have after too much to drink. But this morning he didn't smell like a distillery, and he didn't wince at every noise and every sunbeam like a man with a hangover. Maybe he really was just glad to have a friend. And how glad would he be after a few ill-chosen words from Erika?
Those words evidently hadn't come. Maybe they wouldn't. Heinrich dared hope. In the Reich, the mere act of hoping was-had to be-an act of courage for a Jew. With a shrug, Heinrich said, 'All I know is, I've got too much work waiting for me at the office.'
'Ha! Who doesn't?' Willi said. 'Our section could have twice as many people in it, and we'd still be behind. Of course, if the new Fuhrer cuts the assessments in the Empire the way he's been talking about, we'll all end up out of work.'
'Do you think he will?' Heinrich asked with even more genuine curiosity than he dared show.
'Me? I'm not going to try and guess along with him any more, no, sir,' Willi said. 'I was wrong a couple of times, and all that proves is, I shouldn't do it.'
The bus pulled into the train station. Heinrich and Willi hurried off. They both paused to buy copies of the Volkischer Beobachter from a vending machine, then went to the platform to catch the commuter train into Berlin.
They sat side by side, reading the paper. Heinrich, as usual, went through it methodically. Willi was a butterfly, flitting from story to story. He found as many interesting tidbits as Heinrich did, and sometimes found them faster. 'Americans question assessment,' he said, pointing to a piece on page five.
Heinrich, who hadn't got there on his own yet, flipped to the story. He read it, then shook his head. 'They can question, but it won't do them much good,' he said. 'The occupying authorities will collect their pound of flesh one way or another.'
'Ah, a pound of flesh.' Willi laughed wistfully. 'I remember how much fun that used to be.'
Heinrich winced at the pun. Maybe that wince was what made him ask, 'What about Ilse?' Normally, he would think such a thing, but he wouldn't say it. The wry joke had made him drop some of his defenses. He didn't like that. He couldn't afford to drop them, even for an instant.
Willi blinked. He hadn't expected the question, any more than Heinrich had expected to ask it. After a pause when Heinrich wondered if he would answer at all, he said, 'Ilse's sweet, and she's good in bed, but it's not the same, you know what I mean?'
'I…think so,' Heinrich said. He thought about making love with a near-stranger after so long with Lise and nobody else. Yes, that would be very odd, especially the first few times. Then he thought about making love with Erika, who was, after all, anything but a stranger. What wouldthat be like?Cut it out, he told himself sternly. Most of him listened.
'You're lucky, being happy where you are,' Willi said, and dove back into the newspaper.
'Yes, I suppose I am,' Heinrich said, which was certainly the truth, for he would have been stuck where he was whether he was happy or not. Divorce drew notice to a couple, even these days. Jews mostly stayed married no matter how badly they got along.
A lot ofgoyim did the same thing. Willi said, 'If it weren't for the kids, and if it weren't for the way people look at you funny afterwards, Erika and I would have split up by now. Hell, we may yet, in spite of all that stuff.'
'I hope not,' Heinrich said, which was true for all kinds of reasons his friend didn't understand. He chose one Willi would: 'If you guys broke up, we'd have to find somebody else to beat at bridge.'
'Ha! Whathave you been smoking?' That touched Willi's pride where a lot of other gibes wouldn't have. And if he thought of Heinrich as a rival at the card table, maybe he wouldn't worry about him any other way.
The train pulled into South Station. Heinrich and Willi rode the escalators to the upper level, where they caught the bus to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. Heinrich went to his desk with more than a little apprehension-not only because now he knew Willi was sleeping with Ilse, but also because the Americans were acting up. When they did that, they made his job harder. He had enough other things to worry about without trouble from the far side of the Atlantic.
But sure as hell, four people came up to him in the first hour he was there, all of them with the Beobachter in their hands. They all wanted to know what the Yankees would do, and what the Reich would do to them after they did it. 'We'll have to wait and see,' Heinrich said again and again, which satisfied no one.
He said the same thing to two more men on the telephone. One was a lieutenant general, a man who disliked ambiguity of any sort. 'Dammit, I need to know if we're going to move or not,' the officer growled.
'So do I, sir,' Heinrich answered. The general swore and hung up.
When the telephone rang again, Heinrich felt like swearing, too. 'Budget analysis-Gimpel speaking,' he said.
'Good morning to you,Herr Gimpel. This is Charlie Cox, calling from Omaha.' The American's German was fluent, but had the flat accent English-speakers gave the language.
'I know your name,Herr Cox. You are in the Department of the Treasury,nicht wahr? What can I do for you today?'
'You can tell me how serious Herr Buckliger is about a new deal for the different parts of the Germanic Empire.' Cox didn't beat around the bush. And that, of course, would bethe question in the eyes of any American administrator.
It was alsothe question, or at least closely related tothe question, in Heinrich's eyes. It happened to be one he couldn't answer, either for Charlie Cox or for himself. 'I'm very sorry,Herr Cox,' he said, and meant it. 'I don't make policy. I just implement it when someone else has made it.'
Cox grunted. 'Well, I don't suppose I really could have expected you to say anything else. But you've got to have some kind of idea about how things will work out. You're a hell of a lot closer there than we are here.'
'If I knew, I would tell you,' Heinrich answered, and he might even have meant that. 'But I'm afraid I don't. The person who sets policy, whom I mentioned a moment ago, is the Fuhrer, no one else. When he decides what he wants to do, we will do it.'
'Do it to us,' Cox muttered in English. Heinrich was less fluent in that language than, say, Susanna Weiss, but he spoke it well enough. Even though the Empire ran on German, English came in handy for dealing with Americans. Charlie Cox had just put his life in Heinrich's hands.
'Sooner or later, we will all see what the Fuhrer has in mind,' Heinrich said. While true, that was unlikely to be comforting. 'In the meantime, I suggest you pay your assessments promptly. That way, there won't be any unfortunate incidents both sides might regret.'
'Incidents we would regret a hell of a lot more than the Reich does.' Cox dared say that in German.
'Probably,' Heinrich agreed. 'The losing side does have a way of regretting incidents more than the winners.'
'If we didn't know that already,Herr Gimpel, the past forty years would have proved it to us,' Cox said. 'Auf wiedersehen.' He hung up.
From his desk a couple of meters away, Willi Dorsch asked, 'The Americans?'
Heinrich nodded. 'Oh, yes. Did you expect anything else? They want to see how much they can get away with, too.'
'Who doesn't, these days?' Willi said. 'If we had any Jews left, they'd be trying to persuade us they were good Aryans, too.' He laughed at the absurdity of the notion.
Heinrich laughed, too. But the shriek inside didn't go away. One of these days, he would have an ulcer-or a stroke. A stroke had killed his father. Things came back to haunt you one way or another.
Ilse set some envelopes and a small package on his desk. 'Morning mail delivery,Herr Gimpel,' she said.
'Thank you,' he answered, hardly looking up.
She went over to Willi's desk and gave him the same sort of stuff. 'Here's yours, Willi,' she purred in a bedroom voice.
'Thanks, sweetie.' He made as if to grab her. Laughing, she spun away.
Heinrich punched keys on his calculator with altogether needless violence.If you're going to have an office romance, can't you at least pretend you're not? he wondered.It makes life easier for everyone around you-especially people who know your wife.
A moment later, another question crossed his mind.Am I angry at Willi, or am I just jealous? He shook his head. He didn't want Ilse. But the idea of having his choice between two women he did want…He shook his head again, annoyed at himself for poking beneath the surface. Purely in the abstract-or so most of him insisted-he liked
