Great Hall when Haldweim lay in state. No man with a face like that would have let anybody get away with anything. But Trudi and her parentshad got away with it. Therefore, thingshad changed, at least some.
There was logic that didn't chase its own tail. And if Wolf Priller didn't like it, so much the better. Alicia threw her orange peel in the trash and ran to join the girls with the jump rope.
Because of who he was, because of what he did, and because of what he was, Walther Stutzman had access to far more of the Reich 's computer records than anyone else knew about. The problem was being able to use the access codes he had. If anyone spotted strange things on his monitor, he would lose his access privileges in a hurry-and also, very likely, his freedom, and also, quite possibly, his life.
Lunch was a good time to poke around. Most people in Walther's office at the Zeiss works went out to eat. That helped. As usual, he kept his monitor turned so it wasn't easy to see unless you came right into his cubicle. That helped, too. All the same, especially after things had gone so badly wrong fixing the Kleins' genealogy, he got extra nervous whenever he went looking where he wasn't supposed to.
He had to keep doing it, even if it was dangerous. He knew that. Finding out more than he could through ordinary channels might help keep him and all the Jews left in the Reich safe. And he couldn't help being curious, either.
His boss said, 'There's a gang of us going over to this new place that serves American hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken. Want to come along? Guaranteed heart-burn or your money back.'
'Can't do it.' Walther pointed to his desk. It was as neat as usual, but did have more stacks of paper on it than people were used to seeing there. 'This changeover to the new operating system is tougher than we ever thought it would be. I don't know if we can meet the schedule they've set us.'
Gustav Priepke grimaced. 'Lord help us if we don't. We've already had three false starts. If we botch it this time, they're liable to throw us out on our ear and hire a bunch of programmers from Japan.'
Priepke was kidding on the square, and Walther knew it. The Reich had pioneered in electronic computers- and the core operating system still showed as much, for it lacked protected memory and preemptive multitasking. The Japanese had got off to a later start, and had had the advantage of seeing the mistakes German programmers made. Japanese systems were more robust and often more reliable, even if they weren't so elegant.
'I think we can make it happen, but it's going to take a lot of work,' Walther said. 'And so…' He apologetically spread his hands.
His boss nodded. 'If you're on the trail of something, keep after it. I'll have an extra hot dog for you.' Off he went-and, knowing him, he'd probably have two.
Walther waited till more people went off to lunch, whether at the American place-it was called, for no reason he could see, the Greasy Spoon-or somewhere else. When the big room that held his cubicle had quieted down, he used one of those access codes he wasn't supposed to have. This one took him to an archive of the Fuhrer 's speeches. He wanted to-and he was convinced he needed to-find out just what Heinz Buckliger had said at Nuremberg, because it had so many people hopping.
The Nuremberg speech was there in the menu, sure enough. When he tried to call it up, though, it demanded another authorization code from him, one with a much higher security level. He blinked. He'd never seen anything like that before, not for a speech. He knew the second code, but hadn't imagined he would have to use it. Whathad Buckliger been talking about? Nuclear bombs and missile design?
Even after he entered the authorization code, the system hesitated before it coughed up the text of the Fuhrer 's speech. He got ready to bail out in a hurry and cover his tracks. But then the speech did come up. If someone-or something electronic-was making special note of his presence, none of his own tools for detecting such things sensed it.
He quickly scrolled through the speech to see how long it was. When he did, he got another surprise. It seemed to go on forever. the Fuhrer had the privilege of length, of course. Had any ruler of the Third Reich ever used it so extravagantly as Heinz Buckliger had here, though? Maybe the Volkischer Beobachter hadn't published it because it would have filled two days' editions.
Walther started to read. He couldn't go through the whole speech in detail, as he'd intended. It was just too damned long; he wouldn't have been halfway through by the time his boss got back from the Greasy Spoon. So he skimmed-and even skimming was plenty to make him sit up and take notice.
Buckliger came right out and said things that everybody knew but that nobody-certainly not the Fuhrer — ever talked about. What had Lothar Prutzmann and the rest of the leaders of the SS thought when he declared, 'For far too long, this state has been founded on one thing and one thing only: terror'? If that didn't infuriate them…
If that didn't infuriate them, the speech had plenty of other things to do the job. The new Fuhrer said that all his predecessors, from Hitler on, had received reverence as if they were gods, 'but they are only men, with all the failings to which men are heir.' Walther found himself nodding. That seemed obvious when you came out and said it-but who in the nearly eighty years of the Reich 's historyhad come out and said it? Nobody-and a ruling Fuhrer least of all.
And Heinz Buckliger had also said, 'Force can win victories, but force alone cannot maintain them forever without more expense than Germany can readily afford.' If that didn't fly in the face of everything the Reich had stood for since the early days, what did?
With each new bombshell, Walther wanted to slow down and read more carefully. He knew he couldn't, not with his boss and his colleagues coming back soon, not if he wanted to see as much of what was there as possible. But he wanted to.
If he had slowed down, he wouldn't have come to the question the new Fuhrer asked near the end of the speech: 'If everything we say about Aryan descent is true, how do we explain the recent rapid progress of the Japanese, who have not mingled their blood with Aryan stock any time recently?'
How Buckliger answered that question, Walther didn't find out; he had to get the speech off his monitor because the room started filling up again. But that the Fuhrer thought to ask it said more than any answer could. No, they couldn't very well publish this speech. The country wasn't ready. And Walther would have bet anything he owned that the Party and SSBonzen who'd listened to it at Nuremberg hadn't been, either.
VII
Heinrich Gimpel had tried the greasy spoon before, and hadn't been much impressed. No matter how trendy the American place was, he didn't like the food all that much. But if Richard and Maria Klein wanted to go there to celebrate, he and Lise weren't about to tell them no. The Kleins had reason to celebrate. The Security Police didn't call off an investigation every day, not when they were trying to find out if you were a Jew.
'I wish we could throw a proper party at home,' Maria said. She'd been thin and pale to begin with, and the troubles of the past few months had only made her thinner and paler. She had a very nice smile, though, even when she shrugged and said, 'You know how things are liable to be.'
'Oh, yes.' Heinrich nodded. So did Lise. If the authorities were still looking for evidence, what better way to get it than to fill the Kleins' house with microphones and listen to everything they said-and, if they did throw a party, to everything their friends said, too?
Richard took a big bite out of his cheeseburger. He had a musician's hands, all right: long, clever fingers, the tips slightly spatulate from endless hours of practice. He said, 'I don't have any idea what finally made them quit. They just said, 'All right, we're done. Go on about your business. Doesn't look like you are what we thought you were.'' He had too much sense to say Jew where anyone who wasn't might hear. Grinning with relief, he sipped from a mug of beer.
'Was it your lawyer?' Lise asked. 'From what Susanna says, he's a tiger.'
The Kleins shrugged in unison. 'He made a lot of noise, I'll say that for him,' Maria answered. 'I don't know how much real good he did, though.'
A girl in what was supposed to be an American waitress's outfit from before the Third World War came up to the table. 'Hi!' she said-the standard server's greeting at the Greasy Spoon. She returned to German to ask, 'Would you like some dessert? Cherry pie, maybe, or brownies?'
'We're not quite ready yet,' Heinrich said.
