In The Presence Of My Enemies

Karl didn't want to leave things alone. "I wasn't so much talking about what would happen. I was talking about what should happen."

No matter how Susanna seemed, her instincts were of the wild-eyed, bomb-throwing sort, and to a degree that made Rolf Stolle hopelessly stodgy. Like Buckliger, Stolle wanted to reform the Reich. Susanna wanted to see it fall to pieces, to ruin, to disaster unparalleled. She wished its foes would have smashed it in the Second World War, or the Third. Maybe then she could have lived openly as what she was.

I'll never do that now. Hiding is too ingrained in me. Even if I knew they wouldn't kill me, I couldn't reveal myself that way. Easier to walk up the middle of the Kurfurstendamm naked.

"I'd like to vote in an election where I had a real choice," Mathilde said. "I don't know who I'd vote for, but there sure are plenty of people I'd vote against."

Again, several of the youngsters up by the lectern showed they agreed with her. Only a couple of them frowned. But who was more likely to be a spy for the Security Police, someone who pretended to agree or someone who openly didn't?

Susanna sighed. That question had no answer. Anyone could spy for the Security Police, anyone at all.

Mathilde looked right at her. "How about you, Professor Weiss? Don't you think we'd be better off with real elections than with the ones where everybody just votesja all the time? When Horst says all the Reichstag candidates got elected with 99.78 percent of the vote, don't you wonder how he keeps a straight face? It's such a farce! You must feel the same way, too. You're a sharp person. Anyone can tell from the way you lecture. Tell us!"

"Tell us!" the other students echoed.Tell us you're with it. Tell us you're not a fuddy-duddy. Tell us we don't have to turn into fuddy-duddies when we're your age. Please tell us.

Am I a sharp person?Susanna wondered.Am I really? Am I sharp enough to keep my mouth shut when I really want to shout, to scream? "I don't know anything about politics," she said. "As long as the politicians leave me alone, I'll leave them alone, too."

"But theydon't leave us alone," Mathilde said fiercely. "If you say the wrong thing today, you're liable to get a noodle tomorrow." Camp slang permeated German these days. Often, people didn't even know where it came from. When you were talking about a bullet in the back of the neck, though, there wasn't much doubt.

"Well…" Susanna's conditioned caution warred with the fury and outrage she'd bottled up for so long. She surprised herself. What came out was a compromise, and she wasn't usually good at splitting the difference. All or nothing was more her style. But now she said, "I wasn't sorry when the Fuhrer reminded the Volk about what the first edition of Mein Kampf says. In fact, I was in London for a conference last year when the British Union of Fascists reminded us all."

"You were in London for the BUF convention?" Was that awe or horror in Karl Stuckart's voice? Some of each, probably. Maybe he was wondering ifshe had SS connections.

"No, no, no." Susanna shook her head. "I was in London for the Medieval English Association conference. The BUF was meeting across the street." That she'd found some of the Fascist bruisers more interesting than her fellow professors was a secret she intended to keep.

"It's a shame the British had to remind us of what we should have remembered for ourselves-no, what we never should have forgotten," Mathilde Burchert said. Most of the other students nodded. They didn't seem to fear informers or provocateurs. Maybe they were too young to know better, although in the Greater German Reich you were never too young to learn such lessons. Or did they smell freedom on the wind?

Heinrich Gimpel pulled a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter out of the vending machine in the Stahnsdorf train station. A moment later, Willi Dorsch paid fifteen pfennigs for his own copy. On the front page was a color photo of Heinz Buckliger receiving an award in Oslo from the Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian Fascist party. the Fuhrer was a big blond man. The Nasjonal Samling officials in the photo were even bigger and even blonder, with long faces and granite cheekbones.

Willi saw the same thing at the same time. "Damned Scandinavians are the only ones who can racially embarrass us," he said. "Bastards look more Nordic than we do."

Was Willi kidding? Was he kidding on the square? Or did he really mean it? Heinrich had trouble telling. Willi loved to joke, but race, in the Reich, was as serious a business as Marxism had been in Russia before it fell. Even the Fuhrer hadn't said anything more than that the Nazi founding fathers might not have understood race the right way. Heinrich gave back a grunt and a nod-a minimal answer.