Chapter 354: The Result

“Knock! Knock! Knock!” The sound of knocking rang out. A sleeping man of the house was awakened by the sound. His eyes heavy with sleep, he came to the door and asked loudly, “Who is it? What’s the matter so late at night?”

“SS Gestapo. Please assist us in an investigation,” a gruff man’s voice came from outside the door.

“Me? You’re looking for me to investigate a case? I’m just an ordinary minor noble. I’ve never done anything out of line. Are you sure you haven’t got the wrong person?” the man asked, a look of confusion on his face.

“Sir, we are the SS Gestapo. Please assist us in investigating a case. If you still refuse to open the door and cooperate, we will have to take coercive measures,” the gruff voice from outside the door said.

“My God! Wait a moment! I’ll open the door right now! Don’t do anything rash! I am a legal noble of the Reich!” the man said, unlocking and pulling open the door. “Don’t shoot! I’ll cooperate! I’ll cooperate!”

At least three flashlight beams shone directly into the face of the man who had opened the door. In an instant, several SS soldiers with guns rushed into the room. The leading SS officer handed a man an arrest warrant, on which were written the names of the man’s entire family. “Mr. Noble, I am now going to ask you, on the third day of last week, did you introduce a woman to a military officer and falsely claim that this woman was your niece?”

“I did indeed introduce a girl to the officer to be his fiancée, but that girl really is my niece!” The man, after reading the arrest warrant, was already scared out of his wits. He cried and begged for mercy. “I only made the introduction! I really didn’t do anything!”

“I regret to inform you, sir, that this woman is not your niece, but a British spy,” the officer said with a cold snort. “And she is a heinous criminal who attempted to assassinate the Führer. You should know that according to the Reich’s wartime management regulations, Article 13, supplementary clause, the ‘Spy Prevention Act,’ we have the right to execute you and confiscate all of your property.”

“I really don’t know anything! I’ve been wronged! Please let me go! Please let me go!” The man knelt on the ground, crying, and crawled toward the SS officer. “I’m just an ordinary German! I don’t know anything.”

The officer kicked the kneeling man away without the slightest bit of pity. “I advise you to tell us everything you know, otherwise not even the gods can save you. If you just cry and shout that you don’t know anything, I will begin the execution.”

“Wait! Wait! That niece is someone my wife knew! She was the one who said that woman was her distant relative! I really didn’t know anything! You can go and ask her and get it straight! Go and ask my wife!” The man hurriedly confessed everything he knew, for fear of leaving out the slightest detail.

“Crack!” At almost the same moment as the man had given up his wife, a gunshot was heard from the room. Everyone was startled. Two soldiers immediately rushed into the bedroom of this house with their guns at the ready. When they kicked open the door and rushed in, they saw a bed full of blood and a woman with a mangled face.

“Wife! My God! Darling! What have you done? What have I done wrong? Why are you doing this to me?” The man had originally followed them into the room, but as soon as he saw the corpse on the bed, he rushed forward, regardless of anything, and held his wife’s body, wailing loudly.

“Search! Dig three feet into the ground if you have to, but find me some evidence!” The officer now also understood the situation. It seemed they had found the wrong person—it was clear that the man of this house was a timid scapegoat, and this woman who had committed suicide was the British spy the SS wanted to arrest. Now that this woman, who was a witness, had already killed herself, they could only settle for the next best thing and look for some physical evidence.

The originally neat and tidy room was instantly turned upside down. Soon, a lot of hidden government bonds, as well as private property certificates and the like, were found, plus some savings and cash, all of which were piled up on the coffee table in the living room. Naturally, a little while later, the identity of the mistress of the house was also verified. She was indeed very suspicious. As a German, the relatives in her correspondence were all British.

The officer took out his pistol and, with a look of regret, aimed it at the man who was still crying and holding his wife’s body. He said with regret, “If you have to blame someone, then blame yourself for marrying a woman you shouldn’t have married… Your property will contribute to the rise of Germany… Goodbye.”

“Crack!” With a gunshot, the sound of crying stopped. The night, it seemed, had returned to its peace.

“Crash!” The main door was kicked open from the outside, and another group of SS soldiers rushed into the room with ferocious expressions. Inside, it was empty, with documents scattered all over the floor and an iron brazier in which many things had been burned.

Just an hour ago, the head of this intelligence operation, that is, the old man who had spoken with Aina, had received news from home. The family of a spy who had been lurking in Germany had disappeared in London. This intelligence had immediately caught the attention of the extremely cunning old man. With a little thought, he had guessed the possibility of his own exposure. Just a few dozen minutes ago, he had burned some important documents, and then, without regard for anything else, he had fled with all the cash he could find.

The most explosive scene appeared in the operation to capture Aina that night. A special forces action team, just as in a drill, staged a textbook multi-point breach tactic. Two assaulters broke in through the window, and the four soldiers at the door smashed down the main door at almost the same time. The six men rushed into the room simultaneously, and the dozen or so SS soldiers who followed them poured in, completely controlling every corner of the room.

The second lieutenant from the intelligence bureau in Berlin and the local SS lieutenant colonel walked into the room together and looked with a cold smile at the main target, Aina, who was sitting on the bed, naked, staring at the crowd. Aina was sitting on the bed, her upper body completely exposed. She seemed to have been unprepared and had been trapped by the sudden attack.

“What is going on? Why have you SS bastards broken into my house? Are you insane? I am a noble! I am an officer! I am…” Aina’s fiancé, who was on the bed and had not yet figured out the situation, was clearly very dissatisfied that everyone was staring at his naked fiancée, and he shouted loudly.

“If I were you, I would shut my mouth right now! Because in a little while, even if you don’t want to open your mouth, I will knock your teeth out and make you tell me everything you know,” the second lieutenant said with a cold snort, not paying the slightest attention to the Junker aristocrat officer who was shouting on the bed.

“You! You dare to insult me? I am a major! I am a dignified Wehrmacht…” The Junker aristocrat officer was enraged and was just about to curse loudly.

“Crack!” A member of the special forces team with a gun squeezed the trigger. A bullet directly hit the Junker aristocrat officer’s knee, which was met with a pig-like squeal from the officer.

“If it weren’t for the fact that I want to ask you some questions in a little while, I would have smashed your head!” the second lieutenant said fiercely. He then turned his gaze and, staring at the naked Aina, asked, “Miss Aina, or should I say, spy Miss Aina, are you going to get dressed and come with us, or are you going to come back with us just like this?”

“How do you know I’ll go with you? Can’t I resist?” Aina asked with a sneer.

“I would very much like to know what you will resist with!” the lieutenant colonel beside the second lieutenant said proudly, looking at his own densely packed soldiers around him. “I advise you to get dressed quickly, otherwise I don’t mind having my men interrogate you right now!”

“What will I resist with? Hahahaha, that’s a very interesting question!” Aina said with a laugh. As she spoke, she took her hand out from under the bedsheet. It was actually the military pistol worn by the screaming man on the bed.

Aina pointed the gun at the second lieutenant as fast as lightning. As a result, her action was only half-completed when she was hit by several guns at the same time. There were bullets from the snipers on the building not far away, and bullets from the assaulters with their MP-44s on her side. In short, in an instant, this Aina, who had been thinking of stubborn resistance, was turned into a sieve.

The sound of “Crack!” and “Rat-tat! Rat-tat!” rose and fell one after another.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” the second lieutenant shouted, his face cold. It wasn’t until he had shouted a second time that everyone stopped shooting. The soldiers of the special operations team had even begun to change their magazines.

“What are we to do now?” the lieutenant colonel asked, his face pale. “To have killed such an important prisoner, what are we to do now?”

“She was resisting! Of course, she had to be killed!” The second lieutenant’s face was just not very good, and he did not look dejected. “To be able to take out a spy hidden so close to a mid-level technical officer in one go is already a great achievement. There is no need to be dejected.”

“But if we had captured her alive, at least we could have gotten a lot of useful information from her mouth,” the lieutenant colonel said with regret.

The second lieutenant waved his hand. “To waste the lives of soldiers just to capture someone alive is not worth it. Since we had a way to find this Aina, we will have a way to find the other one!”

“The other one? There’s another one?” the lieutenant colonel was taken aback for a moment, then asked.

“Don’t ask about things you don’t need to know! Knowing too much is not good for you!” the second lieutenant said, looking at Aina, who had been a beautiful woman just a moment ago but was now a pile of minced meat. He then looked at the Junker aristocrat officer who was lying on one side, already driven mad and silly by fear, and commanded, “Take him away. Get what we want to know out of him, and then execute him.”

Several soldiers immediately stepped forward, pulled the aristocrat officer up from the bed, and, without regard for the blood on his body or the gunshot wound on his knee, they dragged him down the stairs. The second lieutenant looked around and continued to command, “Search!”