In the Presence of Mine Enemies (13 page)

“They aren't usually so jumpy during the lunch break,” he said once they were safely inside and out of earshot of the guards.

“Did you think they wouldn't be?” Heinrich asked. “Nobody's going to trust anybody till we have a new
Führer
. Suppose the SS tried to sneak somebody in here to find out which way the
Wehrmacht
will go.”

“They'd be fools if they did. They'd be bigger fools if they didn't have spies in place here years ago. And we'd be fools if we didn't have spies planted over there. And the Party's watching us and the SS both. The Air and Space
Ministry's likely got fingers in a few different pies, too. Maybe even the Navy—who knows?” Willi took to intrigue like a duck to water. He eyed a secretary walking past as if he thought she was spying for the SS and the Navy and the Japanese all at once: or he might have looked at her that way because she was a cute redhead in a skirt that rose almost to her knees.

Just because he was melodramatic, that didn't mean he was wrong. The
Wehrmacht,
the SS, and the Party surely were all spying on one another. Air and Space and the Navy were smaller players, but they could get big in a hurry if they managed to put one of their people in the
Führer
's palace.

Once Heinrich got back to his desk, he checked to see what was coming over the
Wehrmacht
computer network. Most of it was what he'd expected. The United States sent a message of condolence. So did the British Union of Fascists—with one intriguing difference. Their spokesman added that he hoped the new
Führer
would be chosen “according to the principles set forth in the first edition of
Mein Kampf
.”

Heinrich scratched his head. “Why is the first edition different from all other editions?” he asked Willi Dorsch. The question eerily reminded him of the one he'd asked Lise a few days earlier.
Why is this night different from all other nights?
Only a few people in the Germanic Empire—a handful of hidden Jews, and another handful of scholars who studied dead things—had any idea what that question meant and how it should be answered.

Willi didn't know how Heinrich's question should be answered, either. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“See for yourself.” Heinrich pointed to his monitor.

Willi came around to his desk to look. “Isn't that interesting?” he said when he'd read the British message. “I don't know what the difference between the first edition and the others is, either. I didn't think there was much difference, except for cleaning up typographical errors and such.”

“Neither did I,” Heinrich said. The powers that be had never forbidden any edition of
Mein Kampf
. That strongly
argued the differences between editions weren't large. But they had to be there. Otherwise, the British Union of Fascists wouldn't have specifically cited the first edition.

Like everyone else at
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht,
he had a copy of
Mein Kampf
on his desk. His was, of course, the fourth edition, revised by Hitler after Britain and Russia went under. As always when he opened the book, he found his way to one passage near the end.
If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: twelve thousand scoundrels eliminated in time might have saved the lives of millions of real Germans, valuable for the future
. But that passage was plainly old, for by
the War
there Hitler had to mean World War I.
Damn him,
Heinrich thought wearily. He'd known what he wanted to do, what he intended to do, long before he got the chance to do it.

But what did he say about choosing a new
Führer?
Finding out took some poking through the index. In this edition, it was exactly what anyone would have expected.
The young movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects in general and in its own inner structure a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of a mere executant of other people's will and opinion. In little as well as big things, the movement advocates the principle of unconditional authority of the leader, coupled with the highest responsibility
.

That was the way things had worked in the
Reich
for as long as Heinrich could remember, and for years before. How was the first edition of
Mein Kampf
different? Willi Dorsch had his copy open, too. He read aloud the passage Heinrich had just found.

“It can't be the same in the first edition,” Heinrich said. “If it were—”

“But how could it be different?” Willi asked. “What other way to do things is there?” He'd said Heinrich was more content living in the world as it was, but he was the
one for whom that world was water to a fish. He couldn't see beyond what was to what might be.

“There has to be something,” Heinrich answered. He didn't know what it was, either, but he could see the possibility. As a Jew, he necessarily perceived the
Reich
from an outsider's viewpoint. Sometimes, as now, that proved useful. But he found himself longing for Willi's simple certainties at least as often.

“I think the British are just out to make trouble,” Willi said now. “They're probably plotting with the Americans. The damned Anglo-Saxons have always been jealous of Germany. For years, they tried to keep the
Reich
from taking its rightful place in the sun. Now they're paying for it, and I say it serves them right.”

He'd learned those lessons in school. So had Heinrich Gimpel. But Heinrich, for reasons of his own, had found he needed to doubt a lot of what his teachers said. As far as he could tell, Willi never doubted.
Does that make him a fool, or the luckiest man I know?

“They've spent a long time paying for it,” Heinrich said.

“Good,” Willi Dorsch declared. “So did we.”

“Well, yes.” Heinrich couldn't—didn't dare—disagree with that. “Still, I do wonder what's in the first edition.”

 

From his herringbone jacket to his long, narrow, bony face to his decaying teeth, Professor Horace Buckingham might have been a stage Englishman. Even his own countrymen had trouble following his Oxonian accent. It had made the panel discussion on Chaucer's “Wife of Bath's Tale” an ordeal for Susanna Weiss, who'd had to respond again and again to points she wasn't sure she understood.

When the panel ended, the audience applauded politely. Buckingham turned to Susanna. “I thought that went off rather well,” he said. His breath was formidable, no doubt because of those mottled teeth.

“Not bad.” Susanna still thought his interpretation naive, but she wasn't inclined to argue—not at close range, anyhow. A paper in a learned journal would offer her a more impersonal way to stick a knife in his scholarship,
and would also give her something she could show her department chairman.

“Would you care to discuss things further over a drink?” he asked. The way he smiled said scholarship wasn't the only thing on his mind.

I don't want to be within three meters of you, let alone closer
. The retort hovered on the tip of Susanna's tongue. Not without regret, she let it die there. She said, “Not now, thanks. I have no more discussions until the evening session, and nothing on the program really draws me, so I am going to go across the street. The British Union of Fascists' meeting has turned out to be fascinating, don't you think?”

“Fascinating. Indeed.” Professor Buckingham departed with marked haste. At first Susanna thought that meant he had no use for fascists, which got him a point in her book despite his bad breath. Then she realized another explanation was more likely. To him, she was a German, nothing else. She knew otherwise, but he didn't. And what did a German interested in the congress of the British Union of Fascists add up to? Someone with connections to a security bureau.

Under different circumstances, that might have been funny. As things were…Susanna sighed. Buckingham would talk—what else did academics do? If the other professors at the Medieval English Association didn't start sidling away from her, it would be a miracle, and God was depressingly stingy with miracles these days.

She went across the street to the Crown Hotel anyhow. She'd never been able to resist political drama. This was the genuine article—what Americans called, for no reason she could fathom,
the real McCoy
. On the surface, everything seemed exactly as it should have. Union Jacks and BUF flags with lightning bolts that resembled the SS runes flew at half-staff in commemoration of Kurt Haldweim. English and Scottish fascists had praised the departed
Führer
to the skies. They'd also spent at least as much time patting one another on the back as the scholars of the MEA had done.

That was the surface. Underneath, and sometimes not so
far underneath, things were different. Susanna hadn't even got into the Crown when a parade came up the street toward her. Nothing out of the ordinary there; British fascists were no less enamored of public display than their German counterparts.

But these tough-looking men in uniforms and shiny jackboots carried signs that said,
REMEMBER THE FIRST EDITION
! The mere idea was enough to make Susanna want to hug herself with glee. Political action mixed with textual analysis? The earnest academics at the Medieval English Association didn't know what they were missing.

To make sure their British colleagues and, more to the point, the National Socialists in Germany
did
remember, other paraders carried banners that stretched from one side of the street to the other, with the relevant passages spelled out in English and
auf Deutsch
. The English read,
IN LITTLE AS WELL AS BIG THINGS
,
THE MOVEMENT ADVOCATES THE PRINCIPLE OF A GERMANIC DEMOCRACY
:
THE LEADER IS ELECTED
,
BUT THEN ENJOYS UNCONDITIONAL AUTHORITY
. Other banners declared,
THE FIRST CHAIRMAN OF A LOCAL GROUP IS ELECTED
,
BUT THEN HE IS THE RESPONSIBLE LEADER OF THE LOCAL GROUP AND THE FIRST PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO THE NEXT HIGHER ORGANIZATION
—
THE LEADER IS ALWAYS ELECTED
and
AND FINALLY
,
THE SAME APPLIES TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE WHOLE PARTY
.
THE CHAIRMAN IS ELECTED
,
BUT HE IS THE EXCLUSIVE LEADER OF THE MOVEMENT
. And, at the very tail of the procession, another big banner proclaimed,
MEMBERS OF THE MOVEMENT ARE FREE TO CALL HIM TO ACCOUNT BEFORE THE FORUM OF A NEW ELECTION
,
TO DIVEST HIM OF HIS OFFICE IN SO FAR AS HE HAS INFRINGED ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MOVEMENT OR SERVED ITS INTERESTS BADLY
.

British policemen in their blue uniforms and tall helmets stood on the sidewalk watching the fascists' procession. They didn't seem to know what to make of it. Neither did the German occupation authorities. If
they
had decided to come out and quash it, they would have used panzers and rocket-firing fighter jets. They'd done that more than a few
times in the earlier years of the occupation, though not so often lately.

As for Susanna, she marveled that the British Union of Fascists, or at least one wing of the party, had managed to find a way to call for democracy without immediately getting lined up in front of a wall and shot. How could you give a man a cigarette and a blindfold for quoting Adolf Hitler, whose words were close to Holy Writ all through the Germanic Empire? You couldn't possibly.

Susanna rapidly discovered the marchers represented one wing of the BUF, not the entire organization. More men in uniform swarmed out of a side street and attacked the men in the parade with clubs and brass knuckles. The marchers fought back with similar weapons. Other fascists rushed out of the Crown to join in the mêlée, on whose side Susanna wasn't sure. She had all she could do to keep from getting bowled over.

Whistles shrilling, the British bobbies waded into the fray. They flailed away with their truncheons, whacking brawlers on both sides with fine impartiality. “Break it up!” they bawled. “Break it up, you bloody sods!” But nobody on either side seemed to want to break it up.

Even as the men who extolled the first edition fought, they raised a chant in English: “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”

Odd sort of battle cry,
Susanna thought. But maybe it wasn't. Sure as the devil, televisor cameras from the BBC and the German RRG were filming the clash. The marchers must have known the cameras would be there; otherwise, they wouldn't have quoted from
Mein Kampf
in both English and German.