Chapter 20: Nuts
On the hospital bed, Hermann looked around in a daze.
The last thing he clearly remembered was being shot, thrown into a car, and taken away. After that, everything blurred into pain, blood, and darkness.
So who had saved him?
Men from the Workers' Party?
A backup arrangement left behind by the bearded madman?
Or perhaps his old pilot comrades, the ones he had long since lost contact with?
Before he could arrive at any real conclusion, the door opened.
The sight of a police uniform instantly filled Hermann's eyes with alertness. Instinctively, he tried to shrink back and reach for a weapon that was no longer there. But then he saw his wife.
His movements froze.
"Carin," he said at once, his voice softening so much it hardly sounded like the same man. "Why are you here? And who are they?"
Jörg gave Vito a look.
Vito understood immediately. With Cardolan following behind him, he quietly withdrew from the room and closed the door.
Soon, only three people remained inside the ward, Hermann, Carin, and Jörg, whose presence felt entirely out of place amid the smell of alcohol, medicine, and blood.
"Hermann, are you all right?" Carin rushed to the bedside, her voice trembling. "My God, I nearly lost you. Let's not stay in this dangerous country any longer. We can sell everything and go to America. Or Australia. Damn it, anywhere is fine."
Jörg did not interrupt.
His cold blue eyes remained fixed on Hermann's face, not merely watching him, but studying him, searching for the place where the armor ended and the man began.
Hermann's voice turned low and strained.
"I can promise you anything, Carin. Anything except that."
He looked at her with painful sincerity.
"I cannot leave. This is my mission. It is my duty."
"But you are also my husband…"
The noblewoman who had once chosen this man over comfort, status, and ease whispered those words with quiet desperation.
Hermann was about to answer her when the steady male voice from the side cut cleanly into the moment. At once, his whole body tensed again. Even the injured leg held in its sling throbbed sharply from the strain.
"Ms. Carin," Jörg said lightly, "would you mind allowing me a few words with your husband?"
Though his tone was mild, the authority beneath it was unmistakable.
It sounded less like a request than a decision already made.
Carin looked at Hermann reluctantly.
She was not a particularly capable woman in politics or strategy, but she was not a fool either. She could tell that this handsome, aristocratic young man was not simple. Most likely, if her husband had not died like the others in the Workers' Party, it was because of this man.
"Of course," she said at last.
She pulled the blanket up around Hermann, gave him one last look, and then stepped out of the room on her heels.
Now only the two men remained.
They looked at each other in silence.
The warmth Carin had brought with her vanished almost instantly.
The room became still, cold, and quiet, like the surface of some black river in the underworld.
"Who are you?" Hermann asked at last.
Looking at the man before him, someone much younger than himself, Hermann felt an unexpected pressure pressing against his chest. He had only ever felt this sort of pressure in front of men like Erich.
The fact that he now felt it from a young man barely past youth was almost absurd.
"Call me Jörg," he said. "Mr. Hermann, you look far sturdier in person than in your photographs. No wonder you were counted among the finest of the pilots."
Jörg calmly pulled over a chair and sat down.
In the sterile light of the hospital ward, with Hermann laid up in bed and his leg suspended, the scene looked almost exactly like an interrogation, except that the man doing the questioning looked more like a nobleman than a policeman.
Hermann's gaze sharpened.
"Are you police? I saw the man who just left. The uniform he wore, I saw the same one in Munich. It belongs to the head of Police Security."
He stared at Jörg.
"Are you the head of Berlin's police?"
Jörg crossed one leg over the other.
"I was."
Then he smiled faintly.
"But Mr. Hermann, aren't you curious why I saved you?"
"Not particularly," Hermann replied without hesitation. "If you were truly working for the government, I'd already be in a prison cell. And if the reason were 'helping people for amusement,' then that would be even more ridiculous."
His breathing remained shallow, but his mind was sharp.
"So you want either money, or something more valuable."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"And since you were able to investigate me this thoroughly, I doubt you lack money. Which means you're after me… or more accurately, the Workers' Party behind me."
Hermann stared at the blank white wall for a while after saying that, as if testing the shape of the idea in his own head. Then he slowly turned back.
Seeing the almost imperceptible nod from Jörg, he let out a low breath.
"So that's it."
A long silence followed, then Hermann gave a bitter sigh.
"Unfortunately, our leader is finished. Everything is over."
A trace of appreciation flickered in Jörg's eyes.
As expected, men who left their names in history were not always geniuses, but they were never fools.
"What exactly is over?" Jörg asked.
He stood, walked to the window, and drew back the curtains so that pale sunlight spilled into the ward.
"One or two failures do not mean the end. What I want is not for the Workers' Party to fail."
He turned slightly, the light catching the sharp line of his profile.
"I want it to disappear."
His voice was almost gentle.
"I want that trend, that fever, that ideology poisoning Germany's future, to disappear completely."
Then he chuckled.
"And you will be the executioner."
Hermann's gaze hardened.
The words should have sounded absurd. Yet somehow, coming from Jörg, they did not.
Jörg continued, now speaking as if he were simply laying out the next few steps of a journey.
"Let me guess what you would do otherwise. You would take Ms. Carin, with your injuries and your growing ailments, and flee to Italy to seek aid from the man you have been trying to imitate."
He took another step.
"Or perhaps you would be driven from city to city by the police. Or wander from country to country, living like an exile among people who neither trust you nor need you."
Hermann said nothing.
Jörg's voice remained cool.
"I know you would be willing to endure all of that. But have you ever asked whether Ms. Carin would?"
That struck deeper than anything political.
Jörg's eyes did not leave him.
"Have you considered what your wife actually wants? A life of fear? Endless flight? Illness from exhaustion, anxiety, and hunger?"
At the mention of Carin, the hard, disciplined face Hermann had maintained began to crack in subtle places.
But when it came to betrayal, he remained rigid.
"She would understand."
"That," Jörg said, "is an irresponsible answer."
He returned to his chair and sat down again.
"To speak plainly, I can help you remain in Germany. In exchange, you will help me gather in all the filth, all the poison, all the diseased fragments, so they can be swept away at once."
Hermann's eyes shifted.
Then Jörg said two words.
"Progress Party."
The reaction was immediate.
The contempt that had filled Hermann's gaze since the beginning changed at once. Among all the speeches and propaganda he had heard in recent years, only two things had truly appealed to him, the speeches of the bearded leader, and the speeches of Joseph from the Progress Party, who likewise linked Germany's revival with the cleansing of humiliation.
His voice turned tight.
"What is your relationship with the Progress Party?"
Jörg folded his hands together.
"It is an extension of my will. A part of me."
His eyes remained perfectly steady.
"Mr. Joseph is my secretary. And my propagandist."
Then he asked, with complete confidence,
"So, Mr. Hermann… what is your answer?"
Hermann stared at him for a long time.
"What if I refuse?"
Jörg only smiled.
He did not say a single word.
But the silence itself told Hermann all he needed to know.
Between the vulnerability of his wife and the hard weight of reality, Hermann felt his resolve shift.
The image of the leader fleeing under gunfire flashed through his mind again.
Suddenly, that man no longer looked as great as Hermann had once believed.
In contrast, this excessively young Jörg, with his own party, his own network, his own terrifying calm, began to seem far more worthy of following.
How old was he?
Twenty four?
Twenty five?
And yet he already had his own political organization, his own ideas, and the eloquence to make those ideas sound inevitable.
No.
Not merely eloquence.
This man was a born politician.
A born ruler.
Under the combined pressure of German revival, practical necessity, and his unwillingness to drag Carin through years of fear and exile, Hermann finally closed his eyes for a moment.
Then he opened them and nodded.
"All right."
.....
[Check Out My Patreon For Advance Chapters On All My Fanfics!]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]