In The Presence Of My Enemies

"I don't know." Walther looked half intrigued, half appalled. "Do you think weshould do anything with it?"

"I'm not sure. I was hoping you would be." Esther's hand folded into frustrated fists. "If we don't, and if the SS takes over…"

"But Prutzmann's liable to win whether we do that or not," Walther said. "And if he does-or maybe even if he doesn't-using it's liable to putus in more danger."

Every word he said was true. Esther knew as much. Walther was nothing if not sensible. All the same, she said, "If we don't do anything, if we don't even try to do anything, what good are we? We might as well not be here. What difference would it make if they had wiped us out?"

"I haven't got a good answer for that," her husband said slowly. "About as close as I can come is, if we do try to do something, we'd better pick our spots with care, because we won't get many of them. Is this one? Is Buckliger that important? Are you sure?"

Before Esther could answer, the traffic noise around the Tiergarten changed. It was always there in the background, the only real reminder that the park lay in the middle of a great city. But suddenly it leaped from background to foreground. Esther had never heard such a deep-throated roar of diesel engines and rattling of treads, not even at a construction site.

She turned her head. Through the screen of bushes, she saw a column of panzers and armored personnel carriers purposefully pushing eastward, in the direction of Rolf Stolle's residence. The breeze shifted-or maybe the armored column made its own breeze. The harsh stink of diesel fumes suddenly clashed with the Tiergarten's green, growing smells.

The panzers rumbled past and were gone. Esther turned to Walther, raw terror on her face. To her surprise, he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, almost as if he were one of the pair of lovers not far away who hadn't even looked up as the deadly machines went by.

"Well, sweetheart, you were right," he said. "Sometimes you have to try." He got to his feet and hurried away, off toward the Zeiss works, off toward trouble. Esther stared after him, hoping she'd done the right thing, fearing she'd just made the worst mistake of her life.

The crowd in the square outside Rolf Stolle's residence was for the most part orderly and well-mannered. Heinrich would have been surprised if it had been otherwise: it was a crowd full of Germans, after all. People shared cigarettes and whatever bits of food they happened to have. The Gauleiter threw the ground floor of the residence open to the throng. Two neat bathroom queues, one for men and one for women, formed seemingly of themselves.

Every so often, a chant of, "All the world is watching!" or, "We are the Volk! " would start up, last for a little while, and then die away. The rooftop cameras kept carrying pictures of the scene to the outside world. Heinrich hoped they did, anyhow. By the way the cameramen stayed with them, they were still working. He hoped so there, too. The more people who knew Berlin wasn't taking Lothar Prutzmann's

Putsch lying down, the better.

And then, instead of defiant chants, cries of alarm rang out from the distant fringes of the crowd: "Panzers! The panzers are coming!"

"Scheisse,"Willi Dorsch said, which summed up what ran through Heinrich's mind.

Some of the men and women who'd come to Stolle's residence decided they wanted no part of facing up to SS armor. They pressed away from the panzers and armored personnel carriers growling up the streets. Others as automatically advanced on the armored vehicles.After all these years, Berlin still breeds street fighters? Heinrich thought in amazement. He himself stood irresolute for a long moment.

Susanna surged toward the panzers without the slightest visible hesitation. The only thing that surprised Heinrich was that she didn't have a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a cigarette lighter in the other. After standing there for another few seconds, he went toward the armor, too. It didn't feel like bravery. Desperation was a much stronger part of the mix.

Willi grabbed his arm. "Are you nuts?"

"Probably." Heinrich shook free. "Go the other way, if you'd rather. I won't hold it against you."

"Scheisse,"Willi said again, in doleful tones. "You're going to get both of us shot, or more likely just run over." As Heinrich had waited before following Susanna, he waited before following Heinrich. But follow he did.

Berlin might still breed street fighters, but they were amateurs up against professionals. The panzers rolled over the barricades the crowd had run up as if they weren't there. As they crushed the second one, a horrible shriek rang out, for a moment rising above even the roar of their engines. After that, the lead panzer had blood on its left track.