Thinking this over, the old marshal's tone softened.
"Mainz, does anyone else know about this besides you?"
Now that the deed was done, scolding was pointless. All Hindenburg could do was cover the tracks as best he could and ensure the French never learned of it. If they remained ignorant, the matter could be buried.
"No, Marshal. I checked carefully before I acted. No one noticed. We went in plain clothes, never in uniform."
Hindenburg exhaled, relieved. His greatest fear was exposure. If the French learned the truth, they would demand the guilty party, and he himself would be placed in an impossible position.
"Good. See that it stays that way. And next time, do not act rashly. If something like this arises again, come directly to me."
He had meant to say report it through proper channels, but too many mouths, too many hands, meant too many risks. No — better that Mainz speak to him alone, where the circle could be kept small.
"Marshal… do you mean you're willing to help these people?"
Mainz asked deliberately, feigning a misunderstanding.
"Hmph. If I don't intervene, are you planning to take matters into your own hands again?"
The young major's darting eyes irritated the old soldier. Were it not for the consequences, Hindenburg might have been tempted to discipline him on the spot, the way he might have done with his own son.
"Heh. With your word, Marshal, I am reassured."
Mainz allowed himself a small sigh of relief. To have Hindenburg's backing was no small thing. The old marshal, Chief of the General Staff, commanded power greater even than the Chancellor in Berlin. With him involved, those people would stand a far better chance of survival.
"Tell me, Mainz," Hindenburg said, narrowing his eyes, "why are you so intent on protecting them?"
He was willing to help — but he could not fathom why. Krupp was obvious. If Gustav Krupp were captured, Germany would lose its foremost supplier of artillery. That alone justified intervention. But many of the other names on Mainz's list baffled him.
Take this one: Willy Messerschmitt. Twenty years old, little more than a boy, known only as a beer merchant, his stepfather a professor at an art college. And worse, he had an American passport. During the war such a man would be a suspect, not someone to be shielded. Why waste effort on him?
Hindenburg frowned as he studied the unfamiliar names.
Mainz, of course, could not explain that he was no ordinary officer, but a traveler from another age — that this Messerschmitt would one day found the firm that produced the famed Bf 109, the fighter that carried the Luftwaffe across Europe. Or that another, Walter Reitel, would help design it. Such knowledge could never leave his lips.
So he gave only a vague reply. "I have faith in their future, Marshal. I believe they will make great contributions to the Reich."
Hindenburg stared at him for a long moment, eyes sharp as knives, as if to strip away the young man's very thoughts. Mainz's heart tightened. For a moment, he feared the old marshal saw right through him.
Then Hindenburg leaned back with a sigh. "Very well. It is not such a great matter. I will see that someone watches over them."
He did not understand Mainz's motives, but he trusted his loyalty. This young officer was no traitor; of that he was certain. And youth had its own ideas. An old man with one foot already in the grave had no right to smother them.
Mainz felt the tension ease from his chest. Even so, he could not shake the impression that Hindenburg had looked dangerously deep into him. It was no easy thing, contending with such men, their judgment honed by decades of war.
As he wiped the sweat from his brow, Hindenburg's next words caught him off guard.
"Go back, pack your things, and prepare to hand over your command."
Mainz froze. Strip me of my troops? Was this the old man's way of cutting the ground out from under him, to prevent another act of insubordination?
Before he could speak, Hindenburg continued.
"I am transferring you to the General Staff. Of course, with your present rank, you will have to begin with paperwork at the lowest level. Can you accept that?"
Mainz's eyes widened. The German General Staff — the very nerve center of the Reich's military machine. Prussia had pioneered the system, and through it had triumphed at Königgrätz, at Sedan, and on battlefields across Europe.
Under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the Staff had grown into something greater still: not merely planning wars, but executing them, wielding power that eclipsed even the Kaiser himself in the last years of the Great War.
To enter the General Staff, even at the bottom, was no demotion. It was an honor — a gilding of the record, the first step on a path that led upward.
Mainz understood at once.
This was not punishment. It was a promotion.
The old marshal was raising him up.
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