In The Presence Of My Enemies

The neon brilliance of the street outside dimmed as the bus went past the shops and theaters and started picking up passengers from the Ministries of the Interior, Transportation, Economics, and Food.More uniforms that don't have soldiers in them, Heinrich thought. The buildings from which the new riders came were shutting down for the day.

Two ministries, though, like the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, never slept. A new shift went into the Justice Ministry to replace the workers who left for home. German justice could not close its eyes, and woe betide the criminal or racial mongrel upon whom its all-seeing gaze settled. Himself a thoroughly law-abiding man, Heinrich still shivered a little whenever he passed that marble-fronted hall.

The Colonial Ministry stayed busy, too. Much of the world fell under its purview: the farming villages in the Ukraine, the mining colonies in central Africa, the Indian tea plantations, the cattle herders on the plains of North America. As if picking that last thought from Heinrich's mind, Willi Dorsch said, "How many Americans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

"The Americans have always been in the dark." Heinrich clucked sadly. "Your father was telling that one, Willi."

"If he was, he sounded more relieved than I do. The Yankees might have been tough."

"Might-have-beens don't count, fortunately." Isolation and neutrality had kept the United States from paying heed as potential allies in Europe went down one after another. It faced the Germanic Empire and Japan alone a generation later-and the oceans weren't wide enough to shield it from robot bombs. Now it was trying to get back on its feet, but the Reich didn't intend to let it.

Just ahead lay another monument to German victory: Hitler's Arch of Triumph. Heinrich had been to Paris on holiday and seen the Arc d'Triomphe at the end of the Champs-Elysees. It served as a model for Berlin's arch, and was a model in scale as well. The Arc d'Triomphe was only-only!-about fifty meters tall, less than half the height of its titanic successor. The Berlin arch was almost a hundred seventy meters wide and also a hundred seventeen meters deep, so that the bus spent a good long while under it, as if traversing a tunnel through a hillside.

When at last it emerged, South Station lay not far ahead. The station building made an interesting contrast to the monumental stone piles that filled the rest of the avenue. Its exterior was copper sheeting and glass, giving the traveler a glimpse of the steel ribs that formed its skeleton.

The bus stopped at the edge of the station plaza. Along with everyone else, Heinrich and Willi filed off and hurried across the square toward the waiting banks of elevators and escalators. They walked between more displays of weapons from Germany's fallen foes: the wreckage of a British fighter shown inside a lucite cube, a formidable-looking Russian panzer, the conning tower of an American U-boat.

"Into the bowels of the earth," Willi murmured as he reached out to grab the escalator handrail. The train to Stahnsdorf boarded on the lowest of the station's four levels.

Signs and arrows and endless announcements over the loudspeaker system should have made getting lost inside the railway station impossible. Heinrich and Willi found their way to the commuter train without conscious thought. So did most Berliners. But the swarms of tourists were grit in the smooth machine. Uniformed boys from the Hitler Jugend and girls from the Bund deutscher Madel helped those for whom even the clearest instructions were not clear enough.

All the same, the natives grumbled when foreigners got in the way. Dodging around an excited Italian who'd dropped his cheap suitcase so he could use both hands to gesture at a Hitler Youth in brown shirt, swastika armband, and Lederhosen, Willi growled, "People like that deserve to be sent to the showers."

"Oh, come on, Willi, let him live," Heinrich answered mildly.

"You're too soft," his friend said. But they rounded the last corner and came to their waiting area. Willi looked at the schedule display on the wall, then at his watch. "Five minutes till the next one. Not bad."

"No," Heinrich said. The train pulled into the station within thirty seconds of the appointed time. Heinrich thought nothing of it as he followed Willi into a car. He noticed only the very rare instances when the train was late. As the two men had done on the bus, they put their account cards into the fare slot and sat down. As soon as the computer's count of fares matched the car's capacity, the doors hissed shut. Three more cars filled behind them. Then the train began to move. Acceleration pressed Heinrich back against the synthetic fabric of his seat.

Twenty minutes later, an electronic voice rang tinnily from the roof-mounted speakers: "Stahnsdorf! This stop is Stahnsdorf! All out for Stahnsdorf!"