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From: Troubador <llywarch_hen@btinternet.com>
Subject: ST: From Defeat, Chapter 12: Epilogue (M/t, hist)
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I've prompted myself to write this 'last' chapter after realising I'd promised twelve in the preamble to chapter one but only had eleven to deliver. Somehow I managed to duplicate two of the early chapters which prompted a rapid re-write and chapter renumbering. 

To those who have been writing to me while following the story, I hope this doesn't strain the bounds of credulity too much.




Chapter 12







    Jurgen paced the museum gallery carefully checking each display, conducting his final checks before reporting to the Curator he was prepared for the final, pre-opening inspection. This was Jurgen's baby; a history of the Second World War from the German perspective, with his own special take on the Battle of Berlin... complete with a special display of his own personal souvenirs.

As he reached the far end of the gallery his assistant was waiting for him, holding a card in his hand.

    "Jurgen, the mail-man left this in the office; there's a package awaiting collection which needs to be signed for, by you, personally."

Jurgen nodded absently as he stared back down the gallery hoping he hadn't missed anything.

    "OK. I'll run over to Doctor Butler's office and let him know he can begin his inspection tour when he's ready, then I'll run over and collect the package. Does the card say how big it is?"

    "No."

    "Damn; can't risk taking my motorbike then, guess I'll have to draw a car from the pool. Go over to Lithography and check the final print of the display cards has been completed. You'll need to place them before Butler begins his inspection tour you'll have plenty of time, he's entertaining a member of the appropriations committee at the moment so he'll be occupied for another couple of hours at least."



Jurgen smiled at Andy and motioned his hand around a glass and tipping it to his mouth.

He returned to his office to grab his jacket and as he turned to leave he caught sight of a framed photo of Karl and himself, taken the day Jurgen had been promoted to assistant Curator. He was one of five assistants to the Curator, but still, it was an achievement which might springboard bigger and better things if this display pulled in the crowds. He walked to the rear of the building and signed out the keys to a poll car from the foreman in the logistics section before heading off into town.

As he drove he reflected on the air of tension which existed between himself and his boss, it stemmed from them both being homosexual. Also from the fact that Michael had blackmailed Jurgen into his bed. He felt terrible for betraying Karl and before he bedded with Michael he'd made it clear from the outset, whatever happened between them it would only be transitory. He and Karl had been together for almost thirty years and he had no intention of endangering their relationship with a tawdry affair. Michael in his turn had made it clear to Jurgen he was only interested in a no-strings sex arrangement, he wasn't looking for a relationship or commitment, he preferred to remain a free spirit, unencumbered by emotional baggage.

One night turned into five nights over a six week period with Jurgen visiting Michael at his home on the pretext of conferring on work issues. Jurgen had breathed a sigh of relief when after six weeks Michael announced he'd turned his attention to an eighteen-year-old twink who'd started work in the museum. Jurgen had looked in and cruised the young lad one afternoon, he was young, fresh-faced, muscles in the all the right places, Jurgen had flirted with the lad to annoy Michael who was watching, but from then on had steered well clear.

When Jurgen was promoted to assistant curator Michael's discomfort had begun; he'd tried to apologise for using blackmail but had since been quite uncomfortable in Jurgen's presence; they'd managed to come to a mutually satisfactory accommodation so as not to endanger their professional relationship but it was still ... uneasy. 

During the time he'd been having sex with Michael, Jurgen had realised that in thirty years, despite the brief dalliance with Anthony Donatello in which Karl was a willing participant, he'd only ever had sex with Karl and while their relationship was, he felt, as strong as ever ... he'd experienced a level of excitement and desire with Michael which seemed to have drained from his relationship.

He'd tried to raise the subject with Karl on a number of occasions but at fifty-five Karl seemed ... happy with life and Jurgen felt uncomfortable making demands and rocking the boat ... so he'd left it alone.








    His route to the Post Office took him past the house, as he drive past he slowed as he caught sight of Karl standing on the door step. As Jurgen moved his hand to toot the horn he caught sight of another man walking up the drive alongside Karl's car. Karl looked both ways up and down the street before he put his hand on the stranger's back to guide him inside.

Jurgen felt a sick, hollow feeling grow in the pit of his stomach as his imagination went into overdrive. Maybe Karl, too, had grown tired of their realtionship and was inviting a string of men into their home, maybe there was a steady flow of men through their bed. 

Woodenly, he drove the rest of the way to the Post Office, parked, collected the package and returned to the Museum all thoughts of a brisk, relaxing stroll in the park forgotten as his mind churned through the terrible possibilities engendered by what he'd seen.





    He left the museum at the end of the day, dispirited and down, wondering how he could raise the subject with Karl; how he could ask about what he'd seen or if he should say anything at all. Despite Karl being unaware of what had happened between Jurgen and Michael, he still felt he'd betrayed Karl so he was hardly in a position to take the moral high ground.

He parked his motorbike in the garage and walked the path to the front door. His mind slipping back thirty years to the first time he'd walked up this path as a bewildered seventeen year old, the two cherry blossom trees were still there flanking the path but they'd long since dropped their myriad of little pink petals for this year. 

Karl's grandfather had died at the age of ninety two, followed within six months by his wife, who never really recovered from the loss of her husband of seventy years. In their Will, they'd left the house to Karl's parents and after some discussion it was decided they wanted to remain in their own home so they offered the house to Karl and Jurgen. Barely two months after they'd vacated their old apartment above the garages than one of Karl's cousins who'd lost out in a very acrimonious divorce had moved in.

Jurgen sat at the table looking over at Karl as they ate dinner, he barely tasted it as he went through motions, images of Karl twisting and writhing in heated passion as he played with other men in their bed spooled endlessly through his mind.

Without looking up from his plate Karl spoke.

    "So! You going to tell me what's wrong?"

    "Why should anything be wrong?" Jurgen knew the tremor in his voice would betray him.

    "You've said no more than 'How was your day?' since you got home. I know you were putting the finishing touches to the display today. You've been happily telling me all about every aspect of it for weeks and now at the culmination you clam up like an oyster!"

Jurgen took a deep breath to pluck up his courage before continuing.

    "I needed to go to the Post Office to collect a donation sent by parcel post and as I was driving past the house I saw you putting your arm around a guy before walking into the house."

    "Oh ... I see ... and you what? Think I'm having an affair?"

    "Are you?"

    "If I was would it be any different to your sleeping with your boss last year?"

    "You knew?"

    "I didn't actually until you just confirmed it now, but I guessed. You were very careful, very discrete, but, hell Jurgen we've been together for almost thirty years and I like to think we know each other very well. You picked up some new techniques in sex and bed-play and you were trying them with me."

    "I'm sorry ... he blackmailed me, threatened my job and postion."

    "You could have said no, found another job."

    "Without a good reference from him as my Head of Department, I'd have been dragging the barrel looking at jobs in some flea-bitten, back-yard display in the back end of nowhere."

    "So if I was having an affair it's not so much of a betrayal, is it?"

    "I guess not." Jurgen whispered.

Karl go up and walked around the table and knelt beside Jurgen.

    "I don't blame you for having sex with Michael ... after all, I'm the only man you've ever had sex with and if I'm being truthful, I expected to lose you to one of you're school friends and or a college friend years ago. I was very surprised you waited as long as you did before you had sex with someone else. You had sex with Donny twice and, I think, that was more to keep me happy than actual desire on your part. I've been seen him often over the years and I know you're aware of that."

    "Donny's different, he's an old friend. So... you're not having an affair? There's no string of guys parading through the house while I'm at work."

    "Come on ... " Karl smiled ruefully. "My mom sits in the front room of her house most days, looking out the window which over looks our front door. What do you think the chance are of my sneaking a lad in here without her knowing."

    "I'm sorry... sorry for suspecting you and I'm really sorry about Michael." 

    "I don't care, as long as you come home to me each night, snuggle up to me in our bed. I love you so much, more so now than when we first met in Berlin.

    "Jurgen! I've been setting something up for your birthday. The man you saw me with is an old friend, someone I haven't been able to speak to or see in almost thirty years because of the Cold War. He's a Russian, an ex-soldier, we knew each other in Berlin. He's been working something for me in Berlin and, hopefully, in two weeks time I'm going to have a birthday present the likes of which you've never had before. It's taken a lot to set this up and that's all I'm going to say to you about it, I wouldn't even have said this if I didn't think you needed the reassurance.

Jurgen stood up to face Karl, he put his arms around Karl's neck and kissed him long and passionately, an apology for the doubt and suspicion, to express his sorrow for going behind his back with Michael.

    "Whao! You keep that up and we're off to bed." Karl said.

    "Why don't we? Go to bed, I mean!"

    "Hey! I'm an old man! We had sex this morning and now you want it again? What you trying to do? Put me in an early grave?"

Jurgen slowly slid his hand into Karl's trousers and gently stroked his erection.

    "So what's this then?"

    "A shower first?" Karl smiled.

    "You bet!" Jurgen grinned in reply.

Jurgen ran to the stairs closely followed by Karl as they headed for the shower, stripping off their clothes as they ran. For the first time in a long time Jurgen felt a surge of excitement as Karl playfully chased him the stairs. 

Almost their first project after moving in was to rip out the old style, in-door, out-house bathroom preferred by the grandparents in favour of something more modern and functional... a wet room ... and as Jurgen stood in the centre of the room, three jets of water splashing over his body he stood still, allowing Karl to soap his body as he felt something warm and loving beginning to rekindle.

Karl dropped to his knees in front of Jurgen and slowly began to suck Jurgen's cock, sliding his tongue in under the foreskin to rasp the sensitive glans with the rough surface of his tongue. As he took Jurgen into his mouth Karl continued to move his soap covered hands over Jurgen's arse moving closer to his hole but not actually touching it, that would be for later when they were in bed. 

Karl's mind was enervated with a desire which he now realised had been missing for a while. Perhaps it had been for the best to get Jurgen's brief dalliance with Michael Butler into the open. Karl knew the diminution of desire had begun when he'd discovered Jurgen had been playing around behind his back.

Later, laying in bed post-coitus, arm-in-arm, they chatted late into the night. Each spoke of the frustrations they felt over how their relationship had become hum-drum, even a little boring and as they looked at each other they realised simultaneously ... they'd turned into a middle-aged, married couple and both promised the other to take special steps to re-energise their relationship.













    As Jurgen's birthday approached Karl found himself heading down to New York City for a final planning meeting with Yuri. He walked to the Russian Consulate and waited in the foyer as they informed Yuri he was waiting. In the years following the end of the war, Yuri had turned from a good looking, slim, Russian Army sergeant into the typical Russian bear, Vodka-swilling and barrel chested.

    "Karl!"

    "Yuri Malachenko! A pleasure as always."

    "I thought we would have a bite to eat at a little restaurant down on the water-front. A little taste of home from home for me... it is run by a Russian couple who escaped Mother Russia in the 1960's. I guess as a representative of my country I shouldn't really be going there but their cooking is ... excellent. They make no compromises on preparation, all staff here at Consulate eat there regularly."

    "Yuri. As long as your expense account is paying it sounds good. I remember a long time ago in Berlin, you recommended I try borscht but we never got around to it before they slammed the borders shut. Perhaps now you will have the opportunity to introduce me to ... comrade Borscht."













    As they sat in the little restaurant, Karl slowly ate his way through a rather excellent bowl of borscht and Yuri placed a file of papers on the table.

    "Did you ever have any reason to actually believe he'd survived?" Yuri asked. 

    "No. As far as Jurgen was concerned he'd died as a fifteen year old fighting in the East, possibly Stalingrad."

    "There are no records on file in the East German State Archives post-1943 of this man. As far as the official record is concerned he died somewhere to the east of the Oder-Neisse line. There is a record of the award of an Iron Cross (Posthumously), apparently sent to his mother in Berlin, but I wasn't unable to trace her."

    "No, you wouldn't have been able to. Jurgen tells me she was in her house next door to his parents house on the night of the air raid in which his father died. For reasons of her own she gave her son's Iron Cross to Jurgen, he still has it."

    "Recently a project was started to cross-reference the State Archives using computers instead of the old card indices. I entered his name into the new computer system, date of birth and other information you were able to provide and the system flagged an anomaly. 

    "There exists a STASI record of someone arrested in nineteen sixty-five claiming to be this man; he was seeking to take advantage of state medical care for veterans of the war.

    "Tracking him man down took some great effort and ingenuity on my part but I finally found him. He was living under the name of Erick Manheim in Liepzig, he'd moved around a lot so it was very difficult to track his changes of address but when I confronted him using his real name he was ... well, almost eager to tell the truth about what had happened all those years ago.

    "Towards the end of the Battle of Stalingrad he realised his country was headed for a massive disaster and so he swapped identity papers with a recently deceased soldier who'd received orders to return to Germany. They were about the same age, same height, same build, he simply assumed this man's identity for the purposes of travel and left Stalingrad for Germany on an empty troop convoy heading west. I cant say I blame him, Karl, Stalingrad was a terrible battle and both sides did awful things there."

    "Where is he now?"

    "Here ... in America! I have him... stashed ... at a hotel near the consulate. I will take you to meet him when we walk back. I have arranged for him to get his true identity back, I informed Herr Manhiem's family his remains where found on farm ground near Volgograd a few years ago and he was awarded a military funeral at a German cemetery nearby. I even arranged for a small head stone to be placed above an empty plot in case they choose to visit."

    "No stone left unturned?"

    "Better to 'cover all the bases' as you Americans say, eh?"

    "I guess so, nothing left to bite us in the arse."

    "From what you tell me, you like being bitten in the arse so I'm not sure how accurate that statement might be." Yuri said with a broad grin on his face.

    "Would you come to Jurgen's party?"

    "I wouldn't want to miss the culmination of all my efforts to find this man."

    "Come up to New Haven when you're ready."

    "I shall have my assistant book hotel rooms for us. I think a hotel would be better so we can maintain the surprise for Jurgen, yes?"

    "Well, I could ask my parents to put you up."

    "You have told me Jurgen is in and out of their house regularly; even after all these years he might recognise this man. I think it best we use the hotel until the party, after which, if you don't mind I would like accept your invitation to stay."

    "A room will always be available for you, Yuri Malachenko."

    "Perhaps we should walk back now, I shall introduce you to him and we can set this all in motion."













    On the day of his birthday, Jurgen felt a palpable sense of tension in the air as he sat at the table in Karl's parents kitchen eating his dinner. Once again, Karl was absent visiting his Russian friend; Jurgen was aware his adopted grand-parents knew the details of what Karl had planned but they were being as close lipped as Karl about the whole affair.

Jurgen's display at the museum had launched to congratulations and plaudits from all over the state; a resounding success, it was drawing in the crowds from all over and he and Michael had finally been able to put what happened behind them. Jurgen felt a sense of triumph as he guided groups of school children, explaining to them what it had been like to be their age and fight as a soldier in his country's armed forces.

    "Jurgen? I think you should go back to work now and allow us to set things up for later." Karl's mother suggested.

    "I was hoping to see Karl before I left."

    "It'll be a few more hours before he returns. You know what's he's like when he's been with Yuri, drinking and eating and all that."

    "When he gets in, tell him I waited."













    He started his birthday celebration in town, at Donny's restaurant, as he celebrated with friends and colleagues but as the evening drew to a close he found he really wanted to go home and celebrate with his family at the house, so he made his farewells, thanking his friends for an excellent meal. He gave Donny enough money to keep the drink flowing for the rest of the night so his friends wouldn't notice his absence.

He walked into the house to be greeted by family and neighbourhood friends. Karl was standing off to one side talking to a big, burly older man but Jurgen was quickly side-lined receiving presents so became a little preoccupied to wonder who the stranger was.

After all the presents had been opened he realised there didn't seem to be anything from Karl despite the hype he'd given about something really big; the fact he was beaming a grin from ear to ear which would have split his face from side to side if it got any wider didn't really help.

Karl walked over and the big, heavy set man he'd been talking to followed.

    "Jurgen? I'd like to introduce you to Yuri Malachenko, he's the friend I've been visiting in New York and he's been doing the leg work for me to get me your birthday present here."

    "Karl tells me you have few happy memories about Russian soldiers. I hope, perhaps, I might have the chance to change your mind about us."

    "It was a long time ago, sir, I don't hold anything against the Russian people now. Perhaps you might like to come down to the museum tomorrow and tell me what you think about my work there."

    "Ah... yes... Karl told me about what you've been doing. I would be honoured ... provided I get personally escorted tour by you?"

    "It would be my honour, sir."

    "Karl?" Yuri said, "Do you perhaps think we have kept them apart long enough?"

Karl nodded as Yuri walked away and he turned to face Jurgen, he put an arm around his partner's shoulder as Yuri walked in to the kitchen.

    "This all culminated from your asking me to contact my old army buddies to get you information for your display at the museum. Someone put me in touch with Yuri, he now lives in East Germany and he helped me to locate the information you'd asked for; in the process of making his enquiries Yuri turned up a rather puzzling anomaly and he contacted me for further instructions."

The kitchen door opened and Karl turned Jurgen toward it; Yuri walked into the living room followed by another man about Jurgen's age. As Jurgen frowned at the new stranger in their midst something began to tickle his memories and slowly his mouth dropped open as recognition dawned.

    "Hans..." he whispered as his jaw dropped.

He turned to look at Karl, the tears welling in Karl's eyes confirmed the truth, he looked at his grandparents, at the neighbours, all had tears rolling down their cheeks as Jurgen turned and staggered forward shakily, he slowly closed the distance between himself and the friend he'd last seen boarding a train, as a frightened fifteen year old heading for Stalingrad almost forty years ago.

    "Jurgy?" Hans whispered in hoarse voice.

As soon as Jurgen heard the voice use the diminutive form of his name only Hans had ever used he knew. He closed the distance between them quickly and threw his arms around his friend, hugging him tight and close, both sobbing as they whispered to each other confirming the truth, they had both survived the horror.

Karl felt the warm trickle of tears rolling down his cheeks as he watched the joyful reunion, as he looked around the room and saw not a dry eye in the house. Even Yuri had tears rolling down his cheeks as one and all they bore silent testimony to the closing of a chapter which had been opened by war so long ago.













    Later in the night after they'd bid goodnight to their guests Karl, Jurgen and Hans remained. From the moment Yuri had escorted Hans out of the kitchen, he and Jurgen had been inseparable as though both feared that come midnight a Cinderella-like transformation would rip then apart again.

    "What say you lads? We have a shower and then head off to bed?"

    "Bed?" Jurgen exclaimed.




    "Well ... come on! For over thirty years you've been telling me how much you regretted the chances you missed with Hans. Over the past few days he's told me how much he'd enjoy the chance to get to know you as he'd hoped to do in Berlin. So, I'm wondering, if perhaps we might  not go to bed together!"





    They stood in the wet room as hot water cascaded over their bodies, Karl and Jurgen began soaping each other as usual, but soon they were both soaping Hans getting him relaxed and including him in the regular nature of their ablutions. A cold draft blew in the open door and Jurgen used his foot to give it a gentle shove, his cock still buried in Karl's mouth and his lips locked to Hans'. 

The door closed gently as the three made love under the shower.




The End




Well, almost, what happened in the shower is another story entirely...
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