In The Presence Of My Enemies

Rumor also spoke of Bonzen from the Party and from the Navy who had been admitted to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Heinrich tried to read tea leaves from that. All he could see was that the Navy, like the Wehrmacht, was a conservative service. If they were joining with one section of the Party, maybe with an SS faction different from that Obergruppenfuhrer 's…They might be trying to promote a candidate, or they might be trying to block one. Only time would tell.

Heinrich and Willi rode home together. "See you a little before seven," Willi said as he got off the bus. "We can all watch Horst and then get down to cards."

"All right." Heinrich hoped it would be.

Katarina came over to babysit the girls. Kathe was a kid sister, closer in age to Alicia than to Lise. Heinrich suspected she'd been a surprise to her parents. He wished he could ask them even such a nosy question; a drunken truck driver had broadsided their little VW a few years before, and they hadn't survived the wreck. A People's Court gave the truck driver summary justice, but that didn't bring back the Franks.

Tante Kathe fascinated the children. She dyed her brown hair a yellow as artificial as oleomargarine, and sometimes wore styles that looked like what SS uniforms would have been if they were designed to titillate rather than terrify.In my day, you'd have done a stretch in a camp for clothes like that, Heinrich thought. He laughed at himself.And if going on about "In my day…" doesn't make me an old fogy, I don't know what would.

Tonight Katarina had on dungarees of blue American denim, which were almost as scandalous as some of her other clothes. She refused to be ordinary. That was dangerous for a Jew. On the other hand, a fair number of young men and women dressed the way she did, so she had a crowd into which she could blend in.

"Have fun with your bridge," she told Heinrich and Lise. She might have been saying,Have fun with your warm milk and slippers. Kathe's eyes sparkled as she turned to the girls. "While they're gone, we'll havereal fun, won't we?"

"Ja!"Alicia, Francesca, and Roxane chorused, entranced. Every so often, Heinrich wondered whatreal fun consisted of. He'd never found the girls' heads spinning with hashish after Tante Kathe watched them, so he didn't lose sleep over it, but he did wonder.

Getting out of the house felt good, even if it was only for the short jaunt over to the Dorsches'. As Heinrich and Lise got off the bus, she said, "Willi and Erika are lucky to live so close to their bus stop."

Heinrich nodded. "I've thought the same thing." Thinking along with your wife was supposed to be another mark of fogydom. He didn't care. He liked thinking along with Lise.

When he rang the bell, Erika opened the door. She smiled at the Gimpels. "Come on in," she said. "Horst will be on in a minute, and Willi wouldn't miss him for the world." Erika made watching the news sound like a vice.First danger sign, Heinrich thought.

From the front room, Willi's voice rose in excitement: "Come quick, everybody! I think we've got a new Fuhrer! " That sent Heinrich and Lise-and Erika-hurrying to join him.

"Germany, awake!" Horst Witzleben spoke in millions of homes as if he were a close friend. "After long and serious discussions, senior Party, SS, and military leaders have chosen the present minister of heavy industry, Heinz Buckliger, to guide the future of the Greater German Reich and the Germanic Empire. I am proud to be among the first to say, 'Heil Buckliger!'" His arm shot out in the Nazi salute.

Behind him, a new picture appeared on the screen. Heinrich wouldn't have known Heinz Buckliger from the man in the moon. He proved to be a ruddy-faced man of about fifty, with a thick shock of graying blond hair and a toothy smile. "He's so young!" Erika Dorsch said. A moment later, she added, "And handsome, too."

Heinrich didn't know about handsome. Young the new Fuhrer certainly was: younger by far than Kurt Haldweim had been when he began to lead the Reich. "They passed over a lot of senior people to put him in place," Willi said. "The new generation's here at last."

"The new head of the Reich was born in Breslau in 1959," Horst Witzleben said. That made Buckliger more than forty years younger than Haldweim-closer to two generations than one. The newsreader went on, "He studied economics in Munich, graduating with highest honors from the university there. Before joining the Ministry of Heavy Industry, he served for seven years in the Allgemeine -SS, rising to the rank of Hauptsturmfuhrer."Captain, Heinrich thought, automatically translating to what he thought of as a real rank. Not bad. Not spectacular, but not bad.

"Once in the Ministry,Herr Buckliger rapidly became known as an efficiency expert," Witzleben said. "He has promised to bring that passion for efficiency to the Reich as a whole. Here is his first statement after his selection."