In The Presence Of My Enemies

The Japanese who ran Admiral Yamamoto's had come to Germany ten or fifteen years earlier, to study engineering. He'd got his degree, but he'd never gone home to Tokyo. Some of the sushi he served would have got him odd looks if he had. What he called a Berlin roll, for instance, had seaweed and rice wrapped around thinly cut, spicy white radish and a piece of raw Baltic herring. It might not have been authentic, but it was good, especially washed down with beer. Heinrich ordered half a dozen, and some sashimi as well.

"I don't quite feel like raw fish today," Willi Dorsch said, and chose shrimp tempura instead. The batter in which the shrimp were fried wasn't what it would have been on the other side of the world, either, but it was tasty. In place of tempura sauce, Willi slathered the shrimp with wasabi. "It's green, not white, but it cleans out your sinuses just like any other horseradish."

"You put that much on and it'll blow off the top of your head." Heinrich used wasabi mixed with soy sauce for his sushi and sashimi, too, but not nearly so much.

"Ah, well, what difference does it make? No brains in there anyhow." Willi took a big bite, and found out what difference it made. He grabbed for his own stein to try to put out the fire. When he could speak again, he said, "I'mnot going to tell Erika about this."

"Mm," Heinrich said-the most noncommittal noise he could find. Anything that had anything to do with Erika Dorsch made him nervous. He didn't want Willi thinking he had designs on her. He didn't want her having designs on him. He didn't want…He shook his head. He couldn't say he didn't want Erika. He didn't want her enough to throw away what he was for her, and to endanger his family and friends.

When I found out I was a Jew, I knew it meant I had to watch a lot of things. I never imagined then that it would rob me of adultery, too. Such irony appealed to him.

But when he laughed, Willi asked, "What's so funny?"

He couldn't tell the truth. One thing he'd soon learned about being a Jew was always to have a cover story handy. He said, "The look on your face after you took that mouthful, that's what."

"Oh. Well, you can't really blame me," Willi Dorsch said. "If you ask me, wasabi's the first step toward what goes into atomic bombs."

That made Heinrich laugh without needing any cover story. "I wouldn't be surprised," he said, and then, looking out the window, "What's going on? Everybody's stopping. Is there a traffic accident down the street?"

"We would have heard it, wouldn't we?" Willi sent the wasabi paste a suspicious glance. "Unless this stuff made my ears ring, too."

The owner of Admiral Yamamoto's came out from the kitchen. In his accented German, he said, "Meine Damen und Herren,please excuse me for disturbing your meals, but I have just heard important news on the radio. the Fuhrer of the Germanic Empire, Kurt Haldweim, has passed away. Please accept my deepest sympathies and condolences." He bowed stiffly, from the waist, arms at his sides, and then disappeared again.

Heinrich Gimpel stared down at his half-eaten lunch. He'd known this day might be coming, yes, but he hadn't thought it would come quite so soon.

Willi took a last big bite of tempura. If the wasabi bothered him this time, he didn't let it show. He got to his feet, took out his wallet, and pulled out enough money to cover his lunch and Heinrich's. "Come on," he said, suddenly all business. "We'd better get back to the office."

"You're right." Heinrich rose, too.

Half the diners in Admiral Yamamoto's were finishing up in a hurry and getting out. That surprised Heinrich not at all. Given where the restaurant was, most of the people who lunched here would work for the Wehrmacht or the SS or the Party. Haldweim had no obvious successor. Intrigue and jockeying for position had begun years earlier, when he started having "colds." Now things would come out into the open.

"Who will it be?" Willi murmured as they hurried up the street. The same thought was uppermost in

Heinrich's mind, too.