In the Presence of Mine Enemies (63 page)

He was just about to sit down in his squeaky swivel chair when Ilse spotted him. “Oh,
Herr
Gimpel, I'm so happy you're back!” she squealed, and ran up to him and gave him a hug and a kiss. Then she laughed. “Now I've got lipstick on you, the way I do with Willi.”

Willi chose that moment to have a coughing fit. Heinrich would have, too. Ilse turned and made a face at her lunchtime lover. She pulled a tissue from her purse and rubbed at Heinrich's cheek. She drew back, looked him over, and rubbed a little more.

“There! All better,” she said briskly.

“Is it?” Heinrich said. She nodded. He was almost as much an object to be dealt with for her as he had been for the Security Police. Her ministrations were a lot more enjoyable, though.

Off she went. Heinrich sat down. The chair did squeak. He tried to remember what he'd been doing when the blackshirts grabbed him. Before he could even come close, Willi stalked over and spoke in a mock-tough voice: “Trying to steal another woman of mine, are you?”

Heinrich hoped it was just mock-tough. He said, “The only thing I'm trying to do is mind my own business and have people leave me alone. Up till now, I never realized how hard that was.”

Willi laughed and slapped him on the back. “All right. I can take a hint.” Heinrich wasn't at all sure Willi could. But his friend—and in spite of everything, Willi did still seem to be his friend—went back to his desk and got to work. With real relief, Heinrich did the same. He knew he wouldn't accomplish much this morning. It would be like coming back from vacation: he'd need to figure out what had gone on while he was out before he could do anything useful.

Here, what had gone on while he was out couldn't have been more obvious if it had marched by with a brass band. The Americans were kicking up their heels. They took Heinz Buckliger's policy for weakness. Payments were lagging. Excuses were some of the plainest lies he'd ever seen. Over on the other side of the Atlantic, they were finding out how much they could get away with.

So far, they seemed to be doing exactly that. Panzers hadn't rolled out to plunder the countryside—or to surround the American legislature and bureaucrats in Omaha and make them cough up what was due the
Reich
. Haldweim would have arrested people. Himmler would have machine-gunned people. Up till now, Heinz Buckliger hadn't even squawked.

If I were running things…
But Heinrich wasn't. He wondered if anyone was, or if the people above him were just letting everything drift till they got orders from the
Führer
. With worries closer to home, would Buckliger give orders about the USA?

“How about some lunch?” Willi asked. Heinrich looked up in astonishment. It couldn't be lunchtime yet. But his watch insisted it was ten to twelve. Willi went on, “How about Admiral Yamamoto's?”

“Sounds good to me.” After cabbage stew in prison, any real food sounded good to Heinrich. Several big meals at home had only just begun to fill the hole inside him.

Shrimp tempura, teriyaki beef, and a plate of Berlin rolls enlivened with soy sauce and wasabi went some way toward hole-filling. Miso soup came with the meal. So did rice, which was to be expected, and potato salad, which never failed to leave him bemused. It was pretty good potato salad, but he didn't think the average Japanese came home to potato salad every night—or any night. But Admiral Yamamoto's wasn't the only Japanese place in Berlin that included potato salad in its meals, so maybe he was wrong. More likely, the restaurant owners just knew what their customers favored.

As usual, plenty of customers favored Admiral Yamamoto's. It drew people from every government agency within several kilometers, along with hotel clerks, shopgirls, and even the occasional Japanese tourist hungry for the tastes of home and discovering that the restaurant offered…some of them.

Heinrich ate, rather clumsily, with chopsticks. He sipped a good wheat beer, which went well with the spicy, salty lunch. And he listened to the people chatting at nearby tables. The tables were so close together, he couldn't help listening to his neighbors. One question he heard over and over was, “Who are you going to vote for?”

Once, to his astonishment, he heard one trooper from the
Waffen
-SS division
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
ask that of his pal. He was even more astonished when the second trooper answered, “Me? Stolle, who else?” The tough young Aryan warrior sounded as if no other choice besides the radical
Gauleiter
of Berlin were possible. And the first man nodded, plainly agreeing with him.

“I wasn't sure what I thought of this whole election business,” Heinrich said. “Sounds like everybody's excited about it, though.”

“Sure does,” Willi agreed. “I'm as surprised as you are, maybe more so. And once the votes get counted, I can think of some other people who'll be more surprised yet.” He mouthed Lothar Prützmann's name, but he didn't say it out loud, not in a restaurant full of strangers.

“Someone else might be surprised, too.” Heinrich mouthed the
Führer
's name, and Willi nodded. “I don't think he expected Rolf to get so popular so fast.”

Willi nodded again, but he said, “Still, the two of them ought to be able to work together. They're going in the same direction. It's not like that other fellow, the one who wants to turn back the clock.”

“No, I wouldn't think so. I sure hope not,” Heinrich said. “The only thing that worries me is, what happens if the one of them gets jealous of the other?” Yes, not naming names was definitely a good idea. A few months earlier, Heinrich wouldn't have dared to talk about Party rivalries in a public place with or without names. Back in the days when Kurt Haldweim was
Führer,
he would have been leery about doing it even if private.

As usual, Willi Dorsch had more nerve than he did (of course, Willi hadn't been hauled away from his desk by the Security Police, either). “Buckliger should've run for the
Reichstag
himself,” Willi said. “This way, Stolle will be able to say, ‘The
Volk
chose me, but who chose you?' If elections really do stick, that could matter. It could matter a lot.”

“You're right,” Heinrich said. Willi might not notice something like his wife making a play for another man, but he missed very little when it came to politics.

And, when Heinrich tried to pay the tab, Willi wouldn't let him. “Next time, fine, but not right after the Security Police let you go. You don't need to show me you're no cheap Jew. I believe it.”

“That's nice,” Heinrich said. Willi laughed at the irony in his voice. But it held more irony than Willi knew. It was especially nice that Willi thought Heinrich wasn't a Jew when he really was. Had Willi—or anybody else—been truly convinced he was, he wouldn't be full of Japanese food right now. He would have been disposed of, and so would his children.

Willi got to his feet. “Shall we head back?” he said. “I know you're dying to, with all the catching up you've got to do.”

Heinrich rose, too. “I don't mind,” he said. Willi rolled his eyes and shook his head at such dedication. Heinrich
meant it, though. He wasn't dying to get back to the office, but, as he'd thought a moment before, he would have been dying—or dead—if he couldn't go back. Given that stark choice, sitting at a desk and adding up long columns of figures didn't look bad at all.

 

Alicia Gimpel's class went out to eat their lunches and play on the schoolyard. She was about to walk out with the other boys and girls when her teacher called her name. She stopped. “What is it,
Herr
Peukert?” she asked.

“You've only been back in school for a couple of days, Alicia,” he said. “You don't need to work so very hard to make up all the assignments you missed.”

“But I want to get them out of the way!” Alicia exclaimed. “Then I won't have to worry about them any more.”

“I'm not going to worry about them now, or not very much,”
Herr
Peukert said. “You're a good student, and you've shown you can understand the material. That's what really matters.” He hesitated, then went on, “And it's not as if you could help being absent, not with what happened to you. I'm glad you're back.”

“Thank you,
Herr
Peukert. I'm glad I'm back, too,” Alicia said. “Are you sure it's all right about the work? I don't mind doing it.” Like her father, she was glad to have the chance to work.

“Yes, I'm sure.” The teacher hesitated again. Finally, nodding to himself, he asked, “Has anyone given you a hard time about…about where you were, and why?”

“No, sir,” Alicia answered, which wasn't strictly true. Wolf Priller and a couple of other boys had teased her, but it hadn't been too bad—certainly nothing where she felt she ought to tattle. “But…” Now she was the one who paused.

“But what?”
Herr
Peukert asked. “The charge made against you was serious, but it was false. Now that it's been shown to be false, people have no business—none—throwing it in your face. Do you understand?”

“
Ja, Herr
Peukert.” Alicia would have let it go at that if her teacher hadn't sounded angry that anybody could still be bothering her. Since he did, though, she added, “It's not me, sir—it's my sister.”

“Some of the students in your sister's class are giving her trouble?” Peukert sounded angrier still. “Who is your sister's teacher? We'll deal with this.”

Alicia's heart sank. She wished she'd kept her mouth shut. “Francesca's in, uh,
Frau
Koch's class, sir.” She'd almost said
the Beast's class,
but not quite. “The boys and girls aren't giving her any trouble, though. It's…it's
Frau
Koch.” She waited to see if the sky would fall.

“Oh.” The word seemed heavy as lead as it came from
Herr
Peukert's throat. “That's…very unfortunate, Alicia. I'm sorry. I don't know just what to do about that. I don't know if I can do anything about that. Some people…Some people can't be reasonable about some things. It's…too bad when those people get put in charge of others, but sometimes it happens.”

“It's not fair. It's not right,” Alicia said. “She shouldn't say those things. Daddy's
not
a Jew, and that means my sisters and me—and
I
—aren't
Mischlingen
.” Part of that was true, anyhow. She and Francesca and Roxane weren't
Mischlingen
. They were full-blooded Jews. Alicia knew what she had to say, though.

Herr
Peukert looked troubled. “If you like, Alicia, I will speak to the principal. But I have to tell you, I don't know how much good it will do, or if it will do any good at all. Inside their classrooms, teachers do as they see fit, as long as they teach what they are required to teach. And I know
Frau
Koch has been at this school a long time, much longer than the principal has.”

He waited. Alicia needed a few seconds to understand what he was saying. If he talked to the principal, the principal might tell the Beast to go easy on Francesca. Because she told her, though, that didn't mean
Frau
Koch would do it. She might act meaner than ever, to get even with Francesca for trying to land her in trouble. Knowing the Beast, that was just what she
would
do.

“Maybe you'd better let it alone, then,” Alicia said reluctantly.

“I think you're being smart.” Her teacher sounded relieved.

Alicia didn't feel smart. She felt shoddy. This was the
same as not standing up to somebody on the playground even if you were right, because he'd beat the snot out of you if you tried. Sometimes you had to make choices like that. When you got to be a grownup, from what she'd seen, you had to make choices like that all the time. No matter what you ended up doing, you couldn't be sure it was the right thing. Sometimes there
was
no right thing.

Herr
Peukert said, “Why don't you go out and play now, Alicia? This business with your sister will sort itself out sooner or later.”

“Sooner or later,” Alicia echoed in mournful tones. Whenever a grownup said that, he meant
sooner
. Whenever a child heard it, she heard
later
. As far as Alicia knew, there was no bridge across that chasm between the generations.

She went out. Emma Handrick and Trudi Krebs waved to her. She went over to them and started chatting. Everything was pretty much the way it would have been if the blackshirts hadn't taken her away. Pretty much…

Even while she was talking with her friends, though, part of her mind was chewing on something
Herr
Peukert had said about the Beast.
Some people can't be reasonable about some things. It's too bad when those people get put in charge of others, but sometimes it happens
.