Prologue

 

If I remember old Ali correctly - and I got to know him pretty well when he was one of my pupils in the art of... let's call it persuasion - then he'll have taken one look at the bundle of papers that I sent him and rubbed his hands with glee, at the same time dancing around with dollars signs alight in his eyes. Oh, I know that he'll print these rather derogatory remarks, because Ali regards the written word as sacred; besides, these are my written words and I'm dead, which puts him under an even stronger obligation.

So sorry if this embarrasses you, Ali, but I'm putting in this entr'acte on the fairly well-founded assumption that you're going to milk the market for all it's worth and split my story into at least two parts (I wonder what you're charging for it?). Rather than have you go to the trouble of making an introduction to the second (or third, because I've got that covered, too) part, I've written this small preface to keep my readers (are you reading this in Dear Old Freedom-for-All England, I wonder; or have the fat-arsed slime bag bureaucrats and politicians managed to kill off what's left of liberty when you are?) up-to-date with what's happened so far.

People say (I know I do - or did; have it your own way) that young people just don't think the way that we used to when we were young, to which some smart-arse will probably remark: 'they never did.' 'Course they bloody don't, any more than we thought the way our father or grand-fathers did; stands to reason. But I'll lay odds that, although there were different ways of thinking, there were a couple subjects at the top of the list, whatever the generation: sex and money. Which makes me a bit different, because I didn't care a toss about money and never have; what I cared about was sex and... what'll I call it?... screams. Yes, that'll do nicely... sex and screams, because the way I thought, the two were as inseparable as coffee and cream. What's the point in having a good-looking woman if she isn't grovelling at your feet naked with the marks of your pleasure all over her, begging to be allowed to do anything if you'll stop hurting her? Christ! The very act of writing the words has given me a rampant hard-on that'll cost me a hundred quid to get rid of when that nurse gets here, mercenary bitch...

Where was I? Oh, yes... Germany, on the very edge of war. Not that I knew it, standing in the middle of Berlin with those precious papers in my hand; papers that were the things that influenced the rest of my life just as my first trip to Germany had formed and moulded it. That trip in 1936 put me smack into the middle of a Nazi party Youth Rally when German national resurgence and pride was in strident crescendo. It's when I met Ruprecht, who liked to be called 'Rupert', and his uncle Ernst, who was a big-wig in the Party. It's when I committed my first of many rapes and learned of my until-then latent sadism; it was when I was approached by some mad-cap intelligence people in the (British) government who saw the war coming a long way of and wanted me to move to Germany as a sort of sleeping time-bomb, something I was all too keen to do, though not for love of country or fine morals or any of their daft schemes but for some very discreditable reasons of my own.

Fantastic? Call it what you like, but it happened. So did lots of other things, like Rupert and I interrogating, torturing and thoroughly enjoying ourselves with a couple of beautiful university students who were members of the Edelweiss group, a sort of loose network of intellectuals opposed to the Nazis. As a result of the confessions that we screwed (hah!) out of them, they, their families and their contacts were arrested and jailed (though a more interesting fate lay in store for Erika and Leni, who were to spend much of what was left of their lives on their knees or their backs). That little coup brought us - Rupert and me - to the attention of people who mattered in the Party, a status that further enhanced when we caught and extracted a confession - and a great deal of pleasure - from Marie Benoit, one of Ernst's workers who turned out to be a French agent.

Because of those episodes, Rupert and I were invited to Berlin to meet a very important member of the Nazi hierarchy who, like a fairy godmother (and not a chicken feather in sight) granted all our secret dreams. Or I should say that some of mine had been secret until then and surprised even Rupert, who thought he knew me. Which brought us out into a summer afternoon in Berlin, me with my new citizenship papers and both of us with documents authorising us as the new Special Secret Interrogation Unit; it was Tuesday, August 29^th, 1939.

Chapter 1

1939 - From exalted heights to new beginnings...

 

I know what you're thinking, especially if you've read the first volume of this epic saga: you're thinking that this pair of young reprobates who'd discovered and developed a taste for sex and sadism - in either order you choose - would wait a couple of days until war was declared and then charge off into Poland and proceed to screw every available female in sight with the entire Wehrmacht looking on and crying 'Well done, those chaps!'

Well, you'd be wrong; in fact, you'd be so far wrong that you couldn't be further from the truth if you were a politician making an election speech. For one thing, we didn't have the vaguest notion that war was just around the proverbial corner. We had no plans of any sort and it was only while we were making inroads into a celebratory bottle of wine in a café on the Unter den Linden that we began to see certain problems with our new position. True, we had that precious piece of paper that confirmed our status, but when I'd asked the great man about who we would report to, he'd just waved his hand airily, given an enigmatic little smile and said something about 'those things taking care of themselves.' I hadn't understood what that meant then and I was still wrestling with it while the new problems we had began to surface in my mind.

What I ought to do now is go into a history lesson and tell you how Hitler, ruling over a Nazi party that was chaotic in its organisation and structure, managed not only to put Germany back on to its feet out of a state that threatened collapse into a new Dark Age, but got it marching in one direction to such effect that he attracted admirers all over the world - my father among them. Having done that, I should then go on to describe how the power of SA - whose leaders were beginning to fall out with Hitler - was flattened - or its leaders were - and the SS began its growth until it became the biggest and most important thing in German society despite being run on lines that would have made the law of the jungle look mild by comparison - and if that was the sort in-fighting within the organisation, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that they were utterly merciless bastards to people who were complete outsiders, like Jews, gypsies and Slavs. That chaos wasn't true in the Waffen SS, of course, or at least not in the fighting bits of it, but in 1939 the Waffen SS didn't exist except as a couple of units attached to the army, much to said army's disgust.

No, I'm pretty sure that I know the sort of person that's reading this book and I don't think you're interested in German history or the structure - such as it was - of the Nazi party. Suffice it to say that it's a miracle that it achieved anything at all, let alone carry on - and damned nearly win - a world war over six bloody years, because the organisation was a true shambles. The whole thing was a pyramid with Hitler at the top, looking down at a state of administrative anarchy in which everyone was fighting and jockeying for power like kids trying to get the last sweetie out of the jar and the further down the pyramid you got the worse it became. So when Himmler gave that enigmatic little smile and waved us goodbye with his specs glinting, I began to develop a severe case of itch between the shoulder-blades for reasons that I (then) didn't understand.

 

No, we didn't charge into Poland on a mission of ravishment; what we did was go back home and sit and wait. Well, not sit exactly, because Ernst - Rupert's Nazi Party Area Commander uncle - was still keeping a stable of good-looking slaves and had just taken delivery of a couple of imports from Ethiopia, thanks to a contact in Italy. They promised all sorts of fun in training, especially because of their novelty and because they seemed to be as proud and stubborn as any woman I'd come across. We weren't idle and we certainly weren't bored, but the anticipated deluge of avaricious, ambitious SS department heads eager to sign us up just didn't appear. It puzzled us, it puzzled Ernst and it puzzled Hans, our relatively new pal and head of the local Gestapo - partly thanks to us - who had taken to joining us in our fun. Those two were even more familiar with the rapacity that passed for organisation in the Nazi party and SS in particular than we were and couldn't understand why we weren't being bombarded with offers, if only so that the person offering could lay his sticky hands on that important piece of paper, thereby increasing his power and prestige.

Time passed. War broke out and blew apart my cherished belief that Britain would stay out and join Germany later and clean up the world. Hope wasn't entirely dead though; maybe someone in England with the power and enough common sense to see the obvious would wake up and get the country out of it all before it turned nasty. Surely to goodness, I thought, they wouldn't send an army to France to fight alongside the Frogs? It was just about then that Otto arrived and gave us the answers to all the things that had been driving us potty, except why Britain had declared war, but then you can't have everything.

We were in what we had christened the 'Fun Room', training our Ethiopians to behave by the - relatively - simple expedient of tethering the nose-rings with which they had been fitted to a rope hoist and then lifting them until they were on tip-toes, with their heads back, noses high and they uttering protesting squeals. They were, of course, quite naked and had their hands tied up their backs, the arms doubled and pinioned at wrist and elbow. Both were enormously tall for women, which made them seem thin, though both had breasts that were larger than average, with well-rounded hips and bottoms. Bottoms that were feeling the tips of the buggy-whips that we were using on them, taking pleasure in driving them in circles, quite often having even more in making them go in opposite directions so that they collided, tit to tit. Not exactly chess, but a damned sight more amusing, especially when you've got a beer or two inside you.

We - Rupert and I were alone, it being the middle of the day when Ernst was going about his various duties - were at our ease, lolling in chairs with beer at hand, spaced well apart so that we could swing freely. The two sluts were still new, having suffered only a few introductory rapes and buggerings over a hurdle and three or four canings up to now. Enough to let them know the sort of thing they were in for, but not enough to break them, not by a long chalk. We were thoroughly enjoying the sight of those bouncing tits and the sound of their squeals, so didn't react when the door opened and Hermann walked in.

If you've read the first of my books you'll have met Hermann before: he was Ernst's major-domo and general factotum who supervised the staff and generally took care of all the things that the serving class take care of. In addition to all that, he was absolutely invaluable as a torturer's assistant, a position in which he had helped us in more than one escapade. It was by no means unusual for him to walk in without knocking; it had been agreed that that was the only way to do things when you might have women bawling the place down and you wanted a fresh bottle of champagne, for instance. Having rung for service, the noise might drown the sound of a discreet answering knock and you'd have to go thirsty. That might be the way that it was supposed to be, but it seemed ridiculous to us, so no knocking it was. What was unusual on this occasion, however, was that he was accompanied by a complete stranger.

We simply stopped what we were doing and stared, our whips poised. The fact that Herman was beaming all over his face and looking as happy as an inveterate drunk who's just tripped over a case of beer was reassuring, but not entirely so. The activity that we were engaged in was as illegal in Nazi Germany as it would have been in England, while the penalties were likely to be a damned sight more draconian. To have a complete stranger walk in on us was so unexpected that it left us both absolutely speechless, leaving a silence broken only by the noises that the two women were making.