When the Red Army rolled into Berlin in the spring of 1945, no woman was safe. Russian rapists rampaged through the ruined German capital ravaging any female they could find between the ages of eight and 80.
Hundreds of thousands. The biggest mass rape in history. Wolfman Kane observed it all, wandering through mountains of rubble while the terrible Ivans rounded up their prey. During his time on Earth he had seen every conceivable atrocity but nothing on such a scale of human misery. Revenge was the word he heard uttered most by the conquerors. Revenge for what the Nazis had done across Europe.
Just a few months earlier, Barbie Boseman had slipped quietly away as Allied forces liberated Auschwitz. Barbie was a notorious concentration camp guard, a sadist who got her pleasure from torture. Heavily built, daughter of a shopkeeper, a slow smile that hid the true beast wiithin.
Nobody seemed to know how she came to be recruited to the SS or land her first job at Ravensbruck, but she came to Auschwitz with a reputation that even her fellow guards feared.
Barbie loved classical music. In her private quarters she played records to drown her victims' screams. One of her favorites was Tchaikovsky. Barbie would pick a man from a work party, the strongest and best looking of the ragged bunch.
He would be ushered in by two other female guards, stripped and bathed while Barbie watched. A half-starved captive who had not seen a woman for months, maybe years and who suddenly found himself immersed in their scents and intoxicating laughter. Yes, there would be food and wine and the women fondled him, kissed him, danced close with him and when he was relaxed and thoroughly aroused, Barbie would give the signal for her fun to begin.
She put a record of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite on the player and playfully flashed a bit of leg so that the prisoner could see her suspender belt. The guards moved swiftly in and pinned the prisoner down.
Barbie's Walther P38 sat snug in her shoulder holster. She also had a knife sheath but instead of a knife it contained a pair of nutcrackers. She was drenched in perfume. Even if he had wanted to, the captive could not have controlled himself. Barbie leaned her face towards him and he smelt the cigarettes on her breath. His erection throbbed. The guards had him trapped.
Barbie clamped his testicles in the steel jaws of the nutcracker. She squeezed with her full force and bent down to hear his nuts crack. First left, then right. Not so much a cracking sound as a pop, his balls collapsing to mush.
The last thing he saw before blacking out was Barbie's crimson mouth twisting into a huge smile.
It was the Red Army who liberated Auschwitz but by then Barbie was already in Berlin. And by the time the Russians got there she had used her contacts to get in touch with their secret police, the NKVD.
Wolfman Kane was tracking her movements. He wondered what ploy she would use to gain the confidence of NKVD Captain Vladimir Kobulov.
Kobulov leaned back in his chair and blew smoke at the ceiling. "Everything is fucked," he said. "The Americans, they think it all comes down to chocolate, stockings and smokes.
And you, dear Comrade Boseman, you say you can be of great use to us. So tell me how."
"I was in the camps," she said. "It will start to come out but most of the records have been destroyed and there are things..."
He waited: "Things? Things you have knowledge of? But how?"
She would not say. Only that she had been close to the camp commandant, secretarial job maybe, something that gave her access to the numbers. Yes, they could put her on trial but she was prepared to cooperate.
Kobulov tugged thoughtfully at his insignia, red shoulder patches with three silver stars. He knew she couldn't be trusted but then treachery and betrayal were second nature to every Russian so he had no great expectations.
He thought her attractive enough. She would probably look fresher without the heavy makeup but they were all tired and in need of camouflage
"Okay," he said. She smelt the vodka on his breath. "We will give it a try. I will have to explain you away by saying you have joined us as a collaborating German comrade to help with the new entertainments section."
When Barbie left the underground bunker, Kane followed her through the smoking ruins of Berlin. He felt no lust for her but was obeying an instinct he could not explain. The streets were crowded with crazed drunken soldiers but she could pass unhindered because of her NKVD credentials.
The women of Berlin were not so lucky. Soviet troops with bared chests lined them up and assaulted them. These were mainly men from the steppes, Mongolian in appearance with almond eyes and short crooked legs. They had thick arms. Many had tattoos. In previous lives they had been thieves and murderers.
A drunk soldier with long black hair lunged at Barbie but shrank back when she flashed her pass. "Well then, comrade," you can watch, he yelled. "Watch us fuck some Fritz cunts!" He brandished a bottle of vodka in one hand and with the other he held a naked young woman by the throat. There was a snap as he broke her neck. Then he ran her through with his bayonet.
Barbie hurried on, back to the small lodging house where she had found temporary shelter. She felt exhausted but was also happy to have got a foot in the Soviet camp. She had her own plans for the entertainments section.
In the street outside, Kane lit a cigarette. It was a habit he had picked up since his arrival on Earth. He listened to the sounds around him, shouts and screams, the ashes of defeat blowing through Berlin. A corpse lay propped in a doorway, corroded and crumbling away.
He remembered back, how long was it, 10,000 a million years, to other worlds. It was always the same. War and then more war.
But it did not have to be like that. It never had to be like that.
Kane wished he could hear birdsong and watch a flight of geese flapping across the evening sky. This planet. Such a beautiful place with so many wonders. His own homeland now a dusty wasteland.
It would come to that on Earth soon enough. Everything ending in fire, the forests burning and oceans boiling, all the great monuments of mankind turned to stone.
Kane sighed and went to join Captain Kobulov for a nightcap. The Russian was pleased to see him. "Comrade Kane," he said. "It's a black day when we can't find something to cheer us up." He pulled a bottle of vodka from his drawer and filled two glasses. They drank to the end of the war, the end of all wars.