"Tell me, Brasch, would you have turned traitor if it were not for your son?"
"Ha! You're a fine one to talk, Muller. If I am a traitor, what are you? Skulking about in your stupid disguise. An assassin, that's all."
Muller sipped from the fine bone china cup. Coffee with real cream. Because of his trusted position, Brasch would enjoy many privileges denied to ordinary Germans. The full pound of Italian roasted coffee beans his wife had produced from a cupboard was undoubtedly one. The dollops of rich cream another. Manfred, the engineer's boy, was no longer with them. He'd been put to bed an hour earlier. The three adults-Muller, Brasch, and his plump, pretty hausfrau Willie-all hunkered over the kitchen table, like card players protecting a hand.
They heard the muffled crump of far-off bombs only as an echo of thunder.
"So, Brasch. What say you?"
Muller did not mean the question to be insulting. He was genuinely interested, and Brasch seemed to be genuinely sincere in trying to answer. The play of emotions across his haggard face gave away his conflicted feelings. "I don't know," he said. "I think so. Perhaps I would not have been so quick in my betrayal. Perhaps I was ready to throw it in after the Eastern Front. I don't know, Muller. I did not have the luxury of growing up in your world."
Willie patted his arm. "You were very sick, when you returned from Belgorod. That medal they pinned on you was supposed to make everything better. Men are full of such foolishness, Herr Muller. But not my Paul. He is a good man. We are good Germans."
Muller controlled the sick sneer that threatened to crawl across his lips at the old phrase. "You are." He nodded and waved his flexipad in their direction. "I have convinced my controllers of that. Although, it was the information you sent, Brasch, which has saved your hides."
The engineer flushed with anger. "That is not why I sent it, as you well know. I have saved the hides of my enemy, and condemned thousands of my comrades. I did so without knowing that you were coming for me. I did so knowing that it probably meant the deaths of my wife and child when-not if, but when I was found out. So you can cram your insinuations back into your arse, where they came from, Herr Kapitan."
"Paul, please," Willie pleaded.
Muller smiled and shook his head. "No, Frau Brasch, your husband is right. I should not pick at this scab. He has done a great service, not just for the world, but Germany herself."
"And so my reward is to be abandoned here," said Brasch.
"Left, not abandoned," Muller corrected. "Your wife and son will be smuggled out, and their disappearance covered up by the bombing raid in two days' time. You, however, must stay. Like me. There is more work to be done."
Brasch's wife gripped her husband's arm tightly. "But they will know, Paul. They will search the rubble and find we are not here, and they will think we have escaped."
"There will be bodies to find," said Muller, pushing on over the woman's objections. "Don't concern yourself with details. The Reich is full of bodies."
"But our neighbors. They will all be killed."
Muller shrugged. "This area of Berlin was taken by the Soviets at the end of my war. They are better off dead. And anyway, I have observed your neighbors these last few weeks. Some of them deserve everything they get."
Tears welled up in her eyes, and Muller regretted his harsh words, but he did not soften them. If this woman and her son were to survive, they would need to toughen up.
"So two days," said Brasch, bringing them back to business.
Muller scanned the latest data burst from Fleetnet. Sea Dragon was failing, the assault collapsing in on itself. Some German units had successfully landed on British soil, but the follow-on forces had been blocked. Raeder's most powerful ships were scrap metal. And the Luftwaffe was being pounded out of the sky.
"Two days will mark the point of maximum confusion," said Muller. "As the two army groups are forced to pull back from the French coast or be annihilated by the Allied air forces. In two days, a thousand British and American heavy bombers will strike at Berlin, to emphasize the scale of Hitler's failure. A few of them, specially adapted for the mission, will bomb this neighborhood into rubble, to cover your escape."
Muller let his eyes freeze on Willie Brasch.
"Do not warn anyone. You are already traitors to the Reich. Like me."
"But there are children…," cried Willie.
"I know," Muller shot back, suddenly giving vent to his own suppressed rage. "Some of them are my family."