In the Presence of Mine Enemies (30 page)

“Ha!” Erika said: a one-syllable demolition of the very idea. Lise had started to nod in agreement with her husband. That scornful laugh froze her for a moment with her chin in the air. She looked as if she needed a distinct effort to bring her head back down to a normal posture.

After what seemed like forever, water ran in the pipes at the far end of the hall. Willi came back to the bridge table looking grim. “We'd better go,” he said to Erika. “It's getting late.”

“It certainly is—in a lot of ways,” she answered. “And we have a few things to talk about, don't we?”

“Yes, just a few,” Willi said. The Dorsches headed up the street for the bus stop after the most perfunctory good-byes. They were shouting at each other long before they got there.

“Well!” Lise said. “That was another interesting evening.”

“Interesting.” Heinrich considered. “Mm, yes, that's one word for it, anyhow.”

“It was the politest word I could think of,” his wife replied. “What exactly did Erika mean there? And who
was
Willi at lunch with?”

Answering the second question seemed safer, so Heinrich did that first: “Ilse—again—if lunch is where they went.” Lise's eyes widened. Her mouth shaped a silent
oh
. But her expression said she hadn't forgotten the other question, either. Unhappily, he told her, “Erika probably meant just what she said. She usually does.”

“I know she does. That's why I wondered.” Lise frowned. “But she was looking at you when she said it. I didn't much care for that. What did you think about it?”

Now there was a question to make a man want to pretend he'd suddenly gone deaf. “It's a compliment of sorts,” said Heinrich, whose ears still worked, however
much he wished they didn't. His wife coughed dangerously. “Will you let me finish?” he exclaimed. Lise gave back a pace in surprise; he didn't raise his voice very often. He went on, “It's not
much
of a compliment, not when she would have said the same thing to any man who happened to be in the neighborhood.” He didn't mention that Erika had already said the same thing about him in particular. He did add, “And I've told you before—I know when I'm well off.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Lise sent him a challenging stare. “How am I supposed to be sure of that?”

He took her in his arms. He kissed her. His hands wandered. “I'll think of something,” he said, before adding the father's usual caveat: “If the children stay quiet, anyhow.”

He was lucky. They did.

 

Children in the United States, Alicia Gimpel had learned, got long summer vacations from school. Her teachers said that scornfully. They offered it as one of the reasons Germany had beaten the USA: Americans didn't study enough, and had been too ignorant to take full advantage of their country's riches. No matter what her teachers said, though, the idea sounded wonderful to Alicia.

Here it was the middle of August, and she remained in school. The only real breaks she got were two weeks around Christmas and New Year's and another week at Easter time. The rest of the year was school, punctuated by much-too-occasional holidays.

Herr
Kessler said, “Many important things have happened in our country. The
Führer
is setting us on a new course, and that is the way we shall go. Matthias Walbeck!”

The boy jumped up and came to attention. “
Jawohl, Herr
Kessler!”

“Tell me how the
Führer
is changing the
Reich
.”

Poor Matthias couldn't do it. He was a big, strong boy, but good-natured—not a bully at all. Unfortunately, he also was not a scholar at all. He stayed at attention, his face a mask of misery. “I'm very sorry,
Herr
Kessler,” he whispered. “Please excuse me.”

Kessler took the paddle off the nail where it hung.
Matthias turned and bent over. The teacher delivered a swat that made the boy hop forward. But Matthias let out not a peep. Showing weakness would only have earned him more. “You must study, Matthias,” the teacher said. “You must pay attention.”

“I will,
Herr
Kessler. I promise,
Herr
Kessler,” Matthias said. Everyone in the classroom—probably including him—knew the promise would be broken.

The teacher's glower raked the room. Alicia knew the answer. She didn't throw up her hand, though. Volunteering too often got you a reputation as a teacher's pet. She already had more of that reputation than she wanted.

Herr
Kessler picked another hapless student, this one a girl. She couldn't answer, either. He swatted her, too. When he was in a bad mood, he would choose children who weren't likely to know what he wanted, just so he could hand out swat after swat. He wasn't the only teacher in the school who did that, either.
Frau
Koch was universally known as “the Beast” to her students, and had been for years—but not a teacher ever heard the nickname.

After dealing out yet another whack on the bottom,
Herr
Kessler put the paddle back in its place. “I don't know what the younger generation is coming to,” he said sadly. “When the
Führer
speaks, you must listen. And what is his name, class?”

“Heinz Buckliger,
Herr
Kessler,” the children chorused.

“Very good. You've learned that, anyway,” the teacher said. “And Heinz Buckliger has said that not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, so some things must change. And why must things change?”

“Because the
Führer
is always right,
Herr
Kessler,” the whole class said together.

That was the right answer. Alicia knew it was. Teachers had been drilling it into students since kindergarten. She sang out as confidently as her classmates. So she was amazed when
Herr
Kessler shook his head. “No. What did I just say?”

They were trained to repeat his words back to him. They did now: “And Heinz Buckliger has said that not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, so some things must change.”

“Yes.” Kessler nodded. “So why must things change, then?”

“Because the
Führer
says so.” Again, all the children were sure they had it right. Again, Alicia was as sure as any of the others.

But the teacher shook his head once more. “No. You are wrong. What did the new
Führer
say?”

“That not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, and—”

“Stop!”
Herr
Kessler held up his hand. “There is the answer. We must change because not everything we did in days gone by was perfect.”

He paused to let that sink in. The children murmured among themselves.
Herr
Kessler didn't correct them, which was at least as astonishing as the lesson he was teaching. Alicia wanted to ask several questions. She didn't think she ought to ask any of them. But Wolfgang Priller's hand rose. “Question,
Herr
Kessler!”

“Go ahead, Priller.” The teacher braced, as if expecting bad news.

Wolf stood up and came to attention. “Sir, if the
Führer
is always right, the way we know he is, how is it that not everything we did in days gone by was perfect?”

Sure enough, that was one of the questions Alicia had wanted to ask. It had occurred to her because of the logical inconsistency. She suspected it had occurred to Wolf Priller because he remained convinced the
Führer
was always right. He took to indoctrination the way a duck took to water.

Herr
Kessler said, “Heinz Buckliger is the
Führer
now. If he says not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, is he not right to say so?” Wolfgang Priller frowned as he tried to work that out. Alicia frowned, too. Again, she thought
Herr
Kessler's logic was that of a dog chasing its own tail. The teacher gestured. “Be seated, Priller.” Wolf sat down. He looked as if a dog were chasing its tail inside his head, too.

“What did we do in days gone by that wasn't perfect,
Herr
Kessler?” another boy called without raising his hand.

Alicia didn't see who it was. Kessler didn't see who it was, either, which had to be lucky for whoever had spoken out of turn. The teacher growled, “I don't have to respond to questions not put in proper form. I don't have to, and I don't intend to. Let us continue with the lesson.”

Does that mean you don't know the answer?
Alicia wondered, which would have been unimaginable not so long before, when she thought her teachers knew everything.
Or does it mean the new
Führer
hasn't said what the answer is, so there isn't any answer yet?
She could see Kessler was parroting what Heinz Buckliger had said, the same way students parroted what the teacher said.

At lunch, Wolf Priller declared, “I don't like these changes. I think they're stupid.” Nobody disagreed with him, not out loud. He could beat up any of the other boys in the class.

Alicia wondered if anything would really change, if anything could really change, or if everything that was going on was just a lot of talk. Sometimes people said this or that without meaning a word of it. If the men who ran things wanted to do something like that, they could easily enough.

But there was Trudi Krebs, skipping rope with some other girls and as happy as any of them.
Herr
Kessler had taken down her name for speaking well of the first edition of
Mein Kampf
. Wolf Priller had gloated about how the knock on her door would come in the middle of the night. Everybody—including Alicia—had been sure it would happen. It hadn't.

If Kurt Haldweim were still
Führer,
it would have. Alicia remembered the beaky, waxy face she'd seen in the Great Hall when Haldweim lay in state. No man with a face like that would have let anybody get away with anything. But Trudi and her parents
had
got away with it. Therefore, things
had
changed, at least some.

There was logic that didn't chase its own tail. And if Wolf Priller didn't like it, so much the better. Alicia threw her orange peel in the trash and ran to join the girls with the jump rope.

 

Because of who he was, because of what he did, and because of what he was, Walther Stutzman had access to far more of the
Reich
's computer records than anyone else knew about. The problem was being able to use the access codes he had. If anyone spotted strange things on his monitor, he would lose his access privileges in a hurry—and also, very likely, his freedom, and also, quite possibly, his life.

Lunch was a good time to poke around. Most people in Walther's office at the Zeiss works went out to eat. That helped. As usual, he kept his monitor turned so it wasn't easy to see unless you came right into his cubicle. That helped, too. All the same, especially after things had gone so badly wrong fixing the Kleins' genealogy, he got extra nervous whenever he went looking where he wasn't supposed to.

He had to keep doing it, even if it was dangerous. He knew that. Finding out more than he could through ordinary channels might help keep him and all the Jews left in the
Reich
safe. And he couldn't help being curious, either.

His boss said, “There's a gang of us going over to this new place that serves American hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken. Want to come along? Guaranteed heart-burn or your money back.”

“Can't do it.” Walther pointed to his desk. It was as neat as usual, but did have more stacks of paper on it than people were used to seeing there. “This changeover to the new operating system is tougher than we ever thought it would be. I don't know if we can meet the schedule they've set us.”

Gustav Priepke grimaced. “Lord help us if we don't. We've already had three false starts. If we botch it this time, they're liable to throw us out on our ear and hire a bunch of programmers from Japan.”

Priepke was kidding on the square, and Walther knew it. The
Reich
had pioneered in electronic computers—and the core operating system still showed as much, for it lacked protected memory and preemptive multitasking. The Japanese had got off to a later start, and had had the advantage of seeing the mistakes German programmers
made. Japanese systems were more robust and often more reliable, even if they weren't so elegant.

“I think we can make it happen, but it's going to take a lot of work,” Walther said. “And so…” He apologetically spread his hands.