In The Presence Of My Enemies

Heinrich shrugged. "Joke all you please." To Willi, it was just a joke, too. Heinrich knew he should be used to gibes like that. Hewas used to them, in the sense that his face didn't show what he thought. But they still burned. He went on, "No matter how you joke, though, plenty of people who can't afford our electronics can afford to buy from the Japs."

Willi twirled his finger in a gesture that had meantso what? for the past two generations. "That hasn't really got much to do with the budget, you know."

Although Heinrich didn't know any such thing, he didn't argue. He'd been taught since childhood not to disagree too strongly with anyone. Instead, he rustled the Volkischer Beobachter and changed the subject a little, saying, "What do you make of this? the Fuhrer says, 'As part of an ongoing effort to strengthen the state, a thorough examination of its political underpinnings must also be undertaken.' What's that mean?"

"What? Where does he say that?" Willi opened up his own copy of the paper again. "Have to tell you, I missed it."

"Page four, third column, about halfway down."

"Page four…" When Willi finally found it, he shook his head. "He couldn't have buried it any deeper in a graveyard, could he?" He rubbed his chin and frowned. "I have to admit, I don't know exactly what that means. I bet nobody else does, either, except maybe Buckliger. It might just be the sort of stuff politicians use to pad out a speech." But he was still frowning. "You wouldn't put padding there, though-not usually. He wanted to say it, and he wanted to say it where not many people would notice he'd said it. I sure didn't. You notice everything, don't you?"

"Me? Only thing I notice is, we're coming into the Berlin station." Heinrich folded his newspaper and stuck it in his briefcase. Easier to carry just one thing when they hurried up the escalators to the level where they caught the bus to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. Willi did the same.

A three-car accident snarled traffic to a fare-thee-well. Ambulances, police vehicles, and rubberneckers meant nothing could get through at a busy intersection. The police were slower setting up detours than they should have been, too. Everyone in the bus grumbled and complained. That did no one any good. Heinrich and Willi got to work half an hour late.

The guards at the entrance clucked sympathetically as the two of them hurried up the steps. "Came from South Station, didn't you?" one guard said when Heinrich held out his identity card. "Things are buggered up good and proper between there and here."

"Don't I know it!" Heinrich said. "I thought I'd be on that damned bus forever." The card went through the reader. The light flashed green. The guard returned the card and waved him through.

Willi joined him a moment later. "At least we're not the only ones," he said. "Misery loves company."

"Misery doesn't love anything," Heinrich said. "That's what makes it misery."

"Jawohl, Herr Doktor Professor!" Willi came to attention and saluted. "Thank you so much for clearing that up for me."

"When we work in the same room, I can't even tell you to go away," Heinrich said sadly.

They navigated the maze of corridors to get to the room they shared with several other budget analysts, secretaries, and clerks. Willi promptly disappeared from his desk. Heinrich knew he was heading to the canteen for coffee, and didn't think anything of it. Willi came back with two foam cups. He kept one and, with a flourish, handed the other to the secretary he and Heinrich shared. Ilse stammered out thanks, simpering like a starstruck teenager. Willi preened. Heinrich fought not to gag.

He had plenty to keep him busy. He always did. His fingers flashed across the keys of his adding machine. The number and function keys had grown smooth and shiny from long use. Some of the more senior men in the department were getting new adding machines, half as big and half as noisy as the old ones. The new machines came from Japan. Heinrich wondered if Willi knew. As for himself, he didn't want to give up the one he'd used for so long. In a lot of ways, he was intensely conservative. Change made him suspicious; it might lead to exposure. As long as things went on as they had up till now, his family and he stayed safe.

The phone on Willi's desk rang. Heinrich noticed it only peripherally. He was trying to unravel by exactly how much the Americans were pretending to be poorer than they really were. He might not have noticed the phone on his own desk. The Americans used numbers the way a cuttlefish used ink: to obscure, to conceal, to confuse. Figuring out what lay behind their smokescreen took not only patience but imagination.

But in spite of his best effort to focus on the columns of numbers in front of him, Willi's loud, angry voice eventually pierced his concentration: "Dammit, Erika, don't call me here for crap like that! I haven't got time to worry about it, and I sure as hell haven't got time to deal with it."