"Ilse? I want to talk to Heinrich. This is his wife," Lise said.
"I'm sorry,Frau Gimpel, but he's not here," the secretary answered.
"Do you know when he'll be back?"
"I'm sorry, but I have no idea. As soon as we heard…what had happened, he and Herr Dorsch and some other people, uh, left the building."
"Left the building?…Oh." Lise needed a moment, but she figured out what Ilse meant. They'd headed for Rolf Stolle's residence. That had to be it. Ilse wouldn't come right out and say so, though, not when the phones were bound to be monitored. She might have round heels, but she definitely had strong survival instincts. "Thank you," Lise said, both for the information and for the nonincriminating way the secretary had given it to her. She hung up.
Survival instincts,she thought, and shook her head. She'd always believed Heinrich had strong ones. But if he did, why had he gone running to stick his head in the lion's mouth? At first, she was inclined to blame Willi. A moment later, though, she shook her head again. Heinrich hadn't taken Willi all that seriously-not seriously enough to let Willi talk him into risking his life-even before the trouble with Erika.
The trouble with Erika…Lise saw, or thought she did. Before the blackshirts grabbed Heinrich and flung him into prison, he never would have done anything so crazy. Now, though, he'd lain in the hands of the SS. Maybe he thought anything that might help stop that committee with the silly name was worth doing.
It will happen just the same, with you there or without you. Lise couldn't shout that to Heinrich, no matter how much she wanted to. He'd had an attack of patriotism-and wasn't that a strange fit to come over a Jew at the beating heart of the Third Reich? Was the difference between Lothar Prutzmann and Odilo Globocnik on the one hand and Heinz Buckliger and Rolf Stolle on the other really so enormous?
Lise wished she hadn't asked herself the question that way. The answer looked much too much like yes.
She turned on the televisor. Most of the stations were broadcasting reruns of daytime dramas or quiz shows or weepy advice shows. Every so often, words would glide across the bottom of the screen.You are ordered to obey the decrees of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich, the crawl said, over and over and over again.
The Berlin channel was different. It showed the crowd milling around Rolf Stolle's residence and, now, the stalled armored vehicles in front of it. "We are still here," a frightened-sounding announcer said over the noise of the crowd. "I don't know how long we can stay on the air, though. If we didn't have our own generator, we would have been shut down already. SS men have come here, but our guards turned them back. The guards have since been heavily reinforced by Wehrmacht troops."
Was that a warning to Prutzmann and his henchmen? Or was it a bluff? The announcer seemed nervous enough to make the latter seem a real possibility. But then the picture switched to a tape of Stolle kicking at a panzer's iron tire and bellowing at the SS man leaning out of the turret. Seeing the Gauleiter 's nerve made Lise willing to forgive the announcer's nerves.
Her daughters got home from school just then. She thought that would distract her from what was going on downtown, but it didn't. They were more excited about it than she was. Francesca said, "Frau Koch says we have to do what the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich tells us, and Odilo Globocnik is the new Fuhrer."
"Odilo Globocnik!" Roxane echoed. "Teacher made us learn how to say it."
"Us, too," Francesca said. "The Beast made us memorize his name and State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich, and anybody who couldn't do it got a swat. I did it. She's not going to hitme again." She spoke with grim determination.
"What does your teacher say?" Lise asked Alicia, who hadn't spoken yet.
"He made us learn Herr Globocnik's name," her eldest answered. "He said there wasn't any law for a committee like this one, but that wouldn't matter if they held on to power. He said we'd just have to wait and see, pretty much."
"He'll get in trouble," Francesca said. "Frau Koch says the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich "-since she'd memorized the name, she used it every chance she got-"is going to pay back everybody who ever liked what the old Fuhrer was doing."
"Odilo Globocnik is the new Fuhrer!" Roxane showed off what she'd learned, too.
"If that State Committee wins, they may do what Frau Koch says," Lise said carefully. "But Alicia's teacher has a point. They haven't won yet.Gauleiter Stolle and lots of people are protesting against what they've done." She didn't say that Heinrich was there. Even if things went sour in front of the Gauleiter 's residence, he might get away safe.Well, he might, she insisted to herself. Aloud, she went on, "They're on the televisor, too. Do you want to see?"
"Would you get us snacks first?" Roxane asked.
That seemed reasonable, so Lise did. Then they all went back to the living room. The Berlin channel was showing the tape of Stolle kicking at the panzer again. Francesca, in particular, watched wide-eyed. There was no room for dissent in Frau Koch's universe. Seeing that there was, or might be, in the real world seemed to hearten Lise's middle daughter. Alicia asked, "What are the other stations showing?"
"They were just putting on boring reruns, I suppose to make people think everything is normal," Lise answered. "But we can see what they're doing now."
She changed the channel. It wasn't a daytime drama any more. Horst Witzleben looked out of the screen at her and her children. "I have been given the following statement to read," he said. "And I quote…" He looked down at a paper on his desk. "'Rumors relating to the ancestry of the Reichsfuhrer -SS are false, malicious, and despicable lies. He is of unblemished Aryan descent. This being so, anyone repeating or spreading the false rumors will be subject to the most severe penalties. By order of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich.' We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming."
Regularly scheduled programming turned out to be a nature film about the migration of storks. "What did that mean, Mommy?" Roxane asked.
"I'm not quite sure," Lise answered.
"He didn't look very happy about it, whatever it was," Alicia said. "He didn't sound very happy, either."
"You're right-he didn't," Lise said. Witzleben had been a cheerleader for Heinz Buckliger's reforms. If he'd actually been as enthusiastic a cheerleader as he'd seemed, what had Prutzmann's bully boys done to persuade him to speak on their behalf? Held a gun to his head? Held a gun to his wife's head? There were, no doubt, all sorts of ways, and they'd be the ones to know them. She changed channels again. The Berlin station was still broadcasting. The crowd around Rolf Stolle's residence was still there. Lise shrugged. "We'll just have to see what happens, that's all."
"Let me through!" somebody with a big voice shouted behind Heinrich. "Get out of my way, dammit! Clear a path!"
"In your dreams, pal," Willi Dorsch said.
Even if they didn't clear a path, the man kept on coming, using his shoulders and his elbows to force his way forward. He was a Berlin police officer. People did try to move aside for him, but in the press of bodies it wasn't easy. "Let me through!" he yelled again. "I've got important news for the Gauleiter."
He pushed past Heinrich and Willi. A moment later, a woman spoke sharply: "You might say, 'Excuse me.'"
For a wonder, the policeman actually did say, "Sorry, lady." Then, as roughly as ever, he went on toward Rolf Stolle, who was still arguing with the commander of the lead panzer.
"Was that your friend who called him on his manners?" Willi asked, grinning.
"Susanna? I do believe it was," Heinrich answered.
"She's got nerve," Willi said admiringly.
"Oh, yes. That she does."
There was a stir when the police officer came up to the gray-uniformed men guarding the Gauleiter of Berlin. They must have recognized him, for they let him through. He spoke to Stolle for perhaps a minute and a half. Heinrich wasn't that far away, but couldn't hear a word he said. He could see Stolle's reaction, though. The Gauleiter stared. His eyes went wide with surprise. Then, to Heinrich's amazement, he threw back his head and bellowed Jovian laughter at the sky.