Ashes of Berlin

July 1941, Berlin

Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Kristian Krammer squatted and placed a red rose on the grave that should have been his. It still didn’t have a full covering of grass over it.

He touched the headstone. “I’m sorry, Adelaide.”

God, would he ever get over the guilt?

They should be married now, and the baby she’d carried born and possibly another on the way.

He still couldn’t think about it too much.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then stood and continued to the Weiss Building. It wasn’t a long walk.

With a sigh, he stepped inside and handed his identification papers to the same guard who looked at them every morning. It didn’t bother him. After all, the project was top secret.

“Go on, Herr Hauptsturmführer, you’re fine,” the guard said and handed him his papers.

He was anything but fine. Wilhelm nodded, tucked the papers away, and headed down the long hallway to the work area. He pushed open one of the double doors at the end of the hallway and stepped inside the cavernous room.

The hulking machine they’d toiled over for months sat in the corner of their work area. While it wasn’t a weapon of war, it was just as important to the Reich.

“Krammer, it’s about time you got here,” Sturmbannführer Fritz Schechner said and narrowed his eyes.

Wilhelm didn’t inform him that his shift began at seven, and it was five till. Because in the military, right on time was ten minutes early. Which he wasn’t. “Yes, sir. My apologies.”

“Get to work, Krammer. And don’t be late again.”

“Yes, sir.” He strode to the men clustered outside the machine.

It annoyed the hell out of him that his rank was virtually worthless on the project. It didn’t matter that he was only one grade lower. Since he’d been pulled from his company, he was stuck working under that asshole, Schechner. And he would stay there until they deemed him mentally healthy enough to return to the field.

His men were doing the real work, under someone else, while he was there, tinkering on a machine that would never do the impossible.

It was humiliating.

“Krammer, you’re just in time,” Erich Gebauer said.

“What’s going on?”

Erich handed him a long metal rod. “We’re going to activate it, but someone needs to hold this in place since it hasn’t been welded yet. You can do it since you know how it’s supposed to work.”

Wilhelm looked at the rod. “It isn’t going to fully activate, or…” He didn't really believe anything would happen. But still...

Erich shook his head. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t let anyone inside that thing if there was a chance of it going into real operation. Besides,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “You know I don’t think time travel is possible. But working here and putting up with that asshole Schechner is better than sitting on the front lines and having Russen shoot at us.”

Wilhelm snorted. “I’d rather be in the middle of Russland than have to deal with Schechner.”

Erich glanced over at Schechner. “His dislike for you is nearly legendary.”

Wilhelm snorted. “I don’t know what I did. But he hated me the moment he set eyes on me.”

Wilhelm spotted his friend, Gerhard Kinchen, on the other side of the building. Gerhard motioned for him to come over.

Wilhelm rubbed his jaw. “When do you want me to get in this thing?”

“We’ll be ready in about ten minutes,” Gebauer said.

“Okay, I’ll be back in a little bit.” He strode over to see what Gerhard wanted.

“What’s going on?” Wilhelm said.

Gerhard brushed something off the arm of his uniform. “You know, my sister is absolutely nuts about you. She keeps hoping you’ll ask her out.”

“Did she put you up to telling me that?”

“No,” Gerhard said. “She’d be pretty angry if she knew I told you.”

“So why did you?”

Gerhard rolled his eyes. “Because you’re my good friend, and I hate to see you so unhappy. You need a Fräulein to spend some time with. She’s crazy about you. And I could do a lot worse for a brother-in-law.”

“I don’t deserve a Fraulein.” And he certainly didn’t deserve love, not after what had happened to Adelaide.

“Look, I know losing Adelaide was hard, but it wasn’t your fault, and you can’t change it. You need to find someone and live again. You have to accept it and love someone else.”

That’s where Gerhard was wrong. Adelaide’s death was his fault. And he didn’t want to endanger another Fräulein.

Wilhelm said, “You know we won’t be working on this project forever. When they finally decide this isn’t going to work, we’ll all be sent back to our previous assignments. I’m not going to marry someone and maybe not come back to them.”

“You were engaged to get married,” Gerhard said.

“Yes, and it was a mistake. One I’m not going to repeat. If I make it through the war, I’ll find someone. But not before.”

“Krammer, we’ve hit a snag over here. It’s going to be a little while before we’re ready,” Schechner called to him.

The bastard could at least address him by his rank.

He lifted a hand, indicating that he’d heard Schechner.

“Do you think this thing will work?” Gerhard said.

“No,” Wilhelm said. “But my orders are to work here for now. We all do as we’re told.”

“But you want to be back with your men. We all know you do.”

“Yes, and I want to find the bastards who killed Adelaide.” And if he did, they would pay. Hadn’t he been trained to be the very best at killing? He’d sworn an oath to protect the Fatherland and to their leader, but war took all sorts of casualties. And if he found those men, they would be counted among them.

She hadn’t been the target, but the partisan bastards hadn’t cared who fell in the rain of bullets meant for him. She had been innocent. Her only crime had been falling in love with an SS officer. She’d paid dearly for it. And it shouldn’t be like that. He couldn’t bring her back. But maybe he could send her killers to Hell.

By the noon hour, they still hadn’t been able to test the machine, but Wilhelm was accustomed to delays. Perhaps after they broke for lunch, they would be able to proceed.

He didn’t care one way or the other. He would do his job to the best of his ability. No one could fault him for slacking. People who slacked didn’t rise in the ranks, and that didn’t fit his plans.

Besides, that wasn’t what Germany needed from her sons. Germany needed men ready and willing to do what was necessary to be victorious over their enemies. And he was one of those men.

He believed completely in the necessity of defeating the communists. Only a fool wouldn’t understand their threat to Germany and eventually all of Europe. After the Russland Revolution and seeing what the Bolsheviks did to so many innocent people, only a complete idiot didn’t understand the threat they posed to all of Europe.

It would take good leadership to win, and he wanted to be a part of it. Sitting on the side and watching others become winners wasn’t something he was willing to accept. Besides, it was going to take everything they had to give to gain victory. He wasn’t a fool. Wars were never easily won.

And if they didn’t win… That wasn’t something he wanted to consider as a possibility. The High Command understood the danger. Many of the people did, too.

“Wilhelm.” Nikolaus Weider motioned for Wilhelm to join him and Heinrich Schlink.

He crossed to the far side of the building to where they waited.

“We’re going to the café. Do you want to go?” Nikolaus said.

“Sure. Did you ask Gerhard?”

“He’s off to take a piss or something. Said he’d be ready in a minute.”

Wilhelm nodded. The four of them almost always went to the café across the street or the diner in the Krippendorf Building, which was just a short walk from the Weiss Building. More than a hundred people worked on the Black Bird Project, as it was officially known, but most of them were engineers who didn’t have time for anyone else.

The four of them, excluded from the designers of the machine, had become good friends over the months. There were many others who weren’t part of the elites, as they considered themselves, but his little group had something in common that had drawn them together.

None of them were deluded into thinking they would find victory in government projects. Victory would only come from blood and sacrifice and lots of it.