Klein’s eyes lit up. “Wow! Amazing, sir. I saw this, too. I remember, now that you’re showing it to me again. But I never would have thought of it, let alone come up with it just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Words are weapons, too,” Heydrich said. “You need to know where you can get your hands on them. Why don’t you go grab yourself some chow? I want to fiddle with this for a while.”
As soon as Klein left, Heydrich sat down again and started writing. He worked in German; he knew he’d make a hash of things if he tried to compose in English. But it would get translated. Other people would suggest changes and add things, too. That was all right. He was fighting again.
VII
In Nuremberg, the city jail was near the center of town. The Palace of Justice-a fancy name for the local courthouse-lay off to the northwest. It had taken some bomb damage. That didn’t surprise Lou Weissberg. In Nuremberg, it was much easier to list the buildings that hadn’t taken bomb damage than to set down the ones that had.
Bomb damage or not, the Allies were going to try the Nazi big shots they’d captured at the Palace of Justice. The American judge and his opposite numbers from the UK, France, and the Soviet Union would give Goring and Hess and Ribbentrop and Streicher and Jodl and Keitel and the rest the fair trials they hadn’t given to countless millions. And then, without the tiniest bit of doubt, most of those goons would hang or face a firing squad or die in whatever other way that extraordinary court decreed.
In the meantime, the Nazis cooled their heels in the Nuremberg jail as if they were ordinary burglars or wife beaters. Well, not quite. They had a wing of the jail all to themselves. They had a lot more guards in that wing than anybody in his right mind would have wasted on burglars or wife beaters.
And the jail was surrounded by barbed wire and sandbagged machine-gun nests and concrete antitank barriers. The pointed obstacles looked to Lou like German designs. They’d probably been yanked from the Siegfried Line and carted back here. In a way, Lou appreciated the irony. The obstacles intended to slow up American and British tanks were now going into action against the krauts who’d made them.
In another way, that irony was scary. Almost six months after the alleged surrender, the occupation authorities needed to stay buttoned up tight to make sure the Germans didn’t liberate their leaders.
If they somehow did, that would give the United States a godawful black eye. All the same, Lou wondered how much Reinhard Heydrich wanted to have to do with men who might have the rank to order him around. Somebody like Goring wouldn’t be able to resist trying. And Heydrich, damn his little shriveled turd of a soul, was managing just fine by himself. Anybody who tried to jog his elbow might come down with a sudden and acute case of loss of life.
Lou eyed the jail again. “Fuck,” he said softly. Despite all the barbed wire and the antitank barriers and the machine-gun nests and the swarms of jittery dogfaces manning the position, somebody’d managed to stick one of the fanatics’ new propaganda sheets on the wall.
Shaking his head, Lou walked over and tore the sheet down. It was what Europeans used for typing paper, a little taller and a little skinnier than good old 81/2? 11. Lou had seen English and German versions of the propaganda sheet. A printer was giving the fanatics a hand. If the occupation authorities caught him at it, he’d be sorry. Lou snorted under his breath. That didn’t seem to worry the bastard one whole hell of a lot.
This was the English version. It was obviously translated from the German, translated by somebody better with German than with English. WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? it said: smudgy type on cheap paper.
What Germans desire to acquire by victory is the fulfillment of the idea that an individual shall be respected for his own self. This is what makes life worth living for us.
“Assholes,” Lou muttered. The Nazis had sure respected Jews and Gypsies and Russians for their own selves, hadn’t they?
We fight for the sake of our own culture, the propaganda sheet went on. If you had invaders ruthlessly occupying your own land, you too would rise up against them. How can a brave folk do anything else?
“Assholes,” Lou said again, louder this time. Tito’s guerrillas, Russian partisans, the French maquis-what did the SS and the Wehrmacht do to real freedom fighters when they caught them? Everybody knew the answer to that one. Lou had seen a photo a German soldier took of a hanged Russian girl maybe eighteen years old. Around her neck the SS had put a warning placard in German and Russian: I SHOT AT GERMAN SOLDIERS.
Once we have once more our own state back in our hands, we solemnly vow that we seek no new foreign conflict. Europe has seen enough of war, the sheet declared, as if Hitler hadn’t had thing one to do with that war and the way the Nazis fought it. All we seek is a fair peace and our own national self-determination, which is the proper right of any free people.
What kind of self-determination did the Reich give Poles and Scandinavians and Dutchmen and Belgians and Frenchmen and Yugoslavs and Greeks and Russians and…? But Germans had a knack for feeling a shoe only when it pinched them.
Lou started to crumple the sheet and toss it aside. Then he caught himself, even though CIC already had plenty of copies. A major with a double chin was giving orders to some GIs. Lou walked over to him and said, “Major, I just found this stuck to the wall here. How come somebody was able to put it up?”
The major snatched the paper out of his hand, gave it one quick, scornful glance, and barked, “Who the hell are you, Lieutenant, and who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m Lou Weissberg, Counter-Intelligence Corps,” Lou said calmly. “And who are you…sir?”
By the way he said it, he made the title one of reproach, not respect. The major took a deep breath and opened his mouth to scorch him. Then the man had very visible second thoughts. Even a lieutenant in the CIC might have connections that could make you sorry if you crossed him. As a matter of fact, Lou did. Raising when you really held a full house gave you confidence that showed.
“My name’s Hawkins-Tony Hawkins,” the major said in a different tone of voice. He took a longer look at the propaganda sheet. “You found this goddamn thing here-at the jail?”
“Just now, like I said. Right over there.” Lou pointed. “You’ve got this whole shebang around the building, and I wondered how some Jerry snuck this thing in here and put it up without anybody noticing.”
“Goddamn good question,” Major Hawkins said. “Fuck me if I know for sure, but my best guess is-”
His best guess got interrupted. The explosion wasn’t anywhere close by, but it was big. The ground shook under Lou’s feet. One of the soldiers said, “That an earthquake?”
“You California jerks think everything’s a goddamn earthquake,” another GI answered. “That’s a motherfucking bomb going off, is what that is. One huge honker of a bomb, too.”
That echoed Lou’s thoughts much too well. He looked around in all directions. At least even money the jail’s gray bulk would hide whatever had just happened…But no. There it was, off to the northwest: a swelling cloud of black smoke and dust.
Major Hawkins had already proved he had a foul mouth. He outdid himself now. Then he rounded on Lou. “What do you wanna bet that’s the fucking courthouse? You CIC cocksuckers are such hot shit, how come you didn’t keep the fanatics from blasting it to the moon?”