Chapter 12: Berlin Rebellion
Twilight settled over Berlin.
The sinking sun draped Wilhelmstrasse in a wash of gold, as if the avenue had been covered in fallen leaves. The guards posted there were changing shifts, left hands raised in salute, when the growing roar of voices from farther down the street drew every eye.
The workers were not dispersing.
Instead of heading home as they usually did, they gathered in swelling numbers, occupying the road as one mass and advancing with an oppressive momentum that made the air itself feel heavier.
Nade's pale yellow eyes narrowed.
Like a cat sensing danger in the dark, he immediately caught the wrongness in the scene.
He tugged the brim of his captain's cap lower and rushed into the guard post.
"Call the Public Security Department and tell them to send men immediately," he barked. "Report this to the First Rapid Response Unit as well. If this turns into an armed riot, notify the military at once!"
The messenger grabbed the telephone without wasting even a second.
At the police station, Jörg's expression was no less grim.
The operation was supposed to unfold at a fixed time.
And yet he had remained in his office all day without receiving so much as a single call from Vito.
That silence had lodged itself in his mind like a thorn.
By afternoon, unease had already driven him to gather every public security officer in the building and distribute all available weapons and ammunition.
Then the telephone rang.
Ding-a-ling.
The unfamiliar tone in the line immediately swept away the flicker of hope in his chest.
"Is this Minister Roman? A large group of unauthorized people has gathered on North Wilhelmstrasse. Please dispatch personnel immediately to maintain order."
Jörg knew at once that the plan had begun.
But instead of relief, a deeper unease gripped him.
Vito's disappearance weighed on him like a knife pressed against the spine. The more he thought about it, the less he trusted the surface of what he was seeing.
"Understood," he replied.
He hung up, strapped two pistols into the holsters at his waist, and stepped out into the corridor.
There, fully armed public security policemen who had been waiting for orders for what felt like ages immediately straightened and looked up at him.
The loose, noisy atmosphere that had lingered a moment earlier vanished at once.
In its place came silence.
And attention.
Jörg placed both hands on the wooden railing, his back straight as iron, and looked down at the men below.
"Everyone stop whatever you're doing," he said, each word falling hard and clear. "Load your sidearms. Hold those larger weapons firmly with both hands. Then move toward Wilhelmstrasse. Immediately."
North Wilhelmstrasse.
The left wing factions had clearly put serious effort into this operation.
In an open area along the road, several leaders were already giving their final speeches before the crowd.
"Comrades, workers, ask yourselves this: does the Weimar Republic care whether we live or die?"
The speaker threw out his arm dramatically.
"No! They care only for nobles. For the upper class. For men who sit in warm rooms while we starve!"
The crowd stirred, faces taut with anger.
"They eat steak and drink red wine while watching us claw over a single loaf of bread. They watch yesterday's wages become waste paper overnight as if it were some cruel performance arranged for their amusement."
His voice rose.
"Can we accept that?"
"No!"
The roar that answered him came from the very pit of inflation itself, from hunger, humiliation, and helplessness beaten into fury.
The leader nodded with satisfaction.
"Then we rise against that injustice! We will build a Germany of our own, a Germany that belongs to workers!"
Even as he spoke, rifles and ammunition were passed through the crowd. Bullets changed hands in the open. And even those who had only wandered over to watch the commotion found stones shoved into their palms, as though mere presence now meant participation.
Those movements did not escape the guards.
The moment he saw firearms appearing in the crowd, Nade snatched up the communicator's microphone.
Today, the Soviet Russian ambassador had gathered a group of high officials for talks at the Ministry of Economics.
If anything happened there, it would not simply destroy him.
It would shake Germany itself.
"This is Nade," he said sharply. "I repeat, this is no longer an ordinary strike. This is an attempt to seize power. This is rebellion!"
His voice grew harsher.
"They have firearms. They have goddamned firearms! Immediately dispatch South District guard support."
Then, with mounting fury, he shouted into the line,
"And where the hell are the public security police?!"
He had barely finished speaking when several police cars came tearing into the intersection and blocked it off.
Squad after squad of public security officers spilled out, using the vehicles as cover, taking up firing positions with disciplined speed.
Nade's eyes widened.
He even saw two Lewis light machine guns being deployed to create overlapping fields of fire from the upper windows of two cafés.
And at the center of it all stood a handsome young man in black ministerial uniform.
There was no time to ask why the police had machine guns.
Nade strode straight toward him.
"Minister Roman? I'm Nade, captain of the guard."
Jörg turned, studied the severe faced man before him, and returned the salute in full.
"Captain Nade," he said. "Given that there are still civilians on the street, may I suggest we try talking first?"
At the same time, the rebel side was not standing idle.
Old abandoned vehicles were overturned and shoved into place as crude barricades. Men carrying rifles slipped into buildings on both sides of the avenue and took up hidden positions inside windows and hallways, ready for the clash everyone now knew was coming.
And yet no one dared fire first.
The wide, once bustling street fell into a strange and terrible silence.
It felt like a battlefield waiting for the first spark to set off a field of powder.
Then Jörg's voice cut through the stillness.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Jörg von Roman, Berlin's Minister of Public Security."
His tone was clear, steady, and amplified across the street.
"I know you have demands. I know many of you are unwilling to lay down your weapons, or to abandon what you have come here to ask for."
He paused.
"But ordinary people are innocent. So let them decide for themselves whether they wish to remain in this demonstration. What lies ahead will mean bloodshed. It will mean death."
His gaze swept over the crowd.
"I have not seen a battlefield with my own eyes. But the mountains of corpses printed in newspapers are already enough to show us what modern weapons do to flesh."
His next words fell with deliberate force.
"Everyone has the right to choose life."
He let that sink in, then added,
"And if those who are armed are willing to lay down their weapons now, we can still let bygones be bygones."
Those few sentences shook the line more than bullets would have.
Workers exchanged uncertain glances. Civilians hiding in corners began to inch out from cover. A few bold souls even started jogging toward the police lines, desperate to escape before blood began to flow.
The hesitation on some of the workers' faces was brief, but it was there.
And Kralev saw it.
In that instant, he understood something bitterly clear: all of Stoff's assumptions about their so-called allies had been nonsense.
The police had never truly been theirs.
They were the least trustworthy of all.
Fortunately, they had prepared for that possibility.
If the police liaison officer had been in front of him now, Kralev would have shot him himself.
But the more chaos they created here, the better the chance Stoff had of succeeding elsewhere.
That was what mattered now.
So Kralev hardened his heart, raised his rifle slightly, and aimed not at the police, but at one of the civilians nearly at their lines.
Bang!
The bullet tore into the man's left leg.
The delicate balance shattered instantly.
Gunfire erupted.
Windows burst apart in sprays of glass. Bullets screamed off stone and iron. People shouted, ducked, screamed, and died. The rebels, most of whom had little real training, opened fire wildly and chaotically, less like a unit than a panicked mob trying to save itself.
Strings of sausages hanging in a delicatessen were ripped apart.
Tailored suits in shop windows were punched through and left dangling in tatters.
Civilians, merchants, and tourists crouched behind walls and overturned stalls, some whispering prayers to God, others shrieking loud enough to drown out even the gunfire.
In the span of a breath, Berlin's most prosperous district had become a miniature urban battlefield.
And yet Jörg did not order an advance.
The thunder of gunfire only deepened the unease already chewing through him.
Then the squeal of brakes tore through the noise.
A young policeman, one of the men left behind at the station, came running up, breathless.
"Minister… someone called for you…"
Jörg turned sharply.
"What did he say?"
The officer swallowed.
"He said it's not the north. It's the Ministry of Economics in the south."
The realization struck Jörg like lightning.
He crossed straight to Nade, who was still directing the fighting and shouting into communications.
"There's a meeting on Wilhelmstrasse today, isn't there?"
Nade answered without turning fully.
"How in hell did you know? Yes. A cooperation talk arranged by the Soviet Russian ambassador. It's being held right now."
He had only gotten out those few words before continuing into the microphone.
"Deploy the rapid response unit…"
Jörg snatched the microphone from his hand.
"Deploy to the South District. Now. Immediately!"
Nade rounded on him at once.
"What are you doing? You're a police minister. You don't have the authority for this."
He reached to seize the microphone back.
A pistol appeared.
Its muzzle pressed directly against his forehead.
Jörg's face had gone cold enough to kill.
He had been played.
And there was no longer time for rules, no time for explanation, and certainly no time for pride.
"Order your men to move with me," he said in a low, dangerous growl. "You're responsible for holding this line. Hurry, unless you want Germany to wake up tomorrow under a different flag."
For a moment Nade froze.
Then he understood.
He kicked the door open and roared,
"All guards, move with Minister Roman! Now! Quickly!"