In The Presence Of My Enemies

And yet, was he so far wrong? All Heinz Buckliger had done was loosen the straps of the straitjacket a little. Susanna didn't think the Fuhrer wanted anything more than to make it fit the Reich better. But if people started trying to wiggle out of the sleeves, how could he complain? He was the one who'd made it possible in the first place.

Would they really start wiggling? The English proverb was,Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. The Reich had taken both inches and miles from Britain, forcing the metric system on it. The point remained. If the Fuhrer gave an inch…

Susanna shook her head and went over to the scotch again. If the Fuhrer gave an inch, the SS was all too likely to take it away again-and to break your fingers because you'd tried to grab it.

Professor Oppenhoff fixed himself another drink, too. The old boy had to have a liver like a sponge; he could pour down a lot of sauce without showing it. Like an old-fashioned arch-duke, he inclined his head to Susanna. "A good New Year to you, Professor Weiss," he rumbled, and exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke almost as toxic as mustard gas.

"Thank you, sir. The same to you." Susanna wondered how she could get away.

"I daresay you approve of the radical changes we have seen lately," Oppenhoff observed.

There was a not-quite-question that dropped her right in the middle of a minefield. If she denied it, he'd know she was lying. She'd always been as radical as she could be in a police state. If she admitted it, that might come back to haunt her after a crackdown. The calculations you had to make, living in such a state…

"Hard not to approve of anything that lets us inquire more openly into all sorts of things," she said after no more than a second's silence. If she kept her answer strictly related to business, it was-she hoped-less likely to seem politically dangerous.

"Inquire more openly?" Professor Oppenhoff pondered that with a judicious puff on the cigar and another cloud of poisonous smoke. "We in the Department of Germanic Languages have never been greatly restricted in our scholarship."

"Well, no," Susanna said. Could he be as naive as he sounded? She had trouble believing it. True, the Nazis didn't interfere so much with a professor of Middle English or Gothic or Old High German. But why would they? Susanna's research touched the modern world almost nowhere. If she'd taught sociology or psychology or political science, it would have been a different story. Anthropology? Anthropology was so full of Aryan doctrine, it was hard to tell science-if there was any-from ideology there.

Franz Oppenhoff seemed oblivious to all that. "Inquiry is good," he said with the air of a man making a large concession. Then his gaze sharpened. "And I congratulate you on placing your recent articles in two most distinguished journals. This brings credit to the whole department."

"Danke schon, Herr Doktor Professor," Susanna said. "I hope you will agree it also brings credit to me?"

Did Oppenhoff turn red? With all the booze he carried, it was hard to tell. The cigar could have caused his cough. "No doubt it does," he said without conviction. "Your research is, ah, most original."

"Thank you again," Susanna said, though he hadn't meant it for a compliment. She'd undoubtedly written more about the roles of women in literature, for instance, than all the men in the department put together.Herr Doktor Professor Oppenhoff would have looked down his nose at that even more than he did-he was an unreconstructed Kuche, Kirche, Kinder man-if she hadn't repeatedly placed her articles in some of the most prestigious academic publications in the Germanic Empire.

"Modern ideas," he muttered now. "Well, you are better suited to cope with them than I am. When they say they are going to change the ideology we have lived under for longer than I have been alive…Is it any wonder I have a hard time working up much enthusiasm?"

"If the change is for the better, we should make it," Susanna said. She made herself a fresh drink, wishing the scotch would change for the better.

"Yes. If," Oppenhoff said. "Who knows? Whatever happens, you are bound to see more of it than I do." With that cheery reflection, he went off to inflict himself on someone else. Susanna took a long pull at the new drink, even if it was nasty. If the Security Police ever found out what she was, the department chairman would outlive her by years.