He removed his pince-nez and cleaned it again. It wouldn’t do to misread a figure because of some speck on the glass. He’d had some trouble with that recently, blurred objects appearing along the edge of his field of vision, vague disturbances in the air. Perhaps these were the harbingers of some immanent vision, but probably that was too much to hope for. Although it embarrassed him, he considered that his eyes might be weakening further.
Minutes later he walked out into the hall. Something bothered him about the crowd, something that did not fit, some disturbance. Something stirred there on his left, skin paler even than his own, eyes which did not blink, as if there were no eyelids, and dark holes in the milky eyeballs where the pupils should have been. But he had a task to perform and his men were waiting. He scanned the crowd again but could find nothing more.
Daniel could tell that he was less into this part than normal, his consciousness only partially absorbed. Certainly this mind was a twitchy, uncomfortable place to be. But part of the issue, he thought, was that Himmler was so difficult to pin down exactly, his mouth always saying one thing while his mind was thinking another, and more. Himmler was like a robot with more than one program running inside.
Among the SS higher-ups in their stiff uniforms and feigned expressions of attention, a dirty young boy in striped pajamas drifted in and out between the seats, floated along the floor, insinuated his stick thick arms and legs among the chair legs and uniformed legs, pushed his twig-like fingers upwards in a reach for the sky.
Had Himmler noticed? Yes, but only vaguely. He was not yet quite ready to see.
Heinrich climbed the podium. He looked about to see who was in the high-backed chairs, how many were empty. The town hall was not as impressive as he would have liked, but at least there were the vaulted arches, a Teutonic feel to the stone work.
“In the months which have passed since we last met in June of 1942, many comrades have fallen and given their lives for Germany and for the Führer. Before them, in the forefront—I ask you to stand in their honor, and in the honor of all our dead SS men and dead German soldiers, men and women—in the forefront, from our ranks, let us honor our old comrade and friend, SS Obergruppenführer Eicke.”
They rose from their seats. Eicke had been a difficult loss for him personally. He’d taken the man out of an asylum and made him commandant at Dachau. If nothing else he would make sure Eicke was remembered as a hero. He gazed at the men assembled before him, seeking some sign of the disturbance he’d sensed earlier. There—a bit of ragged cloth, a filthy foot, but he could not see what they were attached to. His men shifted their weight impatiently. Some boy had gotten in. Someone would pay. But for now Himmler said, “I ask you to sit.”
Heinrich usually felt in control in these situations, speaking authoritatively, those he commanded hanging on to his every word. At times like these he thought of his father and all those years he’d stood in front of a classroom. His father must be proud of him, but the old man had no idea how far Heinrich might take this. No one did. He had to rid himself of that filthy intruder. A brutal bit of housekeeping was called for.
“I have considered it necessary to call you all together, the High Leadership Corps of the SS and Police, now at the beginning of the fifth year of the war, which will be a very difficult year…”
Heinrich had his fears, more than he would name. Throughout the year he had utilized his control over the courts and civil service to advance the racial reordering of Europe, paying particular attention to the fates of the 600,000 Jews he estimated to be in France. Earlier last month one thousand Jews had been deported from Paris to Auschwitz.
This Autumn there had been the Allied air raids on Hamburg in early August, followed by the destruction of the armament center of Peenemünde at mid-month. The Allies were calling for Germany’s unconditional surrender.
Some days, they seemed much further away than others from the supermen they would one day become.
Heinrich heard his own voice continue on and on, and it seemed to him he was putting parts of himself to sleep. His men continued to sit bolt upright in their chairs, but here and there he could detect some glassiness in the eyes, some strain in the necks. They would all let him down eventually, and he would become the commander of an army of corpses. They needed stirring. They needed a bit of mayhem.
But the future still lay before him. In the years ahead he would expand Wewelsberg into an SS kingdom. It would be his great city, his SS Vatican, the center of the new world. An 18-meter-high wall with 18 towers. The whole of the complex would be in the shape of a spear pointing north. Part of him focused on this and nothing else. He liked to imagine all his brave knights gathered together in the castle dining hall, sitting in their pig leather chairs and eating from silver plates with their names engraved on them. This would be just the beginning of the next phase of human evolution.
Daniel wasn’t always sure which Himmler to pay attention to—the officious accountant of the dead or the dreamer who had lost his head. Both were frightening, and equally dangerous.
“The Bolshevik system, and therefore Stalin, had made one of its most serious mistakes…”
He kept hearing a murmuring, a clanging of pots and laughter. That boy in the audience, was he causing the trouble? There—part of the boy’s face—so blue, as if the flesh had lain on frozen ground.
“… the total loss of approximately 500 km of front.
This loss required the withdrawal of the German front, in order to be able to close it again at all. This loss made the sacrifice of Stalingrad necessary from the point of view of Fate.”
There it was again. Heinrich turned. Who? Were they listening? He marked his place in the notes and stopped his speech. “Hold on. Koppe!” The men stirred anxiously. “Down there! It’s so noisy! Does a shaft lead to the kitchen?”
There were service people in the kitchen who might listen. He had to shut off the possibility.
He looked back into the audience. He didn’t see the boy. Perhaps he was still sneaking around, attempting to sabotage Heinrich’s speech? “We are going to wait for a moment,” he announced. “Because what I say isn’t for everyone’s ears, right?”
He left the microphone. His men were scattering, moving rapidly, much to his satisfaction. Now there would be action! He followed two of his staff down into the kitchen. They began to question the workers. He pulled one of his men closer, yanking on his elbow. “Are there Jews here?”
The young man looked alarmed. “Oh no, Herr Reichsführer. Everyone was checked beforehand.”
“Make sure,” he whispered. “Shoot them if necessary.”
Peering around them, Heinrich saw something on one of the counters that made him gasp: a bloody rabbit carcass, waiting patiently to be fully butchered. He shuddered, his belly twisting in knots. Vaguely, he heard one of his men explaining how they could not close the door to the kitchen, but they had found a mattress in one of the rooms. They would stuff it in front of the door.
He scurried back toward the podium, trying to leave the image of the butchered animal behind him. He had no tolerance for such things—for him a meal was ruined if he was reminded that animals had been slaughtered.
He could never understand how a hunter received pleasure from shooting an innocent creature. Every animal had a right to live. The Buddhist monks had the right idea. They carried a bell with them to keep the woodland animals away so that no harm might come to them.
He was rattled, but he went on to discuss the evacuation of Kharkov, still hearing things out in the crowd and glimpsingmovement. Why couldn’t the child at least lie still until Heinrich was finished?