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Interlude: Betrayal
Oct. 18th, 2008 09:00 pmAllied Headquarters, Frankfurt. Hardly one could see a busier place, for the task of defending Europe from the soviet invasion was a truly endless one: supplies had to be regulated and delivered, orders forwarded, plans composed. All finished plans and strategies traveled under guard, in sealed envelopes and locked briefcases.
It was supposed to keep the missions secret and the operatives safe. Unfortunately, a bit less attention was paid to the people who wrote the reports and collated plans.
It was not a terribly hard task after all. Millions of civilians were behind enemy lines, prisoners of the Soviets, in forced labor camps, reduced to slavery. Some resourceful high officer of the Red Army came up with a plan: prisoners were approached by lower officers, and told a prisoner exchange was going to take place. Elated at the prospect of being sent to their families in Free Germany, hundreds of thousands of citizens supplied names and contact information of their relatives.
The next step took longer, with spies combing information bases in Germany, locating relatives until a list was compiled: workers at the Allied HQ who had loved ones captive. From that list, careful probing and questioning led to the creation of a third, much smaller list, a couple handfuls of people willing to report information they had been working on in exchange for the continued survival of their captive families.
You see, a traitor is not always a despicable wretch. Sometimes, just desperate.
Sometimes, willing to put strangers in jeopardy to protect their loved ones.
It was supposed to keep the missions secret and the operatives safe. Unfortunately, a bit less attention was paid to the people who wrote the reports and collated plans.
It was not a terribly hard task after all. Millions of civilians were behind enemy lines, prisoners of the Soviets, in forced labor camps, reduced to slavery. Some resourceful high officer of the Red Army came up with a plan: prisoners were approached by lower officers, and told a prisoner exchange was going to take place. Elated at the prospect of being sent to their families in Free Germany, hundreds of thousands of citizens supplied names and contact information of their relatives.
The next step took longer, with spies combing information bases in Germany, locating relatives until a list was compiled: workers at the Allied HQ who had loved ones captive. From that list, careful probing and questioning led to the creation of a third, much smaller list, a couple handfuls of people willing to report information they had been working on in exchange for the continued survival of their captive families.
You see, a traitor is not always a despicable wretch. Sometimes, just desperate.
Sometimes, willing to put strangers in jeopardy to protect their loved ones.
