In the Presence of Mine Enemies (38 page)

If that went on for a few hundred years and then they got to come out into the light of day once more, would one group recognize the other as Jews? Or would their beliefs have changed so much in isolation that one saw the other as nothing but a pack of heretics?

Susanna laughed at herself. Talk about building castles in the air! She'd not only lost the thread of the student's argument, such as it was, she'd also lost track of what Horst was saying. Pretty impressive woolgathering, especially when what she'd wondered about was so completely unprovable—to say nothing of unlikely.

The picture cut away to an advertisement for Volkswagens, and she realized the whole lead story had gone in one ear and out the other. It had been…something to do with banditry in the Caucasus, she thought. She wouldn't have sworn to it. In one ear and out the other, all right.

Mercifully, the singing advertisement ended. Horst Witzleben's handsome, regular features returned to the screen. He said, “The
Führer
announced today that a division of occupation troops will soon return to the
Reich
from the United States.
Herr
Buckliger said, ‘The situation no longer calls for so large a force in a country nearly as Aryan as our own.'”

Susanna frowned. Not very long before, Buckliger had questioned whether Aryan blood really mattered as much as Party doctrine said it did. Now he was using it as an excuse to pull soldiers back from the USA. What did he really think about it? Did he have any consistent beliefs, or was he just grabbing whatever tools came to hand for a given job?

Before Susanna could decide what she thought about that, Witzleben went on, “In London, Charles Lynton, the recently chosen head of the British Union of Fascists, applauded the
Führer
's move.”

The newsreader's face disappeared again, to be replaced
by Charlie Lynton's boyish visage. In pretty good German, Lynton said, “This important step can only lead to better relations between the
Reich
and the states that make up the Germanic Empire. Recognizing the proud history of many of these states,
Herr
Buckliger begins to give them some say in their internal affairs, for which I applaud him.”

Instead of returning to Witzleben, the camera cut away to an advertisement for Agfa cameras and film. That gave Susanna a moment to scratch her head and think. Was Buckliger really giving the USA any say in its internal affairs? She'd taken the troop transfer as a cost-cutting measure. There'd been a lot of those lately. But maybe Lynton had a point. With fewer
Wehrmacht
soldiers around to point guns at their heads, the Americans would be able to do more as they pleased, with less fear of having their actions forcibly overruled.

When the advertisement ended, Horst Witzleben came back on camera. “The leaders of France, Denmark, and Finland were also quick to express their unreserved approval for
Herr
Buckliger's order.” Their photos came up on the screen, but they didn't get quoted, as Charlie Lynton had. Witzleben continued, “And the King of Italy and the
Duce
both termed the
Führer
's move a positive step. In other news…”

That chorus of approval and applause didn't sound as if it had sprung from nowhere. It sounded as if Heinz Buckliger had carefully orchestrated it ahead of time. While Witzleben showed horrific footage of a train wreck in Hungary, Susanna wondered what that meant if it was true. It struck her that Buckliger was a politician of a sort that no previous
Führer,
except maybe Hitler in his early days, had ever needed to be. She took that for a good sign.

But then she frowned again. Why did Buckliger need to be that kind of politician, where Hitler through most of his career, Himmler, and Haldweim hadn't? The only answer that occurred to her was that Buckliger was facing opposition of a sort his predecessors had never met. They'd ordered and been obeyed. He was ordering, too, but it also seemed he was cajoling and maneuvering in ways they hadn't had to.

Hitler invented Party doctrine, or most of it,
Susanna thought.
Himmler and Haldweim believed in it. They didn't rock the boat—though there were long stretches when Haldweim didn't do much of anything. Buckliger's different. Buckliger
is
rocking it, sure as hell. No wonder the old guard's unhappy. And no wonder he has to—what's the English phrase?—to wheel and deal, that's it. If he doesn't, he's in trouble
.

Witzleben's next story was a tribute to the
Gauleiter
of Bavaria, a paunchy, jowly, white-haired man in a gorgeous uniform who was finally retiring after leading the Party organization in his state for more than forty years. And there was Heinz Buckliger, shaking his hand as he stepped down. “
Herr
Strauss' contributions cannot be overestimated,” the
Führer
said graciously. “He served the
Reich
and the Party long and well. New blood comes, though. Such is the way of nature.”

Buckliger said no more than that. He let pictures do the rest of the work for him. There he stood, strong and vigorous, next to the doddering official who'd been in charge for so long.
Which would you rather see over you?
the image asked without words.

Doing something like that would never have occurred to gray, astringent Kurt Haldweim. For one thing, he'd been even older than Strauss, old enough to have fought in the Second World War. For another, all through his long rule he'd never believed in putting anybody out to pasture. And, for a third, he, like Himmler, had taken the televisor largely for granted. Buckliger didn't. Like Hitler long before him, he understood exactly how much pictures could do.

Susanna wished she hadn't thought of it that way. She wanted to like Buckliger, wanted to trust him, wanted to believe him, wanted to reckon him a new star in the Nazi firmament. He was different from anything she'd ever known. But did that make him
really
different? Did it make him
better
? Hitler, after all, had been dead for years before she was born.

She shook her head. The longer Hitler stayed in charge of things, the more power he'd gathered into his own hands. Buckliger seemed to be going in the opposite direc
tion. He hadn't quashed Charlie Lynton for proclaiming his allegiance to the first edition, the democratic edition, of
Mein Kampf
. He'd even talked about it himself.

And so?
Susanna wondered.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose
. Shakespeare wasn't quite medieval English. When the quotation occurred to her, she had to look it up to see which play it came from. She shivered when she found it. It was from
The Merchant of Venice
.

 

When Heinrich Gimpel found something he could sink his teeth into, he worked like a man possessed. His surroundings all but disappeared, leaving nothing but the numbers he was manipulating, his right hand dancing on the calculator or the keypad of the computer keyboard, and the figures going up on the screen.

The only reason he looked up from this particular blitz of calculations was to take another sheet full of raw data out of his in-box. When he did, he saw the office full of SS men in camouflage smocks, assault rifles at the ready. All the guns seemed to point straight at him.

He froze, the sheet of paper still between thumb and forefinger.

Willi Dorsch burst out laughing. A couple of the SS men grinned, too. “What's the matter, Heinrich?” Willi said. “Didn't you even notice them come in?”

“Uh, no,” Heinrich said sheepishly.

Willi laughed some more. “I didn't think so. The way you were working there, the world could have ended, and you'd never have known the difference.”

What went through Heinrich's mind was,
Oh, thank God. Maybe they haven't come for me, then
. He took another, less horrified, look at the big, blond, hard-faced men. When he didn't see them with eyes full of terror, the muzzles of their assault rifles pointed every which way.

“Uh—” He still couldn't avoid that dismayed stutter. “What
are
they doing here, then?”

Before Willi could answer, Heinz Buckliger strode into the room.

Along with everybody else at a desk, Heinrich sprang to his feet. He drew himself up as straight as he could. His
right arm shot out. “
Heil
Buckliger!” he bawled at the top of his lungs. He remained in place, frozen like a statue.

Casually, the
Führer
returned the salute. Even more casually, he waved to the men in the analysis section. “Relax,” he said, sounding much more like a human being than an icon. “This isn't anything fancy. I'm here to pick somebody's brain, that's all.” He peered down at a piece of paper, then up, then down at the paper again.
It's an office plan,
Heinrich realized.
He's comparing the plan to the room
. And then, to his amazement, Buckliger's eyes met his. “You're Gimpel,
nicht wahr
?” the
Führer
said.

For a mad moment, Heinrich wanted to deny it. Clearly, that wouldn't do. He managed to mumble, “Uh,
ja, mein Führer
.”

Heinz Buckliger seemed used to people mumbling and stammering when they spoke to him. “Good,” he said. “I want to talk with you about the Americans.” He snagged the chair by Heinrich's desk with his ankle, pulled it closer, and sat down in it. “By how much can we reduce their assessment to let their economy breathe a little easier and still keep ours going?” Noticing Heinrich still stood at attention, he waved him to his chair. He also waved to the rest of the people in the office. “Relax, I told you. Go back to work. Pretend I'm not here.”

With those trigger-happy SS guards eyeing everybody, that wouldn't be easy. Heinrich dizzily sank into his seat. Of itself, the calculating part of his mind engaged the
Führer
's question. Even as another part of him wailed,
This can't be happening,
he heard himself saying, “Well, sir, a lot of that depends on how much the Americans think they can get away with not paying if you let up on them. They're looking for signs of weakness.”

“I don't want to be weak,” Buckliger said. “I do want the
Reich
to be able to stand on its own two feet without being propped up so much from outside. That sets a bad example, and it sets a bad precedent, too, don't you think?”

He cocked his head to one side. Heinrich realized he really was waiting for an answer.
I want the
Reich
to grow like an onion—with its head in the ground
. No, he couldn't very well say that.
“Ja, mein Führer,”
was less truthful but
much safer. As for the numbers…His right hand, flying on automatic pilot, cleared the figures he'd been working with and started entering the ones that would let him answer Buckliger's question.

“You have the data at your fingertips,” the
Führer
said approvingly. “That's good. That's very good. Efficient.”

“Thank you, sir. Assuming the Americans will keep on paying the same percentage of a lower assessment as they do of the current one, I would say you could reduce it by….” His voice trailed off as his fingers flew on the keypad. He considered the answer the computer had given him, then passed it to Buckliger: “By about nine percent.”

“Those are the figures from the machine, right?” Buckliger said. Heinrich nodded. The
Führer
asked, “What's your personal opinion of them?”

“That if you reduce the proposed assessment by nine percent, you'll get back fifteen to twenty percent less. That's if you don't go out and take the full assessment by force. Give the Americans a centimeter and they'll take a kilometer.”

“I want to use less force in America, not more,” Buckliger said. Since he was moving a division back to the
Reich,
Heinrich believed him. He went on, “All right, then. To get nine percent less revenue from the Americans, by how much would I have to reduce the assessment?”

That was a genuinely interesting question. “This is only an estimate, you understand,” Heinrich warned as he started stroking the keypad again. “The computer is very good with numbers, not so good at figuring out how much people are liable to cheat.”

“Aber natürlich.”
The
Führer
laughed. “We need other people for that.”

“Uh, yes, sir,” Heinrich said. Then he gave his attention back to the screen. Designing a function on the fly to figure out how much more enthusiastically the Americans would cheat if they saw their risks as diminished was nothing he'd ever tried before, but he did it. He punched
ENTER
one last time, looked at the answer on the screen, and slowly nodded to himself. “I'd say a formal cut of six percent,
mein Führer,
would give you an actual cut of nine.”