Christopher Nuttall - Ragnarok

“There’s a surprising amount of truth here,” Kurt said, finally. “Is it wise for me to be a native of Berlin?”

“Your accent marks you out as a Berliner,” Horst said. Kurt would have lost the accent, if he’d been trained in Germany East. “There’s no point in trying to pass you off as an Easterner.”

He scowled. Kurt’s accent was a problem, even though they’d done their best to compensate for it. There were plenty of SS officers who had been born and trained in Germany Prime, but in these days… they’d just have to hope they didn’t run into someone who would be automatically suspicious of a Westerner. It shouldn’t be that much of a danger. Karl Holliston had been born in Berlin, after all.

“Never mind that,” he added. “Do you know the songs?”

“Most of them,” Kurt said. He didn’t sound pleased. “We learned them in the Hitler Youth.”

“There’ll be some verses you weren’t taught,” Horst said. He couldn’t imagine parents being very pleased if their children had been taught the more bloodcurdling verses. “We’ll go over that later, just in case we are invited to sing with the men.”

Kurt gave him a sidelong look. “Is that likely?”

“The SS prides itself on being one big happy family,” Horst said. “There’s a great deal of rivalry, of course, but it’s never brutal. ”

“Really,” Kurt said, sarcastically.

Horst nodded. It was rare — almost unknown — for officers in the Heer to socialise with their men, but SS officers were expected to spend a great deal of time with their men. And local units would often fraternise with other units. It was supposed to help, when the units were mashed together into improvised battlegroups. The men already knew and respected their new comrades.

“The SS is not the Heer ,” he said, finally. “Don’t make the mistake of assuming they’re the same, just because they use the same weapons. There’s a lot of little differences between them.”

“And I might slip up because of them,” Kurt said. “Perhaps I’ll just let you do the talking.”

“That would be a good idea,” Horst said, dryly.

He put the folder down and opened up the latest set of reports from the front. The SS lines were firming up, unsurprisingly. Horst knew the Waffen-SS . They would have taken a beating, the defeat would have given them a terrible shock, but they were trained to recover from anything . He could imagine the officers moving from unit to unit, collecting stragglers and slotting them into the front lines; filling holes in some units, disbanding others until after the war. And probably doing whatever they could to slow down the advancing panzers as much as possible.

They’ll need time to boost morale , Horst told himself. Stopping a panzer or two won’t be enough .

Kurt looked up. “Do you have a plan?”

“Slip through the lines,” Horst said. He tapped the papers. “We shouldn’t have any trouble getting our hands on a jeep, once we show them our ID. And then we just head east to Germanica.”

“That could take a while,” Kurt observed.

Horst nodded. There were just over a thousand miles between Berlin and Germanica. Even if they took the autobahns , even if nothing got in their way, it would take at least five or six days to reach Germanica. And he knew there would be problems. There were plenty of checkpoints on the autobahns .

And even if there weren’t , he thought, they’ll be using them to rush supplies and men to the front .

“So we reach Germanica,” Kurt added. “What then ?”

“We play it by ear,” Horst said. In truth, there was no way to come up with a proper plan until they knew the situation on the ground. “I have some… contacts … I might be able to convince to help us. If they refuse — or if we can’t meet them — we will have to think of something else.”

He scowled. He’d seen the Reichstag in Germanica before, back when he’d gone to the city for a Victory Day parade. It was a towering nightmare of stone and steel, protected by some of the finest stormtroopers in the Reich . And now, it was playing host to the self-promoted Führer of the Greater German Reich . He would be surprised if the building wasn’t ringed with defences, from antiaircraft guns to antitank weapons. It wouldn’t be strange for Germany East.

Kurt cocked his head. “You think we can do it?”

“I think we have to try,” Horst said.

He cursed under his breath. Gudrun had trusted him to protect her… and he’d failed. He’d been so wrapped up in his scheming — their scheming — that he’d missed the spy right under his nose. And now Gudrun was a captive. She’d be on her way to Germany East, if she wasn’t there already. There was no way he could just let her go. She was his wife, his lover, his friend. He couldn’t abandon her.

But he knew what would happen if he was caught. The SS might have some difficulty comprehending that Gudrun was more than just a puppet, but they would have no such difficulty with him. Horst was a traitor in their eyes, a young man who had betrayed everything he’d been taught to respect; he could expect no mercy if his former masters got their hands on him. He’d be lucky if he was merely tortured to death.

He looked back at Kurt. There was a resemblance between him and his sister, Horst admitted, although it was more physical than mental. Kurt’s face was a masculine version of Gudrun’s face, his blond hair cropped short to fit a helmet. And he’d fought well in the war, no one doubted his courage. But it took a different kind of courage to stand up against the entire Reich …

“This is your last chance to stay here,” he said, slowly. “Do you want to remain?”

“No,” Kurt said. “I’m coming with you.”

Horst nodded as he picked up the papers. “Where were you born?”

Kurt blinked, then realised what he meant. “Berlin, Braun Hospital,” he said. “My parents were Herman and…”

“Don’t volunteer information,” Horst said. It was something he’d been taught during basic training. Nervous people, people with something to hide, volunteered information. “They’ll think they’re being manipulated.”

He bounced question after question off Kurt, silently relieved that Kurt managed to keep his story relatively straight. It helped that much of the background information was actually true , but there were still risks. Whoever they encountered might know enough to poke holes in the narrative, then rip it apart. There was no way to be sure.

Kurt held up his hand. “Will they ask all of these questions?”

“I don’t know,” Horst said. “There’s a war on. They might not have time for a full interrogation. It depends…”

He shook his head. “If they wanted to give you a security clearance, they’d send officers to your home, your school, your training camp… they’d go through your life in minute detail before deciding if they could trust you or not. Some very good people have been denied clearances for reasons beyond their control. But here… if they have reason to be suspicious, they might just toss questions at you to see if you slip up.”

Kurt snorted. “What are the odds of us encountering someone who went to the same school as me?”

“Poor,” Horst said. “But don’t dismiss them entirely.”

He picked up the next set of papers. “We’re leaving this evening,” he added. “Getting through the lines is not going to be fun.”

“No,” Kurt agreed. “Getting shot by our own side would be embarrassing.”