In the Presence of Mine Enemies (70 page)

Survival instincts,
she thought, and shook her head. She'd always believed Heinrich had strong ones. But if he did, why had he gone running to stick his head in the lion's mouth? At first, she was inclined to blame Willi. A moment later, though, she shook her head again. Heinrich hadn't taken Willi all that seriously—not seriously enough to let Willi talk him into risking his life—even before the trouble with Erika.

The trouble with Erika…Lise saw, or thought she did. Before the blackshirts grabbed Heinrich and flung him into prison, he never would have done anything so crazy. Now, though, he'd lain in the hands of the SS. Maybe he thought anything that might help stop that committee with the silly name was worth doing.

It will happen just the same, with you there or without you
. Lise couldn't shout that to Heinrich, no matter how much she wanted to. He'd had an attack of patriotism—and wasn't that a strange fit to come over a Jew at the beating heart of the Third
Reich?
Was the difference between Lothar Prützmann and Odilo Globocnik on the one hand and Heinz Buckliger and Rolf Stolle on the other really so enormous?

Lise wished she hadn't asked herself the question that way. The answer looked much too much like yes.

She turned on the televisor. Most of the stations were broadcasting reruns of daytime dramas or quiz shows or
weepy advice shows. Every so often, words would glide across the bottom of the screen.
You are ordered to obey the decrees of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich, the crawl said, over and over and over again.

The Berlin channel was different. It showed the crowd milling around Rolf Stolle's residence and, now, the stalled armored vehicles in front of it. “We are still here,” a frightened-sounding announcer said over the noise of the crowd. “I don't know how long we can stay on the air, though. If we didn't have our own generator, we would have been shut down already. SS men have come here, but our guards turned them back. The guards have since been heavily reinforced by
Wehrmacht
troops.”

Was that a warning to Prützmann and his henchmen? Or was it a bluff? The announcer seemed nervous enough to make the latter seem a real possibility. But then the picture switched to a tape of Stolle kicking at a panzer's iron tire and bellowing at the SS man leaning out of the turret. Seeing the
Gauleiter
's nerve made Lise willing to forgive the announcer's nerves.

Her daughters got home from school just then. She thought that would distract her from what was going on downtown, but it didn't. They were more excited about it than she was. Francesca said, “
Frau
Koch says we have to do what the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
tells us, and Odilo Globocnik is the new
Führer
.”

“Odilo Globocnik!” Roxane echoed. “Teacher made us learn how to say it.”

“Us, too,” Francesca said. “The Beast made us memorize his name and State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich,
and anybody who couldn't do it got a swat. I did it. She's not going to hit
me
again.” She spoke with grim determination.

“What does your teacher say?” Lise asked Alicia, who hadn't spoken yet.

“He made us learn
Herr
Globocnik's name,” her eldest answered. “He said there wasn't any law for a committee like this one, but that wouldn't matter if they held on to
power. He said we'd just have to wait and see, pretty much.”

“He'll get in trouble,” Francesca said. “
Frau
Koch says the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
”—since she'd memorized the name, she used it every chance she got—“is going to pay back everybody who ever liked what the old
Führer
was doing.”

“Odilo Globocnik is the new
Führer
!” Roxane showed off what she'd learned, too.

“If that State Committee wins, they may do what
Frau
Koch says,” Lise said carefully. “But Alicia's teacher has a point. They haven't won yet.
Gauleiter
Stolle and lots of people are protesting against what they've done.” She didn't say that Heinrich was there. Even if things went sour in front of the
Gauleiter
's residence, he might get away safe.
Well, he might,
she insisted to herself. Aloud, she went on, “They're on the televisor, too. Do you want to see?”

“Would you get us snacks first?” Roxane asked.

That seemed reasonable, so Lise did. Then they all went back to the living room. The Berlin channel was showing the tape of Stolle kicking at the panzer again. Francesca, in particular, watched wide-eyed. There was no room for dissent in
Frau
Koch's universe. Seeing that there was, or might be, in the real world seemed to hearten Lise's middle daughter. Alicia asked, “What are the other stations showing?”

“They were just putting on boring reruns, I suppose to make people think everything is normal,” Lise answered. “But we can see what they're doing now.”

She changed the channel. It wasn't a daytime drama any more. Horst Witzleben looked out of the screen at her and her children. “I have been given the following statement to read,” he said. “And I quote….” He looked down at a paper on his desk. “‘Rumors relating to the ancestry of the
Reichsführer
-SS are false, malicious, and despicable lies. He is of unblemished Aryan descent. This being so, anyone repeating or spreading the false rumors will be subject to the most severe penalties. By order of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
.' We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.”

Regularly scheduled programming turned out to be a
nature film about the migration of storks. “What did that mean, Mommy?” Roxane asked.

“I'm not quite sure,” Lise answered.

“He didn't look very happy about it, whatever it was,” Alicia said. “He didn't sound very happy, either.”

“You're right—he didn't,” Lise said. Witzleben had been a cheerleader for Heinz Buckliger's reforms. If he'd actually been as enthusiastic a cheerleader as he'd seemed, what had Prützmann's bully boys done to persuade him to speak on their behalf? Held a gun to his head? Held a gun to his wife's head? There were, no doubt, all sorts of ways, and they'd be the ones to know them. She changed channels again. The Berlin station was still broadcasting. The crowd around Rolf Stolle's residence was still there. Lise shrugged. “We'll just have to see what happens, that's all.”

 

“Let me through!” somebody with a big voice shouted behind Heinrich. “Get out of my way, dammit! Clear a path!”

“In your dreams, pal,” Willi Dorsch said.

Even if they didn't clear a path, the man kept on coming, using his shoulders and his elbows to force his way forward. He was a Berlin police officer. People did try to move aside for him, but in the press of bodies it wasn't easy. “Let me through!” he yelled again. “I've got important news for the
Gauleiter
.”

He pushed past Heinrich and Willi. A moment later, a woman spoke sharply: “You might say, ‘Excuse me.'”

For a wonder, the policeman actually did say, “Sorry, lady.” Then, as roughly as ever, he went on toward Rolf Stolle, who was still arguing with the commander of the lead panzer.

“Was that your friend who called him on his manners?” Willi asked, grinning.

“Susanna? I do believe it was,” Heinrich answered.

“She's got nerve,” Willi said admiringly.

“Oh, yes. That she does.”

There was a stir when the police officer came up to the gray-uniformed men guarding the
Gauleiter
of Berlin. They must have recognized him, for they let him through. He spoke to Stolle for perhaps a minute and a half. Hein
rich wasn't that far away, but couldn't hear a word he said. He could see Stolle's reaction, though. The
Gauleiter
stared. His eyes went wide with surprise. Then, to Heinrich's amazement, he threw back his head and bellowed Jovian laughter at the sky.

“What the hell?” Willi said.

“Beats me,” Heinrich said.

That great bellow of mirth had made everybody within a hundred meters turn and look at Stolle. With a sense of timing an actor might have envied, the
Gauleiter
waited for people's attention to wing his way before shouting up to the panzer commander: “Hey, you! SS man!”

“What do you want?” the officer in the black coveralls asked warily.

“You know your boss? The high and mighty
Reichsführer
-SS? The chief Aryan of all time? Lothar goddamn Prützmann? You know who I'm talking about?” Rolf Stolle waited again. He looked as if he could afford to let the moment stretch. He also looked as if he was enjoying himself immensely.

The panzer commander saw that as clearly as Heinrich did. His nod was a small masterpiece of reluctance. “I know who you're talking about. What about him?” He didn't use the bullhorn now.

That was sensible. It was even smart. But when he went up against Rolf Stolle's leather lungs, it didn't do him much good. “What about him? I'll tell you what about him, you pickle-faced son of a bitch,” Stolle boomed in a voice audible all across the square in front of his residence. “You know what your precious Aryan Prützmann is? He's a Jew, that's what—nothing but a lousy kike in a fancy uniform!”

“Why, you lying toad!” the panzer commander exclaimed, shocked out of his reticence as the crowd began to buzz.

Stolle shook his bullet head. “Not me, by God! What do you SS bastards use for a motto? ‘My honor is loyalty,' that's it. Well, on my honor, it's the truth. It's all over the computers—and Prützmann's come out and said on the televisor that people aren't allowed to talk about it. If that doesn't make it true, what's likely to? Here.” He shoved
the newly arrived police officer forward. “Tell him, Norbert.”

Norbert told the same story the
Gauleiter
had, in a higher, thinner voice but with more details. Beside Heinrich, Willi Dorsch listened with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. He had to shake himself to turn back to Heinrich. “That can't be true, can it? But if it's a lie, it's a lie that goes right for the throat. And if it's a lie, why would Prützmann deny it like that? Sounds like panic. And what would make him panic like the truth?”

“Beats me.” Heinrich started to quote Hitler about the big lie, but checked himself. He remembered how the Kleins had got released after they were seized. One of Prützmann's relatives had had a baby with the same horrible disease as theirs. Maybe that was a coincidence. Or maybe the
Reichsführer
-SS really did have Jews in his woodpile, and his enemies were seizing on it.

Where was Susanna? There, only a few meters away. She was looking back toward him as he was looking for her. When their eyes met, he saw her thoughts were going in the same direction as his. Lothar Prützmann certainly wasn't a Jew in any meaningful sense of the word. But wouldn't it be luscious if the
Reichsführer
-SS came to grief because people thought he was?

The panzer commander disappeared down into the turret once more, no doubt to get on the radio yet again. Heinrich would have given a good deal to be a fly sitting on the breech of the cannon in there. No such luck. Whatever the officer said, no one else but his fellow panzer crewmen heard it.

He didn't emerge for some little while. When he did, his troubled features proclaimed that he didn't like much of what he'd heard. Even so, he raised the bullhorn to his lips once more. Gamely, he said, “
Achtung!
What the
Gauleiter
says is nothing but a pack of lies. Anyone saying such things about the
Reichsführer
-SS makes himself liable to severe punishment. You have been warned.”

Rolf Stolle laughed again. “Yes, you have been warned,
Volk
of the
Reich
,” he called, mockery dancing on his voice. “And what have you got to say about that?”

He waited. So did Heinrich. Would the people dare, after they'd been warned not to by men with guns?

They dared. “Prützmann is a kike!” somebody yelled, and in an instant the whole crowd was chanting it: “Prützmann is a kike! Prützmann is a kike!”

Heinrich shouted it, too, as loud as anybody. “Prützmann is a kike! Prützmann is a kike!” He looked over to Susanna again. She was shouting the same thing, her hands cupped in front of her mouth. When their eyes met this time, they both started to laugh. They went right on chanting, though. Heinrich had never imagined anti-Semitic slogans could be so much fun.