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Dancing on the Edge: The New Order: A Nazi Victory Spy Quest

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Update XX: Diversions
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    • Diversions

    THREE EYES: A common saying in the Eastern colonies is that every Wehrmacht occupation man has three eyes - two to see ahead and one to see a bribe, for a surprising number of them are on the take. Outside of the SD or the elite Waffen-SS units, a substantial minority of Eastern conscripts and in rare cases SS conscripts are compromised or sleepers. Attention ought to be paid to uncovering the extent of this...
    -    Internal memo, Central Intelligence Agency, 1960​

    November 19th, 1962
    Moskau, RK Moskowien
    Metropol Hotel

    The Metropol Hotel is a home for most of the higher ranking SS officers in Moskau, together with their assorted mistresses, possessions, and sensitive secrets. Once the most lavish hotel in Tsarist Moscow, with a great neoclassical facade hiding the suites behind with every room a different one, it became a status symbol for the Soviet Union. When the Germans came, they decided to keep it – and fill it with all manner of things. Among those things being the top SS officers in the RK and sensitive political prisoners the regime wasn't yet sure about.

    That meant that when you were brought to the Metropol with a half-conscious SS stringer in tow by a couple of Wehrmacht halftracks, the first response of the Waffen-SS duty NCO was to bellow orders to halt, schnell. The concrete monolith in front of the Metropol turned out to house an infantry squad with antitank weapons, and the overage conscripts you'd talked into dropping you off here with mentions of Sicherheitsdienst suddenly found themselves with business elsewhere - colonel's orders or no.

    That meant that you woke up in a smallish suite on the Metropol's uppermost floor that wasn't the one you'd checked in to, with a sentry at the door. It meant that you were tiredly blinking away the detritus of a day spent in tension and desperate persuasion as you woke to a new one, but woke up to the brusque knock of the sentry at your door.

    You lazily wake up in the same uniform shirt and pants that the sentries handed you, call out for the newcomer to enter, and make your way to the bathroom while what's probably some low level interrogator pokes around the room - no doubt trying to find something incriminating that your nefarious American self did overnight.
    Good luck with that, the tiny suite has barely a bed, desk, chairs and a bathroom. It's not as if you're secretly running Radio Free Europe out of the Metropol here.

    You come out of the bathroom somewhat refreshed, and find Prosecutor Steiner sitting on the suite's narrow bed and gesturing to the hardwood chair at the bed's foot. You bottle up what nervousness you feel, calmly moving to sit and opening the conversation. "So what brings you here, Prosecutor? I already cooperated with Agent Schneider in all particulars, I don't think that my credentials are in doubt."

    "Your credentials, such as they are, are for a journalist. Not a spy, and walking around an abandoned metro station without an escort is a good way for a spy to work. Not a journalist." He adjusts his glasses somewhat fussily, picking up a manila folder from the bed. It's one that he brought in with him, judging by the Reichsadler. "Take a look at the photographs, miss Freide."

    You find one of a square-faced man staring into the camera, marks on his face and bleakness in his eyes even in an old gray photograph. Sergei Korolev, no doubt – he looks a bit like 'Sergei' did in the sewers.

    The second photo is one of you and Hildi Knef, laughing at something together on the train. Probably shot with a telephoto lens on high zoom, judging by the quality. Evidently the SS had an eavesdropper.
    You feel numb as you go through the rest of them, another six images of you in Paris, you talking to people, you alone in the train compartment and reading.

    You being spied on from afar, and making you right now feel violated. A small part of you – the jaded, cynical one – says that that's the intent.

    You toss them back on the bed, sitting so that the back of the chair faces the prosecutor. "So you spied on me while I was on the train. What of it?"

    "Hildegard Knef is a traitor, and fled the Reich no doubt with American aid. You lost your passport to her, and managed somehow to gain new papers." He glares at you, metal-rimmed glasses and graying hair making him seem more an irate principal than an SS officer. "You were thus in a position to help the Americans gain a propaganda coup by encouraging a traitor. Perhaps even seducing her away from the Reich." The sneer on his face at the last sentence is enough to make you want to hit him, all the propaganda of 'decadent America' regurgitated at you in some sort of stress-interrogation.

    Your hand twitches, you carefully do your best to keep your face blank, and your stomach is heaving with either fear or anger or both. A smooth, cold voice answers the prosecutor that you realize is yours, "So you have the baseless allegations made in Berlin, for which I was cleared in the Embassy interview. What else, prosecutor?"
    He has enough to haul you into a camp already, you know that. The issue is what else he has to avoid diplomatic fallout.

    The answer, as it comes, is not much. At least, not much by your standards – you're not sure about RSHA-Ost. "You then took a taxi to the soldiers' bar Barbarossa near the Sretensky Monastery, and met with the South African van der Merwe, who has been under observation by RSHA-Ost since 1961 as a potential subversive element. You also met with Colonel Josef von Strachwitz, who while unreliable, informed us that he could not testify that what you spoke with van der Merwe was entirely above board."

    Shit. You blink once, but thank God above and your nerves here on Earth that you don't react more than that to the colonel evidently throwing you to the wolves. Perhaps since the wolves were on his tail, but that still won't help you one jot.

    "So you have a colonel that doesn't like me and a meeting with a fellow Westerner in a bar. Near a tourist destination." Engaging with the prosecutor isn't the wisest course of action, but silence tempts all sorts of other measures. If he wants to show off, let him.

    "You then took a cab with Fritz Schaefer to the ruined Komsomolskaya Station, an area of partisan activity." He looks at you with something like satisfaction and a hint of vindictive anger in his face, thin features seeming almost predatory in the interrogation despite your plush surroundings. "You went into the station for half an hour, emerging with nothing of note except a few scribbling on Soviet architecture. You no doubt met some Russian or the other in the tunnels, they get everywhere in this place."

    Like pests, he no doubt wants to say. Like rats. Like an antibody, you want to say. But you don't. "So you think I spoke to some Russian for what? To give them the time of day? Schaefer and your duty NCO here at the hotel searched me thoroughly -" They were at least professional about it, but it's a violation nonetheless, "And they found nothing at all. So what's the charge, prosecutor?"

    "I don't think you understand, miss." Steiner shakes his head almost chidingly, words coming far too smoothly to be something he hasn't said before. "I don't need more evidence. With what I have, I can send you to an Arctic labor camp for the few months you will last there, and in doing so eliminate another bacterium in the Reich."

    "I knew that already, your point?" You're more sarcastic than you ought to be, but the stress and fear in your chest and your gut are driving you on. That, and the exhaustion of all of this.
    You're so, so tired.

    "My point, miss Freide, is that you are on thin ice." The prosecutor taps the file, "We have enough to make things lethal, without hunches. And we have plenty of hunches."

    "Such as?" You might as well humor the man, he wants to seem clever.

    "You did not pick anything up from the station, or you were unable to do so." He pauses, "Or you instead dropped something off."

    "Really." You drawl that word out, "So what, I'm now some superspy smuggling things out of the country while not being able to spot a tail?"

    He rises from the bed, picking up his folder and patting you on the cheek on his way out. It's almost patronizing, your arm twitching upwards before you remember the situation. "I say nothing at all, miss Freide, except outline your situation. You will sit here while we discuss things, and you will get an offer. Be sure to consider things carefully when you make a choice."

    Steiner opens the door, nods to the sentry, and calls over his shoulder, "If it was up to me, I wouldn't even give you this."

    * * * *​

    The door opens a few hours later, a thin, short woman in cleaner's dress coming inside without knocking. Presumably the guard let her in or something. You sort of manage to nod at her from where you're splayed out on the bed doing precisely nothing at all, and she hesitantly nods back.

    At this point in the mission, you're very probably dead unless Tolbukhin is willing to burn assets on getting you out. So you're probably dead. At least, that's what it looks like.

    Something brushes your leg, making you twitch and sit up in bed to find that the cleaning lady is staring right at you and pointing to a corner of the room. She gestures discreetly at her eyes and points at the corner, ostentatiously sweeping the floor while doing it.

    You nod once, and ask her in German to clean it. "I'm sorry about that, but I got nauseous. Can you…?" You gesture towards it in full view of the cameras, the implication obvious.

    A sigh, a muttering of Russian, and she moves slowly there before smiling briefly at you with thin lips and tense eyes when she reaches the camera blindspot. She pulls out a piece of paper, drops it on the floor, and asks you to come and see the clean floor.

    You do that, and the note asks you to be ready in two hours.

    Evidently things are afoot.

    You ask her name and thank her, and she simply shakes her head and says No, no in German. There's a flicker of something behind her eyes at your politeness, and you don't push it further.

    The room is clean, the sentry dropping off lunch once the cleaner is done, and you spend a less than enjoyable hour eating Wehrmacht field rations that show the cost-savings inherent in conscription.

    You finish eating, choke down the last of the ersatz chocolate that comes as dessert, and get bowled off your chair when an almighty crash sounds through the Metropol. A flash of pain and a dull thud herald you hitting your head as the chair falls to the ground, and shouting outside the door heralds the distraction that you were told about.

    The door is bashed open by a sentry, voices barking in German to move, quickly. A hood is slapped over your head faster than you can protest or struggle, and you're moved with no attention to safety or health.

    You hold back a sob under the hood, and it isn't on account of the bashed shin that happened on your way out or the rifle-butt that was applied to keep you cooperative.

    You were promised extraction, not another SS prison cell.

    You move down, up, and ahead, always quickly and sometimes with the roar of helicopters in your ears. The burlap of the hood keeps you from seeing and dulls the noise of the outside world, keeping you from knowing where you are or what your surroundings are. After a bit you can feel something soft under you and something to lean on, and you assume it's a seat.

    Before you can know what sort, a rag is placed against your face, a sweaty arm coming under your hood.

    The world goes dark.

    Yet when you come to and the hood's taken off, you find yourself…

    Pick one:
    []On the Road North:     The driver is a Russian who won't speak to you, dressed in a Hiwi volunteer's uniform and driving steadily northwards. Evidently the cover is your movement to the 'New Town' Germanic suburbs north of Moskau, a prisoner transport that Tolbukhin has managed to compromise. After that, though, you're told that you and Sergei have to reach the Finnish border...

    []Past the Lubyanka: You get told what to do in terse sentences, clipped German with the accents of a Pole or a Balt telling you that you'll be shifted in a coffin with air holes to join Sergei once you reach the SS regional HQ at the Lubyanka building. Prisoners expire all the time, and there's a corpse to replace yours in a carbombing that ought to buy you some time and safety...

    []On the Rails East: A cargo train carries all sorts of things, among them prisoners held near prison equipment. Your escort loads you on board with a few Russians aiding them, the marshaling yard denuded of Germans as troops are called back to sweep the city proper – and Sergei nods at you from the other side of the carriage. You're headed East, to the Soviet Union...

    AN: I apologize for the delay and the low output, but I've recently got a new laptop and have been playing games in my spare time. Feedback is, as always, welcome.
     
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    • [X]On the Rails East: A cargo train carries all sorts of things, among them prisoners held near prison equipment. Your escort loads you on board with a few Russians aiding them, the marshaling yard denuded of Germans as troops are called back to sweep the city proper – and Sergei nods at you from the other side of the carriage. You're headed East, to the Soviet Union...
     
    [X] On the Road North: The driver is a Russian who won't speak to you, dressed in a Hiwi volunteer's uniform and driving steadily northwards. Evidently the cover is your movement to the 'New Town' Germanic suburbs north of Moskau, a prisoner transport that Tolbukhin has managed to compromise. After that, though, you're told that you and Sergei have to reach the Finnish border...
     
    [X]On the Road North: The driver is a Russian who won't speak to you, dressed in a Hiwi volunteer's uniform and driving steadily northwards. Evidently the cover is your movement to the 'New Town' Germanic suburbs north of Moskau, a prisoner transport that Tolbukhin has managed to compromise. After that, though, you're told that you and Sergei have to reach the Finnish border...
     
    ... well shit, the mission is failed. Now it's just running on our own for Finland or trusting the Chinese and Russians.
     
    [X]On the Rails East: A cargo train carries all sorts of things, among them prisoners held near prison equipment. Your escort loads you on board with a few Russians aiding them, the marshaling yard denuded of Germans as troops are called back to sweep the city proper – and Sergei nods at you from the other side of the carriage. You're headed East, to the Soviet Union...

    Not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but the Road North looks like a harrowing, mad dash to Finland and out of Nazi Europe, Past the Lubyanka means we keep going down the rabbit hole, on the Rails East seems like a compromise; we're out of the red zone, but we're still in dangerous, uncharted lands of a totalitarian dictatorship, albeit one that shares a common enemy.

    I like living and there's probably some intel scraps we can hoover up in what's left of the USSR.
     
    Last edited:
    aeiou! said:
    Not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but the Road North looks like a harrowing, mad dash to Finland and out of Nazi Europe, Past the Lubyanka means we keep going down the rabbit hole, on the Rails East seems like a compromise; we're out of the red zone, but we're still in dangerous, uncharted lands of a totalitarian dictatorship, but one that shares a common enemy.

    I like living and there's probably some intel scraps we can hoover up in what's left of the USSR.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Not to mention we're only alive because the Soviet resistance cut a deal with the SS. Anywhere we end up, rest assured it's because that grinning asshat wants us there.
     
    mouli said:
    The world goes dark.

    Yet when you come to and the hood's taken off, you find yourself…

    Pick one:
    []On the Road North:     The driver is a Russian who won't speak to you, dressed in a Hiwi volunteer's uniform and driving steadily northwards. Evidently the cover is your movement to the 'New Town' Germanic suburbs north of Moskau, a prisoner transport that Tolbukhin has managed to compromise. After that, though, you're told that you and Sergei have to reach the Finnish border...

    []Past the Lubyanka: You get told what to do in terse sentences, clipped German with the accents of a Pole or a Balt telling you that you'll be shifted in a coffin with air holes to join Sergei once you reach the SS regional HQ at the Lubyanka building. Prisoners expire all the time, and there's a corpse to replace yours in a carbombing that ought to buy you some time and safety...

    []On the Rails East: A cargo train carries all sorts of things, among them prisoners held near prison equipment. Your escort loads you on board with a few Russians aiding them, the marshaling yard denuded of Germans as troops are called back to sweep the city proper – and Sergei nods at you from the other side of the carriage. You're headed East, to the Soviet Union...

    AN: I apologize for the delay and the low output, but I've recently got a new laptop and have been playing games in my spare time. Feedback is, as always, welcome.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    @mouli, blink twice if Todd Howard is forcing you to write a Skyrim crossover :V


    Right, you say you work better with feedback, so let's just look at this chapter alone.

    The fundamental conceit of this chapter is "the heroine of the story gets hauled to an interrogation after she acts too suspiciously one too many times" - and to an extent, there's a passivity to it. The main character, in this chapter, lacks agency. She is not choosing where the story goes - the story is choosing where she goes, and her only choice is how loudly or quietly she goes with it. Even the part where she speaks up is passive - she is answering the interrogator's questions, and barely realizes that she's making the decisions that she is. The part where the Russian cleaning lady comes in and tells her what to do, she complies - she is following along with their orders, instead of breaking off.

    Intentional or not, this is a chapter where things are happening to the protagonist. We're at a decent point to do this - you have clearly established the protagonist's choice in affairs, and fittingly enough, the interrogation provides you an excellent place to recall to the reader what choices the protagonist has previously made. However, this passivity does require us to be near the end for this to work well - the protagonist should be the one driving the story, so when the protagonist stops driving the story, the end has to be in sight - and indeed, the quest choices are about the protagonist's exit.

    Narration-wise, you do a pretty good job of driving your points home - you have a few places where an editing pass might be able to improve, but certainly I'm guilty enough of "fuck it gotta push it out the door" so that's not really a big deal. Emotionally, you do a good job of depicting things, though especially in the forceful extraction bit you have some parts where the emotion comes before the cause. I'm thinking specifically of this segment:
    mouli said:
    A hood is slapped over your head faster than you can protest or struggle, and you're moved with no attention to safety or health.

    You hold back a sob under the hood, and it isn't on account of the bashed shin that happened on your way out or the rifle-butt that was applied to keep you cooperative.

    You were promised extraction, not another SS prison cell.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Moved with no attention to safety or health" is a little too clinical for what sounds like being roughly jostled, dragged, and beat with a rifle-butt to with a sneer about staying cooperative, especially since the very next line opens up with "you hold back a sob under the hood". Essentially, you haven't made the reader feel like the protagonist is about to cry before you state that she's about to cry, and why - it's not quite telling instead of showing, because you do show why, it's just that you've told the audience "she's holding back sobs" before you've showed the audience why "she's holding back sobs".

    Something to perhaps keep in mind going forward.
     
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