica. She couldn’t help thinking that it looked like Berlin, only bigger, but it was definitely intact. The city hadn’t been blasted to rubble by a nuclear weapon.

Two guards poked and prodded at her for a long moment before allowing her to enter Holliston’s office. She tensed, half-expecting to be on public display again, but the giant room was empty, save for Holliston himself. The would-be Führer was sitting behind a desk large enough to pass for a dining table, larger than the one she remembered from her last headmaster’s office. He’d had an immense ego too.

“Gudrun,” Holliston said. He sounded surprisingly normal. “Please. Come forward.”

Gudrun felt her skin crawl as Katherine walked her forward until she was standing in front of the desk. There was something about the way he was looking at her that creeped her out, even though it didn’t seem overtly sexual. She wasn’t a pretty girl to him, she realised; she wasn’t even an attractive piece of meat. To him, she was something he could use; no more, no less. It was a chilling thought.

Holliston smiled at her. “Have you no words of greeting?”

“Guten Morgen, Herr Holliston,” Gudrun said. She was damned if she was calling him ‘Mein Führer’. He was certainly not her Führer. “How are you?”

His expression darkened. “You will address me as Mein Führer.”

Gudrun hesitated. If she refused… what would he do? But she already knew the answer. A beating, perhaps, or worse. She was in no state to defend herself. She’d loathed her last headmaster — she didn’t know anyone who’d liked the brute — but she’d known better than to deny him the respect he’d thought he was due.

“As you wish, Mein Führer,” she said.

Holliston seemed amused by her submission. “I believe that fool Müller told you that nuclear weapons have been deployed?”

“Yes, Mein Führer,” Gudrun said. It felt odd to call anyone by that title. She’d never actually met the previous Führer, even after he’d lost his position and been exiled to the countryside. He’d been a figurehead, nothing more. No one had thought him worth the bother of executing. “He was very definite about it.”

“A third has now been used,” Holliston said. “A minor training base at Kursk was destroyed.”

Gudrun didn’t believe him, not completely. Why would anyone drop a nuclear warhead on a minor training base? If the nuclear budget had been a major drain on the Reich’s economy — and she knew it had been — why would an expensive weapon be wasted on a minor target? It made no sense. Logically, Kursk had to have been a far bigger target — and Holliston was trying to minimise the impact. But she found it hard to care.

“If you used nuclear weapons, Mein Führer,” she said, “the Provisional Government would certainly retaliate in kind.”

“Quite,” Holliston said. “This war will destroy both sides.”

He cocked his head. “What were you thinking when you took up arms against the Reich?”

Gudrun stared back at him, evenly. “I was thinking that the Reich had betrayed its soldiers,” she said, flatly. “I told you that… Mein Führer.”

Holliston ignored the implicit disrespect. “A young girl like you should be married and bringing up children by now,” he said. “What was your father thinking when he allowed you to go to the university?”

“I believe he was thinking I should follow my dreams and actually put my intelligence to some use,” Gudrun said. “I wanted to be more than just a housewife.”

“You appear to have succeeded,” Holliston said. He smirked, rather unpleasantly. “What would Konrad Schulze have thought of it?”

Gudrun flinched, then told herself not to be stupid. She’d mentioned Konrad’s name a lot, after the Reich Council had been broken. The SS wouldn’t have had any difficulty tracking him down, even if his father hadn’t become the Provisional Government’s leader. Hell, they’d probably made the connection between Konrad and herself a long time before they’d realised that she’d started the protest movement.

“Yes,” Holliston said. “What would he have thought of it?”

“I think he would have approved, Mein Führer,” Gudrun said.

She shrugged. In truth, she had no idea what Konrad would have thought of it. He’d been an SS stormtrooper, a loyalist… would he have joined her, like Horst, or would he have reported her to his superiors? Or would he have married her and then insisted on her remaining in the home, rather than getting involved with politics? He would probably have told himself that he was doing the right thing, keeping her from doing something that could get her killed…

“His file suggests otherwise,” Holliston said. “He was marked down for early promotion.”

Gudrun felt her temper flare. “Before or after he was wounded?”

“He would have been one of the youngest officers in the service,” Holliston said. “I think he would have gone on to great things.”

“You betrayed him,” Gudrun said. Her temper snapped. “You didn’t even let his family know he was injured.”

She fought back tears of rage and bitter helplessness as her voice rose. “And what does it matter now? He’d dead! I can’t change what I did, even if I wanted to! And you can’t change it either!”

Holliston rose. “Do you not regret what you did?”

Gudrun sensed — vaguely — that she had crossed a line, but she found it hard to care. “I hated it,” she said. “I hated growing up, knowing I had to watch my words all the time. I hated being scared of unexpected knocks on the door. I hated going to school, knowing that asking the wrong question would earn me a beating — or worse. I hated being told that I would bear the next generation of children while the boys had all the fun…”

She shook her head slowly, feeling her hair brushing against her bare shoulders. “This is no way to live,” she added. She knew he wouldn’t understand. “Your Reich is nothing more than a prison camp and a mass grave.”

“We did what was necessary,” Holliston said, stiffly. “You are the one who betrayed the Reich.”

He reached out and poked her in the chest, sharply. “You, a young girl of the highest of bloodlines, had a duty to the Reich,” he snapped. “And instead you forsook that duty and tore the Reich down.”

Gudrun stared back at him, defiantly. “The Reich does not deserve to live!”

Holliston slapped her, hard. She stumbled backwards and fell, landing on her bottom. He loomed over her, fists clenched; she braced herself, expecting it to end. Katherine wouldn’t save her from the Führer. Just for a second, it dawned on her that she’d finally managed to get Holliston to see her as a person. And then it struck her that that was no longer a good thing.

“You have no idea what it was like,” he hissed. “You… you child… you imprudent brat… you have no idea what it was like, back before the Reich. You…”

He made a visible attempt to calm himself down. “There were entire families starving because the French and the British had blockaded Germany,” he said. “Jewish-Communist subversives were worming their way into everything. The bankers were steadily bringing us under their control, weakening the Volk… we would have been crushed, eternally enslaved to the Jewish filth, if the Führer had not taken control. And you, you… you stand here and dare to tell me the Reich does not deserve to exist?”

“You murdered countless millions of innocent people,” Gudrun said. Uncle Frank had drunk, heavily, to forget what he’d done. As horrible as the old man had been, she thanked him now for showing her what lay behind the facade. “And you crushed hundreds of countries…”

“They would have destroyed us,” Holliston said. “They were the masters of the world…”

Gudrun met his eyes. “And if they were the masters of the world,” she said, “how come they were always the first to get the blame when everything went wrong?”

Holliston lifted his fist, then stopped himself. “The world is not genteel,” he told her, sharply. “It is red, red in tooth and claw, full of enemies who will drag you down and kill you if they scent weakness. We did what was necessary to establish the Reich, to prove that we were the strong, that we deserved to rule. And the weak have no choice, but to bow their heads.”

He reached down, caught hold of her hair and hauled her to her feet, then thrust her forward until she was bent over the table. “You are weak,” he snarled. He slapped her bare buttocks, hard. “I can take you right now and no one will stop me. Do you understand me? I can do anything to you, because I am strong and you are weak! The only thing that keeps you from being raped is my decision not to rape you!”

Gudrun grunted in pain. “How brave,” she managed. Perhaps he’d kill her for it, perhaps not. “Deciding not to rape a handcuffed and naked girl.”

Holliston thumped her back, hard. “Your safety was bought at a cost,” he snapped, as she gasped for breath. “The Reich protected you from the true nature of the world and all it asked, in return, was your loyalty. And you didn’t even bother to do that.

“I sent men like your boyfriend south to uphold civilisation,” he added, his fingers clawing at her flesh. “And you betray their sacrifice by turning on the Reich. His service served the Reich; you betrayed it. How could you?”

He let go of her, turning to stalk around the room. “I should never have agreed to let Krueger establish the university,” he snapped. He sounded as though he was talking to himself. “And it was a mistake to let women enter as students. Women…

“Krueger, the rat bastard, claimed we needed to make better use of female labour,” he added, darkly. “But what better use is there than turning out the next generation of Germans?”

“A woman doesn’t have to be nothing more than a mother,” Gudrun said. “She could be a mother and something else…”

“Be silent,” Holliston snarled.

“You know nothing. You have been safe for so long that you are not even aware of the depths of your own ignorance. The nightmare you have unleashed on the Volk will consume hundreds of millions of lives… just because you were feeling instead of thinking. Your boyfriend’s death was necessary…”

“You lied,” Gudrun said. “He was crippled, yet you lied to his family.”

Holliston ignored her. “The Provisional Government is doomed,” he said. “Too many problems, too many people with their own agendas… they’re doomed. We are strong, we are united, we will triumph.”

He turned to face her, his eyes shining with an unholy glee. “I shall return to Berlin and take control, once again,” he said. “By the time I arrive, the battered population will greet me as a saviour. But you… you will never see it.”

Gudrun closed her eyes. This was it.

“You’ll be sent east,” Holliston said. “There are settlements there in desperate need of young women, desperate enough to overlook a few… irregularities in their pasts. I’m sure you’ll fit in quite nicely.”

He laughed. “And if you cause trouble,” he added, “I’m sure they won’t hesitate to hobble you. Or something.”

Gudrun felt her heart sink. “But…”

“But nothing,” Holliston said. “I’m sure this punishment will be worse than being executed.”

And the hell of it, Gudrun realised as a silent Katherine marched her back to her cell, was that he was right.