In The Presence Of My Enemies

Walther glanced down at his watch. Yes, it would have to be another time. People would start coming back from lunch pretty soon. He couldn't afford to take the chance of being seen doing that kind of work. And he was through the other portal. If he was going to look around inside Lothar Prutzmann's domain, he had to do it now.

Too much information. Not enough time to sift through it. That protected SS secrets as well as any encryption algorithm, probably better. If Walther couldn't find what he was looking for, what difference if it stayed in plain sight? You couldn't read what you couldn't find.

He did find proof of Prutzmann's hand behind the "Enough Is Enough" article in the Volkischer Beobachter. Under other circumstances, that would have delighted him. As things were, he shrugged. If Heinz Buckliger didn't already know who'd put Dr. Jahnke up to writing that piece, he was a fool. So far, he hadn't acted like one.

Still…A message revealing in which SS directory all the dirt on "Enough Is Enough" lurked wouldn't hurt. Walther had ways of bouncing such a message through the data system till it became impossible to trace. He used them.

And he was back to working on the new operating system by the time his boss lumbered back into the office. Gustav Priepke stuck his head into Walther's cubicle, saw what he was up to, and nodded approval. "That goddamn Japanese code really will save our asses, won't it?" he said.

"We've got a chance with it, anyhow," Walther answered.

"Good. Good. That was a hell of a good idea, using it," Priepke said. Walther started to thank him, but just nodded instead. Unless he misread the signs, his boss had forgotten whose idea it was in the first place. Because it was working so well, Priepke had decided it was his.

Had things been different, Walther wouldn't have let him get away with that. As they were…As they were, if Priepke was angling for fame and glory, he could have them. Walther didn't want them. They were no good to him. The less he was in the public eye, the better he liked it. And if his boss got a bonus and a raise, that was all right, too. The Stutzmans had plenty. They needed no more. No Jew dared be or even think like a money-grubber these days.

"We'll do fine," Priepke said, as if Walther had denied it. "We'll do just fine."

"Of course we will," Walther said.

When Gottlieb Stutzman came home for a weekend's leave from his Hitler Jugend service, Esther was amazed at how brown and muscular he'd become. "They work us pretty hard," her son said, scratching at his mustache. That was thicker and more emphatically there than it had been a year before, too. He wasn't a boy any more. He was visibly turning into a man.

"How is it?" Esther fought to keep worry out of her voice. She'd been afraid ever since Gottlieb left the house. She hadn't feared he would be caught, or hadn't feared that any more than usual. He looked like an Aryan. He wasn't circumcised. He had the sense to keep his mouth shut about his dangerous secret.

But in a setting like that, suffused with the propaganda of the state and the Volk, what would have been easier than turning his back on the secret? It was a burden he didn't have to carry. Nobody did. If you chose to forget you were a Jew, who could make you remember?

Esther's fear swelled when Gottlieb shrugged and said, "It's not so bad." But then he went on, "Or it wouldn't be, if I weren't different." Esther let out a heartfelt sigh of relief. He accepted that difference, then. She'd thought he had, she'd thought he would, but you could never be sure. He gave her a quizzical look. "What was that for?"

"Just because-and don't you forget it," Esther answered.

"Sure." Gottlieb, plainly, was humoring his mother. Since he hadn't had much practice, he wasn't very good at it. The doorbell rang. "Who's that?" he asked as Esther started for the door.

"Alicia Gimpel," Esther answered. "She was going to visit Anna and sleep over tonight. They set it up before we knew you were coming home, and it was a little late to cancel by then. I hope you don't mind?"

"Why should I?" He laughed. "It's not like I'm going to pay any attention to Alicia one way or the other."

"All right," Esther said. Gottlieb no doubt admired one pretty Fraulein or another. Of course he did-at seventeen, what was he but a hormone with legs? No matter whom he admired, though, if he was as serious as he seemed to be about staying a Jew and passing it on, he would marry another Jew. Seventeen would pay no attention to eleven, but twenty-four might find eighteen very interesting. Seven years, right now, would feel like an eternity to Gottlieb. To Esther, they felt just around the corner.

She opened the door. There were Alicia and Lise. As Alicia came in festooned with sleeping bag, change of clothes, and the other impedimenta of a sleepover, Anna bounded down from upstairs to greet her. Through the squeals, Lise said, "It's a shame they don't like each other-tragic, in fact."