The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Forty-Four

Felixstowe, England

“Interesting,” Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl said as the SS investigative team went though the cottage carefully. “Very interesting indeed.”

“Really,” Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger drawled. Technically, he outranked Stahl, but in occupied Felixstowe, Stahl was very definitely in command. The logistics and civil service sections of the SS took a back-seat to the security forces in wartime, particularly in occupied territory. “They broke three of my fingers and tried to force me to tell them information!”

“Yes, interesting,” Stahl agreed. He wasn’t entirely convinced by Deininger’s story; the man had already shown a dubious amount of moral courage — if not common sense — by coming up to the cottage with a prostitute on the eve of the offensive. The French bitch might be pretty, but Deininger was clearly more than just a little infatuated with her, something that Stahl found disgusting. Who knew where she’d been? “What did they want you to tell them?”

“They wanted to know about the offensive and when it was going to be launched,” Deininger said. “I held out until I heard the noise of guns and then laughed at them. They tried asking a few other questions, before they fled and left us tied up…”

“And they didn’t kill you,” Stahl said. That point was odd. “Do you know why they didn’t kill you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Deininger thundered. “I want them hunted down and eradicated!”

Stahl took a long breath. “It has been my experience that when most insurgents take prisoners, they very rarely keep them for long,” he said. He carefully kept his voice calm and free of accusation. “You should have had your throat cut, and your bitch should have either been killed or had her hair cut off. Why were you not killed?”

“I have no idea,” Deininger snapped. The fury in his voice was unmistakable. “What are you going to do about finding them?”

“I am going to carry out a proper examination of this place first, and then I will decide,” Stahl said pleasantly. “My men will escort you back to our compound where the medics will see to repairing your hand and hopefully returning you to duty as soon as possible. The fighting is being touted as a great success, but between you and me, I don’t think that it was as successful as the official broadcasts indicate.”

He smiled at Hauptsturmfuehrer Grauer Wulfenbach as Deininger was escorted out of the cottage and back to Felixstowe. He wasn’t convinced that Deininger was an innocent in the affair or that he was being completely honest about why he was up at the cottage. There was something buried there that Stahl didn’t understand. A man like Deininger, with his rank and status, could have had practically any unattached woman he wanted, or he could indulge the darkest of tastes at an SS-run brothel, but he had chosen a French whore. Why?

Wulfenbach snapped a salute as soon as they were alone. “I interrogated her and she knows nothing,” he said briskly. Stahl had given orders that the questioning was to be gentle, but ‘gentle’ was relative when it came to the SS. The whore would have been scared out of her life. “All she knows is that the attackers came in, tied her up, and dumped her on the bed. A few hours later, the Brigadefuhrer freed her and had her call for help.”

“And yet, she wasn’t molested in any way,” Stahl said. He scowled as he thought about it. “Did they try to take her or anything?”

“No,” Wulfenbach said. “They just tied her up and left her out of the way.”

“As if she was nothing to them, not even a woman,” Stahl said.

Wulfenbach shrugged. “I can question her more thoroughly if you want…?”

Stahl stroked his chin as he thought. There were generally two types of insurgents; the trained and experienced remains of various armies and, then, civilian insurgents who were often little better than bandits. The first type could be very dangerous but tended to be professionals, while the second type could often be more dangerous to their own people than they were to the Germans. They’d left Janine alone, and that was curious. Several girls who had slept with Germans had had their head shaved under cover of darkness. The entire action had been professional… and yet, there had been a certain kind of amateurish behaviour about the attackers. They should have killed Deininger and had, instead, left him alive.

“Not yet, he said, finally. He looked over at the head of the forensic team. “Have you found anything?”

“No, Herr Standartenfuhrer,” the man said. He pulled off a pair of gloves as he spoke. “We found a great many prints, but the only fresh ones correspond to the prints of Brigadefuhrer Deininger and his female companion. The insurgents wore gloves and didn’t leave any traces of their identities.”

He smiled. He’d given orders, as soon as the attack began, for the British civilians to remain firmly in their homes, sheltering from any British attack and remaining out of the way of troop transports as they moved through Felixstowe and up towards the front-line Their mystery insurgents were probably still in the town, unless they had a hiding place out in the country, and that meant that they were vulnerable. He could find them, and if he found them, he could crush them like bugs… but doing so wasn’t going to be easy.

“Seal this cottage and have a guard remain here,” he ordered the forensic team and headed back out into the sunlight. His official car was waiting for them, and they climbed in and ordered the driver to take them back to the barracks. They passed through the empty streets of Felixstowe, the houses still blacked-out but with the occasional open curtain, and he felt his insides shake. He hated the town at that moment, hated it for interfering with his work and leaving a black mark on his record. They would all pay for daring to interfere with the triumph of the Reich.

“Carola,” he barked as soon as he marched into his office. “Where are all the British men with military experience from this town?”

Carola took one look at his face and wisely didn’t argue. “Half of them are in Detention Camp Seven,” she said. Stahl nodded; the Germans had set up ten detention camps, mainly for captured soldiers. They were packed as a result of the fighting. Several hundred prisoners had already been shipped over to France in order to prevent the British from recovering them. “The others are part of the dockworker force.”

“I want those men permanently isolated and supervised at all times,” Stahl ordered curtly. He frowned as he ran through the logic. They couldn’t simply be added to one of the detention camps as it would slow down the unloading process. The Army would have a number of sharp things to say about it, and Himmler would be furious. It would rapidly result in his recall and transfer to Russia. “They’re to be restricted to one of the barracks when they’re not working.”

“I need something that will bring them out before something worse happens,” he said, thinking hard. He considered a major search of Felixstowe, but there was little point. The insurgents wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving weapons around, not after what had happened to Davidson and his family. That brought a smile to his face, and he made a decision. “I want hostages.”

Carola stared at him. “Herr Standartenfuhrer…”

Stahl ignored her. “I want to round up twenty wives,” he said, remembering how this tactic had been applied in Norway and Denmark. The Russians hadn’t been quite so easy to affect with the tactic; they didn’t seem to care that much about their women. “I want them held here and it to be announced that they will be executed for the crimes of the insurgents unless the insurgents come forward and surrender to us.”

Carola made a second attempt. “Herr Standartenfuhrer, the Reichsfuhrer forbade the use of heavy tactics against the British,” she said. Her advancement was dependent upon his; it gave her a motive to offer him good advice at all times. “Should you not clear it with him first?”

“The British have managed to humiliate us,” Stahl snarled. He had seen it happen in Norway. Someone humiliated the Reich, and it encouraged dozens of others to try to follow suit. It usually ended with a particular settlement being razed to the ground and was therefore wasteful of resources. “If we don’t hit back at them now, we will have to use heavier tactics later, understand?”

Carola bowed her head and replied. “Of course, Herr Standartenfuhrer.”

“Draw up a list,” Stahl ordered her. “Use the standard criteria, but leave out any wife who is married to someone who was working at the docks when we arrived and wives of the police and local government people; anyone else is fair game. Send that list to Wulfenbach, and he can organise the arrest teams. Once they’re all rounded up, we can make the proclamation about what will happen to them unless the insurgents surrender.”

Gregory Davall had slept in despite the rising and falling noise in the distance. there hadn’t really been anything else to do. The Germans had banned the British from going out in the day and it wasn’t worth the risk to see what was going on. The battle was being decided far from them and, despite listening to both the BBC and Radio Berlin, there was no way of knowing what was happening. The BBC swore blind that the German attack had been contained; Radio Berlin swore blind that German panzers were driving towards London… and the only thing they agreed on was that there were high losses.

Kate stuck her head into the room and urged him to get out of bed. Davall was tempted to try to pull her back into the bed instead, but with James in the house and wide awake, he knew that Kate would never agree. She was often just as eager to make love as he was, but her sense of proper behaviour would never have allowed her to risk their child catching them in the act. Davall’s father had once told him that he needed to listen to his wife in such matters. Kate, the woman he loved, was often more practical than her husband. She meant the world to him…

So why was Janine’s face floating around in his mind?

He dismissed the vision angrily as he pulled himself out of bed and got dressed. There was no way of knowing how long they would be prisoners in their own home, but James was already bouncing around like… well, like a child demanding entertainment and diversion. He would normally have gone to school or gone to see his friends, but with the Germans keeping everyone indoors, he was trapped with his parents. Davall remembered when he had been that age; he would have considered it a prison sentence, but he didn’t dare allow James to leave the house. It would have been far too dangerous. The Germans might not have shot a little boy, but it would have drawn attention to their house.

The kitchen smelled surprisingly good as Kate fried eggs and bacon for him. She managed a tired smile as she served him, but he could tell that she was worried. The last time James had been confined indoors, he’d accidentally on purpose wreaked havoc with the house’s furnishings. Kate had cleared up the mess, and James hadn’t gotten any supper that night.

Now, James was older, and yet unable to understand the Germans. Their existence meant very little to him, even though they were already altering what he learned in school; one of his new schoolbooks had almost made Davall sick. It contained a story about a Jewish doctor and a German girl, who went by the name of ‘your sister,’ and detailed in terrifyingly sharp prose what had happened to her at the hands of her doctor. There had been a major fuss a few years ago when teenagers had read a book that had been regarded as dubious, but now no one would dare protest… and James could already do the Hitler salute. If he could be altered so much in the space of a few short weeks, what would he be like if the occupation lasted for years?

“Thank you,” he said after finishing his breakfast. He helped Kate with the washing up as his mother had taught him, remembering how she had told him off for refusing to help, a cold lecture that had been somehow worse than a trip over his father’s knee. “Is there anything else you want done around the house?”

Kate smiled, her face crinkling up with laughter… and then there was a knock at the door. Her face went pale instantly; it wasn’t a hesitant knock, or a friendly knock, it was the knock of someone standing there with the full weight of authority behind him. Davall knew, instantly, who it was and, composing himself as best as he could, went to the door. Three Germans stood there; an officer and two subordinates, all wearing SS uniforms.

The leader stepped forward. “Mr Gregory Davall?”

“Yes,” Davall said, carefully. “That’s me.”

“We have instructions from the Reichgovernor of this town to take Mrs Kate Davall into custody,” the leader said. Davall didn’t hear his words for a long moment. “You will present her to us at once.”

“No,” Davall said, desperately. He wanted to shout at Kate, ordering her to run and hide, but it was already too late. “You can’t have her…”

The leader swung a punch into Davall’s chest and he folded up, gasping with pain. One of the soldiers stayed and watched him, assault rifle pointed directly at his head, as the other two walked into the house as if they owned the place. He heard, through the pain and the roaring in his ears, Kate’s sudden scream and a cry of pain from James; a moment later, Kate was being hustled back out of the house, her hands cuffed behind her back and tears running down her face. Davall tried to stand up, wanting to kill all the Germans with his bare hands, only to discover a rifle pointed directly into his eyes.

“You will remain in your home until the ban on moving outside your home is lifted,” the German leader said flatly. Davall concentrated on trying to memorise the German’s face, noting the dark eyes and the beetle-brow, promising himself that he would kill him, whatever it took. “Unless the people responsible for the attack on Brigadefuhrer Deininger surrender themselves, the hostages will suffer their punishment.”

“But… that’s not fair,” Davall protested hopelessly. He tried to keep the cold knowledge of what he could offer to save her life from showing on his face. “She doesn’t know anything that you can use!”

“She is a citizen of the Greater German Reich,” the German said flatly. “The lives of everyone in the Reich are dedicated to maintaining the Reich, but someone within this town, someone who has sworn loyalty to the Reich, has decided instead to turn on the Reich. If that person does not surrender, the hostages, including your wife, will carry out their duty to the Reich and die in their place.”

“That’s madness,” Davall said. He was ashamed of his own weakness, his own inability to protect his wife, his own fear for the future. “You can’t…”

“We can, and we will,” the German said. He snapped to attention, arm outstretched in the classic German manner. “Heil Hitler!”

They marched off, leaving Davall alone.