She wasn't really asking Esther. And if she was asking God, He'd had few answers for Jews these past seventy-five years. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything,' Esther whispered, and hung up. As soon as she left the booth, another woman went in. She hoped the other woman had happier business. She also hoped the other woman, and whoever used the booth afterwards, would cover up all of her own fingerprints.
Esther wanted to find another phone booth and call Walther, to let him know she'd warned the Kleins. She wanted to, but she didn't. Calls into and out of Zeiss were too likely to be monitored. She could have worked out some sort of code phrase to tell him what she'd done, but she didn't want to take the chance today. Such phrases were fine if nobody was likely to be paying close attention. If, on the other hand, someone was trying to build a case…
With a shiver, Esther shook her head. 'No,' she murmured.
A man gave her a curious look. Susanna would have frozen him with a glare. Heinrich would have walked past him without even noticing the curious look, which would have confounded him just as well. Esther's way was to smile sweetly at him. He turned red, embarrassed at wondering about such an obviously normal person.
If only you knew,Esther thought. But the truth, no matter how little the Nazis wanted to admit it, was that Jews were, or could be, normal people, some good, some bad, some indifferent. Shylock's words from The Merchant of Venice echoed in Esther's mind.If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?
Esther tried to imagine an SS man tickling a Jew. The picture was enough to set her laughing without the deed-but only for a moment. The Nazis had poisoned Jews, poisoned them by the millions, and the Jews had died.
Shylock went on,and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? She doubted a Jew was left alive who didn't dream of revenge at least once a day. But dreams were only dreams.
Survival is a kind of revenge,Esther thought.Just by living on, by passing our heritage to our children, we beat the Nazis. She smiled. Now Alicia Gimpel knew what she was, too. Pretty soon, her sisters would also know.
And if all went well-and Esther, with her sunny disposition, still hoped it would-Eduard Klein would find out one of these days, too. But then that smile disappeared. No matter how sunny Esther was, she couldn't keep it. The Kleins had passed on some of their heritage to little Paul, too, and he would never live to find out what he was.
Heinrich Gimpel was starting to get used to seeing long black limousines pull up to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht about the time he and Willi got off their bus in front of the building. He was getting used to watching Party and SSBonzen he'd seen on the televisor and read about in newspapers and magazines climbing the steps he climbed every day.
And he was beginning to gauge how the generals in charge of the Wehrmacht liked their high-ranking visitors by the way the guards treated the newcomers at the entrance. If they came to attention and waved the politicking bigwigs through, those officials were in good odor with his bosses. If they made the muckymucks wait, checked identity cards against faces, and fed the cards through the machine reader to get a green light, those men weren't so well liked.
One morning, the machine reader showed a red light. 'This is an outrage!' an SSObergruppenfuhrer shouted. 'Let me pass!'
'Sorry,' a guard replied, obviously enjoying being rude to the SS equivalent of a lieutenant general. 'No green light, you don't come in.' He turned to Heinrich and Willi. 'Next!'
'You have not heard the last of this!' the Obergruppenfuhrer warned. He stormed off, his face as red as the stripe on a General Staff officer's trousers.
Heinrich wondered if his identity card would pass muster, but it did. So did Willi's. Once they got inside, Willi said, 'The generals really didn't want to see that fellow, if they programmed the reader to reject his card.'
'People are starting to show where they stand,' Heinrich replied.
'I'd say so,' Willi Dorsch agreed. 'And if that SS man's faction wins, I'd say we'll see our budget cut.'
Heinrich shrugged. 'The Waffen — SS has always thought it could do the Wehrmacht 's job. The next time it's right will be the first.'
'Not to hear its officers tell the story.' Willi shrugged, too. 'Ah, well. Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is but to do or die.'
'You so relieve my mind,' Heinrich said. Willi laughed. He could talk blithely about dying-he didn't have to worry about it very much. Heinrich, on the other hand, had days when he felt he was living on borrowed time, and that it was about to run out. The feeling would have been bad enough had he worried about himself alone. Worrying about the rest of his folk left in the Reich seemed twenty times worse.
As they sat down at their desks, Willi said, 'You see, though? It's just like I said. Nobody cares what the limeys did, and nobody's calling a Party congress to pick the next Fuhrer. So much for the precious first edition. The big shots will do the choosing, same as always.'
'It does look that way,' Heinrich agreed, and did his best not to sound too unhappy in case the room was bugged. 'They're taking their time, too.'
'They've got to find somebody they can all at least stand,' Willi said, which was doubtless true. 'That weeds out the zanies and the men who only have a following in one faction.'
'So it does.' If Heinrich thought,A Party congress would do better still, because then everything would be out in the open, he kept it to himself. Willi was right: no Party congress would choose Kurt Haldweim's successor. That being so, to go on talking about the first edition might mark a man as a dangerous dissident.
He settled in to work. No matter what the Waffen — SS thought, the Wehrmacht was the strong right arm of the Greater German Reich. And no matter who became Fuhrer — even if it turned out to be that belligerent Obergruppenfuhrer 's candidate-the Wehrmacht had to go on. It had to-and it would. Plenty of people like Heinrich Gimpel (though not many of themjust like Heinrich Gimpel) made sure it kept running smoothly.
Willi asked, 'Are we on for tonight?'
'The brains of the outfit hasn't told me anything different,' Heinrich said, by which he meant Lise. Willi grinned; he sometimes called Erika the High Command in the same way. Carefully, Heinrich added, 'We might do better if we don't talk politics too much, though.'
Willi's grin slipped. 'You know that, and I know that, but whether Erika knows that… Well, we'll find out.'
That was what Heinrich was afraid of, but he made himself smile and nod. The date for dinner and bridge alarmed him, so that part of him wished he'd backed out. If Willi and Erika's marriage was blowing up, he didn't want it to blow up in his face. But what would Erika do if he made that too obvious? He didn't want to find out. Getting back to work was something of a relief.
Willi didn't joke any more about Erika being the one who wanted Heinrich over. Heinrich wished he would have. If he was joking about it, he probably wasn't brooding over what it meant. If he wasn't joking…Well, who could say?
They got through the day's work. Canteen rumor was full of talk about the rejected Obergruppenfuhrer. Since Heinrich and Willi had seen that happen, they scored points for eyewitness accounts. Another analyst sighed enviously, saying, 'I'd've paid money to watch one of those arrogant so-and-sos head off with a flea in his ear.' Several other people nodded.
Rumor also spoke of Bonzen from the Party and from the Navy who had been admitted to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Heinrich tried to read tea leaves from that. All he could see was that the Navy, like the Wehrmacht, was a conservative service. If they were joining with one section of the Party, maybe with an SS faction different from that Obergruppenfuhrer 's…They might be trying to promote a candidate, or they might be trying to block one. Only time would tell.
Heinrich and Willi rode home together. 'See you a little before seven,' Willi said as he got off the bus. 'We can all watch Horst and then get down to cards.'
'All right.' Heinrich hoped it would be.
Katarina came over to babysit the girls. Kathe was a kid sister, closer in age to Alicia than to Lise. Heinrich suspected she'd been a surprise to her parents. He wished he could ask them even such a nosy question; a drunken truck driver had broadsided their little VW a few years before, and they hadn't survived the wreck. A People's Court gave the truck driver summary justice, but that didn't bring back the Franks.
Tante Kathe fascinated the children. She dyed her brown hair a yellow as artificial as oleomargarine, and
