“I will do my best, Mein Herr,” Horst said. He’d have to seriously consider betraying a handful of uninvolved students, if only to give himself cover. By now, he was sure, there would be hundreds of other small groups in the university. “If the group can be found, I will find it.”
“Good,” Schwarzkopf said. “Your second task, however, is harder. We intend to insert more agents into the university. You will be responsible for assisting them to blend into the student population.”
Horst kept his face expressionless with an effort. “It isn’t easy to blend in with the other students,” he warned. “I only fit in so well because I am a student. Anyone else would have problems fooling any of the other students.”
Schwarzkopf’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“You were trained as an SS officer,” Horst said, carefully. “From the moment you entered Wewelsburg Castle as a new recruit, you were steeped in the history and traditions of the SS, everything from songs to precisely how to stand when inspected by a superior officer. You aren’t posing as an SS officer, you are an SS officer. Every little detail confirms your identity as one of us. Could a civilian, even one with the correct uniform, mimic you so precisely that they’d fool a genuine SS officer?”
“Of course not,” Schwarzkopf said, flatly. “They wouldn’t be quite right.”
“Nor would your agents,” Horst said. “The university isn’t a parade ground, Mein Herr, or an army barracks. Your agents would stand out like a nude woman in the middle of the Victory Day parade. The only way to pass as a student is to be a student.”
“You could prepare them,” Schwarzkopf said.
“Not in less than six months,” Horst said. “They’d need to unlearn a great deal, Mein Herr.”
“But we have orders to insert more agents,” Schwarzkopf said. “You’ll just have to try your best.”
“Associating with them may blow my cover,” Horst warned. Unless he was underestimating the SS agents, Gudrun and the other students would have no difficulty identifying the spies and isolating them. Newcomers in the middle of term would raise more than enough eyebrows. “I’d have to be put in a position where I would be forced to work with them.”
“That can be arranged,” Schwarzkopf said. “Now, here’s what we want you to look out for…”
“He knew nothing,” the interrogator said.
Reichsführer-SS Karl Holliston peered through the one-way mirror. Herr Doctor Professor Claus Murken sat in a metal chair, his naked body strapped to the metal and his face battered into a bloody pulp. The interrogators had been quite precise, as always, combining physical torture with a brutal beating that rarely failed to drag answers out of uncooperative suspects. But it seemed as though it was nothing more than a waste of effort. Either Murken had the ability to fool a pair of experienced interrogators or he was innocent all along.
Karl turned to look at the interrogator. “You’re sure?”
“He was practically pissing in his pants as soon as we strapped him into the chair, Herr Reichsführer,” the interrogator said. “It took us some time to actually focus on the leaflets because he wanted to confess to fucking two of his female students. But he knows nothing about the leaflets.”
“I see,” Karl said.
He gritted his teeth. It was possible that the professor was concealing something – he might have given up one piece of information to keep the rest hidden – but he had faith in his interrogators. Besides, he rather doubted a pampered university professor, a man who hadn’t experienced real pain since the Hitler Youth, could have endured a torture session without breaking. The man really was disgustingly unfit. Karl took a look at his chest and shuddered at the thought of him huffing and puffing over a nubile young German maiden. No doubt he was on the verge of a heart attack every time he took off his trousers.
Torture worked, he’d been told, if the interrogators were careful to convince their subject that they would always be able to detect a lie. A proper session could take hours, with the interrogators confronting their subject – their victim – with what they knew about him, just so he would lose the habit of lying before they reached the questions they couldn’t verify. But it could be maddeningly imperfect if the victim retained his presence of mind. The fact that the professor had confessed to seducing not one, but two students was a good sign he hadn’t managed to keep himself under control, yet Karl knew he’d always have doubts. What if the bastard had managed to fool the interrogators?
“Take him to the cells and have the medics see to him,” Karl ordered, finally. He could have killed a rebel out of hand – or handed him over to the Reichstag for a show trial – but there was no point in killing someone who had been scooped up by accident. “And make sure he knows he won’t be returning to the university.”
He strode out of the torture chamber before the interrogator could reply and headed up to his office, barely noticing the uniformed officers who saluted as he walked past. It was frustrating. The only lead they’d had was the fingerprint and that had turned into a damp squib. Whatever the professor was guilty of – and Karl was sure that everyone was guilty of something – it wasn’t being involved with the rebels. And that meant… what? The professor’s fingerprints being on the leaflet suggested the rebels studied under him, but there were over two thousand students at the university. Tracking down the true rebels would take a long time…
…But Karl was no longer sure they had time.
He stepped into his office and closed the door behind him, then sat down and forced himself to think. There had to be a way of locating the rebels quickly, before word spread further… if, of course, it hadn’t already spread right across the Reich. The computer network was a security nightmare because it allowed instant communications right across the whole continent – the Americans had offered to link their network into the Reich’s network, a thought that had made the SS have a collective fit – and word could spread to every email address in the country. And who knew where it would go after that?
His intercom buzzed. “Herr Reichsführer, the Territories Minister requests an interview at your earliest convenience,” Maria said. “What would you like me to tell him?”
Karl frowned. “Tell him I’ll see him in twenty minutes,” he said. He had no idea what the Territories Minister would want with him, but it would distract him from his thoughts about the future. “And have a pot of coffee sent in when he arrives.”
“Yes, Herr Reichsführer,” Maria said.
And so another lead is gone, Karl thought, as he skimmed through the reports from the earlier interrogations. The Gastarbeiters had known nothing, of course, and they were now on their way to the great slave labour camps in the east. Their masters had taken the commission without checking it carefully – let alone reading the leaflets – and had very little to offer to mitigate their crimes. They’d probably wind up in the camps themselves once the Reich Council met to confirm their fate. And so we are left blind.
He was still mulling it over when Marie showed Philipp Kuhnert, the Territories Minister, into his office. Kuhnert was an odd duck, caught permanently between the Finance Minister, the Foreign Minister and the SS; Karl respected Kuhnert, even though he didn’t particularly like the man. It was his job to keep Germany’s satellites in line, obedient to the will of the Reich, without provoking them into futile rebellion.