In the Presence of Mine Enemies (61 page)

“All right. Here it is.” Menzel told him how the charges against him had come from Erika Dorsch, and how she'd tried to kill herself after she found out she'd got the girls seized along with Heinrich. Menzel added, “You should have just screwed the broad, Gimpel. No matter what your wife did to you afterwards, you wouldn't've landed in this kind of shit. And you'd've had the roll in the hay to remember.”

“Heh,” Heinrich said in a hollow voice. That had occurred to him, too. He went on, “You say Erika's going to be all right, and that's she's withdrawn these stupid charges.” He needed to go on repeating that they were stupid, or the blackshirts were liable to think he believed them. “That's all wonderful! They have to let me out now, don't they?”

Gloomily, Klaus Menzel shook his head. “They don't
have
to do a goddamn thing, and you ought to know it by
this time. Trouble is, they don't believe this Dorsch item. They figure she's got the hots for you, so she's lying to protect you.”

“That's crazy!” Heinrich yelped.

“Tell me about it,” Menzel said. “But the way things are now, they aren't about to let you go right this minute. They don't want to look soft.” He wrinkled up his nose, as if at a bad smell.

“Is Prützmann—?” Heinrich began.

“I don't know anything about politics,” his lawyer broke in. “If you're smart, you don't, either.” That was undoubtedly good advice. With the guards in the room, with microphones bound to be picking up every word, saying anything bad—or anything at all—about the
Reichsführer
-SS couldn't be smart.

“Well, what are you doing about everything?” Heinrich demanded. That was a question he could legitimately ask, even here.

“Trying to get them to look at what's right in front of their noses,” Menzel answered. “Maybe they will, maybe they won't. They haven't given you a noodle yet, anyhow. That's something, believe me. I don't remember the last time they arrested somebody here they thought was a fullblood, not just some kind of
Mischling
. Whoever the last bastard was, I bet he didn't come close to lasting as long as you have. So keep your pecker up, and we'll see what happens.”

As soon as Menzel turned away from the grill, the Security Police jailers marched Heinrich back to his cell. There he sat, by the world forgot though he couldn't forget the world. They didn't take him out and shoot him or send him to a camp. That was his only consolation. No, he had one other: as long as they didn't do anything to him, they wouldn't do anything to the girls, either.

Three days later, a tall, blond man in the uniform of a Security Police major came to his cell along with the warder. The officer signed some papers on a clipboard and gave them to the warder, who read them, nodded, and opened the door. “He's all yours,” he said.

“Good,” the officer answered briskly. He pointed a
leather-gloved finger at Heinrich. “You're Gimpel?” Heinrich nodded. The major gestured peremptorily. “Come with me.”

Gulping, Heinrich came. He'd been here long enough to have learned to fear changes in routine. They were rarely changes for the better. He shuffled around, shoes loose on his feet, one hand holding up his pants. Behind him, the cell door clanged.

His fear grew when the officer took him down unfamiliar corridors. Would they give him the noodle right here, when he least expected it? He braced himself, not that that would do him any good. They left the cells and went into the prison's office block. The blackshirt opened a door. “In here.”

The room was small and bare. The walls were whitewashed brick, the floor cheap linoleum. A bare bulb burned in a ceiling fixture. On a rickety wooden table lay Heinrich's greatcoat, his belt and shoelaces, his wallet, his keys, his comb, even his pocket change—the personal effects he'd had when he was arrested.

“Fix yourself up,” the Security Police major said. Heinrich obeyed, though his hands shook so much, he had trouble putting the laces in his shoes. Would they shoot him “while attempting escape”? When he was dressed, the major took him to a bathroom across the hall. A scissors and a razor sat on the sink. “Shave.” He did, trimming his beard with the scissors before attacking it with the blade. Shaving in cold water without soap was unpleasant, but he managed. The major nodded. “You'll do.”

Heinrich was surprised when the blackshirt, after signing more papers, led him out of the prison. He was astonished when the man took him to a bus stop two blocks away, so astonished that he blurted, “What's going on?”

“You're free,” the major said. “Charges quashed. Go home. This bus will take you right to South Station.”

“My God,” Heinrich whispered. “Menzel came through?” A few meters away, a wren scuttling through a flowerbed chirped shrilly. It was the sweetest music he'd ever heard.

“Your lawyer?” The Security Police officer threw back
his head and laughed. “He thinks he did, anyhow.” A bus came up. The wren flew away. The major winked at Heinrich.
Did I really see that?
he wondered. Casually, the fellow said, “You find us in the oddest places.” The bus door opened. The major pushed Heinrich towards it.
Us? He couldn't mean—
He never got the chance to ask. The major had turned away, and the bus driver waited impatiently. Heinrich fed his card into the fare slot. The light flashed green. The bus rolled away.

T
HE MATRON WHO RAN THE FOUNDLINGS
'
DISCIPLINARY
home reminded Alicia of
Frau
Koch. Like the Beast, she was perfectly Aryan: blond, blue-eyed, fair. And, also like the Beast, she had a face like a boot. She was tough and mean and ready to lash out at any moment. Alicia wondered why people like that had—or wanted—anything to do with children.

“Gimpel!” the matron said now, sticking her head into Alicia's room. “Come with me. This minute.”

“
Jawohl!
” Alicia didn't know why the matron wanted her to come, or where she was going. Asking questions was not encouraged. Blind obedience was.

Alicia had to hurry to keep up with the matron, whose soldierly stride conceded nothing to smaller people. The woman always looked angry at the world. This morning, she seemed even angrier than usual. She kept glaring down at Alicia and muttering things the girl couldn't quite make out.
Maybe I'm lucky,
Alicia thought, and shivered.

“In here.” The matron pulled open the door to her own office. Alicia hadn't been there since the day the Security Police pulled her sisters and her out of school. And there were Francesca and Roxane now. They sat on identical metal folding chairs and wore identical wary expressions. The matron pointed to another chair by theirs. “Sit down,” she told Alicia. The next word seemed aimed at all three Gimpel girls: “Wait.”

Still muttering, the matron stalked to another door and flung it open. In came…“
Daddy!
” Alicia shrieked, and ran
to him. Her sisters' squeals might even have been higher and shriller, but couldn't have been any more delighted. The three of them put together almost knocked their father off his feet.

He bent down to kiss and squeeze all of them. Behind his glasses, tears gleamed in his eyes. “I've come to take you home,” he said huskily. “The Security Police have seen that I'm not a Jew after all, and if I'm not a Jew, the three of you can't possibly be
Mischlingen
. And since you aren't, you don't have to stay here any more.”

Francesca broke free of his arms and rounded on the matron. “I told you we weren't filthy, stinking Jews. I
told
you so, and you didn't want to listen. Well, now you see I knew what I was talking about.” She had her hands on her hips. She might have been an irate housewife telling off a clerk who'd been rude to her. The matron turned bright red. Her formidable fists clenched. But she didn't say a thing.

Daddy was more polite. He asked the matron, “Is there paperwork I have to fill out so I can take my girls home?”

“Paperwork?” The woman nodded jerkily. Little by little, her angry flush faded. “
Ja,
there is paperwork. There is always paperwork,
Herr
Gimpel.” She took forms from filing cabinets and out of her desk. Daddy signed and signed and signed. The matron studied everything. She finally nodded. “You may take them. Their behavior here has been…acceptable.”

“I'm glad,” Alicia's father said. “They should never have been brought here in the first place, but I'm glad.” He gathered up the girls. “Come on, kids. Let's go.”

Alicia had never left any place so gladly in all her life, not even the doctor's office after a shot. As Daddy led the three sisters towards a bus stop down the street from the foundlings' home, Roxane said, “They thought we were Jews! Ugly, smelly, yucky Jews!” She made a horrible face.

“They sure did. They're pretty dumb,” Alicia chimed in. She and her father knew the truth, but her little sisters didn't. She had to hold up a mask in front of them. That wasn't any fun, but she'd just found out how needful it was.

“Well, they were wrong, weren't they?” Daddy said.
Francesca and Roxane nodded emphatically. Half a heartbeat later, so did Alicia. Her father had to hold up a mask, too. Maybe the blackshirts had put a tiny microphone in his clothes. Maybe they were still listening. You never could tell. You never could be too careful, not where the Security Police were concerned.

Up came the bus. Daddy stuck his card in the slot four times. After a while, they got off and transferred to another bus. Then they did it again. The third bus took them into Stahnsdorf and, a little more than an hour after they'd set out, stopped at the corner up the street from their house.

Daddy herded Alicia and her sisters off the bus. “Let's go. Mommy's waiting.”

When they got down onto the sidewalk, Francesca and Roxane raced up the street. Alicia hung back. She looked up at her father. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “Really all right?”

He smiled. “I know what you mean.” As she had, he spoke cagily. “Everything is as good as it can be, sweetheart. We're out here. We're free, the way we should be, because they shouldn't have grabbed us in the first place.” Yes, he too was playing to an invisible audience that might or might not be there. “I'm afraid we won't see some friends so much, and that's too bad, but….” He shrugged. “There are worse things.”

“The Dorsches?” Alicia asked.

Daddy stopped. “How do you know about the Dorsches?”

“The Security Police were asking me questions, just like they were with Francesca and Roxane.” Alicia tried to remember just what the blackshirt had said. “Is
Frau
Dorsch really ‘a piece and a half'?” She wasn't precisely sure what it meant, but it sounded impressive.

Her father turned red. He coughed a couple of times. After a long, long pause, he said, “Not…quite,” in a small, strangled voice.

Alicia almost asked for more details. But the front door opened then. Her sisters ran into her mother's arms. “Mommy!” she shouted, and broke into a run herself.

Mommy had a hug for her, too, and kisses. “I know you
were all brave girls,” she said. Alicia's little sisters nodded eagerly. So did she, with a secret smile on her face. She'd had to be brave in a way Francesca and Roxane hadn't, because she'd known the truth and had to hide it, and they hadn't.

Their mother tousled her hair. She had a secret smile on her face, too. Yes, she'd meant that especially for Alicia. It went right over Francesca and Roxane's heads. Alicia's smile got wider. She liked secrets…well, most secrets, anyway. The big one she carried? She still wasn't so sure about that. One thing she was sure of, though, and all the more so after this ordeal: like it or not, it was hers.

Daddy came up the steps. “Did you tell them about the surprise yet?”

“Of course not,” Mommy answered. “If I told them, it wouldn't be a surprise any more, would it?” Naturally, that set all three Gimpel girls clamoring. Their mother looked innocent till she'd almost driven them crazy. Then she said, “If people look in the kitchen, they may find…something.”

They ran in. Roxane's gleeful squeal rang out a split second ahead of her sisters'. The cake was enormous, and covered with gooey white icing. Big blue letters spelled out
WELCOME HOME
! When Mommy cut the cake, it proved to be dark, dark chocolate, with cherries and blueberries between the layers. She gave them huge slices, and when Francesca asked, “Can we have some more?” she didn't say anything about ruining their appetites. She just handed out seconds as big as the firsts.

Everything was so wonderful, it was almost worth getting grabbed by the Security Police. Almost.

 

Walther Stutzman muttered to himself. Threading his way past the electronic traps on the virtual road that led to Lothar Prützmann's domain wasn't his worry. He had their measure now. Sooner or later, an SS programmer would come up with some new ones, and Walther would need to spot them before they closed on him. Today, though, getting in had been easy enough. So was looking around once he'd got inside.

No, what made him mutter was not finding what he was
looking for. Heinrich had given him a good description of the man who'd released him from prison: tall, blond, a major in the Security Police. By what the man had said, he was a Jew.

But Walther had been pretty sure he knew about all the handful of Jews in the SS. None of them, from what he recalled, matched this fellow. Looking through the records only confirmed that.

So who was the major, then? More to the point,
what
was he? Someone who'd tried a last trick to get a suspected Jew to reveal himself? That would have been Walther's guess, but it didn't fit the way Heinrich had described the scene a couple of days earlier. A joker? Or a real Jew, unknown to Walther and his circle of friends?

That would be good—the more who survived, the better. But it also raised doubts, frightening ones. Now somebody outside the circle, somebody no one in the circle knew, knew something about somebody in it. The last thing a Jew in the Third
Reich
wanted was for anybody to have a handle on him.

What can I do?
Walther wondered. One thing that occurred to him was tracking down everybody on duty at the prison the day Heinrich was released. Not many majors would have been there. One of them should have been the man who turned his friend loose.

Before he could do that, though, his boss came back from lunch and bellowed, “Walther! You here, Walther?”

Three quick keystrokes, and everything incriminating vanished from his monitor. Three more made his electronic trail vanish. “I'm here,” he called. “What's up?”

Gustav Priepke stuck his beefy face into Walther's cubicle. “You smart son of a bitch,” he said fondly. “You goddamn know-it-all bastard.”

“I love you, too,” Walther said in his usual mild tones. His boss roared laughter. Still mildly, he asked, “Could you at least tell me why you're swearing at me today?”

“Delighted, by God,” Priepke answered. “You're not only a smart son of a bitch, you're a thieving son of a bitch, too. You know that?”

Excitement tingled through Walther. Now he had a
pretty good idea of what his foul-mouthed boss was talking about. “The code ran, did it?”

“Bet your sweet ass it did,” Gustav Priepke said. “And backward compatibility looks as good as you said it would. We've got a real live modern operating system, or we will once we root out the usual forty jillion bugs. And we won't lose data, on account of it'll be able to read all our old files.”

“That's—terrific,” Walther said. Computer experts in the
Reich
had talked about modernizing the standard operating system for years. They'd talked about it, but they hadn't done it—till now. He was proud he'd had a part, and not such a small one, in turning talk into the beginning of reality.

And then he wondered
why
he was proud. A new operating system would only make German computers more efficient. It would help the government work better, and the government included the SS. It might make the search for hidden Jews more effective. This was a reason to be proud?

Yes, in spite of everything, it was. If he didn't take professional pride in his own skill, his own competence, life turned empty. Whatever he did, he wanted to do well.

As smoothly as only a man with no worries in the world could, his boss changed the subject: “You going to vote when the elections for the new
Reichstag
come up in a few weeks?”

“I suppose so,” Walther answered. “You know I don't get very excited about politics.” He didn't show that he got excited about politics, which wasn't the same thing at all. But Priepke—and the rest of the outside world—saw only the calm mask, not the turmoil behind it.

“Shit, I don't get excited about the usual politics, either,” Gustav Priepke said. “But this isn't the usual garbage—or it had better not be, anyhow. If you've got a chance to make a real difference, grab with both hands.” The gesture he used looked more nearly obscene than political, but got the message across.

“You really think it will make a difference?” Walther asked.

“It had better, by God,” Priepke rumbled ominously. “You wait and see how many
Bonzen
go out on their ears when they run where people can vote against 'em. A lot of those stupid bastards really believe everybody loves them. I want to see the looks on their fat faces when they find out how wrong they are.” Gloating anticipation filled his laugh.

Without answering in words, Walther pointed up to the ceiling with one index finger and cupped his other hand behind an ear. Had his boss forgotten he was bound to be overheard by someone from Lothar Prützmann's domain?

Priepke gestured again, this time with undoubted, un-abashed obscenity. “Hell with 'em all,” he said. “That's the point of this election—to teach the goddamn snoops we've got lives of our own. And if they don't like it, they can screw themselves.”

He means it,
Walther thought dizzily.
He doesn't care if they're listening. He doesn't think it matters
. He looked up to—no, past—the ceiling he'd just pointed at.
Please, God, let him be right
.