In The Presence Of My Enemies

Prudence? Susanna laughed. Nothing that had happened all this mad day had had even a nodding acquaintance with prudence. It wasn't even prudence that had kept the SS men from fighting it out when they found themselves outgunned by the Wehrmacht. They still could have killed Stolle then, as they could have killed him a hundred times earlier on. But their hearts hadn't been in their orders, and so they hadn't started shooting and had given up at the first excuse they got. SS men! Who would have imagined it?

Not Prutzmann, Susanna thought, and chuckled evilly.

Here and there in the city, she did hear spatters of gunfire, but only a few. The panzer commander heard them, too. "What are you people going to do when we get where we're going?" he asked plaintively.

"Hang the Reichsfuhrer -SS from a lamppost, that's what!" bawled a burly man near Susanna. She and the rest of the panzer-riders cheered.

"But we're liable to have to shoot some of those SS bastards, and they're liable to shoot back," the Wehrmacht man said. Whenever the panzer passed under a streetlight, the little silver Totenkopf on his black coveralls glittered for a moment.

"Give us guns!" that burly man said. "We'll shoot 'em ourselves!" Through more cheers, he went on to describe in vivid terms the personal and moral shortcomings of the SS. Then he nodded to Susanna. "Meaning no offense, ma'am."

"It doesn't bother me," she said. "They're much worse than that." The man blinked, then grinned enormously. Susanna grinned back.

SS men had barricaded the grounds around their brooding headquarters. What they'd run up looked much more formidable than the flimsy makeshifts the people of Berlin had erected in front of Rolf Stolle's residence. But there was no swarming mass of people behind these barricades: only Prutzmann's allegedUbermenschen. And, as the first panzer stopped and turned its lights on them, the SS men looked quite humanly nervous, even if they did clutch assault rifles and a few antipanzer rocket launchers.

The commander of the lead panzer yelled, "You fuckers open up on us and we'll slaughter every goddamn one of you. We'll laugh while we're doing it, too. You shot our boys at the televisor station, and we owe you plenty. You got that?" He ducked down into the turret. The panzer's engine began to race and roar. The commander reemerged to issue a one-word order he surely hadn't learned in any training school: "Charge!"

His panzer thundered forward. It hit a parked truck head-on and hurled it out of the way. Susanna screamed with delight. Her panzer rumbled through the breach the lead machine had made. Others followed. So did trucks and armored personnel carriers full of Wehrmacht soldiers. The SS men didn't fire a shot. Troopers in Wehrmacht gray urban camouflage came down from their vehicles and began disarming the men who'd made careers of spreading fear and now suddenly discovered there were people who weren't afraid of them.

Fear is what they had,Susanna realized.The Wehrmachtalways had more muscle. Up till now, it never used what it had. Politics held it back. But tonight the gloves are off, and it's nobody's fault but Lothar Prutzmann's. She whooped again. The Reichsfuhrer -SS hadn't known what he was getting into. He hadn't known, but he was finding out in a hurry.

Prutzmann's office was on the third floor of the SS building, right above the monumental entryway. Anyone who paid attention to the news knew that much. The Wehrmacht panzer commanders evidently did. Half a dozen 120mm cannon rose and swung to point straight at the famous chamber.

One of the panzer commanders had a bullhorn, probably the same model as the SS panzer man had used outside of Rolf Stolle's residence. "Prutzmann!" he shouted, his amplified voice echoing from the granite and concrete and glass. "Come out with your hands up, Prutzmann! We won't kill you if you do. You'll get a trial."

And then we'll kill you,Susanna finished mentally. Hearing Lothar Prutzmann's unadorned surname blare from the bullhorn was a wonder in itself, a wonder and a portent.How the mighty have fallen, it said. Unadorned surnames blared at prisoners in interrogation cells. The Reichsfuhrer -SS had surely never expected such indignities to be his lot.Too bad for him.

No answer came from the famous office. The lights were on in there, but closed venetian blinds kept Susanna from seeing inside. "Don't screw around with us, Prutzmann!" the Wehrmacht commander shouted. "You have five minutes. If you don't come out, we'll come in after you. You'll like that a lot less, I promise."

Susanna looked at her watch, only to discover she'd somehow lost it. She shrugged. Five minutes wouldn't be hard to figure out. All the civilians on the panzer with her-and on the other Wehrmacht machines-shouted and cursed the Reichsfuhrer -SS. Between their cries (including her own) and the rumble of the panzers' engines, whatever was happening more than a few meters away got drowned out.