In the Presence of Mine Enemies (66 page)

What the devil is the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
?
Lise wondered. She'd never
heard of it. The government had nine million different committees and bureaus and commissions, so she didn't know how much that proved, but if it wasn't important, what was it doing on the air like this?

“The
Führer,
Heinz Buckliger, has been taken ill on the island of Hvar,” the man said. “As a result of this illness, he no longer has the capacity to rule our beloved
Reich
. Under such emergency conditions, the State Committee will administer affairs.”

Lise frowned. That sounded like…But it couldn't be. Nobody since the Night of the Long Knives, more than seventy-five years earlier, had tried to seize power like this.

The announcer went on, “We address you at a great and critical hour for the future of the
Vaterland
and of our
Volk
. A mortal danger now looms large over our great
Vaterland
. The policy of so-called reforms, launched at Heinz Buckliger's initiative and allegedly designed to ensure the
Reich
's dynamic development, has in fact gone down a blind alley. This is the result of deliberate actions on the part of those who trample on the laws of the Greater German
Reich
so they can stage an unconstitutional
Putsch
and gather all personal power into their hands. Millions of people now demand stern measures against this gross illegality.”

“
Du lieber Gott!
” Lise exclaimed. Whoever was on the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich,
they really meant it.

“By order of the State Committee, citizens of the
Reich
are to remain calm,” the announcer said—and if that wasn't a command designed to spread panic, she didn't know what would be. The fellow continued, “The holding of meetings, street processions, demonstrations, and strikes is
verboten
. In case of need, a curfew and military patrols will be imposed. Important government and economic installations will be placed under guard by the SS, which remains loyal to the ideals of the state even in this time of corruption.”

Aha!
Lise thought. Now she could make a good guess about who was behind the Committee and the
Putsch
.

“Decisive measures will be taken to stop the spreading
of subversive rumors, actions that threaten the disruption of law and order and the creation of tension, and disobedience to the authorities responsible for implementing the state of emergency.” What did the announcer feel about the words in front of him? Was he for the
Putsch
? Did he hate it? He read like a machine, droning on mechanically: “Control will be established over all radio and televisor stations. Now serving as interim
Führer
of the
Reich
and of the Germanic Empire is Odilo Globocnik—”

“Who?” Lise had heard no more of him than she had of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
. His name hardly even sounded German.

“—who has previously served the state as High Commissioner for
Ostland
Affairs.” He'd been in charge of slaughtering Slavs, in other words. And now they were bringing his talents to the
Reich
itself? Lise shivered. The difference between bad and worse was much bigger than the difference between good and better. Much, much bigger.

C
EILING SPEAKERS IN
O
BERKOMMANDO DER
W
EHRMACHT
headquarters carried the announcement of Heinz Buckliger's incapacity moments after Heinrich and Willi sat down at their desks. “Decisive measures will be taken to stop the spreading of subversive rumors, actions that threaten the disruption of law and order and the creation of tension, and disobedience to the authorities responsible for implementing the state of emergency. Control will be established over all radio and televisor stations. Now serving as interim
Führer
of the
Reich
and of the Germanic Empire is Odilo Globocnik, who has previously served the state as High Commissioner for
Ostland
Affairs.” After the announcement, “
Deutschland über Alles
” and the “Horst Wessel Song” rang out again.

Heinrich looked at Willi. Willi looked back at Heinrich. “It's an SS
Putsch
!” Heinrich said.

Willi nodded. “It sure as hell is,” he agreed. And then he said, “Odilo fucking Globocnik?” in tones of absolute disbelief.

“Be careful, Willi!” Ilse exclaimed. “If you talk like that, who knows what kind of trouble you'll end up in?”

In times like these, that might have been excellent advice. But Willi only shook his head. “Odilo fucking Globocnik?” he repeated, even more amazed and disgusted than before.

Over the patriotic music blaring out of the intercom, Heinrich said, “He's Prützmann's puppet. He can't be anything else.”

“Well, I should hope not,” Willi said. “He's certainly
nothing by himself. Didn't he get in trouble for driving drunk a while ago?”

“Beats me,” Heinrich said. “I don't remember hearing that, but you could be right.”

“I think so, but I'm not sure,” Willi said. “Who the hell pays attention to the Odilo Globocniks of the world?”

Running feet in the corridor. Before Heinrich could respond to his friend's bon mot, someone—a soldier—stuck his head in the room and called, “Globocnik's on the televisor! They've got it on in the canteen!” The man didn't wait, but thudded down the hall in his jackboots and repeated his message for the next big office.

“Come on!” Half a dozen people said the same thing at the same time. Wheels squeaked as analysts pushed swivel chairs back from desks. A few stolid people went right on working. The rest, Heinrich and Willi among them, swarmed out of the room and toward the canteen.

So many men—and a few women—were going that way, something not far from a rugby scrum broke out in the corridor. Heinrich took an elbow or two and gave out a couple of his own. He squeezed into the canteen just in time to hear somebody yell, “Shut up!”—which made the clamor from the people already crowding the room drop a little.

Because Heinrich was ten or twelve centimeters taller than most people, he got a good look at the televisor screen even though he couldn't get close to it. Odilo Globocnik wasn't in the
Führer
's office in the palace across the square from
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
headquarters, or in the even more magnificent study in the
Reichskanzellerei
. He spoke from a studio that could have been anywhere.

And Globocnik himself was as unimpressive as his surroundings. He was in his fifties, and had the face of a street bruiser who'd gone to fat. His eyes and his short nose were both red-streaked. Heinrich would have bet that Willi was right and he did drink, probably a lot. He'd jammed his uniform cap down low on his forehead, perhaps to keep the bright studio lights out of those watery eyes.

He was reading from a text on a lectern in front of him, very obviously and not very well. “We will, uh, restore law
and order. We will check anti-Party tendencies, at home and abroad. We will stamp out nationalist, uh, adventurism.” His voice was a gravelly croak. His big, soft jowls wobbled as he spoke. When he reached up to turn a page on his speech, his plump, beringed hand shook. Was he stumbling over the speech because he was a stupid lout or because he'd had a snootful before he got in front of the camera—or maybe both?

How much did any of that matter, though? In the background, out of focus and only half visible but instantly recognizable all the same, sat Lothar Prützmann. The
Reichsführer-
SS might choose to rule through a puppet, but he was bound to be the power behind the
Putsch
. And what could anybody else do about it?

Nothing,
was the only answer that occurred to Heinrich, who'd just got out of the clutches of the Security Police. But then someone in the crowded canteen said, “This is the national channel. What's on the Berlin channel?”

The buzz that rose from that made it hard to hear what Odilo Globocnik was saying—not that missing his speech meant missing much. “Will Stolle let them get away with this?” somebody asked.

“Can Stolle do anything to stop it?” somebody else came back.

“If he can't, nobody can.” Two people said that.

A
Wehrmacht
colonel, no less, turned the dial on the televisor set. On the Berlin channel, a frightened-looking man sat on what looked like a quiz-show set. He was saying, “—not know how long you will be able to hear me,
meine Damen und Herren
. Armed men claiming to be from the Security Police have come to this studio. Our guards refusing to let them in, they opened fire. There have been casualties on both sides. We have asked for help from the Berlin city police, but we do not know if it will come or if it will be enough. We—”

The
Wehrmacht
colonel's voice rang out: “Sauer!”

“Ja, Herr Oberst?”
someone—presumably Sauer—said.

“Get two companies of men to that studio on the double. They are to hold it at all costs. They will be reinforced if necessary. Do you understand me?”

“Jawohl, Herr Oberst!”
Sauer started shoving his way out of the canteen. “Let me through!” The crowd parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses.

A telephone rang behind the man on the set. He didn't look like an announcer. He looked like a director suddenly in front of the camera instead of behind it. When the bell sounded, he jumped. He grabbed the phone, listened, said,
“Ja,”
a couple of times, and hung up. He started talking even before he turned back toward his audience: “
Meine Damen und Herren,
that was Rolf Stolle, the
Gauleiter
of Berlin. He calls the arrest—that is what he terms it, the arrest—of the
Führer
illegal, and says Globocnik and Prützmann and the forces of darkness—so he calls them—fear elections and the exposure of the truth and—”

He disappeared. There was Rolf Stolle himself, his shaved head gleaming as he glared out of the televisor set. “Am I on?” he rasped, and then, “
Volk
of the
Reich,
anyone who can hear me, listen and listen good. This is an SS
Putsch,
nothing else but. If you stand up against it, it will come to pieces right in front of your noses. If they don't shoot me, I'll kick 'em right in the teeth. Don't let the bastards pull the wool over your eyes, the way they've been doing for years. They—”

When his angry face vanished from the screen, everyone in the canteen groaned. But the feed didn't turn into predigested pap or a smiling SS announcer explaining that everything was fine. It went back to that harried-looking man in the Berlin station's studio. He said, “We've lost our transmission from the
Gauleiter
's residence. I don't know whether it has just been cut off or they are under attack there. I—” The phone behind him rang again. He jumped again, too, and snatched the handset off the cradle. When he hung up this time, he looked relieved. “That was Rolf Stolle. He is still free. He—”

A cheer rang out, drowning his next few words. Heinrich joined it. He pumped his fist in the air. Willi Dorsch pounded him on the back.

“—wants you to come to the square in front of his residence,” Stolle's amateur spokesman said when Heinrich could next hear him over the din. “How can the SS cut him
down when all Berlin is watching? It may be dangerous, but—”

Heinrich waited to hear no more than that. He turned around and started swimming upstream against the throngs still battling to get into the cafeteria. “Where are you going?” Willi asked him.

“To Stolle's residence. Weren't you listening?” Heinrich answered. “After what Prützmann's bully boys just did to me, you think I'm going to let them screw the
Reich,
too, if I can do anything to stop 'em?” The
Reich
would be worse off with the SS in charge than with Heinz Buckliger, yes. Jews, he had no doubt, would be disastrously worse off. But his being a Jew played only a small part in this. As he'd said, it was personal.

He didn't look behind him. Suddenly, though, he had help breasting the crowd. “I'm with you,” Willi said.

 

When Esther Stutzman turned the key to the outer door and walked into the waiting room, the radio in Dr. Dambach's office was blaring out patriotic marches. She scratched her head. The pediatrician didn't usually listen to that kind of music. He wanted something soft and calm in the office, something that might soothe both a crying baby and a worried mother.

“Dr. Dambach?” Esther called.

He must not have heard her over the thump of drums and the bronze clangor of bugles. Then the march ended and an announcer said, “Now, here is
Reichsführer-
SS Lothar Prützmann to explain the goals of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
.”

“Dr. Dambach?” Esther called again, her voice this time rising in astonishment. What on earth had happened while she was coming to work?

Now her boss heard her. “Come in here and listen to this,” he said. “I think they've gone right off the deep end.”

It sounded that way to Esther, too. She hardly remembered to close the door behind her before hurrying into Dr. Dambach's inner office. In a surprisingly high, thin voice, Prützmann was saying, “—obvious symptoms of overwork and stress necessitated the
Führer
's stepping
down for reasons of health. Odilo Globocnik, our interim
Führer,
has already shown that he is fully up to the demands of the position.”

“What the—?” Esther said. Dambach just pointed at the radio and mouthed,
Listen
.

“We have already outlined the prohibitions necessary for the success of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German
Reich
.” The
Reichsführer
-SS brought out the cumbersome name without a bobble. He might have been mulling it over in his mind for a long, long time before pronouncing it in public. He went on, “Now we must set forth the goals for which we struggle.

“First, we shall roll back the anti-Germanic, antistate measures
Herr
Buckliger was unwise enough to introduce. Aryan supremacy must always be the primary objective of the Greater German
Reich
. We struggle for the richness and variety of the Aryan's life in peacetime. We struggle for man's right to
Kultur
. This is the basis of the new social order in Europe. The capable individual must be able to occupy by his efforts the place for which he is fitted. And we struggle for the final solution to the question regarding the worker's standing. In the
Reich,
the path leading the worker to a secure existence has already been trodden. German workers are no longer proletarians. They have a legal claim to work, an adequate wage, medical care, and pensions. All this the so-called reforms of the Buckliger regime have threatened. But we, duty-bound to the highest concept of Aryan blood and honor, have rescued the state from his clutches. Order will soon be fully restored, so long as you obey. Thank you, and good morning.
Heil
Globocnik!”

The patriotic marches resumed, as loud and bombastic as before. With a gesture of disgust, Dr. Dambach turned the radio way down. “Isn't that a fine kettle of fish,
Frau
Stutzman?” he said. “They blather about law and order, but what's their blathering worth? I respect law and order. They don't. They throw such things over the side as soon as it's
their
ox being gored. Pah!” For a moment, Esther thought he would spit on the carpet.

“Everything was fine when I left the house this morning,” Esther said, still dazed. “Or I thought it was, anyhow.”

“Well, it isn't fine now,” Dambach said. “Heaven only knows when it'll be fine again. Talk about your hypocrites and whited sepulchers!” He made as if to spit again, and again seemed barely able to check himself.