In The Presence Of My Enemies

And he was beginning to gauge how the generals in charge of the Wehrmacht liked their high-ranking visitors by the way the guards treated the newcomers at the entrance. If they came to attention and waved the politicking bigwigs through, those officials were in good odor with his bosses. If they made the muckymucks wait, checked identity cards against faces, and fed the cards through the machine reader to get a green light, those men weren't so well liked.

One morning, the machine reader showed a red light. "This is an outrage!" an SSObergruppenfuhrer shouted. "Let me pass!"

"Sorry," a guard replied, obviously enjoying being rude to the SS equivalent of a lieutenant general. "No green light, you don't come in." He turned to Heinrich and Willi. "Next!"

"You have not heard the last of this!" the Obergruppenfuhrer warned. He stormed off, his face as red as the stripe on a General Staff officer's trousers.

Heinrich wondered if his identity card would pass muster, but it did. So did Willi's. Once they got inside, Willi said, "The generals really didn't want to see that fellow, if they programmed the reader to reject his card."

"People are starting to show where they stand," Heinrich replied.

"I'd say so," Willi Dorsch agreed. "And if that SS man's faction wins, I'd say we'll see our budget cut."

Heinrich shrugged. "The Waffen -SS has always thought it could do the Wehrmacht 's job. The next time it's right will be the first."

"Not to hear its officers tell the story." Willi shrugged, too. "Ah, well. Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is but to do or die."

"You so relieve my mind," Heinrich said. Willi laughed. He could talk blithely about dying-he didn't have to worry about it very much. Heinrich, on the other hand, had days when he felt he was living on borrowed time, and that it was about to run out. The feeling would have been bad enough had he worried about himself alone. Worrying about the rest of his folk left in the Reich seemed twenty times worse.

As they sat down at their desks, Willi said, "You see, though? It's just like I said. Nobody cares what the limeys did, and nobody's calling a Party congress to pick the next Fuhrer. So much for the precious first edition. The big shots will do the choosing, same as always."

"It does look that way," Heinrich agreed, and did his best not to sound too unhappy in case the room was bugged. "They're taking their time, too."

"They've got to find somebody they can all at least stand," Willi said, which was doubtless true. "That weeds out the zanies and the men who only have a following in one faction."

"So it does." If Heinrich thought,A Party congress would do better still, because then everything would be out in the open, he kept it to himself. Willi was right: no Party congress would choose Kurt Haldweim's successor. That being so, to go on talking about the first edition might mark a man as a dangerous dissident.

He settled in to work. No matter what the Waffen -SS thought, the Wehrmacht was the strong right arm of the Greater German Reich. And no matter who became Fuhrer -even if it turned out to be that belligerent Obergruppenfuhrer 's candidate-the Wehrmacht had to go on. It had to-and it would. Plenty of people like Heinrich Gimpel (though not many of themjust like Heinrich Gimpel) made sure it kept running smoothly.

Willi asked, "Are we on for tonight?"

"The brains of the outfit hasn't told me anything different," Heinrich said, by which he meant Lise. Willi grinned; he sometimes called Erika the High Command in the same way. Carefully, Heinrich added, "We might do better if we don't talk politics too much, though."

Willi's grin slipped. "You know that, and I know that, but whether Erika knows that… Well, we'll find out."

That was what Heinrich was afraid of, but he made himself smile and nod. The date for dinner and bridge alarmed him, so that part of him wished he'd backed out. If Willi and Erika's marriage was blowing up, he didn't want it to blow up in his face. But what would Erika do if he made that too obvious? He didn't want to find out. Getting back to work was something of a relief.

Willi didn't joke any more about Erika being the one who wanted Heinrich over. Heinrich wished he would have. If he was joking about it, he probably wasn't brooding over what it meant. If he wasn't joking…Well, who could say?

They got through the day's work. Canteen rumor was full of talk about the rejected Obergruppenfuhrer. Since Heinrich and Willi had seen that happen, they scored points for eyewitness accounts. Another analyst sighed enviously, saying, "I'd've paid money to watch one of those arrogant so-and-sos head off with a flea in his ear." Several other people nodded.