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MAINBURG POLIZEI
Paul Leone

SCHUTZPOLIZEI DES REICHES (Reich Protection Police) – the uniformed police force of the GREATER GERMANIC REICH. The Schutzpolizei is responsible for basic law enforcement – foot and automobile patrol, traffic control, prison management – while criminal investigation is under the jurisdiction of the KRIMINALPOLIZEI and GESTAPO. Size: approx. 500,000 officers and employees in 2000.
Bradley’s Guide to the Reich, Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2004)

* * *
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) – SS-Obergruppenführer Fritz Bauman
Polizeipräsidium (Police Headquarters) Mainburg – Polizeipräsident SS-Oberführer Karl Lebler
Schutzpolizeiabschnitt (Police Area) Mainburg Süd-Ost – Hauptmann Albrecht Henze
Schutzpolizeireviere (Police Precinct) Heßburg – Hauptwachtmeister Heinrich Lenz
Schicht (Shift) C – Revieroberwachtmeister Uwe Scholz

Oberwachtmeister Otto Bähr
Wachtmeister Friedrich Ehrhoff
Wachtmeister Götz Frink
Wachtmeister Christoph Greiß
Wachtmeister Eduard Grünfeld
Wachtmeister Bernhard Hördler
Wachtmeisterin Eike Metzinger

Oberwachtmeister Walther Holzer
Wachtmeister Jupp Sparre
Wachtmeister Reinhold Eisenhut
Wachtmeister Markus Haas
Wachtmeister Reinhard Nödl
Wachtmeister Rolf Schlegel
Wachtmeister Karl Steichen

ONE – NOVEMBER

MAINBURG (formerly Minsk) – industrial city and capital of REICHSGAU BJARESINA. Location of heavy fighting during the EASTERN WAR, which saw the city largely destroyed. Rebuilt on a smaller scale in the 1950s as the capital of GENERALBEZIRK WEIßRUTHENIEN and then as a gau capital. Population (2000) – 327,500
Bradley’s Guide to the Reich, Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2004)​


It was after midnight in Mainburg and only fools, drunks and crooks were on the streets.

Case in point:

An alley near the corner of Schwarzweg and Henzelstraße. Three Sathmar punks up against a wall, arms and legs spread, hands digging into the brick. A dead body on the ground. Two Schutzpolizei officers holding down the fort while waiting for detectives and paramedics to arrive.

“Names and cards,” Wachtmeister Eduard Grünfeld demanded. “You first.” He pointed at the closest Sathmar kid, a tall, gangly teenager with close-cropped dirty blonde hair and downcast eyes. Cheap wool pants, a loose long-sleeved shirt that might have been grey or a seldom-washed white, surplus Army jacket, surplus Army boots. The uniform of slum youths in Biaresina.

Eduard’s own uniform, a sharp grey tunic and pants with black leather boots, black leather belt, black-brimmed cap, black buttons, was a bit neater. Adding to the intimidation factor were the gun on his hip and the SS runes on his collar.

The not-quite-blonde kid jerked his head down towards his pockets.

“Well? What? I’m not digging in your ass,” Eduard said. “Get it out. Slowly.” He put his hand on the grip of his gun.

Behind him, Eduard’s partner Wachtmeisterin Eike Metzinger, moved aside slightly to get a clear line of fire in case anybody did anything stupid.

Eduard wasn’t that worried. These three idiots probably had nothing to do with the dead body. From the looks of it, the old man had been dead for hours. Nobody would stick around in an alley with someone they’d just killed for that long, even in the heart of the slums of southeast Mainburg.

The kid’s Kennkarte, issued by the Neu-Nürnberg precinct in suburban southwest Mainburg, gave his name as Klaus Benz. Date of birth 25/11/01.

Eduard smirked. “Come here shopping for your birthday? Is that it? Looking for a bit of special sugar for your cake?”

Benz didn’t say anything.

One of his friends did. “He was like that when we found him!” the boy, tall and stocky, wailed. His accent was thickly Eastern. Even 75 years out of Romania, the old cadences were still going strong. “He was already dead!”

“Shut up, I’m not talking to you yet,” Eduard snapped without taking his eyes off Benz. “What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked as he stepped closer to the kid. A Kripo detective would go over the kid, in detail, later, but the ‘smart cops’ always liked the initial statements. They’d be full of holes in the heat of the moment or they’d be honest in the heat of the moment. Either way, it gave them something to play with and pick apart.

“We wouldn’t have called it in if we killed him,” Benz finally said.

Eduard smirked. Everyone in the Reich knew that every pay phone booth in the country had hidden microphones and cameras in it. Everyone in the slums knew which recorders were broken at any given time. But this idiot wasn’t a slum kid. He was just a poseur from a respectable working class neighborhood who wanted to celebrate his birthday with a little nose candy.

Reinforcements began to appear. First another patrol car, called when the shape of the scene was nothing more than ‘dead body on the ground, warm bodies on their feet,’ and then a thoroughly redundant ambulance, and finally an unmarked BMW which disgorged a tired, rumpled-looking Kripo detective. He looked like he’d been on his way home when the call came in, diverting him from a few beers, the late news and an early bedtime.

“What’s the story?” the detective demanded.

“He’s dead,” one of the paramedics said after studying the old man lying face down in the dirt and a yellow week-old issue of the Mainburger Nachrichten.

“Thanks, professor,” the detective said, rolling his eyes. He rounded on Eduard and Metzinger. “Names and numbers.”

Both officers gave the info to the detective for his report.

“What about these idiots?”

“Checking their cards now, detective. This one is from the southwest,” Eduard said with a nod at Benz. “He says they found the body like it. Says they called it in.”

“Did they?”

Eduard shrugged. “Have to check with the techs downtown, sir,” he said. The Mainburg Schupo data team wasn’t exactly an award-winner, but they could match a voice recording to a suspect maybe half the time.

The detective’s face suggested he was well aware of the odds.

He turned to the paramedics. “Cause?”

“Looks like he was sick,” one of them told him. “Probably crawled over here to piss or vomit and that’s it.”

The other paramedic held up a dirty, mostly empty bottle of cheap Ingermanland vodka. “Pneumonia and booze. Not a great combination.”

Eduard shook his head sadly. What a pathetic way, what a pathetic place, to die.

The detective noticed, arched an eyebrow, said nothing. “All right. Give me all the fun details for the file,” he said to the paramedics. Once that was done, he turned back to Eduard the other Schupos, who had cuffed the three idiots up in the meantime. “Haul these shitheads downtown and tell the key officer to sit on them until Detective Galowitch comes. Got it?”

Eduard nodded. “Detective Galowitch.”

“Good boy.” The detective turned back to study what little there was of his ‘crime’ scene. After a few seconds, Eduard made himself scarce.
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