The Man with the Iron Heart (62 page)

And now I’m it,
Peiper thought. The radio, the newspapers, and the magazines in American-occupied Germany were full of gloating glee because Heydrich had fallen in service of the cause. He’d been photographed dead more often than he ever was alive.
THE GERMAN FREEDOM FRONT’S FRONT MAN IS NO MORE
, a typical headline proclaimed proudly.

Jochen Peiper assembled the men who shared the underground secondary headquarters with him. “We’re fighting a war, and when you fight a war you go on even if you lose your general,” he said. “The man who’s next in line steps up, and you go on. The
Reichsprotektor
was a great German. We’ll miss him. He gave us hope for freedom even in the blackest days. He inspired the Werewolves to remind the enemy Germany wasn’t altogether beaten. The best way to honor his memory is to go on and free our country from the invaders’ yoke.”

He eyed them. A few of the fighters didn’t want to meet his gaze. They feared—or else they hoped, which would be worse—the struggle had died with the
Reichsprotektor.
But most of the SS men and soldiers seemed ready to keep on soldiering. That was what Peiper most wanted to see. He had to hope he wasn’t seeing it regardless of whether it was there or not.

“We can do this. We can, dammit!” he insisted. “We’ve already got the Americans on the run. We have to show them they haven’t cut the heart out of us. Reinhard Heydrich
was
a great man, a great German, a great National Socialist. No one would say anything different. But when great men fall, the ones they leave behind have to keep up the battle. And the
Reichsprotektor
had some ideas he didn’t live to use. We’ll see how wild they can drive the enemy.”

“What kind of ideas?” a man inquired.

“Well, for instance…” Peiper talked for some little while. He could have kissed the noncom who’d asked the question. If the troops were interested in what to try next, they wouldn’t brood because they’d lost their longtime commander. Or Peiper could hope they wouldn’t, anyhow.

But then another man asked, “Can the Americans sniff us out now?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Peiper answered, “Anything that can happen can happen to you, Heinz. They were supposed to use up all the workers who dug out the
Reichsprotektor
’s headquarters, but it sounds like somebody got through in spite of everything. That’s just bad luck. I don’t think it’s likely that that kind of thing could crop up here, too, but it’s possible.”

Unlike Heydrich, he’d had no direct role in eliminating
Untermenschen.
He’d been a combat soldier before his superiors tapped him for this slot. But he wasn’t naïve about what the
Reich
had been up to. He talked about it in the same allusive, elusive, oddly dispassionate way someone who’d served in an extermination camp might have. If you talked about it that way, you didn’t dwell on what you were actually doing. Workers got used up, not killed. The survivor got through; he didn’t live. Jochen wished to God the bastard hadn’t lived.

Heinz had another awkward question: “What will we do without the physicists the
Reichsprotektor
liberated?”

“The best we can.” Peiper spread his hands. “I don’t know what else to tell you. We’ll be able to find other scientists who know some of what they knew, and we’ll find more people who can learn. We’re Germans. Other people would come here to study before the war. There are bound to be men who can do what we need. Remember, we know it’s possible now, and we didn’t during the war.”

Heinz nodded, apparently satisfied. Peiper wasn’t satisfied himself—not even close. He knew too well that losing those physicists meant Germany would take longer to build atom bombs. And he knew the resurgent
Reich
would need those bombs to keep it safe from the Americans and the Russians.

But, as he’d told the junior officer, all you could do was all you could do. He wasn’t even sure the fighters outside this headquarters would obey his orders. He had to nail that down first. If they wouldn’t follow him, the Amis and Tommies and Ivans had won after all. After keeping up the fight for so long despite the surrender of
Wehrmacht
and government, giving up now would be tragic.

He went back to his office to draft a proclamation.
The struggle continues,
he wrote.
The hope for National Socialism, the hope for a revived German folkish state, does not lie in any one man. A man may fall. Adolf Hitler did; now Reinhard Heydrich has as well. But the cause goes on. The cause will always go on, because it is right and just. We shall not rest until we free our Fatherland.
Sieg heil!

He looked it over, then nodded to himself. Yes, it would definitely do. He signed his name. After another moment’s hesitation, he added
Reichsprotektor
below the signature. Even though Heydrich had originally had the title because he governed the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, it also suited a partisan leader trying to shield Germany from the foes who oppressed her.

The headquarters had a small print shop, with a hand press not much different from the ones Martin Luther’s printers would have used. That would be plenty to get out a few hundred copies of the proclamation. Sympathetic printers in the U.S. and British zones could make thousands more once it reached them. Word would spread.

Which raised another question. Peiper wondered whether his fighters ought to stay quiet for a while. It might lull the enemy into a false sense of security. It would let Peiper consolidate his own authority within the German Freedom Front. Everybody’d known, and known of—and feared—Heydrich. By the nature of things, the number two man in any outfit was far more anonymous.

Peiper drummed his fingers on the desk.
“Nein,”
he muttered. Heydrich hadn’t made the Americans start bailing out of their zone by acting meek and mild. He’d harried them so harshly that they were glad to go. The best way to keep them on the run was to keep goosing them.

And the Russians…! No Russian ever born had ever admired meekness and mildness. The only way to get Ivan’s attention was to hit him in the face, and to keep on hitting him till he had to notice you. Peiper had fought the Red Army out in the open till he was recruited for the twilight struggle. Running it out of the Soviet zone wouldn’t be easy. He knew that. But not fighting, against the Russians, meant giving up.

He’d found his answers. He knew what kind of orders to give. Whether anyone would listen to them…He shook his head and said
“Nein”
again, louder this time. Some people would always follow a superior’s commands. He could use them to eliminate the fainthearts. No, to eliminate a few of them. That should scare the rest back into obedience. Fear was as much a weapon as an assault rifle.

It all seemed simple and straightforward. Peiper laughed at himself. If everything were as simple and straightforward as it seemed, the
Reich
would never have got itself into this mess. Well, the job of getting it out had landed on his shoulders. He’d do his damnedest.

When the phone rang, it was the Mothers Against the Madness in Germany line. It usually was, these days. “Diana McGraw,” Diana said in her crisp public voice.

“Hi, Mrs. McGraw. E. A. Stuart here, from the
Times,
” the reporter replied in her ear.

“Hello, E.A. How are you?” Diana said. Only the
Indianapolis Times,
not the one from Los Angeles, let alone New York’s. Well, she lived next door to Indianapolis. And other papers would pick up whatever she said to Stuart. She’d got used to having people all over the world pay attention to what she thought. She liked it, in fact.

“I’m fine, thanks. Yourself?” Unlike reporters from far away, E.A. knew her well enough to chitchat for a bit before he got down to business. He might have thought it would soften her up. And he might have been right.

“Doing all right.” Diana wasn’t lying…too much. Her conscience still gnawed at her for that San Francisco night. She did feel bad about it—and she felt worse because she’d felt so good while it was going on.
I was drunk,
she told herself.
I didn’t know what I was doing.
The first part of that was true. The rest? She’d known what she was doing, all right. And she’d gone and done it. And she’d enjoyed it like anything—then. Afterwards was a different story. Afterwards commonly was. She ducked away from the worries: “What can I do for you this morning?”

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to comment on the death of Reinhard Heydrich.”

“I’m glad the miserable skunk is dead,” Diana said at once. “So many people have called me a Nazi, and it’s a filthy lie. You know it’s a lie, E.A. The maniacs that evil so-and-so led murdered my Pat. If we’d caught him alive, I’d’ve been glad to string him up myself.”

“To hang the Hangman?” Stuart asked.

Diana nodded, which the reporter couldn’t see. “That’s right,” she said. “That’s just right.”

“Okay.” By the pause, E. A. Stuart was likely nodding, too. “How do you think his death changes the situation in Germany?”

Since Diana’d been thinking about that ever since the news broke, she could answer without the least hesitation: “It just gives us one more reason to keep bringing our troops back to America. We’ve been saying all along that we wanted him dead, that we needed him dead, that he was the most dangerous man in the world, and I don’t know what all else. Fine. Now he’s dead. Now the fanatics can’t cause anywhere near as much trouble as they could before. That means we’ve got even less excuse for sticking around. The sooner all the soldiers come home, the better.”

“Hang on,” Stuart said. She could hear him scribbling notes. Even though he took shorthand, she’d got ahead of him. Then he asked, “What would have happened if all the American soldiers were out of Germany before we found out where Heydrich was hiding out?”

Diana scowled at the telephone.
Doggone it, E.A., you’re supposed to be on my side.
But she didn’t say it out loud. He would have to deny it, and he might have to go out of his way to show it wasn’t true. That wouldn’t be so good.

“Maybe we would have gone back after him. I’ve never said we shouldn’t get rid of him,” she answered. “Or maybe the German police could have dug him out on their own.”

“Mm. Maybe.” Stuart didn’t sound as if he believed it. He tried a different kind of question: “How do you feel about President Truman taking credit for bumping him off?”

“If we’d caught Heydrich right after V-E day, he would’ve been entitled to some,” Diana said tartly. “Now we’re only a couple of months away from 1948. It’s not just about time Heydrich’s dead—it’s way past time.”

“Hang on,” E. A. Stuart said once more, and then, “Okey-doke. Got it. Thanks a lot, Mrs. McGraw. ’Bye.” He hung up.

“So long.” Diana set the phone down, too. She heated up the coffee, took the pot off the stove, and poured herself a cup. It wasn’t as good as it had been when she made it right after she and Ed got up, but it wasn’t too much like battery acid yet. And she was too lazy to fix a fresh pot.

Battery acid. She shook her head. Would the comparison even have occurred to her if Ed hadn’t worked at the Delco-Remy plant since the Year One? How many car and truck batteries did they turn out there every year? Zillions—that was all she knew.

The phone rang again. This time, it was a reporter from the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
He wanted to find out what she thought of Heydrich’s untimely demise, too. She was still all for it. He asked almost the same questions as E. A. Stuart had. Later on, she got a call from the
Boston Globe,
and one from the
Los Angeles Mirror-News.

“Do you feel like you’ve got revenge for your son now?” the reporter from the
Mirror-News
asked.

That was a more…interesting question than she usually got. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “When it’s your own flesh and blood…No, it’s not revenge, or not enough revenge. I don’t think there can be enough revenge for your own child. I’m still glad Heydrich’s dead, though.”

“You and everybody else. Well, thanks.” The reporter didn’t even say good-bye. He just went off to write up his piece.

In between phone calls, life went on. Diana sliced potatoes and carrots and chopped onions and put them into a pan with a pot roast. If a few tears fell, she could blame them on the onions. Supper went into the oven.

Ed got home about twenty to six, the way he always did. He took a Burgie out of the icebox, drank it faster than he was in the habit of doing, and then opened another one. “You all right?” Diana asked. “You don’t do that very often.” Ever since she got back from San Francisco, she’d watched him more closely than usual.

He let out a wordless grunt and got to work on the second beer. That alarmed her. Everything alarmed her these days—a sure sign of her guilty conscience. That same guilty conscience had made her extra accommodating in the bedroom since coming home. If only it had made her take more pleasure in what went on there.

Doggedly, she tried again: “Everything all right at the plant?”

“Fine,” Ed said. He poured down the Burgermeister.

He opened another one to go with supper. “You’ll get snockered,” Diana warned. She remembered too well what had happened when she got snockered. Ed just shrugged. He killed the beer, and killed one more while she was doing the dishes.

That seemed to get him where he needed to go. While she dried the last fork and put away the dish towel, he sat there waiting. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” he said, sounding sad and resigned at the same time.

“What is?” Her voice, by contrast, was a thin, nervous squeak.

“Us,” he said, and then, as if that weren’t comprehensive enough, “Everything.”

“What? We’re fine! I love you!”
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Diana hadn’t read any Shakespeare since high school. Why did that particular line have to come back to her right now? Why? Because she was protesting too goddamn much—why else?

“Yeah, well…” Ed turned toward the icebox, as if to get one more Burgie. But he didn’t. His smile was sad, too, sad and sweet at the same time. “You’ve got your head turned, babe. It took a while, but you do.”

“What are you talking about?” Diana wouldn’t have sounded so scared if she hadn’t known precisely what he was talking about.

He spelled it out for her anyhow: “You go here, you go there, you go all over the darn place. Reporters call you all the time. How many calls you get today on account of Heydrich’s kicked the bucket?”

“Four.” Automatically, she answered with the truth.

“Uh-huh.” Ed nodded. “And you hang around with big shots when you go traveling. Congressmen and mayors and Lord knows who all. And they figure you’re a big shot, too, ’cause you’ve got all this clout you made for yourself, and that’s great. And I bet they hit on you, too—you’re a darn good-lookin’ gal. I oughta know, huh? And then you come home.”

“I’m glad to come home,” Diana said. And she always had been, till this last trip.

Ed went on as if she hadn’t spoken: “You come home, and waddaya got? Me. Foreman at Delco-Remy. Ain’t gonna be anything more than foreman at Delco-Remy if I get as old as Methuselah. And it isn’t enough any more. I can tell.”

“How?” she whispered. Did she have a scarlet A on her chest? Did she remember high-school lit classes better than she’d ever thought she could? She sure did, but why, for God’s sake?

“How?” Her husband snorted. “I’ve known you for thirty years, that’s how. I’m not smart like a big shot, but I’m not blind, either.”

Diana started to cry. “I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want any of this to happen—not any of it. If Pat was alive—” She cried harder. Ed hadn’t really guessed. She hadn’t really admitted anything, either. But how much difference did that make? He’d nailed everything else down tight. Hadn’t he just! “What are we going to do?” she wailed.

His shoulder went up and down in a tried shrug. “I dunno, babe. What
are
we gonna do?”

When it came to American foreign policy, she found answers with the greatest of ease, and she was always sure they were right. Here? Here she had no answers at all. She started crying again.

“H
E’S DEAD.
G
OOD RIDDANCE TO HIM,”
J
ERRY
D
UNCAN SAID ON THE
House floor. “And now, God willing, the fanatics in Germany will see that their cause is hopeless. And, I note, this is all happening even though our troops are coming home from Europe. The world hasn’t fallen to pieces. And it won’t fall to pieces, in spite of the doomsayers’ croakings in this very House.”

Congressmen who agreed with him clapped and cheered. Congressmen who didn’t were much less polite. Boos, catcalls, shaken fists…Jerry didn’t seen any upraised middle fingers this time, which was progress of a sort. He did hear several insistent shouts: “Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker!
Mr. Speaker!
”

Joe Martin pointed. “The chair recognizes the Representative from California.”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Helen Gahagan Douglas said.

Maybe Martin had recognized her because her voice stood out among those of the Democrats clamoring for his notice (and well it might—not only was she a woman, but she’d also sung opera, so she had impressive volume when she needed it). Or maybe he’d thought she would be milder than most of her colleagues. If he had, he was unduly optimistic. Now that the wartime consensus lay dead, nobody saw much point to mildness any more.

And Congresswoman Douglas proved as much, saying, “Many years ago, Chancellor Bismarck remarked that God loved children, drunkards, and the United States of America. The way things are these days, I hesitate to speak well of any German, but it seems to me that Bismarck knew what he was talking about. The distinguished gentleman from Indiana wouldn’t be celebrating Reinhard Heydrich’s death today if he’d got his own heart’s desire a few months earlier. If we didn’t have any men on the ground to dig him out once we learned where he hid, he’d still be down there sneering at us.”

People on her side applauded. People on Jerry’s side were at least as rude to Helen Gahagan Douglas as people who agreed with her had been to him. The first thing that ran through his mind was
Well, fuck you, bitch.
He didn’t say it. Consensus might have expired, but civility, though hospitalized, still breathed.

And she
wasn’t
a bitch, and Jerry knew it perfectly well when he wasn’t pissed off himself. She was a highly capable Congresswoman who disagreed with him on the President’s German policy. The way things went these days, the distinction seemed ever more academic.

“Mr. Speaker!” Jerry said.

“You have the floor, Mr. Duncan,” Joe Martin replied.

“Thanks, Mr. Speaker. How many of our young men did the fanatics murder and torture while we lingered in Germany because President Truman couldn’t see we didn’t belong there? Are they a fair trade for Heydrich?” Jerry asked. Attacking the President was easier and more likely to be profitable than swinging directly at Helen Gahagan Douglas.

She didn’t mind swinging right at him. “If someone makes a habit of murdering and torturing our young men—and that’s what the Nazis do, no doubt about it—isn’t it better to make sure he can’t do it any more than to run away from him?” she demanded.

“I would say yes, except the Army has made it much too plain they can’t do that, either,” Jerry answered.

“How do you expect it to, when you’ve been doing everything you could to hamstring it since V-E Day?” Helen Gahagan Douglas said. “You’ve been blaming the administration for Chiang Kai-shek’s losses in China. But when the administration tries to blame this Congress for our losses in Germany, you don’t think that’s fair.”

“It isn’t fair,” Jerry snapped. “Our losses in Germany started long before Republicans gained the majority. We gained it not least because of American losses in Germany. And those losses started almost before the ink dried on the so-called surrender. The Army in Germany had full wartime appropriations in 1945, as I am sure the distinguished Representative from California recalls.” His tone declared he was sure of no such thing. “Even with those full appropriations, even with that flood of manpower, the U.S. Army had no better luck against partisan warfare than the
Wehrmacht
did in France or Russia or Yugoslavia.”