In The Presence Of My Enemies

"Not everyone inside the Party is pleased with the direction reform is taking. I think the Jahnke letter in the Beobachter proves that. No one I know believes Jahnke could have published that letter without official, ah, encouragement. It's fairly obvious which officials encouraged him, too." She looked around at the language and literature professors. By their expressions, it wasn't obvious to a lot of them. They were safe. They were comfortable. Why should they get excited about politics?

"On the other hand, we've also seen that some reform has spurred a call for more reform," Susanna said. "Some people-people in high places, too-don't believe the Fuhrer is moving fast enough. Like those who oppose any reform at all, they may grow harder to ignore as time goes on."

She looked Franz Oppenhoff in the eye. "And that,Herr Doktor Professor, about sums it up."

He'd wanted her to make a hash of it. She knew that. She'd had to suffer through a string of indignities no professor who pissed standing up would have had to endure. This was only the latest, and far from the worst. Now she wanted to see whether Oppenhoff would have the gall to claim she hadn't made a proper presentation. If he did, she intended to scorch him.

He scratched at the edge of his side-whiskers, coughed once or twice, and looked down at the papers in front of him. Still looking down at them, he mumbled, "I must thank you for your clear, concise report." People more than half a dozen seats from him undoubtedly didn't hear a word.

"Danke schon,Professor Oppenhoff. I'm glad you liked it," Susanna said loudly. She would get the message across, even if the department chairman didn't feel like doing it.

The meeting ground on. Oppenhoff didn't call on her any more. He did keep glancing over to her every so often. She smiled back sweetly, wishing she could display a shark's teeth instead of her own.

Heinrich Gimpel was finishing up a bowl of rather nasty cabbage stew in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht canteen when a uniformed guard coming off his shift walked in and said, "Something juicy's going on out in the Adolf Hitler Platz."

"What now?" somebody asked him. "More damned Dutchmen yelling, 'Freedom!'? They probably won't even bother arresting them these days."

But the guard shook his head. "No, it's bigger than any of that piddling crap. They've got a podium and televisor cameras and all kinds of stuff."

That sounded interesting. Heinrich got up, threw out his trash, and put his tray on a moving belt that took it back to the dishwashers. By the clock, he should have gone straight to his desk. He decided to ignore the clock for once. Willi and Ilse had taken plenty of long lunches without ending the world. He figured he could get away with one, especially since he was only going out onto the square in front of headquarters.

As soon as he walked out of the building, he saw the guard was right. In fact, Adolf Hitler Platz held not one commotion but two. Proud banners flying ahead of it, an SS band full of tubas and thumping drums strutted through the square playing marches as loud as they could. If they weren't trying to drown out the man on the podium…

It was a bright spring day. It wasn't very warm-it couldn't have been above ten Celsius-but the sun shone down brightly. It gleamed off the speaker's head, which wasn't just bald but shaven. As soon as Heinrich recognized Rolf Stolle, he knew exactly why that band was blaring away.

He hurried down the steps and across the paving toward the podium from which the Gauleiter of Berlin was addressing a good-sized crowd. Stolle had a microphone. Even so, he was barely a match for the booming band.

He not only knew it, he took advantage of it, saying, "You see how it is,Volk of the Reich? Some of the powers that be don't want you to hear me. They don't want me reminding you that we need to go forward, not sit around with our thumbs up our…" He stopped and grinned. "Well, you know what I mean. And I'll tell you something else I mean, too. These are the people in charge of protecting the Fuhrer. He wants reform. He doesn't want enough of it. He doesn't want it quick enough. But he wants it. They don't. I've told Heinz and told him, 'Don't let these people get behind you so they can stab you in the back,' but he doesn't want to listen."

Stolle stuck out his chin and thrust his fist forward. The pose made him look like Mussolini. "Heinz Buckliger is a good man. Don't get me wrong," he said. "A good man, yes. But a little too trusting."

Whatever he said next, the thundering SS musicians drowned it out. Instead of getting angry about that, he laughed. He even sang a few bars of the march they were playing. People laughed and clapped their hands. Stolle grinned. He struck another pose, this time a silly one. When Heinrich thought of him as a clown, he hadn't been so far wrong. An appreciative audience made Stolle come alive.