In The Presence Of My Enemies

The band moved a little farther away from the podium. The Gauleiter moved a little closer to the microphone. "If those noisy SS bastards will just go home, I'll get on with my speech," he said.

A man in the crowd shouted, "SS go home!" He shouted it again. Then three or four more people took up the call. Before long, everybody who'd come to Adolf Hitler Platz to hear Rolf Stolle was yelling, "SS go home!" The cry echoed from the long front wall of the Fuhrer 's palace. Could Heinz Buckliger hear it in there? If he could, what did he think?

Heinrich wondered, but not for long. He was caught up in the thrill of shouting, "SS go home!" He never would have had the nerve to be first to yell such a thing. In the middle of thousands of others, his voice was only one, indistinguishable from the rest.They'll have a hell of a time arresting all of us, he thought, and yelled louder than ever. "SS go home! SS go home!SS go home! "

The chant swelled and swelled. Looking at the excited faces and sparkling eyes of the men and women all around him, Heinrich realized he wasn't the only one who'd wanted to say that for years. How many Germans did? How many would, if they got the chance? He smelled the acrid sweat of fear, but people kept shouting.

Rolf Stolle leaned toward the microphone again. "SS go home!" he called, leading the chorus. "SS go home!"

Heinrich watched the band. Would the musicians deign to take any notice of the people clamoring for them to leave? If they did, wasn't that a sign of weakness? If they didn't, how long before hotheads started throwing rocks and bottles and whatever else they could get their hands on at them? And what would the SS men do then? And what would the crowd-the mob?-do in reply?

Maybe those same questions were going through the band leader's head. Maybe he didn't like the answers that occurred to him, either. As if continuing a regular performance-which this was anything but-he led the musicians to the edge of the enormous square. They kept on playing, but they no longer interfered with Rolf Stolle's speech.

As the crowd roared in triumph, Stolle shouted, "Do you see,Volk of the Reich? Do you? Without you, they're nothing. And they aren't with you, are they?"

"No!" That was a great, pain-filled howl. Again, Heinrich yelled as loud as anyone. Had schnapps ever left him this giddy? He didn't think so.

"I was going to talk for a while longer, friends, but you just made my speech for me," the Gauleiter of Berlin boomed. The crowd cheered. Rolf Stolle went on, "And do you know what else? By this time tomorrow, the whole Reich will know what you've done!"

Ecstatic cheers drowned out the now-distant SS band. Heinrich joined them, but hesitantly. He thought Stolle was likely right. He wasn't so sure that delighted him. If this footage showed up on Horst Witzleben's newscast, would gimlet-eyed SS technicians pore over it, trying to identify every single person-every single subversive person-in the crowd? Could they identifyhim?

Most of the time, things like that would have left him scared to death. Today, he felt too much exultation, too much exaltation, to care very much. Germans-Germans!-had just told the SS (even if it was only a marching band) where to head in. He'd joined them. The SS (even if it was only a marching band) had retreated. And nobody had got shot.

If that all wasn't a reason to make a man feel three meters tall, Heinrich couldn't imagine what would be.

Something was going on. Lise Gimpel could tell as much by the way Heinrich acted when he came home from work. He had almost a mad scientist's gleam in his eye, an air of excitement, he didn't even try to hide. He wouldn't tell her what it was all about, though. That made her want to smack him.

The most he would say was, "We'll watch Horst after supper." Since he said that about three nights a week, it didn't give Lise much of a clue about why he wanted to see the evening news.

Dinner ran late, too. The chicken Lise was roasting took longer to get done than she'd thought it would. The family didn't finish eating till just before seven. Normally, Lise would have done the dishes while the news was on. If she missed the first couple of stories, well, the world wouldn't end. Tonight, she got the feeling it might. She left plates and silverware and glasses in the sink and sat down next to Heinrich to find out what Horst Witzleben had to say for himself-and why her husband had been looking wild-eyed ever since he walked through the front door.

"Our opening story," the newsreader said, "is the collision of two airliners on the runway at Gander, Newfoundland." A map flashed on the screen to show where Gander was. "More than 250 people are confirmed as fatalities. Only seventeen are known to have survived, many of them with severe burns." The televisor showed smoking wreckage, and then one of those survivors coming out of an ambulance on a stretcher.