In The Presence Of My Enemies

Frozen and freeze-dried food had come a long way since she was a girl. A lot of the advances had been military first; nothing was too good for the Reich 's soldiers and sailors. Little by little, things had trickled out to the civilian world as well. A faint stigma still clung to eating such food too often. It said you were lazy, or you didn't care enough about your family to take care of them yourself. Being a Jew, Susanna didn't worry about stigmas that were merely faint. And she was convinced she had better things to do with her time than stand in front of a stove. When she ate in her flat, she had frozen or freeze-dried food most of the time.

She was eating beef stroganoff that had started life in a plastic pouch when Heinz Buckliger came on the televisor screen. The Russians, those who were left alive, had been pushed east far past the Urals. Some of their recipes lingered on in the Germany they couldn't hope to threaten for generations.

Recorded, abridged versions of"Deutschland uber Alles" and the "Horst Wessel Song" prefaced the Fuhrer 's appearance. The screen cut to an image of the Germanic eagle with a swastika in its claws to the Fuhrer 's study. Like so much Nazi architecture, the room was on a heroic scale that did its best to dwarf the man who occupied it. The walls of red marble with ebony wainscoting rose nearly ten meters to the cofferwork ceiling of rosewood. The televisor camera panned slowly, lovingly, along those walls. Along with gilded Party symbols, they held portraits of Bismarck, Hitler, Himmler, and a new one-over which the camera lingered-of Kurt Haldweim looking Viennese and aristocratic and more than a little snooty.

The picture cut away to the Fuhrer 's desk. The cabinetmakers who'd created insanely ornate inlaid furniture for French noblemen during the Old Regime would have owned they'd met their match in the craftsmen who made that desk. On the wall behind it hung a genuine Gobelin tapestry from the seventeenth century. Next to the tapestry, a German flag hung limply from a pole. Another gilded swastika-bearing eagle topped that pole.

As the camera shot tightened to the tawny leather chair in which Heinz Buckliger sat, the flag remained at the edge of the picture. Susanna had seen that whenever she watched a speech from the Fuhrer. Tonight, she really noticed it, which was not the same thing. She gave a grudging nod of approval. Party propagandists didn't miss a trick. Of course they associated the head of state with the state itself. That they did it so shedidn't consciously notice most of the time was a testimony to their skill.

Then she noticed something else, and her eyes widened. Heinz Buckliger was wearing a plain gray suit, not a Party uniform. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen any Fuhrer in civilian clothes. She wondered if she ever had. She didn't think so. Buckliger's necktie was of a red that perfectly matched the flag. After a moment, she saw it bore a pattern: small black swastikas. Any men's-wear store might have sold it.

What did that say? What did it mean? Anyone alert who watched the televisor looked for meanings behind meanings, for what was said without a word being spoken. What was Buckliger trying to get across here? All Susanna could think of was,I'm as patriotic as the next fellow, but I'm transposing the tune into a new key.

"Good evening, citizens of the Greater German Reich, " the Fuhrer said. "Not long ago, in Nuremberg, I spoke to officials of the National Socialist Party about some of the problems I see facing the Reich and the Germanic Empire. You also need to know some of the things I told them."

As who in the Reich had not, Susanna had seen films of Hitler. He'd dominated, whether screaming for war or vengeance, pleading for greater effort, or cajoling people into sacrifice. Himmler, who'd led Greater Germany and the Empire when she was a child, had dominated in a different way. His style was flatter than Hitler's, but you could sense the iron underneath. If you caused trouble, you would get it-in the neck. Kurt Haldweim had talked down to people, as if convinced he knew things no one else did. If he happened to be wrong, who was going to tell him? And if he happened to be wrong, would he ever admit it? Not likely.

Heinz Buckliger simply…spoke. "For a good many years now, we have been living off the great deeds of our ancestors," he said. "And our ancestorswere great men who did great things. But we are like a family that lives off an inheritance from Grandpa, doesn't take care of its money very well, and doesn't have enough people in it who have gone out and looked for work on their own. After a while, the inheritance runs dry, and they have to figure out what to do next.