Chapter 46: Sharpening the Sword
"Then why not let him stay in the Foreign Ministry after he returns this time? With his abilities, he would definitely..."
Ebert uncorked a bottle of red wine from the cabinet, filled two glasses, and raised his own in quiet celebration of their diplomatic victory. Yet even in that moment of triumph, the concern in his voice remained impossible to hide.
Hindenburg took a slow sip of the crimson wine before setting the glass down.
"No, absolutely not. Even if I agreed, he himself would refuse." The old field marshal looked at Ebert with calm, knowing eyes. "I know what you are thinking. You fear he will stumble badly in the matter of army reform."
Ebert did not answer immediately.
Hindenburg continued, "But is that not precisely the forge he needs? A sharp sword is not polished in silk. It is honed on stone. And tell me, Ebert, is there any whetstone in Germany harder than the army?"
Ebert shook his head and turned on the desk lamp. Soft yellow light spilled across the office, illuminating the paintings hanging on both walls. Bismarck in uniform. Blücher marching toward Paris. Under that light, the old figures seemed almost alive, as if the ghosts of Germany's past were quietly listening in.
"I want him tempered," Albert said at last, "but I do not want him dead."
His voice lowered.
"You are an old man, and so am I. You know better than anyone what sort of temper those old officers have. Most of them will retire in a few years anyway. Why not let Jörg remain in government for the time being? Once those old men are gone, the Reichswehr will naturally..."
Hindenburg shook his head before Ebert could finish.
"This is a wager he chose for himself. The conservative faction in the army is already watching him. If he retreats now, he will lose more than a position. He will lose the very thing that makes him who he is."
Then a faint smile appeared on the marshal's weathered face.
"Besides, you trust Jörg's abilities so much. Are you perhaps afraid he really can trick military funding out of the Americans?"
At that, Ebert could only sigh.
He remembered Jörg's steady gaze during the Christmas meeting. The confidence. The resolve. The almost infuriating certainty.
"I am not afraid he will fail," Ebert said slowly. "On the contrary, I am afraid he will succeed. If he fails, then so what? The diplomatic victory is already in our hands. No one can strip that away from him. But if he succeeds..."
He paused, then drained half his glass.
"If he succeeds, he will control a vast sum of military funds and wield real power over reform. By then he will become a thorn in the side of half the officer corps. And when that happens, even we may not be able to shield him."
He turned toward Hindenburg, his expression grave.
"And Seckt certainly will not. Do not forget, it was the conservative faction that helped raise him to the top in the first place. Just look at how he handled that logistics inspector. That was not the hand of a ruthless reformer. That was the hand of a man who still hesitates when old comrades stand in the way."
Ebert's eyes darkened.
"He stands beside Jörg now because their interests still align. But the moment they no longer do, the best Seckt will offer is neutrality."
In Ebert's eyes, Jörg was Germany's future. That was precisely why he worried.
His brilliance had been revealed too early, far too early. In the eyes of many, he was like a newly kindled flame. Beautiful, bright, full of promise, and vulnerable. A careless gust, a jealous hand, a single swarm of moths from the dark, and that flame might be smothered before it ever became a blaze.
Of course, those moths might also burn.
"We can wait," Ebert said quietly. "The Fate Plan can be delayed. There is no need to force it now."
Hindenburg looked out through the frosted window at William Avenue, white beneath the falling snow.
"Jörg will not drag it out," he said. "A genius has a genius's pride. If he learned to compromise at every turn, then he would no longer be Jörg."
He swirled the wine in his glass once, then emptied it.
The truth was that he wanted to help. But the Reichswehr was no longer a sword he alone could wield. Even if he intervened personally, those old diehards in the army would not change.
To cross that threshold, Jörg could only rely on himself.
On the other side of Berlin, in the Staff Secretariat, another gathering was underway.
Naz sat with a circle of semi-retired officers of similar age around a round table, the pieces of an international chessboard spread neatly between them. Pipes smoked. Tea cooled. The atmosphere was casual, but beneath it ran the same undercurrent as always, calculation, resentment, and old loyalties.
"Naz, I heard your First Division has become that young hothead's private playground," said a bald old general, narrowing his eyes as he advanced his rook and knocked over Naz's king. "I passed by not long ago. They were wearing specially issued uniforms. All black."
He let out a derisive snort.
"I have never seen soldiers dressed so theatrically. They looked less like troops than actors from some cheap production."
Naz smiled thinly.
"I cannot control them anymore. Seckt favors these young men now. To him, it seems we old soldiers are already relics taking up space."
Then he leaned back and added with deliberate ease, "But do not laugh at me too soon. He now holds considerable authority over military reform. I hear he has already concluded matters with Soviet Russia and won the first of his wagers. Before long, you may find yourselves forced into those black uniforms as well."
"The Americans are not so easily fooled as the Slavs," the bald old officer replied with a laugh, though there was no warmth in it. The general's insignia on his uniform caught the light, as did the emblem of the galloping horse that marked him as cavalry through and through. "And even if he does fool them, the Reichswehr will not be dictated to by a child."
His smile sharpened.
"Besides, no matter how much money he secures, it will not make the army his. Those clumsy iron shells of his still cannot outrun a warhorse."
The chessboard was reset.
Naz folded his hands and said, "With that said, I am relieved, old Drew. The boy shouts about increasing military spending, but no matter how much he boasts, not a single mark of it will necessarily reach our hands."
Then his gaze turned sly.
"Perhaps your cavalry will be reduced to hauling supplies. Perhaps trench doctrines and old manuals will end up as waste paper in the latrine. Perhaps all of us will become the objects of their so-called optimization."
Drew's smile did not change, but something far colder rose in his eyes.
To him, cavalry was not merely a branch of service. It was blood, inheritance, and glory.
His father had commanded cavalry in Germany's wars with saber and inferior rifles. He himself had ridden beneath German banners across multiple fronts. The cavalry was not just his profession. It was his family's pride.
Whoever threatened it was threatening him.
"That will not happen," Drew said. "I am not like you, Naz, leaving openings for others and calling it strategy. Your greatest act of resistance was to throw your authority around like a new recruit who has yet to smell real blood."
He reached out and moved a knight.
"I am not a bureaucrat. I am a warhorse. Anyone who dares stand in my path will be trampled beneath hooves."
Then, after a pause, he added, "Though in truth, I do not think the boy will even survive the American test."
A silence followed that statement.
No one laughed.
Because everyone at that table knew Drew was not a man who joked.
...
In the weeks that followed, Berlin began to change again.
With the Ruhr returned, with the strikes ending, with the protests losing momentum, the streets slowly recovered some of their former appearance. Shops reopened. Traffic increased. Faces on the sidewalks no longer looked quite so hollow.
Yet beneath that surface recovery, deeper shifts were already underway.
Even with the government offering only partial support for the Fate Plan, retired soldiers' clubs began appearing in city after city like mushrooms after rain. Police quotas were raised by nearly a thousand positions with the stroke of a pen. Veterans with mud still in the creases of their hands, men who had scarcely had time to forget the trenches, were quietly transferred from the army into police ranks.
Of course, with only that much support, such changes might still require years, perhaps more than a decade, to fully mature.
Because the true catalyst of all reform was not ideas.
It was money.
Sitting in the back seat of his car, Jörg watched the country outside the window with a still, unreadable expression. Berlin was alive again, but it was the life of a man still recovering from illness, not yet the strength of a nation restored.
He slowly raised the window and shut out the cold air.
The Soviet matter was settled.
Now only one task remained.
How to pry enough money from the Americans to force the entire Fate Plan into motion.
As for repayment, Jörg had never seriously considered it. When the coming economic crisis struck, those loans would be transformed into bad debt regardless. That was the future.
His intention was simpler and crueler.
Expand the scale of the loan, pour it into the blade of military power, and let the storm that followed wipe the slate clean.
At the same time, Germany would be dragged out of the abyss and onto her feet again.
One hand would seize the future.
The other would write off the bill.
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